1. In what ways does your Media Products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Created by Mohammed Ali AHMED Evaluation 1:

2. Which Videos were you Influenced by: The core music video that I was influenced by was Jessie J ‘ Who You Are’, because that was the epitome of what a performance video should look like. The artist showed emotion and passion when appropriate when she sang the lyrics to the song. Also, she was looking directly at the camera while singing, connecting with the audience, so that they can feel how she feels allowing the song to make a big impact on the audience so they can buy her single. I thought this was very powerful so we told our artist to try and do the same thing. She connected to the lyrics of ‘Who You Are’ and performed her heart out while looking directly at the camera – we followed the convention of Jessie J’s video: looking at the camera and performing to get the same effect.

3. Which Videos were you Influenced by: Like most conventional music videos, each scene changes on the beat of the song, but what we as a group found compelling was that in the original music video by Jessie J, the next scene opens on the beat of when her eyes open. This effect I really liked because it showed her emotions: how painful it is for her to sing this song but as soon as her eyes open on that beat, it carries a message of not giving up. I developed this effect in our music video by having an extreme close up shot of her eyes closed showing her eye shadow make up, and then on the beat, it opens with those long eye lashes flicking up to dramatise how she feels at this point. The fact that this shot is very close up, those eyes looking at the audience creates a feeling of wonder – that she is almost looking at us for help, to help find out who she is.

4. Which Videos were you Influenced by: Our music video also challenges conventions like in the video ‘We Can Change the World’ by Bridgit Mendler, she uses cards that has writing on to convey her message of the song. We challenged this by having our artist be as explicit with her body language and facial expressions because the performance should reflect the lyrics of the song and the audience should respond to this by feeling sympathy or empathy. Visually I really loved the music video of ‘We Can Change the World’ because I thought that the backdrop of a park symbolised life and vibrancy, which reflected our music video because its about our artist losing who she really is and trying to find herself. So we decided to have our artist in Hyde Park in a medium close up shot with the trees in the background. I think this shot is really good as a metaphor for standing strong and believing n yourself. Our artist is wearing a t-shirt with different coloured lines reflecting how she feels – red to show her love for herself.

5. Which Videos were you Influenced by: Our music video was influenced by ‘Better in time’ by Leona Lewis because there is a scene where she is looking in the mirror while there are people applying make up on her, trying to make her look like the way they want her too look, not the way she feels. This idea with the mirror I really liked so in our music video, we had our artist perform in front of a mirror looking natural without any make up to show that this is who she really is but yet she questions herself in front of the mirror. We purposely shot this scene with soft lighting to create that lightness to the scene, making it feel intimate as though the audience is stepping into her thoughts. The candles in the scene creates that thoughtfulness and connotes being in meditation – thinking deeply about herself. The over the shoulder shot was deliberate to create the feeling that the audience is on her shoulders.

6. Which Videos were you Influenced by: I developed the idea of the high angle shot from the Leona Lewis’s video ‘Better in time’ in our version because I liked the idea of looking down at the artist, to show her vulnerability and to show the isolation from her and other people and how lonely she is feeling. They are both wearing black clothes to illustrate their feelings of heartbroken and to show how there isn’t life in them any more but in our version, we showed the grass to show that she hasn’t given up looking to find herself. We were inspired by the video ‘Hey there Delilah’ by Plain White T’s because he performed with his guitar. So we wanted our artist to have a guitar because I felt that it showed a more heartfelt side to our artist, which in most conventional music videos about the intimacy, the artist plays a guitar hindering on the compassion sound. I shot this scene as a panning shot while she sat there like in Plain White T’s version.

7. Which Videos were you Influenced by: In our music video, we challenged the stereotype that most conventional music videos on how they portray women. “ In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly ”. ( Laura Mulvey ) Nicki Minaj The Saturdays Beyonce

8. Which Videos were you Influenced by: Nicki Minaj The Saturdays Beyonce You can see a pattern being formed here on how women are perceived in music videos to satisfy the male audience. They wear clothes that accentuates their ‘curvy’ figure and they wear low cut tops to show their chests. Their make up is used to show their beauty and to look sexy in front of a male audience. Beyonce is shown typically wearing lingerie fitting into that stereotype that women are only good for sex. In the Saturdays video, the central girl is blonde, which stereotypically pleases a male orientated audience. And the Nicki Minaj video puts focus on her skin – to emphasise her sexuality and to put focus on her breast which is pushed up so that she is seen more as a sexual figure.

