FINAL PRODUCTS

https://daniofficialmusic.wixsite.com/media

EVALUATION 4

SCRIPT:

Online research into target audience, narrative and star image:

To determine who our target audience would be for our artist Dani, we created a survey using survey monkey. We asked questions to determine the demographics by asking their age and gender. From this, we found that our target audience would be both male and female aged 11-25 as they are a young audience and so therefore because Dani is a young pop artist, we thought she would appeal to these ages. We were then able to tailor our narrative to something that they would want to see and appeal to them. We used the internet to research into similar artists such as Louisa Johnson and we looked into their star images. From this, it was clear that these artists did not include the use of instruments in their music videos as it allows them to sell themselves, rather than their music and it also emphasises their synthetic pop nature. Therefore, in order to conform to these conventions, we would not include instruments in our music video. Additionally, from looking at music videos and photos, we saw that these artists wear very bold clothing which signifies their celebrity status. However, we wanted to make Dani seem relatable to her audiences and so we dressed her in everyday clothes such as jeans and a denim jacket but with bright red lipstick in order to emphasise the idea that she is still a synthetic artist. This shows that Danis star image is conventional. 

Filming your animatic - what you learnt from this:

The storyboard was drawn out carefully using our initial ideas from our group discussions and focus group feedback, we then used our mobile phones to take photos of each frame of the storyboard and then edited this in time with the song. This helped us see how the music video would potentially pan out. After having completed the animatic, we took videos of our target audience giving feedback and concluded that we would need to add another narrative strand and shorten some of the shots in order to create an entertaining music video. The animatic helped us to visualise our music video and give us a good idea of what our finished product will look like

Filming your music video - how you used the camera more creatively than at AS

Our skills in camerawork this year demonstrated the way we had improved as we weren’t matching generic conventions and had more choice over the way we represented our artist. We used 2 adaptable lenses rather than last year when it was one fixed lens, and this enables us to make sure that the close ups were in high definition, so we could focus on the artist lip synching. The 50 mm close ups were effective for selling the artists star image of a rebellious pop artist Whereas the 18 mm lens for the wide shots enabled us to focus on the location where she sprays painted the walls which again enhanced her star image as rebellious. In addition, we also used whip pans which we couldn’t master last year which enabled us to match the fast energy of the song with the vibrancy of the fast-paced movement of the camera.

Editing - How you edited more creatively than at AS:

Our music video required more advanced editing skills and enabled us to use after effects as well as demonstrate how our skills progressed in premiere pro. As we had more footage and were creating an artist’s image from scratch we had more freedom and therefore cut from performance and narrative element frequently. For example, we cut between different locations and different ways of our artist getting revenge. We made sure our song was cut to the beat on premiere pro and matched up the lip synching to the milli-second on the timeline to make sure our artist was in time with the song and make it look more professional. Additionally, in the studio footage, the backdrop was a green screen, which gave us the advantage to choose any background we wanted. In adobe after effects we inserted a graffiti background, which was relatable to our narrative. And helped sell our artist as being more rebellious. Overall as our music video was discontinuous and featured a wider range of shots and our editing skills were far more developed than last year as we had much more freedom in creating our music video

Digipak and Website - How you created a cohesive package that ran along 3 different technologies:

We created a cohesive package by using a similar colour scheme on the website and on the digipak. The choice of the pink colour is effective as it helps to bring together the two products and make them easily identifiable as Dani’s products. The pink also allows us to target our audience effectively as it reinforces the idea that Dani is young and fun. The star image is created via these products through the clothing that Dani wears. On the Digipak Dani is wearing a denim jacket and, on the website, she is wearing a spray paint leather jacket, this reinforces her rebellious but relatable star image within the two products. Additionally, the font was also kept constant within the products, this will help Dani’s fans to establish a brand, making her products more cohesive and recognisable

EVALUATION 3

We gathered different types of audience feedback. For example, feedback during our research and planning, the construction of our media products, and feedback on our final music video, digi pack and website. 

It was especially important that we got feedback from our target audience 15-30 because it was essential that this audience were pleased with our products, as these are who we are selling it to. 

It was important to get feedback for each of our media products as they are part of a promotional campaign for releasing our album to a specific target audience. Getting feedback at each stage of the construction of all products and the creation of our star image was vital as we wanted to make sure to products appealed to our target audience. 

When we finished the 3 main products (music video, digi pack and website) it was obligatory to get audience feedback to gather their opinion and see if we achieved our aims successfully and if the audience would buy our album. 

What is a focus group?

A focus group is the most grass roots way you can learn about your media business. By gathering a select group of regular people together, you can find out how your company is perceived versus your completion. The Answers you receive allow you to build your band, as you learn from criticism. 

