Our task was to design and create a promotional music video, magazine advert and digipak, the three combined making a promotional package. The purpose of using all three is to ensure that the song and the artist will be effectively promoted. By using a magazine advert as a form of promotional material the general idea is to promote the song to as wider range of the public as possible, however if the genre of the song that was being promoted was rock, you would be more inclined to put the advert in a rock magazine such as ‘Scuzz’ rather than a pop music magazine. All in all if the magazine advert is distributed correctly, it will be effective in promoting the band. With the digipak if the product itself is aesthetically pleasing and suits the style of its genre then it will also be effective in promoting the band. As far as the distribution of of the digipak goes, I think that most mainstream supermarkets such as ASDA, Morrisons etc, all sell a range of genred music. Along with this music stores such as HMV also are not genre specific, selling a range of genres and era's. With a digipak the ‘extra’s’ that can be added, unlike a standard cd are what makes the product more appealing to the audience, i.e.: The behind the scene’s footage, gallery of the artist/band etc. If a band or artist distributes a digipak, on the whole it will be more enticing than a typical CD. Finally the promotional music video is probably the most important element of the promotional package, if the video fits the expected criteria of its genre then it is likely to be a success and appeal to the correct target market. As far as the distribution of the music video goes it is completely down to the genre of the music as to determine what music channels it would be suited to. Our artist, Sophie Pentecost is a powerpop artist and therefore suitable music channels to exhibit her music on would be the likes of: Smash hits, The box and MTV hits, all of which play powerpop music, along with other genred music.
All music video's contain elements that when put together succesfully make an effective music video. Different musical acts would go about making their video succesful in different manners. For example, our video is powerpop and looking at exaples of powerpop video's it is obvious that there is a stark pattern. With the majority of the video's having an artist performance, along with a storyline that links with the lyrics of the song. An example of this is Leona Lewis- 'Bleeding Love'. This video see's Leona performing along with a number of storylines all showing relationship problems, this links with the lyrics of the song. The structure of the majority of music video's is an even blend of narrative and performance. The role of the performance element is so the audience get to see the artist and experience a performance. Aswell as this the role of the narrative is to give the viewer a better idea of the lyrics through portraying a storyline that is relevent to the song. In doing this the audience get the idea of the storyline behind the music as well as being able to experience the artist performing. It is important that the right camera work is used and the the angles are correct because they help express te meaning behind the video and determine the mood. On the whole (through research of the genre) I have gathered Powerpop video's use close up's and mid-length shots the most. This is done in order for the audience to get close up views of artist, and also the storyline. Editing plays a key role in the music video as a whole, if the editing is not done correctly or bits look like they need a bit of tweeking then it can make the music video look a disaster. Examples of bad editing would be: not cutting shots so they appear too long, not blending shots together successfully etc. The tempo of the song plays a role in how the editor would go about editing the footage. For example fast songs would need lots of quick, fast cuts, in order for the cuts t be in sync with the music. A slow tempo song would need more slow cuts and is more likely to use slow fades to sync with the music. Having good actors/ actresses is a bonus to a music video, especially if the song is meant to portray a certain storyline. Actors/actresses are used to portray the storyline. In some songs, depending on the genre, having a strong narrative can be very important. Some 'Indie' style songs have more of a 'quirky' idea behind the video and lyrics and in this case the narrative might not be as obvious as in a powerpop video. Mis-en scene is bringing everything together and placing it in a number of suitable locations that will portray the mood and meaning of the song. The location of the video and its compatibility with the song is probably the main factor in whether the video is successful or not.
