A2 Media Blog

I chose to produce a music promotion package for a new song, I Got U by Duke Dumont. I Got U belongs to the genre of dance/house. I chose this song before it had even been officially released so the song did not have a video which I believe helped me to come up with a more original idea for the video as I had not seen a video prior and so I couldn’t take inspiration from it and so there was no chance of me copying it in some way. After planning the video and doing research into the codes and conventions of music videos and looking at existing videos, I created my music video and put it onto YouTube. I then created a digipak and magazine advertisement for the artist that featured in my video for promotional purposes.

I am going to evaluate the way in which I used, developed and challenged existing conventions of real media products, how effective the combination of my music video and ancillary texts is, what I learned from audience feedback and how I used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages.

Question 1.
These are the general conventions of a music video. In my music video I have followed many of these conventions such as lip syncing, editing to the beat, in relation to cinematography I have used close ups and long shots. In relation to editing, I challenged the convention of using jump cuts in parts of my video, I used a fade a couple of times instead. I did this as the song sounded as though it faded out and then in again and the fade cut emphasised this. The mise-en-scene I used was reflected by the lighting I used. Even when the artist was just in front of a black background, I used a bright lights that had an orange type of effect. This made it look as though as though the sun was shining on her. The song I used has a summer feel to it and so I wanted to reflect this in the video, by making sure it was sunny when I was filming outside and using lights that have a sun effect when filming inside.

Above are the conventions of the genre, dance. I followed some of the conventions, more in terms of cinematography, such as editing to the beat, using fast cuts that coincide with the song to give the audience a sense of submersion into the song. However I challenged some of the conventions, mostly in relation to mise-en-scene. A lot of dance genre videos are shot in clubs or at a party or in some other sort of lively environment. I shot mine outside, on streets mostly, in the sunshine, as my song is quite a 'summery' type of song. If I shot it in a club it would not match the song as it is not your typical club song. As music videos for dance music don't tend to have many conventions it allowed me some freedom when creating the video as there wasn't really any limitations to what I could do, in terms of conventions, it would still be a music video for a dance song.

Generally, women in music videos, specifically of the dance genre, are sexualised and made to be seen as an object, supporting Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory. However, I did not want my artist to be seen in this way so I did not follow this convention. As the song is about love, I wanted my artist to be seen as quite innocent, just a girl singing about love, however confident and happy on her way to find her love. She is the dominant character, when people are watching the video, they are watching her. As she is a fictional artist, I had to stress her dominance even more, by making sure she was the subject of the majority of the shots. I wanted to attract the right target audience and I wanted the audience to be able to connect with the artist, for her to be relateable. If I portrayed my artist in a sexualised way, it would be difficult for the audience to relate as hardly anyone portrays themselves in this way, but many people can relate to a girl in love.

When editing my video, there were certain conventions I followed in order for the video to link with the song. I watched many music videos so that I could conduct research into their codes and conventions. Almost all music videos use editing to the beat in order to emphasise the speed of the song in order to engage the audience, so they feel as though they are in the same situation as the people in the music video, as if they are in the music video with them. I used Adobe Premier Pro, a non-linear editing software, to edit my video. I used this so that I didn't have to edit the video in order, I could start at the end, then edit the beginning last. There wasn't an order in which I had to edit it so if I did some filming, I could just edit it straight away instead of having to wait until I had filmed the whole video first. I mainly used jump cuts in my video, something that it conventionally done in most music videos, as I wanted my edits to go with the beat of my song and jump cuts were the only way of doing this. However, there are parts of the song that slow down and seem to fade out then back in so to match the song I used fade cuts in the parts of the song that do this.
As well as researching the codes and conventions of music videos, I also looked at the codes and conventions of my ancillary texts. The ancillary texts I chose to make are a digipak and a magazine advert. Below are the main features of both.

