Our chosen music genre was R&B, and this collective decision was made after careful analysis of what the conventions of an R&B music video would be. We chose this genre because it gave us opportunities to play and experiment with the narrative therefore developing and sometimes challenging the typical conventions.
One of the main aspects of an R&B music video that we found was the conventional video would often follow a story. Most R&B music video use females as a key character in the music video, as this was one of the main conventions we chose to incorporate and use it in our music video rather than develop or challenge it, we didn't want to challenge one of the most vital components of an R&B music video. This was one of the main conventions we chose to incorporate into our music video and with the introduction of a new character other than the artist, it gave us a chance to play with the narrative to make it more suitable for the concept we are trying to portray.
However we didn't adopt a conventional idea of production of the music video, Lyotard said that there are no boundaries in music genres and that they all interrelate and can be linked with each other. We decided to adapt this mentality and challenge certain aspects of the R&B music video. The availability and attainability of certain props played a role in challenging the conventions, we were unable to get hold of expensive cars and large quantities of females, often there were passers by in our video.
Furthermore, the use of jewellery was a development - if anything the lack of use of jewellery was a development rather than a challenge, in convention R&B music videos there is an excessive use of chains and neck-lasses, teeth grills and earrings. However in our video rather than not using any jewellery at all we used one single ring, and this ring soon developed into our motif. Most videos have a reoccurring theme which relates to the song, in Cheryl Cole - 'Fight for this love' there is the consistent use of red and tiger tops as well as a red army suit. Our developed motif linked with the song, our song was called 'carosel' so we developed the idea of going round and round in circles but not making any progress. We discussed this further about what other motifs could be used, we used clocks in our videos with the clock staying at a certain time throughout the entire music video. We did this to further denote the idea of making no ground, we reinforced this idea visually by what is seen on screen, to represent the motif we displayed the artist getting close to the female but not making any progress.
In our digipak we used the intertextuality of 'Lost Not Found' rather than 'Lost And Found' in order to further our motif. This was developed through the narrative of the video, the main concept was that the artist could not get to the girl of his dreams, everytime he thinks he is making progress he loses her and i back to where he started, This itself is challenging R&B videos because he doesn't get the girl in the end, usually the artist gets the girl and the end of the music video.
Barthes idea of an enigma or mystery helped us put together the video and what it depicts & denotesm we were able to put our ideas and experiences into the video as the visual.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
How did you use new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
New media technologies played a vital role in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages as it allowed me to use a wide range of online sites which enhanced m multimedia experience.
In terms of research, the diversity of choice i was given allowed me to search through many sites such as yahoo music, but he website which aided my choice of song was 'youtube.com', 'youtube' allowed me to search for specific genres and specific artist and their songs saving me a lot of time waiting and watching music video channels such as MTV waiting for the specific song. This form of globalisation allowed me to get in view of many music videos such a Usher -Yeah, Omarion - O and others, it provided me with playlists and made the whole specific genre and artist search process much more efficient. I managed to get results immediately and this multimedia search engine allowed me to sift through uneccessary videos and to find specific artists. It was form this stage Josh and I decided on what genre we should choose, we chose and artist called Young Truth who had been advertising is copyright free music on youtube. As with any multimedia site it had a few problems for example sometimes the video did not allow users to copy the embedded code, therefore stopping us from uploading it onto our blogs for further evaluation. This was easily avoided because this obstacle was overcome by websites such as 'yahoo music' which allowed us to grab any video embedding code, also I was able to download videos as an mpeg file so that I could watch it if there were any problems with the internet. I could upload it onto my phone either through bluetooth or use of a USB and could watch it anywhere when convenient. I did this by copying the youtube url and added it into a website called vixy.net, this allowed me to decide what format I wanted the video in and download it in an instant.
