Group 5 A2 2016/2017

Monday, 2 January 2017

Evaluation Question 4 - Giordano

How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Using Final Cut Pro as an editing program

Raw footage using DSLR - Canon EOS 650D

Evaluation Question 3 - Giordano

What have you learnt from your

audience feedback?

Focus group on initial ideas...


Audience feedback on final cut...


Audience feedback on final cut...


Audience Feedback: Genre

I asked many people of different ages (however focusing more on my target audience range) to state their favorite genre of music and why. I then transferred the information I found into a tally chart and a table so that it could be easily visually analyzed. Although some members of a different age range enjoy grime and some teenagers/young adults enjoy other genres, I still found that grime was the most common genre that teens/young adults enjoy. I also found that some reasons that people gave to why they enjoy a particular genre can be applied to the pop genre, such as having visually appealing music videos. Therefore, I also aimed to achieve this in my own music video.

Audience feedback: Print products

Before creating my digipak and advert, I wanted to look at real media print products that were successful in promoting the artist and his/her work. I asked my target audience to state some of their favorite rap/grime artists and I researched the digipaks of the most common artists that they had answered.

Tinie Tempah - Discovery

  J Cole - The sideline story

My group and I designed one digipak and three magazine adverts as a rough guide to see what our audience would think, and from there would have gone on to make many others for our target audience to give suggestions of which one to choose. However, thankfully our target audience loved our digipak and even after explaining other ideas to them, they were fixed on this design. The only element of the digipak that was not heavily touched upon was whether it should be completely in black and white or in colour. Therefore, I decided to send out an online survey asking which design they preferred, A (black and white) or B (colour). Since my target audience is of a young age, it occurred to me that the best way to easily communicate with them is through using social media, as i did not only want to take the advice from one focus group.

Therefore, using the Internet, I had a sample of my target audience take this online poll on their phones and computers in order to choose which design they preferred. I found this method very easy and practical as it is simply a one-click process and I was able to track the progress of the poll to see which designs were doing well. Here were my results...

Focus group on digipak

Results of online poll regarding digipaks...

Thankfully, design A was the design that I initially wanted for my digipak front cover and this was also the design that received the most number of votes. Therefore, it ended up being our final front cover design.

I also used another form of social media very popular with my aimed target audience; Twitter. Here, I simply posted the two digipak designs and asked for responses and opinions. Here are some examples of the responses I received...

By this time my focus group, online poll and twitter had

all said that they preferred design A to B. I am glad that

I experimented with different types of audience feedback

as the result (using design A) will be more reliable.

Using my audience for feedback really made the construction of my digipak and magazine advert much easier as I could see which images, designs, fonts and layouts worked best to appeal and attract them. Since the print products and the music video work together as a promo package, if I can ensure that my designs appeal to the majority of my target audience, then it makes it more dependable that my products would have a better chance of success in the market place.

Evaluation Question 2 - Giordano

How effective is the combination of your main product

and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1 - Giordano

1. In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions of a music video:

Conventions of the grime genre

Mise-en-scene:
Looking a the locations of where grime music video’s are filmed, it is obvious that they are mostly set in the streets of cities where the artist’s were most likely to have grown up in. A prime example of artist’s using this location is Chip - Run Out Riddim, set on the dark streets of Tottenham where he was born and raised. Typically, grime artists in video's wear casual clothing consisting of puffer jackets and matching tracksuits, and use props that link in with the lyrics.

'Don't Worry About Me': Location's
The locations that were chosen to shoot my music video all link together well and follow the generic conventions of existing grime music video's. I was able to work with a collection of scenes consisting of high streets, empty back streets, alley's and car parks. I found that the variety of of locations helped to create a sense of realism making it look similar to an existing grime music video.

Ealing Car Park:
Perfect location to capture the characters surroundings, the vibrant blue colours of the car park contrasted with dark sky looking extremely cinematic.

Alley way:

A dark and eerie location, common of the grime genre.

1. Domestic location:

2. Block of flats:

Typical of grime videos that a narrative, story like structure. Helps to show the progression of time from when the artist is at home to what they get up to when they leave.

Blocks of flats are usually seen in grime videos, it order to show an urban location.

Props

Initially, this was my plan for what props I wanted to use in the music video. However, due to a very low budget, I was only able to get some of the items. Nonetheless, I still found that some of the props used in the overall final cut of the music video were successful in creating a realistic grime video.

Initial ideas for props

Props used

Subverting the grime genre conventions

A convention seen in numerous grime videos is the connotation of youths running into trouble with the law for committing criminal offences. I did not include this as I believed it would have a more powerful impact if the youths in my video would challenge the stereotype, and instead want to make something of themselves. This is clearly shown in my music video when the main artist says "Low life MC's, no dreams for the future....can't you see i'm going to beat them" and on screen is recording of a police van. Here are some example of grime artists that included the stereotype of London youths in their videos....

Krept and Konan - Dunya

Bugzy Malone - Section 81

Cadet - 100 Phone Calls

Music Video - Technical Conventions

Ancillary Texts

Final Digipak

Final Magazine Advert

After researching real media print products in the grime genre, I created this digipak/poster in order to conform to the grime conventions and create a realistic finish.

Q1 from Giordano Boscarelli

The grime genre is very versatile, therefore when it came to making the Digipak and magazine advert I was not restricted. It was crucial for my advert to include clear, bold fonts and colour in contrast to my black and white Digipak, sticking with the original grime album cover conventions.

Image choice

In most of my digipak images, the location shots and any photos without the artist are edited to are edited to be in black and white. I wanted this to relate to the grime genre of music itself, it shows that grime is a raw genre of music and lyrics come form the heart of the artist, they do not need bright colours and hugely edited images for their music to be impactful. In contrast to this, I wanted the text to stand out from the photograph so that it would be easily read.

Font and Design

Keeping the fonts and colours of the text the same for the entire digipak was important to make my digipak look professional whilst still conforming to the genre of Grime. Again, I researched real Grime album covers to guide me with the design.

Sunday, 1 January 2017

Evaluation Question 4 (Morgan)

Q4- How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation question 4 by Morgan Noel

Raw Footage Captured Using Canon DSLR EOS 650d

Extras (Behind The Scenes) - Footage Captured Using Apple iPhone 5s

Editing - Using Final Cut pro