Our Music Video (Jason Derulo - It Girl)

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

When producing our music video, we were inspired by many conventions from other music videos. We looked at music videos from the same genre of our own video, RnB and we adapted the typical conventions of these music videos into our own production piece. We were inspired by artists such as Rihanna, Jason Derulo, Bruno Mars Chris Brown, Beyonce and JLS. A list of how we were inspired by other music videos is featured in my blog named 'inspiration'.
Our music video also broke away from the typical conventions of a lot of music videos, we used a original idea of Ruksana being in a shadow while Raees was in the light singing to the camera, the shadow effect showed Ruksana's silhouette making it obvious that Raees was still the main focus of the video and we are promoting his image and showing that he dreams of Ruksana.

We also created a original element by having Ruksana singing at one point to the male singing part, this demonstrates the idea that they are both connected and in love. Amy Winehouse's music video 'valerie' is similar as people who are not Amy Winehouse lip-sync her song. Even though, Amy Winehouse is not the same genre of our own music video, we still liked this feature and adapted it to our music video. However, I believe our music video is original by making Ruksana lip-sync to Raees part.



We decided to create a illustrative music video, our video features a mixture of performance and also narrative. We believed a illustrative music video most related and conveyed the typical conventions of a RnB music video. The narrative features a boy and girl who are both in love, the boy sings to the girl and flatters her relating to the lyrics 'you can be my it girl'. This love story narrative is similar to other videos like 'Just the way way you are' by Bruno Mars and 'Everybody in love' by JLS.


We used Goodwin's theory to compare the conventions of our music video.
- Music video demonstrate genre characteristics. I believe our music video does demonstrate the characteristics of our music genre, RnB. In our music video, we feature a couple in love and as shown in the Bruno Mars and JLS videos above, they also feature a love story narrative and also are in the RnB music category.
- There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. In our music video, there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, the boy praises the girl saying 'you can be my it girl', the lyrics of the song are even shown in a text message. The happy nature of the actors reflects on them being in love and relates to the lyrics of the song.
- There is a relationship between the music and visuals. There is a relationship between the music and visuals in our video, the camera cuts to the music and the fading of the sunshine between the couple is an effect which relates to the music.
- The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist so that the artist may develop motifs. In our music video we do include lots of close-ups of the male lead singer, Raees, we did this knowing it would be the demands of a record label. I also believe the close ups of his 'it girl' promote the image that he is a caring man appealing to a female audience.
- There is frequent reference to the notion of looking and particulary the voyeuristic treatment of women's bodies. We do not feature the notion of looking in our music video, however we do contain the slight voyeuristic treatment of a woman's body. The female actor in our music video, Ruksana, we show her silhouette we can be interpreted sexually.
- There are often intextually references to films, TV, programmes other music videos etc. We decided not to use any references to other forms of media and made our video completely original.
Overall our media product does use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. We do follow the typical conventions of a Rnb music videos, however we also challenge these forms by having the female lip-sync the male role at one point and add in original elements with the editing.

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

Overall I think that our main product links in really well with our digipack and magazine advert. First of all when doing our planning we thought that we had a lot of footage which was in the studio, we liked the way it looked quite plain with a tint of colour like the red sofa on the white background, we chosen the red colour sofa as it symbolises love, the story is also a typical love story which runs though it. We thought really hard about the link between the video and the advert and decided to creative the advert in a very symplistic way and used a font which is very basic but have created it in a rouge red colour just like the simpleness of the "love" video itself. We have also used white writing as well which indicates pureness and angelicness, linking in with the symplistic studio shots. The colours have been very well thought out as they are eyecatching.

From watching the video we can also see that Raees (Jason Derulo) looks very happy being with his perfect girl, he looks very proud and confident, this is portrayed in many ways the main one being the way he can stand tall and sing the song to her, as the song itself is a huge important part of the video we tried to still portray this image within the magazine advert. We decided to postion him and take a photo where you can see the full length of his body, we is also slightly smiling but not too much as we didnt want to give anything way, he also looks very confident like in the video. The way he grabs hold of the microphone and looks us directly in th eye shows that he is very serious about telling us about his "It girl" which he does and perfoms in a great way within the video. We have purposely not given anything away with the advert and we want people to be drawn to it by the eyecatching colours and to listen to the song, if we put a lot more things on the advert then we thought it would be giving too much away, we thought that we would sell our product better this way as people would want to know and find out more and buy the song.



We also portrayed a similar style through our digipack. For the cd cover we included a close up photograph of Raees (Jason Derulo) in which he is looking to the side. This still has the similar plain style and the same use of colour with the "love" red rouge writing which says "GIRL" we have made this really big on purpose as we want people to remember the name so they will buy it. We decided to include a close up photograph of him for two reasons, the first one being as it is only his face and he is looking away, this way nobody would be able to know what the song is about which will lead to them buying it to find out. Secondly Jason is also quite a modern new artist and isn't as well known as some of the artists in the music industry. We wanted this close up image of the face so that people can see and remember who he is, to get his confident image out to show that people should look out for him, as a piece we were all happy with the way it has been created, also with the simple but effectivness. This same theme runs through the digipack which links in with the video and advert which we thought is crucial as it basically comes in one piece, with the song.

We thought that also be rearch that we could use marketing strategies for this by putting it on a website which we have wrote on the bottom right corner of the advert, which although is out the way from the picture, it is still quite big and easy to spot. People would log on to this website where they can find more information about Jason himself and might become very interested in him and his style of music.
We thought it was important to put it into music magazines of an r&b style as it is a typical r&b song which those who like this style of music will love, we also thought that we could widen this as although the advert itself has a boy on the front, the colours are very appealing to both men and women and women themselves might see him as a sort of "eyecandy" as we know that image can also be a big part of selling a product, we thought that we could market this product by putting it into both male and female magazines so a whole range of ages, male or female get the opportunity to see it.

