The document provides an evaluation of a media project involving the production of a music video. It discusses how the music video used conventions like depicting stereotypical scenes of teenagers in council estates using drugs and committing crimes. It also discusses how the ancillary texts like the digipak and magazine ad helped promote the music video. Feedback on the project noted positives like accurately portraying drug use across ethnicities, but also areas for improvement like making the stabbing scene more realistic. Throughout the project, technologies like YouTube, blogs, and editing software were used to conduct research, plan, construct, and evaluate the media product.

1. Zayd Hillawi
Evaluation
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
When deciding what sort of theme we should go for during the planning of our music video,
we listed different ideas that can challenge or develop types of forms and conventions. We
had to look at a song choice that will reflect on the genre of the music video so it’ll suit the
scenes we would be filming. We decided to go for a dubstep song by Professor Green who is
a young urban artist. The original song is about life in Hackney and teenagers in hooded
clothes causing all sorts of mischief. The song was called “In the Jungle” which reflects on
the life of a stereotypical teenager living in a council estate causing trouble. The dubstep
song was unique and the genre had not been used many times in previous projects so we
went for it.
The narrative of our music video consisted on the followings of a teenager who is the main
character, wearing a hoodie, walking around the streets of Soho late at night causing
trouble. The video reveals the teenager to be snorting drugs and this was one of the main
conventions that were used in our video as it stereotypes the typical teenager using drugs to
ruin their life and cause upset wherever they go. We used different settings in the music
video such as council estates, sleazy clubs in Soho, and dark alleyways where many crimes
are seen to have been committed in. These settings that were based on our video were
again the stereotypes used for teenagers in hanging around in or even living in with regards
to council estates. Later on in the video, we see the character trying to cause a fight in the
alleyways which again challenges the conventions of a teenager’s life. He also goes to stab
the singer in the video, and this is also when the person had already sniffed the drugs. This
was meant to show that drugs can cause people to do terrible things like taking a life, and
when the character takes off his hood in the video after the stabbing it shows how they
might be trying to seek redemption for what they have just done.
When we had been planning the narrative for the video, we looked at other movies that
have a relevant story to the one we had been planning to make for the video. This would
give us ideas that can help us with the conventions for young people on drugs, and maybe
replicate a few scenes. Kidulthood was one of the movies we had looked at because it was
focused on the urban scene in London, with young characters using drugs and knife crime as
a form of influence on their life. This gave us a wide range of ideas to use in our music video
because the scenes in that movie were very helpful in helping us stereotype different racial
backgrounds with regard to knife crimes and drugs. It also helped us in deciding the settings
we should use for the music video.
Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

2. Zayd Hillawi
We feel that the combination of our main product and its ancillary texts worked very well
together as they adopted the key elements of branding. We noticed that many music videos
heavily rely on a unique and creative look in the mise-en-scene and enhance the power of
modern technology such as CGI to make their video look more eye catching and attractive
for listeners. An example can be pop artist Jessie J and her song “Domino” which involves
the artist singing whilst in the middle of the camera shot for the whole video whilst the
background changes every minute to something colourful or dark. In the video, when the
background changes so does the artist’s clothes which also interchange between dark and
bright colours to match the background. So for our video we didn’t do many sort of high
tech editing techniques like Jessie J’s music video, we basically used a wide range of
differing camera shots for effect and the tempo of the shots was at times upped but also
slowed down for use of effect. We had to keep this form of editing the same throughout the
video so it looked consistent, if we added a bit of high tech editing into a certain part of the
video it’d have looked out of place so we had to maintain consistency and house style.
By adopting the key elements of branding, we had decided what to
put on our digipak after researching digipaks by real life music artists
and also looking at our music video for ideas too. This would help us
decide on the final design for the digipak and how it would be laid
out. When looking within the video for ideas, the concept of drug
taking and violence helped us decide on what to put on the digipak
as the main look. The use of darkness in the video helps connote the
terror and horror in the video so we used the main character with
the hoodie on the front of the digipak as the bigger image. We also
included other images that would reflect on the video such as the
snooker table and a road sign in Soho. This would give the viewer a
big help in knowing what will be on the video because of what the
digipak will reveal in terms of the mise-en-scene and the characters
in it. The road sign would also be connoted by the viewer as a setting
in the video.
Our digipak follows many of the forms and conventions in a professional music artist’s own
digipak. Our digipak showed the artist’s name, the name of the song, track lists of other
different songs and the music label the artist is currently signed under too. With the digipak
front cover we didn’t follow many conventions as other real life digipaks
because we had put quite a few images on our one which revealed aspects
of mise-en-scene in the video and also where a certain part of the video is
set. We didn’t use the artist’s face on the digipak but the main character
that the video is based on throughout of it. Some artists usually put their
face on their album cover in order to show the viewers who is the singer
and also use the background to show the listeners aspects of the mise-en-
scene too just like we did with our digipak. An example of this is Professor

