How did you use media technologies in the research stage?

Throughout the Researching stage. A lot of Youtube research was conducted.

This was used, in order to watch and analyse the different types of music videos in order to gain an understanding and appreciation of how they are created. Low budget videos, Rock videos, Pop videos and Hip-Hop videos were just some of what we viewed on Youtube. We done this to get some ideas from different genres and budgets to help with how we wanted to present our videos.

AllCDCovers.com was also used a lot in order to obtain the CD covers of artists and groups that I had studied to get some inspiration and influences into what I may like to do with my Digipack.

Wikipedia was also used to gain some background knowledge about the record labels from the genre of our choice. This was informational and also helpful to us, because it then gave us a foundation to choose what type of look we wanted our artists to be represented under.

I also used picsearch in order to find pictures of artists or logos to add visual imagery to my research.

Microsoft Word and Excel were also both used during the research stage. I used these media technologies to create an audience research table, presented with different types of graphs to show how my audience reacted to the questions that I put to them. This was very handy for me because it gave me my answers in a very slick and clear way without any misleading information going astray.

How did you use media technologies in the construction stage?

During the construction stage of our project, two main media technologies, Final Cut Express and Adobe Photoshop were used throughout to create and develop our music video and ancillary texts.

Final Cut Express:

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

Our products are heavily linked throughout eachother, and we wanted to make that as evident as possible during our brainstorming throughout the research section. if we look particularly at our ancillary texts, we can see a lot of influence of both in eachother:

[Our video here]

[Picture of Digipack here]

As you can see, our complete product is very similar in appearence and context. they all have quite a dark theme with a twist running throughout. The ancillary texts have white text on black background to keep the consistency from piece to piece. the fact that the ancillary texts are complimentary, I felt it was crucial to include our artists as much as we can on them. Images of them are dotted all over the ancillary texts to make our artists a recognisable face time and time again. The combination of our video and ancillary texts is very successful, as the easy on the eye video is reflected in our ancillary texts as we made sure it was all corectly spaced and aligned, our video is very slick in the way in which we have cut a lot on the beat, so this is also emulated in our ancillary texts. The combination of both products is very experimental. The colour theme is very generic, but the ancillary tasks back up the music video, as the video isn't striking, it is very aesthecial, which is what we wanted to get across, as the beat and lyrics are very soulful, so we have used the a lot of bold techinques in the fonts to encourage a balance between both products to create an equilibrium for our whole product.

In what ways does your media product challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

[Pictures of our artists in clothing in talk about here]

Throughout the whole process of creating my music video and ancillary tasks, one of our major aims was to make sure that we challenged or changed the stereotypical views of the Hip-Hop genre in 2011. We added a personal and morden day twist to the clothing that our artists were wearing. Our artists wear pieces like blazers, leather and baseball jackets, trilby and flat hats/caps to add a more professional, and stylish effect to there overall image. We wanted to be rememberable, and for our artists to come in at a new angle in which nobody else has come in from before. The Hip-Hop genre is evolving, and we are not the first artists to start dressing more appropriately towards reaching out to a wider audience, but it is a crucial factor for us to consider because the look of our artists is very important to our success.

In what ways does your media product develop forms and conventions of real media products?

My product Develops a new trend starting to emerge from the urban music scene. We have latched onto the latest craze that has overcome many successful Hip-Hop and R'n'B artists in working with a fellow composers of music to create a joint album in which they both contribute tracks, some of which both feature on and some on there own to add a lot more variety to the whole package and encourages a lot more sales due to two sets of fanbases that will look to purchase the album. Notable stars from this genre who have already made a joint album are Chris Brown and Tyga, with their album, Fan of a Fan:

Other major stars that are looking to join this ever increasing popular fad are Kanye West and Jay-Z upcoming album; Watch the Throne (above), Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame, Drake and Lil Wayne. These artists are some of the most popular in the genre, so if they are looking to take advantage of this new type of music production, then us as new artists to the scene need to look at new trends being set because we need to make an impact what is a hard industry to break into.

In what ways does your media product use forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product uses a lot of stereotypical and cliche forms and conventions of a real life product from the R'n'B/Hip-Hop genre, such as the focus of our artists on the glamourous side of life, interested in money and of course, success. It takes inspiration from a lot of mainstream and underground sources and adds a little twist or bit of character to how it is presented. The colour theme of our ancillary tasks is black and white. Very obvious, but it is quite sophisticated and portrays a serious side to our artists. We toyed with the idea of the colour scheme, but came to a decision that white lettering and effects would suit our overall image a lot more than any other combination as it signified our intent to make our target audience understand that we are professional artists looking to make an impact. Our video also uses forms and conventions of real media products. The picturesque and idyllic images of city buildings and sky scrapers to start with conforms to stereotypical media products of the genre as it is something that is seen a lot throughout the mainstream music videos of the genre. My media product follows the 'Illustration' approach of Andrew Goodwin's Theory of Music Video Construction; the majority of the cuts of our video are on the beat to create emphasis on the change of scenery or artist. Our video matches the lyrics, and my artists act out the lyrics in the video. This theory was also important to us as we had planned to use the 'Amplification' method in the 'Band Image' section. Doing things such as playing on the lyrics to do with money, involving homeless people to show they are "unfamiliar" to money. This was something we decided to use the 'Illustration' technique to get a more complete effect in our video, we wanted to make sure that is was completely understandable and easy enough to engage with, so choosing the same techniques throughout of adoption of Andrew Goodwin's theory into our video was a good decision.