Liam Hutchinson

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

The main conventions in a music video are quick fast paced editing in-between each scene this is usually to make the video flow throughout.
Near enough every music video there will be a repeatable scene which will be shown a few times to the audience, sometimes these scenes are repeated only during the chorus which makes sense to repeat when there is a repeat of lyrics. However the scenes are sometimes repeated randomly with no reason. In my music video there are scenes which have been repeated, I did this to break down some of the longer shots throughout the video, I used a scene of a train going back and forth and repeated that a few times and also repeated a shot of someone saying ‘My Love’.
In my video I have used an element of performance, which is someone miming the lyrics and dancing towards the end of the video, this is a typical convention in nearly all music videos, so I thought I would have to also add this to my production.Also the lyrics of the video are some way shown the element of film, so this means that the video would be showing you what the lyrics are saying or meaning.
Usually the conventions of a music video vary depending on a genre of music. My track is a bassline track from an artist called ‘Mr Virgo’ which is fast paced, this means that the music video had to be fast paced in order to have some relevance with the audio track.The bassline genre is a niche genre, so therefore it’s less widespread and public to an everyday audience. There are few music videos which are based on a bassline genre however many artist just create the music but no videos. Often the conventions used in bassline music videos are an element of performance, which instead of someone just singing and dancing they would portray there bassline music as a story, so they would have someone performing, but at the same time showing a story, for example following a man on a journey.
With bassline it’s typically hard to make a video because there is often little or no lyrics, and the tracks are quite long considering the lack of lyrics.However ‘My Love’ was remixed by ‘Mr Virgo’ as it was originally a song from Justin Timberlake and the developed into a bassline track. Therefore I had to focus on both the bassline side and pop side of the track. So that is why I had elements of performance which was singing and elements of dancing.

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

For my website I researched into different genre websites and realised that all of the pages used are along the same lines, so this lead me to choosing my five pages to have at the top of my site. I focused my research on to two very different style sites which was ‘Girls Aloud’ and the ‘NME’ website, both are mainstream, however they focus on different genres and layed out there website differently.
The predominant colour for bassline websites or albums is black with either a bright colour which creates a contrast or with some kind of abstract design or image. Therefore for my webpage i decided to use a black and white colour scheme which creates an effective and professional finish. On my home page I had an image of someone who was playing ‘Mr Virgo’ which I used for the front cover of my CD case, this is because I thought that would be the best way to interlink the both texts together.

My CD cover consists of a front and back cover, and two inside covers.The front cover has Mr Virgo on the front standing in front of a brick wall in black and white, this image is on the website and the colour scheme of the front cover looks continuous throughout both texts.For the first of the inner page’s duplicated 6 of the same image and changed the colours of Mr Virgo, I think this created a good effect, and I received good feedback because of the inlay.My back cover consist of the same brick wall, with two body shots of Mr Virgo with the colours manipulated, I did this in order to be consistent with both the front cover and the first inlay cover.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I received my feedback through my class peers. We individually commented on each other’s website and digipack noting the positive and negative points. We also had a class screening of all our music videos, which we then we later received feedback on our music videos.
I was praised from my peers for my digipack. This is because of the style of my genre. As it’s a bassline track they agreed that the front cover of graffiti and a wall background was suitable and a good connection between the track and the digipack.
They also liked that I used a black and white colour scheme for the front cover, except from the graffiti sign saying ‘Mr Virgo’ which is red. My peers believed that the colour scheme was basic, but the right choice as everything on the front cover stood out.
The negative feedback I received for my digipack was that the back covers text wasn’t very clear. This is because the colour scheme again was predominantly black and white; with the text also being black it wasn’t clear for the audience to read.
They also suggested that maybe I lacked the style of bassline on my digipack, they suggested I should have used more graffiti onto the front cover to create an illusion of bassline.
Personally I could see where my peers were coming from when they suggested that I should have used more images or graffiti to create a sense of bassline however I didn’t do this because the track I used was a mix between bassline and pop, so therefore I didn’t want to solely base my digipack on bassline.
For my music video I was praised for the shots I used and from how I gained them. My peers thought that most of the content which was included in the video was interesting and relevant for the upbeat song. They liked how I repeated scenes, making them faster or in reverse which gave a good effect. I was also praised how I made my performance actor sing whilst he had the moving traffic behind him, they said this was a good effect that I had used.
I was criticized for the length of one of the scenes which was following a lorry because it was too long and soon became boring to watch the back of a lorry. They also could still see part of the green screen at the top of the video when my performer was singing and thought this lacked professionalism.
I also received good feedback for my website. My peers thought that my colour scheme was aesthetically pleasing, this is because they thought the colours were a contrast and helped the website standout to the viewer. They also liked the image on the home page as it was bold and stood out. They thought It was also a good link between the website and the digipack. My peers liked my rollover images as it was a good effect and technique to use which looked professional.
The negative feedback I received for my website was that there was too much black space to the right of the main image. I believe this was true, and should have centered the webpage, however I didn’t realise the webpage would eventually look like that.