I did some research on what is expected of a music video and my findings were that panning is a camera shot used accross most genre's. An example of this I have gathered through research is Faith Hill- 'There you'll be'. Her video uses panning shots in order to show the audience the setting for the video. Also a lot of close ups are used of Faith's face in order to show the audience performance from the artist, and also to convey her emotion. My findings also show that it is important to include narrative in a music video because if the video is all performance it does not keep the viewers attention as much as a video that contains both narrative and performance. Representation is also another point, whether the song is trying to address an issue or just an idea behind the song, our research shows that songs with a definite meaning and the ability to portray this meaning through the video are more successful than those that dont. An example of this is the video for Christina Aguilera- 'Beautiful' , the song deals with peoples insecurities and portrays the message that people dont have to fit to a stereotype, and that it is okay to be different. The video deals with transexuals, gays, anorexics etc, because the song has a powerful meaning behind it and the video portrays this successfuly the song therefore is a success. I researched into my chosen genre of music and my findings were that alot of mid and long shots were used, to get in both the surroundings of the video and the artist themself. Another point I gathered was that the majority of powerpop video's realate to the lyrics. In the three music video's I analysed there seemed to be a pattern in the sense that the video's all contained an equal balance of narrative and performance. Although their are stereotypes of certain genre's of music video some artists chose to ignore these and go for an unexpected take on their song, an example of this is: Rhianna - 'disturbia', this song goes against the stereotypical idea of a powerpop artist, although we see Rhianna performing there isn't really a storyline to it, we just see Rhianna portraying perculiar behaviour. On the whole it is fair to say all of Rhianna's latest songs have gone against the stereotype of a powerpop video.
A song that influenced our video is 'There you'll be' by Faith Hill. The shots used are similar to the ones we want to portray in the sense that they create a depressive mood. This is done by using bland, simple, darkish coloured sceneary. We also noticed that although Faith is singing about the death of her lover she is still dressed quite classy with her hair and make up done all nice, we wanted to make our artist the same. The storyline is made apparent in Faith hill's video with flashbacks of all the scenario's that were involed in the storyline, this is similar to what we did, by having our artist singing and then flashbacks showing the violence she suffered.
The black background on mariah carey's album and magazine advert was a huge influence on our album cover and magazine advert. The typical convention of our genre of a digipak is a pretty simple design, usually on really showing a picture of the artist and need to no information, such as: Artist name, title of song etc. We thought that in making the background all one colour and then having a picture of the artist on top it would make both the writing and picture of our artist stand out.
A typicality of the locations used for powerpop video's is that there is one setting where the singer performs and then another one or two that tell the story of the song. I think that we followed this effectively as we had seperate locations to portray the idea of the story as well as a location where the performance takes place. We used the same location for the performace and for the dometsic violence taking place, in doing this its meant to give the idea that the singer is erasing all the memories of the man away and is looking forward to a free future, this is shown through the fact that for her performance he is out of the house and out of her life. We used numerous domestic violence shots through-out the video to show the seriousness of the situation. The singers wedding ring is refered to numerous times in the video, it is used to signify the dometic violence inthe marriage. The wedding shots are meant to symbolise both the start of their marriage and the start of the domestic violence, then when she finnally takes off the ring we see the end of the marriage and the end of the violence. The clothes that the actors wear are significant as they are typical everyday clothing, which is meant to suggest that the violence is very typical everyday with them. This contrasts with the performance as she is dressed up for this, she is dressed up both to symbolise celebrating the end of the violence and because during her days with her husband she was unable to make much of her appearance, this also applys for the wedding when they were happy, before the violence began. It is important to remember the clothes an artist or actor is wearing for a video is meant to reflect their mood. ie: If a charactor is dressed in dark clothes it is meant to portray a dark mood for the charactor.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts
The package as a whole is meant to promote the song, by using pictures from the video on both the digipak and Magazine advert it shows consistency at the same time as differentiating them in some way. The promotional package is suited to the idea behind the story of the song. We didn't go for anything to 'flashy' or 'in your face' because for one it would not suite the genre of music, but also because it wuld not be right to have an 'in your face'digipak, as it could be argued to be 'glorifying' dometic violence. The types of music channels that you would expect too see this video on are the likes of 4music, Kiss etc. However traditional television isn't the only place that video's can be distributed. For example social networking websites are a good place to promote new artists, as it is easy to get backing and fans through the internet. Our magazine advert would be aimed at magazines that are relevant to our genre and target audience. A suitable magazine to put our advert in would be the likes of Womens magazines and magazines aimed at teeenage girls, this is because this song will be easy to relate to for young women, and also on the whole girls tend to be more powerpop fans than males. The digipak would be sold in all music shops and all good supermarkets like typical CD's, Digipaks and Dvd's etc.
