Note To Examiner

Dear Examiner

I hope you enjoy looking through the last year of my A2 media coursework. This blog contains my research and planning, drafts and final products for my Digipak, Magazine advert and music video. This blog also contains my evaluation questions where it goes through each stage in detail, including Post-production, production and Pre-production.

I hope you enjoy

Final CD Digipak

This is my final edit of my CD Digipak. I have now incorporated the big letter 'D' into my CD inner cover from my magazine advert just so my designs flow into each other. It also adds "spice" to my album and makes the seemingly unimportant inside cover jump out towards the audience. I have also added my main image onto my CD with 'Distinct mix tape' and a nice aesthetically pleasing flick underneath 'Tape'.  I believe my digipak will attract a Hip hop audience but also people who are experimenting with different genres of music. 

Final CD Cover

This is my final CD cover design. Throughout my design process, I kept the black and white effect on one side and coloured on the other. I did go through a lot of designs but overall this design comes out on top as it is original and stylistic. My CD cover appeals to a more stylistic and simplistic audience. My CD cover appeals to a Hip hop audience but could also appeal to an indie audience as the design is rustic and original. It is also something different from normal conventional designs. 

Final Magazine Advertisement

This is my final Magazine Advertisement for my CD Album. I have kept a simplistic design with the font and keeping to conventions of a grid layout when designing my advert. I have included a date and legal writing at the bottom of the advert to make it seem more authentic. I have also added in a big letter 'D' as just a stylistic form. Compared to my previous Advert, I believe this comes out on top as it is simplistic and looks a lot more authentic. 

Question 4 - how did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

 

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback

Audience feedback is a huge aspect of our music video, digipak and magazine advert. We received many audience feedback in class, on google forms and on blog posts. This greatly improved all of my pieces of work as it helps us realize what appeals to our target audience.

Target audience

Our target audience was aimed towards young adults, ranging from 17 - 25, who are interested in mainstream rap. We also tried to appeal to our audience through the use of the artists styling. As this is a niche target audience in Hip-hop, i tried to appeal to more of an audience through the use of my digipak and magazine advertisement. This is because i wanted to have our artist bigger than he already is and wanted him to be listened by other audiences who are interested in other genres. 

Primary audience - fans and listeners to Hip-hop and RnB. These are stereotypically aged between 16-25.

Secondary audience - our secondary audience are teenagers who take on a casual look on style and on music. 

Feedback during construction - music video

During the construction of our video, digipak and advertisement, i received some feedback from members of my class verbally and also on blogger. This helped my creation of my products as it allowed me to realize what i need to attract my targeted audience. 

• Whilst recording our draft, we tried to film in a Forrest in a secluded location. On feedback, we realised that this particular location did not suit the genre. our audience found that the performance of the video was really strong, but the location did not fit the genre. We then conducted a study on which locations sound the best, our audience responded with The White Room, mic booth and a casual loving area. 

•The area was too dark, it looked fake and was really scummy. This all resulted in grainy footage which did not look good at all. In order to overcome this issue, we re filmed everything. This part didn't really have much to do with the audience, but on second reflection, we wouldn't have looked closer at our video and it would have stayed the same. Without our audience to help us in this part, our video would have stayed really bad.

•Whilst revising our music video, we realised that the experimental shots we planned which was one long, continuous shot of rapping did not fit the genre as the camera movement and positioning of the star was completely off. However, our audience did praise us on our performance skills in the video as the rapping looked real. 

Following improvements

Draft White Room:

Final White Room:

Draft Forrest #1:

Final Living Environment:

Draft Forrest #2       

Final Mic Booth:

Receiving the audience feedback was essential in the creation of our products as they helped us make important decisions, including: lighting, location, style and editing. Without the use of our audience, we wouldn't have changed these aspects of our video. The final cut of the video is far more immersive and superior to the draft version. 

Feedback during construction - digipak/Magazine advertisement

- During the creation of my digipak, i used my audience to decided what colours, style, genre and layout they like in album covers. I conducted surveys on google forms and verbal questions about what people like to see in CD albums. 

•As we can see from the results, it is clear that my audience prefer a colourful album colour. As my questionnaire doesn't ask their names (due to privacy issues), i couldn't go up to them and ask why they have done this. Instead, i just listened to my audience. This is the reason why my main star image has dripping, colourful wet paint. this is also why i included a plain white background as i thought the colour is going to stand out more and that the audience is going to be drawn into the image, instead of the looking at a location that the image was shot in. 

