1. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the
forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video was based on the artist Professor Green with his song “Jungle”.
His genre is R n B and Rap and he is one of the biggest artists in Britain. Dub-
step is not an established sub-genre so its music video conventions have not yet
been established. This allowed us to be very creative, with very much a free
hand regarding our style of production. For example, we used editing techniques
such as fade to black to emphasise the „dark nature‟ of our subject matter and a
non-linear narrative to make the video more intriguing for our audience.We
adopted the traditional style of continuity editing, with cuts on the beats onthe
music. This challenges the emerging conventions of Dub-step music videos as
the shot transitions are focused more between the beats.
Regarding our choice of mise-en-
scene, Dub-step has roots in
London‟s underground urban dance
scene, therefore we felt we needed
to feature this life-style in our music
video. We consequently had an
emphasis on London‟s inner city
housing estate areasand Soho back
streets.
Our research on Dub-step videos
was fairly limited as we could only find two productions: “Blackburner”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN4unt2aB1s) and “Dreamer”. We analysed
these videos and found that both were similar regarding their style of
production. They were performance driven, and without following any kind of
recognisable narrative, they did not make any sense. Basically, theyfeatured a
fairly unimaginative mixture of flashing lights and people‟s faces popping up on
screen to sing the lyrics. Our video challenged these embryonic conventions as
we followed a distinct storyline, with a closed narrative structure. We wanted to
increase our target audience interest by doing this.
Of course, being a mixture of performance and narrative driven, our video is
following the conventions of more traditional
music video productions. We also used
traditional editing effects such as fade to black
to punctuate the action, while using tried and
tested black and whitesequences to connote
flashbacks. We also adopted the style of
intercutting scenes, in our case a street scene
narrative that is related to the lyrics of the
song and shots of a performer lip-syncing in a
back-street pool room.

2. Our scenes also traditionally comprised of establishing shots to set the scene,
with medium shots and close-ups to emphasise particular action. We had to
make some of the shots a bit pacey so that it would match the beat of the
song.As is conventional, we featured close
ups of the artist to promote his image,
encouraging the concept of the female
gaze.We use conventional symbolic codes,
such as characters in hoods / on mobile
phones to enable greater audience
identification. The shot where the main
character is about to sniff the cocaine is an
extreme example of this, with drugs being
a feature of inner city gang life. Our style
of presentation was influenced by film noirs, showing their characters warts and
all. In our case, the shots of cocaine sniffing are warning the audience that the
rest of our character‟s scenes are now going to be under the influence of drugs.
Regarding our narrative, to a degree, we followed the emerging convention of
using violence in music videos. There has been much controversy about this
development, with many feeling that music videos havegone a step too far in
recent times. For example The Game‟s musicvideo for “Dreams”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K0q74jtV8s)features a gang breaking into
aperson‟s house and shooting him in the chest.
The extreme violence, with the One of our shots,although
gun and blood from his chest without blood on his body
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?
I think our main product and ancillary texts flow
well together as they have managed to adopt the
key elements of branding.
This wasfirstly achieved in our video as we tried to
differentiate ourselves from whatalready existed in
Beyonceyoutube.com/watch?v=
FHp2KgyQUFk&ob=av2e

