Market Research Album Adverts (JONNY)

	Ellie Goulding ‘Lights’	Wretch 32 ‘Wretchrospective’	Kings Of Leon ‘Take me home’
Images -Presentation of artist/ band	There is a clear image of the artist ‘Ellie Goulding’ which takes up a good ¾ of the page. The image has been photoshoped with lights in her hair to relate to the album name. The emphasis has been on selling the artist more than the album.	The advert contains a full shot of the artist (Wretch 32). The surrounding/ Mise En Scene relates to the artists origins. The image is creative with contrasts of white and black which enable it to represent the genre without being too dark and boring.	I believe that ‘Kings of Leon’ are closest to our band out of these examples. There is an unusual image comprising of split screens with the four band members and an eagle, creating a strange creature covering a third of the page. The name of the band is at the top which is very clear with the use of white on black.
Clarity of Album being advertised	The album name is very small compared to the image of the artist. However it has been place prominently in the middle of the ad in front of a black background. It is very clear to read from a distance.	The name of the album is clearly displayed in the middle of the advert along with the release date. This is all very clear using a white text on a black background. There are attempts to sell the album by mentioning the ‘featured guest appearances’.	The name of the album is in large font in the bottom sector of the advertisement with the release date below it. This information is very easy to read with the use of vivid colours. There are attempts to sell the album by mentioning that their hit songs are included in the album.
Other information	At the bottom of the advert there are reviews from reputable reviewers such as ‘The Times’. Although this helps sell the album, there is no information on where the album can be purchased.	Unlike the other two adverts, this one clearly shows the consumer where the album can be purchased on the right hand side of the ad. The advert also includes the artists myspace account which is effective in gaining more long term fans.	At the bottom of the advert there is information for the bands website and the record labels website. Similar to the first advert, it does not show where the album can be purchased, which I think is important.

Analysis Of A CD Album (JONNY)

Audience Feedback From 1st Draft Of Music Video (JONNY)

Josh and I received feedback for our music video today as part of a peer assessment in our class. Although our music video had not been completed, we were able to show our development and then collate some feedback in order to improve the video. A lot of the feedback focused on items which we were already aware needed improving, however certain suggestions did help us with methods of improvement. We have decided to work on 3 different improvements that were brought up repeatedly in the peer assessment.

Improvement 1- Lip Synching
The majority of video currently is 2 seconds in front of the song. This makes any singing in the video look very silly! It would be easy to fix this problem, if the whole of the video was 2 seconds in front. However as it is only part of the video we will have to find a way of only shifting that part, whilst keeping the rest in the same location. I feel that this will be the hardest challenge and will be difficult to fix.  

Improvement 2- Dream Sequence
A lot of feedback talked about how the audience were unaware that one of our sequences was intended to be a dream. I have started attempts at improving this by finding a fce tutorial explaining how to make a filtered dream sequence (View Here). I hope to have this fixed by the end of the week.

Improvement 3- Dream Bubble
This should be the easiest problem to fix, but I am having a real problem with it! We have a dream bubble in front of a white background. The original colour of the dream bubble is white, but in the video it turns purple. This was also noted in the feedback as it makes the quality of the video very poor. I am not sure why this has happened and have tried to change this. I think I will need to conduct some research to establish what the problem is and how I can go about fixing it.

Market Research Album Covers (JONNY)

	EXAMPLE ‘The evolution of man’	MAROON 5 ‘Overexposed’	ONE DIRECTION ‘Take me home’
Images	The albums show a person holding a picture of the artist example when he was young over an image of a crowd at a festival. The style is very retro and has a ‘home made’ feel to it. The image on the album is creative as it indirectly relates to the title ‘evolution of man’ as in a way the image shows the ‘evolution of example’.	The album comprises of a number of hand drawn unusual images with a pink/ purple colour scheme. The images and the colours are bright and so attract the eye but do not tell a story or have any other purpose on the album cover.	The band is clearly represented in the album cover. The fact that they are all round a telephone box gives a British representation in international markets.
Brand Identity	The iconic Example logo is placed on the top left of the album. This makes it easily identifiable for his fans, however it is not as easy to identify for consumers browsing in a shop.	The band name is placed along the middle of the album, however does not stand out as much as the same colours are used. The name of the album is crushed along the bottom of the album. Although the album cover is unusual it relates to their other albums in terms of design.	The brand identity is extremely strong with all of the band being placed in the image. The name of the band and album name are clearly presented. This makes the band easy to identify for consumers, even those who are not as familiar with the band.
Presentation of artist/ band	The album presents Example through his younger self. This portrays a sense of innocence. There is also the idea of achievement, that when the picture was taken he dreamt of being famous and the fact that it is placed over a massive crowd means that he has achieved this.	There are no images of the band, however arguably they are famous enough to get away with this. The creative album image may be used to indicate their creative music style.	The fact that they are jumping and climbing on the album cover connotes youthfulness, energy and fun. The fact that is a sunny day means that the songs are likely to be happy. These are all things that we relate to boy bands, especially One Direction.
Other information	This album cover is effective however suits artists/ bands that are already famous. Our album will need to promote ‘The Village Musicians’.	Although I like the design of the album as it would stand out amongst all those other CDs in HMV. It would be expensive and time consuming to produce the images. Similar to the Example album, it would not promote our band.	In my opinion the album cover is too cheesy. However in terms of concept and promotion of the band, something similar to this would be good for ‘TVM’. However it would be important to make sure that we didn’t alienate the male market.