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

During my research stage I looked into the genres in the music industry, I did this by using www.wikipedia.com, Wikipedia provided me with a large amount of genres to research into, with detailed information. I also used www.youtube.co.uk to analyse other music videos, this was helpful to me as it gave a insight into what a music video contained, and the main conventions which were used.
For my planning I had to decide what genre I wanted to focus on, I used www.youtube.com to try and influence my decision, however the genres I that I would have liked to use were hard to receive permission to use a track of that genre. I visited www.unsigned.com to try and find a song which I would have liked to use for my music video, however I received know permission for the music I did use. I then later tried www.myspace.com to try and gain permission of signed artists to use their music tracks, this proved pointless as I received know emails back granting me permission. Eventually I visited www.facebook.com a gained permission from a Nottinghamshire based, bassline artist called ‘Mr Virgo’. I used Inspiration to create a mindmap as I knew how to use this software already, I thought using this software would be helpful to me because I could later edit my mindmap instead of having to re-create it as I would have to on paper.
During construction I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to edit my media work, throughout the editing stage I found it relatively easy to use after I familiarized myself with the controls and buttons; this is because I used the same software in year 12 for my AS Thriller.
For the creation of my website I used Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. I found this software the best and most professional to make a website with. At first I found it hard to understand how the software worked and how to use it; however I soon realised how to use it.
The images I used for my website and digipack were taken from a Cannon G360, this camera was just a normal camera, which was convenient to me. The images I gained from the camera were good enough quality for me to use for my construction of my website and my digipack.
I filmed my music video using a Sony MiniDV camcorder. The Sony camcorder was the best quality camcorder I could use because it was the most up to date and most straight forward to use, however because the camcorder was a MiniDV it took a lot of time to capture my film onto a computer. If I was fortunate enough to have a HDD camcorder it would have prevented me capturing onto computer.
Instead of me uploading my music video straight up on to www.blogger.com I used my YouTube account to upload the video there. I did this because I believed it was more time efficient because Blogger is a slow process compared to YouTube. I also uploaded it YouTube because now days the music industry depended mainly on people listening to music and watching videos on the internet, on sites such as www.youtube.com, therefore I came to the decision that in the future YouTube is more accessible compared to blogger, and more music based I uploaded there.

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

The main conventions in a music video are quick fast paced editing in-between each scene this is usually to make the video flow throughout. Near enough every music video there will be a repeatable scene which will be shown a few times to the audience, sometimes these scenes are repeated only during the chorus which makes sense to repeat when there is a repeat of lyrics. However the scenes are sometimes repeated randomly with no reason. In my music video there are scenes which have been repeated, I did this to break down some of the longer shots throughout the video, i used a scene of a train going back and forth and repeated that a few times and also repeated a shot of someone saying ‘My Love’.
In my video i have used an element of performance, which is someone miming the lyrics and dancing towards the end of the video, this is a typical convention in nearly all music videos, so i thought i would have to also add this to my production.
Also the lyrics of the video are some way shown the element of film, so this means that the video would be showing you what the lyrics are saying or meaning.
Usually the conventions of a music video vary depending on a genre of music. My track is a bassline track from an artist called ‘Mr Virgo’ which is fast paced, this means that the music video had to be fast paced in order to have some relevance with the audio track.
The bassline genre is a niche genre, so therefore it’s less widespread and public to an everyday audience. There are few music videos which are based on a bassline genre however many artist just create the music but no videos. Often the conventions used in bassline music videos are an element of performance, which instead of someone just singing and dancing they would portray there bassline music as a story, so they would have someone performing, but at the same time showing a story, for example following a man on a journey. With bassline it’s typically hard to make a video because there is often little or no lyrics, and the tracks are quite long considering the lack of lyrics.
However ‘My Love’ was remixed by ‘Mr Virgo’ as it was originally a song from Justin Timberlake and the developed into a bassline track. Therefore i had to focus on both the bassline side and pop side of the track. So that is why i had elements of performance which was singing and elements of dancing.

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

For my website i researched into different genre websites and realised that all of the pages used are along the same lines, so this lead me to choosing my five pages to have at the top of my site. I focused my research on to two very different style sites which was ‘Girls Aloud’ and the ‘NME’ website, both are mainstream, however they focus on different genres and layed out there website differently.
The predominant colour for bassline websites or albums is black with either a bright colour which creates a contrast or with some kind of abstract design or image. Therefore for my webpage i decided to use a black and white colour scheme which creates an effective and professional finish. On my home page i had an image of someone who was playing ‘Mr Virgo’ which i used for the front cover of my CD case, this is because i thought that would be the best way to interlink the both texts together.
My CD cover consists of a front and back cover, and two inside covers.
The front cover has Mr Virgo on the front standing in front of a brick wall in black and white, this image is on the website and the colour scheme of the front cover looks continuous throughout both texts.
For the first of the inner page’s duplicated 6 of the same image and changed the colours of Mr Virgo, i think this created a good effect, and i received good feedback because of the inlay.
My back cover consist of the same brick wall, with two body shots of Mr Virgo with the colours manipulated, i did this in order to be consistant with both the front cover and the first inlay cover.