Evaluation Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning
and evaluation stages?

From the early 1890s, when three men came together to start one of the biggest developments that would soon engulf the world; projecting a series of still images simultaneously to a live performance; to a modern era in which the technology has helped reform the way we see and use moving images and sound together to create a piece of art. The modern world has given us the benefits of the latest technology to give us the best possible ways of producing a music video, benefits that people in the 1800s couldn't possibly have wished it didn't come sooner.

With this being said I will now move on and discuss the ways that technology has helped us in every stage of our music video. Like all music videos, they require great research and planning. For this we had the help of the greatest advantage of the modern day; the Internet. We also had the help of the already existing music videos, and audios.

At the beginning of the year we each thought of a number of possibilities of what song we should interpret into a music video, but because we all had different tastes in music we decided to compromise. For this to work we looked into each other musical history; Simon and Sarah who are both Rock, and Heavy Metal fans; me being the complete opposite with a taste for R&B, found a common interest in 'Love The Way You Lie' because at the time of its release I, myself was interested already; Simon liked the aspects of creating a video to the song, and Sarah liked the lyrical aspects of it; as well as Simon's 'fan-ship' of Eminem during Primary/Secondary School. So moving on, we were able to use the Internet to inspire us, and to use as a research basis of coming up with ideas. For example, we used 'YouTube' a broadcasting website in which people can post their videos online, a lot of which are music video; just for the sake of naming one, 'Jason Derulo - Fight For You'. By looking at other music videos we were able to think of numerous ideas and ways that we could approach the production. The original version of 'Love The Way You Lie' gave one clear theme, which was domestic violence, so we stayed with this theme and thought of something that can be very stereotypical and commonly thought of, but not shown (I will explain this my post, in which I will discuss the mise-en-scene and representations given). When it came to planning, as its been said I came up with a brief about a vision that I saw in what could be our first scene, other than this, we looked, in terms of research and planning, we started looking at star theory, including that of Eminem, we also went into greater depths of analysing music videos, using Goodwins theory, and Craig Davies model of analysis.

As I've said in a post, some of the equipment that were involved in the processes of constructing our video involved the uses of DSLRs and tripods as well as a number of other pieces of 'production' eqipment; we also had the use of Mac Pro's, and Final Cut for the post production stages of our music video. This is what takes us into the modern world with the main advantage of this being we get instant feedback from our cameras, and we get to piece together the video digitally, meaning we need not worry too much about mistakes. Here are some examples of us piecing together the music video.

Using Final Cut Pro to create a music video required patience and was time consuming, this is because while it is easy enough to match cut the scenes, we had to make sure that the footage remained in sync with the lip movements, and the beat of the song. We also made use of our cinematography skills, because the video played around with time quite a lot, we had scenes that represented the past, present, and (arguable) the future. When it came to the 'Past' scenes we needed to create a feeling and look that suggested that it was set in the past, so we tinted the video, desaturated it, and blackened and unfocused the edges of the frame to create this scene of the past. Going back, we were able to obtain more accurate lip sync by miming to the actual song, to do this we needed something flexible, easy to move, and accessible, so we used my HTC Desire Android phone. Compare to the 20th Century where the performer would have to perform live, you can now, more popularly uses, mime to the song, without the need to transport different equipment from place to place.

Instant feedback and digital enhancements ment that we were able to evaluate our video as time went on, in one instance we were looking through the footage (one example is in the pictures above) and found that some of it wasn't our strongest, this was due to the performers or the fact that we thought that it made our video resemble the original. For example in this image we filmed in the Bury fields next to a wind farm, because of the fields use, it resembled the field in the original, so instead we decided to film the 'artist' in a much more darker alley way surrounded by tall, used buildings.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we had created our music video, we had to go about getting audience feedback for it. Therefore, we first asked people in our Media Class to tell us verbally what they thought of the video we had produced. One person in our class told us that, “It is what a well-made music video and it looked professional”. Off this feedback, we learnt that we made a right choice at the begging of the year to use our own SLR cameras, as this would give a more defined and more professional look to the music video.

Another person in our class told us that, “It is lip-synced extremely well”. From this feedback, we learnt that having Sarah and James act was a good choice because they were both extremely well at lip singing. Some parts of the Eminem’s wrapping were difficult to do so it took us a fair few attempts to synchronize them up with the song on the music video. Moreover, when Sarah was doing the first words “On the first page…” because of the speed this was going we took us many attempts to match it when she was acting. She started either singing a second too early, or milliseconds too late. Once they had gotten used to the lip singing they were both very good at it and usually pulled it off first time with no mistakes.

