Evalutation Question 1

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge 

forms and conventions of real products?

The artist we based our music video and promotional package was Melanie Fiona who is a an RnB artist from America. RnB music is a very popular genre, not only in America but all around the world. The conventions of RnB music differs from that of other genres. In RnB music the conventions consist of the main singer/artist singing mainly about love or being heartbroken. There is normally one male and or two females (vice versa) and its either that one of them is cheating or there is a problem in the relationship.  Other Characteristics and conventions are:

• Variety of shots, but mainly close ups, medium shots
• Shots that favour the artist are predominantly used
• Tends to be a narrative throughout the music video
• Main artist is normally on their own in most of the scenes
• Mainly shot in a house or party
• Some special effects used but not all the time
• Filmed/shot in a calm setting
• The time of setting reflect the mood and pace of the song



We decided as a group that we will follow a narrative similar to the music video of the song we were using. We decided this as we felt as a group If we were to change the narrative it may not be as strong as if we were to act out the initial narrative but with our only characters, and the objective as a group is to show and display our talent both as a group and as individuals. We decided to do research into different types of RnB music videos and some videos that a level student from other schools had made. We found good and bad points of the videos made and used it as a guide to set standards and also to show what should be avoided and mistakes we should not make.

Ways in which I am going to show/explain how as a group we developed/challenged form and conventions of real products is through analysing some of the shots that we used in our main task/music video:

For example at 0:52 we have a medium shot of our artist in a room on her own sitting on her bed. This situation is very typical for an Rnb music video. We made sure in this shot that the actor looks the part. To do this we had to take into consideration the clothing, in this case she I swearing a dress. Also make up and hair, also in this shot our actor has her make up done very well and looks and plays the part especially when It comes to her appearance and hair. So overall we had to make sure that she fit the description and conventions of a RnB music video when it came to appearance. Lighting was another issue, this was a delicate matter because lighting can make or break a music video from research. As we looked at professional music videos we found that in most of the cases were the artist was on their on in a room the lighting was not bright but wasn't too dark We decided it would be a good idea to recreate this in our own music video. This shot shows the lighting we used. In terms of the type of shot. I personally did research into the type of shots that we mainly used in music videos of our genre. From my research and analysis I found that the most shots that used in music video like such as close up and medium shots. Its one thing to be able to point out what shots are predominantly used in music videos and its another to know why, what they are try to imply, what effect are they trying to get across. This helped us as we were able to understand what message these shots should send out to our audience. Another was the angle of our shots. Camera angle are not used to much in these music but when they are used they must be used properly and in the right way. 

It was noticed from our research that in most RnB and Rap music videos there is some sort of promotion for a popular product included. This is done by big companies, whether food, drink or cigars, that pay to have their drinks shown on a music video. This is mainly seen in the music videos of popular artists. For example in most of Rick Ross's (rap artist) music video we see several clips or shots of him holding or drink either Ciroc or Bel Air(Rosay). This can be big money for both the artist as the company as the artist is being payed to promote the drink and the company make money from the promotion especially when its a popular artist as the more views, the more people who view the video and the more people might by the drink it self. We decided that we should use this technique or idea in our music video as it adds a bit more realism to the video it self. From most of the music videos we watched, the artist is either holding the drink or the drink is being placed on the table. We decided that we would have the drink placed on the table but in a interesting way. We thought the best way to promote the drink itself would be to have a close up shot of the brand logo as it was placed on the table. What i think worked even best for us was the time in which we decided to include the shot. It was not place randomly in the music video. Luckily for us there was a verse in the song where Melanie Fiona said "Pour me up a drink i swear i need it". This i guess this was the perfect time to not only included but promote the drink as everything linked. I guess there was more emphasis on the shot than anything else but we had to take into consideration what type of drink were going to use. We wanted a drink that would look somewhat interesting and not boring, we also had to consider the colours used. I think that the drink used in the video was a good one as it had a unique logo and look something that most of the music videos in professional music videos had. We made sure that when it came to this part of the music video that the lighting was clear and good enough to see the drink and label and to create an effect. One thing that was tricky but we still were able to do was to make sure that the placing of the drink on the table and the music was in sync. We found this hard and in most cases had to speed up and slow down the clip. We eventually were able to get the music and the movement of the drink in sync which when done looked very good.

Another shot Im going to analyse is at 1:39 when she is walking alone In the kitchen. This bit of the music video is meant to send out a message to the audience. Starting of with lighting...This was not as hard as it was for the bedroom scene. It was quite basic and easy, we used the kitchen light and then edited it in final cut to give it a different sort of effect and colour. The shot itself was used in the music video. We thought it would be a great idea if we included it in our music video as well. The shot we used was a close up, which only allowed the audience to see below her ankle. What we  noticed from the music video is that Melanie Fiona was wearing nice heels, we had to make sure that the same thing was done in our music video. We made sure she wore something nice and something played the part. 

