Final Evaluation

The music video I have created follows the conventions of a real music video and also Andrew Goodwin’s codes and conventions as follows.

Andrew Goodwin’s conventions state that there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. It states that the lyrics of the song will amplify, illustrate or contradict the visuals of a video. My video follows this one convention because the lyrics talk about determination and in the video you can see that the artist is determined to strive towards success. For example, in the video you can see that the artist gives up his life in the hood and focuses on becoming successful. This shows that the lyrics amplify the visuals of the music video. There are a lot of close ups of the artist throughout the music video and the close ups throughout the video follows Andrew Goodwin’s codes and conventions which state that close ups are demanded by the record company. This video follows the codes and conventions of Andrew Goodwin because this video is a concept based and also a narrative based video.

The artist is represented as an inspirational and very determined person who strives towards success. To his audience he comes off as a good role model which is a very good image to embody to this audience. In the video we can see the artist giving up his old life of violence and gang activities and goes into a life of positivity, success and a life which benefits him. The image my artist has embodied is constructed through mise-en scene throughout the video. At the beginning, the artist is seen in all black clothing which shows the dark path he was on when he was involved in gangs and violence. You see his clothing starts to change throughout the video. You see him in a dark room with a spotlight on him wearing white. The colour white is a reference to his new beginning, purity and success at that stage in his career and life and also the artist standing out in the darkness. You see a lot close ups of the artist as he goes from his transition from gang member to successful artist. You can see in some of the close ups he looks quite upset which shows his struggle and in others he is very excited and enthusiastic. The font used for the artist is a customised font which looks like it has been painted on. This font shows that somebody has painted it themselves and this also relates to the artist. It tells us that the artist has done this himself. There is a double meaning to this and the second meaning is that the artist has started and built his career by himself. He is a self-made artist.

I have learned quite a lot from audience feedback. I now know what my audience is into and what they like to see in a rap music video. Our targeted audience was really attracted to the music video because it related to the meaning behind the lyrics and how the music video is clearly a rap genre video. For example, one of the comments were “Good editing. Rhythm fits in with tempo and genre.” The tempo of the song was quite fast so the editing was fast so it can go with the tempo of the song as well. There were a few people who suggested improvements to the video such as “Needs more narrative” and “Shots on Joseph’s face (main artist)”. The targeted audience like the style of the editing but they also like to see some narrative in the video to get them more interested in the video.

I used a lot of different media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my project. Using Blogger I posted all of my work which involved the music video project such as where we will be filming, what equipment we will be using and what times we will be filming. Another technology I used was a HD Nikon camera which let us shoot really good shots. With these shots that we had on the camera we used Final Cut to edit all of our shots into one video. We were able to use effects which we found on the program especially an earthquake effect which I had learned how to use myself. Once we had finished our music video we used YouTube to post our videos so everyone could see it, like it and comment on it. Throughout the making of the video we took pictures of the artist for our artist’s digipak and album advert. I used Photoshop to edit the pictures so that it looks good and also gives off a particular representation of the artist.