Our focus group allowed us to receive detailed qualitative data, which we would used to analyse whether our music video idea was good or not. We were able to gather a lot of feedback which helped us to make our final product the best that it could be, and without feedback our final products wouldn't be what they are. 

Advantages of a focus group:
They are useful to obtain useful information about person and group feelings, perceptions and opinions they can provide a broader range of information 
Disadvantages:
It is difficult to gather a large group of ppts, and some people in the focus group may find it intimidating as they could feel pressurised to go along with the majority. Focus groups are also not randomly allocated, therefore the sample may not be representative. 

Different types of Research: 

Qualitative Research:

This method of research questioning aims to discover the opinion and preferences

of the target group. 

This enables more detail and therefore more quality in their responses as they can

elaborate 

The questions in this type of research will be open questions, so they can elaborate

on the question, which is better than a closed question, which has limited 

responses 

However, evaluating this research is time consuming

Quantitative Research:

This method of research questioning enables gathering figures or data 

You will use this type of questioning when you want to record statistics on audience preferences 

Closed questions are using in quantitative research. 

Can we used to draw conclusions and to create visual representation of the data gathered. Can be gathered through questionnaire which can include multiple choice answers 

Quantitative data can be analysed easily, however it is less detailed that qualitative research. 

We are using both these methods to gain a more holistic understanding of our target audience. 

We noted down the feedback given from our focus group, allowing us to see the preferred idea and what works best for our music video. This allowed us to see that we should go for a revenge narrative because the people we interviewed said this idea was the most interesting and could present revenge ideas in an interesting way. It also raised the content that we needed to pick a song that made sense with our narrative, rather than just picking a random song. 

From the previous feedback, this allowed us to develop our idea and then pitched it to a focus group. It was useful to film the responses as it allowed us to concluded that our target audience liked our final idea for the narrative and that it appeals to them. 

It was useful to help our focus group understand how we would show certain things For example, the frape and when she will be performing due to the different locations used. We also noted that we needed to think of unique ideas as they had been similar in other music video. This allowed us to thing of revenge ways such as sticky notes on the car. 

EVALUATION 2

SCRIPT:

Hey guys and welcome to media Mondays, on SJM Radio where we will be discussing the new and upcoming artist Dani Alexander, ever since her debut single ‘we are never ever getting back together’ was released last week, she has been trending on twitter with the hashtag #Danisrevenge and so we knew we must answer a few of the many asked questions. 

1: How was Dani’s star image portrayed in the music video?

In the music video, we tried to portray Dani as being a synthetic pop artist but with a rebellious edge. One way we did this was through the use of clothing – unlike other pop artists we did not want to sexualise Dani and so therefore we dressed her in everyday clothing such as jeans and a denim jacket, this allows her fans to relate more to her as her style can be easily copied. Additionally, her actions of vandalism and spray painting shows her rebellious side which therefore differentiates her from other similar artists such as Louisa Johnson 

2: What is the narrative about? And how did you portray it

The narrative is about Dani and how she went through a toxic breakup, the main aspect of the narrative is Dani going through a range of emotions and taking her anger out on him due to the fact he cheated. We definitely portrayed this narrative through the use of props for example. We used a playstation to which Dani would smash, this was used to represent how the ex-boyfriend ruined the relationship and so therefore it shows Dani to take a dominant role and get revenge, rather than being sad and upset. This is different to other artists such as Taylor swift who usually creates narratives about the sad aspect of her breakups.

2: What genre is Dani’s Music:

Dani’s Music is mainly in the pop genre, as it is fast beat, her music video includes bright colours and no instruments are involved. The pop genre is suitable for Dani as she is young and so therefore would want to provide upbeat and fun music for her Fans, the song we are never ever getting back together is very catchy and so therefore this will allow her audience to promote it on social media and through their friends. The song is about a relationship breakup and so therefore it is similar to other pop artists such as Taylor Swift who is known to frequently sing about breakups and her past relationships. 

3: What ways have you promoted your artist?

As our main target is the ages from 15-25, we knew that it would be important to promote Dani on online media such as on social media, YouTube and streaming services such as Spotify. This is because it is easily accessible for Dani’s fans to listen and share her music with their friends. We created Dani a website so that they can also subscribe to her and get constant updates throughout her career.

4: Who is Dani’s main target audience?

Dani’s main target audience is within the ages 15-25, this is because Dani is 20 years old and so therefore can easily relate to a young target audience as she is fun and attractive and so therefore can target a wide audience of both males and females

5: How does the Music Video, Digipak and website sell her image to her fans?

