The brief that we worked towards for our three main products was Breif Number One - Music Promotion. Our aritst Carl Hauck, we found him on Unsinged.com under alternative music. We seeked permission straight away from him after listening to his songs and he had contacted us back within a day.
We also thought that to thank for him letting us use his song and also giving us the song free of charge we would have a special thank you, which we did add at the end of the video. The genre of music we wanted to go for was Acoustic/indie music because we had initial ideas before we partnered up, so it was a specific genre that matched with our ideas. All that was left was for us to find an artist that connoted this in their music. We did originally have an artist called Erick Baker and this song 'Comfort You' we thought would go perfect with our ideas we had in mind. However, it did not work due to it being quite hard to recieve permission back over the six weeks we gave him to reply. Therefore, as an alternative we found Carl Hauck and we were more happier having the permission and support back from the artist.
Carl Hauck has throughout his songs a sense of belief and escape which is what my partner and I thought would go well with ideas we came up with. We wanted to clearly dennote this in the video through the song about the artist being able to escape through his music. From listening to the song we started branching our ideas to what would suit the artist from our prespective and other artists that were similar. We used a pinterest board to carry this out and became useful in terms of explaining to our audience what they were going to see in our video.
This week was our last week at school to do two of the evaluation parts together, so we aimed to have both finished by the end of the week. From our audience feedback we made a powerpoint and voiced over important parts we had included. Along with this we also added in things that what we would have improved on from what has been said from peers. We also finished off a video we made including our video and other music videos that inspired us in terms of shots, mise-en-scene and many more aspects. This video helped explain where some of our ideas were influenced from and some ideas that helped us develop original ideas even further to try something new in our own work.
Overall this has helped us understand the pros and cons to our work and made us able to put into construction to see what we have achieved over all three products. These are some of the videos we put in our work and used as research before we created our very own:
This week we focused on our evaluation for our main product and ancillary products. We also were giving feedback to others on all their products by watching theirs and filling out a feedback sheet to explain what was conventional, effective and their strengths and weaknesses. We too recieved ours by the end of the week to help us fill out a part of our evaluation in order for us to know what our audience/ peers thought of it. We started by cutting in other videos along with ours to make a video discussing what we developed, changed or challenged in terms of conventions with our media products. We decided to put annotations in with the video playing so it would be easier for the viewer to view and hear what we want them to know from our commentary. This will demonstrate what we had used and where we had got these ideas from by following artists within the simialr genre. Here are some of the videos we used to compare with our own:
This week we carried on with our digipak making more amendments and looking at other examples to give us some inspiration to what we could add on some of our panels. We used Kings of Leon as a main example for both digipak and magazine advert because they went for a simple look which is what we were heading for.
This digipak is very simple in design but supports the artist by it's images and this could represent the band and their songs. For the magazine advert we did our design first and then decided to add the rest like typography and small detail at the bottom like retailers where you can buy the album and information on where you can find out more about the artist and where the songs that feature, all on his website.
As you see from this advert we've done the same by putting our image as our centre piece and the title of the artist standing out at the centre top. At the bottom we had the name of the album and other details like a website, a logo of itunes to say where you can buy it through. We kept our aspect of the leaves and the guitar because they are both main aspects of our music video.
At the beginning of the week we added our extra shots that we filmed over the weekend. The shots turned out to be really good and fitted in well with the rest of the video because we got a contrast of location because before it was mostly just based on one throughout so this helped it break up the video. We then recieved feedback and we were told that storyline flowed much better and is more interesting to watch because there is some sort of storyline now and the shots are more interesting to watch. We then managed to sort out most of the shots and watched it all to make sure that it flowed well and we really were pleased with how we edited it. Also we added in the rest of our effects and started to add our title on the beginning of our video. We changed our ending because we wanted to edit in a manner that just finished off the storyline. At the end of this week we started our digipak and magazine advert and we took all our ideas together to come up with each panel. To also help us we asked people what they would expect to see in adverts and on a digipak. These are some screen shots of our progress over the week.
In the digipak we are also going to add a message from the artist and maybe a picture of the artist. We are still planning on the two panels and will be looking into other artists and the ideas they had for their own digipaks.