3. Zayd Hillawi
Green with his album “Alive till I’m dead”.
The magazine advert follows some parts of the forms and conventions as well but on the
main cover we persisted with using the main character as the focus of the advert instead of
the singer. We used quite a dark background with dim street lights and an empty road to
connote different aspects of the video and how violence will be connoted better in a dark
colour and the character disguising some of his face with a hoodie would complement those
sorts of connotations. The forms and conventions that were followed had been the name of
the artist in a big font placed next to the character so the listener would know who the artist
is and the main character in the video would be the picture of the hooded character. This
would show the listener an interest as they’d like to see what would revolve around this
particular character that had beaten the artist in terms of being the main focus of the whole
advert. We also added big shop names under the advert to show the listeners where it
would be sold, and we also added the artist’s website and 5 star ratings so the listener
would know the video has been enjoyed by others.
Regarding intertextuality, we didn’t have really any form of influence on our magazine
advert. We followed the conventions of having the artist’s name placed in big letters on the
advert but we had not shown the singer on the advert instead we had shown the main focus
of the video which was the hooded character and the background would show the mise-en-
scene of the video which was dark streets where the character will be around in some parts
of the video.
Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When we were planning our music video, we wanted to aim it at a certain age group which
had conveniently been our target audience. The age group we hoped the video will appeal
to had been the older teenagers aged between 17-20 years of age and mostly of male
genders. We had researched the statistics in age and gender of people using drugs and the
results reflected more on the older teenage group and the statistics had been largely
dominated by males rather than females. This is why we used mostly male characters in the
video, as it reflected on those statistics that had been looked up on. The music video we
created reflected a bit on Professor Green’s original video where it showed hooded
criminals causing violence around council estates.
The music video contained different ethnicities including black and white people as it
showed the impact of drugs on certain people’s lives regardless of what background they
came from. The modern stereotype was black people are the ones promoting and using
drugs, but we found that to be incorrect as anyone can use them. We represented different
social groups to the audience to show them that anyone from any background can be under
the influence of drugs and it doesn’t always necessarily mean people from lower class
backgrounds are the ones addicted to drugs. We wanted to show the target audience that
we’re not being one sided and biased with our characters nationality in relation to being on

4. Zayd Hillawi
drugs, so we tried to be more fair and honest in showing them that lots of different racial
backgrounds deal with the use of drugs or dealing in it. We also tried using the black
character as a form of sympathy for the audience as he had ended up being the stab victim,
but we also used him in order to show the audience that stereotyping black people is wrong
because they could end up being the victims at the hands of non black people which the
main character had been. This was recognised by a few of the audience in the feedback
reviews and it gained many plaudits as they recognised what our intentions were.
We built many different elements into our script when developing it that would show the
video is targeted at the specific age group of our audience. We used a wide range of camera
shots to show items of clothing’s worn by the characters as it represents the stereotype that
we was aiming to show. We showed a close up shot of white trainers being worn and laces
being tied by the character, this was meant to show the audience how teenagers wear
trainers all the time and the different brands they like. We also showed numerous close ups
and medium long shots of the main character wearing his hoodie along with tilted shots of
the drug dealer the character gets the cocaine off. We also used the alleyways, council
estate houses and sleazy bars to promote the locations of where these sorts of teenagers
hang around to do their wrongdoings. This was all to show the audience how some
teenagers these days dress up and go to these places to do drugs and other crimes, and it
received many positive views as many had connoted the conventions well.
The digipak and magazine advert had received a mixture of positive and negative reviews, as
did the music video too. The digipak got the positive reviews about the pictures and the
mixture of colours used as it looked appealing and it highlighted different points shown on
the video too but the pictures had been crammed together too much so the digipak images
were a bit squashed and a bit out of place. The texts that describe the name of the artist
had not looked right and the colours used for the font was wrong as it did not stand out
from the images. The same problem with the magazine advert had been the background
didn’t look right but the fonts and colours had been better compared to the Digipak. The
music video got mostly positive reviews than negative, the audience had responded well to
the conventions we had implemented in the video. They liked some of the camera shots
that showed the character doing some terrible things and also the props used looked very
realistic such as the cocaine. The criticisms we received was that we didn’t include detailed
shots of Soho so it explores the scene more, and the stabbing scene didn’t look realistic
enough either to some. I feel this video can be a success in the current market if we worked
on the criticisms and improved the video, it does lack a bit of realistic things and that is
always needed to catch the viewer’s eye. The digipak would also be attractive once it is
worked on with the criticism given, but I don’t think a label might find it attractive for
release as it may be too violent for a music video and could offend some people by bringing
up the debate of teenagers and the stereotyping of drugs and alcohol.

