A2 Media coursework Evaluation.

1. Media A2
Coursework
Evaluation

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

3. In order to tailor my media Music Video to correctly appeal to the audience and to focus on Tyler’s codes and
conventions. Research from Tyler the Creators current digipaks has shown that he doesn’t tend to follow
common conventions, from analysing each cover in and out of the digipaks we can see that there is no
consistency.
The main conventions we can take from Tyler’s artwork is that he relies heavily on the use of his face which is
essential his brand image and icon, and we can see there is his branding within the artwork by use of his
clothing. Therefore when creating the digipak we took into consideration that Tyler constantly uses his identity
in order to be recognised. Linking to this as a placeholder for using his face we concentrated on Tyler’s brand
and personality so we used one of his main logos seen in the bottom right image, this is commonly used to
Represent his brand and his personality. Not only does our digipack relate to
Tyler’s identity but it allows the audience to properly identify his work via
the logo and the large name of the song, similar to the ‘Goblin’ album cover.
Throughout the digipak we have included images of Rory’s the actor in our
music video who mimed Yonkers, by including these images we wanted to
create a strong icon, this relates to information in Andrew Goodwin’s
Dancing in the Distraction factory “the demands of the record label will
require lots of close ups of the artist.”

4. Here is an example of how we used Rory’s head in
the artwork included in our digipak. The reason
for using this is that it over exaggerates the brand
placement and is quite weird an unseen within
digpaks of other artists within the genre. It is also
very similar to how Tyler crops his head into his
productions, for example the bottom picture is a
screen grab from ‘Tamale’ one of Tyler’s latest
music videos. The majority of the faces Tyler pulls
are comical and we wanted to carry on that form
with Rory’s face so we chose a comical grin, this
appropriately matches the conventions of Tyler
the Creator’s work. But continues to challenge the
conventions of the genre in the same way that
Tyler does.

5. In the production of our music video we
wanted to develop one of Tyler’s main
conventions and a common convention
within the genre which is the
camerawork, Pictured on the left is short
clip of an example of Tyler’s direct
address to the audience in his original
Yonkers video. Below that is still image of
our production. We wanted to focus on
including the direct address with the
close up shot as I believe that as it is a
fairly emotional and deep song it
therefore I sought it necessary to create
as little gap between the artist and
audience as possible. So therefore the
audience takes the lyrics of this song
seriously. Similarly to Tyler’s video our
video features direct address throughout
the majority of the run time, however it
isn’t just Yonkers that Tyler features direct
address, it has become a theme across his
over video’s such as ‘Domo 23’.

6. Another convention we
were keen to emphasize was
the motif of brand
placement which is
commonly used in most of
Tyler’s video’s. Brand
placement and endorsement
is a common theme
throughout the Hip-Hop
genre, However Tyler only
tends to promote his own
brands such as GOLFWANG
usually abbreviated to GOLF
but however wears Supreme
in a lot of his videos and
photos. Therefore in order
to represent this we had our
actor Rory wear a Supreme
hat and a GOLFWANG
jumper and made sure to
include plenty of medium
shots so that the logo
On his torso was visible. This made Rory relatable to Tyler
and also able to appeal to the correct audience. The use
of Tyler's motif relates to Andrew Goodwins theory which
is the demand for the record label to have close ups and
the development of motifs.

7. Another theme used consistently within the production of our video and ancillary texts is
the use of the black and white. As our album is an Extended Playlist focused around the
song Yonkers, which is a relatively deep and unhappy song therefore we deemed it
unnecessary to market our album with bright colours as it doesn’t carry the correct
representations and could perhaps confuse the audience. The use of black and white
relates similarly to the use of our location. You can see that we chose an urban
environment with noticeable graffiti the reason
for choosing this type of
environment was that it had
the correct connotations
with our chosen artist as
locations such as this are
common among the
stereotypes of youths, the
lighting from the ceiling
allows us to use the full
effect of black and white the
use of these codes and
conventions allowed us to
create a video that follows
similar conventions of Tyler’s
Yonkers video as that is also
Produced in black and white. In terms of other videos
within this genre similar to Tyler our video challenges
the conventions as there aren’t any I know of that are
produced in full black and white

8. Question 2:
How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?

9. We believe that our production package fits
together in order to promote our album
effectively. We did this by creating a solid link
between our products, for example we
focused heavily on iconography, through using
certain codes and conventions such as Fonts.
As you can see above is the video with the
font identical to the album poster on the
right, the font has continuously been used
throughout our other pieces. This allows our
audience to easily identify our work and with
the poster including the album artwork, it
shows the consumer what to be looking for.
An advantage of our album being an
extended playlist is that it allows us to
focus on the name of the song, this
allows it to be found easily without
having to know an album or artist name
and for this reason the song name is
promoted at the start of our video.