This week we recieved feedback from our peers and what they think about our video. This feedback helped because people were for our work and really were intreged to know about how we filmed certain shots and how we added and changed effects to make it look the way it did. We also were told that maybe we could add something in between the video give more of a storyline rather than the artist just being in the forest. We have the idea of showing more of our artist being rejected because that is what the video is about. The artist is suffering in the inside of the industry but when he is out in the open he is free to be the artist he wants to be without anyone telling who he is and who he should be. We are planning to film the rest of these shots over the weekend so that we can add them all on the following week and come to a climax of our video. These extra shots will make the storyline clearer for the audience to understand and should give it that extra lift to make it more exciting to watch.
This week we came back to school and started editing our shots. We uploaded our footage on to final cut and started to cut our intro to the beat. Whilst putting shots onto our timeline, we experimented with different effects and changed the colours in the background to make the video feel like it is set in autumn time. We managed to get half way through the video by the end of the week and plan for other products, the magazine advert and digipak and what and where things were gonna go and when we were going to do it around our schedule of editing. Overall the week went well to start off with our editing and we plan to finish it before the deadline so we have some time left over at the end to go over and make final touches.
This week we filmed in Hainault forest for our music video and we managed to film a lot of the video in the day. We had one of our friends who was going to feature in the video, he arrived late due to delays with transport but when he arrived we filmed more shot of him with our artist. The day overall went great as it allowed us to experiment with shots and because our song was based on nature it was a great location to film on. When filming naturalistic objects we tried to capture different angles and tried to get in the sun so we would have a flare running over the top of the shot. Throughout the day we managed to shoot all our shots and even extra shots that we could have added whilst editing.
This week we looked at some digipak examples to help and a main influence came from Radiohead's 'I Might Be Wrong' Live Recordings.
This helped us branch out ideas what we would put on the digipak and what would be needed in terms of information on the label and artist etc. We have also been experimenting on fireworks trying to make a old fashioned book page in the background. By this we have been merging colours like browns and creams and blendening them to get the effect. For our digipak we had scanned into see if we could photoshop the drawings of our leaves in the background which we are still in the process of doing. We are also planning to film next week during our holidays as we will have a whole day to do our filming and will not have to worry about time. This will enable us to get most of our filming done ready to edit when back in school. We have filming to do in school too which we will film on a day after school so we have the room free. Overall, this week we have been able to do a lot of planning and preparation for our three products making us sure of what we need to do over our break and when we get back to school.
This week we have shot recci shots that we could potentially edit like when editing our real music video. This will enable us to learn some more new skills in terms of editing when it comes to the real thing. We planned out the digipak and magazine so we know what it would contain when it comes to making the actual product we know what it will contain. We also carried on looking at the recci shots we filmed and what type of effects and editing styles we could add to make it look more interesting. We researched over the Internet different ways we could do this and we found out there are many different ways to give it a vintage look. This was done by changing colours to more reds when in the sunlight and more blues out of the sunlight giving it that summer and winter look. The colours go well as they contrast with what has been filmed like we filmed leaves and tried to focus on a leaf whilst the rest went out of focus then to add colour we a blue and purple shade to match the leaves.
Here below is some of our recci shots we filmed and edited to what we could potentially use when it comes to our actual music video:
We had received feedback from our teacher on our idea for our music video and we considered to change it around a bit. By this we added a story line of some sort to make it more interesting. We carried on with shots looking at examples of existing videos that would suit our song and look at the shots they have carried out in theirs.
This video inspired us to take that step further with shots and conventions towards our genre. We thought the way Ben Howard has used his storyline with the song matches extremely well and could be something we could carry out in our own. These artistic shots will help connote what the artist is like and too the meaning behind his song.
This week again we carried on with our shot list making the shots very related and suited to our song. We looked at similar videos again to give us some inspiration with ideas. Also this week we changed our idea completely to make it more appealing as we discussed with our teacher a new idea and she favoured it in terms of narrative and shots. She thought that it would go better with our song and lyrics rather than our original idea.
Another task we carried out this week was desiging our flatplans for our magazine and digipak. We decided to go for a hand drawn animation so we considered this by looking at images of hand drawn guitars, leaves and other images for backgrounds like old paper and vintage covers for books. Because in our video at a point we have a book we thought that it would go nicely with our design.
Audience Theory: Our audience research we carried out by survey monkey and this helped a lot towards in what our audience wanted to see in our music video and how it would suit them. After we created an audience profile to brainstorm what our ideal audience member would be like in terms of dress, artists and songs. From this we have looked at how we could apply this to all three of our products and how our song will suit to the shots, storyline, props and most importantly the song and lyrics. For our digipak and magazine adverts we had looked at other artists that would suit our genre so that we are heading in the direction that our audience will favour using all the right perks to do so. Others we looked at in terms of interesting examples that would be considered are:
Representation Theory:
Our artist is a male so we have considered to follow what male artists are normally seen like in videos. Looking at solo male artists within our genre such as James Morrison, Ben Howard, Jason Mraz etc. we have learned that their style is similar.
