Evaluation(1)

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

For my music video I chose the already established song ‘Beez In The Trap’ by the American R&B/Hip-Hop (also uses elements of dance and pop genre) artist Nicki Minaj. This mainstream artist has a very successful career and is a very established artist within the industry. I am a fan of Nicki Minaj and admire her unique and distinct personality, I think within all her music videos she shows positive creative energy and this is why she is so popular and sets new trends within Pop, R&B/Hip-Hop culture. I like this track as it is upbeat and has a fast pace. The lyrics are abstract so their meaning is unclear to the audience, however when researching I found that Nicki Minaj had stated in an interview with Graham Norton "It just means, 'I am always...' you know, that's our slang way of saying, 'I beez doing such-and-such-and-such.' So it's really like, 'I am always in the trap.' Now, the trap, ladies and gentlemen, relates to anywhere where you get your money” so as we can see her lyrics are creative and abstract therefore I wanted to create a similar effect within my music video by making an abstract video with the main focus being on the artist and the lyrics rather than a narrative story-type video. To do this I used little continuity throughout and mainly did lip-sync of the artist mixed with a variety of close-ups, medium and long shots of the actors featured in my video. This will promote the artist and show the artist skills; therefore the video I created was more of a performance based one.

I researched the typical codes and conventions of an R&B/Hip-Hop style video and also the usual conventions of a Nicki Minaj music video. Typical R&B/Hip-hop videos focus on the physical appearance of the artist and a big part of this this is ‘showing off’ materialistic possessions such as money, cars and jewellery. This is a big focus in R&B genre often the competition of making the most money is a way of gaining status, especially for Nicki Minaj as she is signed to the record label ‘Young Money’ founded by Lil Wayne, the main motto for them is ‘money over everything’ showing how money plays a big part in this genre. I also found some kind of dancing often appeared within the videos such as breaking dancing or ‘grinding’ from the female Rn& artist, again this shows off the artists talent and body. This also leads to a dance type of setting, often including night-clubs or a party type atmosphere. I wanted to recreate this mise-en-scene by looking at clips from a Nicki Minaj music video and tried to recreate a few within my music video. Here are some examples of how I attempted to recreate some of the shots that have been used in previous Nicki Minaj music video's in order to have similar effect and atmosphere within my video

This is a long shot image of the actors dancing.

Close-up shot of the money in the actors hand, being throw towards audience

Close-up shot of the female artists face

Shows the green lighting effects edited into the background

Close-up shot of the disco ball - adds to mise-en-scene of a party type atmosphere

I felt that using Nicki Minaj’s other video’s as a model text gave me some good inspiration and ideas when it came to creating my own music video. These shots show how I tried to achieve a similar look to hers. In order to create the right mise-en-scene for my video I chose Pozition Night Club in Hull as my first location. I contacted the club owner via text message and asked for permission to film there, I was granted this but could only film during the clubs usual opening times. This made filming quite difficult as it meant other members of the public were also around making it difficult to find places within the club which were more private and would only include my actors in the shot. This also meant I could only film between the times 10.30pm-3.30am which was difficult to ask of my actors. This location is about a 45minute drive from my own house which also made the location difficult to return to when doing retakes. I used all my original footage to create ‘draft one’ of my music video. However when I looked over this and got some audience feedback I found that this footage was unclear and too dark. I decided this location was not right for my music video as it was very difficult to organise and over-all not very effective. I am glad I did my filming very early on (November) in order to see that the footage was not right so i could therefore amend this. I then tried booking the theatre at my College. I wanted to recreate a night-club setting and atmosphere without actually being in one. To do so I used a variety of lights and camera angles as well as strobe lighting effects to create the mise-en-scene. In total including the first footage I had 5 and a half hours of filming for my music video, this was very useful as my chosen song is 4minutes and 41 seconds long so I needed plenty of footage to cover that amount of time. I actually found this song quite difficult as it was longer than most and very repetitive, if I were to re-do this assignment I would have taken this into account when in the early stages of planning.

I used mainly the new footage when creating my 2^nd draft for my music video as this footage was a lot more clear and professional looking however I tried to edit in some short clips from the first footage to create more of a nightclub effective. I edited in some of the flashing light clips in the background of my new clips as well and this made a good realistic mise-en-scene for the video. When I collected my audience feedback for the 2^nddraft, I found that the majority of people thought that the lighting made the video a lot more effective, I therefore decided for my final draft to include more of this as you can see. Here is an example of me editing the different footage together - the lights in the background are from the first draft of filming whereas the actors are actually in the school theatre, the edit made it appear to be a night-club setting:

When I created the storyboard and animatic for my video I had previous ideas on the type of activities I wanted my actors to take part in. I researched some typical dance activities for this genre. After doing so I had a clear idea on the type of routine I attended to create including the Hip-Hop style which meant a fast paced, sexually-charged, high contact social dance giving great focus on the actors body and movements, which meant when filming I would emphasise body parts by taking close-up and medium-close-ups of different parts. All mainstream Dance, R&B and Hip-Hop incorporate this style so I therefore followed these conventions when filming mine. I used a variety of different shots including extreme long-shots to show the artists full body image and outfits as well as close-up and medium close-ups to give an intense feeling between the audience and the artist as well as giving main focus on the artist and her different features. I filmed the full song with just my female artist which meant I had a variety of different shots that I could include for every part of the song, as she is the main artist in this I felt it was important to spend more time on her and have lots of individual shots of her. Her clothing also reinforced her importance as it was a bright pink short dress, similar to what Nicki Minaj has worn in previous music videos and the main attention of the audience. I then repeated this with the male artist as he has one verse on his own, I used a few single shots of him for that part of the video but I wanted to show that the female artist was the more dominant character, therefore I filmed the whole song again with both artist's in and included this throughout the whole song. It was good to have enough footage to cover the whole song this helped when it came to putting it all together as I had a variety of shots to choose from for each verse. I was glad to still be able to edit in a variety of shots from my first filming from the 1st location, I added short fast clips in between the new footage which gave a fast paced effect in time to the beat and pace of the music which gave the dance, club type music video effect that I wanted to achieve. I wanted to do this because as part of the codes and conventions I found that club, party lifestyle is a big part of the R&B Hip-Hop genre showing off their fast, exciting life-style. Usually this type of music would be played in clubs this is why the music video has to show it as a dance based song, in order to match the music's beat and rhythm with the visual image. For example my first location, Pozition Night-Club has an R&B floor, which includes a lot of Nicki Minaj's songs and other music from this genre. When I went to this location I found that the dance floor was full of people dancing and enjoying the music, the majority of those people being teenagers and young adults, mainly students as it was a Thursday evening which is a student night in Hull. This showed me that I was targeting the correct audience for my genre and therefore going for the right style of video including dance and club-themed atmosphere as that is the type of entertainment my target audience appeared to enjoy.

  Before filming anything I created an animatic to give me a good idea of all the different shots and the timing of each shot to fit the length of the song. I felt this planning really helped when it came to doing the filming for my video as I had a good clear idea of what I wanted my actors to do before-hand. I showed my animatic to a few of my peers in order to gain some feedback, I did a questionnaire and found that they agreed it was an appropriate routine for this genre. I then began to decide on outfits for my actors as I felt this would also contribute to creating the genre and mise-en-scene. I researched some of Nicki Minaj's outfits in previous videos and tried to match them. As you can see from my research I went for a similar style as Nicki Minaj, using bright colours, mainly pink and revealing outfits that emphasise the artists body parts. My other costume included small black and white stripped hot-pants which drew attention to the females buttock area which is also a common code and convention of R&B genre as I found when I was researching that throughout R&B music videos they're often sexual connotations which is another way to sell the music and the artist image. For the male artists outfit I told him to dress casual with baggy trousers and to give the impression of a care-free, gangster type male similar to the artist '2 Chainz' (the male who is included in the real Nicki Minaj video.) I asked for him to possibly wear a hat or a chain as well to fit the codes and conventions of R&B male rap artists. This connotes wealth through 'bling' and the layed-back clothing connotes a rebellious care-free image possibly showing the artist has attitude and does what pleases himself rather than caring what mainstream society sees as acceptable. The connotation of wealth also plays a bit part with this genre. A main code and convention of an R&B music video is to show-off the money they have gained, therefore I included shots of the male artists throwing money onto the floor and also the two artists dancing as money fell over the top of them. This showed how they have rebellious care-free attitude as they are willing to waste and throw money away as money is no object to them. This shows both the artists rebellion and wealth which are both very common images used for R&B/Hip Hop style artists. Researching all the codes and conventions and extensive research helped create a video which suited my genre. I felt the party type mise-en-scene fitted this well and made the video match the sound.  

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For my ancillary texts I took a plenty of different images, the first few images where taken on my phone and therefore where unclear and unprofessional, I created a rough first draft of my magazine advert with these images which I found was unsuccessful as the whole text looked very unprofessional and unrealistic. It gave me a good idea of the codes and conventions and I found it useful to look back at and analysis in order to make changes and improvements. To make a more professional looking advert, I decided to take some new images with a professional camera. For these first few images I wanted my artist to stand against a plain background. I choose a white wall as I wanted to be able colour the whole background in pink. I managed to do this on Photo Shop however it turned out to be quite difficult as my actors hair is a light blonde colour, so against the white wall it was difficult to tell the computer the exact outline, I therefore had to find other ways of editing to fill the background with one colour. In the end I managed to complete this. I was hoping to achieve a similar look to Nicki Minaj's album 'Pink Friday' which hopefully I achieved.


