This document discusses soca music and its lack of mainstream popularity outside of the Caribbean. It provides biographies of two leading soca artists, Machel Montano and Destra Garcia. It also lists some television channels that play soca music, mainly in the Americas. The document aims to evaluate soca music's presence in media.

1. A2 MEDIA
Evaluation
Courtney-Isis Guishard-Pine

2. Introduction
In the mainstream music industry today
soca music is not a worldwide
product and is mainly known by
ethnic minorities from the Caribbean

3. Cont.
Soca music is known for having strong
rhythmic sections done by drum sets. Due to
its strong influence from Africa. More recently
soca has used synthesized drum sounds and
has taken on more of a pop influence.

4. Cont.
The biggest soca hit is the 1982 song (Feelin’)
Hot Hot Hot by Arrow. Other leading artists
include,

5. MACHEL MONTANO
He is well-known for his
high-energy performances
as well as catchy,
unforgettable songs
Above is one of Machel Montano’s album covers,
showing his various stages through his long-running
career.

6. DESTRA GARCIA
Destra Garcia is soca’s vixen, she is
one of the biggest and best soca
artists of all time.

7. Within the media there are very few TV
channels that show soca music, these are:
- CaribVision
- Centric
- Synergy TV
- Tempo TV
These are mainly shown in the Americas

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

9. Introduction
• A music video is a film/video that
accompanies a piece of music or a song. In
more modern times it has been developed as
a marketing device for the promotion of an
artist or album. Because of this, music videos’
complexity has increased.
• To answer this question I have referred to
Andrew Goodwin’s Generic music video
Forms and Conventions.

10. USE – There is a relationship between the
lyrics and the visuals
• Bright text appearing in our video, reading
out the lyrics that were being sung in the
song. This added a bit more life to the video.
This is similar to ‘Palance’ by JW and Blaze
where text also appears in a similar fashion.

11. Cont.
• Lip-syncing of the lyrics being sung in the
song was used in various shots. Like in many
modern music videos where the artist is lip-
syncing the lyrics of the song.
Lip syncing the first verse to the
song, illustrating movements that
match the lyrics.

12. USE – There is a relationship between
the music and the visuals
• We used this through the editing style of the
video. By cutting the shots to match the beat.
We enhanced this between 02:01 and 02:11,
where we fast cut the shots in time with a
specific drum beat.
• We also used this through dancing, laughter
and the bright coloured text matching the
upbeat rhythm within the music.
• These techniques are used both in soca music
videos as well as mainstream music videos.

13. CHALLENGE and DEVELOP – There is likely
to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in
the treatment of women
• By showing women/girls of different ages and sizes, not
being shown as sexual items, just being normal and having
fun. I believe we challenged and developed this convention
in a positive way. It showed that it was possible to show
women/girls in non-sexual ways but still make the video look
exceptional. Unlike in the majority of modern videos.

14. USE, CHALLENGE and DEVELOP – Particular
music genres may have their own music video
style and iconography
• Soca music videos are quite simple in terms of what
conventions, style, iconography etc. They usually
contain women in revealing clothing, dancing,
carnival/partying, beaches, islands.
• We used the dancing within our video and
requested a small routine be formed to perform
throughout the video. We also used the fact that
soca music videos are usually non-narrative in the
production of the film.

15. Cont.
• We challenged and developed the concept of
showing women in a certain way, and showed
women/girls of different ages and sizes, in non-
revealing clothes, dancing, laughing and having
fun like normal girls. Their not like the girls that
are seen on television.

16. Question – Two
How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary
texts?

17. Digi-pack
The digi-pack had to have a Caribbean feel.
Which is why we chose the bright, almost-
neon colours for the front and inside. We also
added a palm tree to the front cover because
we felt that this would connote the Caribbean
and that this digi-pack would link to the
Caribbean. The font for the wording was
chosen to give a superstar, name in big, bold
lights feel.
As if the band are a
huge success. I like the
digi-pack because it
shows the true colours
of what Soca stands for.
Which is standing out
and having fun.

18. We added shots of -- > wanted to bring the
London because we are Music Video carnival/Caribbean feel to
from London and we --> London
These are some signature
images from the music
video. Very bright,
summertime, happiness,
fun directed. Which is
exactly what we wanted to
connote. Because the
music is very upbeat and
carnival orientated we had
to try our hardest to show
this through our video
without involving an
actually carnival. Which
meant we had to focus on
other things that were well
known for carnival, such as
sunshine, fun, dancing,
bright colours etc.

19. BRANDING
• A brand is the identity of a specific product,
service or business.
• Branding is mainly known to be used on
products and companies such as McDonalds
or Coca-Cola.

20. Cont.
• Many of the major music artists are known to
be ‘branded’. Celebrities such as Lady GaGa,
who is famously branded for her crazy, wild,
extravagant antics, music videos and outfits.
This is known as ‘personal branding’

21. Cont.
• I felt that when it came to our artist, we should give them a
brand that would make them stand out, like Lady GaGa.
• Their brand name is ‘Kes the Band’. So we felt that the best
way to help them to stick out was through the design of
the digi-pack and through the music video. By making the
video unlike any video in the mainstream, but still
noticeable.
• I feel we did this in the music video by putting
predominantly a female cast in the video and having a
female miming the lyrics to the song despite the band/artist
being all males. We also made sure to show females of
different ages, sizes, colours etc. in non-revealing clothing.
Which is the opposite of what the majority of soca products
show. I think the fact that our products are completely out
of the norm makes them stand out.