Ben Howard follows the style and aspect we wish to carry out with the scenery. Like in the video you see his perks because of his career but you also see what he carries out in spare time away from his career. He goes around on a bike mostly visualising all aspects around making it based on location. In our video we want to show that aspect of freedom and escaping from the real, tough world.
In James Morrisons video it has some interesting shots that we took into consideration. There is a certain shot that we liked and he had his guitar and the camera tracked down the cords to the strum to show the guitar. This could give a lot of representation towards the artist making us as the audience know what type of person he is like and most importantly what he is like when it is about music and lyrics.
Conventional Styles of Music Videos and Media Language:
For our video we are following a narrative because it suits to our lyrics. We are having the narrative of our artist not being allowed to express or be himself in the real world but when he enters a calm, outside, nature location he is who he is. Expressing through his music. We are having the peformance aspect too so that we have the artist relating with the songs so that the narrative and lyrics will carry out what we intended. Other videos that carry out this aspect follow this same sort of path so that the audience does not get bored very quickly, always being entertained shot after shot. We have considered to show a lot of close ups making sure that the audience understands and can maybe relate to our artist through the shots. The close ups will make the understanding of the artists emotions more clear and also by how he is saying the lyrics.
This week we have been finishing off group work like our focus group and final treatments. From our feedback we had learnt a lot about what our audience wants and is expecting to see in our video from hearing the song. We gathered our ideas together and put them into our final treatment so we understand ourselves what we are heading for in terms of our video, magazine and digipak. We have again been looking at similar artists that are within our genre and would suit our idea for our video, these are some videos that we looked at:
This video really gave us some ideas as the whole greenery area is what we are heading for so some of the shots towards the beginning gave use some ideas. This we used to help us create shots for our shot list and what we could be considering to film in our own.
Another video was James Morrison's video as he had some shots with him and his guitar that we could follow and try to create into our own. The shot you can see below was something we also wanted to show as it was interesting shot that could go with our song having a guitar as one of our main instruments. Another of Ben Howard's videos called 'Only Love' also had really interesting shots that we could take into account. Mostly they were shots focusing on things that we wouldn't focus on all the time like birds, branches or even other little things. This sort of aspect follows our song and also the lyrics and can be useful when interpreting our song right for our audience.
The responses we got from our survey were all very similar. We found that they all listened to the same or very similar genres of music , which was very similar to genre of the artist whose song we are using to make our music video too. Predominantly this audience either buy clothes that are vintage or clothes that resemble vintage clothing. They watch most of their music videos on youtube via vevo. The social networking sites they use facebook,twitter,tumblr and instagram. They all believe that vintage clothing is cool and we plan to have the artist wearing vintage/ vintage-like clothing in the video. A majority of the people who filled out my survey didnt go to london and prefered staying at home or going to parks and forests to hang out with their friends, listen to music and read books. They said that they enjoyed doing the things above in their free time.
In our music video we have planned to show the artist wearing similar clothes to what our target audience wear. From the feedback we have also learned that it is important to have the right setting throughout the video in order to match the lyrics and harmony in the song so it will appeal to our audience throughout. From the research we have carried out by looking at videos, pictures and websites we have seen how it is important to get the right shots and editing styles to match the genre we are showing and therefore will appeal to our audience. The artists we have looked at have shown throughout their videos their sense of style in their props, shots and editing styles. For example in Kings Of Leon's video 'Back Down South' throughout we see their sort of rural area they suit to best and it would be wise for us to follow this to show our artists persona. The certain effects we have seen in other artists videos during our research have proved to be very useful in giving us an outline of what effects should be used in our video. In Maverick Sabre's video 'I Need' throughout we saw a rough effect in some shots which looked old fashioned but suit him as an artist and his song and we plan to project this in ours. The certain shots we have seen have shown us what would be suitable when filming ours, an example we really liked was Keaton Henson's 'Strawbear' has close-ups and extreme close-ups as wells as shots focusing on small details not giving away too much of the artist as a whole to the viewer.
