Location Choices

One element needs to be taken into consideration is the location where each of the parts of the video is going to be filmed. There are 5 locations that need to be identified and depends on where they are and what they are; permission needs to be granted to film there.

We need to find a location for each of these parts of the video:
- Performance Setting
- A Martial House- The Mate’s House/Pub
- Places/Streets he’ll run down
- Black Background set for beginning “fade to beat” shots

Performance Setting
The school stage would be used for the performance part. We might not see the stage as an actual stage, we could possibly lower the curtains and make the stage look darker and make it appear to look like a generic darker room

A Martial HouseA typical home, well cared for…

The Mate’s House/Pub
More messy than the marital house, men around the table playing poker.

Places/Streets he’ll run down
A typical street, near where we are filming for convenience.

Black Background set for beginning “fade to beat” shots
Same as the performance area, although it would be restricted to just showing the black background, we would not be able to tell it was a stage.

The weather also needs to be taken into consideration as it may have a impact on the shooting which we can’t control, although there isn’t many outside shooting, if it’s snowing, it would affect us as they mise-en-scene wouldn’t be right, as well as having take the risk in running down an icy road. Also as it is England the outside shooting, it will most probably be cold. So precautions would have to be made as it gets increasingly difficult to film in the cold weather. So the shooting would have to be planned inside and quickly but efficiently filmed when outdoors, reducing the time spend outside, which is something we learnt from out foundation production filming.

FOLLOWING THE HOLIDAY PLANNING WE HAVE DECIDED TO USE THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS FOR OUR PROMO:

The Performance Setting: We will be using the stage at RMC with a black background. If the stage is only free when we could not use it for whatever reason, we have secured a possible back-up location - we would use the Drama studio at our school. We have been told that black curtains will be being put up in the drama studio for when we wish to film so if, for whatever reason, we could not use the stage, then the studio would be a viable alternative.

A Marital House: One of our actors homes in a small village will be used for a marital house. It is tidy and fairly rural styled inside which will will fit stylistically with the pub and the running scenes. We will be using the kitchen, the hall, the lounge and the bedroom (for the separate 'cheating' scene). Lighting may be an issue in this location due to the dark walls so, to counter this, we will be bringing a very bright desk lamp which hopefully will solve this problem.

The Pub/Mates House: Ideally, we will be using the pub in Haconby, a small neighboring village for this location. If we can get permission to film in the pub then we will be able to create a poker game at a table. If, however, we are not able to film in this location then we will have to change the location to my home. We could use my dining room as it particularly light and I would be able to mess it up.

Street: For the street scenes, we will be filming on the Haconby roads. Due to it being a small village we would be able to film down the middle of the road without having to worry about to many cars. We will be using streets and a country road leading down lane to a river for the water shot when the main character throws their phone into a lake.

Costume Choices

In music video the right ‘image’ has on the video, and how it is viewed and the costume for the actors was somewhat important. I felt as the costume was important it had to organised efficiently so the right image could be portrayed. I started by going through the clothes available in local stores such as Asda, Tesco, Burton, Topman and The Officers Club, as I felt these shops would have the clothing that would fit to the look I felt was needed in the music video. By looking at the pictures available online of “The Colours” we felt it was necessary to use the image they have already created for themselves as an unsigned band. The Colours seems to have a smart casual look, so I searched through the shirts, ties, blazers, t-shirts, belts and coats that were available from local stores and fitted the image we wanted to portray.

The clothes below show the ideas for costume in the music video, however when filming we want to make use of the actors own clothes if they are similar and fit to the style.

However if these clothes aren’t available we would have to purchase them for the music video, so that right look was created.

Male:

Male 1 - in the Performance, Vocalist of band
Male 2 - in the Performance, Guitarist of Band
Male 3 - in the Performance, Drummer of Band
Male 1 - in the Narrative, Main Lead
Male 2-5 - in the Narrative, Playing Poker

Male 1 – in the Narrative, Beginning “fade to beat” shots

Clothing Ideas for Males parts -

Pitch Ideas

This is our Pitch, which we created to share the ideas we had about our music video to our peers to get their opinion on our ideas and to strengthen our ideas by taking on their feedback.

Moodboard

After listening to the chosen song and analysing the lyrics, I went on the internet to find some images that I felt fitted to the song and images that helped show what I felt the music video should contain. With these images I created a mood board, which as well as helping spark ideas for the music video and how the video show be portrayed it helped my group members see what images I got by listening to the music and from the analysis of the lyrics.

Questionnaire Results

These are the results that I attained from asking the target audience of the text my questionnaire.

