Draft 2: Question 1 - Media Theories

In our video we have used conventions of media theories as our music video has montage editing within it as well as a story line. We also decided  to add a bit of phantasmagorical body into our video as it is present within a lot of music videos today and it would make our video more professional. It also shows that the artist is attracted to the female character within the video.
We have also shown the deeper meaning of the lyrics through our video as the video doesn't correspond with the lyrics. Our story tells the deeper meaning as the artist is singing about how he doesn't care about the girl and doesn't want her back but the video shows he is putting on a front and is actually in love with her and he doesn't want to lose her.
According to Andrew Goodwin, our film would fit the amplification classification as we have shown the audience a deeper meaning of the lyrics as they story line is opposite to what the lyrics suggest. Such as the lyrics 'I don't care if you want me baby' whereas the story shows that 'Jay' wants 'Chloe' as he chases her when she is going to leave 'for good'. Also, Jay (Jamal) has taken on a fictional character within the story which is another concept of amplification music videos. As well as this, we also fit this classification technically as most of the cuts are on the beat although we do also cut off the beat which helps to keep the video interesting for the viewer.
When looking at Bordwell and Thompsons theory, we have aspects of graphic editing as we have used the colour red to link our video as well as link it to our digi pak (graphic match). We also have aspects of rhythmic editing as the duration of shots we have used for the bar sequence create a fast paced beat and emphasis that 'Jay' is into the girl.Aspects of the Kuleshov effect as at the end of the music video we assume that both the characters will go to the same airport until we see the road signs showing that they are not going to meet as 'Jay' has gone to the wrong airport. This is also an aspect of temporal editing as we have manipulated the setting of the characters so that the audience believe that they have gone to different airports although we filmed the sequence at the same airport with a few shots from gatwick mixed in. We also have a clearly identified flashback as we have used a transition where we flash to white to signify the flashback has started and put a black and white effect as well as a 'misty' look to the flashback sequence so it stands out from the rest of the film. We thought of adding titles to show the audience that it was a flashback but in the end we thought that it was not effective. Also, in the short flashback sequence we tried to create a 'phantasmagorical body' as suggested by Carol Vernallis as we had a shot of the actresses legs which slowly moved up making her a 'sex object' in the video.

Draft 2: 'Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?'

My ancillary texts link with the music video as they both have the constant colour scheme of red which runs through our film with Jamals red body warmer and also through the editing and lighting in the film. I also incorperated this in the text as well as having a drop shadow which makes it stand out from the background.

2nd Draft Music Video

There are still some gaps within the video which we need to fill in with some film we have recently acquired. There are also shots that may not be present within the final draft as they do not fit in althought they are good technical shots.

Draft 2: Publicity advert feedback

The feedback that I received was that the audience didn't like the fact that all the text seemed to be centralised as they didnt think it went with the genre so the next draft I will make will have less centralised text and I will also make the font size for 'Jay' bigger so that it becomes a recognisable brand identity as the Urban Jungle text will become a logo as it will be used throughout the career of 'Jay'. The audience also thought that the text was not clear on the publicity advert so I will add a 'drop shadow' effect which will make the text stand out from the image.
I will also add the record label that the artist belongs to as I forgot it in my other drafts although I remembered the publisher. I will also make this text smaller as it is not a major part of the advert, just a necessity.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our video we have used the conventions of the grime genre as well as challenged them.
I used the conventions of the grime genre when I created my ancillary texts as I have used the same image for the advert as the album cover. This goes along with the conventions of our grime/UK hip hop genre as artists such as Chase and Status used this technique when they released their album 'No More Idols' as they had a bulldog on their publicity advert as well as the cover for the album. I decided to use this technique as it worked really well for Chase and Status as it has become a recognisable part of their brand identity. Also, other artist have used their name as a logo from  a varied range of genres such as Skrillex (Dubstep), N.W.A (American Hip Hop), Korn (Metal) and other artists so I decided to do the same for Jay through the use of the Urban Jungle font. This would make him instantly recognizable when his name is viewed on adverts or CDs.
We challenged the conventions of a grime music video through the costume as normally the costume  within the UK hip hop/ grime genre is either a tracksuit or someone wearing long baggy jeans with a baggy t-shirt. In our video me and Shehabur decided that we would change our costume to go against the conventions by including items of clothing such as  chinos which are used predominantly by 'Pop' artists such as JLS and getting the main artist to wear a body warmer which still is part of the grime genre but is less frequently used. We applied the conventions of a grime music video by having the main artist (Jay) surrounded with other people such as me and Shehabour as in many grime music video there are shots of the artist and his 'crew' around him like in 'Lethal Bizzles - Pow 2011' video.
Our music video is similar to other videos as we have used a stop-motion section in our video which has been used by Coldplay for their video 'Every Tear Drop Is a Waterfall' and although they aren't from our genre we felt that this technique was very effective as it makes the sequence interesting and as it is different to the rest of the video it is memorable.