"Q magazine, a music magazine which appeals to people will different styles of music.

Overall We think that the combination of our main product and our ancillary texts work really well together and have be well thought out and produced to be eyecatching and appealing to all.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After finishing the Jason Derulo 'It girl' music video, we decided that it would be appropriate to gain audience feedback from our video. We initially very much hoped that we would be able to get a audience feedback from publishing our video onto Youtube, however because of copyright issues we were unable to do this. Immediately we decided that we would conduct a questionnaire and find out the respones of other people. You can find the answers from the questionnaire on the blog post 'questionnaires and feedback'. The questions we asked were:

Are you male or female? - this was to see whether opinions differed with gender.
Name you favourite thing about the music video.. - this showed us the strong points about the music video.
How was the music video appealing to you? - this allowed us to know what each individual particularly liked about the music video.
How could the music video have been improved? - this informed us of our weaknesses in the music video.
What is your opinion of the camera work? - this allowed us to gain the opinion of the camera work, the part all of the group worked on.
What did you think of the locations used? - this informed us of the audiences opinion of the locations we used in the video.
What did you think of the performance of the actors in relation to the song? - this told us whether we picked the right actors and how the audience thought they performed.
Out of a scale of 1 to 10 , how would you rate the music video? - this allowed us to know how much the audience enjoyed the music video.

We found the results of the questionnaire that out of the people we interviewed, they all appeared to agree that we should of included more locations in our music video, we know this is an area of our music video that we could of improved on and now know if we were to create another music video, we would include a lot more locations in our video. From the results we gained, we also found that the biggest positive about our music video was the performance in relation to the song, all the people we interviewed agreed that the actors for our video were very believable and played the role excellently. Also, we found from the results gained from that questionnaire, that females appeared to rate the music video a lot higher, this suggests to us that the love story narrative of the video is more appealing to a female audience.

4. How did you use media techologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

To research, plan and evaluate our music video we used Apple Mac's through all the stages.

When we started our video and started out initial plans we used the computers to research music videos, genre conventions and software the computer provided to plan out thoughts.

We also used the Apple Macs in the post production stages, for example, editing our video, evaluating it and posting blog about our product.

To research, our music genre we used Youtube.com. Youtube is a free online video sharing site, so this made it easier for us view other people's and artists videos and songs to see whether we wanted to use them.

Youtube was also helpful when we wanted to analyse particular artists like Jason Derulo because you can view all his videos free.

Youtube was also helpful in the evaluation stages as it also enabled us to post or Music video so we could receive free audience feedback, quickly.

We used Blogspot.com to create our blogs for our music video. Blogpost is a free blogger site where uses can create and share blogs easily.

We initially created our blog and started using it to plan and share our ideas with other members of the group. Blogspot enabled us to share ideas even when we weren't in class together.

Blogspot has also helped us evaluate our music video and other products because everything is displayed neatly on one page.

To film our video we used a Canon Legria FS306. The Canon Legria FS306 is a SD camcorder.

The camcorder was useful because it has features like being able to use SD cards to store our footage, which made it easy and accessible so share with other group members and film outside of college.

The model is also Canon's smallest camcorder which was also helpful when we were filming on location.

We wanted to have a variety of locations in our music video. The studio at college had equipment like high quality cameras and a green screen which let us do this.
The Green screen gave the illusion that characters in the video were at different locations; this was helpful in the planning process as it let us think 'out of the box' and not have to limit our video to simple ideas.

The studio also let us research videos that we couldn't necessarily achieve without green screen and the high quality equipment provided.

To edit our music video we used Final Cut Pro 7. Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc.

We edited our film and used different cuts, transitions and effects to create our video. For example, we used a fade transition on some shots to add effect rather than just a simple shot. We also used a fade to black transition on some of the the studio shots for our music video.

To produce our ancillery tasks we used a Nikon coolpix compact digital camera. The camera was high high quality so let us plan better products like the digipack and poster because we knew that we would have high quality equipment.

We used Photoshop to create our ancillery tasks. Photoshop is a graphics editing program that let us add graphics and effects. Photoshop let us plan great produces and research different effects we could add to our products. For example, we researched some vintage Photoshop actions we could add to our poster and successfully applied them.

Photoshop also gave us access to better features to edit our items, which let us create better products. For example, we had a better variety of fonts to add to our digipack.

We used Facebook to promote our video and get audience feeback quickly. Facebook is a popular social networking site so it accessible and easy to get information you require.
Facebook was also an advantage in the evaluation stage because we could use the feedback to add in our evaluation of our product.

Final Cut Pro

To edit our music video we used Final Cut Pro 7. Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc. Clips can be edited together in timelines called sequences. Sequences can be nested inside other sequences, so that a filter or transition can be applied to the grouped clips.

We edited out film and used different cuts, transitions and effects to create our film. For example, we used a fade transition on some shots to add effect rather than just a simple shot. We also used a fade to black transition while we were in the studio and then added it to Final cut pro.

Photoshop CS5

To edit our CD digipack and magazine advert, we used Photoshop CS5. Photoshop CS5 is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorparated. This program was very helpful when editing, we were then able to crop pictures, change the contrast and brightness, add a large variety of fonts and also able to add on many effects. We hope that with the help of Photoshop CS5 that we were able to produce a professional and sophisticated CD digipack and magazine advert.