10. In order for our products to reinforce each other we concentrated on making the branding obvious and the
location persistent, as you can see both the tunnel and the cat logo are visible in both our video and the album
artwork. This reinforces the brand image and allows the audience to recognise this far easier. And Tyler’s
current fans will easily notice the logo as it is widely used throughout his brand “GOLFWANG”. The use of the
long shot in the album artwork allowed us to create a clear image of the tunnel which can therefore be linked
to the music video. This type of brand reinforcement can be seen in Tyler’s video ‘Tamale’ and the album it is
included in ‘Wolf’ this is shown in his video and artwork below, there is an obvious direct link between the two.
The use of this branding also relates to Andrew Goodwin’s theory that iconography reflects the genre.

11. What is important to any record label is that the product is professional and has the correct
legal information on it, this is clear from my research of Tyler’s album covers as shown on
my blog to the right. Therefore on the reverse of the digipak cover we have included a
record label name and a small print of legal information to give a professional feeling to the
consumer in order to make sure they feel safe buying the product. This level of detail can
also be seen on the front of the digipak as we have included a parental advisory logo as
seen on the vast majority of Albums which include Explicit language.

12. Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience
feedback?

13. We started our audience research with a survey using Survey Monkey, using this website
with it’s built in application allowed us to submit a public survey in which anyone can
answer. Pictured below are examples of some of the data we received. The main features of
the data are that we found out that the main gender of our target audience is
male, predominately teenager, white British in ethnicity and with a few black Caribbean and
black African audiences. Upon learning about this we decided we would have a teenage
actor within our music video in order to appeal to the mass audience. We also found out
that the majority of viewers accessed music videos through their smartphone. This was
therefore taken into consideration when rendering and uploading our video to YouTube
making sure it was accessible to smartphone users otherwise it would most likely effect our
views.

14. Another valuable source of our audience
feedback was our interview with two boys
from out target demographic. This helped
us to see what we should be aiming for in
terms of content within our video.
A recurring theme of having a strong
artist presence within the video was
popular among both boys, upon finding
out this information we then decided to
incorporate the whole video as a shot of
the artist and to include him a significant
amount in our ancillary texts. This
allowed us to create a fan base
surrounding our product and gave us a
face to promote and an artist that the
audience can connect with. This closely
relates to Andrew Goodwin’s view that
music video’s demonstrate genre
characteristics such as our direct mode of
address to the camera. Which is seen
widely throughout the Hip-Hop genre.

15. Once we had finished
producing our video we
deemed it necessary to get
some feedback in case any
changes where necessary
before submitting it.
Therefore we shared the
video using social networking
platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter and also asked
other members of our class
for their honest and critical
opinions. Our main criticism
was that when the video was
on YouTube it was a bit too
dark in some areas with it
being a black and white
video, we then tweaked the
brightness in order to make
these parts clearer to the
audience.
We didn’t receive a large amount of criticism for our
video production, instead we where praised on our
use of a one shot video, location fitting to
genre, good miming fitting with the nature of the rap
and our use of black and white.

16. Question 4:
How did you use new media technologies in
the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?

17. A huge range of new media
technologies has helped my A2
Coursework to become what it is. This
new technology has been used in
order to organise, research and
produce my work. One of the main
products I have used heavily
throughout my coursework is Blogger.
The use of this online blogging
application has allowed me to
document my progress throughout
my coursework and has helped my
project to stay organised. It has also
allowed me to describe what I have
been doing effectively by allowing me
to embed videos, pictures and make
use of hyperlinks to more
information. A big feature of blogger
is that it can be publicly accessed
therefore making it really easy to be
shared on social networking sites by
just using a single link.

18. Being able to gather large amounts of information has been very beneficial to the quality
of my coursework. Being able to use YouTube to analyse videos published by artists within
my target genre has helped me to understand common codes and conventions which have
contributed to the way in which my music video links to the audience.
Another extremely valuable tool has been the use of Survey Monkey. Upon using this
application it has allowed me to clearly see what the audience wants in a music
production, which is extremely important in the music industry because if the people
do not consume your product you cannot afford to stay in the industry.
The use of Google Maps allowed
us too easily scout for a location
that would fit our requirements
of genre and had the correct
connotations. Street view
especially allowed us to find a
location and see it’s suitability
without having to travel.

19. Media hardware played a big part in allowing us to film the production the way we
want, using the tripod for stability and led camera attachments in order to get the correct
lighting for the aesthetics of our video.
Most importantly the use of computers. All of the editing was digital and possible due to
access to a computer. All our editing was done in Final Cut which allowed us to add
filter, change brightness, saturation, gamma and over effects that lead our video to become
what it is now.