Above is the digipak we created, I think we did a good job and our digipak was effective. It includes relevant information such as pictures, lyrics and a small section on the artist Sophie Pentecost. The picture inside the pack is in black and white because it is behind the DVD so it needs to look effective but also doesn't stand out too much.
This is our magazine advert, the background is black so that the the picture and text stands out. The picture is distinctive as we adjusted the colour and the writing in order to make Amie stand out. In the picture itself she looks frightened and it is made quite apparent by his posture and his expression that he has control over her. I think that our Digipak and Magazine advert work well together in portraying the idea of our music video.
What have you learned from your audience feedback
It is important to conduct audience research in order to get other people's view and opinions on our production package. Research should be conducted before creating the product as in doing so, it will then be apparent what the target market expect of the product. Audience feedback then has to be gathered after teh product has been created, to see what the audience think of the product and also to see if the product fits the expected criteria and is a success.
We created a questionnaire that asked questions on our final product. Six questionnaires were distributed, a response from one individual is:
'Very good use of black and white and colour, use of flashbacks really effective, eg: Showing photo's of the wedding, good timing. apart from on odd occasions, where it is a little off sync. The production package fits in with the song really well and the video looks very proffessional'.
Another persons commments are as follows:
'I think that the production package is very meaningful. I like the camera angles used. The idea behind the video is also very appealing and would be relatable to some people. I like the quick flasbacks used as a timeline of their relationship, I also think the picture on the magazine advert is very powerful'.
Underdog management are a are a proffessional music management company. They visited our media class on numerous occasions to give us help and advice with our idea's. They said they really liked our idea, and that done correctly would be really effective and successful. They also mentioned that by using a good mixture of narative and performance the video will be successful. When summarising the comments from the audience feedback they think that the products all work well together, and they all really enjoyed watching the video.
The importance of audience research is to see what the audience's reaction is too see what the audience reaction is to the product in question. In finding out audience opinion the producer of the product will know for future reference what is popular with the target market and what isn't. Of course audience research will only be aimed at the specific target market of the product. We did our audience research in order to find out what the target audience expected of a powerpop music video and then to see what they thought of our product and if they felt it was successful.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages.
When it came to choosing a song to use for our video we had copyright issues to consider so we had to chose an unsigned artist from unsigned.com. Unsigned.com is very important as it allows unsigned and unheard of bands and artists exhibit their music online. These are artists that can only be accessed on unsigned.com. artists such as our chosen artist Sophie Pentecost. We decided on an artist called Sophie Pentecost, who does a cover of the Coldplay song- 'Fix you'. However Sophie hadn't been given permission to use this song, so we were unable to use it. Sophie offered us one of her own original songs called 'Strong enough'. We kept in contact with Sophie through MSN and she sent us the song lyrics, aswell as an Mp3 version of the song. We often still talk to her even now, social networking sites such as facebook and Myspace were also a good way to keep in touch with Sophie.
For the making of our music promo we had to use various technological computer programmes, such as imovie on the apple macs. Imove played a massive part in the production of our video. Because in having this programme we were able to use specific effects etc that would not have been available with other editing programmes, and therefore in using the macs we were able to improve on our footage vastly. One specific editing technique we used was fading. Fading was very important to our video as it shows continuity and sync, and therefore made our video look more professional. Slow fades suited our video because the temop of our song was pretty slow, although nearer the end of the song when the tempo starts to pick up the shot length starts to do the same, once again showing continuity and proffessionalism. To gather my research I used the internet, I researched numerous powerpop artists in order to colate information on stereotypes and typicalities of a powerpop genre music video. We used video camera's to get our footage for the music video and a digital camera to get our stills for the digipak and magazine advert.