Album Cover Research

All the songs that I have in my iTunes library have a album cover, and all the album cover differ from genre to genre, artist to artist and also from the time they were released although throughout the years the same conventions have been used, but the technology used to achieve the album cover has adapted with the new technologies available. The album cover should attract you to purchase the CD when brought in the shops as the cover is the first things you see, and that’s what’s attracts you to put up the CD and turn it over to look at the track lists.

The typical conventions of the album cover are the artist name, the song title, an image and also a sticker such as parental advisory sticker if needed. However not all album covers follow the main conventions, however this could be proven effective when the album is released.

Personally I have always felt that a successful album cover should have a eye-catching image, however the examples from my music library show what I feel is successful and unsuccessful when an album cover is quite plain.

These are the album covers to “My Name – Mclean” and “I’m Yours – Jason Mraz”. Although the album to “I’m Yours” has a small graphic included, it’s still rather plain but I think it has been effective. Whereas I don’t feel that the album cover to “My Name” is successful at all, and I feel it would have been more successful if it used the typical convention of an image, and as the other the next album covers to the following songs he has released go with the same design but the song title changes, it isn’t that appealing. However having this same design of a black background, song title in red, and artist name in white, it would create an “image” and his audience would be able to identify his album covers by the repetition design across his singles.

'Image' of Female Character in Music Video

When thinking about the costume of the actor and actress that would be in the music video whatever pitch is refined and created, there would be a male main character and a female main character (the male’s ex-girlfriend) but as I felt there must be a reason for the man to want to “let [her] go” and refer to her as a “mistake”. I felt a background story would have to be identified to convey the right image in the music video. By looking at the lyrics I felt cheating would fix with the feelings the man has, I also felt the female show have a certain image, as I felt it was necessary.
After thinking though the ‘image’ the female needed I felt that she should be a pretty woman, which ‘caked’ her face in make-up and wore hair extensions/had long hair, as well as having fake nails, and wearing a push-up bra and low cut top. When a female has all this features it can seem she is hasn’t the confidence in her own skin, so wore things to get the attention which shouldn’t be attracted when in a relationship. After thinking to far into the image of the female, I felt the make-up could have a major impact have her image so I created some pictures with different combinations of make-up so my group and I can decide which make-up promotes the right image that we want. Another need from the make-up she has red lipstick/lip-gloss applied to show temptation/love through the colour meaning, the image on the right is of a model before I added make-up and the images below are the combinations of make-up which are a possibility as they have the right ‘image’.

As you can see the model with the make-up and without is completely different, I feel that the make-up needs to be taken into account when filming the music video as it gives the woman the right image, I feel the best combination of make-up is the third image as it has the red lips which will suggest lust, and the smoky eyes and long lashes should more of a ‘fake’ look, and blusher would also be necessary however not a lot is needed. From creating these images I have realised how the make-up can have an affect on the image of the person, and as the ‘image’ is important for the female character in the music video what make-up she wears needs to be considered.

Music Deconstruction

My group’s music deconstruction was completed by Jack Marshall;
http://jackmarshalladvancedproduction.blogspot.com/2010/10/music-deconstruction.html

The link takes you to his original post.

Questionnaire Market Research

To find out the information I feel my group could benefit from a questionnaire has been created. Firstly the group make a questionnaire that could be used to get the information we would need, however after asked one person the questionnaire I felt it wasn’t easy for the people to answer if they weren’t aware of the Pop-rock genre and technical media terms, as some of the questions needed to be explained. I then adapted the first questionnaire to one I thought would be more appropriate for the audience we were asking. The questions in the second version of the questionnaire are below, I feel that the amount of questions are appropriate and well give us enough information to work with for our creation of a music video, album cover and magazine adverts.

1. Are you Male/Female?

2. Which age category do you fit into?
11-16 17-24 25-34 35-44 44+

3. What is you favourite genre of music?

4. Do you listen to music that fits into the genre of Pop-Rock?

5. How do you purchase your music? CD Copy or Electronic Copy?

6. Do you illegally download music? If Yes, why?

7. How do you find out information about your favourite bands?

8. Do you listen to unsigned bands? If so have you heard of “theCOLOURS”?

Music Videos
9. Do you watch music videos? Why?

10. Would you rather a video was narrative based or performance based? What percentage do you think it should be spilt?

11. When the video is narrative based, do you think the images should match the lyrics?

Album Covers
12. Would you prefer an album cover to contain the band name and song title?

13. What other features do you like to see on an album cover if any?

Magazine Adverts
14. Do you pay attention to a bands/artists magazine advert?

