QUESTION 4

QUESTION 3

QUESTION 2

QUESTION 1

FINAL VIDEO

Website research

Here are three of the main websites I constantly referred back to when creating my website.
They are all top female artist's who are in the same genre. I also looked at artist's Beyonce, Ellie Goulding and Rihanna.

FINAL DIGIPAK

MY WEBSITE

Digipak Images- Album Cover

A few weekends ago I took and edited some photos for my digipak. Having looked at current Digipaks for pop artists who have a similar persona to our own I have discovered that they often have 1 theme going throughout the CD material, which is often from one photo shoot. I had been planning to include pictures from shooting in my digipak however, I have been struggling with doing this and keeping it looking professional and as if it was a real product. This is my main issue at the moment with the production of my digipak.

This weekend I tried to face this issue, taking and editing two photoshoot's that I did myself. Again after much research into similar artists, in particular Kesha, I discovered that image manipulation where the image is mirrored is particularly common. EXAMPLES AND WHAT I DID IN EDITING.

Xena Typeface.

18/03//2014

Here is a quick video of what we did in today's lesson.

Our Group Animatic.

Today me and Libby finished our animatic in lesson. We decided not to draw the montage section as it depends what footage looks good when we come to editing. We also haven't included every detail that we will film, as learnt last year in our films that some of the best shots come spontaneously. 

CURRENTLY IMPROVING POSTS.

Adding the final bits of feedback to posts. This will be completed asap.

Dance

 When we have looked at music videos we have seen that a common feature is choreographed dancing. We would like to include this in our video. So we have been looking at some dance videos that we could use some dance moves from.

) )
This is the dance routine that we liked the most and are going to try and learn for our studio scenes.

Artist Name

Today we decided the name for our artist. We wanted a powerful name to match the persona we have created. Originally we were going to keep my original name, Katy, but decided that it wasn't strong enough. To find names we searched a number of things, for example unusual names and mystical names.

 A few we liked were: 

Isadora
Cleo/Clio
Sadie
Flora
Amber

Ember
Flora

Cecily
Aurelia
Tamsin
Rosalie

 Iris

KT

Katie

Xena is the final name we choose. Some of the other names we liked we decided were too floral and natural, which we didn't really think fitted well. We wanted something unusual, which Xena seemed to fit.

We also thought about adding an extra bit to the name like in Marina and The Diamonds or Florence and the Machine, however we couldn't decide on the Xena and the name, and decided that Xena was strong enough on its own.

Star Image in Music Videos and Websites- Kesha.

While designing my website and Album Cover I have been taking inspiration and looking to the artist Kesha as she is in the same genre and has the kind of star image we want to promote in our artist. Kesha is rebellious, punky, sexy, and is a pop artist. These kind of traits are something we have tried to incorporate into the marketing of our artist, who is also of the pop genre.

Kesha's first album "Animal" shows her against a dark background which is scratched and eroded. This shows her style to be quite dark, and that she is quite a grungey artist. This grunge element is something we have been incorporating into the marketing of our artist. Therefore I will be thinking about adding in similar effects in my current album cover design so there is unity between the promotional materials.

This album cover ultimately still has bright features such as the type which is written in glitter. This provides a nice contrast to the dark picture which might suggest a rock them if it was not paired with the text which brings it back to the pop genre of music. 

Kesha's next album is Warrior. This album cover has a completed different color palette however, there is still a similar style to her last album cover. The color of this Album markets Kesha in more of a pop artist way, with the bright bold colors, however elements of her slightly edgier music are visible, for example in the dress she is wearing and background. Also the typography of her name which is clearly shown on all of her products connotes a edgier artist, as it is made up of harsh lines that are very graphic.
When designing my Album cover I have thought about using bright colors also as this demonstrates the music to be part of the pop genre.

Kesha's website has a similar feel to her album covers. With the background being black with areas that have been eroded. This gives a similar messy, carefree and slightly rock and roll image to Kesha.
Also on the website are pops of color, mainly the lime green hints that are present in her name and highlight titles. This in-keeps with the pop genre, but also the color of green is an acid green, further suggesting erosion and decay.