Having Freeview at home allowed me to watch music videos when I wanted to - on demand. Channels such as 'viva' and '4music' helped me carry this out. I watched special one-off programs such as 'the making of a music video' which enabled me to get a directors view on how to film a music video, from this I could take on board comments, tips, and techniques shown in order to incorporate this into our production to help us denote our intended concept - this went into my planning and my research as I could review certain shot angles and techniques and I could plan how I would use them throughout my music video. Using my phone helped me a lot in the research and planning because the 'iphone' allowed me to add dates with my calender creating a schedule so that I could structure my timetable efficiently, helping me reach deadlines. Furthermore this covergence of internet, itunes and 3G allowed me to access sites for when using an 'apple mac' wasn't a possibility, sites such as 'youtube' and 'google' were easy to access. In fact 'youtube' was the site I gained my copyright free song from, as I clicked search for copyright free artists the results I was provided with were of a wide variety of choice of genre, music and artist. As well as this, it helped me narrow down my minority of genre choice, for example '1extra' radio had a majority of urban hip hop youth audience as does our genre choice R&B.
Google played an important role in every stage if our development and overall dictated what sites we used because it generated such a wide variety yet specific to the words I typed into the tool bar. The search engine helped us plan with the use of the google calender as well as searching for specific sites. I managed to find the top ten R&B music videos by typing it into the search engine as well as certain sites which allowed me to download them for more use. Such sites which enabled me to convert and download music videos into mp3s, 'vid2mp3.net' was one site which I used a lot. As we uploaded our video onto youtube & blogspot as well as facebook we recieved a wide range of responses from people we knew and people we didn't know, the feedback and comments we took on board - both positive and negative, this interactivity allowed online users & our target audience to speak with each other about the video concerning what went well and what could have been improved. And this was part of our evaluation as we could take on board these comments and amend certain parts in our music video which we though was in need of some tweaking. This was important because it allowed us to get the audiences responses to our production both critical and constructive.
However we did have a few minor problems as mentioned earlier, sometimes the servers were down restricting access to the internet but his meant that I had more time panning our music video. Also with the benefit of having a music video playing phone I could watch downloaded videos with no problems. Furthermore the gaining of the permission wasn't a problem because we had chosen two artists, one refused however the other artist accepted.
In terms of evaluation, blogger allowed me to post up my all my work and enabled others to comment and put their views across in a matter of seconds. Internet blogging was much more efficient then using word and printing out endless sheets of paper, it didn't require elaborate pages of information, all that was needed was to post up information on the blog and wait for other interactive users to comment and pass opinions.
New media technology played an important role in our production and without it our research, planning and construction would have been much more labouring and less efficient.
In terms of research, the diversity of choice i was given allowed me to search through many sites such as yahoo music, but he website which aided my choice of song was 'youtube.com', 'youtube' allowed me to search for specific genres and specific artist and their songs saving me a lot of time waiting and watching music video channels such as MTV waiting for the specific song. This form of globalisation allowed me to get in view of many music videos such a Usher -Yeah, Omarion - O and others, it provided me with playlists and made the whole specific genre and artist search process much more efficient. I managed to get results immediately and this multimedia search engine allowed me to sift through uneccessary videos and to find specific artists. It was form this stage Josh and I decided on what genre we should choose, we chose and artist called Young Truth who had been advertising is copyright free music on youtube. As with any multimedia site it had a few problems for example sometimes the video did not allow users to copy the embedded code, therefore stopping us from uploading it onto our blogs for further evaluation. This was easily avoided because this obstacle was overcome by websites such as 'yahoo music' which allowed us to grab any video embedding code, also I was able to download videos as an mpeg file so that I could watch it if there were any problems with the internet. I could upload it onto my phone either through bluetooth or use of a USB and could watch it anywhere when convenient. I did this by copying the youtube url and added it into a website called vixy.net, this allowed me to decide what format I wanted the video in and download it in an instant.
Having Freeview at home allowed me to watch music videos when I wanted to - on demand. Channels such as 'viva' and '4music' helped me carry this out. I watched special one-off programs such as 'the making of a music video' which enabled me to get a directors view on how to film a music video, from this I could take on board comments, tips, and techniques shown in order to incorporate this into our production to help us denote our intended concept - this went into my planning and my research as I could review certain shot angles and techniques and I could plan how I would use them throughout my music video. Using my phone helped me a lot in the research and planning because the 'iphone' allowed me to add dates with my calender creating a schedule so that I could structure my timetable efficiently, helping me reach deadlines. Furthermore this covergence of internet, itunes and 3G allowed me to access sites for when using an 'apple mac' wasn't a possibility, sites such as 'youtube' and 'google' were easy to access. In fact 'youtube' was the site I gained my copyright free song from, as I clicked search for copyright free artists the results I was provided with were of a wide variety of choice of genre, music and artist. As well as this, it helped me narrow down my minority of genre choice, for example '1extra' radio had a majority of urban hip hop youth audience as does our genre choice R&B.