A typical place or location that music videos of this genre are set, is indoors. For example, either in a house, a club or even at a party. The location normally has to be relevant to the song and how it would be performed, for example if it was narrative. THis is very important as the song cannot be about a man cheating on his girl and the location is a club and every one is just partying, there must be some sort of relevance.

For example Melanie Fiona - 4am. The song is about a woman who thinks her husband is cheating on her. Just from watching the video you can tell that everything has been well thought about. The song and location has some sort of relevance. As she is singing about what she feels is going on, we the audience get to see what the husband is doing. The environment where they put him is a place where you would think he would cheat on her. So they have related the location to the song, and where is the best place to put the lady while all this is happening?...at home, all alone.

Another example to show the importance of location is in the Usher video - Confessions part 2. This song and artist also fall into the RnB genre. In this video usher is talking about everything he has done wrong e.g cheating. There are many places where you can film the video for this but the director has cleverly put him in an enclosed room. When I watched it I wondered, why an enclosed room and not outside?...well setting it outside could symbolise some sort of freedom and the point or the message the video is trying to get across would not be successful. Placing him in an enclosed room tells us that he is locked in, emotionally and physically, he has done some thing wrong and he is confused. What the artist is thinking now is how is going to get out of this mess.

For our music video, we came up with a number of locations that we felt would suit our genre. After re-evaluating these places, we came to a conclusion that it would be better if we followed the structure of music video our artist performed. The main reasons for this was that the message the artists music video was trying to get out was very successful, we understood what was going on very well. If we were to follow the same structure and steps, we were sure to accomplish the same thing. There were only two locations that we used, that was the girls house and the boyfriends how. We were not able to secure a club like venue, this was either due to funds or availability.



The types of clothing and accessories and artist wears in a music video is not only dependent on the genre but it also depends on whether the video is narrative or performance. Clothing is also a very important fact and artists can be judged or recognised by the clothing they wear. For example Michael Jackson and Lady gaga, who's clothing determined their iconography. I decided to look into what artists of the same genre wore and did my best to apply that to our music video. We had to make sure what our artist was wearing was not too flashy but not too simple and related to the scene and lyrics at a particular point. For example if our artist was singing about laying in bed, giving our artist a flashy dress and classy heels at this point of the song would be ridiculous. In almost every RnB music video the artist is well dressed and we needed to get this across to our audience, in order to do this outfits we carefully selected for our model.

Our music video genre did not require a lot of camera movement, just a variety of shots that complimented our artist. We made sure that we embedded this in our music video as it was important. A variety of camera shots were mainly used when tension in the song started to grow, this was mainly in the middle and the end of the song. A this point different shots of our artist at different angles were used, this created an authentic and dynamic feel to our narrative video. The use of the camera shots in the beginning of our music video was typical of our genre. The song normally starts of quite slow, at this point there are a limited amount of camera shots and angles used, they are normally faded into each other so that everything flows.

Another convention we manage to follow and stick to was including the logo for our song. At first we were going to ignore this factor, but the importance of the logo was later drawn to our attention after we researched the forms and conventions for music videos in our genre. We chose for our music video to appear on MTV BASE as it was the type of channel that not only because a lot of our music genre was played by them but also because it fitted in with the artist as her music is similar to the artists of the same genre that are played on this channel. The logo was placed on the top left of our music video and stayed there throughout the song.

A lot of thought was required when we were making our magazine advert. We did not have a lot ideas when it came to carrying our ancillary task as there was a limited amount of examples of existing posters and digipak available on the internet.

So I guess for this part of our project we had to be very creative. We looked into the lay out of the few posters that we could obtain and found several relationships. For example, the relationship between the colour used and the image. The image and the colours used whether fonts or anything else needed to have some sort of connection. This was definitely applied in our poster.  

We found that on most of the posters there was a release date, giving the audience an idea of when to expect the product to some our. We did not think twice about adding this.

We also found that on some of the poster, there was some sort of record label or organisation placed either on the top or the bottom of the poster, we thought it would be a good idea to adopt this as it could help our magazine advert look more appealing and professional

Before we created our ancillary tasks, the influence of existing products was very important. We looked at many existing digipaks before creating our own so we could  understand the typical things we needed to include such as barcodes, copyright information, a website and labels. We also needed to look into albums from our genre of music to get an understanding of their layout and colour schemes.

We found that the images on the front cover of a digipak were mainly pictures of our artist. We thought that the best way to link our three products would be to have the artist on the cover of the digipak and also include them on the advert. We saw that the majority of album covers with the artists on the front had a layered image. We used this style of image on our digipak to show the importance of the singer, create a connection to the audience and show the band together.