Our Music Video
Our Album Cover
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
There are various forms and conventions of real R&B music videos and music videos of other genres. Some of these are shown in the diagram below:
Our music video uses and challenges many of the conventions in the diagram.
- Showing off - black and white shots at the beginning of the music video highlighting the clothes, glasses, watch and shoes which is a typical feature in R&B music videos as there is usually a theme of materialism. This also links into the concept of "Focus on appearance of artist and extras"
- Storyline - our music video challenges the concept of storylines in R&B music videos. A lot of R&B tracks are baout love and other life experiences, theefore they tend to have narrative in their music videos; however, more recent music videos focus on performance instead of narrative. Therefore we have developed this convention so that our music video can appeal to more modern audiences.
- Simple concepts - I think we definitely used this convention. We wanted the video to be kept simple with a colour scheme of black ad white and the use of only one extra; the dancer.
- Good-looking people - our music video has both a good-looking male and female so it therefore appeals to both a male and female audience.
- Singer looking directly at camera - this is supposed to be his debut music video and therefore it is very important that the audience relates to him and are engaged. This is achieved by having him sing directly to the camera; directly to the audience.
- "The Look" - R&B music videos almost always have "The Look" where the artist and/or the extras look directly at the camera which engages the audience. Our music video definitely uses the look.
- Relationship between artist and others - the lyrics of the song indicate that he is singing about a girl so the fact that there is only one female in the video leads the audience to believe that he might be talking about her. This is helped by the fact that she is dancing quite provocatively which creates a sense of chemistry between them.
- Performance - our music video definitely uses this concept; it is entirely performance-based which is quite unusual for R&B music videos as they usually have some form of narrative in them.
- Narcissism and sexualised female, scopophilia - we DEFINITELY have used this convention as the styling and performance of the female makes her seem like an object. She appeals to both the male and female audience as males will want to be with her and females will want to be like her.
- Lack of continuity - our music video does not have any narrative therefore it has no continuity at all. Instead of editing shots to make a story 'flow', we used a variety of shots (close-ups, long shots, mid-shots) and two different colour backgrounds (black and white). There are also shots that cut to the beat.
- Designed to be watched again - the use of quick cuts and the dancer has definitely made our music video interesting and makes people want to watch it again.
- Genre characteristics - we definitely used this convention. The focus on the material possessions and the appearance of the artist and dancer is a characteristics of R&B videos. The sexualised female is also a major characteristic of this genre.
- Close-ups and beauty shots of the star - the music video is mostly made up of shots of the star as we wanted to promote him and his music and make him the main focus of the video.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC AND VISUALS
- Labels: evaluation
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Q2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Looking at examples of other websites and album covers, it is clear to see that the main focus has to be the artist. No record label will want to pay for a website, music video or album cover if their artist isn't promoted.
For example, Scorcher is a UK underground artist who is yet to become very mainstream. He is on the brink of getting signed and is therefore in the same "boat" as Knyt. Below is his debut album and it is clear to see that album is promoting him and therefore all the images are of him.
- Labels: evaluation
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Q3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
- Labels: evaluation
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Q4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages ?
Frame hold |
We were also able to change the colour of his top and create glow effects. It was extremely important that his top was purple as we wanted it to fit in with the colour scheme we had already decided on. Although, he was wearing a purple top, the camera caused it to come out look blue. Luckily, Photoshop allowed us to rectify this problem.
before editing |
- Labels: evaluation
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Friday, December 10, 2010
All Done !
After so many weeks of hard work, we're finally done with the project.
- Labels: production
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Thursday, December 9, 2010
Homepage Dilemma
I love the way the website has come along and really happy with the techniques that have been used to make it look like a real, professional website.
The one page I did not like was the homepage:
- Labels: production
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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Uhh ohh
We had thought the music video was done so we exported it and uploaded to YouTube. However, when we watched it on a different computer, the white was completely yellow in some places. Not even a faint yellow !
So we're going to go through the whole music video again and use the Chroma Key tool.
Hopefully this will make it better...
[UPDATE]
Yes ! The chroma key has fixed the problem so the music video is good to go !
- Labels: production
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