Planning for our Music Video

Equipment list:

• CAMERAS: Canon 1100D, Canon 600D
• LENSES: Canon 18-55 x2, Canon 55-250
• TRIPOD
• MOBILE PHONES: iPhone 5, HTC One
• Make up kit

Props/Costume list:

• Guitar
• Cigarettes and lighter
• Pizza
• Male actor: skinny jeans, leather jacket, checked shirt, backpack, boots.
• Female actress: shoes, tights, floral dress, leather jacket, red lipstick.

Crew list:

• Sarah (director, camera person, editor)
• Alysia (director, camera person, editor)
• Chelsey  (actor)
• Luke (actor)

My Pitch for Digipak and Magazine Advertisement

Font Research for Digipak and Magazine Advertisement

Digipak and Magazine Advertisement for Digipak Pitch

Digipak and magazine advertisement pitch from sarahisthebestx

Analysing Digipak Magazine Advertisements

This is an advertisement for Florence and the Machine's album. This has an image of Florence which is made to look like a drawing as the background and the lower half of her body. This picture makes you think that the songs are all fantasy based. Also, the image used is also the album cover, which gives an identity so that the audience know what they're looking for when they want to buy it. They have the name of the band at the top of the magazine advertisement, and the name of the album 'Lungs' underneath the picture. The picture is mounted on a black background and all the writing is done in white, the reason for this is so that the text contrasts with the backround, making it stand out to the audience. This gives me some ideas for my own digipak advertisement: making clear links between the digipak and advertisement. Also having the date of when it is released in store is a good idea, but I think in my own advertisement I'll make it stand out more, maybe in a bigger font.

What I really love about this magazine advertisement is the rustic, vintage feel about it. This reinforces Marina & The Diamonds music genre of pop and the running theme throughout all of her music, this creates a very strong identity/star image for her. The font used has a personal feel about it as it looks like someone's handwriting, which will appeal to the target audience as they will feel it is more relatable. There is a running colour scheme used throughout this advertisements of dull pinks and neutrals, this shows to me that Marina is creating the image that she's been around for a long while and she's going to stay around and she doesn't need to revamp her style to modern times because she's successful as she is. I love this magazine advertisement, and I might adopt the vintage feel of it to my own magazine advertisement and digipak. I also love the font type as well.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text meaning by another text. Some texts refer directly to others, parodies for example. The interpretation of these references is influenced by the audience's prior knowledge to another text. A prime example of intertextuality in this sense is the music video All The Small Things - Blink 182. Where they mimic and parody 'typical boyband' 90's music videos. This is used to attract their target audience as Blink 182 are a punk band, and usually the people who likes punk bands don't like the genre of pop boy-bands so mimicing them will make them more appealing as punk artists. Intertextuality as a whole is used to refer to other texts and make the artists more appealing to their target audience by alluding to similar or completely opposite texts.

                                

A more recent example of the use of intertextuality is the video Lady Gaga - Applause where she mimics the Greek goddess Athrodites, to gain a symbol of power and expressing her personality in a way that would make her target audience that she is Godlike and an iconic figure.

In my own music video I think that I'm going to use some intertextuality as both Alysia and I are taking inspiration from two music videos into our own music video. One of the music videos is Ben Howard - Old Pine. From this music video we really admire the establishing shots used so we'll be taking some shots that are similar for own music video. We are doing this to reinforce the genre of acoustic music and the sense of nature. The Other music video is The Neighbourhood - Sweater Weather (Original/First music video) because of the use of the relationship included.

Animatic storyboard: second attempt

We changed our animatic so that the song fades out when our shots end so that there isn't a long time of just a black screen for the rest of the song. We edited this using Adobe Premiere Elements.

Codes and Conventions of Magazine Advertistments

These conventions include:
- The artists name and the new album title.
- The release date of the album and the download.
- Website, myspace, facebook or twitter of the artist.
- Product content such as extra DVD footage or any bonus tracks that are included.
- Magazine reviews and star ratings from magazines and newspapers depending on the genre, such as NME, Q, Smash Hits, Kerrang, The Guardian.
- The name of record label.
- Tour dates.
- Photographs or graphics of the artist or things associated with their album.
- Where the album is avaliable to perchase such as HMV, Amazon or iTunes.
- Lines such as “out now” or “debut album”.
- Any offers that are avaliable such as free downloads.

Most bands adhere to these codes and conventions, for example:

But then others don't and keep the theme extremely minimalistic:

How the sales of CDs have changed in the last 5 years

In the past 5 or more years, CD sales have dropped in sales dramatically as these printscreens show evidence of:

The main reasons for these sales dropping dramatically is because of the eas access to listening to free music, e.g: music channels, YouTube, Spotify etc. Also, illegally downloading music for free has become very popular too.

 This image shows he dramatic decrease in sale in the USA from 1999 to 2009

The above pictures are two different reports (BBC News and The Mirror) on the HMV crisis as their sales dropped by huge amounts. They had to close down many stores to make sure not to go into dept.

It is clear that artists are now making the most of their money through online stores for merchandise, concerts and gigs, iTunes and other download methods such as the premium Spotify. It is important to note that CD sales are of a bare minimum now and the primary source of the artist's money is totally through online stores.

