4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and reasearch, planning and evaluation stages?

Media Technologies on Prezi

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

It is very charming. The lip-syncing is very slick. Some of the shots are very striking especially the sun and field scenes. However, is the song not about how the protagonist cannot get the person she admires, so how come she is smiling? The dog is quite random as well. On the other hand the dog adds a normality to the music video, this sets it apart from other music videos, which means it can become more relatable for the audience. You have also flattered Imogen very well with the dull colours and bleaching which follows one of the conventions of music videos.

Lily Vetch

I thought over all you have a brilliant video.

The editing is smooth and to the beat throughout.

You have used a number of different techniques which work well together, stop motion, slow motion and the computer thing which is my best bit :)

You do not have too many different effects which is bonus. And nice twist at the end with Matt..

the way you return to the lip sync holds the whole thing together, and they are on time.

I do not have any criticisms, i really like it x

Maud Start

I really like the way you've put a male in the video to relate 'Imogen's' feelings for him. I also like that the whole thing is in the same colour wash black and whitish.
I don’t like that the boy only appears right at the beginning and right at the end, would have been better if he appeared at other stages too. BUT LOVE IT!
Teresa Alba

 

Lily Vetch makes a very valid comment on the fact that our video does not match the lyrics of the song in the way that we have created an uplifting video to a song about pain.
We spent a lot of time filming the lip sync, to get footage of her singing the song without her smiling but this was obviously not enough to portray sadness in our video. So I have learnt that we could have twisted the story line a bit to display the lyrics more clearly.

Maud and George both comment on the use of the dog. I was a bit sceptical about this part of the video working at first because it seemed a bit out of the blue, but from this I have learnt that they do like it because fitted with the rest.

I have also realised that we were not wrong to spend a lot of time focusing on the editing of the film because there have been comments about the accurateness of the lip sync as well the slick editing.

After uploading our videos to Facebook, we got a few compliments

After being uploaded on YouTube for just over a week, we have had over 200 views as well as a few likes and dislikes

We have also looked at the views on YouTube to see who has been interested in our video.

It is evident that it is more commonly viewed amognst woman ages between 17-24 within the UK, this does not come as a surprise with our choice of song and the use of a female protagonist.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Question 2 on Prezi

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

Bottom left

I feel that this is a key shot within our music video because the use of a dog is one of our main elements, and this is the first shot in our video in which the dog can be seen.

Using an animal in a music video is not commonly done. However, for the genre of video that we have aimed towards, it can be seen. For example, during Ellie Goulding's video for 'Your Song' there are several shots that show her playing with a kitten.

Bottom middle

This is key shot because it clearly displays our use of blank and white, as well as being a clear shot of our protagonists face.

We chose to use black and white because we felt that it differentiated our video slightly as black and white isn't often used in music video.It can be related to Jessie Ware & Sampha's video for 'Valentine', in which they use the black and white throughout their video to enhance the simplicity very successfully. This video also has several shots of the both singers faces, similar to ours in the way that we use many shots that clearly show Imogen as our protagonist.

Bottom right

I feel that this is key because although it is quite simple, it displays a lot. It shows clearly a major part of our video which is Imogen walking  in the country.

For this, we were inspired by Ellie Goulding and her use of the outdoors within her videos.

Middle left

To me, this is a very important shot because it is one of the only long shots where Imogens full body can be seen, from head to toe. This displays her outfit. This is often seen in music videos as a lot of attention is on the protagonists clothing.

Unlike other videos, this is not shown very often. The difference with ours is that we appreciated the focus on other things, such as facial expressions and lighting. Furthermore, in many msuic videos, the protagonist has several striking outfits. Our video challenges this because we kept it simple with only one outfit (and a few small changes such as shoes) but we feel that this works for the genre of our video.

I feel that this is also a key shot because the long shot enables viewers to see me of the surroundings, by displaying the fields around her, which enhances her location by clearly displaying that it is set in the countryside. I think that continuously setting the scene throughout the video increasing the understanding of the viewers.