15. What features attract you to a magazine advert?

Marketing and Promotional Techniques - Katy Perry

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, better known as Katy Perry is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Katy Perry’s style of song is Pop, Pop Rock, Dance-pop and Electro pop. Her songs have been in the charts over the past couple of years, when she signed with her fourth record label. Her first chart hit was “I Kissed a Girl” which came #1 in the UK Charts. Although six months before this single was released “Ur So Gay” however it was released online and Capitol Records offered this song as a free download on her website which was a good marketing technique as it enabled the audience to sample what her songs were late, which would help establish her fan base. In June 2008, Katy’s first studio album was released, which peaked at #11 in the UK album charts. However her recent studio album was released last month. “Teenage Dream” peaked at #1 in the UK albums charts.

When visiting Katy Perry’s website (www.katyperry.com) it uses the typical conventions of a band website such as the latest news about her, her tour dates, pictures, music, video and most important her information about her new releases. On the website there is an advertising banner advertising that her new album is out and available to purchase, as well as in the main header of the website having a link to order the CD. As you can see in the screenshot of her website below:

The Digipak of “Teenage Dream” has been marketed differently as the insert in the CD smells like Cotton Candy which is a common theme of the album release as it matches the album cover which is of Katy Perry lying naked on Cotton Candy. This is an uncommon feature of a Digipak, however it attracted people to purchase the Digipak and not settle for the electronic version. The original version of the album cover was published without the wording “Katy Perry” and “Teenage Dream” on it which is unconventional, both versions can be seen below:

What is Representation

All media texts that some form of reality and represent it – they are constructions that involve selection. Images in text evoke different connotations in different segments of the audience

Possible Representations
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Regionality
- Age
- Class

Voyeurism
- Freud’s Theory = erotic pleasure aimed from looking at a sexual object, preferably when the object is not aware
- Shown be screens with screens CCTV style images, webcams, characters watching characters


Gender Representation
In typical music videos males and females are usually represented as the following:

Male
- Dominant
- Powerful
- In control
- Controlling
- Active

Female
- Submissive
- Sexual objects
- Powerless
- Controlled
- Passive

Digipak Ideas

When we know what song we were creating a video for, we also realised that a CD/DVD Digipak would have to be designed, after talking about ideas about what the album cover could contain, I came up with the idea of a pack of cards but using the hearts suit. The group agreed this was a good idea, to see if the idea could be achieved I told some photograph and edited the pictures to see whether it would be an achievable idea and meet the perfection we wanted. After putting the idea into practise I feel that this idea would be great for the album cover and some of the panels in the Digipak, however I feel that the band name will have to be present as well as the song name as I feel it would be a more effective album cover if it contained the song title and band name, however successful album haven’t always used this convention.

My first attempt at the photographing and editing for the album covers came out with these results:

I felt it was a good idea to attempt the idea now so we could see whether it worked and now I am aware it works I can take these attempts in to account and the negatives about them can be adapted to create a better album cover for the final design of the Digipak.

Ideas For Music Video

To record our ideas we created a mind map of ideas and recorded all the different ideas we had for different parts of the song. Most of these ideas are for the beginning of the song so more ideas need to be thought of, however we feel that the need ideas won’t be recorded the same way and will be put into our three pitch ideas.

Although not all of these ideas recorded will go any further they may spark other and better ideas that would go into one of our pitch ideas.

"Tonight I Let You Go" Lyric Breakdown

After using Wordle to present the data of favourite music genres, I felt it would be beneficial if I put the lyrics to “Tonight I Let You Go” and get a visual of the words that appear most in the song. After seeing it visually it has helped spark more ideas for the music video as the reoccurring words are identified.

I then printed the Wordle to annotate with word meanings and ideas for some of the words, this was easier to do when the words aren’t in context as you don’t think of the idea from what was said before it to make the lyrics link with one another so it was a good idea to collect all different ideas. The ideas/meanings I have got for the following words were:

Loveless: no love at all, the love wasn’t there in the end.

Running: running away, running away from their house/down street, running towards the “next” chapter.

Filling/Mind: unable to express his feelings (typical of a male), so all the new feelings keep that mind filling, and it’s getting to much, the mind is full.

Insecurities: she didn’t show him love, could have made him angry after feeling disrespected, insecure about his performance in life (relationships and work)

Mistake: had a bad judgement of her, ignorance to her bad qualities, once stepped back was able to see them, she wasn’t worth it.

Leaving: packing bags to go, doesn’t return to their house and crashes as friends, note left to tell her to pack her bags (as she was the unfaithful one?)

Better: a change for better, he is the one who has come out superior.

Fools: a person that lacks good judgement.

