Final Product: Music Video

Digipak

My final digipak uses the blurred effect I created, with the Ironman standing out. All the writing on the cover represents the colour theme throughout the website and music video as well with red and gold fonts. 

The inside cover consists of two images of 'Connor James'. I used the erase tool and magic tool to delete any background of a curtain. I chose to have a black background to make the artist stand out a lot more. In the bottom left corner I wrote a thank you to the production team.

Website - http://gabsdj.wix.com/connerjames

Evaluation Question 4 - Digital Technologies

My A2 media studies project consisted of the creation of a digipak, website and music video which each, in turn, required large amounts of research and planning. My blog in itself is a direct portrayal of how media technologies has provided me with the ability to create an interesting and enjoyable display of the work I have done over the year. 

The most crucial digital technology that we used was the internet; we spent months researching online what audiences liked in their artists and understanding style and image. We used sites such as Wikipedia to get a formal statistical understanding of what the average person liked about their artist but we used social media as our main case for understanding what the major fans liked and disliked. We used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to see what people were saying about famous performers. We searched the comment section on YouTube of music videos that had been uploaded, and typed in celebrities names on Twitter and Facebook to see what people were writing about them. We also looked at articles that had been posted online about the singers and checked what people were commenting on websites such as www.dailymail.com. All of these websites also aided us in understanding what the fashion was at the moment, what styles were in, what artists were wearing and most importantly what the public thought of those outfits. 

Without the internet we wouldn’t have been able to search artists’ websites or made our own. We used a website called www.wix.com, this is yet another example of an online Media Technology. WIX is a programme that allows you to create and distribute your own online website. I was able to add elemtents such as images, videos and links onto the websites and social media. It is an easy to use website that allowed us to make a website from scratch for our artist in a professional manor. To create our website we looked into websites for people such as Bruno Mars, Olly Murs, Ed Sheeran and many others. From their websites we were able to understand what we appreciated the most and what we didn’t like very much. Through this analysis we understood that we shouldn’t complicate our website too much and make it user-friendly.

 The internet also managed to help us when it came to location, we used Google maps to plan our a route for our filming day. We wanted to create a structure of how the day would pan out and Google maps made that a lot easier, we were able to pin-point where we would film and when.

 Another important piece of digital technology was our mobile phones. We used our phones to video the interviews we conducted with member of people representing our target audience. We were able to film, edit and upload our content from our phones which shows how important they were. From the interviews we managed to gain an insight into our target audience and understand what they looked for in an artist. 

Our phones were also very helpful when it came to filming our animatic. We drew a picture of each scene and then took a picture of each drawing, then we were able to edit the images together and place them with the audio of the song so we could see when there would be a cut to the beat and when the narrative and performance bits would be. This is a lot more advanced than AS because during AS we just took a couple picture of a drawn out storyboard, this required little effort and thought and didn’t aid the overall product.

 During AS we used an older and less advanced camera than in A2, for our music video we used a GoPro and a DSLR camera to make sure we got as many shots as possible and crisp, good quality shots. This made it a lot easier to compile shots and choose our favourites too. In AS our filming skills were a lot worse and the fact that the camera wasn’t great quality didn’t help that so it made editing a lot more complicated.

 For AS we used imovie which is a much simpler and less advanced editing software whereas for our music video we used Adobe Premiere Pro which is a great software that aided the production of our music video a lot. We used the colour corrector tool to enhance the colours of each shot. We used the cut and separate tool the most to make sure each scene was cut to a beat and the lip-syncing all matched up.

 For our digipak we used Coral Photopaint/Draw/photoshop to edit pictures we had taken during a photoshoot and during our filming days. These enabled us to create a professional album cover for our artist.

All these technologies were useful for me because I am a prosumer. They were all free to use which was good for us because it made our pre-production and post-production much easier. I create things and share them through the internet whilst I also consume things that other people have made. All of these things that I have talked about have encouraged and helped me construct and research my music video, digipak and website. 

By using digital media technologies I have used technological convergence to ensure that I have produced three products as part of a successful campaign. My use of YouTube, Wix and Blogger has enabled me to become a prosumer, a creator of media products to a near professional standard. Digital technology has given me opportunities to upload, share and distribute my products. It is also interactive as my audience have been able to feedback, like and comment on my products using features such as, Survey Monkey, YouTube and Facebook comments, this is important as it gives an understanding of media in the online age which overall helped the creation of my media products.