This style is also shown in a slightly different way in Rizzle Kicks video for 'Down With the Trumpets' because while they are filming with their back to the sea in Brighton, it is clear where they are located because of key elements related to being on the by the sea, for example the beach huts.

Middle

This is a key shot because it displays one main convention of music videos which is lip sync.

I feel that it is very important to allow the audience to focus on the lyrics to the song by removing any distraction. Variations of lip sync are shown in several music videos, ranging from close ups to long shots to walking down the street. However, we decided to stick to close up because it gave us the ability to show other things at the same time, as it kept it quite simple.

I was inspired by Natalie Imbruglia’s video for ‘Torn’. During this video, there is lip sync throughout and it cuts between lip syncing and action within the music video. I think it is similar to ours because we used a combination of lip sync with other shots throughout too.

It is also really similar to Azealia Banks' video for '212' because she uses a similar style of lip sync in the way that they use two close ups of the mouth, one a bit further away than the other which is very like ours.

 

Middle right

Stop motion is a key element in our video. Stop motion is becoming more and more commonly used within music videos. Oren Lavie’s video for ‘Her Morning Elegance’ uses stop motion throughout. It was extremely effective and done very well, which was inspirational to add some stop motion in our video.

Top left

This shot shows the only male in our video. For romantic songs, it is very common to have two main characters in the video, one male and one female.

This can be related to Gotye's video for 'Somebody That I Used to Know', in which the female character appears half way through the video. Like ours, the opposite sex is not shown throughout.

However, it differs because during our video, the female protagonist is never in the same shot with the male character. This is slightly similar to Plain White T's video for 'Hey There Delilah' because during this video, there are single shots of them collaborated together on screen.

Top middle

This is another key element, which is repeated throughout our video in the chorus. Some music videos use text within their video in many different forms. I think that the use of text was very successful in Coldplay’s video for ‘Paradise’. This inspired me because I think it works very well and enhances the key words of the chorus. We chose to do it differently with our video because it was better suited and different from others that I had seen.

Top right

This shot shows our protagonist interacting with the camera and audience. For me, it is key because it adds to the atmosphere of our video and is very ‘cute’. I was inspired by Ellie Goulding because she often does this in her videos and it is very interesting and grabs the attention of the audience.

Advertisement Poster

FINISHED POSTER

Conventions of CD Advertisements

Key to promotion of albums is their poster announcing the release.

This is a good example of an album advertisement. The font and colours reflect the name of the album. The information is easy to read and clear. Having an image allows the viewer to see who the artist is and allows them to judge what style of music you think they will have.

For our advertisement we will need to stick with vintage and contemporary theme. Sticking to the font courier new, this gives our digipak a recognizable branding We are going to have take good images which reflect the genre and style that links to our type of music yet we will remain with a simplistic look.

 

Finished Digipak

Above is each panel in large. Below is the finished flat pack of our digipak.

The image below is an annotation explaining the reasons for our images and where they have been placed.

Flat plan of digipak

Digipak Cover

We have started to edit the back of our digipak...

Digipak Idea

This is an idea for the digipak cover...

After making our music video, we now have to create a digipak that complements the style,genre and artist etc. We have taken a still image from one of the shots used in our music video and hav edited it using a polariod background and then added the text at the botttom.

This will not be the final cover for our digipak it was created simply to play around with ideas and see which direction we hope to venture. We think we shall create something similar possibly using the polariod effect but we shall take new images for the cover. As in our music video we dont actually show the main characters face until the first chorus we feel that we should have her face on the front of the album cover to divert away from too much mystery.

CD Sales Investigation

CD sales dropped dramatically in the last five years due to illegal downloading from the Internet and the widespread CD burning. The easy access to this has made it such an easy adjustment and for those that cannot afford all of the music they want. It allows those to have free music on demand.
The Universal Group, which is one of the largest record cooperation, cut the sales prices up to 25% in the last two years, in order to increase sales hoping to grab the attention of fans and to decrease the amount of illegal download.
Comparing the sales figures of 2009 and 2010 the figure dropped from 147 million to 114 million this year. In 2007 CD's accounted for 90% of the album sales in the United States, with digital accounting for the other 10%. In 2009 the CD sales were only 79% whereas the the digital download of music had increased up to 20%.