I followed many of the conventions for a digipak such as the front and the back of the digipak being the main focus, it is a 6 panel digipak, and the colour scheme from the music video is carried onto the digipak and also the artist is wearing the same costume in the photos on the digipak that she is wearing in the music video. This was to create continuity between all my media products in order to create a professional looking music promo package. I looked at existing digipaks to research the conventions but to also gain inspiration for my digipak, in order to create a digipak that looked professional. The digipaks I looked at were Rihanna - Loud and Arctic Monkeys -Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not. I looked at these two because they are from completely different genres and it would be easier to see the contrast between them. Below are Rihanna's and Arctic Monkey's digipaks and the features of their digipaks.

The colour scheme in Arctic Monkey's digipak is black and white, possibly reflecting on what the songs on the album are about, they may possibly be quite dark. Also, as Arctic Monkey's are of the indie genre, artists of this genre tend to use dark colours throughout their albums, clothing etc. The CD has a picture of cigarette buds on it, which is made to be portrayed as an ashtray. This could suggest that the band smoke, something that indie bands are known to do.

The colour scheme throughout Rihanna's digipak is red and pink. This could be a connotation to love suggesting that many of the songs on the album are about love. This is a feature that many artists incorporate on their digipaks, a certain colour scheme will connote to a certain emotion, suggesting what's on the album before the audience have heard it. It could also be a connotation of what genre the music is, before the audience have heard it. E.g. rock artists may use dark colours on their digipak, reflecting the genre of their music. Pop artists may use bright colours, connoting to happiness and fun - an element of their music.

My fictional artist is of the 'dance/house' genre. Digipaks of this genre tend to be bright in colour to connote fun. The music itself tends to be played when people are having fun, in clubs and at parties, so the digipak needs to reflect this in order to create continuity between the music and the imagery. In my digipak, I have used bright colours, and had a paint theme running throughout, with paint dripping down the artists face on the cover, paint dripping down the back cover of the digipak, paint splatters inside and silhouettes with paint splatters in on the CD. I did this to create continuity throughout all my media products. As the costumes in the video are bright in colour, I wanted to continue this use of colour onto my ancillary texts. I also used geometric patterns on my digipak as my video had tribal styling in it and tribal patterns tend to be bright, geometric patterns. I wanted to carry this theme on throughout the whole of my music promotion package. The first draft of my digipak looked this this:

I thought that the inside looked too plain if I just used a black background as my digipak is meant to be colourful in order to follow the conventions of a dance genre digipak.. The back of the digipak is pretty similar on my first draft as it is on my final draft, with only some minor changes such as removing the artists name from the back and adding more geometric shapes to the back with the triangle. I changed the CD design as I thought it looked like too much of the paint dripping design, as I used it on the cover and on the back. I liked the image on the cover of my digipak so I decided to keep this pretty similar in my final draft, with only minor changes such as the font of the artists name and the song. I saw a painting of a girl with water colour paints running down her face, on the google images when I was researching digipaks and also looking for inspiration on what I could have on my cover. I liked the way it looked so I thought I would try and recreate my own version with an original image, on photoshop. Firstly I took a photo of my friend and removed her face from the photo so only her eyes and mouth were visible. I then created the dripping paint effect. I did this using the paint tool. I lowered the opacity and chose bright, primary colours and drew what looked like a paint drip. I then used the smudge tool to drag the drip down and then I used the blur tool to make the drip decrease the sharpness of it, to make it look more like a paint drip.

In order to create a professional looking album cover, the first thing an audience would see when looking at the digipak, I did some research into album covers. I used google images to do this. They were all fairly unique in terms of mise-en-scene but they do have things in common. All the album covers either had the name of the artist or their recognisable logo so that the audience can easily see who's album it is, whether they are buying it from a shop or buying it on iTunes. Album covers that do not have the name of the artist on may have something else on the cover which enables the audience to recognise whose album it is. For example on Eminem's Relapse album, his name is not featured on the cover, but a photo of Eminem is featured and because he is very well know, the audience will see it and automatically know it is his album. This also applies to Daft Punk's Random Access Memories album. As they are well know for wearing robot helmets, just having a photo of their two helmets merged together will allow an audience to recognise that is is Daft Punk without actually having to see their name on the album cover. The Beatles Abbey Road album is also a very good example of this.As they are a very well known band and around the time this album was brought out, they were probably one of the biggest bands on the planet and even now they are one of the biggest and most well know bands there ever was, there is no need to feature their name on the album, because everybody already knows who they are and so featuring their name would be unnecessary. The Abbey Road album cover is simplistic yet iconic and whenever anybody sees that album cover, they know exactly who the band and exactly what album it is.

