Evaluation

By Nosa Iredia

1. In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

• These are some of the conventions of Euro dance music.

Vocals-The vocals are often very upbeat and speak of love and peace or of dancing and having a good time, and often the lyrics are very limited to allow more time for the instrumental to stand out. Euro dance lyrics are almost always sung in English, regardless of the artist's nationalities.

PercussionThe percussion is always done by synthesizers. Most Euro dance songs have a tempo of around 140 beats per minute. Euro dance percussion is done most times with a bass drum and the sound is usually a thumping sound, similar to knocking on a door in a 4/4 signature.MelodyAlmost all Euro dance music is melody-driven, they are usually done in minor keys unlike most pop songs, which use major key melody because in pop songs the melody is the most important by far, while in most Euro dance, the instrumental is meant to stand out a lot more.

Euro Dance videos codes and conventions

There are large groups of people dancing to the song or it focuses on them just before they go out as well, but it is usually based around party going people.There are either a lot of lights when people dance or the video itself is infested with aluminous lighting in a relatively dark place that shows the lights off even more when they dance. This obviously is to add to the atmosphere of dancing in a club. When they are just talking the lighting is usually at a darker level. This is to highlight that the dancing is the enjoyment that brings out the light as well as using the darker lighting of one scene, to make another scene with lighter lighting stand out.

How My video and song choice develops these conventions

• Song- My song is called “Be Free” it is by the artist, who is not an English speaking artist but sings his song in English. Also the lyrics to the song are limited to a short chorus that comes up twice in the song.

• The melody is in a minor key to have the instrumental and beat stand out more. The beat itself is percussion played to a 4/4 rhythm.

Video-In my video there is plenty of dancing in it.

My video challenges these conventions because I am dancing on my own at home whereas the usual would be with various others.

I had different scenes that showed me dancing and me looking for my clothes. In the scene with me only looking for my clothes to wear has a dark lighting, to the point that you can’t see my face.

In this, I have started to sing along to the lyrics and dance, so the lighting is brighter

My advert and Digipak

• Digipak The album cover sticks to usual codes and conventions of a club dance album cover. The image is simple, headphones that shine on a dull background. To show that the headphones are the reason for being free and ending the monotony and dullness the background shows.

Most euro dance album covers are quite simple but effective to portray the message

The head phones are used in the album twice to show that this is my symbol. Also the two fonts or Heavy Loud Edge and Impact are two fonts that I downloaded and use in my Advert as well as this. This is also a way of differentiating myself from other artists. A lot of Euro Dance artists don’t have a particular symbol or font style other than the font that is used in their names.

The image here is again being used as my image and symbol, something a lot of other artist’s don’t.

The Facebook, Twitter and YouTube emblems show how I am expanding into the internet to further my career. This is something that has become the norm over the past few years.

I have added quotes from critics that are known for criticising my type of music.

This is to show that I have a target audience of Euro dance listeners who are fairly young, and that I am aiming towards them by posting quotes from these particular critics

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

• The way I branded my artist is that I did not want there to be a face of my artist or for my artist to be held in any light because of the face.

• There are Euro Dance artists who don’t really model in their work to a great degree. For e.g. the instrumentalists behind the face of Cascada.

• To do this I created a symbol for my artist when making my advert and digipak

The image of the big headphones helps to create the image of my artist being more of a DJ than a Pop-like solo artist.

I also use my video to help with this theme that my artist doesn’t want a face to represent him, just the music.

How my video helps thisThe shots in my video of me playing the character are not very flattering to the face, in most of the shots you can just about make out my face and what I would look like.This is because in the video, I am not meant to be the artist, I am just someone who does the video. The artist is separate.So in the shots the lighting is set to be darker, even in the brighter shots where I’m singing and dancing.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• This was the audience feed back for my first music video draft which is on my blog as well as my response to the audience feedback for my class

• http://nosaalex.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/blog-post_13.html

Music video

• For My music video first draft, I had a lot of shots from Tom Cruise’s risky business. So the feedback helped me to make sure that I didn’t make the crucial mistake of copyright infringement.

• After the feedback, I was able to make the decision of why I would have a lot of darker shots of my character, so you would not notice his face as much because the face is not supposed to matter.

Magazine Advert?

I received audience feedback for my magazine advert. I received more than a few points of feedback, but the one that I took in the most was that If I want my artist to not be concerned with the face then I should not have a face on my magazine advert or at least not a clear one.

Also I received feedback that I should remove the quote that says “Fastest selling dance-pop album of the year”. This is because the album was only meant to be out fairly recently and not a re-branding of an already successful product.

First draft Final draft

I received feedback for my digipak, and the main one I took into consideration is that it does not look like anything a supposedly cool artist would have as images for a digipak. I was told it seemed looked like a children’s album.

I looked at this myself and my thoughts were that it was awful and needed changing.

I also added a barcode and trademark to my back of album as well as change the title of the album to the title of my music video song

First draft Final Draft

4. How Did you use technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages

• Construction• In construction of my Music video and ancillary products I

used technologies such as paint.net and Adobe premier 2.0• I used paint.net from the beginning of the construction of my

ancillary products I had been using paint.net to construct my ancillary since the first preliminary task to the first draft front cover of my digipak to my final front cover of my digipak.

This is how I used paint.net to add effects to an image.

The final digipak front cover has a dull background with a highlighted image of the headphones to make them stand out

Using Adobe Premier 2.0• I used Adobe Premier 2.0 to construct my music video shots into the order

that I wanted and inserted the music to fit the shots accordingly. Before I started to use Adobe Premier 2.0, I filmed the shots into the camera and then added all the shots I had to my area and inserted them into Adobe Premier 2.0.

• I made a first draft music video which I showed to my class and received audience feedback for, after looking at the audience feedback, I made certain changes to shots for e.g. Removing all the shots from Tom Cruise film “Risky Business” and replaced it with shots of me doing similar dance moves to it.

• Reading the audience feedback, which said I should make more shots brighter, I then decided to make clearer the validation of my point in having a lot of the shots dark. This was so that I can relate to the theme of my artist not wanting the face to be so important as well as having the shots with brighter lighting when I dance, meaning that the dancing brings out the brightness, which is similar to many Euro dance videos.

Research and Planning

• For my research I have posted music videos on my blog. • I have added my analysis of these videos, also how they

could inspire me in my video and what about them makes them similar products.

• You can view these on my blog.• http://nosaalex.blogspot.co.uk/• I uploaded these videos from YouTube into my blog by

clicking upload from YouTube. It was very convenient as this meant I didn’t have to go on to YouTube to embed it into my blog, meaning I could also do this in school, where YouTube is blocked.

This is how I uploaded videos from YouTube.

There was one disadvantage to doing this is school. This was that you could not view the videos in school so sometimes you’d find that the videos aren’t allowed in this country for example

• I posted info of ancillary products like album covers from Google images

Album covers like these where the inspiration for making my album simple, with not too many colours flying about.However unlike mine these covers have faces on them. I decided to make my digipak simple but not to have faces to match the type of artist I am claiming to be.

• When planning for my digipak and magazine advert I looked to download a cool techno-like font to use. I found the font on the website

• http://www.dafont.com/• This font I chose was called Heavy Loud edge and I used it for my artist

name (Beat Chaser) and song name(Be Free) on Paint.net

Evaluation

• For My Evaluation I used the PowerPoint 2010.• This is because with PowerPoint It is easy to

paste links on here, similar to my blog. • I have added screen shots of my Music video,

Digipak and Magazine Advert to aid my Power point presentation.

• With PowerPoint I can easily post this on to slideshare and share it on my blog.