For our digipaks we have decided to go for a simple animated style with not too much detail into the cover to keep it basic but also artistic appealing to the audience. We haven't seen that many like our idea and is why we would like to be the first to create something unique and different. An example that is basic could be Keaton Henson or Jason Mraz becaue both of theirs are simple.
The typography we are planning to use is Helvetica font and this font is basic but matches well with our genre of music, artist and video. It also appeals to our target audience as this is one of hipsters favorite font. Like we have seen from these two examples it appeals well. For our magazine advert we want to go for a similar image we are showing on our digipak but also keep the image different and still appealing to our artist. So the image will be bigger, better, same font and eye catching so we are heading in the right direction in terms of appealing. From our research we have seen that artists in similar genres have the artist as the main focus but some don't and focus on other images that have some sort of relevance to the album or a song featured on the album. We would like to show this with having some sort of relevance to the song we are doing for the video but also show the artists persona. The sort of critics and reviewers on the advert would be someone like Q music or others that are into the genre we are signifying. The artist name would be quite big along side of the image so they are both the main focus and also we would have the stores they will be able to purchase from someone like HMV because they sell all genres. Also we would have Carl Hauck's official website so the audience know where else to get more information from.
This is who we would see our target audience to be for our artist, from the way they dress, genre of music and similar artists. We are aiming for both male and female and listening to Alternative, Folk, Indie or Acoustic music. Their dress sense would follow similar artists such as Keaton Henson and Ed Sheeran as you could say their genre is similar to ours.
The type of clothing we would see our audience wearing would be something vintage, different and unique like we can see from above. The brands they would mostly like are something like Topman, Topshop, H&M and other shops that went for the vintage look.
These sorts of clothing would be worn by women and men for our target audience. We plan to reflect this by having our artist dressed in this similar clothing. So as we have heard from our target audience that their hobbies would be visiting rural areas rather than big cities with noise. They go for the more calmer, more open life making them quite laid back people. Similar artists that would be liked from our audience would be people like Ben Howard, Keaton Henson, Kings Of Leon, Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran.
The feedback we received overall was mainly positive and good feedback that we can take into account when making our music video. Some of them did not really like the song as it wasn't their type of music they usually listen to but they thought it was a perfect song for us and our idea went well. We asked for their opinion on what they thought they would see from just hearing the song and they thought that greenery and forest scenes would go well. Also one of our ideas we thought of had actually been favored with having our artist busking and just getting on with everyday life.
We also asked what they would see our artist wearing in the video and one of our friends said he saw them dressed farmer like but another disagreed and said he would be wearing casual clothing. This is when they agreed as a group that our artist would be similar to Ed Sheeran like from the way he dresses and the song would be a similar genre.
This week we have been focusing on images and other videos that could relate to what we want to show in our very own music video. In class we looked further into details in certain videos and from there took some ideas to put towards our own. We thought this would be a great way to appeal even more towards our audience knowing what they would like to see.
One video that caught our eyes was Kings Of Leon's video because they carried out the aspect of having the lens flare and the sun peaking through the trees it would seem to go very well with our song. It would signify our song by the lyircs and the harmony. Another video we looked at was Colplay 'Fix You' and the storyline of him just walking around would go well with the song because it is calming and that is the sort of message we want to get across.
This week we looked into digipaks and what we would need to be considering on there when making our own. We looked and analysed several examples including these:
So with Katy Perry's digipak Teenage Dream we can see her whole theme is the sweet candy theme. This we can tell from the colours and the images. So we have the CD's as a lolipop and doughnut and the clouds as candy floss. This also works well with her video 'California Gurls' as the theme in the video is also based on candy and the whole land is made out of it so it would make sense for her album to have some relevance.
Here Rihanna's digipak again is following her video 'Only Girl In The World' where she carries out the theme of having red colouring everywhere including her hair. Her dress is all white to make her stand out from the backgroud but however I can see why she wanted to carry out the theme on her album.
The feedback recieved from my peers was mainly very good feedback that was useful to me and to help point me into the right direction. They liked my ideas and how combined I combined ideas together to show what is going to be in the video. They understood how it would appeal and agreed on the age and to help I showed them some examples which they liked and thought worked well with my artist and for my video. They thought me and my partner should combine our two ideas together and see what it brings out as an idea and we have discussed as a pair and come to an agreement. Even though our artist has changed because of permission issues it still matches our idea and we are more happier with this artist because we think it suits better than the first person we picked. Overall we were very happy with the positive comments towards our video and will carry on our peers ideas to consider when filming and editing.
