Feedback for Jessica Sergeant

Jessica Sergeant

Jessica you’ve written an essay here – there are no interactive or creative elements here at all. See the guidance notes on moodle for help with this. You need to avoid lots of writing and instead use sub-headings, bullet points, diagrams, directors commentaries, annotated stills/images, real media texts for comparison (particularly for genre Q), links, websites, logos, graphs/charts (for audience feedback data) etc.
It also seems incomplete!
Apply theories – Audience theories (GRASS, Psychographic profiles etc)
Genre – show videos of inspiration to demonstrate chosen conventions and then analyse your own video in light of this – director’s commentary or annotated stills etc.
Include audience feedback results where relevant – quotes from questionnaires, graphs etc, audience video.
Use branding theory – see pack and apply. Analyse all products to show how they’re all linked.

Mrs A

Feedback for Emily Haworth

Emily Haworth

Some good stuff here Emily but the presentation needs work. It must not be just an essay on the blog – this is essentially what you’ve produced though! It needs to be interactive. Use subheadings and bullet points rather than full sentences. You could create a director’s commentary either as piece to camera or as voice over on video to discuss your use of genre conventions across the texts. Compare your video and ancillaries to real media products to show how you’ve used and challenged the conventions – embed videos and annotate print material to show direct comparisons. Good use of quotes and audience feedback. Instead of just writing about conventions expected perhaps you could do a spider diagram or something similar? Annotate your own covers etc. Ensue you discuss all products not just a couple!
Branding – apply theory to discuss conventions – see packs! Again try to discuss visually and then analyse all your products to discuss how they are all connected visually and thematically. Annotate the logo to analyse the connotations created. Include logos and website for institution etc.
Good use of theories and powerpoint to show audience feedback but you need to discuss what you’ve found – were your products successful? Again all this section needs to be more interactive rather than dense text.
Don’t forget to embed the audience feedback video – we did this to make the evaluation more interactive!
Technologies and conclusion – again needs presenting in more creative, visual and interactive way! See guidance notes on moodle. Tables of strengths and weaknesses, screen grabs of applications and detailed discussion of tools used through annotated texts would be most effective here.

Mrs A

Evaluation 1st Draft by Emily Haworth

Introduction

The project that I worked on was the creation of a music video, in which I worked with Kate Lydon, Jessica Sergeant and Vicky Wright. I partnered with Vicky to create one of the Advert Magazine and created the back cover alone. My particular contributions in this project were editing, filming and the creation of the magazine advert and back cover of the CD.

Question 1

The typical conventions of an acoustic music video usually use similar elements, although some can break typical conventions.. In our music video we have used some conventions from others that we had researched, such as using a narrative and also showing the artist perform within the video. In our video we used a linear narrative. Using typical elements in our video was very important because it gives the target audience something that they can relate to and be able to understand the meaning of the song from the artist’s perspective from a typical storyline.

“Genres are created through a process of repetition and recognition leading to anticipation and expectation.” - Graham Burton 2000. His theory of genre suggests that throughout one genre there are many codes and conventions that link it to its particular genre. This is done by repeating techniques in which its conventions become recognisable to the audience.


Our innovations were likely to prove successful because we researched other well known similar artists to gather ideas and create our own based on their choices. Through our audience feedback, we have found that the choices that we have made throughout the video have worked effectively. Below is an example of persons personal response.

The conventions of our Album are quite traditional; this is because we want the audience to know directly from seeing it who the artist is and when the album will be released. The conventions of a typical advert and album that we used are:

· The artist name and Album title

· Readable colours that are eye catching

· Photograph of the artist

· Logo

· Date of album release

The conventions on the album and advert that had to match with the typical acoustic genre were:

· Suitable clothing on the artist

· Location of the shots (old train station)

· The colour scheme had to match the theme of the artists music (we chose blue)

The conventions that we used for the album and advert worked particularly well on our audience feedback. Below are is the back cover of the album and advert that i created..

Question 2

Branding is an important factor for an artist in the music industry; it can increase its chances of selling the product and being able to express a particular image to the audience. Our brand image for our artist is for typical teenagers who are into alternate, acoustic music. We had to make the artist appeal to our target audience by the use of branding, the singer had to have the correct image in order to grab the audience’s attention, therefore we had to create our three products and link them together so that it looks as thought they belong together.

After trying new ideas on Photoshop, the logo that we created is very simple yet eye catching, we decided to do this after looking at a number of acoustic artists in which they used the same technique. By using a simple logo design, the audience could distinctly see who the artist was straight away.

Throughout making the three products, our group have tried to maintain the same brand image in all three, the music video, Album cover and Magazine advert. The Advert and Album cover really had to go with the style of the music video and artist, therefore we used the colours blue, black and white on these products, this created connotations of the single being slow and sad. I believe that using these colours created this effect. The black and white colours on the album went very well with the music video as we had used black and white memory clips within it, this created a link between the two products. On both Advert and Album cover, I edited both images on them with a high contrast and black and white effect, this looked more effective and suited the genre of music. The fonts that I used were very simple and easy to see, I did this because the name of the artist had to be clear to read and I made the font white so that it contrasts with the background so that it was viewable.