The colour scheme was very important for us, we decided to use bright colours within the music video and we kept a fluent shade of pink throughout the digipak and website, this is important in establishing continuity and so therefore, it allows all three of our media products to be easily recognised by the fans. Additionally, a picture of Dani is placed as the main attraction on the digipak and website, this relates to the music video as we included a lot of close ups, this allows us to emphasise her synthetic pop image. The style of outfits in all three media products are similar, for example, on all the jackets she wears, they have been sprayed with paint, this again enhances the rebellious side of her star image, it also allows our products to be more cohesive due to the fact that spray paint is a significant part of the music video as it makes up the majority of the chorus and the title of the album is represented by spray paint. The font is also the same throughout the website and Digipak, this will allows us to establish a brand for Dani as it means that fans will be able to recognise her music.

6: Who influenced Dani’s Music?

One of the main influences for Dani’s style of music is Lily Allen due to the fact that she is also edgy and is differentiated to other artists. Lily Allen is another synthetic pop artist that sings about real life experiences and has a large target audience, this shows that she is a good choice to for Dani to look up to as it means that Dani can also target loads of people as she can present herself as relatable. Additionally, Dani’s ex boyfriend was a major inspiration as he influenced and provided inspiration for We are never ever getting back together as the song is a tribute to their breakup.

EVALUATION 1

Keithe Negus: Generic conventions of music videos 

Codes and conventions are signs which the director and audience have agreed upon meaning and used to communicate. This makes it easy to create a product within a specific genre. This method of interpreting signs is called semiotics and the signs used offer denotations and connotations to the audience. Conventions become so familiar and natural that they become the expected. For example, an isolated location is expected in a horror film. 

Conventions are used to target their audience and can be applied in different media concepts in both narrative and genre.

KEITH NEGUS' CODES AND CONVENTIONS

Organic Artists

• Develop career initially independently of to the music industry
• Tend to write and play most of the instruments on their songs
• Develop through playing live venues before signing with a record label
• Have more freedom initially to chose their image and songs for release
• May start their career independently
• A 'naturalistic' approach to artists 
• The image of the artist is 'enhanced' by the record company
• The artist is given time to evolve and progress through their career

Synthetic Artists

• Manufactured by the record labels and TV demands
• Generally have an image that is directed towards a specific audience
• audience
• They begin their careers recording songs either written for  them or chosen by record companies
• Limited freedom of choice
• Sell their star image 
• Less likely to use instruments

The codes and conventions for a pop music video:

• Close ups to sell the star image 
• Bright colours to emphasis the pop genre 
• Artists wear modern day clothing: either seductive, relatable, everyday clothing 
• Pop artists mostly wear a full face of makeup e.g. lipstick, mascara, blush to sell their star image 
• Doesn't have to have a narrative, but some do 
• Rare that the artist plays an instrument 
• Lots of close ups to show the expression on the artists face e.g passion in their singing, lip syncing and to show the artists looks. 
• artists also use different forms of body language during any performance as a way of expressing themselves through non-verbal communication as well as verbally
• Range of locations

Similar Artists

Lily Allen is similar to our artist because she is a pop artist who has something different about her. Our artist portrays herself as being rebellious, which is also seen in Lily Allens music video 'Smile' who shows her aggressive nature to her ex boyfriend. 

Zara Larson is also a similar artist to 'Dani' because she is an upcoming pop artist who has not been in the music industry long and is producing music to her target audience, just like Dani is doing in the music video to sell her star image and her talent. 

Analysing facebook feedback

ACCOUNT OF EDITING

• Editing the music video for our artist had strengths and weaknesses and also challenges. 
• Overall, we believe that as a result of this process we have been able to create a successful music video. 
• We first organised folders and labelled these to what location or camera angle. This made it easier to select which shots we wanted use when putting it all in order on Adobe Premier Pro. Our animatic story board was a guidance to know which location or which shot we needed to select. 
• We also put all out shots on an external hard drive incase we would loose our footage on the original device. 

• However, once we put the music video in order, we noticed that some of the shots needed replacing due to her lip syncing being out of sync, or bad lighting. This meant we had to review all the shots we took to see how we could replace the gaps. This is an example of what we had to take out due to the lighting and the artist not being in the camera frame. We thought this would happen e.g. some shots not coming out as expected so on our filming days we recorded multiple shots of the same action.   

•  In the jump cut we used the video transission ‘dip to white’ to make a cereal flash when the song cut to beat to show the passing of tine. 

•  We wanted to exaggerate the lyric “WHAT” so we got the footage over another Clip of footage by changing the levels of opacity. This enabled it to pop out at the viewer and make it more exciting to watch, which was necessary to have at the beginning to show our skilful editing techniques. 