Evaluation Question 3 - Audience Feedback

Once we had finished our music video we presented it to a focus group, we asked open questions to get thorough data and feedback and we also gave them all questionnaires to get more specific answers of what we wanted to know about the music video.

Qualitative research is information that is gathered that is not in a numerical form. Common examples include, diary accounts, open-ended questionnaires interviews and observations.

Quantitative research gathers information in a numerical form. This information can be collated into groups, categories and and orders. this type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables.

The questions that we asked included:

Did you enjoy the music video? - what worked well?
What would you change?
What was the narrative of the video?
Does the video fit the genre of music
Do you think the video was cut to the beat?
Do you like the editing?

We were presenting our final piece so we knew the focus group would only be picking out the smallest of details to be changed or to criticise because we had already followed the feedback previously received. The main feedback that we received was very positive. People had lots of good things to say for example how upbeat, original and amusing the video was. 


The points from our feedback that stood out the most was the divided preferences, we found that the reason the boys enjoyed the video and the bits the liked the best was the superhero, narrative element, from our research we were aware that there would be a preference of boys towards the superhero because it seemed that at one point or another in most of their lives they wanted to be a superhero therefore watching someone else dress up and pretend to be a superhero gave them a nostalgic type of feeling. 

The girls on the other hand enjoyed the performance element a lot, we found that the casting of our character Connor James was very good as most people appreciated his young and charming vibe while at the same time finding him very attractive. This was one of the aims of the music video, we wanted to appeal to all 12-20 year olds of both genders. Therefore we incorporated the information we found out during research into how to interest all types of audiences.


During the focus group we wanted to know if the group was able to decode the idea of the music video. We had encoded a narrative into our video that we felt portrayed itself very clearly. When asked what they had thought the video was about they were able to give clear answers based around the idea of 'A superhero in London' and 'The child in all of us'. These answers showed us that they were able to de-construct the meaning of the video very easily to understand what we had wanted them to about the video. It also shows that we had been successful in constructing a music video that our target audience were able to connect with and enjoy.

Some thoughts that were given included, switching the shots around a bit to make the video more upbeat and jumpy. We had previously thought about this idea but felt that it did not fit with the tempo of the song and that it look messy and unprofessional when we tried to cut shots not in time with the beat. 

Another idea was to end the video with the superhero going back to his home to give it a cyclical feel and tie off the ends, we felt that although it was a good idea we preferred to leave the narrative out in the open, we wanted to end it on an artistic shot of the Ironman character as we felt he represented the fun and exciting side to the music video.

The aspect of the music video that got the most praise was the editing side of it. People appreciated the way the narrative flowed and the way the performance interjected at specific times throughout. They thought the jump cuts created an upbeat vibe and made it exciting. They felt the lip-syncing was accurate and the cuts were on a beat. The enhanced colour in the narrative side was found to be very appealing and noteworthy.

However, another comment that was made about editing was the fact that we could have included a wider variety of shot types for the performance element. We had used mainly close-ups on the face and chest area of our star Connor james for the sole reason of attracting our target audience.

We asked each member to rate the video out of 10 and the average mark was 8.5/10.

Finally, we also posted a survey monkey which was available for anyone who had seen the video to answer, the results are as follows:

Lastly, After uploading the video to YouTube we were able to analyse the demographics and view count that our video received. From this we were able to see that our main target audience was a considerable viewer of our video. This is important as we had been successful in creating a media product for a specific target audience.

Here is a video of groups of people representing our target audience responding to questions we drafted to better understand the types of things our audience likes.

Evaluation Question 2 - Promotional campaign

Our star, Connor James, fits the conventions of a normal pop/rock artist. We researched many artists of similar genre, age and gender to find out what people found most appealing about the artists. A few artists similar to Connor include Olly Murs, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and Cody Simpson. We got inspiration from these artists, the way they acted, dressed and played up to the camera during their music videos; all of these factors helped us to create the perfect pop star.

