Thursday 24 March 2011

Evaluation Answers

Abdul Baki

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

I have chosen 2 genres to research on, which are RnB and Hip-Hop. I've chosen them genres because i think that nowadays the music industry has been more dominated by these genres. Although the music industry is mixed, i think that Hip-Hop and R&B has the edge. Some may say that these 2 genres are completely similar but both have its difference, for example: In Hip-Hop it’s more drug/crime related; however in R&B the drug/crime influence is limited. I've chosen R&B as my main genre to avoid controversy and the topics of drugs (my teacher did not seem keen on these issues being used)   Hip-Hop conventions tend to be quite negative and I felt that R&B would be more appropriate. 
R&B would also give us more variety of editing choices e.g. a slow track would have smoother and longer editing whereas in an upbeat track the editing would be faster and more effects can be used and both type of tracks can be used in R&B. In modern day videos like ours, most are located in cities to show the artst as successful and modern, and ones that are set outside are ones that are sang softly e.g. Nelly – Just A Dream (set in the beach). 
The artist usually wear hoodies and if not a hat with only a few showing their hair, not forgetting a lot of jewellery. In our music video we used nearly all of the conventions you’ll see in modern day R&B/Hip-Hop videos. For example the locations where in the city of London and costumes worn were typical clothing worn by R&B/Hip-Hop artists, as well as jewellery. However majority of videos in this type of genre would involve voyeurism, but we decided to subvert that because of the artist we chose and the people we’re showing this to. Imad, our artist didn’t want
voyeurism in the video as he didn’t want people to think of him like that and also he didn’t want to use girls in such ways to promote the video as he thought it’s only included to get a wider audience.


Location was not a hard decision because where it was located, was area’s all of us visit every now and then. Living in London makes it easier for travel, and we’re also familiar with the locations. Waterloo was chosen because it’s seen as a romantic place where couples usually visit. Canary Wharf was shown so the audience is familiar where the setting is, and because Canary Wharf is an iconic figure of London we decided to show it. Another iconic figure of London used was Tower Bridge, and this was chosen because we visit the place a lot and know the place inside out, also looks good
in the video with many places to visit that surrounds Tower Bridge, places like Southward (place with the multi coloured lights and speedy cars).
Because we couldn’t choose a copy right song, it was difficult for us to find a decent track. Having a friend that records music, we decided to use him. His music also appeals to the audience we want to target and its arguably the genre which dominates the music industry. Our artist, Imad, is quite dark (no offence to him) and when you see on TV, most of these artists are dark, although he is Bengali.

Most narratives in R&B and Hip-Hop music videos are about girls, for example they’re in the look for a girl, partying with girls or about your girl. We chose to follow these because there aren’t many other narratives on these genres. Although it was quite straight forward to briefly come up with the narrative, it was difficult how we were going to do it. Because the lyric of the music wasn’t specific, it could’ve been about anything about a girl, and we came up with a lot of ideas. Finally coming up with the final idea where it would be suitable and simple but effective. Most the conventions we used should appeal to the target audience which is young teenagers.








Monday 21 March 2011

Evaluation Planning

To prepare for our evaluation we all answered the questions individually at home and then had a meeting to discuss our answers. We then began planning how we would bring together all our ideas to make the video evaluation. We decided to record as a group but to answer one question each, with the group making contributions to all questions.
We made a list of clips and images which we would use
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Monday 14 February 2011

Shooting Day Six

Yesterday we went filming at Waterloo/Embankment to go and film the final bit of the music video. We finally filmed the short narrative and we are currently editing the final cut.  We plan to finish the video by this week.

We encountered a small problem which led to a disagreement with the director Nasima and the artist Imad about the narrative and ideas that they both had. We had finally agreed upon using both ideas and finished the filming. Another problem we had was that we were approached by one of the security guards who asked us a few questions on what we were filming, we had told her that we were filming a scene for our media course work which is a music video. She had told us that we needed a permit to film in that area but as we had already started she had let us off and said we should be more prepared next time round. We believe we were very fortunate to have been finished the filming before we had any other problems.

Friday 11 February 2011

Shooting Day Five

One of the audience feedback we got was that there was too much of Imad, and not any of the girl, considering that there's a girl singing in the track. So we went Waterloo today with our full crew, and filmed a story with a girl. Another problem we encountered was we found it hard to find a girl that'll fit the genre, and when we did find one they often refuse or too shy to do it. Therefore we had to use one of our own mates to film with Imad, and told her to dress in a certain way so she fits the stereotypical image of a video girl.

Shooting Day Four

We went filming at southwark today to film the speedy effect with the cars and film the whole song once over. Today at the shoot was me (Khalid), Baki, Nasima, Ridhwan and our artist Imad. One of the problems we had while filming were that cars did not drive by regularly. We needed cars from both lanes of the road to drive past but not many were driving by. When filming, Imad could not hear the song as the car engines driving by were too loud but we still managed to get it done.

Shooting Day Three

Today we went back to the roof top the re-film the 2nd verse because when we took it back to edit we accidently deleted it. We reviewed our shooting and screened it in class, and one of our comments we got back was that we didn't have enough shot variations. So we went back a filmed the video in different angles (close up and over the shoulder shots). Me (Baki), Khalid, Imad & Ridhwan come along to the shoot, and Nasima couldn't come due to exams. Again we encountered problems on the roof top as we had to be as quiet as possible, without disturbing the residents. The light power was slowly going and become dimmer as we continued.