Once I had edited my image the way I wanted to look I thought about the codes and conventions of a magazine advert, I researched three different magazine adverts and analysed the different codes and conventions for each text and how the genre affected this. I then decided that for mine I wanted to just include the main conventions and keep the text limited and just focus mainly on the artist making the image the most dominant convention. This suited Nicki Minaj’s other adverts and album covers, as she is an established artist and the image of her can sell its self and little persuasive text is needed. I created a rough hand drawn draft of my advert followed by a more professional clear looking ICT draft. This gave me an idea of the conventions I would be including, such as: the artists title, the main image, the album name, the release date and the rating. I decided to use the iTunes logo as well, as iTunes is now the main source of music sales showing how I am using new media technology within my work. Creating these drafts was really useful as it gave me a chance to organise the layout before starting on Photo Shop. Therefore it made creating the ancillary texts quite straightforward to complete as I already had a clear idea of the positioning of all the conventions.

For my second ancillary text, the DigiPak I decided to screen shot some of the images from my music video, as this gave me a variety of different effective images to choose from, I made sure to screen shot as many as possible as this would give me plenty of choice. I felt it was important all the images fitted together on the page and looked like they matched with one another so taking them from the video meant they had quite a few similarities between them. It also showed good continuity as this linked the DigiPak and the video together. I tried to keep continuity throughout so in order to do this I made sure both ancillary texts used the same font and all three had similar colouring, this mainly included the colour ‘pink’ which has been included in all three texts.

 Having so many different images was also really helpful as I developed my Digipak because I could test a few different images before choosing which I liked the most.
Like my first ancillary text I created a hand-drawn draft as well as an ICT draft, again I felt this was really useful and effective planning as it gave me a good idea of where to start. However with my first ancillary text I stuck to my original draft ideas whereas as I developed my DigiPak I made a few changes as I went along. However I did stick with all the conventions and this made the drafts helpful as I knew what had to be included on a CD cover. On the DigiPak more legal information was needed such as a parent advisory label showing the the CD would have rude content and was not suitable for children. This video its self is quite racy and furthermore the lyrics include a lot of taboo language this meant the label was necessary. I also included copy right details and the record label on my DigiPak. I felt this made the Digipak look more realistic, as on a real life DigiPak this would be a necessary convention.

Like the first ancillary text I did research on several different CD covers and DigiPaks in order to have some inspiration for creating mine. Here is the research I completed for my ancillary texts: (click on the links)

DigiPak Research
DigiPak Research 2
CD Cover 1
CD Cover 2
CD Cover 3
CD Cover 4
CD Cover 5
Magazine advert 1
Magazine advert 2
Magazine Advert 3


 I researched into a variety of different genre's when looking to create my ancillary texts so i could compare them to the typical codes and conventions that needed to be included in my own, this gave me an idea on how to tell the different genre's apart and how to achieve a successful genre suited text. I used Nicki Minaj's as my main inspiration as she is the artist of my chosen song. I hope to show a similarities between her album 'Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded 'to my album 'Freedom.' However creating a DigiPak to represent Nicki Minaj is more difficult as although the song represents a very Dance, R&B and Hip-Hop genre the album is a lot more varied as she also shows elements of mainstream Pop music, that is why I also looked into some Pop DigiPak covers to spot any similarities between that and Nicki Minaj's album cover.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the name of my album. I research Nicki Minaj's previous albums and found that her first album was called 'Pink Friday' her second album was the follow up to this called 'Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded' and her last album was called 'The Re-Up' these abstract names are very individual. The song I chose had been taken from her album 'Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded' I began to research into the meaning behind this album. I found that it represents her "angry male alter-ego called 'Roman Zolanski" (who is mentioned in a few of her other songs) Nicki Minaj sees herself as having several different expressive personalities which reflects in her music and also explains why she has different elements of genre throughout her music. She shows her mixed personality giving the artist different sides such as an aggressive, rap style or a more feminine soft side to her. I liked this as it gave Nicki Minaj freedom to express herself through her music and is free to say and do as she pleases and is able to express the different sides to her. 'Roman Zolanski' gives her freedom to express anger and verbally shocking taboo within her songs, which shows Nicki Minaj's rebellious 'dark side.' I liked the idea of this and therefore decided to call my album Freedom. I think this gave my fictional character 'Loz Beet' a similar type of image as the album name 'Freedom' could have two meanings as it can sound very 'light' and has the connotation of being peaceful. However it also shows another side of this such as showing freedom of speech and how she is unrestricted and an independent strong female. I feel this represents how she is Free to do as pleases giving a more aggressive rebellious side to my character.

I think overall the ancillary texts linked well together and with the video and showed some strong similarities between the artist of my song, Nicki Minaj and my Character Loz Beet. I think the research and planning was very helpful when creating this. I think to improve I could of showed stronger continuity throughout the texts and a more obvious colour scheme, although I had pink running all the way through I feel that the colours on each differed and could have been more strict with this and stuck to one or two colours throughout the whole product. I did keep the font the same on both ancillary texts but the Title on the music video differs from this and is in a red/pink colour. I think this shows bad continuity and if I was to re-do this I would have taken a screen shot of that title and put it on both ancillary texts in order to show the product name looking exactly the same throughout.