Once we had received all the feedback we could from our classmates, we then had to come up with another way of getting audience feedback. We discussed it with each other and finally came up with a good idea of putting our music video on Facebook. By putting it on Facebook everyone could watch it, comment what they liked, and give criticisms.

One the video was uploaded onto Facebook we all published it on our walls and asked people to comment on it.

We then started getting comments and likes of people, in these comments of people they told us what they liked and some even gave a good detailed review what was good about it.

Ryan Nelis gave us a good point by telling us that the music video we had produced felt like a real music video you would see on TV. Savanna White told us that the lip-syncing was very good. Daniel Robinson gave us some good feedback telling us; that it put across the emotions of the song well. It also presents the problem of domestic violence without showing th

e actual violence, just the emotions. Then we got good feedback off Sam Tierney say how the lip-syncing could not be faulted, and how it felt as though it was real arguments taking place. He also said how he liked how the music video was introduced, with the couple sitting on the couch doing some acting without music.

Off all feedback we learnt that the music video we had created had a very realist feel to it, and it shown the problem of domestic violence without having to show any physical abuse happening. It seemed to be that we had all positive feedback and no one wanted to give us negative feedback, so we must have done a good job on it.

Evaluation Question 2

Our music video is an illustrative music video showing a lot of face shots of the two singers as they both sung and acted. Our video is mostly acting, giving us lots of ideas for our digi-pack. For our magazine cover we used the idea of a standoff, both characters being dominant and controlling which contradicts with our original music video. In the original music video we had the male character being the abusive character. The female in the video was the weak and submissive partner. As the story progresses the roles of the characters swap and the female becomes more dominant as she starts to stand her ground and fight back.

On our album cover, we went for a light-hearted approach. We embarrassed the male protagonist by having him sat on a fallen chair with his feet in the air. We used this theme to connect and appeal with a younger audience, it will look more appealing to them and they would become interested. It highlights the dangers of drink, as he could appear to be drunk in the day (alcoholic perhaps) also highlighting the dangers of abusive relationships.

With our CD case we had bricks for the CD itself, this links in with the poster where both character are standing against a brick wall. The brick wall represents the strength in both characters, the male being the powerful and in some way evil strong personality. The female having a hidden strength that is biding its time till the emotions overflow. The colours on her clothes once the costume has changed represent this. They are standing on each side of the wall; the walls are joined by one side. This represents that they are two different people with two different personalities; they are just joined by the fact of their relationship.

Evaluation Question 1

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

(Unfortunately, our directors commentary didn't work out the way we wanted it to, mainly due to technical faults)

Our music video was inspired a number of videos; some R&B, some Hip-Hop/Rap videos, primarily, the inspiration came of Eminem's way of working, the fact that in most of his videos he tells you a story in some way, shows you that he is a narrator. We have duplicated this style but with a more original, but simple narrative style; using the basis of Eminem's narrative style, we intended to create a video that has a beginning and middle, but we leave the video on a cliffhanger as well as the fact that we show a mixed timeline, using both past and present. At the beginning of the video you see that the video starts with a sequence of acting, this comes from our inspiration that we found in the video, 'Stan'; in the video you see that the two main characters have a heated discussion before the video starts. Other videos that notably, have this in their videos are, 'Russian Roulette' by Rihanna, 'If I Were A Boy' by Beyonce, 'Love In This Club' by Usher, 'Run This Town' by Jay-Z just to name a few. A typical convention in Eminems videos is the dress codes that he has; as I've said before, his clothes symbolise his authority, masculinity, and seriousness. So that we didn't totally copy his dress code we added the black jacket to truly add the authority and seriousness.

Going back to the beginning of the video one other convention that relates to other videos in the R&B genre, is the idea of the males flirtatious and prowling of women; basically they generally show the males pursuit of a female companion. A video that clearly shows this is 'Forever' by Chris Brown. We wanted to stay true to this convention, because it also gives us the options that we needed to make this purely about a domestic violence relationship. To explain this, we can look into, Chris Brown's video; in the video he is pursuing a woman who is playing 'hard to get', we could easily turn this around into a domestic violence case by giving the male character a bad temper and the female showing total rejection, this allowed us to lead into the blackout and the sound of a remote being thrown and a slap to the face.

