Q1

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

For our music video, we followed Carol Vernallis theory of having non-continuous edits and going against the standard edit usually seen in film and TV. We did this because we wanted to maintain the audiences interest in the music video. We also added light special effects to our music video following another one of Vernallis points, to make it more visually appealing however we didn't use over the top effects you would usually see in a hip hop video because our song is alternative.  Our music video follows the sub genre of hip hop known as alternative hip hop, where the focus is usually based on intellect and culture rather than wealth and material objects.

For example in this video, there is abundance of lens flares, super fast cuts and the use of a shaking filter every time the bass drops to represent the live fast style most hip hop artists follow, and the use of lens flares, particularly in the shops and in the Las Vegas type area emphasises on the wealth, they use effects to emphasise on their material objects.

An example

In our music video, the effects are used to put more attention on our artist for example we put a saturation filter on to make our artist stand out in dull areas and we used another filter to blur out the background in one part to make the artist stand out. We also applied the saturation filter throughout the video so the background isn’t constantly dull, and it makes the colours more vibrant.  It also shows that our video goes against the mainstream production values of a normal hip hop video because the editing isn't focused on material objects.We also added slow motion to some parts of the video because we wanted the video to have moments that would leave an impact and doing it in slow motion ensures that the viewer would have a good look at that moment. 

Here is a part where slow motion is used. 

                                     

We also edited to the beat so the video can be as fluid as possible and so the audience does not lose interest in the video because they are more likely to be put off by a video that consists of an edit every 5 beats than a video that has an edit every 2 beats. We also followed the point Vernallis made about eye contact, that the artist maintains eye contact with the camera throughout the video, this makes the audience feel more close to the artist because its like the artist is addressing the audience directly.

Our video follows Andrew Goodwin’s theory too because we used the point about disjuncture for our video because our video isn’t a narrative so we don’t follow the illustration point, and our video doesn’t have a deeper meaning so it isn’t amplification, our video just consists of our artist performing and occasionally doing random stuff such as jumping on a post box. We did this because with disjuncture, it’s easier to create a sense of movement so we could maintain the interest of the audience. However, we did use very minor illustration on some parts of the music video in order to add a little emphasis to the lyrics, for example there is a part where he points to his teeth while saying cavity, and another part where he points to his head while saying psychoanalysis. 

This is an example of some of the illustration we used.

Our video doesn't really touch on Laura Mulveys theory because there isn't one female in the video and all the shots are basically him rapping. Another point is that our target audience is a wide range of males and females, so if we featured dismembered images of our artist, males probably would've been put off and if we featured dismembered images of a female, females probably would've been put off and also slightly offended.

Our video is based on 2 music videos, the first one is Lecs Luther, Fish and Chips, this helped influence our video because it helped us choose part of our location and it helped with the performance aspect of our video because in Lecs video, he maintains eye contact with the audience throughout and that helps him connect with the audience. We also looked at the use of camera work in the Fish and Chips video and the camera work really helped Lecs address his audience as he was looking at the camera for most of the video so we thought we'd like to try and use that feature, we were also going to use a similar fish eye filter as Lecs does in his video but unfortunately we were unable to do that. (More details in evaluation q3)

We also looked at Baths - Lovely blood-flow because the video gave us the idea to film in a forest because it gave a cool effect, it also goes against the conventions of a normal hip hop video because they would be usually filmed in an urban type area, we did this because our video was made to compliment the alternative style of the song and it also makes it stand out.  However some parts of our video stick to convention as we film in places with graffiti.

Hannibal Lecter Mask

The costume of our artist also compliments the style of the song and it also goes against the conventions of hip hop video because usually in a hip hop video, the artist would wear clothing that would emphasise on his/her wealth such as designer brand, we made sure our artist wore clothes that matches the unique style of the song. Many artists also tend to wear hi-top trainers and caps, but our artist doesn't. We also added a Hannibal Lector mask to our artist’s attire because we wanted to reference the style of another artist, MF DOOM who and we also used the mask as a motif. It also references the conventions of horror/thriller because in alternative hip-hop songs, they usually contain cultural references and references to other peoples work.

MF DOOM

A digipak is a particular style of packaging that consists of 4 or more panels, and it usually contains bonus content.
Our digipak follows some conventions of a usual hip hop cover, as it features a parental advisory logo, something very common. The font used for the title is also quite similar to many other hip hop covers, many covers of the hip hop genre tend to use bold and thick fonts on there covers. Our digipak also follows the style of many types of genres by having a mid-shot of the artist near to the middle. However our digipak challenges mainstream hip hop album covers by having a forest in the background instead of a city which are usually featured in hip hop album covers.

THE ANCILLARY PRODUCTS

make a gif picture