We wanted Connor to be portrayed as a charismatic, charming, fun and energetic character, these were the key elements we wanted to put on our star’s image because from researching the similar artists we found that these were the most talked about and enjoyed qualities displayed.

My digipak, website and music video all used a running theme that represented the main, Ironman character. The Ironman character represents a lot  of the qualities that we wanted Connor to be viewed as, when people see the character dressed in the superhero outfit they get a nostalgic feeling as most people remember a time that they wanted to be a superhero. Also the outfit is very colourful and the character is very playful throughout, this shows the fun and energetic traits. The website and digipak incorporate Ironman throughout the products which play as a reminder to the traits Ironman displays in the music video.

The genre of the music is pop/rock, this type of music appeals mainly to a young audience between 12-20, this is because the tempo of music from this genre fits well with a young and energetic lifestyle, most 12-20 year olds enjoy upbeat and simple music with lyrics that they can sing along to and apply to themselves.

The traits attributed to Connor James are very appealing to people in our target audience because they are traits that young girls look for in boys. Girls want to date him and the boys want to be like him. He is good looking and portrays a great personality that people are usually fond of.

Each product works well at selling the artist, for starters the music videos shows the audience what Connor is like in a stripped back performance, this is a large selling point because we wanted to sell him on his good looks and the way he performed to the camera. The website gives fans an opportunity to find out when he would be performing near them, shows a gallery of all his photo shoots and a variety of personal pictures, as well as being able to buy merchandise based on Connor. The digipak outside image shows a picture of Ironman with everything else blurred out, this encompasses the colourful and playful theme and shows more about Connor’s personality, the inside cover tries to sell Connor’s looks as there are two images of Connor on a plain black background.

The music videos relates to the target audience because it represents the child in all of us. We witness a person dress up in a superhero costume and spend the day in London attracting attention and enjoying himself. Most children at some point want to be a superhero, or dress like one, this means that when the watch the video they relate to the feeling of wanting to be a child again but know they would never do it themselves as it goes against social norms, making it even more enjoyable to watch.

The website is very easy to use and find, the simple, bright, block writing makes everything clear and visible. Each page has helpful information without too much going on making it hard to follow or distracting. We could make it more accessible by putting links on social media and promoting it more to fans online.

The video, digipak and website all have one strong main link and that is the colour scheme, each one follows a colour scheme of yellow and red, these are vibrant and obvious colours which are very appealing to a young audience. The digipak and website successfully promote the video as they show images of the Ironman character which are intriguing to unaware audiences.

We are promoting Connor James through the global, oligopoly Sony. Sony is an huge conglomerate that produces music for many artists including those similar to Connor. It is well-known for the high-quality products it produces and is a great company for an artist like Connor.

We are mainly using social media and adverts to promote Connor as an artist. We found that most people from our target audience spend a lot of time on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat etc and therefore we believe that the best way to create a cohesive marketing campaign is to use social media. It is also a great way for fans to feels as though they can connect with their favourite artists in a direct and immediate way. They can share their opinions and feelings about the artist which makes it easier for us to understand what the fans want and therefore mould our marketing campaign in a way that will attract more people. We are also using other types of media such as magazines and TV interviews to make Connor James a house-hold name. 

Evaluation Question 1 - Conventions

In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenges forms and conventions of real media products?

Media theorist Keith Negus has conducted into the conventions of a music video. I have summarised his work into the following points: 

1. A possible narrative structure

2. A possible performance element

3. The ability to be able to disregard realism and use dis-continuity editing

4. Shots cut exactly to the beat of the track

5. Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGI, in-camera effects)

6. A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

7. The obvious and deliberate promotion of the artist's 'image' be it aesthetic, generic or ideological. The ‘image’ is sold as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption 

8. The featuring of the artist within the media product (almost without exception)

9. A wide multitude of shot types, camera angles and movement

10. Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one crucial element often being dominant and theme for the media product)

Conventions are the traditional codes and  rules which dictate the way that something is usually done. These rules help audiences instantly recognise the genre of certain products. All forms of media use these conventions during the production of media products in order to give the audience what it wants to see. In relation to music videos, conventions are often based around  core elements such as camera work, editing, set design and cast. The genre of our band was pop punk/pop-rock. This means we used conventions within this genre of the music industry.