Digipak Market Research In HMV (JONNY)

After being given our brief to create an album cover for ‘The Village Musicians’, I sought to conduct some market research in one of the UK’s largest music retailers ‘HMV’.

The first thing that struck me when walking in to the store were the vast amount of different sections ranging from band t-shirts to tablet computers (their product range is extremely diverse!) Looking around the shop, to the left a large purple sign caught my eye ‘Chart’ with a music sign next to it. I decided that this would be a good place to start!

The chart music was aesthetically well displayed with lines of the albums all in unison. In my opinion, this allowed the artwork of the album to stand out far greater than if there had just been one album per artist. 
An album that stood out for me was the new One Direction album which had different visual versions of the album, with the image of a band member on each. 
This gives the consumer more choice (or dare I say, for real fans, the opportunity to buy all 4!) I found this interesting due to the fact that we are also promoting a boy band, although arguably with much greater musical talent than 1D. 




Moving on from the chart music, the main section of the store is devoted to what seems like every album ever created, literally thousands! I payed specific attention to the Rock and Pop section as I felt that was the genre our song best fit in to. As you can see from the pictures, its not easy for an album to stand out when there are this many. The Rock and Pop section seemed to go on for ages!





 The albums are firstly categorized by music genre e.g Rock and Pop. They are then sub categorized by alphabetical order of the album name.  There are also other sections such as 'greatest hits' which contain compilation albums with a selection of an artists/ bands greatest hits. This methodology makes it very easy for browsers to allocate the album they may be interested in purchasing. 

 Along with looking at album designs and artwork, I spent some time analyzing the market for music DVDs  This is a much smaller market with the picture to the right showing the whole of HMVs selection. I wanted to compare different styles of music DVD such as; performances, documentaries and compilations.  

 Once again coming back to One Direction. I have found 2 examples of performance DVDs. The model of these specific DVDs is to film the band during their live concerts, possibly add some extra footage such as back stage interviews and package it all in to a DVD. A perfect item for fans who were unable to get tickets for the concert- the next best thing!
Alternatively I found this hybrid music DVD which consisted of a collection of Elvis Presley's greatest performances. This product was aimed more as a collectors item with a high quality box to encase the DVD with a small book including information on Elvis also included! 

 This music DVD is a documentary looking at the history of Rap music and its development throughout the years. It is called 'something from nothing the art of rap'. The purpose of this DVD is to educate the viewer about the music genre, teaching them to have a greater appreciation of the song. The video is directed by ICE- T who is a well known musician in this field of music. 

 Along with the conventional forms of music DVD that I mentioned above, during my market research I came across a 'fly on the wall' style documentary which follows the band around as if you are living the life that they have. The example that I took a picture of was called 'being... N-DUBZ'. The idea of this genre of music DVD is to allow the viewer in to the day to day lives of the band, something that is not normally shown.

After conducting my market research I stopped off at the listening post to see what styles of music were being played. Similar to the shop the selection of songs available to have a brief listen to (30 seconds) were in its thousands. These were all in a database with a search toolbar at the top of the screen, you could search by song name, song artist or even by genre. While I was very impressed by the vast amount of songs available, it was disappointing to see that 'The Village Musicians' were not one of them! 

From my market research I have conducted that CDs are much more viable then music DVDs. I believe this is due to the increased usage a CD can have over a DVD. A CD can be listened to passively (whilst driving a car, doing homework etc) a DVD needs your full attention. It is clear to me that a lot of effort goes in to designing the artwork for an album cover as when albums are faced with such competition against hundreds of other albums as shown in my images above and that many different tactics are used to do this (bright colors  quirkiness of the cover, no images/ no words). These all give USPs to the album covers, and increase the chances of a browser picking the album up! Having spent time in HMV my opinion is that the CD sector of their market is focused at the older demographic who would still rather listen to a CD then download the song online. This opinion was backed up having during my time viewed the majority of CD browsers as 40+. This market research will help me develop my own ideas for an album cover representing 'The Village Musicians',  

Editing Schedule (JONNY)

I created this editing schedule at the beginning of November after we had completed all of the filming  and had uploaded the footage on to the computer. I coordinated our availability through both of our school time tables. I then created a schedule on Excel placing hourly slots in line with our lessons at school.