•As the results show, my audience prefer a casual style of clothing for the main artist to wear. As i Photoshoped most of the image myself, the clothing is not really seen. This was mainly applied to the music video as the styling in that matters a lot more. Also, the clothing we did use in the video matches that of the clothing used in my digipak. 

•A simple question that i asked my audience was that if they liked the Hip-hop genre. Many of the results show that my audience is interested in Hip-hop but also listen to mainstream music along side this. The reason we chose this genre is because we felt like it could be recreated into a hip-hop performance video. However, when thinking of deigns for Hip-hop we realised it is going to be really hard to create a hip hop digipak. My audience also come into hand at this point as we asked them whether they like complex or simplistic designs. The results which came back were very even. This is one of the reasons why i combined the two. These two contradict each other heavily which makes the opposites attract, resulting in an aesthetically pleasing deign. 

•The layout of my design was not brought up directly by my audience, however, they did talk about designs that they find influential and that they like. After looking at these designs, i then realised that each of them have a pattern. The designers of each digipak stick to particular rules, such as margins and rule of thirds. I then incorporated this into my own design.

•After the creation of my digipak. I received many encouraging feedback comments. On my blog post, my digipak got called 'stylistic' and was praised for the colour scheme. I was also praised on my use of margins and the continuity of the image on the disk and the front cover. I was also verbally congratulated by my teacher as i was hailed in front of the class for having an imaginative and authentic design. 

- For my magazine advert, my audience decided that i should keep the same design on my advert as it is on my digipak. I believe that this is to add continuity between the advert and the digipak. Because of this, i was stuck on how to layout my advertisement. This is when my audience told me about artists that they listen to on a regular basis.This is when i googled artist advertisements and analysed them. The most influential advert was promoting one of Jay-Z albums. I took many aspects of this advert and applied it to my own. As a lot of my audience also listen to mainstream music, i also analysed pop advertisements,  which also played a part in my final version. 

Overall, my audience feedback was a very important in the creation of my media products. Without this, my products (especially my music video) would not have evolved onto the creation it is now. 

Evaluation Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

Our media product both conforms and challenges to the forms and conventions of real media products. As our video and artist is part of the Hip-hop genre, our video and style will follow the normal conventions of the Hip-hop genre. However, we have challenged conventions as the styling of our artist does not follow the normal conventions of Hip-hop artist. We took inspiration from various artists such as Witt Lowry, Lucidious and some from Eminem. We have kept this style from the very begging as we don't really want our artist to look very flashy. 

Music Video

As a group, we decided to do Moment of Silence by Lucidious, which follows a narrative based story of him losing his friend whilst drink driving. The song floats over his life and things at which he failed at. Lucidious also raps about his upcoming life and telling his family members and kin about what they can do when he is gone.  The video also features a performance section which includes the singer Josh Woods to join Lucidious in the chorus. in our music video, we did not take on a narrative structure like Lucidious did. We decided to take on a performance based video as we believed it was going to be easier to make; hence why we dropped our narrative plan. In our video, i took on the role as the main artist, and had Joel Robberts accompanying me in the video as the chorus singer. This double act form mirrors that of Lucidious and Josh Woods. In Moment of Silence, there was a female singer but she was only backing vocals in the song, and her voice did not resonate as much as Josh's did. Whilst creating the song, we used various close ups and medium shots. We refrained from straying into any other shot as we were not comfortable with making, however this did not stop us from filming these shots. The reason these shots were not included is because they did not look good as the framing was off and the positioning of the camera looked basic and shoddy. As we took on a performance based video, I feel that this matches the conventions of a hip hop video as more and more artists are now doing performance based videos as their songs dont have as much structure to them and dont really tell a story. 

Locations

The locations we used were similar to the original Moment of Silence video. In one scene, Lucidious is shown to be sitting down with the camera slightly positioned over his head looking down on him. Similarly, we used a shot in our music video which matches this perfectly. in this shot, i am sitting down on a little chair, but because the chair is taken from one of the class rooms, it didn't suit our video. This is why Frank (who filmed this particular shot) positioned the camera in a really sensible way and didn't get the chair in the shot.  