Nowadays it is not so much the sales of CD's, which makes the artist earn his money but more iTunes and other online downloading sites. That change came along because it is so easy for everyone to access Internet anytime and anywhere. In addition iTunes also allows the buyer to buy only one song of a whole album, which makes it more convenient for some people.

The sales of CD's changed rapidly over five years due to the introduction online download especially illegal download. Its popularity is still on the up and increasing rapidly. Artists have resulted in making money by doing more live concerts and also headlining and playing a set at music festivals. Festivals are extremely popular and are an easy catchment area to promote the artists music.

Existing Digipak

We have taken the album cover of Adele's new album '21' and copied it using photoshop.

Below is the edited and copied version. However, we struggled to change the thickness of the font to match exactly to the original album artwork.

Star Image

Star Image on Prezi

Digipak

A digipak is a kind of CD case. It is a six-panel product. It is made from paper and consists of a plastic disc tray that has been fitted inside on one of the panels and the other remaining panels are left for artwork, lyrics, track lists and front covers etc. It was considered the environmentally friendly version of CD cases, although they have remained less common as they suffer more from wear and tear than jewel cases. Also they have remained less common due to the fact they have higher manufacturing costs.

A jewel case/ CD case consists of 3 pieces of plastic put together. This is the more traditional package for a CD. It has the same if not similar plastic CD holder and then the casing on the front and back has paper slotted inside with information on the album and artist.

In our opinion the digipak has more value. It has 6 sides, allowing for more artwork and information of the artist to be obtained whilst also the promotional benefits are greatly increased. The more allowance of space means the artists can promote themselves with more than just their CD but with significant information about themselves adding a personal touch which people do like to see when looking at the concept of celebrities. The item is also seen as a collectable therefore meaning it needs to have that added feature to make it something others want to keep. One of the other key features is also the environmentally friendly touch, the environment is becoming extremely important to our generation and if others have a slight feeling of ‘doing good for the planet’ it adds to the purchase.

What we need to include in our digipak:

• The artist name
• The album title
• Album artwork
• Disc holder
• The names of the songs on the album
• The copyright label
• The record company
• Album credits
• Barcode

Font Tests

We have looked on Microsoft Word to experiment with possible fonts to use for our digipak, posters and anything regarding the sale or advertisement of our album. The fonts have to be consistent throughout the advertising process, in order to create regularity and familiarity. Our favourite font is the 6th one down, which is Courier New. We think this font compliments the style of our genre and its simplicity features relate well to our artists.

I blame coco

Promotion Investigation

     THE DRUMS

The Drums are an American indie pop band from Brooklyn, NY. In December 2009, the band was shortlisted as one of the 15 music acts for the BBC Sound of 2010.

“The Drums have got simplicity down to a fine art. The Drums’ newly minted blend of surf-rock and indie pop was as canny as it was minimal and uncomplicated. Song titles from their self-titled debut, from Let’s Go Surfing to Best Friends, were never likely to mask socio-political treatises” BBC REVIEW.

Album Releases:

‘The Drums’

Released: 7th Jun 2010

Label: Moshi Moshi/Island Records

‘Portamento’

Released: 2nd September 2011

Label: Island Records

The albums artwork is of a photograph containing two people. There is a young boy stood alongside his mother or grandmother perhaps, whose eyes have been edited through computer graphics; his eyes have been filled in red to possibly symbolize possession and the Devil. This connotation is also given through props in the background, a wooden Cross is hung directly above the boy’s head onto the wall. The picture is again of an 80s style, like in the “Best Friend” music video; it could possibly have been taken by a Polaroid or film camera, rather than digital image.
The album title appears to the top right of the cover, typed in large black, bold font inside a white box. The box also contains directly underneath, in smaller font, the band name and a track list. This isn’t very common in typical albums, as the cover usually focuses mainly on the image, rather than font.

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