Digi Pack

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluate stages? (Music Video)

When making our music video a lot of research had to be done to get ideas of what we needed to include in our music video to make it relate to our genre. To do this I needed to use media technologies in the construction and research and planning stages to make sure that I could research some ideas. The main media technology that I used was the internet. I used the internet for several things when I was researching my music video. I had to research the conventions of the music genre that my music video related to and this was UK Grime. To research the conventions I had to look at several music videos in this genre and write down the conventions that I could see being used through out each video. Video's that I looked at were a mixture of low budgeting music videos and then also music videos from well known artists. Music videos from artists I looked at consisted of ; Kano, Roll Deep, N Dubz, Skepta, Wiley and also a couple of up and coming young unknown artists like 'Cash-Tastic' and ;Sneakbo' The reason why I looked at a mixture of these artists was because they are all within the UK Grime genre so through out each video they all would have used the same conventions and I needed to look at this to make sure I researched what I woul dinclude in my video for example the locations I would use, what my artist's costume would be, how my artist would act and also the cutting of the shots in line with the beat.

One artist that my group in a whole focused on was a young artist called Devlin. Despite looking at the other various artists, we mainly focused on he's music videos to get inspiration from because they were combined with some low budget techniques and then also some high technology techniques. Most of his music videos were located and filmed in London and we used this one idea and we went up London to film as well. When looking at his music video we also realized that some effects that he done were quite simple to do and we could use Final Cut to get these effects onto our music video.

When planning our music video again I looked on the internet on websites such as Youtube, to look at how different music video's are constructed. I looked at things such as how they start, how they finish, what types of shots they have and also what the artist looks like. This was successful as when planning my music video on the story boards, I changed some of my original ideas as I thought it would look better in another way by looking at other music videos. During planning I also had to make sure that everything was planned for when we go and film. This means where we was going to film and when we was going to film. Having a shooting schedule made things easier as everything was planned out well and we know what we had to focus on when we went to go and film.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluate stages? (Ancillary Task)

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluate stages? (Ancillary Task)

What have you learned from you audience feedback? (Music Video)

What have you learned from you audience feedback? (Ancillary task)

With my ancillary task I needed to get some feedback from different types of audiences to see how they think my ancillary

task looked. To do this I took some still photos on my phone camera and then I uploaded them onto facebook for people to comment on them. I uploaded my digipack photo's onto facebook and got some relatively good feedback from some friends. They said that they liked the font in which it matched with the jumper with what 'MC Cabe' was wearing and another person said that they liked how I faded out the picture of 'MC Cabe' but I done it with different colours.

They also liked the choice of colour due to the albulm name being called 'In My Zone' they thought that the colours looked very homely and cosy as which is almost like he is in his on zone in his own mind frame.

One negative feedback I got was that the last pictures of 'MC Cabe' looked a bit too dark and you could not really see him. This is an improvement I could make and that is to make him just a little bit brighter so it still looks like its faded out but you can see the image of 'MC Cabe'. After looking at my front cover printed out I did feel that the last image of 'MC Cabe' was a bit too dark so my aim is to brighten this up a bit.

After printing out my ancillary task of my digipack and my concert poster I showed some friends around school and got positive feedback. They mainly liked the track list at the back because they said that the image is clear and so is the font of the writing. They also said how the colouring makes a good effect as I used the hue and saturation tools to brighten things up a bit.

They also thought having the picture of the studio where the Cd is placed was a very good idea as it looks like the CD has just been fresh out the studio ready to be put into the audiences hands due to the fact that everytime they take it out from the cd holder they see the studio in the back.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Ancillary task)

My media product does not really challenge many conventions of a real media product. The reason for this is because before starting doing my digipack I looked at various different types of digipacks from all different genres -taking in mind the genre of grime which is what my artist is based on- and looked at how my digipack could benefit from looking at these. Things that I noticed from all the digipacks that I looked at were:

• It had the same colour theme through out


• It had to have a track list


• A main front cover which clearly displays some thing about that artist or the artist itself


• Same font all the way through

• Close up or double spread of the artist or a scenery shot

When making my digipack I had to make sure that I use the same colour theme through out so I made a background which I could use for all of my pictures. When looking at digipacks I looked at some artists that I would like my digipack to be like and o

ne artist that caught my eye was Drake's and also Wiz Khalifas . They are well known artists and on the front of there album cover it has a bold picture of them.

So on the front of ours I had a bold picture of MCCabe i

n the studio looking focused so we decided to name the name of our digipack 'In My Zone'.

We Also Decided to have the producer as the back panel where the track list is posistioned. This was influenced by our own imagination as we thought have the producer at the back where the track list is would be a good eye catcher to the audience and also unique.

EVALUATION : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Music Video)

As we were making our music video, we decided to follow someof the main conventions of music videos which we had researched and analysed from real media products. These conventions consisted of;

* Lip syncing

* 3 Locations shots or more

* There performer should have a variety of costume attire

* The shots must cut to the beat on time

As i was in a diffrent group to start with before my partner no longer was liable to attend school, we spent a lot of time looking at the vide 'Ps and Q's' by Kano.

This video by the London grime artist was filmed in the backstre

ets of london which was what me and my partner was going

to use as an idea for our music video.