• In the flashback scene we originally had  a zoom into the photo of the couple, which cut to the location where they took the photo in the past. 

•  However, the cut was not smooth and didn't look profession so with the use of After Effects we replaced the cut with live phone screen with them taking the photo, which made it look more realistic.  
• This made it smoother to transmission into the over shoulder shot of them taking the photo, which we later colour corrected into warmer tones to reflect the better times in their relationship. 

•  Our original shot of breaking the playstation was too simplistic, so we cut the shot and duplicated it and reversed one of them so that it had the effect of bouncing back and fourth. 

•   We sped up a lot of footage to make it more enticing and less boring. For example, the time lapse of the the car and grafting the walls. We did this by changing the percentage of the speed on Adobe Premier Pro

• We added interesting transitions such as ‘Additive Dissolve’ to show two an effective way of her being rebellious but then also transitions to singing which shows her star image, as well as her rebellious side

• In the studio footage the backdrop was a green screen, which gave us the advantage to choose any background we wanted.  In adobe After Effects we inserted a graffiti background, which was relatable to our narrative. The colours were conventional due to the genre of the music video being pop. 

• When planning we told our artist to pretend she was spaying the camera as in editing we would insert a spray paint effect to look as if she was spraying on the camera. This had to be done through editing as she could not actually spray the camera. 

• The phone call scene was necessary to have a split screen to clearly show their conversation
• We then added a movement effect within the split screen to show she had power, which matched with the lyrics (lyrics matching the visuals)
• The movement  of the split screen kept going back and fourth until the conversation was over and the ‘ex’ got pushed out the screen 

•  We emphasised her wink as a way of addressing the audience and to show her rebellious side of her getting all the revenge on her ex. The smile shows she is sadistic. 
• To do the highlighted wink we added beam of light on after effects and adjusted the scale of it to look as if it was coming from her eye. 

Sound Effects 

• When it was the flashback, we wanted to make sure it was clear that they were taking to photograph to make it realistic as possible. So we inserted a shutter sound effect. As the photo shows the sound was at a high level of volume to over power the song at this moment in time. This made the audience more attached as to what was going on and felt part of their previous relationship. 

• The next sound effect we added was a ‘ding’ to when she winked. We did this because the song was coming to an end and faded out with no lyrics.
• We wanted it to finish off with a conventional pop song so the sound made it more memorable and more attention grabbing to the viewer. 

How we added the illusion she was spray painting the camera?

• We got assets off Google, and we made sure they were transparent
• We exported the clip on to Adobe After Effects, where we wanted to add this illusion 
• We inserted a marker on the Clip where we wanted the spray paint to start 
• We imported our assets filled which had the brain brush strokes
• We used the eye dropped tool to select the same red used in the spray paint on the wall to make it realistic and consistent. 
• Next, we went to ‘effects and presets’ and typed in ‘fill’ with our brush layer selected 
• We then filled the brush strokes with this selected red

• The texture of the paint strokes were too thick and could not see our artist behind it, so we changed the opacity to 40%
• After inserting the first brush stroke and changing the opacity we wanted the follow the movement of the can 
• We positioned this in time with her movements and then key framed it  which kept it in place, whilst pressing the key ‘R’ followed the movement of the can 
• We added ‘motion blur’ to make it even more realistic 
• To make It look even more like spray paint we understood that if she sprays the same place twice, it will appear more bold and gave a ‘splash’ effect rather than a brush stroke which is what we wanted
• So we went back to google and found a splash that was more similar to our paint strokes. 
• We repeated the same steps until our artist finished spraying the screen 
• We used different brush strokes to make it look more consistent and effective 
• We did this by masking the images and set it to subtract 
• We then went to the mask bar and pressed key frame, then took the mask off. 
• We feathered the mask to blend in with the background. 

How we did the camera flash back:

• We took the original footage and put it into after effects. 
• We then got an iphone front camera image 
• We put the footage inside of the iPhone to make it look like they were taking the photo. 
• We then added a white flash to make it look like they were taking the photo
• This led to the flashback. 

How we did a graffiti background on the green screen?

• We inserted all the studio clips which had a green screen and pasted into after effects. 
• Duplicated it incase we needed the original 
• "Mask Tool” and set in onto an ellipse mask and dragged it to fit 
• We then brought up the mask properties and pressed key frame mask path 
• We then used the arrow tool on the keyboard to follow her movement 
• Then we brought in the background and re imported (copy and paste) to the new comp 
• We copy and pasted the effects used in the other images so that they matched. 
• To change the vantage point, we changed to 3D and change rotation
• Then we selected the scale properties to size it up in order to match the screen