Reshooting.

A few days ago we re-filmed the opening of our music video. We decided during the editing that this part wasn't exactly how we wanted it, and the cakes that we had originally used weren't big or dramatic enough for a pop music video. After getting feedback from the audience and teachers we also decided to include different and more angles of the cake hitting the husband's face.

We also felt that the opening sequence was a little awkward. We had intended to use dialogue, after noticing that this along with intro's were an increasingly common feature in music videos, making them more like mini films. (For example Taylor Swift's-I Knew You Were Trouble and Lana Del Reys' Ride             

However, at the time we struggled with what the husband character should say. Once we watched our footage back from the original shoot it became clear that it needed this element, and we decided that the reading of the clue from a crossword would fit nicely. The added dialogue also allowed us to further develop our artists image. Her not replying and looking bored shows her as having little time for the husband, who does not directly ask her what the answer might be.

This scene shows a huge power status difference between the male and the female character, something that was very relevant for us. During the production of our music video as there has been a lot of controversy towards women's portrayal in music video. (For example Robin Thicke's- Blurred Lines and Lilly Allen's- Hard out Here) As an all female group, we felt that this issue was particularly relevant to us and to the song which describes a young girl leaving her partner, therefore we wanted to draw on this showing her originally as submissive to the male, but only somewhat, as half way through we show her with her Doc Martens on, something that connotes rebellion.                    Another thing we learnt from editing the original footage, was that it was very difficult to keep the tea cups and pot in the same places, to stop this from happening we found that we could place selotape markers on the table that indicated where objects went such as the tea cup and tea pot.

Overall we feel that the re shoot went well and we are all happy with the results. Feeling that this time our footage better reflects our ability and conveys the characters better.

Other things we changed/improved. 

• We changed his costume slightly to fit the 50s husband, adding suspenders and slicked back hair.
• We also decided to add in a extreme close up of the artist and the husband with there heads out of the frame, we thought that this would help add suspense which we often see in music video, where we dont see alot of the artist, just close up fragmented shots.
• We also changed the newspaper he was reading, and this was one of the main reasons we had to reshoot. The paper is now more formal.

Photos for my Digipak booklet.

Planning my backcover for my album.

While shooting part of our music video we went to Lime Street, where there are some sculptures by Robert Indiana. I thought it would be effective to use these on the back of my album cover for the  song names, creating a synergy between the music video and the songs for the audience, also the colors are very bright and bold which i think would tie in well to the pop genre.

I edited the original pictures to make them brighter and to limit the same colors being repeated. I also cut out the backgrounds of the numbers. Some of the edges are still a little rough and I plan to touch up this later.

Who are our audience?

When creating a media text we have to think about our audience.


Our Audience.

We think that our audience for the song would be 14-25 year olds, which is quite a big age range, however, we think that the genre of music would be something that would be played a lot on radio stations such as Radio 1 who target 15-29 year olds, and Capital who target 15-3 year old's, meaning that the song lends itself to quite a wide age range. We also imagined that the song was something that would be played at clubs and bars, therefore we thought the target audience of the song would be that bit higher.

We thought the audience would be predominately female, as the song is sung by female artist's, this also means that alot of themes and ideas in the song are from a females point of view as you would expect so we felt that the song and video would/should resonate more strongly with females.

Demographics
I feel our audience would be made up mostly by two demographic groups: C1 and E.

Psychographics
I think our audience would mostly be:

• Reformers
• Explorers 
• The Succeeders.

Album Cover- First Draft

Today I took some photos for my album cover experimenting with paint on my face to match the main scene in our music video. I decided to use an extreme close up, as I noticed in my research that pop artists covers often feature this. In editing I airbrushed my skin,  increased the saturation to match the colourfulness of pop videos.  I also added a pink tint, because we are marketing an female artist.

 

In the second image I altered the amounts of pink, as I wanted a stronger colour.  

Beginning my website

Planning for Powder paint filming .

