Thursday, 26 April 2012

Evaluation Q1 : What ways does your music product use, develop or challenge real forms of media products?

Whilst doing audience research and product research I and my group found a lot of the editing within R&B video's, if covering a dark sub genre of the main genre, rather gloomy and bleak. compared to how a 'Feel Good' R&B songs image and out-take would be, which is bright and filled with beautiful women, watering down champaign.The topics usually covered or represented within R&B video's are Women, Sex, Alcohol, Relationships and on the sub-verted occasion Death.  In today's day and age depending on who the director is the Video and editing will be based on who the director is, along with what the lyrical content is about. happy, upbeat lyrics drive towards a happy upbeat video. dark, painful lyrics contribute towards a sadly deep video. 


 A lot of R&B video's sequencing fade and cut in to each other rather strongly telling a very clear structured story. There are a lot of pans with close up shots used. slow motion shots or slow shots often create a dramatic effect on the video, giving the video's meaning a more serious look. These are used to portray and show how the artist is feeling about the topic or brief at hand, often sad or regretful, with the sub genre which sub-verts from the stereotypical inclining the artist to do the opposite within the video deciding to forget his/her troubles by going out and having fun with his/her friendship group.


 the narrative structure usually follows the Equilibrium, disruption, Equilibrium either reached, reached but not the same or unresolved. This is common with most R&B music videos as they all try to tell a story to their viewers. the artists within the genre are predominantly represented as regretful individuals, who are emotionally unstable in terms of how to deal with their current affairs. The lyrical content involved within the music usually talk and specify feeling for the other or ex-other half.


Mise-En-Scene within these videos often consist and or are build within a domestic environment. if not then a form of transport or out door sub-vert is used to show the artists thoughts really moving him/her in to another light. photos are used to represent what is and what was within a music video almost acting as a more graphical still watch. bathrooms and clubs are used rather frequently within R&B music Videos as these places tend to be where people go if the're sad or happy within the music world of R&B.


I and my group when creating our own music video, taking in to account all the product and audience research done, we decided to adapt and subvert some of the typical R&B conventions. for example we decided instead of keeping our videos colour, we decided that because we're covering such a dark themed song to make it black and white, bringing malnourishment to the video of it's vibrant colours. we chose to do this as we wanted to be different from the typical always in colour video.


We edited the video's sequencing by making each shot either cut or fade in to each other as most R&B video's do this to keep the storyline and frequency of the video smooth. we decided to include a female and drug within our video as our song choice talks about this within great detail and also follows the Genres forms of conventions.


to create our own music video based upon the genre R&B we also used pans and close up shots to put together our music video. We decided to follow the conventions of the camera angles because we personally thought if we had filmed it any differently i perhaps wouldn't have given the dark, mysterious effect we wanted it to.


 When  and my group created our digipak, the first thing we noticed was that it folded out in to a  long rectangular shape, we also noticed that there were a lot of images consisting of 6 sides, meaning a image on each side. we also noticed instead of having 1 tray like a normal CD. The digipak was a beholder of two trays. a convention that did surprise us as we though there would be some differenece is the digipak uses just like the normal CD covers, the song tittles remaining on the back cover of the panel.


When we created our Digipak me and my group decided to adapt all the conventions of a Digipak with no challenging involved as we felt our target audience would find it awkward enough opening the digipak, so try to not make it any more strange. When I and my group created our Digipak, we decided to keep the layout but add the weeknd, who is the artist we're looking at. we decided to place a picture representing an aspect of his that he sings about or represents him self.


Whilst looking in to magazine adverts with my group, we noticed that what ever medial text is being advertised it takes up two thirds of the page with the Album, Artists Name and the release date all being at the masthead of the advertisement. There is usually a award or prestige that the album has won or been nominated for. We also found the magazines own personal review captioned at the bottom to anchor the whole advertisement together.


When I and my group created our magazine advert for our digipak, we decided to follow all the magazines conventions as we felt comfortable doing so. it also apeald to our target audience as the magazines conventions that we followed was predominantly read by our target audience . We placed the panel in the front so people understood that, that was what was of importance along with the Release date, Artist Name and album title at the top. We also Included our on Caption and included website in to our design by putting the artists Facebook, Twitter and website across the bottom to signify the many different types of media approaches. We also included a 'Smart Phone Scanner'. This is a little code that a smart phone scans and is able to get information about the album straight to their phone.


When creating all of our products we didn't really try to challenge media texts already out there we decided to develop and use different conventions, adding our on twist as this is what we felt more comfortable doing as a group. We figured instead of trying to change our target audiences preferences we should just simply cater to them that way we have hard hitting products that we know our target audience will like.  

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