13U1-44 Music Video 2011: Josh Mansfield

The four questions below will be presented in our "Director's Commentary" as an interview. The interviewer will ask the question, then each member of our group will answer a question/passage. When we get to the editing stage, we will produce appropriate footage of the aspects we are talking about in the interview. We will all also be wearing a blazer to convey our music video even further.

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

Our final production, featuring 'PCD' by JLS, conforms to that of a typical 'hip-hop', boy-band music video as we have ensured that all our costumes, the locations, the lighting and props all convey the genre. As we were aiming to convey the genre and not contradict the conventions, we presented ourselves with bright, bold costumes so that the main attention was the boy-band themselves. We featured four different locations in our video so that we could alter between them which, after researching numerous JLS videos and other artists from the same genre, we noticed that the locations varied in order to keep their audience engaged. Artists such as “Example” and “50-Cent” are two of many artists who use multiple locations in their productions. They also used many ‘close-up’ and ‘medium shots’ so that the artists get the publicity they require and meet the demands of the record label. We too focused mainly on these types of camera-shots in our production.

We believe we have incorporated every aspect of Goodwin’s Theory as we've included scenes such as an intertextual reference to the 'sugarbabes' so that our audience can recognise and associate with them, as well as including scenes that match lyrics and visuals. For example, the 'hands-up' scene. After research, JLS seem to use lighting to enhance their image. We therefore included artificial light in the drama studio to reassemble a traffic light as we created more publicity for ourselves. The ‘traffic light’ was also used as a main theme for our ancillary products as JLS too focus on colour to promote themselves.

We had established that the majority of JLS’ locations were urban environments to create a feel of an ‘alive’ city with an under-lying party life that we feel we mimicked in our video with the drama studio-scenes. Throughout JLS’ videos they always try to convey the emotion of lust, male dominance and seductiveness. They tend to do this by using suggestive dance moves along with very tight clothing. We incorporated this convention massively into our products, with tight clothes, seductive gestures and finally a dance routine that we all learnt specifically for our final production.

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

Whilst our group created different ancillary products, both sets of products combine fantastically as we have ensured that the main theme and concept of the products are the band-members themselves. As we were trying to conform to the conventions of Hip-Hop and after researching the fact JLS focus mainly on themselves as artists, we incorporated this into our designs - featuring the band on every image. We included every convention you'd expect from a magazine advert and a Digipak such as the barcode, price, Production Company, website, tour dates and the release date. Even with all of these elements included, however, it still doesn't take anything away from our main theme which was the band themselves and the link between them - again one of Goodwin’s points.

A second theme that brought our products together was the use of colour. We incorporated the colours red, yellow and green into some shape or form. The colours resemble a traffic light and represent us as a boy-band. ‘PCD’ mentions cars and vehicles a handful of times – so early on we decided to focus each member with a specific colour. We have continued this trend within our ancillary products which provide a clear connection to our main music video.

For our ancillary products, we used green-screening so that we could disfigure ourselves from Cambridge, and into a scenario that compliments JLS’ image. The front cover of our Digipak was simplistic and featured our band placed over a colourful JLS logo. Our back cover wasn't featuring the band as the main focus as after research, realized JLS' back covers tended not to focus as much on the group - I took this into consideration as I ensured the main focus was the text, contrasted with a design of our group as the background. The final design worked extremely well and I personally believe the designs were the main contributors to the success of our over-all production. Our magazine advert again featured the colours red, yellow and green as a theme - and featured the band as the sole attention on the front cover - the advert was very contemporary after analyzing professional adverts such as “Heat”. After researching past student-ads, the majority of the magazine adverts focused entirely on one image, with a few conventions located around them. We decided to instead incorporate one or two images that were complimented by a vast amount of text, as this is again something that was evident within magazines such as "Look" and "Karrang". Our production featured every convention necessary for a magazine advert such as the price and reviews and combines extremely well with our music video.

We felt that our combination of ancillary texts and our final production was highly effective and we felt we were well in-tune with the current conventions of the genre and its surrounding stereotypical images and ways of filming.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The initial feedback was positive, however we were advised to increase publicity with a range of effects such as colour -corrector to enhance our production and make it more effective. We were also told that it looked too much like a "student" video - so adding effects, such as split screen - made our production that much better as it presented the audience with something different.

We had managed to coincide with the popular conventions as intended and that our camera work and editing had worked very well and was fluent. We were told the overall narrative of the video matched the boy band genre. There was a wide variety of shots including lots of close ups to meet the needs of the record label also. However, we did also have some rather significant criticisms that needed addressing urgently, some of these issues being that, at times, the camera was too shaky and could become distorted, this and the fact that some of our shots within the video were very dark and were not reminiscent of a JLS music video at all.

We discovered that almost every band we looked at seemed to base at least one of their music videos around some sort of story frame, whether it is about a heart-felt love story or running through the events of a night out a club. Unfortunately, as our original footage got deleted, we couldn’t add a subliminal-story that focused on the love of a girl. Though this would have enhanced a few aspects of our video, we believe we haven’t suffered greatly from not including a female character. Whilst some JLS music videos do present a female, there are also quite a few that don’t – we therefore turned our attention to the band themselves and focused primarily on them.

Thankfully we were able to take these criticisms on-board and began to painstakingly reconstruct our video using Photoshop and Final cut. We were able to amend the shakiness of our frames and mix around with the colour corrector to get the desired effect for our video. We incorporated most of these ideas into our final video as we greatly enhanced our music video. We were happy with our final product as our sole intention was to present the band as the main focus - something of which we achieved within the video and the ancillary products themselves.

How did you use new Media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The technologies helped us develop our music video greatly. Photoshop enabled us to create a magazine ad that could easily be distinguished as a recognisable advert. Using features such as multiple layers it allowed us to include a range of images as well as the main conventions such as reviews and pricings.

Final cut enabled us to edit our footage and take the ‘student video’ factor away from our production. The program allowed us to use the "green-screening" effect so we could enhance our ancillary products. Without this, we wouldn't have been able to convey the genre quite as well as we would have hoped. We were also able to piece together a range of clips so that we could have varied shots and locations so that we could conform to the conventions of 'hip-hop'. We would have liked more voyeurism however with maybe a shot of a female, though, as previously stated, we still believe it works well without.

We were able to use “Blogger” to post our research on JLS, music videos and other necessary information to make our production a success. Prior to our music video, we had numerous preparations and in groups, we had to choose a genre and create a "Magazine Advert" that would show a relationship between the genre whether that was with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the genre. We created an Ad. Which presented the “Gothic genre” and greatly increased our awareness of what was expected.

Throughout the construction process of our video, digipak and advertisement, we always wanted all of our products to have the ‘JLS’ feel. We feel that we were able to accomplish this with a mix of all of the conventions we had discovered and adhered to throughout our project. Using final cut express we were finally able to put the finishing touches to our products and Through the entirety of our music video project we were constantly uploading our thoughts, ideas and progress to blogger so we were aware of what we still had to include or whether there was any new material that could have been added to improve our products.

Overall, we believe we were successful in our aim to convey the "Hip-Hop" genre and we stuck closely to Goodwin's Theory in order to make our production a success. We stuck to our main themes and ambitions and as a result have produced products which represent our initial aims. We have ensured we haven't contradicted the essence of "Hip-Hop" and have used Goodwin's Theory within our production to ensure that our final music video is a fundamental success.