Location Shots

These are some pictures I took today at our desired location with one of our actors (Chelsey). Unfortunately I chose to take these images at around 4:15pm which meant that the lighting wasn't how I would of liked it to be, especially since it was slightly cloudy: Alysia and I are hoping for a day of filming when it's birght sunlight, so the trees and the leaves are shown up looking warm and appealing to reflect the mood we're intending, instead of it looking dull and dismal. 

Also, my camera doesn't capture pictures very well in low light, especially in enclosed areas such as this forrest. That is something else we'll have to consider when planning a time and place for shooting the music video. Another issue Chelsey and I faced when getting to our location was the fact that it was very muddy and slippery on the paths, which made it take longer to take the pictures without shaking or moving, to avoid this we'll have to consider the costumes, sensible shoes or boots for example.

Other than this, I think that the setting itself with the leaves and the trees are definitely where we'd like to film, we'll just have to think about back up plans if the weather doesn't turn out how we'd like.

Animatic Storyboard: first attempt

This is our first attempt at making our animatic storyboard which roughly gives an idea of what we'd like our music video to look like.

Evaluation of my work so far

I think that my work so far is progressing to look more like a level 4 piece of work. I've worked on trying to make my blog more interactive by including pictures, slideshare, YouTube videos etc. My main focus is to get my work up to date and as detailed as possible, including theorists ideas to make my work seem more sophisticated.

Star Image

We want our star image to be representing our artist as a talented individual with lots of potential for their future career. A set of rules we could use to embrace this on the cover of our digipak could be:

• Neutral colours
• Writing that looks handwritten to make it more personal to the audience
• Minimalistic theme so the target audience aren't put off from an overwhelming album cover that doesn't represent our genre
• An image of either the artist's logo or the artist himself for identity

Categories of Music Videos

This is a performance based music video, as throughout the majority of the music video you can see One Republic performing the song. The purpose of this is to make the audience feel like they are there watching them, and makes the artist seem less commercial when you see the whole band playing.

Mis En Scene

Research on digipaks

Example 1) Bombay Bicycle Club - A Different Kind of Fix

This digipak has a very minimalistic theme, with just two images on the front cover and one of them which is goes through the spine and leads onto the back cover as well. This means that there is more focus on the title of the album and the band's name. I love the style of Bombay Bicycle Clubs album “A different kind of fix” As the title of the album ties in with the image of brains and gives off the idea of mental health and happiness. This clearly links with the image, which looks like a light hearted diagram of the human brain.

I really like the theme of this digipak, because it is so unusual it makes me as the audience more interesting in listening to their music. I expect this is the kind of response that the artists aimed for, as the artwork makes you more interested in the album as a whole.

This digipak gives me inspiration to make mine look like this one as both bands/artist have the indie genre of music and I want to represent the genre of music as much as I can through the visuals on my digipak.

Example 2) The XX



The picture shown shows two alternative versions of The XX's digipack, both have four panels which is the most common used for albums. The digipak has a very simple colour scheme of black and white, which brings more focus to the name of the band and album which will attract their target audience immediately, especially since the colours black and white link are very popular colours with the genre type of indie/pop/alternative. Also, the colour scheme is used as a form of identity for The XX as the majority of their music videos are in black and white too.

The fact that there is no writing featured on the album at all apart from the back cover with the song titles shows that the band's intention was for their target audience to know who they are enough to not have to show their bands name on the front cover.

This digipak doesn't give me much inspiration to use their ideas as I find that my artist isn't known enough to have such a minimalistic style, and it also won't fit with the warmth we want our audience to feel when they're watching my music video as well.

Research on other A2 Media digipaks

Example 1.

I really like the style of this digipak as the girl who made it has obviously captured the essence of 'Bright Lights' through the images, especially on the back cover where the song names are. The lighting in the the two photographs look like it's natural, the purpose of this is to capture the warm lights from the setting they filmed in. The thing I think they could improve on is that the back cover doesn't really go with the theme that's happening on the photographs and disk, which may affect their target audience wanting to buy it because it looks cheap and unprofessional.

This digipak has made me realise how important it is to keep a running theme throughout the product.

Example 2.

This digipak keeps a running theme of nature to embrace Taylor Swift's genre of folk music. An element of this digipak that i really like are that all three photographs used are all very similar and minimalistic. The purpose of this would either be because they want the target audience to know what the artist looks like and so they grasp an idea of what the genre will be. My favourite feature of the digipak is the font being the same as her handwriting. It makes it a lot more personal, as though she's signed the album.

I'm going to adopt the personal feel of this digipak to my own, through the font type and the images.

Analysing Marketing Campaign - Bombay Bicycle Club

This is a printscreen I took of Bombay Bicycle Club's homepage for their official website. The first thing you see is the two advertisements promoting their new single 'Carry Me'. Both with minimalistic, clear fonts and a theme in the colous of green and yellow. Having a running theme of colours creates an identity for BBC so that they are easily recognised from their target audience. Also the fonts used are clear and easy to read, which will make remembering them easier for their intended audience, and the font used for the band them is the same font as the band has always used on previous albums etc, which reinforces the identity value. What I have learnt from this is that keeping a running theme throughout my music video, my digipak and my magazine advertisement is very important, as it means that it will keepe an image in my target audience's mind for them to want to buy into it.

Project Pitch Feedback

Our Project Pitch- A2 Media

Alysia and sarah music video project pitch from Alysia Hurrell

Lip Syncing for A2 Media