9. Which Videos were you Influenced by: We challenged Laura Mulvey’s view on how women are perceived because we felt that the song ‘Who You Are’ plays on the trueness of who you are and that you should only be and act the way you believe is right. We made sure to dress our artist in clothes that she felt comfortable in and that she reflected the lyrics to the song. We made sure she went through various different styles yet keeping her dignified to show that she hasn’t lost who she really is. Over emphasised make up was used when she wore her red coat to show that she almost slipped into that sexual category – losing who she is but we made sure that this amplification and narrative version of ‘Who You Are’ was used to show how she couldn’t find who she was but in the end she did. We used a lot of close ups that conventionally is used to show the woman’s beauty and sexuality but we challenged this shot by showing her natural beauty and in some circumstances, her face with make up on illustrated how she lost herself.

10. Which Videos were you Influenced by: I really liked the Jump Cuts used in Jessie J ‘Who You Are’ because it illustrated her state of mind and how it was jumping form one place to another. I really liked this idea so we decided to use this Jump Cut effect in our video. However, we developed our version with having our artist moving from one position to another in different stances unlike with Jessie J, who only changes her hand movements. I really like having our artist moving from one place to another in the same long shot because it her jump cut movement shows her panic that she might be actually losing who she is and wont be able to find it. We chose to have the climbing frame in the background because the colours red and yellow area contrast to how she is feeling: Red to show her anger and Yellow to show her calmness.

11. Which Videos were you Influenced by: We were also inspired by the music video ‘Lego House’ by Ed Sheeran because in this scene, I really liked how the artist is in front of the sun just looking out in the horizon, just thinking with the sun looking down at the camera giving it that glare look. I used this same technique for our music video because I wanted that glare look and to symbolise that she has finally found who she is and that the sun is shining at her – congratulating her.

12. Digipak: My Digipak follows the genre of RNB/POP which is the same as our song ‘Who You Are’ by Jessie J. Here you can see the Kesha’s digipak which follows the same genre. This was the perfect example that I followed because the colour combination suits the genre with the dark pink and the blue and the white. This colour combination I really liked so I decided to use it. Kesha’s digipak challenged the conventional digipak cover of having a photograph of the artist, except her one is made up of colours to depict the artist. So I decided to challenge a typical digipak by having the colours create the artist. In my version, the colours reflect how the artist is feeling with the dominate colour pink to show her love for herself and the audience. The back cover has the same effect except she has her guitar with her to show a correspondence with the music video where she plays her guitar.

13. Digipak: The inside of my digipak consists of actual photographs of the artist because I wanted the audience who buys this digipak to see the actual image of the artist so when thy open it, they are welcomed by our artist – Yumi, smiling at them. This is similar to the Rihanna’s digipak because the image of Rihanna is stretched across the inside panel. Instead, in my one, there is a mirror effect of her Smiling. Like the front cover of Rihanna’s digipak, the font used is block letter which I was influenced by to have the artist name – Yumi and the title – Who You Are in block letters so that it stood out from the rest. However, I challenged her version with having my lettering to be bold so that it stood out. I transformed the ‘I’ into an exclamation mark ‘!’ because I wanted the digipak to be almost shouting ‘BUY ME’, almost the artist is shouting it out to the audience.

14. Advertisement: Here is my Advertisement. I was influenced by the advert of Rihanna because firstly she uses her whole body in the advert to show who she is to the audience so they remember how she looks of they want to buy her album. However, my advert challenges Rihanna’s advert because I have added the digipak and the critiques from major headlines praising how good it is so that people would buy it. Also it contains more information on how you can purchase it in sore or on the web. It also contains a ‘QR Code’ where you can access it on your phone. I did follow her idea on having the artist leaning because I thought it might illustrate what kind of person she is in real life – a fun, easy going person.