I started by placing our media lessons in the schedule and then proceeded to place our own personal availability following that. Sections marked 'J+J' were when both of us were available to edit the music video. Along with using this time to edit the music video, we also re-shot our stop motion. The stop motion was shot on Wednesday the 14th and Monday the 19th where we were both available for 2 hours (it was a long process!). We stuck to the schedule most of the time, but when we were unable too, we made sure we found another hour where we were available. Overall we spent just under 30 hours editing our final music video, meeting checkpoints along the way e.g the rough cut which we set a deadline for Friday the 9th (this was achieved- just!). The use of a schedule allowed us to be efficient in our time management as we knew exactly when we were needed to edit. This allowed us to schedule our other plans around these times, thus avoiding conflicts which may have caused unavailability for editing.  

Mood Board Representing Our Music Video (Jonny)

This is a Glog that I created, which gives a brief representation of our music video through words and images. It represents ideas that we had and implemented in our music video. This mood board was created on an online software called Glogster EDU.

I have had a Glogster account for a while now as this was one of the technology's that I used for my AS portfolio, and so was familiar with the set up of the software. Glogster edu allows you to set up a simple account which is free, however you can upgrade to a premium account paying a monthly fee. I used the free version which allows you to import images, videos and music to create a mood board which they call a 'Glog'. It is a very simple product to use and is quick to use if you already have the images saved. Another great benefit is that similar to other online programs I have used, you are able to embed your final product on to your blog. which makes it look that bit more professional! 

The Decision To Place Stop Motion In Our Music Video (Jonny)

For our A Level Media project Josh and I really wanted to push the boat out and try as many filming techniques as possible, as to allow our music video to really stand out from the others. Something that we were both very interested in was the video effect of stop- motion. Our interest in creating a stop- motion sequence increased after both watching the following video on YouTube...


 

We came across this video when writing a blog post on similarities between our bands music video and that of Noah and the Whales. The girl that created this video was also doing A Level Media at the time. Knowing for sure that we now wanted part of our music video to contain a stop motion sequence, we then set about finding the best way to do this. A video that I found on YouTube gave us a good basic knowledge of how we should go about creating our stop motion...




This video was created by a group called 'storm the castle' who among other things educate people in different filming techniques. The advice given in this video- although quite simple made us aware of problems we did not anticipate occurring. The video also gave us one of the most important pieces of advice for our stop motion sequence, which was... USE A WHITEBOARD. I can not express how much time this saved us, as it allowed us to modify an image without having to draw it again from scratch (as in the Noah and The Whale stop motion). Haven taken on board the advice given, we set about creating our stop motion sequence.

http://youtu.be/uhrmCTcF7B8

This was our first attempt at our stop motion sequence. Although it was effective in terms of looking like a moving image, we were unhappy with the camera movement. This was due to the fact that images were taken holding the camera free hand, rather than using a tripod. Another error was lighting. By only using natural light our images were inconsistent, instead we should have used photography lights similar to the ones used in our green screen. Because of these errors we have decided to learn from our mistakes and reproduce the stop motion sequence, this time with tripods and lighting.

Detailed Timeline Of Music Video For 'All This Time' (Jonny)

I created a detailed timeline of the footage that we will use in our music video as part of our planning. I chose to do this as I believe it will be extremely beneficial in the long run with both filming the footage and the editing of the music video. This timeline allows us to know exactly what footage we need and where it will go in relation to the other footage. I also have the timeline on a word document so that it is easier to consult when we are out filming.

I originally created this timeline on a power point presentation but then converted that to an online presentation using an online application called 'slideshare'. This was the first time that I had used 'slideshare' and so I was asked to create an account- this was fairly simple! However once I had created the account there were no instructions on how to use the application. I struggled at first on how to use the application, but I soon figured it out by simply uploading my power point at the click of a button. The application then processed the power point turned it in to an online presentation and gave me an embedding link. The program was very simple to use and is a clever idea for anyone who wants to share a presentation document online!   

