1. Evaluation Question 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Nick Borthwick

2. My music video is for quite a recent song ‘Written in the Stars’ by Tinie Tempah. He is a fairly new artist making his debut in March 2010 with his huge dance/rap tune ‘Pass Out’. However he has become very popular amongst people of many ages with his ‘futuristic’ music in which he has described it many times in interviews. ‘Written in the Stars’ was his third single and was released in September 2010 reaching number 1 in the UK charts.

3. I chose this track because it was my favourite song at the time and I knew all the lyrics from the top of my head. Tinie is a UK hip hop artist and has often stated that he’s been influenced by other UK artists such as Dizzee Rascal, however he has admitted to being influenced by US rappers such as Jay-Z, Diddy and Kanye West. Like many other UK artists he has come from the grime scene, however many critics have said that he has comprimised his sound in order to gain a more mainstream audience. Over the past couple of years this type of music has proven to be very popular in the charts and amongst teenagers and young adults.

4. The ‘Written in the Stars’ video was filmed in Summer 2010 in New York in a variety of different locations including on tops of buildings, in parks and in apartment blocks. After watching other music videos from this genre, I've noticed that in parts it closely resembles Jay Z's video for 'Hard Knock Life'. Both the video and song tell a story about Tinie’s struggles of becoming famous and some of the desperate measures he’s had to take in order to become who he is today and the sacrifices he’s had to make. The video features young children wearing headphones and writing lyrics in an apartment block and in a park, this leads the audience to believe that the young children are playing Tinie and his friends, from when he was younger. ‘Written in the Stars’ was not only my chosen music video but also my inspiration as I decided to put my own spin on the original video.

5. Instead of filming in New York, which would have been almost impossible I decided to film in many urban locations around Middlesbrough town centre, including on top of the mima art gallery, with buildings in the background and sitting on some steps near some offices which makes the area look even more urban. I also filmed parts of it in my back garden as in the original parts of it were filmed in the corridor to someone’s apartment. Other parts of it were filmed in the middle of some fields at Bishop Cuthbert, as that is quite an urban area because it contains a couple of high rise buildings in the background. I got the idea for this concept from Rihanna's 'Only Girl (in the world)' video as she's stood in the middle of fields and also this music video is a similar type of genre to mine.

6. My music video uses camera and editing techniques that an audience would typically want to see in a music video. These include meat shots , long and medium shots , close ups , cross cuts, pans and motion paths. My music video is a mixture between illustration and amplification as in some scenes I express the meaning of the lyrics for example, ‘the jacket and hat’ lyric and the ‘racket and bat’ lyric. I really get into doing the actions and putting meaning into my performance to make it look like a real music video. However the majority of the scenes from my video are just linked to the music by the beat and keeping in time. This relates to Andrew Goodwin's music theory as the visual effects change with the beats of the music. When the pace of the song changes so does the video because my video is very fast paced with a lot of cross cuts and changes, so it fits in with the genre.

7. As my song is quite recent I’ve been able to challenge the conventions and done a lot of research into this type of music, as it’s a popular genre at the moment in the UK.