We have had to put off our filming for the powder paint shoot several times due to the weather. Because of this delay the powder we made had detoriated, therefore we have had to plan another way of sourcing the powder. We decided to buy it and then looked online, however, we couldn't be a sure of the colours and didn't feel it would come in time. Luckily we found some in a local shop. Another issue we have faced with the powder is whether or not it will stain, this has been problematic for deciding costumes as we don't want to buy or use something that will just end up ruined. This also limits the look of the extras in our filming as they will also be wearing old clothes that they don't want ruined. Therefore this aspect of our music video may not be a good as we wanted. However,  with limited resources we should have expected this.

Album Art

Conventions of Album Covers

I looked at the key features of Album Covers and found that these were common features.

Front:

• Main image 
• Name of artist 
• Title of Album 
• Band logo

Back: 

• Track list 
• Special features 
• Another prominent image under the text 

Institutional Information: 

• Bar-code
• Record Label 
• Year of publishing 
• Copyright
• Individual track writers, composers, engineers, producers etc.
• Reference Number 
• Band Members
• Guest performers  

Spine:

• Name of artist
• Title of Album 
• Record Label
• Reference Number 

Inserts: 

• Futher insitutional information for each individual track 
• Song lyrics 
• Photographs of Artist 
• Thank Yous

I have shown some of these features on Lana del Rey's "Born to Die" Album. 

Editing-14/02/14

This is what we have done so far in the editing of our music video.

We have edited together the footage from our London shoot and also our housewife shoot. We are very happy with how it is going and at some point are hoping to reshoot the opening as there have been a few continuity errors.

Camera shot idea.

While in story-boarding I suggested to the group that we could try and create a shot where I do a hair flip, and the camera spins around me while I do this. We all thought this had potential to look really good in the video. However of course it also could be very difficult. This idea was inspired from a advert that I had seen recently where there are several of the phones around a circle.In the advert, different people step in an perform.



I have been trying to see whether or not this would realistically be possible for us. One way of recreating the shot is to use a large amount of cameras.Such as the advert I saw or the two videos above.

Another example of Intertextuality and Voyeurism.

This first video is Ingrid Michealson's latest video, it copies some ideas from Robert Palmer's-Simply Irresistible which is below.

Ingrid's video has some interesting ideas behind it, particuarlly that look at the portrayal of gender.
Something we have been looking at in our video.  Video's such as these help with further inspiration, even though we have already started filming, they just help to refresh you and I find help to keep new ideas about editing going.

Audience theories and pleasures.

An audience is crucial to a media text. Media texts all have an audience in mind, and we are all part of an audience, a large group of individuals.

There are several different views and definitions of audience, for example:

• There is no such thing as an audience.
• A variety of different groups to which you belong
• You!
• A target market or a particular type of consumer which a media producer wants to reach. 
• A group of people who consume a product. 
• A set of individual readers of a text who make their own meaning
• Individuals who use media to satisfy their own needs.
• A group who passively consume the media without challenge.

The difference between audience research and audience theory.

Audience theory: different ways of thinking about the audience.
Audience Research: tries to produce evidence about the relationships between media and audiences.

There are several different theory's on audience.  However, there are two main ones that we can apply to music video. The Effects Model, and The Uses and Gratifications Model. 

The Effects Model.

This theory suggests that the media "injects" messages directly into minds of the viewers/listeners/readers and that this media can be addictive like a drug. The viewers are powerless to resist the messages. This approach draws attention to the power that media have, and the importance of the
forms of media that the audience have access too.

The Uses and Gratifications Model

This theory is the opposite of the Effects Model. This suggests that the audience are active. Here the audience uses the text for its own gratification. Instead of researching what the media does to the audience it researches what the audience does with the media. This approach sees the audience as active and intelligent, and the control and consumption of the media text helps them with basic needs, such as;
Diversion-when the audience uses the media for escapism and emotional release from everyday pressures.
Personal Relationships-the audience needs companionship with known media as well as people who they can discuss the text with.
Personal identity- the ability for the audience to compare their life with the media text, so that they can gain perspective on their own life.
Surveillance- gives the audience a chance to view what is going on it the rest of the world.

