RAIHAN'S LAST BLOG

This is my LAST BLOG for A2 Media, you'll find a personal response from me and the final edit, along with slideshow, giving our gratitude and thanks to all who have helped me out... BIG TIME!

Enjoy...

Music Player

I have embedded the Music player gadget on blogger from Jelluzz's MySpace page.

Filming Personal responses for the Evaluation Questions 3 and 2

This is a slideshow demonstrating how I decided to go about the Evaluation questions, I thought filming personal responses in an interview-style documentary, would be far more entertaining that grabbing images off google and sticking blocks of text in.

We took out all the equipment we used, hit the editing suite and started filming, to give a sense to the viewer of the environment we were in, for the duration of this Music video.

Head up to the Header

This is the font on the header of our Blog, I found this font off a website called Dafont.com and I edited it
within Photoshop, thought it looked really 'cool'. It's called 'California Funk'.



Q3 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This is a slideshow of all the equipment and technology that was used, from start to finish, of our music video. Below, is a video that has me demonstrating and presenting each piece of equipment; commenting on the use and when it came handy.

Above is a video of me, showing and demonstrating the equipment we used. Along with, when

it came in handy and the most use, during the Music Video construction process.

This is a slideshow, dedicated to the different kinds of software and programs we used, throughout the whole process of the A2 Media Coursework!

Q2 - How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement) ?

Here, I am pointing out the clear visual links between my ancillary

products, with my Music video, as I'm being interviewed by my collegues.

I collected a few questions, surrounding the issues and opinions, people, who I

considered to be my target audience had with my work.

Here, I am responding towards the question of

whether there was a complication of trying, to promote

too many personalities of Rhyme Royale. Which, as a result,

could potentially confuse the target audience, that I intended to attract.

 

Q4 - What have you learned from your audience feedback ?

In this video, I observed her behaviour, whilst watching the video. She was in lipsync, with the words; which was a common habit that people had with the track.











Thereafter, I asked her about
both the class screening and about the ancillary products.

Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

Andrew Goodwin's theory of illustrative, amplifying, contradicting lyrics.

In our video, some of our lyrics had explicit references to objects. In this case and many other RnB videos, it's to do with activities related to alcohol and women. The song had a few lyrics, inwhich, I believed we could either illustrate, amplify or contradict. I had extracted clips from our video and explained what lyric and what form of relationship it had with the action from the video.

Artist looking directly look into the camera

Camera Movements and other Influences

This is Drake, 'Headlines', we took the idea of the dining scene,

with Drake smoking and drinking alcohol. This suggesting he is a don,

and has people power and men under his influence and authority. We wanted

to portray this same aspect in our video, with our dining scene.

The Banquet Scene In Drake's Video 'Headlines'

The Banquet Scene in Rhyme Royale's Video

Champagne and Alcohol

This is from Dolla's music video, 'Make a Toast',

we took the idea of having a champagne/alcohol 

bottle. As this seems to be conventional, in most RnB 

videos. In addition, We took the scene of the 'toast', itself,

suggesting that Rhyme Royale has people power and authority.

The slideshows below, show the ideas that we took from Dolla's music video and that we took into 

consideration. The first one, is about the toast and the man power he controls and the second, he shows the empathy of alcohol in his video.

Edits and Women representation theory of Laura Mulvey

In Drake's video, 'Money to Blow'. We took the

idea of using one of the split screen edits, as we thought
it was a great way of putting empathy on Rhyme Royale,
as well, as the objects associated around him, i.e. women. We
considered Laura Mulvey's theory of representation, of females
in music videos. We wanted to make women look like a desire
and an object to Rhyme Royale and the male audience, who can
relate to him.

Here is the split scene screen applied to our video

, if applied to Laura Mulvey's theory of representation. We wanted to show

women as a sexual desire of the male audience. Hence, specific focus was

placed on part of their bodies.

Smoke, Smoke and blow it away...