The following prezi and slideshares show how our media product/website and dig-pak, used, developed and challenged conventions

Digipak idea

I had the idea that I wanted to incorporate the artist as well as the Ironman character in the cover. This is because we are selling the artist on his looks and fun personality. From research I have done I have found that most pop artist's covers are quite colourful and vibrant to catch the attention of their audience when in stores. Therefore I have decided to add in the red and yellow theme as the eye catching part, the Ironman picture as the interesting aspect and the image of the artist as a selling point. To get the image of Ironman with a fuzzy background and making Ironman stand out I coped the overall image and used a brush to make the whole image fuzzy. I then used the delete tool to get rid of everything but Ironman in the other image and overlapped the Ironman on the fuzzy image. This gave the effect of Ironman being the most important aspect of the image.

Editing analysis

For the narrative part of filming we had an organised planned of what we wanted to have in the end cut of the music video but while film it meant we had a lot of freedom to shoot as much as we wanted. For our type of music video we felt like all shots could be made important during editing but we decided to discard the shots that seemed a bit dull and less upbeat, we wanted the audience to be amused by the video and enjoy the experience of watching it, therefore we got rid of the shots that contain a little amount of colour, light or upbeat event. For the performance element we filmed the entire song being lip synced multiple times but each time in a different angle. This enabled us to pick which shots looked best with the track. A variety of shots are necessary during this part to keep the audience excited and not get bored with one log shot at a time. Therefore we didn't discard many shots for this aspect.

One we had all the shots we wanted we began the post-production part, to begin with we put all the shots in chronological order before cutting out the shots we felt weren't right for that part. By this point the narrative was beginning to take form and we could see where the video was headed, after this we trimmed each clip to the few seconds they needed to be and the shape of the music video was beginning to look quite solid.

After cutting each shot to about the length we felt suited we began putting them against the music, when the clips were in chronological order against the track we were able to adjust the clips to change in beat with the music. This encompassed trimming or extending clips slightly. We noted that we had to start doing this part at the beginning of the music video because if we found that once the whole video was cut to the beat except for a small part at the beginning then changing that part would affect the rest of the video and meant we would have to adjust every clip very slightly.

Matching the audio to the visual is extremely important but mainly when it comes to lip-syncing, this is because videos that do this poorly can end up looking tacky and unprofessional. When we started matching the artist's lip movements to the audio we found that the lip-syncing during filming had not actually been very accurate, therefore we had to split some clips up change the speed they went at. For some clips the artist had sung too slow to start and then too fast at the end, this meant we had to slow them down to be in sync and match together. 

I think that one aspect that went well during editing was the teamwork of our group, we managed to all take an equal share of the editing and contribute throughout. This made everything a lot easier as we had four keen eyes making sure every shot was accurate opposed to one. Having a good work ethic meant the editing was able to flow smoothly and efficiently. Also when we came across some difficulties we were able to overcome them but thinking of the best strategies to implement. There weren't many negative aspects while editing other than when we felt it was better to put performance parts at every chorus, this meant we had to change a few things around in the video after our first draft, when doing this all the clips that where in the right places ended up not being in sync or on a beat. We had to spend a lot of time correcting the aspects of the video that had changed.

There isn't much in the video that I would change but if I had the chance I would have filmed some scenes a few more times and from different angles, this would have given a larger variety to choose from and would have made editing slightly easier. Also I would improve the lip-syncing while filming to make the editing easier again.

Personally, I believe that the narrative element of the music video we have created was established to a high standard. The title for a narrative is ' A day in the life of an average superhero' but the message we tried to create was to show the 'child inside of every adult.' The superhero is a representation of a child and his adventures through London acting like a normal person signify he is still 'only human.'

The star image of our artist took a lot of research and planning, we found searched other artists with the same genre and found out what people liked most about them. The main things that stood out were that confident, charismatic and fun-loving aspects of the artists therefore we wanted to portray the same things with our artist through editing. I feel we managed to achieve this as we put in a lot of jump cuts and different angles in. 

The target audience that we are trying to appeal to are young male and females between the late teen years and early 20 year olds. By analysing conventions of videos in our genre and interviewing people of a similar age we were able to form a picture of what the audience wanted to see. After shooting the necessary footage we had to use the editing process to bring it all to life. We used fast paced cuts and a variety of different angles and depths of focus to keep the audience excited and used a superhero protagonist to provide a more laid back/funny element to the music video. 