5. Zayd Hillawi
Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and
evaluation stages?
We used many different new media technologies during our project and it helped us in
many ways on the practical and theory side of things. When we started the project we had
to set about doing the research part of things so it prepares us for when we start shooting
the music video scenes. Google was a massive help as always because it helped us find out
how to make digipaks and magazine adverts, we also used it for research on statistics on
knife crime and debates on teenagers being involved with drugs and other sorts of crime.
YouTube was a great source to look through different music videos whilst we was deciding
what one to use for our project, we looked through hundreds of music videos to listen to
and break as many down as possible to a suitable choice. We also uploaded our final video
on to it in order to advertise it for our target audience and gain feedback on it. The
researching of digipaks helped us build on a good design that reflects our music video, the
research showed what should be displayed on it and how it should be laid out so it looks eye
catching and appealing too for our target audience. Facebook was a great form of
communication with different members of the target audience, because it has tools that
allow us to advertise our music video on it so the viewers can watch the video and give us
reasonable answers for the audience feedback. The use of blogging was also something
we’ve gotten used to now and it’s helped increase our skills in using it for future use as well.
It has many tools to make present our work in a professional manner and make it look eye
catching as well. It stored all our theory and practical work in a great way and the tools it
offered in helping us present it were fantastic.
When we moved on from the theory side of the project, we started planning the practical
and that had been shooting the video at last. We decided we need a camera and a tripod to
aid us in the filming, the tripod would help us steady the camera shots and it also offers
great options in having a long handle so we can tilt the camera for use of effect in the video.
The camera we used was a Panasonic HDC-SD80 full HD digital camera and the reason we
chose it as it was light so we can carry it around easily and not cause strain on the arm. It’s
also a HD camera which means it offers great image quality when we edit the clips and it’ll
also show the target audience a crisp and better view of the music video. It also shows how
we’re very fond of the advancing world of technology and how it helped us out in many
ways. The tripod we picked was also great as the camera fit onto it perfectly but the only
criticism we had with it is the constant adjusting of the legs when filming different scenes as
it wobbled at times and looked unbalanced too so adjusting it correctly was a bit tiring. We
had to keep doing it right so the camera shots weren’t canted or out of place. The camera
had great battery life and it was very easy to use, the instruction booklet wasn’t even
needed so that goes to show how great it was for us. Since it was light and not painful on
the arm, we used it for some handheld shots in order to stop wasting time with the tripod
adjustments. The handheld shots weren’t unbalanced and the shots had not been too shaky
as well so it worked out well at the end. The best part of that type of camera was using it for

6. Zayd Hillawi
point of view shots as it was easy to use with the strap on the side to insert your hand in for
holding, and it helped give us ideas in where those sorts of shots would be useful for.
The editing facilities were very much top class and elegant. We had been very much used to
using them now and gained experience with them throughout last year. The editing
program Final Cut Pro provided us with everything we needed in different ranges of tools to
help the video flow and not lack any form of continuity. It helped us out in fixing any errors
in the shots and the uploading of the music file for the background was very much easy as
well. The only criticism we had of the software was at the beginning when we had just
started to use it and the camera shots hadn’t moved onto the program properly so we had
to transfer them one by one which took a long time and wasted valuable editing time.
Moving on with the digipak and magazine advert designs, we had used Adobe Photoshop
CS4 and were given tutorials that would help us develop our skills with it and get us used to
it as well. We learnt about different sorts of tools that can edit images and increasing a size
of one etc. I found Photoshop hard to use even with the tutorials and I didn’t enjoy using it
to create the leaflet, I found it too complex and I needed a bit of help in designing it to the
way I had intended it to on my initial design.