Research & Planning: Time Management

As I am still planning the details of my music video, this time management plan is a work in progress and I will be changing it before the filming process begins.

13/01/11 = Planning & Organisation completed and blog updated fully ready for production.



14/01/11 = Meet cast to talk about work and show ideas more in depth than previously. Choose clothing and locations.


15/01/11 = Visit locations to double check they are suitable for the video. Last minute changes will be updated here.


17/01/11 = Filming: Opening scenes, bedroom/ in house scenes.


20/01/11 = Walking towards bench in video x 4. Different clothes to represent different days etc.


23/01/11 = Scenes involving girl. 4 different clothes changes to represent different days.


24/01/11 = Start editing. 


3/02/11 = Finish Editing.


4/02/11 = Show to a focus group and get feedback on the video. Make any changes if necessary.


I do have hope that this will be a successful plan and along the timeline I will be referring back to this plan to see whether it has been a realistic plan for myself.

Final Print Work - Digipak & Advert

I am very pleased with the way this Digipak has turned out, I think it is aesthetically pleasing and contains all the relevant information needed to look professional.

To me, this album poster looks quite a lot like an independent movie poster, this isn't a bad thing as I think it creates recognition within the genre I am aiming at. Being similar to other interests of my target audience is useful to the promotion of the CD.

Research & Planning: Album Poster Print Production

When starting to produce my promotional poster for the Digipak I only knew that I wanted it to be very much similar to the actual Digipak, using the same, or similar, fonts, pictures and themes.

So to start with I went for a landscape orientated poster with the main focus being the same photograph of the bench I have used for my front and back cover of the Digipak. This seems a very good way to automatically create relation between the two products and if it were to be a real task to be used in the industry, having the same picture helps people to recognise the CD after seeing the poster, possibly creating more sales.

I then used the same font as previously used in my Digipak and centred the large font so that it is immediately attention grabbing and can be recognised straight away, as recognition is a key part of any advertising campaign. I did think about using the torn paper effect again at this point but after trialling it I decided not to as it blocked the bench and was not necessary as the dark metal of the bench and the brown of the leaves creates a visually appealing background anyway.

However, I knew that I wanted to use the torn paper effect so decided to integrate it into the poster at this point. I have recognised from my previous research that a major feature of album posters are ratings from popular music magazines. Including these ratings seemed to be a good way of proving the quality of the music being sold, so naturally I decided to utilise this feature. I used the torn paper effect to make these ratings stand out more than they would against the natural cloudy sky, this also creates correlation between the Digipak and the poster, exactly what I had been trying to do with the font as well.

The finishing touches to my work were just to include more information about Sony Music Entertainment and the rights involved with distribution of the music, give the address to the bands website as well as MySpace page and add a logo associated with the record label the band are signed to. All these are features that appeared on all the posters I looked at in my research.

Research & Planning: Digipak Print Production

Before starting work on my Digipak I only had a vague idea of how I wanted it to look, most of the work done is spur-of-the-moment thinking.

The main idea from my previous mock-up that I have taken into this piece of work is having a picture of a bench on the front cover. My original idea was to have the front of the bench on the front cover and the rear of the bench on the back cover. I did test this out briefly but it didn't look how I wanted it to, possibly because it wasn't a good idea or because the photographs I had to work with were not of a good enough standard to create the desired effect. Thinking about how to create a theme through the different pages of my Digipak made me think about having one image flowing through the spine of the pack, I think this works very well and could be seen on a professional Digipak.

A very clever skill I have learnt from this process of creation is the ability to create a 'torn paper' effect on Adobe Photoshop, as is seen on the bottom right hand side of this screen shot. Once I had made it and put it in place for the front cover I decided I wanted this to be a common visual within my Digipak and possibly Album Poster that I will be creating in the near future. The look is rustic and natural, which I think will appeal to the festival attending audience I have targeted.

I had decided, previous to starting this task, that I wanted the inside cover of my Digipak to include the lyrics to the song featured on the front cover. Using a dark, busy photograph of tree branches was an ideal background for text to appear upon. From far away I realised that the text was quite hard to read, so to conquer this issue I decided to put a slight shadow on the text, making it stand out more that it originally did. This still was quite hard to read from far away, but after researching lyrics inside CD covers on a few other albums I realised that most of the text is very hard to read as it is so small. Most of the covers I researched had small writing as they are usually pushed for space and are made for close inspection. This seems like something professionals do not consider a 'problem' so neither did I.

After completing the inside cover I wanted to add more detail onto the back cover before moving on to the disc tray. I added a track list for the CD, over another piece of torn paper, this followed the theme of one text font in black over the top of torn paper, hopefully keeping the feel natural and rustic. To make it look more professional and convincing I added some information about Sony Music Entertainment, as Passion Pit are signed to a label owned by Sony, showing the copyright sign and including copyright to a symbol I have used on my work. In this screen shot you can also see that I have labelled the spine of the CD case, I did not want anything fancy or dazzling to be on the spine so decided to just go for a clear font which will be easily recognisable within a group of CD's in the future.

The idea for the CD tray in my Digipak was to have an interesting picture for the design on the actual CD, but to have the tray that holds it coloured in a basic colour so the contrast can be seen. I started off by cropping a picture I had taken previously into a square shape and putting it in place.

I chose black as the background colour as I think it would be effective to have lighter colours on the black background, making the picture stand out more. I used the marquee tool to cut out a circle to represent the CD shape, also leaving a smaller circle to represent the hole in the centre of the CD.

To finish my design I added more torn paper with the information on that paper, keeping the theme going, and added more information about Sony Music Entertainment around the outside of the CD. I think this adds to the overall look of the Digipak, making it look more   professional on the whole.

