Media Evaluation

In our A2 Media Studies, we were given a choice of projects to complete for the coursework side of the course. I chose to do assignment brief 1 which consisted of creating a promotion package for the release of an album, which included a video of a song that would appear on the album, together with two of the following options; A website for the band, A cover for its release as part of a Digipak, magazine advertisement for the Digipak, to compliment the music video.

We could do this in alone, in pairs or as a group.. I decided to work with a partner, Tauheed Akhtar, someone who i can trust and rely on to help share the work load. After much discussion, our chosen song was "Na nana na" by rap artist "Nelly". I originally favoured a creating a music video for a more rock orientated artist or group. However, we quickly found that our combined knowledge of rap and hip-hop would advantage us more during the course of the project, due to Tauheed not being a much of a fan of indie/rock.

The song itself focuses around the luxurious lifestyle of rap artists after they become successful, yet not forgetting the experiences they have and goals they ach

ieved. The song has many references, to cars, money and women, seeing all these aspects as objects they have acquired through wealth. We felt the song focuses at more of a niche audience rather then the masses and because of this we would have to work to distinguish the targe

t audience we would be aiming at.

To do this, during the research stages of the project,posting my finds on Blogger, i analysed, the actual video for the track we were using, and compared it to other similar tracks, such as Jay-Z's "99 problems". In both, I highlighted different codes and conventions i found in these videos. For instance, wealth is shown through luxurious possessions such as jewelery and cars throughout almost every video, and idea we planned to incorporate into our own final piece.

Costume also became a main focus, as many of the characters involved in the videos we analysed were dressed in particular ways, consisting of: baseball caps; baggy clothing; medallions; hi-top trainers etc. We looked at this consistent of dressing as a convention of a rap/hip-hop music video, noting it down to be used in the planning of our video.

During the research stages, to gain a further knowledge of how videos work, I also analysed videos from other genres, for example "All the small things" by Blink 182 and Mumford and Son's track "little lion man" which is a performance video, meaning that the video lacks an actual narrative and gives audiences the voyeuristic pleasure of watching the band performing. Blink 182's video parodied other videos from that era, creating humour by openly imitating and mocking the ideas of others. We then decided to attempt to create a humourous video ourselves, using elements of voyeuristic pleasure. We also gained an understanding of how these videos were put together, for instance the rock video cut to the beat of the music regularly the lyrics, in contrast to the rap videos, where the fast paced vocals allow the shots to cut more sharply, another idea we felt would be an essential to give our final product a proffesional look.

After research we began to discuss and plan our ideas for our own music video. We had many ideas, such as a performance video similar to the Mumford and Sons track I had earlier analysed, incorporating conventions such as the baggy clothing from hip-hop videos.

We enjoyed the style of the Jay-Z of the video, as he roams the rough streets whilst performing the song. This is when we decided to base our own music video around this idea. We originally planned to have Tauheed as the Artist of the Nelly track, miming to the track in rough looking locations that would resemble the "ghettos" of places like Brooklyn, with graffiti plastered walls and harsh looking neighborhoods.

Having created an idea, we looked back to our original notes and remembered how we had planned to give the final product a humorous element to it, so we looked back through our analysed videos for inspirations. We found that in the "99 problems" video Jay-Z is pictured with a Caucasian man, in sunglasses with a large beard.

We felt this character contradicted and challenged the conventions we had earlier found when it comes to the contents of rap/hip-hop videos, allowing this particular product to stand out from others, a quality we wanted our film to hold.

However, we were unable to completely copy the idea, as we were told to avoid parodying other video, so we began to brainstorm our own new ideas that would help us create a simulacrum of actual music videos, at the same time as challenging and breaking the stereotypes found in rap/hip-hop videos.

I have a younger brother, William Crooks, who is ten years old and Caucasian. His favourite music genre is rap and his favourite artist at the time of planning just happened to be Nelly, the artist behind our chosen track. So, with Tauheed being the main artist for the track and also my ancillary texts, we chose to include William to feature in the track as another artist called "Crooksy".

Similar to the way the character in the "99 problems" breaks the stereotypes of rap music videos, a young, white child featuring as an artist goes against the traditional conventions of the genre, also adding humour to the product.

We now had two main protagonists/characters and adapted our planned storyline. So we used the ‘Child Rapper’ narrative going against the genres conventions but with the older character, Tauheed following the stereotype.

Once we had created our idea, we began to plan the narrative by storyboarding a rough outline of the shots. We knew from analyzing videos from the genre, that rap music videos lack any real narrative, but instead focus quick paced editing and cuts, that cut more to pace of the lyrics than the beat. We knew we one of our aims was to shoot a balanced range of shots, such as medium, close or long shots, in order for our video not to become repetitive, which could cause audiences to become bored. For extra precaution, we also made sure we shot in many different locations so there is constantly something new for the viewer.