This is Wiz Khalifa's, 'On My Level'. We took the

idea of the smoke being reversed in to the mouth. As

most of our music video was being filmed in a Shisha

lounge, so we thought it could be a nice touch. In addition,

it looks quite menacing and we wanted to show that Rhyme

Royale is a bad boy and a rebel - which seems to attract female attention,

in RnB music videos. Here below, I lined up some images from my video,
of Rhyme Royale and his female accomplice smoking, to portray this rebel
representation. It seems like the idea of drug use is a effective portrayal of
that 'Rebel image'.

The City and Establishing Shot

This is Wiz Khalifa, 'Say Yeah'. We liked the start of the video

of how it introduced itself, with the cityscape, with the artist and

track name, floating with it. So we chose fonts that suited our genre,

and imported it on to our establishing shot of Canary Wharf.

This is the opening shot to our music video, as you can clearly

see we took influence of the text and the same camera movement,

conducted from the Say yeah video. We thought it would be a classy way
to begin the music video.

The Filters we used

We applied a filter with a light and amplified with
Final Cut Pro.

This is Belly - Purple Drugs, we wanted to take the
filter of the shots made. 

This is Usher - Yeah, the blue filter, gives off that cool feeling,
along with the idea of everybody is all in the same feeling, as
they're in a party.

This is Drake - Marvins room, the filter used gives the feeling
of surrealness and hazyness.

The filters gave off an intensified effect, as it is common in all videos. In Belly - Purple Drugs, it gives off that feeling of being lost and mystery (connotations associated with the purple). Our Burgundy and red filter, gave off that feeling of sexual tension and heat in our video.












Ancillary Products

This is the front panels of the Digipak, as you can see that the city of London
is evident within the songs. As the song we did was called, 'Its my City'.
I researched some artists from London and checked out their Digipaks and
could see that London skyline was used, with effects to satisfy what kind of
feel that they wanted to put out.

With K Koke, that feel was a smokey and gritty London. Whereas,
in our Digipak, we wanted London to look stunning and shimmery.
However, our genre was not to do with Gangster Rap or Grime. So we
altered the city to portray that it as a place to be, with the night life. Not
somewhere that is associated with Estates and Ghettos.

This is another piece of album art, inwhich, I developed my Digipak
and poster upon. Ne-Yo is an RnB artist, just like Ryhme Royale, as
you can see the image of the album is taken at night, which demonstrates,
something about a City's night life. However, I did not want to portray Rhyme
Royale as a formality, as that was not specifically, his target audience. Hence, he
wore casual and items, that his target audience desire, such as Beats Headphones and
Biker jackets etc. Therefore, I can say I managed to fuse the two aspects of album art,
from Grime and RnB together.

However, during our video, the filming took place a little early prior to
sundown, as I was looking for that darkness to come through. This
could contradict the whole concept of promoting the night life aspect in RnB
videos. On the other hand, the white sky, could connote the idea of rising

This is the advertisement poster, once again. I stuck with the
blue theme throughout, so the ancillary products were consistent.
I followed the conventions you would find on an advertising poster, for
a music artist. I referenced specialist RnB magazines, to give their ratings and
comments upon him, as the audience would get the assumption, that he is a talented artist.

I placed the iTunes and HMV in the poster, to show how easy it would be for his target audience,
to get hold of his music. As millions of people use iTunes and for those who would like to get hold
of his album, they could go in to a store and purchase it.

Also, I added the social networks that Rhyme Royale is connected to, which is the three major social
networks, this tells his audience, that he is easy to connect to and communicate with.

This is the inside panel of my Digipak, I followed the convention of keeping
a filter and theme consistent throughout the Digipak. I tend to notice that
blue had a consistent upbringing in other Digipaks, such as, the one below of
Pitbull - Planet Pit.

The blue theme here is what we utilised in our Digipak, as
we believed that this was the colour of our genre of RnB. This
is Pitbull's Planet Pit album, however, we challenged the apsect
of his face being merged in to the woman. As we thought, it would give off
the idea that Rhyme Royale is just a ladies man, which he is but we also wanted
the album to be about him and his city.

Rhyme Royale VERSUS Jelluzz

Me and Tony had a chat, whilst watching the music video. We both noticed something about my video, it was hard to explain but we got there. We realsised that the original video itself of Jelluzz - Its My City, well... lets say too Americanised. I listed down some comparisions and notes below, between our video compared to his.