Generally the pleasures that the media offer audiences are not regarded as negative in this theory, however, placing too much importance on the power and choices of the active audience can distract from power certain texts have.

Applying these theories to Our Music Video. 

Personally I disagree with the theory of Effects Model when talking about music video. The Effects Model (or the Hypodermic Needle as it is otherwise known), suggests that the audience are incapable of stopping media messages and that they are like drugs. I think that this consumption is not relevant or applicable to today's music video. On a very basic level the audience nowadays are prosumers and more in control of what they see and take in than ever before. Therefore in my opinion and with understanding of the model, the audience are not "couch potatoes" who have no say in the information they take in. Contradictory to this they actually choose and interact with music video. I think that you only have to look to websites such as a Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Vevo, etc.  to see this kind of behavior. Social media has completely changed the consumption and production of media forms such as the music video. The audience now have the ability to create and post their own music videos. It is much easier, and because of this producers have to be alot more creative in order to get the videos noticed. I think this results that the purpose of music video has greatly changed, with many watching them as a source of entertainment. Although at its core it remains predominately there to promote artists, and to promote their music. (As I discussed in my "A little about about the History of Music Video"). I believe that due to social media and the change in the industry and economic market that music video has become a bigger art-form, because in order to sell the music, industry has to find a way to make it interesting to the audience.I therefore find that the Effects Model, difficult to apply to audience and music video.

I do however, think that the Uses and Gratifications model can be more easily applied to music video and I found it interesting to look at this theory. I think it fits much better to think of music video being actively consumed, rather than passively. Which is obviously something that I have to think about while marketing the artist. Another interesting point to consider in more detail is how exactly the audience consume, this theory suggests as I have outlined above 3 ways that the audience does this: Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, and Surveillance.I think a number of these are hugely relevant in music. For example Diverson I think is often used by the audience, as well as Personal Idenity, as the audience can idolize the lifestyle of the stars they are watching, and the seeing this allows the audience to gain perspective on what they hope to achieve from life, and perhaps how they should look, which often comes through in music video through the idea of voyeurism.I think that Personal Relationships and Surveillance also come through to the audience however, I think much less. I think a sense of companionship is desired when somebody shares a music video on social media, and people will often discuss a video if its message is especially taboo, which links to surveillance as music videos often look at relevant idea and news, although often not in a serious way.

Both of these theories have given me a better understanding of my audience and their consumption of music video.

DigiPak ideas

This is one of the pictures I have edited a a possible cover for my Album Cover. I really like the slightly faded out and chemical burn effect round the edges. I think it conveys the genre effectively and the star. However, there is something that doesn't look quite right for an an album cover.

DigiPak test.

Today I tried some techniques of overlaying colours and shapes over some of the pictures from London to see how it might look. I like the results but I feel more could be done to them. This has given me good practice for the package anyway.

Experimentation for DigiPak.

Today I experimented with layering up one of the pictures that we took while in London with some paint splashes images. I think that this looks effective however, I would edit it better. Possibly cutting out the background of the layer of me and making this all white so it looked a lot cleaner. Also I would prefer a closer up shot. This was more just experimentation, testing an idea I thought might work quite well.

History Of The Music Video

History Of The Music Video (Music Infographics)

28/01/14

In today's lesson we continued our editing. So far we have edited up to the first chorus for our song. Editing is going really well, when an issue arises we all talk it through and decide as a group what to do. One of our main issues at the moment is trying to decide where to put the number scenes. We wanted to use them to do a countdown to the paint party, but we weren't sure if they should all go together or separately between different lip-singing shots. We thought that the clips should go together as it would make more sense that way. The next decision was whether these should go building up to the first chorus or the second. We decided that the first one should be used for more London shots and then build up the numbers for the second. If this doesn't look right when we have added in our paint-party shots that we can always move things around.

Ideas for Makeup

I drew up some face charts last night to test a couple of ideas for our makeup.  We had been discussing what look we wanted, and we had very different ideas. We were certain that we wanted glow in the dark paint splatters on the face but a lot of the other bits where undecided. I have done three looks that we could use and will show them to the group to see what they think.