3. current market trends. Many of the big acts like Beyonce and Rihanna have
music videos that use creative, surreal ideas in terms of mise-en-scene, but
such music videosdo not really explore visual effects (other than through the use
of CGI). In our music video, we focused on keeping a consistent moodof
obscurity, which waslargely achieved by modifying the colours of our clips. For
example, the choice of the black and white colours at the end the end sequence,
when the vocalist disappears connotes that he is in a different dimension and
also he is dead.
We followed these main branding elements through into our print products. For
example, developing our concept of back-street urban life, we featured a night-
time shot of the housing estate and Soho‟s Chinatown.We used the colour of
green, obviously, for the “Prof Green” caption, but we also used green to
connote a balancing influence regarding his warning in the lyrics “Don‟t go down
there”. We also superimposed a big close up of the artist over the Chinatown
shot, connoting that he was „overseeing‟ all the activity in that area, and not
looking too pleased with what he saw connoted by the fact that he is looking
away from the street scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VHwnua6yg0&feature=youtu.be.All this
worked very effectively, in my view, extending the concept of the video
production.
Our digipack follows established forms and conventions, for exampleusing an
image of the artist, the name of the artist, the name of the song and atrack-
listing.We also followed emerging Dub-step digipack conventions by modifying
the artist‟s image in terms of colouration. However we have challengedsome
conventions as most digipacks use bright colours to grab the viewer‟s attention.
We have gone for a different approach, with a dark mise-en-scene, including
poor street lighting and dark colours to show the viewers that we are promoting
a track with a sinister theme. In fact, our video and each of our print products
feature night-time scenarios with dark backgroundsand only a hint of street
lighting, to give everything a very shady atmosphere. We made sure that the
mise-en-scenes were very similar so that each text would flow together,
however we gave the products subtle differences so that the audience could
recognise that each text was a different but integral part of the whole.
We are very happy with our ancillary texts (below).
Digipack front & back cover Inner Sleeve

4. Magazine advert
We wanted to make the magazine advert as simple and
effective as possible, while maintaining our branding style.
In my opinion I think we have achieved this very well as the
mise-en-scene is again dark and foreboding with the same
font style and colouring for “Professor Green”. The main
character is again hooded, with little street lighting to
expose his features. Our magazine advert follows
established forms and conventions byshowing an image of
the artist, the name of the artist, name of the song andthe
date of release, all vital elements inselling the final digipack to our audience.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From our initial audience research we could see that our music video was going
to be aimed at urban audiences aged 15-25, of both genders and all ethnicities.
This was the demographic that could see them-selves most effectively relating to
our Dub-step genre and subject matter.
On the subject of our end of production
audience feedback, the majority of people
we surveyed thought that the overall
concept was excellent, as we had
comments such as “I think the change
between cameras/shots is really well
done”,verifying that we accomplished our
overall objectives.
E.g.regarding technical, symbolic and cultural coding, most of our audience
pointed out that our camerawork and lightingwere of a near-professional
standard etc. Our feedback on editingtechniques was very positive as we had a
comment saying “I think the change between cameras/shots is really well done”.
I learnt that the fast paced editing and good camerawork kept the tension going,
making the audience wanting to see what happens next.Regarding our mise-en-
scene, the actual locationswere proved to be a very big part of our music video‟s
success and 98% of our audience surveyed thought our settings were most
appropriate. The only criticism we had about our choice of location was when the
main character was playing pool, with one respondent thinkingthat the location
looked more like a garage, as it was stacked with storage boxes.From this we
realised that a more up-market pool room would have added a little more

5. authenticity to our production. We also realised that every location has to be
precise in order to best ensure the preferred reading.
We also learned that the majority of the people that we got our feedback from
were mainly into RnB and Hip-Hop, and were into narrative driven music videos
instead of performance-based productions, which gave us a bit of a shock. We
noticed that RnB and Hip-Hop music are genres that focus more on storyline
instead of performance for example comparing a music video of “The Game” and
the rock band “Linking Park”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K0q74jtV8s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4&feature=relmfu
As already stated, many of the audience that observed the music video were not
into Dub-step, however they all commented that the music really suited the
video and they actually liked the choice of Dub-step song that we chose. The
majority of our target audience said it was very catchy and entertaining and that
they were going to listen to Dubs-step more. They also wanted us to make
more music videos. From all this I have learnt that we have utilised the
conventions very well, to a high technical and aesthetic standard.
Regarding the magazine cover and the inner sleeve, I gave it to the audience for
them to hare their opinions on it. 97% of themsaid that they were very good as
each of them flows together and they can see how it suits the music video,
which shows that we have accomplished our goal of continuity. E.g. the layout
and the type of colours shown on both of them are quiet similar such as the use
of green fonts and the use of a dim background with street lights. The audience
really admired the choice of colours used and the type of images and fonts used
also. Not one of them said that they would change anything from it. This
proposes that we put a lot of thought into the layout, the images, the font and
also the colours we wanted to put on it. They all said that they fit the
conventions of our music video.
On the subject of our Magazine advert, we also presented that to the audience.
The majority of the audience we presented the magazine to thought that the
overall construction was very well thought of as we had comments such as “I
really like how the street lights are contrasted with the darkness and the person
is standing there in all black clothes, it makes the whole atmosphere look