Website Ideas

For my website I feel there should be a red and yellow theme running through to represent the music video starring our singer wearing an Ironman costume. It should look like a professional website and not childish so I will use a black background with yellow and red writing. It will have the music video, tour dates, merchandise and photos of Connor James. I have researched artists similar to Connor James and have picked out qualities that I like about their websites.

Final Idea

After filming and editing our new performance part of the music video we showed both music videos (one with the new green screen performance aspect and the first draft we did) to different audiences and classmates. Overall the feedback seemed to be that people preferred having our artist in the music video and were against the green screen idea. Therefore we reverted back to the idea of having a solo artist (Connor James), and to have him singing the performance parts. To make the video more interesting and entertaining we edited the long shot of the artist singing and cut the chorus sections into smaller chunks, so there wasn't one shot in the video for too long. Also we edited the look of the performance sections by using contrast and colour balance to make the background look like one plain, colour and make our artist contrast with the background to show he is the main part of the video.

Digipak idea

This is a digipack cover idea that I had. It is an abstract piece that uses the same colours as the superhero in the music video. I don't want to sue an image of the band because I like the idea of them being an organic band, selling their music instead of their image, going along with the music video as well. 

Filming Performance

Yesterday we began filming the performance aspect of the music video. We recruited many people to come along to filming so we could have a variety of different singers in the music video. We used a green screen so we can change the colour for each person and used a close up shot of their faces to get a good look at their accurate lip syncing. We got each person to sing the majority of the song, aloud to enable us to use them for any part of the song and to make it look as authentic as possible. 

The band

We have decided to go back to the idea of having a band. This is because we feel it fits better with the song. Although, the singers will not feature in the music video, this is because we want to keep the in mind the constructive criticism handed to us about making the performance aspect more lively, therefore we are sticking with the idea to have lots of different singers all lip syncing different parts of the song, this keeps the song fun and upbeat having changing faces and backgrounds. We have looked into other music videos that have done a similar thing and we like the way it looks. Rockstar by Nickleback has a music video that shows different people singing lip syncing their song in different places. The song is Nickleback's but they don't really appear in the music video.

The music video presents a similar idea to what we want to do but the aspects that we don't like in this music video is the fact that the cuts in the video are not on the beat of the music. We want to make sure that each time there is a cut in the video it is on a beat in the song, therefore it should look more realistic. The main difference is that our video will only have the lip syncing aspect during performance sections so there is a split between a narrative story and the performed lyrics.

First Draft

Today my group and I presented our first draft to the rest of the class. We received lots of positive feedback but also constructive criticism on ways in which we could improve the music video. The main point that we have discussed changing is the performance aspect, this is because our performance aspect is set in quite a dull and irrelevant setting, a black curtain in the background of a plainly dressed solo singer. We have decided to use multiple people for our performance, all separately singing different parts of the song but using the same shot. We will use a green screen to change the colour of the background of each performer. This way we can make the whole music video a lot faster paced and snappier. This will fit better with the song and the narrative part of the music video as the whole aspect is fun while trying to stay well structured. We have taken the criticism into account and will adjust the music video to accommodate the suggestions.

Star Personality

Our music video has a comical and fun edge, it is playful and brings out the personality of our performer. In Ed Sheeran's music video for 'Thinking out loud' stars Ed Sheeran which sells him as a person opposed to just his music, also during the video we see Ed sharing a smile, smirk or laugh which allows people to see Ed as a person and shows that he enjoys what he does. His personality has the ability to shine threw. We decided this would be a good idea for our performer because we want to sell him as a good looking, fun and energetic person who also cares about what he does. Therefore we have got him singing with a smile on his face, being energetic and having a good time. We have decided to edit in at the end of the music video clips of our performer messing up and laughing as if bloopers. We feel this will help get our performer more followers and fans as people will feel they can relate to him and see him as a fun guy.
Another artists who does this frequently and is well-loved because of it is Olly Murs. He started out his career on the reality show 'X factor' where he won over fans with his playful, lively and sweet personality.