Timed Evaluation (LYDIA)

Question One: In what way do your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

  I believe that our media product develops and uses conventions of the hip-hop/rap genre of our chosen track. This is achieved through the use of sportswear; such as the tracksuit bottoms, basketball vest and skate shoes our main artist Steve dressed in especially for the video shoot. We as a group decided that the video should have an 'old school', urban feel to it to play to the conventions of the hip-hop genre. The use of the reference of sports brands, teams and sports in general as well as urban settings appear almost constantly in hip-hop/rap videos so as a group we agreed that this would be a key feature to base the concept of our music video around, thus deciding to film on a basketball court in college to keep the simplistic and raw feel we believed essential for the track. The basketball court located on the college site proved really effective as it was aged and simple, allowing focus on our artist we also felt fitting to the genre and the track we chose as this focus also appeared consistently in the videos of the same genre we used for research.

  We found through analyzing real, professional music marketing products such as magazine adverts and tour posters that a lot of artists specializing in this genre use images of themselves to promote their work/products. We discussed these factors as a group and decided we could use this to keep in time with the conventions of the genre. However; as the original artist of the track was not included in the more mainstream music industry and was considered to be more of an underground artist, we didn't feel that we wanted to rely solely on an image of our artist, so decided to also advertise using props included in the video that we felt were key in creating the setting for our chosen track and the video supporting it, for example; the basketball, the red basketball vest that Steve appears in and the skate shoes he was dressed in during the filming of the video as they also help link the main product to the digipak and magazine advert.

Question Two: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

  I feel that all three products work very well as a promotional package due to the use of props featured in the video and the colour schemes used as they tie the package together. I believe we have made it clear that both the ancillary texts are promoting the same product/artist as well due to the colours that have been carefully chosen to tie all three products together nicely.

  The concept we were trying to communicate was that of a simple and un-materialistic nature, which also played to the fact that the original artist, Kyle Rapps, is seen as underground and not mainstream. We didn't want our video to seem like it was an extortionate amount of money to produce or that we wanted our artist to seem like 'the big man' or 'alpha male' as often depicted in many videos of this genre. As a group we decided that to us, the track was reminiscent of 'the old days' and i also believe it tells of how commercial the world has become. Upon realizing this, we decided we wanted the video and the ancillary texts to create the simplistic feel that tell parts of the story communicated through the track and its video. 

  These products create the feel that the artist is carefree, reminiscent and un-materialistic through the use of sports clothing with not a lot of intertextuality to expensive, commercial brands that are featured in many videos of this same genre. Throughout the video, the artist is seen in baggy/scruffy 'comfy clothes', and frequent over the top use of 'bling', 'ice' or diamond jewelry is scarce. Women are often objectified in hip-hop /rap videos and made to appear as another form of materialistic possessions. We challenged the convention of  the genre by not including this in our main product as this was irrelevant to our concept. The scarcity of materialistic possessions also help to support the nature of our artist. 

  Having revised the above points, the products attract the target audience through the ability to offer something different/refreshing change, but still keep in time with a majority of the other conventions we as a group recognised of the genre mentioned in the first question.

Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

  The initial pitch proved to be promising although obviously there were factors we needed to consider/reconsider. Such as costume and location, which, when revised, proved very effective. We also had the idea of having the artist walking and rapping throughout the video in different locations doing different things however; audience feedback informed us that that could have become boring and monotonous. We decided to have this feature as one shot as opposed to throughout the whole of our main product.

  The rough cut proved very successful and audience feedback seemed to be mostly positive although the biggest disadvantage was the faltering of the lip-syncing towards the end of the track by the second artist. Reece found it really quite difficult to learn the lyrics to his part of the track and was disadvantaged by the fact that his part was a lot faster paced than Steve's. As Reece was the only other male team member and the part of the second artist was male, we decided that there was no other alternative than to find a way around it. We decided to resolve the issue by cutting in/away to as many clips that we had that worked well within the video, to take the focus away from the clips where the lip-syncing wasn't quite as strong. We feel our solution has helped strengthen our main product. We also got told that we needed better framework/variety of shots so decided to ad more of these in. instead of filming these shots all over again we learned that if we desired to include a panning shot in our video we could zoom into one of our already shot clips and move it from side to side in final cut.

  The feedback given by our audience proved that we had good examples of lyrics matching visuals within the video which helped it flow better. As this was one of our aims we were pleased with the outcome of the feedback around this area.

  We were told through feedback that the lip-syncing within our video was of better quality than in the rough cut so it was clear that our solution had been successful.

  One improvement that we found had been highlighted was that we still could have used even more variety of shots on our artists.

  Another was that an audience member wasn't sure that the the blunt ending to our video worked. Given that we hadn't received this comment from more than one audience member, i feel it may have just been down to personal preference.