6. dangerous”. From this comment it demonstrated that our intention of creating a
Soho and menacing atmosphere was a success.
4. How did you use the media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the research stage, I used the
internet extensively to help me gain
knowledge of the forms and conventions
of different music genres and to research
different kinds of Dub-step music.
YouTube was one of the most popular
websites that I used for this research,
and it really helpedme with mysimilar
text analysis.For this I analysed the
female R n B song artist named Rihanna. I examined her music video “TeAmo”
to see the different types of camera angles and shots used to portray her image.
This gave me an idea of how an R n B music video should look like.
I used Google as my main search engine and it offered us a lot more
significantinformation as the search results are actually categorised byhumans
as opposed being computerised. Google also provided us with links to images
and videos, not just weblinks.The use of Facebook also helped us during our
target audience research because wewere easily able to gain a large sample
size.
During the planning stage we used Youtube to look at different genres to find
out which genre would suit our group. We examined the convention of R n B,
Rock, Dubstep and Soul. Youtube had a variety of music videos from a genre
which allowed us to analyse and study each genre properly before we chose
which one we wanted to pick. Having picked Dubstep to be our genre, we then
had to research on that genre and found out what made Dubstep different from
the other genre which was done through using Google. Google was one of the
most current websites that I used for this research and it also helpe me with my
subject matter. For this I investigated Dubstep and the history of it to get a
general idea of where it all started from and how it developed during the years.
For post-production we used Final Cut pro on a Mac computer. This was my first
time using this editing system as I was used to use Adobe Premier on a PC.
However, I soon found that Final Cut Pro is much more user friendly regarding
the use of effects and keeping the video in sync with the music on the timeline.
For example, when we imported our clips, we had to use the log and capture
feature whilst playing back our tape though the external video tape player. This
was a very long process, but required us to watch all our clips again, taking note
of any flaws in what we had recorded. After the clips were imported into Final
Cut Pro, some needed to be shortened to fit in the correct timing of our

7. sequence timeline, which meant we were not going towards the script and
storyboard at times. New techniques that we had to learn were the adding of
visual effects to our clips and this was difficult to catch on as this was something
I did not learn during AS. We played around with effects such as split screens
and fade to black.
Photo shop CS4and also Adobe Photoshop Element 10 were another use of
technology of computers that we used to construct our magazine and digi-pack.
Each member of our group chose which part of the digi-pack they wanted to do
and we each tried to make it so that each of it flows together e.g. same or
similar use of colours and font. Moreover To add a cross transitions between
clips, I had to click between the clips on the timeline, and then right click and
click on add cross transition. I was then able to choose how fast I wanted the
transition by dragging the transition left and right, making it wide or thin.
For the construction of our music video we used a cannonLegriaHF R36digital
camera. The camera was very good quality however the camera man did find it
a bit difficult to begin with however he did get the hang of it. Everybody in the
group got a chance to record so that we could all become familiar with it.we
needed to know how to set up several controls like the white balance so our
recording would be clear and not grainy in the
current lighting condition due to the fact that we
were filming in dark conditions. I learnt from using
this camera that lighting was one of the main
things we had to adjust before using it otherwise
when editing the video we would not be able to see
much.
We had to upload every research and evaluation on a blog. The blog was very
easy to use however the appearance of the blog was quiet different which
confused me a bit however I got the hang of it very quickly. We uploaded
images and documents from slide share unto the blog moreover it is very quick
to upload.
Blogger