This real media source helped us in ideas for our music video but what we wanted to do was challenge the grime conventions and instead of having the artist dressed in typical grime attire such as; Dark clothing , hoodies (lie pictured below) ....

.......Expensive

big jewerly round their neck etc. We had an idea of having our artist dressed in casual clothing, clothing that you would more see in a pop video rather than i grime. This therefore challenged the conventions of the real media product of the Grime Genre.

A grime artist that does this well and portrays himself as a pop artist is Kid Cudi. In His video Day n Night he is dressed in casual clothing th

at portrays himself as a pop artist when really hi is grime artist. This is where we initially got the idea from.

With my group i am in now , we used all of the things above otherwise it would have been a bit boring by seeing our artist in the same location and also wearing the same clothes. We have also developed some of the conventions by using different locations at once on the screen at the same time. Instead of just having one location on the screen then jump cutting into another location, we adding in a technique where we splitted the screen in half where we can see two different locations. Also we added in a main shot with two little boxes of action where we set a key frame of the artist was still lipsyncing and then I made

a transition as one of the small boxes to spread over the full screen. Before filming our music video I looked at other music videos in our genre which we could relate to and get ideas from. Music videos that were best to us were some low budget music videos for example some of Devlins music videos and also Skepta's.

Below is a visual of the Devlin video we had an idea from where he is projected onto the wall in Central London.

NOTES TAKEN IN CLASS TALKING ABOUT HOW WE CHALLENGED REAL MEDIA PRODUCT.

Talent Release Form

You need a talent release for for several reasons. The main reason why you need a talent release form is for when you are out filming and people are in the background, you need permission from the person in the background to be able to film them. So you would hand them a talent release form so you have permission to film them. Also, if you do not give them a talent release form and you film them in your music video then they could sue you for not giving you permission to film them.

Initial Story Boards and Group Change Story Board

Here are pictures of my groups storyboard which we have decided to use. As You can see it is not in colour and finished this is due to the fact that my partners absence from lessons.

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GROUP CHANGE STORY BOARD

This is now the storyboard that i am following in my new group which i have joined. As you can see we have different type of shots such as close ups, medium shots , crane shots etc.

This is how we have thought the shooting steps will take place in order for our music video to be successful. Storyboards helot keep track of which shot is to be filmed in the camera and also we are able to see if each frame of shot fits with each other to make the music video fluent and believable.

Concept

The idea that the group have already come up with is have come up with for our idea is a very conventional grime video, we are going to have one person perfoming throughout the whole video. We plan to go to 'Southbank' and shoot our video there where the skateboarders will be in action and there will be alot of graffiti on the walls. We will then go around certain places in London and shoot different types of shots.

The costume is also very stereotypical again and is very similar to Tinie Tempah and Example' type of clothing because we feel these two are very succesful. Tinie is a different style of Grime\Hip Hop artist, he has added a sort of 'Funky' style to his music and it has worked as he has recently won a 'Brit Award' so we will not be stuck in regular grime conventions we will use a mixture of this style of music. focusing on artists sucha as "Devlin, Example, Tinie Tempah and Drake"

Artist Apperance

After a lot of discussing and analysing Grime artists we have decided that we want our artist to look like a typical grime artist, mainly focusing on Tinie Tempah and Example, this is because these two artists are exactly what we are looking for our own artist because they use the typical; leather jacket sunglasses jeans and high top trainers. So we have chosen this because they are easy to purchase and easy to wear.

Above also we have a pair of Ralph Lauren trainers which straight away gives a sense of power to the artist and shows that he is quite wealthy. Having expensive designer brands worn sets a high status bar to the audience straight away which is why we have chosen to include them into the image of the artist.

Normally Grime Artist uses long shots for their choice of clothing to be promoted in the video. In my music video i am going to use shots such as these to promote and emphasize on the clothing which my artist is wearing.

Below is another example of artist using low angled camera shots to promote what their wearing and set a status to the audience which is what i intend to to with my artists image.

Shooting Scheldue

Below is a shooting scheldue which is created to guide my group on what days we are filming and which locations we are filming at.

It keeps us organized an also up to date with what we have to get done in order to complete the music video.

Technical Tutorials

In this lesson we were concentrating how to use the green screen and how the whole process works. We got told that you can add in different locations on the green screen so it makes us look like we are at different locations. To do this you need to go on to final cut and work through stages to make the background of the green screen different.

In this lesson every one was given roles with camera's and lighting and music directors and then every one else was acting out a music video or so called lip synci

ng. It was a struggle for people to get up and act as they were too embarrassed and shy to perform infront of the class.

In the second part of the lesson people got my confident and my Partner Paul Knight and classmate Nathan Oliver went up and done a video for our group and we done a track by Giggs called 'Talking the Hardest'. As it was more of a grime track it allowed them to be themselves more as grime is mainly performed by the younger generation.

After they performed we uploaded it onto final cut and then started to edit it by adding in cuts and also using the green screen to add in effects for the background. Using final cut was a bit confusing and it was difficult to use. I had difficulty using it so I had to ask sir for help several times. I think that final cut is much more difficult to use rather then i movie as there are more tools to get familiar with and it looks like you need to have several lessons of practice to get used to using it.

Below is a preview of the green screen ;