Firstly, broke down the lyrics into the time scale of each line, also taking note of where each shot cuts in the original video, to use as a guideline for our shot planning. During this process, we felt there was some indecent language for a child to be represented as saying, so we made sure any controversial language would be mimed by Tauheed. We than began to plan individual shot, stating how long it would last, the shots location and costume/props that would be needed for that particular scene.

We then created an animated using Windows Movie Maker, consisting of the images from the storyboard placed over the track to simulate how the final video would look. This advantaged us as it helped us highlight our first real issue. From watching the animatic, we felt that it looked consistent and did resemble an actual music video, yet it also felt very repetitive and growingly boring, due to the length of the video, which was originally nearly 5 minutes long. We decided to cut the second verse of the track for a variety of reasons.

The main reason being it held the most indecent language, making it easier for us to keep the track clean. Cutting the chorus also brought down the track length by nearly a minute, bringing us closer to the recommended length of 3 minutes, from start to finish.

Although being a long process, we were benefited by the task as we could no establish the right balance for the mise-en-scene as there we give ourselves a large choice of location, costume, shot type (such as were to include match-on-action, helping the video to flow smoothly) and props.

After the planning stages, it was time to physically go out, and shoot our footage. We created a shooting script as part of the original storyboard to establish where we needed to shoot and what we needed to capture on film. We were given a Sony Handicam to shoot our footage with, a small handheld video camera which copied each shot straight onto a memory stick, allowing us to skip spending a large amount of time capturing the footage onto the editing suite, a task we would of had to complete if we had filmed onto tape. So we began to film, shooting the film lyric by lyric in the specific locations. Unfortunately, we had filmed in nice weather and had not finished with the locations when the city was hit with excessive amounts of snow. We felt that to carry on filming through the weather would not only be dangerous, risking our own health and the safety of the equipment, but also have a negative impact on the quality of the final draft, as the mise-en-scene would be completely different. So we decided to take a break from filming and begin other tasks, one of these being starting editing. Having already shot a reasonable amount of footage, we uploaded our footage onto the editing suite, using a memory card reader through the computers USB port. After importing our footage onto Adobe Premier Pro CS4, which i had already has experience using from GCSE media studies at school, we began to name the shots and rebuild what we had created in the animatic. We quickly realised we had an issue with our shots.

Although framed nicely, in correct locations with appropriate lighting, costume and props, we had previously been strictly filming a lyric at a time. This meant that between each line, if there was a lengthy pause between lines, we had a a large black space in between each lyric, with no footage we could cut to fit the gap. This is when we learnt not to strictly follow our storyboards but use them as guidelines. After the weather cleared up, we went back out to film, this time a lot more freely, re-filming the songs contents numerous time, mixing up the mise-en-scene and cinematography, so the video would flow through unrepetively .

We chose our props carefully to resemble real rap music videos, taking inspiration from similar objects and items pictured in the original Nelly video.

For instance, Nelly is pictured with a Bentley, which emphasises his success and wealth, as the car is very experience. We wanted to give the same connotations in our video, so we took shots of both characters pictured with other expensive cars, such as a Mercedes-Benz and an Audi.

We also attempted to make our characters resemble actual artists through costume. For example, Nelly clothing is usually baggy and with him being from the USA, we dressed William in an american football jersey, which had the baggy fit look, to imitate the costume used in actual rap videos.

Every step we took towards the completion of our portfolio was recorded and posted onto Blogger (which has allowed us to see how our entire project is developing, highlighting areas of improvement) or YouTube, two Web 2.0 websites on the internet. Our access to Web 2.0 had many advantages, as we were able to post our products in a location where audience can give us feedback. Audiences were able to comment on what they thought was successful or should be changed in video.

Alongside our music video, were given the task of creating two ancillary texts to compliment the imaginary release of the album, these being an album advert for a music magazine, and a digipak to be used as packaging. As we did with the music video, before planning, we researched original adverts and digipaks for inspiration in creating our own.

I analysed a number of magazine album adverts, such as this advertisement for a new Basement Jaxx adverts, taking note of repeated conventions that would be essential in making my final product look proffessional. I found that: - usually an image of the artist or band being advertised; Artists/Band name placed boldly and stands out the page (usually near the top of the advertisement); Name of album is also shown and stands out to the reader; Contains a catchy tag line or quotation from the artist or band member; May contain positive reviews from music magazines, institutions and critics e.g "NME"; Artist or bands costume will be representative and relateable to the audience in question (especially for niche audiences); Colour scheme does not nessacarily follow the the rest of the magazine, but compliments the style of the actual album or digipack itself; The record label responsible for production and distribution will be shown (usually near the bottom of the page; The albums release date will also be usually shown on the advertisement, for the readers information.

Most of these conventions appear on original, magazine adverts, so I felt it was essential to use as many as i could on my final draft.