Audience Expectations Of Our Music Video (Jonny)

This is a video that I made to represent our target audiences expectations of our music video. I created the video on Imovie with the experience I gained last year from our film openings. In our questionnaire we asked people to listen to our chosen song 'All This Time' and then asked them questions relating to the style of the song and what they would expect from the music video. This video will help us to understand what our target audience expect from our music video and will work as a guideline when story boarding our music video. We realized after editing the video that we had no female input shown on our video, this was a problem as our target audience is both male and female ages 13-21. However we have solved this problem by keeping the data response from our Music Video Interviews and our Questionaire which have both male and female responses!    

Synopsis Planning (Jonny)

We planned our Synopsis on a online brainstorm and mind map creator called bubbl.us. We started by splitting the music video in to 4 sections: 1st,2nd and 3rd verse and the chorus. We then followed these up with the locations, characters, the lyrics to that section and a brief synopsis of what would happen. This allowed us to create the mind map above.  

This was the first time that I used this program and I found it relatively easy to use! There was a small introduction to the program when I singed up which talked me through the basics, this was useful. There were also buttons which worked as short cuts which made things much quicker, for example ctrl+enter added another branch to the mind map. This mind map program was really effective in organizing all of our thoughts on our music video synopsis and displaying it in a format that is simple to follow. I will definitely be using this program again! 

Organizing Costumes For Our Music Video (JONNY)

I took on the role of organizing the costumes for both the band and the actors in our music video. 

When deciding on what the band should wear, I felt that it was right to represent the real village musicians style. I hoped that this would give an authentic relation between the band members and the song. For example; it would not have been effective if our band members wore baggy jeans, baseball caps and golden chains.
However, I felt that it was also important that our band members wore something true to themselves and that represent their unique style as a band. I found some pictures of the band and posted them on our group facebook page. I showed our band what the real village musicians wore, however explained to them that they had free reign over their own costume as long as it was similar and represented the genre of music. 




When shooting the narrative I ensured that Mike was wearing the same costume to avoid continuity errors. I worked with Ami (our actress) to co- ordinate a costume that represented her character
and that went well alongside Mikes costume.




I decided that it would also be important to start developing an 'image' for our lead singer Mike. Something that would distinct him from other artists. We decided that his leather jacket gave him a really nice nice image, and so you can see him wearing this jacket throughout the music video.

Organizing our filming schedule with the use of Social Media (Jonny)

Before commencing our filming for our music video Josh and I had the complicated task of organizing our filming schedule. This may not seem like a complicated task, however logistically finding a day where we could use our chosen location or green screen and where all 3 of our band members were available was never going to be easy!  Because of this, we decided to take our filming schedule in to the 21st century and create our own Facebook event where we could co-ordinate days with our band and actress and find dates that were mutually convenient for everyone!

We invited our 3 band members and our actress for the narrative to the event. We uploaded images of the original 'village musicians' so our band could get an idea of the style, along with this we also uploaded our animatic to help explain to the group the structure and story line of our music video.

When we needed to film a scene we would 'tag' whoever was needed in a post along with what we needed to film and where it would be filmed. Those who were 'tagged' in the post could then post a comment telling us what dates and times they were available, allowing us to co-ordinate a date that everyone was available. This process was very simple and saved a lot of time. It was a excellent example of how social media can connect people, as if we had not created an event we would have been left with the tedious task of phoning each member individually and collating the dates that everyone could do, before phoning back all of the members to tell them the date we had decided. The event page also allowed us to inform the group of any plans for the filming, for example, where we would meet, what they would need to wear etc..

Along with making life easier for ourselves, using social media also allowed to us to add another technology to the ever growing list that we have used in this A2 course. 

Performance Green Screen Filming 17/10/12 (Jonny)

This was our first filming day on our new music video project and despite a few set backs it went really well! We had chosen to film on Wednesday after school as all of our band members were free, along with the class room and the green screen. We borrowed the drum set and the keyboard from the music department and Mike (the guitarist) brought his own guitar. We filmed each member of the band independently with their instrument first filming a standard full shot of them playing the full song. We then filmed them a second time with a number of different close ups and angled shots. One of the main problems we
encountered during this process was that the band struggled to listen to the song being played over the top, this was especially a problem for our drummer Nicky. We overcame this problem by having him discreetly wear some in ear headphones connected to my phone which played the song straight in to his ear. This allowed his drumming to be in sync with the actual song.
After we had filmed each band member individually we then proceeded to film the band as a whole. Although we only intend to use them in the chorus, we made the decision to film them playing
the whole song as a contingency plan for any changes made along the way. When filming the whole band, we struggled to fit everyone on the green screen without peoples heads and arms coming off the screen. Josh and I were able to solve this problem
by strategically placing instruments so that all members could fit.
 Although this does block the view of the drums slightly, we felt that this was the most effective way of fitting the whole band in shot. Following this we took some shots of the band members without instruments 'messing' around and being silly as we felt this would be effective to go in along the chorus with other footage of them actually playing the song. Although a fair amount of our film looked quite stage, we did manage to get a few moments where the acting looked genuine and where they all managed to fit on the green screen.


