I am very pleased with both the positive and negative feedback that I have received from the audience throughout the production of my product.
The positive feedback I got was from many of my peers, complementing the range of simple creativity and complex effects which I had used to create the digipak, poster and music video. One of my peers, Oliver Marks, gave me feedback on my video saying, "I liked how the cuts were in time with the beat of the song and not just randomly placed." And "I like how the poster and digipak are so simple yet effective, it makes me want to listen to the album and maybe purchase it." Oliver also left a comment on my final video to say what he liked. (The video doesn't show up as the school network does not allow YouTube.)
Although I had much praise, there was also a fair share of constructive criticism and negative feedback during the production of my product. Such as when I had finished the 1st rough cut of the video, I asked the audience how I could improve and they said that more work would need to be done to it to make it seem like a real life product. Also, I had feedback on my poster, mainly because there was such little content, maybe too simple to look professional, so I went back to the drawing board and added more content in so that my poster would look authentic and like something the music industry would release. There was the same outcome with my digipak, constructive criticism telling me that more needed to be done. as I went over my work, I decided that, to improve, I would have to take the simple idea and add some more complex things into it, using more of the conventions of rap albums and not just Kanye's albums.
The positive and negative feedback helped me improve my product, but it also will help me prepare for a different approach if I was to make another music video.
The music video which I have created uses, challenges and develops forms
and conventions of real media products. The video to the song which I chose, ‘New
Slaves’ by Kanye West, is very different to typical rap videos. I was able to
take this change in convention and play with it, being able to challenge
conventions and in cases go completely against typical rap music video
conventions. For the advert which I created I decided I wanted to stick with
the same theme which Kanye had used, being very simple yet effective, with this
in mind I was able to create a poster, taking inspiration from existing
posters, which would fit with the style of the music video and also linked in with
the album which the song is on. At first it was hard to get the poster just
right, as I needed the correct balance of simplicity and effectiveness, but as I
developed my work, taking inspiration from the legitimate poster which
advertised the album ‘YEEZUS’, I was able to make a simple and effective poster
which would catch the eye of anyone who were to look at it.
Below is an image of the poster which I created.
I created the poster like this as I wanted to follow the conventions of real media pieces, such as posters made for Kanye's new album. Below is an image which II took inspiration from.
I have also created a digipak for the album. This took its time as I wanted
it to be similar to the actual album, but I also wanted to have my own spin on
it. As I had used a symbol which I created for the poster, I was able to
utilize this once more to create my digipak. I had decided to use one main
image to use on every page of the digipak, which I was able to do as the
created symbol was an easy fit onto the front/back cover, the spine and also
the inside of the digipak. I decided that I wanted to keep the digipak simple,
and the simple design of the created symbol was key to the design stage of the
digipak. Creating such a simple digipak would both challenge and use
conventions of rap digipaks. To challenge the conventions, I was able to use
such a simple design which meant it would look nothing like most rap albums,
but it would be using the same conventions as Kanye’s masterpiece as it was
that simple. Below is an image of the digipak which I created, I tried to follow conventions of Kanye's past albums but also I decided that I wanted to add my own spin on it.
Below are two images of the various 'Yeezus' digipaks. I used both of the albums to inspire me towards making my own digipak. I was able to use the idea of simplicity to my own product from the original versions, but I also used my own ideas towards making the digipak.
For the video I had decided that I wanted to use the same idea as Kanye
West in his video but also add my own parts in during the editing stage of the
video. As the music video goes I could argue that it follows the conventions
but also goes against the conventions of rap music videos. For the argument of
challenging the video, I would say that it is not like rap videos by Eminem or
JayZ, as it was nothing like they had ever done. This proves that my video
challenges the conventions of typical rap music videos. However, I would say that
it follows conventions of music videos. I would argue that I have followed and
took inspiration from Kanye’s legitimate music video, using few angles and not
many shots to make the political message seem a lot more serious. I like the
idea of not many shots or angles of the artist in the music video, this is
because for the song Kanye is being serious, talking about how slavery is still
about and how racism is everywhere. I used the idea of few shots as it gave my
video a more serious tone to it. This idea enabled me to make a simple yet
effective music video which followed the rest of my production stage which included
the poster and also the digipak. Below is my music video. I have tried to use conventions that Kanye uses so that I could make a professional looking music video. I believe that I have made a professional looking music video as I have used a variety of editing techniques so that the footage would fit with the music.
Below is the actual music video made by Kanye. I have used this as an inspiration as I have taken some ideas from the legitimate music video and put them into my music video. It is easy to tell where I have taken this inspiration from if you look at both of the videos.
(This is a projection of the legitimate music video as the real version is not allowed to be posted online due to it allegedly being racially-charged with the lyrics being the issue.)
This is what my editing process looks like. I have used multiple pieces of footage so that I could create a more professional music video, rather than just having a still shot of the actor lip syncing. I have been able to edit my video through Adobe Premiere Elements 12, which I was new to at the start of the course, but it was easy to pick up on how to get the best out of my video.