Album covers tend to have bright colours and bold lettering in order to catch the eye of the audience. The cover usually has some sort of link to the theme of the album. For example if the songs on an album are primarily about love, red and pink may be used on the cover, so the audience gets an idea what they are going to be listening to, before they have starting listening to it.

For my magazine advert, I decided to make it fairly conventional. I used the same image I used on the cover of my digipak on my magazine advert. I put the artists name at the top of the digipak, I put the album name underneath and then my image underneath that. After researching magazine adverts, I noticed that the adverts have the same of the artist record company towards the bottom of the advert, as well as the artists website, review quotes and the release date of the digipak and where you can buy it. I incorporated many of these features on my magazine advert. One magazine advert I looked at when

researching was Jessie J's - Who You Are. I looked at the different conventions that were followed on her magazine advert. I liked the way her magazine advert looked as, like many other magazine adverts promoting digipaks, the album artwork was used so it looked like her cover that was just extended to provide extra detail about the release date, certain songs that were on the album etc. Magazine adverts tend to be quite simplistic with limited writing on it. This is so an audience can get an idea of what the album is, who its by etc. without having to stop and read the advert for a while. Only the most important features are featured on the advert such as album name, artist name, album artwork, release date and artists website.

On my magazine advert, as seen, I followed this convention of it being simplistic and featured a very limited amount of information on the advert. I only used three fonts; one for the artists name, one for the digipak name and another for the rest of the text. I used the website 'dafont.com' for my fonts so that I could find some unusual fonts, something different from the usual fonts found on Microsoft word for example. I decided on this font; to use for my artists name as it is bold, will stand out to an audience, it is not too fancy so it is easy to read and easily recognisable.The font is also not too plain and so will be memorable. An audience will look at it and automatically know what artist it is. Some of the other fonts I looked at were too 'handwriting' like and so were hard to read. If an audience were to look at the font, they wouldn't be able to read it easily. A font on a digipak or magazine advert should jump off the page so that it catches the audiences eye so that they will stop and look at the digipak and advert. The font I used for my artists name is also quite futuristic and is the type of font you may see featured on things to do with the genre of dance or house because they use technologies that tend to be associated with 'the future' and so portray their music as futuristic and do so by the use of fonts and colour.

Question 2.
The use of mise en scene within a music video and ancillary texts is very important in order to make them relevant and for them to make sense. It wouldn't look professional if the mise-en-scene I used wasn't correct, if it did not fit in with the song I have used. An important element of mise-en-scene I wanted to use in my music video was costume changes. After research into music videos, I found that in many music videos, the artist is wearing more than one costume throughout the video so in order to make my video look more like a real music video, I decided I wanted to incorporate this element. However, due to timing and budget issues I was unable to incorporate this and so I decided on just one costume. This is not unusual in music videos as there are some in which the artist only wears one costume as that particular costume may be relevant to the video. The costume has to represent the genre of music and have to fit in with the theme of the video. For example, it wouldn't look realistic if you were shooting a video on a beach in summer and the artist was wearing the type of clothes you may wear to go skiing. The costumes have to be relevant to the location the artist is in.