Research & Planning: Audience Research

At the moment I think there is a very large 'Indie' genre in social groups, music and films as well. As this is such a big area I am hoping for my video to be able to integrate into the genre very well. My target audience are people who enjoy obscure media. Art that is very modern, into work such as Banksy, Damien Hirst etc. The film interest of my audience are films such as Eagle vs. Shark, Napoleon Dynamite and other Indie comedy films.

Demographic: I will be aiming and Males and Females, between the age of around 15-26.
My main audience will be Hedonists who like to have fun and regularly attend music/film festivals etc. 
In the socio-economic group I will be aiming at C1 all the way through C2, D and E. I think that professionals and business men/women will not have the time to party and go to festivals so targeting my work at them would be a waste of my time, so aiming mainly at people who do not have children and do have the disposable income to attend festivals regularly will be beneficial. I imagine most of my target audience to still be in full time education, either college or university as students are currently the main consumers of indie music and festivals.

I think the style of clothes they wear will be heavily influenced by Topman and popular indie bands such as 'The Kooks', 'Razorlight' and 'The Arctic Monkeys', also taking fashion tips from magazines such as NME especially. 


Male:

• Barber jackets
• Low cut t-shirts
• Skinny jeans
• Plimsolls
• Vintage clothing e.g. charity shop clothing
• Cardigans
• Ray-Bans
• Headbands

Female:

• Old fashioned skirts and dresses
• Vintage belts w/dresses
• Skinny Jeans
• Ray-Bans
• Large jumpers (Baggy)
• Plimsolls
• Dolly shoes
• Headbands

Below is a basic collection of what I think the female audience would be interested in as well as this style of music, I have included this as my Moodboard was predominantly Male orientated.

Research & Planning: Moodboard

Here is a mood board I created in relation to the target audience for the music and video I will be creating. The audience I have been thinking of are people who watch E4 and like very indie styles of clothing and celebrities who conform to these stereotypes, such as Alexa Chung.

Hopefully this target audience will be the consumers of my video and will enjoy the relation and styles used within. 

The style of clothing I think they will wear could be considered as quirky or eccentric to some, but is very fitting to the social group they fit into, with the correlation between their wardrobe and how I will dress my character in the music video will hopefully create a preferred reading.

This will also help me to create a focused music video as I can always look back at this to keep me in the niche I have chosen.

Research & Planning: Artist and Song choice

When deciding on a song to use in this project I thought about the kind of video I would like to make. I like the idea of having a progressing narrative throughout the video without much, if any, of a performance element. So I was looking at music that didn't need the performers to be there, possibly one which does not have absolute focus on the singer and lyrics, e.g Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters etc.

I like quirky videos that can be funny yet touching, so having an aggressive song choice would not work well so bands such as Slipknot were also out of the picture.

After listening to quite a few bands and researching the type of music video I want to make, I decided to create one for Passion Pit. They are a signed band but the song I have chosen, Smile Upon Me, does not currently have a music video so fits the needs of the project. 

The song is one that I listen to regularly and I think having an interest in the band and the music they make will help me to make something that fits well into the genre of music. I think that this song is quite strange in it's overall impact upon the consumer, so I may think about having my main character as someone who is quite a social misfit, portraying this with old clothes, eccentric appearance etc.

After deciding upon this song choice I needed to ask permission to use it from the band. I could not find a direct email address on their website so decided to use Myspace to contact them, sending the following email.

I have not received any reply as of yet, but I am regularly checking back onto Myspace for any response.

Research & Planning: History of Music Videos

The music video is a very large part of media these days, with a whole section of SkyTV dedicated to 24 hour music video channels, producers and directors are in high regard.
The first ever music video is supposedly the one shown above, it was shot in 1894 at Thomas Edison's laboratory. 
Nowadays, music videos are used as promotional tools to sell a song. In the past they were used to accompany a song to create more enjoyable experience for the consumer.
Many performers and bands have pushed the limits of music videos by creating raunchy and explicit videos etc. Some have created feature length films to accompany their music. e.g. Pink Floyd, Kanye West etc.





For some artists, music videos have been a strong political tool while accompanying a particularly strong minded and lyrically challenging song. In the video below Eminem is challenging the US citizens to stand againt George Bush and his administration. This music video gained huge publicity and favour in the media.



The birth of websites such as Youtube have had a very big effect on music videos and how they are produced. In the past, music videos have had massive budgets and have always strived to be the biggest and the best with the most explosions and special effects as possible, now with Youtube, the more quirky and low budget videos seem to gain the most popularity with viewers. Inventive videos like OK GO have gained incredible media and have created international success for a relatively unknown band previously.

Research & Planning: Analysis of Music Videos and Narrative

There are 2 types of narration within music videos; Restricted narration and Omniscient narration.

Restricted narration is where the audience and the characters of the music video learn story information at the same time. This is mainly used to create suspense, as in horror movies. Some horror directors have consciously used Omniscient rather than Restricted narration to create fear of the protagonist who does not know what the viewer knows.

Omniscient narration is where the viewer is not tied to one character and has a god-like view of the story, usually knowing all the thoughts and movements of characters. E.g in a horror film the viewer will know where the 'good' and 'bad' guys are, creating suspense until their paths meet.

In Busted's music video for 'What I go to school for' the director has followed the path involving restricted narration. Throughout the video we are following the band members and we are supposed to empathise with their feelings and actions along the storyline. There is a brief moment of omniscient narration when we see inside the teachers house and can see what she is doing, this is still slightly restricted as this is a first person view from one the the characters we are with.