We didn't try to follow American RnB 'Guidelines'

He used these laser beams, which kind of confused us at first. As
we relate that convention to like an electro genre.

He put in dancers at odd parts of the video, which didn't seem
to fit in. As it looked like something out of Step Up or Save the
last dance...

He is OBSESSED with a Champagne bottle, a clear factor
that always tends to have heavy focus in an American
RnB video.

We stuck to what we knew best and tried not go down following
certain conventions. London is known for the Shisha Lounge Culture,
down famous areas, such as, Edgware Road (commonly known as
the 'Shisha Mile')

We wanted to show him doing the things, that associate with being
a don. Such as, activities like snooker.

We didn't just want to show him, as a ladies man. We wanted
to portray that he has status and authority. He is a man not to
reckon with.

We also, wanted to portray that Money is one of the main
motivations that he has.

THE MOST IMPORTANT thing, we always considered is
that we don't lose the song in always being in an club or a lounge,
because the song is about him and HIS CITY.

Photobucket Mastered!

Finally! I managed to find out how this bloody thing works! whilst everyone was taking advantage of swanky slideshows, I was baffled about how to even make one on photobucket.

The Website itself, it quite sophisticated. You can edit photos, make slideshows (quite obvious), make online albums to share and upload them to social networks, such as... BLOGGER!

A theme that's similar to my Digipak

I use this media streaming website for most of my music downloads, but I realised that the colour scheme and tones were similar to mine. The website promotes Hip-Hop, RnB and Black music, therefore, this might suggest that these colours connote the RnB genre well, (apart from the fact that RnB stands for Rhythm and 'BLUES')

iM1MUSIC.net

My Poster with the blue tones

Digipak and Poster process so far!

Feedback and Evaluation For Digipak and Poster

What are your first impressions of the Digipak and Poster?

Michael:

"The theme runs through out everything, that cool blue theme. Its appealing to me, as a RnB listener, as it has all of the elements that would grab my attention. The clothing he's wearing, the Beats headphones with the views of London in background.

The way everything was laid out, you can tell you considered the Rule of Thirds in your work."

Simon:

 "I like the artistic sketch effect used, it seperates him from the rest of the things in Digipak front panel. It focuses on him.

There's a consistant theme in your work"

Faysal:

"Its a good piece of work, it follows the whole colour scheme of a midnight blue and its not bland, it stands out which essentially, grabs your attention"

Editt:

"The theme is carried through all of the Digipak panels and the poster and the effects were used very effectively"

Point out one particular aspect of the Digipak or Poster, that you liked

Editt:

" I like the swish cut bar at the end of the poster, it has that professional edge...

the layout is simple and clean, yet it works really well"

Simon:

"The filter used on the image, inside the panels, it gives off an atmosphere as if you're there..."

Faysal:

" The way the images on the front panel of the Digipak were laid out, it really grabbed my attention"


Tell me what you disliked and what I can do to improve?

Faysal:

"The font itself is difficult to read, but if its smallprint, it shouldn't be an issue"

Editt:

"For me personally, the font looks like its more suitable for a film"

Simon:

" The text on the CD, should be aligned with the Rhyme Royale text. It'll add a more professional look"

Rotation of Text

Simon, one of my colleagues, suggested that I rotate the
'Back In Town' text, in alignment with the Rhyme Royale text,
to keep consistency and add that professional finesse.

The Back In Town Text rotated, in accordance with the Rhyme Royale
text.

Filter for the inner panel photo

The Original Photo of the Canopy Shoot.

After, applying the blue filter. 

The Bar!

Oooh I love this! This was a bar I made in photoshop using the marquee tool to separate the shape in to both shapes, thereafter, I altered the opacity to distinguish between the two blocks made. I inserted the LDN RECORDS label along with the website information.

I also added Facebook, Twitter and Myspace logos, to show that he's on major social networks.

Huge Error AVOIDED!

Before

And After

A HUGE mistake has been avoided, due to my teacher Rebecca pointing out, that the artist name should be bigger than the name of the album, on the poster for promotion. phewww...