I decided that I wanted my music video to incorporate a tribal theme and demonstrated this through the use of costume and make up. I used brightly coloured outfits, mostly in primary colours. I created moodboards to give me some ideas of how to style my main character so that the tribal theme would be obvious. From making moodboards and researching the tribal style, I found that bright colours are often used and bold patterns are also used. In relation to jewellery, the layering of different necklaces, usually statement necklaces, is often used and lots of large bangles are also worn. I decided on the tribal theme because when I listened to the song I used for my music video it reminded me of summer and the sunshine, a time in which tribal styling is often seen. Also, when listening to the song, African countries and some South American countries and Caribbean islands came to mind, as steel drums are used in the song and this instrument is native to these countries. Tribal clothing originated in these countries and the designers of the tribal style clothing, that is seen in a lot of shops, have taken inspiration from the clothes of the natives from these countries when designing the clothes. This is why I thought a tribal theme running throughout the video would be appropriate when taking the sound of the song into consideration, in relation to the type of instruments used in the song.

One of the costumes I used was a bright blue dress, red heels, and tribal style jewellery. This costume fit in with the theme of my music video (tribal themed) and fit in with my colour scheme (red and blue). I used this costume and these colours because as I was trying to portray a tribal type of theme, I wanted to use bright colours as bright colours are often used in the tribal style. Also because the song is quite a summery song, bright colours also emphasise this. Another part of my mise en scene that was important was the location. As the song is 'summery' the location had to be somewhere sunny, somewhere that could emphasise the song in this way. I did some of my filming down streets but the sun was shining so, as it was sunny, the type of song was emphasised but, as it was shot down a street, verisimilitude was created. I was planning to shoot some of my video on a beach to create a strong emphasis on the 'summery' element of the song as beaches often connote to summer. However due to me not living near a beach and the fact that I was filming in winter when the weather was quite unpredictable, it was difficult to find a suitable day in which I could do some filming on a beach. Even some of the shots that were done inside, in front of a backdrop, the light that was shining on the artist was a bright, orange colour which connotes to the sun shining on her. It was, however, fairly difficult to film on sunny days as my filming was done over winter and so there weren't that many sunny days. I worked around this by filming inside on days that weren't particularly nice and filming outside on days when the sun was out.

The way in which I created a liaison between the ancillary texts and the music video was through the use of colour. In the video, my artist is wearing a blue, red and yellow costume. I carried these colours through onto my digipak to create a generic house style, to create a colour scheme throughout all of my products in order for them to look as though they belong together. The main reason I chose these colours was to reflect the tribal theme I was going for, in which primary colours are often used. I thought the colours contrasted well together and added colour to may products without it being to over the top. I didn't want to use lots of different colours as I believe it would have looked too much and it may have been hard to use lots of the same colours throughout all of my products. Also it is conventional to use the same colour scheme throughout the whole of a music promotion package in order to create continuity. Usually, the colour scheme will be created in the video and then carried over on the the digipak and magazine advert so that they can be associated with the video. An audience may see the digipak or magazine advert and automatically associate it with the music video, even if they don't know the artist.

Question 3.
Throughout the whole of the production, I conducted audience research and received audience feedback in order to improve my product.
The first bit of audience research I conducted was a questionnaire to find out more about my target audience. This was the questionnaire that I asked a variety of people to fill in:

These were the results I obtained from that questionnaire:

Questionnaire results from lucy_richmond

From this I found that my audience would likely be between 16 and 19 years old, mostly female, most of my audience downloads music illegally, almost all of them watch music videos, more so on YouTube than on TV although there wasn't much of a difference, their favourite type of video is narrative although performance was a close second, many of them go to gigs, and most prefer to watch music videos rather than just listen to the song. From this research I was able to create a music video tailored to my target audience.

I created 3 drafts of my digipak. I conducted audience research with the 4th draft. I did this with a questionnaire including the questions:

- Is it clear to see that the genre of my song is dance from looking at my digipak?
- Do you think the digipak reflects the genre of my song?
- What do you like about the digipak?
- How would you change the digipak?
- Do you think the digipak looks realistic?