Temptation: a desire to do something that he knows he should avoid, she has the quality to be seduced.

Audience Research Feedback

When constructing our products the feedback we go from our audience research helped us during the production of these texts. We gathered the research by creating a questionnaire that we asked people using face to face communication as well as via social networking site such as Facebook. The questionnaire that we used to gather the information that we felt was necessary research contained questions surrounding the three products that we had to complete, enabling us to know what the audience looks for in the product, so we can meet the user’s needs. This Audience research was a vital element to complete before constructing the final products, as we were able to find out what the audience prefers and looks for when it comes to these products, and from this questionnaire we found out that:

More people would prefer a video that was 50% narrative based and 50% performance based, however the people who prefer to see more narrative in a music video think it should be spilt 70:30.

People think that when the video contains narrative, the images should match the lyrics as it makes it more believable and think that it should reflect the song.

All people I asked prefer the album cover to contain the band names and song title, however they feel that the band name is a more important feature of the album cover than the song title.

People asked like to see an album cover that contain eye-catching artwork that relates to the song, which is easily identifiable with a good image with colour.

Most people don’t take notice of magazine adverts about a band or artist and the ones that do only look at it if it is about a band they like, however the features that would attract them to a magazine advert are features such as a heading that stands out, a bright eye-catching image that attracts there glance.

Conventions of Band/Artist Websites

The Conventions of a Band Website are:

- New releases (Advertising)

- News

- Tour dates

- Pictures

- Band/artist identify

- Bands/artist twitter updates

- Fan forum

- Videos

- Links to Social Networking Sites

- Biography

- Store

- Music

Favourite Music Genres

For Market Research we felt a need to see what the favourite music genres were of people and as our music was Pop Rock genre which gender the music would most appeal to. The wordle below shows both male and female people we asked:

As you can see the favourite music genre out of the people we questioned were R'n'B, followed by Pop and Rock. When the results that have been collected are split into females and males, we can see that many females favourite music genre is R'n'B, followed by Pop, and Rock isn't a major genre that females like, whereas Rock is a major music genre that males like and R'n'B doesn't even appear.

Female:

Male:

Music Video Analysis - Kelly Clarkson "Never Again"

Kelly Clarkson - 'Never Again'

“Never Again” was released in April 2007 and is the first single from Kelly Clarkson’s third studio album “My December” and reached No.9 in the charts. The genre of the song is Pop Rock, although Kelly Clarkson covers songs that are Pop, Rock and Soul.

The typical conventions used in a music video of this genre are:

- Band Shots, whole band shots and performance clips
- High lighting
- Bright lighting, not natural
- Close-ups, and extreme close-ups
- Colour effects, often monochrome
- Fast-pace editing
- Straight cuts
- Panning
- Seductive pose from the female artists
- Deserted locations with straight forward narrative
- Guitar solos
- Voyeurism
- Urban locations
- Singing whist act

The “Never Again” uses some of the typical convention such as performance clips where we see Kelly Clarkson singing with her band playing, and the video also uses close-up shots,which help portray the emotion. They is also some voyeurism involved when Kelly sinks into the bath, as it isn’t something we would witness so we have the feeling of looking in.

The straight cuts in the video cut to the beat of the song, and when the pace of the song gets quicker the cuts match the tempo. The video also has visuals that match the music lyrics which help tell the narrative of the song, as when the lyrics “Hope he ring you gave to her, Turns her finger green” we see the image of a hand with a ring on the wedding finger.

The lighting of the narrative scenes of the video are dull and dark whereas the performance shots are the complete opposite and are very well lit. The band performance is in a white room and all the people in the room are wearing white and the guitars are also white, this connotes purity. The performance and narrative based scenes are split 30% performance based and 70% narrative based.

Different Ways We Can Document Our Research

As we need to conduct some Market Research there are various methods we could collect and present our research.

1) Questionnaire
2) Video Response
3) Wordle
4) Written Response
5) Graphs from questionnaire
6) Photographs
7) Audio Response
8) Spider Diagram
9) Commenting on Audio/Images (via Facebook)
10) Asking members of the public to comment on the music

I feel that different ways of research would be benefical, and with the new technologies we should use them to get the information we need from our research to create a video, digipak and magazine that would attract the target audience but that target audience needs to be identified first.

Choosing the Song - The Colours "Tonight I Let you Go"

“Tonight I Let You Go” – The Colours is our chosen song.

