A2 Media Studies - Advanced Portfolio

Curt Thompson
A2 Media Evaluation

For my A2 Media Studies Advanced Portfolio in Media Studies I chose to do a Music Video, together with the following ancillary texts;

· A film magazine advertisement advertising the CD album
· A CD Digi-pack displaying the album

For my coursework task I had to research and analyse the typical codes and conventions of a music video but in specific, the genre of my song choice to compile a music video to. I have portrayed and replicated these codes and conventions within my own individual music video. The song I chose to do a music video to is called ‘Paper Planes’ by ‘M.I.A’. This is a hybrid genre between both Rap/Reggae/Dance, this is a feature of post modernism, mixing different media genres together. The song genre and the particular song is targeted towards male/female ages 15-25.

During the planning process of my Music video I had researched several different songs before finally settling on 'Paper Planes'. When I was deciding on the song to choose, I focused entirely on lyrics rather then my own personal music taste. I felt this would help me in the long run when I was trying to find content to film to go with the particular track. As well as doing simple research in to which song to choose, I also compiled a large variety of audience research. This ranged from polls on my blog, to questionnaire handouts and even one-to-one video feedback. For example, one of the questions asked around my college and classroom was ''do you expect the majority of music videos to have a clear narrative structure?''. This question was asked to both male and female, 25% said yes, music videos generally have a narrative structure and 75% said no. I did this so that I would have a clear understanding of the target audience and how I should be portraying the music via the mis-en-scene. The third stage of research I had gathered was the research in to the genre of my chosen song. For this particular area of researched I did not compile extensive research involving the audience, I simply de-constructed and analysed other music videos within my genre of music. This helped me on deciding weather to simply follow all of the current codes and conventions of the existing genre or go against it and create my hybrid genre. As I was gathering my research and audience date I also looked in the 'Audience Theory' to try and understand how my audience would react to the content of my music video and how I would take in to consideration, the content with in my music video. This also helped me understand how to target media literate audience both active and passive.

After extensive research and planning I decided to stick with the current genre codes and conventions instead of trying to completely alter them. I felt that this would target my audience sufficiently and help them to understand the genre of my music video and track choice. These conventions would flow throughout my entire project including the two ancillary texts and a constant theme and genre will be represented through the use of stylistics. Through research, my video contains a lot of obvious conventions and clear followed codes which help to promote the genre. I had gained a lot of inspiration and from the song G-unit – Smile, directed and produced by Robert Klein in 2007 with G-unit Records.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CHNkaCn_zY&feature=relmfu)

The music is similar to the song I have chosen (M.I.A – Paper Planes) as it has a constant repetitive beat throughout the entire song. The video helps to match the rhythm of the song as it is edited to the beat through the majority of the song. I also looked in to a range of current existing fan made music videos to the song including one created by 'BananaPhoneFilms' in 2009.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s51Uhe864iU)

The Music video features 3 characters dressed in clothing which would be considered as appropriate to promote the genre of the music. I gained a large amount of ideas from this music video including the movement of the characters within the music video. All of the music videos I have analysed have not very much in common and are all from completely different genres as well as era's. I felt that this would broaden my understanding of different song genres and how they represent there genre as well as the codes and conventions within the music video. The music videos I have analysed consist of ''The Cure – Boys Don't Cry'' (June 1976, Fiction Records), Mumford and Sons – The Cave (March 2008, Island Records) and M.I.A – Paper Planes (March 2008, XL Recordings).

Before I began planning filming, I decided upon a character and an artist name to represent the music as I could not use the same already existing names. I chose a girl who suited the role of the stereotypical urban character. I felt that this would help represent my music genre as well as the choice of clothing. I decided to call my artist 'Cher' as I felt this was a fairly common name for a female rap recording artists. Pre-filming my music video sequences, I first listed several areas and locations that I would choose to film in as well as different type of studio shots I would include. Filming my music video was a fairly easy task but also fairly time consuming. This was because of the variety of shots I had to shoot to create a montage. Due to previous data from audience research, I decided that I would not base my music video content around a narrative structure and that I would make it a montage. The stylistics used with in the music video are used with consideration to the song genre and the codes and conventions that are associated with it. The opening sequence is a montage of several different shots taken in a moving car. The shots include things such as run down council areas, blocks of flats and general ran down suburban areas. This helps to satisfy the audience expectations straight away as well as preparing them for what the rest of the music video is going to follow like. The first time the audience is introduced to the character is just shortly after the opening scene setting sequence and her face is still not exposed fully by the use of a silhouette. Using eclectic borrowing, I have used an idea from the music video from Eminem - Stand Alone (June 2007, Universal Records) where only parts of the artists face are shown. This leaves a kind of mystery behind the character. The movement of the character was thought about in reference to the fan made videos of the track that was mentioned further up. The reason I picked the particular individual I did for my music video was because she was an experienced dancer. I felt that using a dancer such as herself would help to express the lyrics through the form of dance. For example in the opening sequence when the hand movement are made to represent a plane. This is also followed through later on in the music video to represent the sound of guns and further more to replicate the 'skulls and bones' line where the performer grosses her hands in the shape of a pirate skull and bone symbol. One of my favourite shots follows on after the first introductory of the performing artist, Cher, which is a clip of cars passing by over a period of time, but sped up. I have electively borrowed a similar shot from the music video to Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars (May 2010, Universal Studies) where the cars pass by quickly to create a form of motion blur. This is also a feature of post modernism. I have tried to include a large range of features of post modernism because I feel this will help the music video to apply to the more modern active audiences as well as the passive audiences. I feel that I have made it clear that I have followed the codes and conventions well within the opening seconds of my music video. I thought about the mis-en-scene in particular when deciding location. It needed to be a low class sub- urban area. This was to help re-enforce the stereotypes of the genre of music itself. When filming my video the performer had to do a fair amount of miming to play in sync with the song track. At first this came across as extremely difficult but after a certain period of time practising on the editing suites using Adobe Premier, I found ways in which to over come the situation of syncing the track to the lip movements. I did this by manipulating the play rate of the clip and either slowing it down or speeding it up to match the lip movements to the track. The further I got in to editing the better my editing became and I fell that if I would have practised on the advertisement task beforehand, I would have had a lot more experience with using the software and my music video editing would have been higher quality. The basic editing theme that I had in mind ran through out the entire music video was to edit it to the beat of the song. This is clearly visible to the audience and I think that it give the video the strong entertainment value that it does. When it came to editing I gave myself very little time to edit my music video. This was down to my poor management of time and understating the amount of time that had to be put in to editing. Although I had only 2 days to complete the entire edit, I feel that it helped me. Since I had only 2 days to do it I would be sat at a machine for 5 hours at a time. This meant the ideas that I had for editing was constant for the majority of my video instead of coming back the next day with a whole new set of different idea and most probably worse. I think this gave me no time to 'over edit' and ruin the simplicity of my video which I feel, makes it what it is.