In our drafts, we decided to do most of the filming in a field which was inspired by the music video 'Dreaming With Our Eyes Open,' by the artist Witt Lowry. We were hoping to use the woodland to film our music video, but it didn't end up looking the way we were hoping. We also included the white room in our draft which was also used in Witt Lowrys video and used multiple close up shots. These shots did not make the final addition of the music video as most of the shots were blurry and had multiple problems with them. We also ditched having the woodland idea and decided to film a lot of the shots at my house. The woodland shots do not fit the conventions of a music video as it doesn't fit the stereotypes associated with the Hip-hop genre. however, the shots seen in the white room perfectly match the hip hop genre as it is plain and has been widely used across various videos. 

In the final edit, we had a total of three locations, but shot from different angles. We had: The white room, the mic booth and the sofa scene. During the filming of the sofa scene, we used multiple different angles. One main angle was shot from outside where the dripping of water can be seen running down the window. I feel that this location and shot challenges the conventions of the Hip-hop genre as Hip-hop videos mainly include parties and loom on the curves of females (according to the male gaze - Laura Mulvey). In our video however, there are no shots of women and it is a predominantly performance based video which only focuses on the two artists in the video. However, the mic scene we used is widely used across the Hip hop genre. This scene was inspired from 'No Love' by Eminem ft. Lil Wayne. This location definitely fits the conventions of the Hip-hop genre as it is one of the most iconic things withing the Hip hop genre. 'spitting in the booth'  is one of the most widely used phrases in Hip hop among fans but also used in the actual songs. 

Style

In our music video, we tried to mirror various styles from a selection of artists. These artists include  Witt lowry, Eminem, Lucidious and Watsky. Witt, Lucidious and Watsky all have similar styles as they are mainly all casual and relaxed. I feel that the style we decided on was really good. After extensive research and looking at images on google, we decided to go for a casual design. We also thought about getting new high top shoes as they fit into the hip hop  genre really well. in the end, we decided we wouldn't use any shots which included the shoes.  


Digipak and Magazine Advertisement 

My digipak follows a simplistic form which fits perfectly in the hip hop genre. i used many templates for my digipak as i looked at numerous designs on google and at some of my favorite artists. Logic's album was the most influential as it was the base for my own. Whilst analyzing the cover, i realized i liked the use of the graffiti and wanted to use it for my own. This is when i got the idea to use the wet dripping paint. I feel that by using the bright colours in my design, i have managed to cater for a Hip-hop audience, but also a pop  and mainstream audience as well. I feel that i have conjured up a unique design which springs from other hip hop CD covers. I think that my digipak does conform to the conventions of the hip hop genre, but they dont conform to the stereotypical genre. As hip hop has gradually evolved into a casual, deep and emotional form of music, then the styling has changed; which overall has had an impact on the Digipak's and Adverts the designers make. This is why my Digipak is made for a wider audience. As more and more Hip-hop artists are bringing in mainstream artists in the pop genre, it is getting more popular and more people from other genres are interested in Hip-hop. This is also the case in my Magazine Advert. 

My magazine advert and my digipak spawned from a plain photo of myself, which  was then converted into a wet paint effect. I feel that the colours i used in the photoshoped image are really  bold which attract the audiences eye. My back cover was just a simple idea that i thought of on the spot. However, i did look at other back covers but none of them attracted me into making one like it. Most Hip-hop back covers contain an image which was something i wanted to refrain from using. This is because i wanted to keep the continuity of a simplistic style throughout my design. I also didn't want to have another design as the first design looks so nice, i wanted it to be the only image on the album. This is why i reused the design on the CD and the inside cover. Reusing the design was inspired from Eminem's album 'Curtain Call' which reuses the same image over again on each cover, including the back. 

Motif

My magazine and digipak both use the the same style, effect and image. I did this to keep the album and advertisement in continuity with one another as the advertisement is promotion when the album is going to come out. It wouldn't have made sense for the image to be anything different as it could confuse the audience. The same front is also used across the two albums, but, i did use a different font on my magazine advertisement at the top of the page which was inspired from an advert from Jay-Z. As the same font is used across my media products, this, again, adds continuity across my media products. The same font was also used in my music video as it is simplistic and stylistic.