We decided to use this technique but we grafted it to our genre by using shots which are similar to Devlins video for 'Teardrops' where he is writing his lyrics on a piece of paper as this song/artist is from our grime/UK hip hop genre. In order for it to fit with our video we made our artist write to 'Chloe', the girl he loves who leaves, saying that he misses her.

We have also decided to use a black and white effect to show that there is a flashback within the video as well as the white flash. We decided to use this as it separates it from the rest of the video as it is all in colour but to accentuate the fact it is a flashback we used a blurry effect which symbolises that it is a memory. We feel that this goes with the forms of real media products as a flashback has to be signified otherwise it doesn't make sense and the best example of this was Memento, where the past was signified by the use of black and white shots so we decided to use similar techniques but with several more effects as we do not have as long to show the audience that the black and white means 'flashback'.

2nd Draft Feedback

Here is a print screen of the email I sent linking the survey monkey questionnaire.

2nd Draft Publicity Advert

Here is my publicity advert I have redone. I used the feedback to make the necessary changes to the advert such as changing the date of the release of the album to make it more 'punchy' as that is what my audience feedback suggested. I also added a gradient to the background as the audience thought it was very plain. I have also added a minor change to the shoes on the advert and made them red so that they go with our brand identity. As well as all this, I have made the texet 'album out now' bold so that it eye catching making sure that the audience realise that there is an album out. Also, by making the front cover and publicity advert the same image, it makes the album more recognisable and also goes with the convetions of our genre.

2nd Draft Digipack

 Here is the revisited version of my Digipack front cover. I decided to change the front cover image as many grime artists use the same image for the front cover as they do for their publicity advert which is what I have decided to do. I have also changed the text for 'Jay' and used Urban Jungle text like we had originally planned to do. This would add to our brand identity as I have also used this font for my publicity advert and in the future it would become instantly recognisable by the target market as Jay became more and more famous. I also copied Jamals body warmer as a separate layer so that when I changed the saturation of the image it didn't effect Jamal as the audience feedback I gathered said that the image of Jamal had changed noticeably and that it wasn't effective. I also edited th background and added a gradient so that it was more aesthecticall pleasing to our audience as they said that the background was plain in the feedback.

 Here are 2 images of the back cover. I was unsure which was more effective as I had used the gradient on this image a well but personally I thought that when I applied it over the bar code it wasn't very effective and didn't look realistic. This inspired me to look at albums I have at home and each one of them has the bar code like the image below no matter if it fitted with the images so I decided that the second version of the back cover was more apt.

 I also changed the tack list by adding several tracks and changing a few of their names to keep with the grime genre.

 Here is the revisited version of the image I plan to put behind the CD. I had checked the measurements for the 4 panel digipack and I had realised that the London eye was too small on the previouse version so I had to resize the background image. I also corrected the spacing of the text so that it was even making the overall image look more professional although I am starting to think that th text is too large so I will reproduce another and use smaller text and then get audience feedback to see which is more effective for them. 

Here are the new versons for the last panel of the digipack. They are both very similar although on the bottom one I have used the Urban Jungle text for all the text on the image and for the other I have mixed the text with Myriad Pro. Also, on the bottom image I have reduced the saturation of the background fully so that it is in keeping with the other image on the inside of the digipack as the image behind the CD has no colour other than red to go with the brand identity whereas the other image still has the other colours. As they are both very similar images, apart from several minor aspecets, I have decided to ask the target market which they prefer.

To gather my audience feedback for my second draft I am going to use survey monkey so I can analyse the results quickly in order to adapt the photos for a final draft.