After looking through many bands on www.unsigned.com, I then came across The Colours, they seems to have the right image and I felt my other members of my group would be fine with the song as it was of the “Pop Rock” genre and while I like “Pop” songs another member from my group preferred songs that were from the “Rock” genre, so as I felt the others would but alright with doing this song I posted the link to the page on my group members Facebook page s so they were able to check out the song and decide whether they would want to create a music video for it. The next day in lesson when the entire group met, we all decided this song would be a good song to create a video for. We got the link up to The Colours unsigned.com page, and we found the email address which we used to contact the band for permission to use the song and to create a music video for it, we used Jack’s email account to email them and wrote:

Hi,

My name is Jack Marshall and I am currently studying A-Level Media Studies. One of the tasks is to create a music video for an unsigned band, myself and my group members were searching through Unsigned.com when we discovered your single, “Tonight I Let You Go”.

We all thought this was a very good piece of music, really personifying the conventions of the genres. To that end we have decided to create the video on your single, we would like permission to do this, as well as any support you might lend.

Thanks

Jack Marshall, Chris Tyler & Lizi Howard


Within a couple of hours the band responded to our email with:

Hi Jack,

This is fine.

Do you need us to send you an Mp3 of the track. It’s important that no versions of the track are published anywhere on the internet without our permissions. But for the project this is fine.

Let us know if you need anything.

We could add to our website if we love, love it.

Thanks
Tom

Music Video Analysis - Pink "Please Don't Leave Me"

Pink - "Please Don't Leave Me"

The Single “Please Don’t Leave Me” was released by Pink in April 2009, and reached No.12 in the UK Singles Chart. The songs genre is pop rock, although Pink cover songs at are Pop, Rock, R&B, Pop Punk and Dance-punk. The producer of this Music Video is Max Martin, and the promo is directed by Dave Meyers that has directed 11 of Pink’s music videos as well as the Britney Spears Hits; “Lucky” and “Radar”.

The typical conventions used in a music video of this genre are:
- Band Shots, whole band shots and performance clips
- High lighting
- Bright lighting, not natural
- Close-ups, and extreme close-ups
- Colour effects, often monochrome
- Fast-pace editing
- Straight cuts
- Panning
- Seductive pose from the female artists
- Deserted locations with straight forward narrative
- Guitar solos
- Voyeurism
- Urban locations
- Singing whist act

The Please Don’t Leave Me music video uses some of these typical conventions such singing whist acting as well as seductive poses from female artists, as Pink does a seductive dance when in a nurse’s outfit. It also makes use of a camera pan right near the beginning of the video which places the viewer in the room and directs us to the action.

The video appears to cut to the beat and the use of fades to and from black help the video seem dark and eerie. We can also see that the lyrics have a relationship with what’s happening in the video as the lyrics “perfect little punching bag” shows Pink punch the man like a punching bag.

In this video there are some intertextual references to films from the thriller/horror genre. There is a direct imitation to “Misery” when Pink smashes the kneecaps of her man with a golf club, there is also a direct imitation to “The Shining” when Pink runs after the man with an axe and breaks through the bathroom door and looks through the hole she made. The video also released a censored version because the amount of violence that was used in it. The censored version has the most violent scenes cut and contains shots that aren’t used in the original, as when Pink runs after the man with an axe, the camera is on the man running away and not Pink running after him.

Unlike other music videos this one is all narrative based, usually most videos have an element of performance however this one doesn’t but we see Pink singing the song as if it was play as the lyrics matched the action in the music video.

Who Are "The Colours"

The Colours are a band from Reading made up by Tom Pickford, Tom Newman and Tony Folland. The Colours are now on a tour of the UK as promotion for their debut single 'Tonight I Let You Go', the tour travels the length and breadth of the country.

It is said that: “The single, ‘Tonight I Let You Go’ is a song about the trials of the heart in the formative years; the movement from one relationship to the other. But this isn’t a soppy love story; far from it. Planting a brave face on the inner discomfort exposed within the lyrics, this upbeat number puts a lighter spin on darker issues; and it’s a paradigm that becomes all the more apparent when you meet the band members themselves. Even in casual conversation a sense of youthful theatrics buoyed with an almost innocent optimism prevails to the forefront. It’s certainly an infectious combination, but perhaps uncertain whether this bravado is a natural virtue or concealing more fragile tendencies. Analysis of the lyrics gives more insight into this realm, and it is from here that they have an outlet to let hidden emotions run wild and free”

Conventions of "Without Me" - Eminem

Conventions of Magazine Adverts

The Conventions of Magazines Adverts are:

- Record label

- Band/Artist identify

- Title

- Tour dates

- Price of CD

- Band/Artist website

- Quote from other sources

- Pictures of the band/Artist

- Release date of the CD

- Star rating