Evaluation Questions

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

The stereotypical locations for a hip hop music video are usually settings such as parties or in expensive clubs as this matches the flash image of hip hop stars. However as hip hop originally came from the streets this is often used as a location as well to emphasise the change they have made to the ‘big time’. We decided to challenge the conventional setting of a big party and instead concentrated on the gritty street culture that surrounds hip hop fans. However we decided to still include the major clothing brands that these videos usually include such as Nike, Adidas and Ralph Lauren etc as these are so commonly associated with hip hop. Hip hop music videos also often include lots of half naked women dancing with the artist. We chose to use an all male cast to challenge this and to give the video a gang like feel. We also decided to challenge the conventional music video style and structure; instead of presenting a montage of party scenes, lip synching and dancing women, we decided to make a short film using the song as a non-diagetic soundtrack. We chose to do this after looking at the work of the auteur Jonathon Glazer who does something similar in his music videos. To make sure that the video still related to the genre and song though we chose the theme of criminals in the drug world which surrounds hip hop. We originally decided that we would not include any lip synching but after some consideration we decided to include it to make the video seem more music video like and to give something fresh to the Jonathon Glazer mould. We chose to film Martin lip synching in a dark graffiti covered location to adhere to the conventional hip hop guidelines.

How Effective Is The Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts? 

Our magazine advert and our dvd digipack both include the same graffiti background that is seen in our actual film. We did this to create almost a brand and to create a theme in the three to make them easy to relate back to each other for the audience. The advert and digipack both also include the same font which is in a graffiti style to relate the hip hop genre back to it and to show positive continuity between all three products. Our digipack works as an introduction to the video as it features money and a microphone so the audience it immediately introduced to the themes they will be seeing. This also works to draw people in who are interested or intrigued by these items. The fact that neither characters faces are shown and just their bodies gives a mysterious effect and draws them in also. This perhaps challenges the usual advertising techniques as usually artists use their beauty and image to promote themselves here we are introducing the narrative of the video instead. This mystery will work to draw the audience in as they try to learn more about the artist.

What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

After the initial feedback from the class and our own opinions we thought that centring the video purely on drugs would perhaps be inappropriate and generally not particularly clever. Instead we decided to look deeper into the song’s lyrics and try and relate them well to the video. This is when we decided that we would still tell the story of a criminal underworld but instead of following the selling of drugs we would introduce the concept of illegally buying and selling microphones as if they were as illegal as drugs. We chose microphones because the chorus to our chosen song ‘My Way’ talks about microphones frequently. We also took inspiration from the BBC drama ‘Bootleg’ which followed the black market in England after chocolate is made illegal. We were also told however that our video stayed well within the genre conventions of violence and gang culture in a gritty underworld but had a clever twist by swapping the selling of drugs with microphones. The complicated mix of camera shots was also noticed and made the video clear but we were also told that perhaps we could have made the mugging scene clearer but we were still safe and effective. People also thought that we portrayed the dangerous type of people involved in hip hop culture well and that we created a engaging video by using interesting editing techniques such as split screen.  

How Did You Use New Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

We used the blog throughout the process to document our progress in all stages of planning, filming, editing and creating our digipack. This worked well as a way to keep on track with what we needed to do and to see our progress as we went on. We used photoshop whilst creating our digipack and magazine advert using the different tools and techniques to make an extremely professional finished product. I particularly enjoyed using photoshop and getting to grips with the different functions. To edit and cut our video we used final cut which is easy to use particularly with the experience of last year. We used the hd cameras available in the media classrooms to film our video. These were easy to use and gave good quality picture for the finished product.