22. Cont.
The front cover of a well-
known Soca compilation The front cover of our digi-pack
album

23. Cont.
A printscreen shot of a clip from
our music video
A printscreen shot of a clip from
Ricardo Drue’s soca video ‘Car Key”

24. So how effective do I think the combination of
the main product and the ancillary text is?
• I feel that the main product and the ancillary text
match each other perfectly. They both include
bright colouring, and have a Caribbean feeling. The
music video is very fun, active and involves a lot of
happiness. The digi-pack matches this through the
layout, the text and certainly through the colouring
used.
• This unique differentiation from the norm of Soca
products makes our products distinctive, which is
why I think our main product and ancillary text is
excellent and will be very accomplished.

25. Question - Three
What have you learnt from your
audience feedback?

26. Questionnaires
• We came up with several relevant questions that wouldn’t
be time consuming to fill out and handed the questionnaires
out to various members of the public with hopes to find
information that could help us to decide on different factors
for promoting the video. Questions such as:
• Are music video’s important to you?
• What do you find is the most successful advertisement for promoting
music?
• Where do you think is the best place to listen to music?
• We asked these questions to find out about our audience
and find out what they thought about artist promotion,
which would help us on how we would go about
promoting the band.

27. Cont.
The majority of the replies we got were as we suspected. People said
that music was a part of their everyday lifestyle and they listened to
it daily. Also we learned that people felt the best way of promoting
music was using clubs, where they would listen to such music.
Lastly we found that hardly anybody felt that their dress sense is
strongly influenced by the music they listen to. Which meant that
when promoting the artist, we did not need to focus strongly on
creating a brand clothing for the artist that would be influencing
the way their fans dressed. Although I feel this would be a good
thing to do and would advice it.

28. Interviews
• I did a interview with a fellow soca lover before going
into the production processes of creating the music
video. The interviewee told of how they liked to see
people having fun and dancing in the videos, especially
when it matched the music. They felt that this made
them feel happy to see others being happy and it took
them to a different mindset.
• We also discussed issues to do with representations of
women in music videos. They felt that modern video’s
portrayed women in a certain way and that they
wanted women to be portrayed for being beautiful for
things much deeper than their material gains.

29. Feedback Throughout Production
• Once we had done some filming and captured the footage, we found
that the original idea given was not the direction we wanted the video
to go. After various feedback from people saying they could not
understand where the video was going and how it matched the music
style we scrapped the idea and came up with a fresh one.
• However, again, once we had captured the footage and began editing
we and other members of the audience constantly thought that
something was missing from the video and that we needed to add
something to bring a bit more happiness and flavour to it.
• So we did some more shooting, after receiving some careful feedback
and guidance and luckily found more vibrant, useful shots. Once we
added these in and edited it to our likings we all decided that the video
was to a suitable standard and put it onto the website youtube.com and
facebook.com in order to get feedback from an audience.

30. Final Video Positives
After the video had been finished I posted the
video onto the social networking site
facebook and got feedback from various
people. Both soca lovers and non, the
majority were very positive. This showed me
that our video had achieved the conventions
of what soca music video’s are meant to do.
Inspire feelings of happiness, unity, love,
togetherness etc.

31. Cont.
We got comments such as:
• ‘I really, really enjoyed watching that video. It looked liked
everyone was having fun and the shots of London were
well edited. The video looked very natural. Good job
everybody’ – Angela
• ‘This video is very good, I enjoyed watching it, actually love
the ending , very good..’ – Jasmine
• ‘Love it! Love it! Love it! Charming infectious fun! Yea!! Go
Performers. Top Marks from me! I really really love it.’ -
Maureen

32. Final Video Improvements
However, and gratefully we did get some comments
that sought to give the video improvement. Or
point out what they felt was missing from it that
would’ve helped to make it slightly better. These
people also felt that we had improved massively
from the original video we had, which helped us to
see that from the last video we needed to add more
sunshine, cutaways and just general happiness in
order to match the music style. The majority of these
comments were from non-soca listeners.

33. Cont.
• ‘I liked the fact that they were taking the mickey and having fun. Loved
the bit where the roller-skater was going through the cups. Also I liked
when the guys popped up from behind the car and that everyone was
taking it in turns to dance. I thought that the parts where the writing
flashed up were good too. It would have been good to see boys miming
the words of the song as well as the girls. It was great. Hope my
comments are off use.’ – Asabi
• ‘That looks better from the last time I saw it. I liked that u added the other
random shots of London.’ – Aline
• ‘Perhaps some party or BBQ or even shots that just show people chillin’
socially could have enhanced the sort of feeling you get from the music
but otherwise I agree with Aline ^ and also I like that its just a happy and
natural video, very suitable to the song..I like it.’ – Amit

34. Question - Four
How did you use media technologies
in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages?

35. • In regards to the planning, research and evaluation stages of
production we used different Microsoft software.
• For the evaluation we also used Final Cut Pro and filming
equipment in order to record and edit members of the
group answering evaluation questions and talking about the
various equipment we used.
• With the construction of the video, we used equipment like
a canon filming camera, a tripod (for steady/stable shots), still
camera (for taking pictures of locations), and a handheld
tripod in order to fulfill tracking shots that needed to be
filmed.
• When it came to editing the video we went to a editing
suite equiped with apple-mac computers and all the editing
software we needed such as Final Cut Pro and PhotoShop
(PhotoShop was used for the colourful backgrounds with
the text)