We had a general idea on shooting skills and what shots work effectively as we had some experience from last years preliminary task although through the amount of planning we did for this task I think its fair to say that we were a lot better prepared for it. Before we started shooting we had a general idea of what shot types we were trying to capture, however once shooting we made a few adjustments to the shots we were hoping to get. Through the actual shooting itself I think that I have deveoped my skills both in actually filming itself and in choosing the appropriate shots. During filming there were a few instances where we had a plan of what shot we were going to use, but then we re-evaluated the best shot to get the point accross and decicded to change our shot choice. I think overall through doing this production I have learned how to pick the right shot to suit the idea I am trying to portray best.
Learning to use the apple macs was the hardest element of the editing, but once we learned how to use the macs effectively we had no trouble editing our footage. When editing I learnt a few new skills, some of which being: The ability to sync the music and footage in time with one another, being able to cut slips effectively and blend shots together successfully.
The editing was also a major part in our video. we had to make sure first and for most that we kept it in sync and with the genre we needed to use certain techniques, one of which being short cuts of performance through-out the the narrative. The main transition we used was fading shots, we used slow fades to blend shots and it worked really effectively. The begining part of the song consists of short cuts, this is so the video relates with the song and also so the audience sympathise or even relate to the charactor. However, nearer the end of the song the pace picks up a bit and with this so does the quickness of the cuts. As the charcters moos picks up, the pace of the song does this also.
A technical issue we came accross as far as shooting goes was that on our second day of shooting was the fact that when we looked back on that days footage we realised there must have been somthing different about the lighting because in the same sceneary the lighting was completely different, amie's hair which is black looked more of a blue colour, as did the whole sceneary. When we came to editing and mixing both days footage together we realised that something had to be done because the colour change didn't show continuity. We decided to put certain shots in black and white/sepia in order to A) make continuity apparent and also we realised that actually in making some scenes black and white it reflected the mood of the charactors and also the black and white symbolises the fact that the scene is a flashback.
We used imovie to edit our footage, imovie was a good software to use as it has really good editing features and techniqies ie: numerous fading techniques etc. The editing software we got to use this year seemed to be a lot more technologically advanced and therefore probably contributed to us being able to do more effective editing.
We used Fireworks to create our digipak, one because it is an effective programme to use and two beacuse du to Tara (the other person in my group) doing ICT she has had a lot of experience on the fireworks programme and therefore using it would be to our advantage.
Blogger was a main part of our task as it is where we were to record all of our research and planning. Through our blogs we were to show all of our idea's and how we finally came to produce our finished video and ancillery tasks. Our blogs contain information on our chosen artist and their genre of music, also an analysis of a few music video's, etc. All of the information on the blog contributes towards our marks for planning. Blogger is effective as it displays all of our planning efficiently. It is better to display our planning through an online 'folder' as it is easier to keep organised, and is less likely to be lost or accidently get deleted. If someone was to do all their planning in numerous word documents and then there computer crashed they would lose all of their work, whereas if this was to happen when the work was all on blogger, it would not effect the work remotely.
Unsigned.com also played a massive part in our overall production, as it one of only a few places to find unsigned bands and artists. Other websites to find unsigned artists would be either Youtube, facebook. myspace etc.
By exhibiting our work on social networking sites, such as: facebook, Youtube, Myspace etc, we will be able to obtain a variety of unbiased criticism/feedback on our production, If we were only to ask our family and friends they would give us biased feedback, however in publishing our work online and seeking feedback we are more likely to get accurate reviews and opinions.