Over all, I feel that Filming went well and that we achieved to get footage of everything we needed. We have looked through the tape, but are still to edit it, so we hope to avoid any major problems there. At times it was difficult to get the whole band
 to co operate simultaneously and film the footage which was frustrating and caused the process to drag out longer than we needed. However it was important to keep our band members happy throughout the process, after all they were the ones doing us a favor. Josh and I enjoyed the experience of directing and filming the performance with the green screen and had good fun with the band. We felt that this was a really good first filming session and hope that filming sessions in the future are this productive! Are next planned footage to film is the majority of the narrative which will involve us filming off location (date tbc).
We are looking forward to this greatly!  

Still Frame Analysis (Jonny)

I have looked at examples from three bands in a similar genre and format (3/4 male performers) too the village musicians. I have taken some still frames from a selection of music videos they have produced and analysed these. This will help us when planning and story boarding items such as band performance and narration. 

2 Door Cinema Club

Full Band Shots
These are still frames that have been taken of the full band performing their song during the music video. A clear similarity between them is that the lead of the band (which in this case are all singers) always stands in the middle, flanked either side by background instruments/ vocals. The still frame of Noah and the Whale and of Mumford and Sons  involve the band playing in very

Noah and the Whale

'set up' locations which add effect to the genre of the song
(This coincides with goodwins rule that the visuals in the video 
will relate, amplify or contradict the lyrics of the song). In contrast 
2 door cinema club are playing behind a very simple white back
drop. I believe they have chosen this because of the bands ethos
of it being 'all about the music' therefore they want the audience

Mumford and Sons

to concentrate on the music being played and not the backdrop or location. I like the idea of playing behind a block colour background as it gives emphasis on the band characters with what they are wearing and especially the music that they are playing.
I think it would be very effective to have our band behind a 
block coloured screen in parts of the video when they are 
performing.








Instruments Being Played

I have taken some still frames which show a variety of shots and angles that are used when focusing on a particular instrument being played. In these cases the instrument being focused on is often the prominent sound in the music video at that time. I think that the first two examples given are really effective as they clearly show the instrument being played with a clear view of the hands and the instrument. The third example shows a full shot at eye level of the drummer in Noah and the Whale. Although it is a full shot he is the only band member in the shot. This is good at isolating each band member and representing them individually as the shot can look too clustered if all band members are squashed in to it.

 Lead Band Member

I have taken a still frame of each bands lead member from the same music video as the group stills. These stills focus on the lead band member on their own. I have purposefully chosen a mid-shot, close up and long shot in order to compare the effectiveness of each. Firstly the mid shot of the lead from 2 door cinema club. In this still frame he is placed behind a white back drop with the mid shot allowing the viewer to see his face and the top half of what he is wearing. This is an important shot as by including what the lead is wearing helps represent the Indie image that the band represents. The emphasis in this shot is image. The second still frame is a close up of the lead from Mumford and Sons. This still frame focuses solely on the lead, this shot is taken whilst he is singing so is likely to relate to the song being sung in the music video. The emphasis in this shot is performance. The final still frame is a long shot of the lead from Noah and the Whale. This still frame focuses both on the lead playing his instrument and his surroundings. This shot can amplify both the lyrics and the sound if the surroundings relate to the lyrics of the song. The emphasis
on this shot is both performance and image.










Narrative

I have included a variety of narrative still frames, one from each of the bands. I have chosen still frames which I think may promote inspiration towards our own music video. The first still frame is the introduction to Noah and the Whales music video. I like the use of a title as it is rare to use one when creating a music video. This title adds to the nostalgia of the video which is produced as if it were a home movie. This is similar to the concept we are hoping to create when producing our video and therefore, in our case, using a title may be effective. The second still frame is from a Mumford and Sons music video, it entails a boy and a girl sitting together on a car bonnet. I have chosen this frame as the use of a long shot looking in to the sun set helps set a good image of relationship, but more importantly would amplify the lyrics of our own song. This would allow us to use another one of Goodwin's rules. Finally, I have taken a still frame from a music video by Two Door Cinema Club. This still frame has given me some ideas on how we could represent sadness and emotion.

The high camera angle which is often used to make the character on screen big and powerful is effective in this case by giving the illusion that the character is unaware that he is being watched whilst he sulks looking out the window. It would be good to use this angle towards the end of our music video when we want to portray a sad emotion.