Q4 "How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?"

For this assignment I was briefed to produce a music video, magazine advert, and digipak. To start this I had to use technology, such as social websites (Instagram. Youtube and such) as well as editing software (Photoshop, Premiere Elements and online presentation sites).

In order to find an artist to create a promotional music video for, we looked on a website called ‘Youtube’. This was because it was a way of finding an artist that had not been signed by a record company. This helps to avoid copyright issues because we would know that the artist had not been discovered. We knew from the start that we wanted to create a video for the genre ‘indie’, so we searched specifically for this and stumbled upon the artist that we ended up using. With the other songs that I liked I decided to make a playlist for them. This was so that I could easily find them in case I needed to send them to the rest of the group and get their opinion;

I decided to contact the artist, Briana Colishaw. I located her email from her website and then produced to ask permission for use of the song, as expected there were conditions to utilising the song. 

Proof of Use

Throughout the whole process of producing a promotional music video we used YouTube to find professionally made music videos by well-known artists. This aided us in the early stages when we wanted to find the conventions of music videos in general, and those to our specific genre. Also when editing it was a useful tool because we could get inspiration to create the style of video we aimed for. This was when we were in the editing process of the music video we looked for influences from artists such as Katy Perry ‘Part of Me’, Taylor Swift ‘Never Getting Back Together’ and Adele ‘Hello’. We took inspiration from these music videos as they have a similar story line to the one we aimed for, this meant that we could stay true to the story and see how the mix of narrative to performance. I also decided to include her social media links and email in case YouTube needed further proof of Fetherstone (Briana Colishaw) allowing me permission for use of “Two Hands On Deck”.

The Technology I have used in The Process

Our Task

Q3 "What have you learnt from your audience feedback?"

We have used a number of different methods to collect feedback from our audience. This is because we wanted to stick to the conventions of the age group in which people would listen to Indie music. This meant that the feedback given applied to our group and what we were planning to have our audience be for the music promo. The audience feedback has been extremely helpful because it have given us mix of footage and all being honest in their answers. The only disadvantage of this technique was that when put on the spot some people would become anxious about what they were saying and questioned whether they were giving the actual answer that they were thinking or wanting to give. Some of the people may have ended up not being in much detail that we would have liked, meaning that we wanted them to expand on their explanations a bit more.

 

I have analysed the Vox Pop responses and from this drew some conclusions on how it would affect our music video. From what I found from our first Vox Pop analysis is that they liked a mixture of narrative and performance, this was when we decided that we wanted our music promo to have an equal mix of narrative and performance.

Vox Pop

Vox Pop Dialogue

Focus Group

Focus Group Answers

Audience Feedback on Our Ancillaries



Conclusion

Q2 "How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?"

We must also consider where the music video itself will be exhibited. Until recent years music videos were mostly seen on television. However with the proliferation of smart phones and tablets people can view them wherever they are. They can be found on websites like YouTube and shared through social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This can be an incredibly effective way of sharing videos, this is because people can send it to their friends, share and discuss it.

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Using social sites is a great way to get word around about an upcoming artist, for example we set up an Instagram page with the handle @gpindie as in Georgia Phillips Indie as the name we gave our artist was my name, seen as I would be representing the artist. The final part, Indie, is for the genre of music that our artist created. On this page we would advertise and promote with synergising images of the ancillaries as to not give too much away about the plot and narrative of the music video. In addition, this is a medium popularly used by teenagers which is conveniently part of our target audience.

The images used to promote my artist have been chosen carefully, some have been used from the ancillaries; magazine advert and digipak. The others I have made specifically for the promotional page to give more of an insight on the personal life of the artist. There is a theme running through the images, black and white, this links to the magazine advert’s colour scheme which connotes that the audience will gain a sense of familiarity.

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Q1 “In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”

The Aspects of our Music Video





Costumes
As the narrative of the music video can relate to a realistic story-line, we have decided to dress the characters in simple/casual clothing as we want the viewer to feel immersed in the scene with them. We almost want the viewer/audience to feel like a fly on a wall, considering the narrative as we want them to feel as if they’re spying on the characters and viewing a section of their lives as they happen.

For our male character, the decision has been made on a casual look of a plain T-Shirt and jeans. This adheres to the indie genre of music videos as the band The 1975 dress in this way, keeping an ‘effortless’ look and feel to their style of appearance.

For the female character there will be two defining looks/styling’s and the same person will be playing both characters, which makes the audience feel like the singer has been through the experience that the girl in the narrative is going through. This is because the female is both the singer and girl featuring in the narrative. As she is, mainly the singer we want her to stand out from the narrative and have more of a defining appearance, so that when she is on screen she is seen set aside from the narrative. When appearing on the screen as the singer, she will be featured wearing a large coat, plain long sleeved top, and jeans.

In the narrative, the female will be wearing a style in clothing that is more‘effortless’ and realistic to see in a ‘real-life’ instance. There will be at times where she is wearing something similar to the male role, and when she’s in her room crying she will be wearing more ‘bed’ish clothing.

Props

The props in our music video are going to be both simplistic and complex. The simplistic props will be found familiar settings, such as the location of the house. The reason for this is because we want the viewer to feel engaged and have a sense of realisation as if they’re in the scene with the characters, feeling exactly what the actors/actress’ are experiencing.

The more complex props will be found in the room where the girl/singer is seen crying and tearing up old love notes from her abusive partner. The love notes will be hand written and presented on screen in slow-motion as she tears them apart. The reason for the letters being handwritten is because we want the audience to feel as if the other partner really loved her, enough to write them instead of typing them on a phone and sending them to her by text. Writing the letters, we felt was more romantic and suggestive that he loves the girl/singer as they would’ve taken time to write and think of. It also gives the audience a sense of realism, creating the enigma of how would they feel if they received these letters from a loved one/partner? How would they react to seeing them after they were abused by their partner? Would they be upset, angry, or even scared? These are all questions that remain as enigmas throughout the music video as we want the audience to think for themselves and perceive the video in their own way instead of us giving them all of the information.

Job Roles

Audience Feedback - Final Magazine Advert

Nathan Green - "It looks so much better now that the release date is smaller. The size of it is right as well because it's not bigger than the album name or your name, but it's still visible"

Elizabeth Potts - "It looks so much more professional now that there are social media icons, the album name and song names look great"

Jamie Cross - "I like that you've changed the main image to match the new colour scheme"

I feel that the new magazine cover is a massive improvement from the first rough edit and I am glad that I decided to change the colour scheme. In the first rough edit the colours did not match so it did not look very professional.

What I learnt from this first edit is that the main image should not be as big as it is, the album name should be included so that the audience is aware of what is being advertised.