The denotation of the music video is a typical romantic narrative that is about a boy thinking of memories of his girlfriend but allows connotations such as showing the emotions that he feels for her within the music video. The flashback sequences give the audience something to see about who the artist is singing about.

After looking at several music labels, the one that I personally think will fit well with this artist and genre of music is Sony Epic Records. Epic records have artists such as The Fray, Editors and The Script which are all similar to our artist. However, the artist that we have is quite different than other acoustic singers; more teenagers would relate to our artist and therefore buy more records. It is known that teenagers are the target audience for music as they spend more on it, therefore, the music label would be earning lots of money

Question 3

Throughout our project our group aimed for the band age of 15-39, we thought the artist would appeal more to this audience because the lyrics and the music can be related to youth, and also the music video has a narrative of a teenage boy who has lost his girlfriend which is also relatable to a young target audience. This target audience is known as the Enthusiasts in which people believe music is key part of life but is also balanced by other interests, this was a research method by a company called ‘Emap’ who wanted to research and map the fan economy. In psychographics the group that we would aim to please would be the “individual”, this is because the genre is different to chart music and wouldn’t appeal to mainstreamers.

A young target audience is a potentially large mass audience, therefore allowing more profit to the label; also, because the artist is different to others bands or artists, loyal fans will still keep purchasing music and concert tickets as well as newer fans. Female fans would most likely be the target audience as well, because of the fact they can relate to this particular music. The secondary audience would most likely be the savants. People who love music and can not live without it, this audience would be very important profit wise in the music industry.

For our audience feedback, our group presented our music video In front of around 10 people in which we handed questionnaire sheets. On this sheet were questions such as Gender, age and then questions about the music video, advert and album cover. Once they had watched the video and viewed our ancillary tasks they filled out our feedback form. Here are the results...

Powerpoint

View more presentations from emilyhaworth.

The technologies that we had used in this project were Photo Shop and Final Cut, by using these programs, our group was able to achieve better quality results in our feedback. The planning and construction of our final products aloud us to test different techniques that we could use before have a final piece. Such as creating different logos and seeing which one we liked the best, also looking at planning the effects that we would use in the music video, this made the construction less time consuming.

The main feature of the products was to try and attract the target audience. We did this by using unusual effects on the music video such as black and white effects, transitions and a shot of a swing and then the exact same shot but with the girl there, this created the sense of flashbacks and created more of a narrative to the song. On our ancillary texts I used many techniques on Photoshop to make them more appealing to its target audience, for example, changing photographs to black and white and then adding a high contrast. Also on the Album covers by having the front of the artists body on the front of the album and then a shot of his back on the back of the album.

From looking at the audience feedback on the questionnaires, our products came out with lots of positive reactions. From this reaction I have learned that using more effects can make the video more appealing towards the audience, causing it not be dull or boring, and thought that the right amount of effects had been used and not over edited.

The black and white effects were of the teenage boys memories in which the audience that viewed our video knew straight away. This was a main feature of the video and I found it good that people knew exactly what we had tried to do by changing the shots to black and white.

From looking back at the feedback, overall, many of the people said that the appearing of the girl was one of the best shots that was in the music video. Also in the video many people complimented on the different locations that we had used and thought the video overall suited its genre. In our ancillary tasks, the audience feedback said that our magazine advert and Album covers matched very well with suitable colours and appealing text.

Looking back at the feedback, I think I would have added more shots of the artist within the music video, it was hard to meet up with the main actor of the video but if I could have taken more shots of him I would have. Although having more clips of the girl did not ruin the video in anyway, it just created more of a storyline to the song.

Question 4

The programmes and software that I had to use in order to complete the final products were Final Cut and Photoshop. In AS level our group created an opening sequence of film, in doing this we had to use the programme IMovie, I knew how to work the basic settings of this programme, I also had prior knowledge to Photoshop as I have taken photography so I didn’t really learn any new skills just the ones that I already had knowledge of.

After using Final Cut I used some of my knowledge of IMovie to enhance new skills, such as changing clips to black and white and fading out clips. I also learned how to add sound and the technique of slowing down a clip, this helped very much within this project as it was main part of the video. The advantages of Final Cut were the fact that in our music video we were able to use more effects to make the video look more effective and interesting. Although we did have a problem with one of the clips looking very grainy and pixilated. This wasn’t a major problem and fixed it by importing the same shot again which was not time consuming.

Throughout our project it was important to use the digital camera and DV cameras as this was a main part of our project. The cameras were very easy to work and took no time at all to set up and start filming. However, a disadvantage was one of the DV cameras battery was not charged to the full amount and our group had to reschedule another filming date.

The website that we used to upload all of our research and planning was Blogger. I found this site easier than having a file with all of our work in, this is because we could add more to them if we had too and was easy to access from home if we wanted to do extra work. On blogger we could upload pictures and videos, this became very helpful in our research as we could upload photographs of other artists albums and music videos to evaluate them in full detail.