Google played an important role in every stage if our development and overall dictated what sites we used because it generated such a wide variety yet specific to the words I typed into the tool bar. The search engine helped us plan with the use of the google calender as well as searching for specific sites. I managed to find the top ten R&B music videos by typing it into the search engine as well as certain sites which allowed me to download them for more use. Such sites which enabled me to convert and download music videos into mp3s, 'vid2mp3.net' was one site which I used a lot. As we uploaded our video onto youtube & blogspot as well as facebook we recieved a wide range of responses from people we knew and people we didn't know, the feedback and comments we took on board - both positive and negative, this interactivity allowed online users & our target audience to speak with each other about the video concerning what went well and what could have been improved. And this was part of our evaluation as we could take on board these comments and amend certain parts in our music video which we though was in need of some tweaking. This was important because it allowed us to get the audiences responses to our production both critical and constructive.
However we did have a few minor problems as mentioned earlier, sometimes the servers were down restricting access to the internet but his meant that I had more time panning our music video. Also with the benefit of having a music video playing phone I could watch downloaded videos with no problems. Furthermore the gaining of the permission wasn't a problem because we had chosen two artists, one refused however the other artist accepted.
In terms of evaluation, blogger allowed me to post up my all my work and enabled others to comment and put their views across in a matter of seconds. Internet blogging was much more efficient then using word and printing out endless sheets of paper, it didn't require elaborate pages of information, all that was needed was to post up information on the blog and wait for other interactive users to comment and pass opinions.
New media technology played an important role in our production and without it our research, planning and construction would have been much more labouring and less efficient.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Importance of Audience feedback
Audience feedback was helpful in terms that it allowed my target audience to put across their views and suggestions. My target audience played an important role in shaping our product as it is them we are trying to win over with our product; the audience feedback gave us pin point formation on how to make our product more appealing to our specific audience. Instead of doing questionnaires i used video commentary so that the data was more quantitative and could be looked over again and again. For example one of our first interviewees mentioned one or two flaws in our timing of our music video; we looked back on this comment and mended the timing problem. This was just one of the few pieces of constructive criticisms we received, we did receive positive feedback from our audience for example the audience enjoyed the transitions and the cutting rate was deemed as good. We received both positive and negative on the story line as some managed to understand it but some did not, however we managed to edit the video in order to make it more clear cut and understandable.
Overall, the use of audience feedback gave us a different perspective from ours, it provided us with an indepth audience analysis which we could not provide. And by doing this we were able to improve our product to make it more appealing to our target audience and suitable for the genre.
How effective is your combination of your main product and ancillary task?
Our main ideology and the concept we are trying to put across is to create the sense of loss and reclaim, this is where the intertextuality of lost NOT found comes in, it represents the convention of people finding what they were missing and looking for and developing it and challenging it at the same time as not being able to find it.. Our artist in the music video is trying to get hold of the girl of his dreams, however everytime he gets close she disappears, the relationship with his past is trying to be made but cannot be hardened. The artist is making no progress and this is denoted and reinforced by the motif of the song, a ‘carosel’ goes round and round not making any ground and this idea is supported by the clock constantly staying on 3 0clock, the clock doesnt change reinforcing the ideology created of not making any progress. Other props used to represent the motif are the ring and the ring is incorporated into the digipak and magazine advert. The ring is used to represent something round again reinforcing the reoccurring theme. Following the theme is the quote we have added, the time to reflect underpins the idea of past, present and future. The album itself is about him growing up and becoming what he is today, the carosel video is just one of the obstacles he has to go through and leads onto the eventual becoming of him moving on.
Also the artists is consistently dressed with a ‘doo rag’, either black or white, the artist is . Also Josh and I discussed the use of black and white to represent the past and future, the artist seeing the past and trying to move onto the future but the girl of his past is stopping him. We used the colour of black and white in the video, digipack and magazine advert to keep the use of colour consistent so that consumers when they see our magazine advert will find it easy searching for our digipack in-store.
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