In terms of a typical music video, our video displays four out of six convention suggested by Andrew Goodwin, having already looked at this you can see that most obvious ones that we stuck to all the way was the way in which we show direct links between the lyrics and video just as we do with the music. An example of both of these can be seen when the 'artist' raps 'But when its bad, its awful. I feel so ashamed, I snapped...' this is follwed by a visual interpretation, which shows that we have stuck to the convention that shows a similar style to Eminem, in which we tell a story, giving our video a true narrative style.

Representations in Our Music Video

Our theme for our video is domestic violence, so we used many things to represent this in an acceptable way; from props, to facial expressions, to costumes and behond. These show representation through the mise-en-scene and performance given. Mise-en-scene is the placing, look and feel of the video; with this in mind an example of this in our video which shows that we represent domestic violence is the opening scene of the video. It combines the use of props, costume, facial expression, and placing. In this scene both are wearing black tops and blue jeans, this is plans clothing, and combining this with the upset or moody facial expressions show that they are both fed up; being sat on a couch and one of them holding a remote, also leads room for question. It suggests that their relationship is worthless, it is also very typical because shows the male character in a way that he always has his way and if he doesn't he becomes easily tempered, which can be seen as very stereotypical. Further into the music video we see that the female character has change of clothing, she is wearing a red top and appears, and acts more comfidently towards him, this breaks the stereotype that females are totally dominated in relationships. Also as I've said, it also a twisted representation, which is evident in the fact that she symbolises her pain but also her passion for the relationship. Also when the male character walks off screen we hear a remote get throne and a smack, but the screen is completely black, this gives evidence of domestic violence, but is also very mysterious because we cannot see whats happening; you then see her on a couch in a cuddled positon which shows her vulnerability, this creates her innocent look and makes you care for her, which again shows that males dominate.

Love The Way You Lie Analysis (Craig Davies' model of analysis)

In this post I will analyse our video in terms of the narrative style and performance aspects. Craig Davies, who is also a musician, characterised music videos as an illustration, amplification, or disjunction. Illustration being a straightforward performance/narrative video. Amplification, being the directors way of using both performance and narrative, but instead of a straightforward illustration, they use usual ideas and surreal approaches; for example, 'Praise You' by Fat Boy Slim. And disjuncture being a video that is completely abstract and has no obvious link to the music; for example Radiohead videos or even evidently Ed Sheeran - Lego House.

Looking at our music video, there is clear evidence that like Eminem's music videos, has this style of telling a story, which is telling you about lifes struggles and issues, for example ours is the case of domestic violence. What makes our video a narrative video, is that it tells the story of a couples struggling relationship, and tells you the current situation of their relatuionship and its past, splitting the video into examples of both the good and the bad times. In the video the lyrics match the video, one example can be seen in one of the fight scenes, where the lyrics read, 'But when its bad, its awfull. I feel so ashamed...'.