The results I gained were as follows:

I conducted this research with Wyke college students, one of which was a media student. From this research I was able to improve my digipak in order to create my final digipak:

The first question I asked was 'is it clear to see that the genre of my song is dance from looking at my digipak?'. This question allowed me to find out how the digipak comes across as a whole to the audience. However, the audience would first have to know what is typical of the dance genre in order to know whether my digipak clearly looks like it is of the dance genre. To get around this, the people that I asked to fill in the questionnaire, I knew prior that they knew at least the basics of what products of the dance genre look like. This way, my audience could effectively critique my digipak. The second question I asked was 'Do you think the digipak reflects the genre of my song?'. This question was fairly similar to the first question but it was more about how the digipak reflected the song rather than how clear the digipak presented the genre. In order for my audience to effectively criticise my digipak, they had to know what reflecting genre is. This made the question quite demanding for the audience. In order to gain effective answers from this question, I made sure I asked students who either studied Media or English, or a subject similar to those subjects. This question is also about how the digipak comes across as a whole. The third question I asked was 'What do you like about the digipak?'. This question really just gave the audience a chance to give their opinion on the digipak. All of the people that answered the questionnaire said that they liked the colours and the theme running throughout the digipak. The fourth question 'What would you change about the digipak?' was also a question that just gained the opinion of the audience. One person said that they wouldn't change it, as they thought it looked good enough as it was. Another suggested using one of the images from the inside of the digipak as the cover image. Although I was expecting negative feedback from this question due to its nature, most of the answers were fairly positive. No one suggested any dramatic changes, just small details, which suggests that my digipak is of quite a high standard, according to the feedback. The last question I asked was 'Do you think the digipak looks realistic?'. This is another question that asks the audiences opinion. One student I asked, that was a media student' said that she thought it looked realistic and that she could see it on shop shelves. Others answered the question with a simple yes. The feedback gained from this question suggests that my digipak looks very professional and looks like a real digipak.

When making my digipak, I also gained some unofficial feedback i.e. feedback that I gained without conducting a questionnaire, just friends who I showed my work to telling me what they thought about it. All of them said that they liked the cover the most, and the way that the paint is dripping down my artists face. They thought that it looked effective and said that I should use it as the image on the front cover of my digipak. This is why that image is seen on all the drafts of my digipak and I felt, and other people felt that it didn't really need to be changed as it looks interesting and professional.

I also conducted a questionnaire about my music video to gain feedback on how my music video looked. I showed my music video to a variety of people and afterwards I asked them questions about it. This is the feedback I gained from that questionnaire, presented on a powerpoint.