Yellow and Pink Graphic Style Eyeshadow. Pink Blush. Pink Stain Lips.

Multicolored Eyeshadow. Stars.Glitter Lips

A orange eyeshadow base. Black Eyeliner. Red Lips

21st January: Group Meeting

Today's lesson we started editing the footage for the beginning of our music video. We got along quite far, just doing a rough edit that we can make better later on. We found a few issues with continuity of editing, finding that there were areas that didn't quite match up. For example when I am standing up I pour the tea for myself and the "boyfriend" figure,we wanted to cut from this long shot to a medium over the shoulder shot however, we found we didn't have matching shot for the cut so it didn't flow. Other than that we had a very productive meeting. I think the best bit we did today was that we decided to slow down the part where the cake hits the guys face, and then reverse this and speed it up in time to the song. I think this looks really effective in the video. 

Group Meeting: 20th January

Today in our media lesson we uploaded our footage from the London filming. We then watched the footage back to review it. We also uploaded all our footage so far to Premier Pro and organised it all into separate bins, so we can easily find it for example, Opening, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Fillers, Numbers. etc.

We thought our footage was good and we thought about when to film our powder paint scene, and the spacey stuff in the drama studio.

Another thing we thought about was the issues we had during the London filming.  I don't feel that my performance was as strong as it could have been, so once we start editing we want to go do some more pick up shots etc around London. Also during the power scene we want to have a dance routine or something as we have noticed alot of this in our research of pop music video, its also part of Goodwins theory,  that music and visual link. Also we thought it be beneficial to discuss and practice my performance before shooting.

Ideas for Costume: Drama Studio.

S

Filming:18th and 19th of January

This weekend we planned to do our filming of London and our powder party scene. We wanted  people to be involved in the shooting so we had to find a way of organizing them. We used a number of technologies to do this such as Facebook and Whatsapp.

Friday night we made a quick decision that we simply had not got enough people for Saturday for it to look good. Therefore, we unfortunately had to cancel and decided that the filming would just include me. Relying on people to turn up on Sunday for the Paint Party.

However, after filming all day and still having little to no response about Sunday we decided to cancel it. We plan to reschedule this to the next weekend, giving us a little more time to get a larger group of people together for a better end product.

Luckily filming on the Saturday went well and we got lots of good footage and pictures that we can use in digipacks. We had a number issues with transport as the Northen line was down, meaning it took longer than expected to travel around. We also had issues with lighting, eventually having to give up on our final location, Camden Town as it got dark really quickly.  

We also had to find areas to change and do re do makeup, this took a lot of hassle and time. 

One of the most annoying things by far was the fact that we arrived at 99 Bishopsgate Street to discover that the Love sign we had hoped to use had been removed. However, there was no warning of this anywhere on the internet, with it claiming to still be around into May. We will try and find out if it has been moved anywhere and see if we can still go and film there. This issue meant we had to go find some extra shots. 

Though we had a few glitches, overall the day was very productive and if we need any pick up shots when we are editing we will be better for our experiences of this trip.

Group Meeting- 17th January.

• In this lesson we started looking at Album Covers and Digipaks for artists, so we can have a better idea for our artist's digipak and promotional package. 
• We also finalized plans for our filming over the weekend, such as where we planned to go, meeting times, checking outfits etc etc. 

Goodwin

1950s Shoot

Here is some footage of us filming a few weeks ago for our 1950s shoot.

Making the Powder Paint

Costume: London

 APPLYING COSTUME CHOICE TO THEORIES.
In London we are going to in keep with the same style that was hinted at the beginning of the music video with the Doc Martens. As demonstrated by Goodwin, star image and the notion is a huge part of a music video. Therefore we want to present our artist in the best way possible, which we have chosen to be quite rebellious but also it is important to note that we are selling the artist to the mainstream market therefore the close must not be to different to that of a normal music video. Also the notion of looking and voyeurism means that we have to show the artist in quite a sexualised way to fit the conventions of a music video.