For the second part of my coursework promotion package, I had to create a CD Digi-pack as well as a poster to fit on the side of a bus shelter. I followed the same process I did with my music video, in the idea that I would gather a mass amount of research and conventions of what is expected of a CD package and advertisement. I looked and analysed several different current existing CD packages to find out how they are displayed and weather there was a list of conventions for CD packages in general, regardless of the genre. I looked at the position of the track list, conventionally on the back. I also looked at the title placement, conventionally on the front in either one of the corner also with most of them containing some form of artwork or a portrait of the recoding artist. I planned initially to create the CD package on Adobe Photoshop CS3 because I felt that this would give a large range of tools to design the images I wanted to. I also had a lot of experience from the previous year of media as well as studying graphics design in to using Photoshop and learning how to create the image I wanted to. I feel that because I had the experience of graphics design, that I was at an advantage with the experience of photo shop. This meant that I was able to quickly and effectively design my CD Package. After a couple of hours using the programme I had create my CD Digi-pack . I then compiled a sufficient amount of audience feedback which helped me to understand that I had to re-do my CD Package. Both male and females were asked the same question ''Which genre do you think my CD Digi-pack is representing?'' 0% answered my actual music genre. Since I already had an understanding of photoshop I was able to quickly start fresh and complete a second CD Package that included graffiti images and different text fonts which helped to reinforce the genre of the music.

At the start of creating my CD Package I managed to find a template one an MTV Media website which contained the dimensions and templates to create CD Packages, Magazine advertisements and also any other size poster ranging from bus shelters to billboards. This helped me to design my artwork around the templates which saved me the time of trying to design a template using the tools available on photoshop. Once the art work was complete within the template guideline, I simply erased that section of the template without deleting the artwork due to different layers.

Once my CD Digi-pack was complete I began focusing and once again repeating the same process of researching into conventions but this time, for a bus shelter sized poster advertising the new album. I planned to keep a theme with roughly the same designs and ideas running through my entire project. One of the most common used aspects of the sub-urban culture is graffiti. This is used in the same way in both my finished music video, my CD Package and also my advertising poster. Similar to the CD Digi-pack, the poster was mainly manipulated and create using Adobe Photoshop CS3, this gave me the freedom to copy over the graphics from the Digi-pack, to the poster which helped keep the current theme prominent. I found the poster fairly easy and was able to complete it quickly and easily. I compiled audience research once again using the same questions and systems as the CD Digi-pack audience feedback and the results expectedly came out similar. Only 10% of the audience answered the correct music genre that was relative to my music choice (reggae/rap). This of course meant that once again I had to completely re-do my bus sized advertisement poster. This was sufficiently more difficult to do then the CD Digi-pack because I had to find artwork to cover the entire size of the poster. I managed to manipulate the original graffiti images to cover the entire page. As shown on most other album advertisement posters (and even followed by film posters), star ratings from magazines such as MTV, MoJo and Q Magazine. This helped create a more realistic image for the album. From an audiences point of view I think it would make them appreciate it more if they knew such big names like MTV and MoJo took and interest in the album.

Once the music video was complete along with the two finished ancillary texts I decided to gather a vast amount of audience feedback. I though this would help me alter my video with some minor tweaks and changes but nothing drastic. A range of questions was asked about my music video. Questions containing regards to the entertainment value of the music video as well as the complexity and difficulty it was to make were asked to both genders. I was pleased with the audience feedback as most of it was positive. The results from my audience feedback helped me understand that I had made a mistake to repeat the video footage for the chorus each time. During a video audience feedback clip, Matthew Elliott, male, 17 years of age, stated ‘’I thought that the sequence made for the chorus was entertaining but when it was repeated 3 times it became stale and predictable’’. I agreed with this statement but unfortunately because I left myself such a small time window to edit my music video, I did not have time to re-shoot a new chorus sequence.

Overall, there are many things that I would change about my music video but at the same time, there are many things I am proud of and did not think I could achieve in such short time. For example the stop motion animation sequence in my video where the lines are ‘‘no one on the corner got ‘swagger like us’’. I feel that this was one of the most effective pieces with in my video because it was so simple yet effective as well as unique. If I were to have a second chance at doing my project I would simply manage my time better so that I had enough time to re-shoot and amend parts of the video that maybe let me down compared to some of the better sections of my music video. Another thing I would make sure I did better was directing with the performers. I feel that I had a big difficulty telling the performers to do or dance like. This resulted in a lot of wasted time and confusion.

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