The first question I asked was 'What did you like about the video?'. This question enabled me to get the opinions of my target audience on what they liked about the video. Most said they liked my use of props such as the instruments and the way in which I edited the video. The second question was also the gain the opinions of the audience. The question was 'What would you change about the video?'. Most answers was about the location of the video, that maybe it should have been filmed somewhere that maybe linked with the song more, such as a beach. I had planned to film on a beach but as I was filming in winter and my artist was wearing a dress in the video, it would have been quite cold. Also it would have been an all day thing, as we don't live particularly close to a beach, and as both me and my artist are at college during the week and working at the weekend, it was difficult to find a day in which we were both free to travel to a beach, on a day that was fairly warm or at least sunny, in order to do some filming. The third question I asked was 'Do you think the music video looks realistic? And why?'. This is also a questionnaire that gains opinions but the person answering also needs some prior knowledge to be able to answer it. They need to know what is conventional of a music video. Many of the people who I showed the video to and asked the question to were media students and so were easily able to answer this question. Many thought that it did look realistic as it followed many conventions such as lip syncing, editing to the beat, the framing of the video - mostly close ups, mid shots and long shots. Some, however, said that it would look more realistic and professional if there were some costume changes and also if the quality of the video was better. I couldn't really improve the quality as the cameras used in professional music videos are often quite expensive and I did not have access to this sort of equipment. The fourth question I asked was 'What is the theme of the music video and is it clear?'. Most people who saw the video was not too sure what the theme of the video was and so did not think it was clear. Most thought the theme was either love or tribal themed. They were correct. As the song is about a girl saying that everything would be okay as long as she has a certain boy, I wanted the video to look like she was singing this song about him or to him so it was essentially about love. Because of the sound of the song, the use of steel drums etc. I wanted to incorporate a tribal theme to fit in with this. I was planning on filming on a beach, on a sunny day and using tribal face paint on my artist to make the theme more clear but couldn't those things because of bad weather and, in relation to the paint, as my artist was busy around the time I was filming, she basically had to do some filming and then head off to somewhere else such as work so I didn't really have the time to do face paints and she wouldn't have had enough time to wash it off before she headed off somewhere. I wanted to maximise the time I had filming and so had to cut this part out accordingly. The fifth question I asked was 'Does the mise-en-scene in the video reflect the song?'. This question was about how the video came across as a whole to the audience. Many thought the use of instruments in the video reflected the song as the audience could tell what instrument was being played in the song. They also thought the use of colour, shown through the costume and lighting, reflected the 'fun and happy sound' of the song and thought that the two went well together. I mostly received positive feedback from this question which suggested that my use of the mise-en-scene was effective in presenting the song in the right way. The sixth question I asked was 'Who do you think the target audience is?. This question was just to see if I presented my video in a way that would appeal to my target audience, to see if others thought the target audience was who I planned the target audience to be. Many said teenagers or young adults, people between the ages of 14 and 20. My actual target audience was people between the ages of 16 and 25 so they wasn't too far off which suggests that I have created a video that appeals to the audience I intended it to appeal to, I presented my video in the correct way. The seventh question I asked was 'Do you think the video follows the conventions of a dance music video?'. This question was quite a demanding question for my audience as they had to have prior knowledge of the conventions of a dance music video. Because of this, I showed them a prezi I made about the conventions of dance music videos, in order for them to be able to critique the video effectively. This helped them quite a lot as although many had seen quite a few dance videos, they wasn't 100% sure of all the conventions of a music video of this genre. The feedback I received was a mixture of positive and negative comments. Some thought it followed the conventions of dance videos in terms of editing and the way in which I used jump cuts, fast paced editing and I edited to the beat. Others thought it didn't follow the conventions in terms of the mise-en-scene as it was not filming in a club or a party, something that is typical of a dance video, and there was no dancing in the video. It would have been difficult to film in a club because the lighting would not have been great, I would have had to gain permission from the club's owner, something that was not guaranteed, and also, when I was planning the video and at the time I started filming, my artist was not 18 yet and so would have not been able to gain entry into the club which is why I decided not to film in a club. I also did not include dancing in the video as my artist is not a dancer and it was difficult to find people willing to participate in the music video that could actually dance and choreograph a routine for the video, as I myself would not know how to choreograph a dance routine. The last question I asked was 'What would you rate the video out of 10?' I asked this purely to gain the audiences opinion of how good they thought the video was. It allowed the audience to rate the video as a whole, taking every aspect of the video into account. I mostly received 7/10 and 8/10 suggesting that the music video is perceived well by an audience.

Overall I believe audience feedback has been useful in helping me to understand what an audience expects from music videos and digipaks/magazine advert, and what they expect to see in certain genres of music video and digipak/magazine advert. For example in my video, many people thought it should have been shot in a club or at a party and should include dancing, in order for it to be conventional of a dance music video. Dance music videos don't however have many conventions, allowing freedom when creating a music video. If I was to change any part of my production I would have filmed some of it on a beach so that it linked with the song which has a 'summery' feel to it. From the feedback gained, many thought the same and thought I should have filmed at least some of it on a beach to emphasise the sound of the song. One of the main things I have learned from receiving feedback on my music video is that, when planning a music video, you not only need to envision what you want the video to look like, you also need to envision how the audience will receive it, how they will understand the video, in order for it to be effective and successful. From the audience feedback I found that I had more positive feedback than I did negative feedback suggesting that the construction of my Music Promotion Package has been effective and a success.

Question 4.

I used several types of media technologies throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of music promotion package which includes a music video, digipak and magazine advert.