Love The Way You Lie (The Remix) - Music Video Analysis

Our music video falls under three main types of music in terms of genre; these are Rap, Hip-Hop, and R&B. Our video demonstrates many characteristics that support this. In terms of Rap and Hip-Hop, the ' main artist' in the music video displays some aggressive and angry gestures, body language, and facial expressions. For example, the second verse of the song, rapped by the male 'artist', you see that he displays angry facial expression and is pointing out at something, as well as looking fiercely into the camera as if he is rapping to the audience, telling them about his pain. This is done using close ups of the artist, this demonstrates that he's in your face, and the focus is on him, another video similar to this is Lil Wayne ft. Eminem - Drop the World. In terms of the three genres, the female and male 'artists' demonstrate characteristics of each through their clothing and appearance, especially through the type of colours. For example, R&B can be associated with warm, deep colours, Rap and Hip-Hop can be associated with cold colours, such as blue; and then all three of the genres can be associated with the colour black. In meaning and in terms of music, these colours express generic convention very simplistically, R&B, Hip-Hop, and Rap artists dress mostly in dark or warm clothing or the complete opposite, all of these artist tend to use the colour black; this is because the colour black symbolizes authority and/or seriousness, which is what Hip-Hop, Rap and some R&B artists tend to express in their music videos. Blue also one of the predominant colours associated with Hip-Hop, R&B and Rap, symbolizes masculinity but can also demonstrate sadness, this shows the seriousness of the artist, and tends to separate them from the style of female artist's. Some of which can be seen in the work of Eminem ('Stan' and 'Cleaning Out My Closet' especially), Drake 'Forever', Chris Brown 'Look At Me Now'; all of these artist tend to either where dark blue, in the case of Eminem, dark blue jeans; or black, in the case of all, either black suits, jackets, hats, or they even use both colours in a cinematic way to demonstrate their feelings. Another colour used by artist are warmer, more earthy colours, predominately red, yellow, brown. Red symbolizes sin, guilt, pain, passion, blood, and anger, which is a clear representation of the Rap, Hip-Hop and R&B genres in some way or another. For example, the work of Eminem (Cleaning Out My Closet and Love The Way You Lie), Rihanna (Only Girl (In The World), Man Down, and Umbrella). This links into our work through the costumes that we chose; for example at the beginning of our music video, the female and male protagonists are both dresses very similar, both are in a black t-shirt and blue jeans, both display that this is about to become very serious, and that they are serious. Further into the video we see that the male 'artist' is wearing a black jacket, white vest, and dark blue, baggy jeans, much like Eminem; this is to show the same if not more seriousness of the artist, because he is showing dominance, masculinity and seriousness through his appearance given by the addition of the black jacket to heighten the symbolism. Then we see that the female protagonist and 'artist', both wear similar costumes but convey a different meaning. The female protagonist is wearing a black and red t-shirt, and black leggings and a skirt; this is to show that she is fighting back, and she is standing up for herself, she becomes much more serious and the dominance in her begins to rise quickly. it is almost twisted because it shows her pain, but also shows her passion for their relationship, creating a double meaning.

Just like the original music video, our video had direct links between the footage and the lyrics behind the song; some are very literal. For example, when Eminem raps, a visual interpretation is given shortly afterwards, if not directly after.

Our music video also has links between the music and visuals. In terms of Rap and Hip-Hop, our video links well with the signature style that Eminem has; in his videos he creates this strong and basic narrative, this shows that he is telling a story and is giving his thoughts on real-life issues. The editing style of his videos are also reference to Hip-Hop and Rap, but they also show reference to R&B. For example, much like his videos, we have given the rapping cuts a much more quicker continuity edit, and the protagonist scenes a very filmic style of filming, this links with the style of R&B videos as the editing is slow and smooth.

Our video takes into account the demand of close ups of the artist, but like the original, we have given the priority to the domestic violence relationship in the video. This also links with the idea that Eminem's videos contain some form of narrative. In the editing of video we decided that because the amount of footage and time that was normally allowed we decided that we weren't going to use the shots of the television that we planned to use at the beginning of the music video. This if we used it would be a reference to the notion of looking.

Magazine Cover

This is our magazine cover to advertise our new CD release. We got the idea for our poster whilst filming some argument shots. One we filmed all the arguments and look back over them we noticed that at some point Sarah and James gave each other evil looks. We thought that this would be a good idea to do as it shows the anger from both couples, and with thee corner of the wall to set the scene perfectly.


This was our original draft, it was going to be in from of a wall to begin with but we changed our minds as the wall corner represents the relation, leading in different directions but meeting ( crashing) all the time.

CD Case

This is our CD case that we have made. Going round clockwise from the bottom right corner is our Front CD Cover. The theme of our CD is a light hearted theme, an attempt to bring some humour to it as our project is on the not so humorous subject of Domestic Violence. The back of the CD case (Bottom Left) was a tribute to the song "Love The Way You Lie". We had an assortment of songs that are all different versions of the original song. We again took light hearted theme to this by using the bin number and a corner of the foot. The place where the CD is held (Top Left) is also humorous by using the bricks of the wall, this contrasts into their CD where we also used bricks but in colour. Finally, we used a chair on its back for the inside cover (Top Right).

This is our original draft of the CD case, originally the CD back was going to be a full shot of the green bin in colour but when we actually took the image it didn't come out the way we wanted. so we decided to include a corner of his shoe to give the image a focal point.

Love The Way You Lie (The Remix)

Here is our Music Video, 'Love The Way You Lie (The Remix)'

It is about a couple who's relationship is torn, as things went from good to bad, and from bad to worst. We have based it on domestic violence, similar to the original music video. Differently to the original we have included both perspectives of the relationship in one music video; combining 'Eminem - Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna' and 'Rihanna - Love The Way You Lie pt.2 ft. Eminem'.