As part of this evaluation I created a short Power Point presentation with the audience feedback results. This was much easier to use than adding them straight to blogger because of the fact that it was not time consuming and looking much more neat and tidy.

The technologies that I have used have certainly improved my creativity skills; they have aloud me to have different effects to create very professional products. In Final Cut the scenes of the artist performing had dull colours, by using the programme I was able to add more brightness and contrast to the clips which created a much more stylish and professional look. In AS I was able to achieve new skills on software and programmes specifically meant for media products, after a year I have generated skills of a high standard in able to create real looking products.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research and planning that I did at the beginning of the project enabled me have more ideas on what could be included for the genre that we chose to do. By planning what we were going to do in a group created discussions in which choices had to be made, my social skills were a major part of this project and I learned to listen to other peoples ideas in order to create what we wanted our products to look like.

In my opinion, I think the final products look very professional considered the time we had to make them. The disadvantages of the project were that we had to change the main character of the teenage boy. The person that we initially had didn’t have the same frees as us and lived out of the way. After changing the artist it was much easier to record and start editing. Another problem was that we wanted to film at Blackburn Train station but was not able to; the problem was later solved when we changed the location. Other than these problems everything was good, we were able to have schedule for editing during college time and planned what we were going to film before be did it to make the project less time consuming.

Overall, I have learned many new skills and knowledge over the course of this project, for instance I have learned to work with other people and was able to input my own ideas. I also learned new skills on the software which I did not know before. I think the project went very well, although time consuming, I believe that our finished products are at a high standard.

Jessica Sergeant evaluation

Introduction- task chosen
This year for my media studies coursework I decided to make a music video, we were given the choice of three different tasks so I chose to form a group with three other girls to complete a music video, we decided on a music video because it was a challenge and we were all interested in music therefore eager to find out how to make one. This process took a number of weeks as we completed different tasks step by step. Starting with the planning and organising, we began our planning by deciding between us what song we would use.
Within my group I took part in a lot of planning the video as I helped planning the video, I also did a lot of this filming of the shots, I took all the photographs for the ancilary tasks and then me and my partner Kate both created a front and inside cover of the CD cover and then together we created a magazine advert for the album.
All our group decided on the target audience of ages 16-24, we decided on this because we are within this age group therefore know that a lot of people within this group are interested in music and would listen to 'Alex Johnson's' songs.

Genre

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDieZbG3KT4

this is a music video of a band within our chosen genre who have used similar aspects of an acoustic music videos to what we used.

• Another music video that we linked with our research was Jason Mraz 'I'm Your's', because the style of music is very similar however his music video is completely different. After looking at his music video we decided that the style of his song was completely different to ours so we chose to stick with the black and white clips and the short narrative that was included.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHTsc9PU2A

• When we decided that we wanted to do a narrative music video instead of experimental or performance, we new that we were working with a slow calm song so that everything we filmed for this video had to fit perfectly with the song.
• We decided not to film the clips to follow the words of the song but to make up a story line to follow so that it was easier to follow, however we chose to not give the story an ending but to leave it on kind of a cliff hanger so that the audience could decided for themselves what happens with the couple at end of the story.
• The story we chose was about two teenagers that were in a very complicated relationship, however we did not explain anything more than this. We wanted to let the audience think about what was going on and want to watch the music video over and over again to have different theories. The male character that is miming the song in the video is the main character and then one member of our group played the female character. The shots went back and forth between the two with editing inbetween to show the difficult relationship. This was very hard to film and to get right but we made it in the end and I am very happy with how all our final products turned out.

Branding and brand image

When we were thinking about our acoustic brand image we thought about designing a logo that would be appropriate to this specific genre, we obviously wanted to keep it nice and simple to fit well with the rest of the designing we did for the overall product. Above are the first two designs that we came up with and then after having a think between us we came up with a more complicated logo which is below.

After careful thinking and after we placed everything together within our whole product we decided not to use a logo on our product because we decided that we wanted our artist to just be known as him, with everything plain and simple so we just stuck to the simple black, white and red colour scheme.

• 
  
  With our chosen artist we thought it was important to keep the photographs fresh and modern looking, when i took the images i decided to make them abit quirky looking by taking them in an old dirty train station tunnel, this turned out to look really effective in the way that this acoustic singer was in the train station clearly where he shouldnt normally be. Again keeping the images very simple yet effective this kept a close link with the video, the black and white colour schemes that we chose for the video and the style that we decided to complete all the ancilary tasks in.
• 
  
  When i was editing the images i decided to use Photoshop to do this because it is the best programme when editing images, I thought carefully about how i wanted to edit them to make them look professional and well done. After thinking carefully about this i decided to use a filter on Photoshop named 'dark strokes' this gives the image a black a white edit however it also gives it a really strong contrast so that the photograph looks unique and like it belongs on a CD cover rather than just an ordinary image. I was also thinking about other album covers that would be on the shelves, the customer wants something eyecatching, so even though our product is simple it still would have that edge over the others because of the colour schemes and the way everything strongly links together. Also even though the genre is acoustic we wanted to make our acoustic overall product very similar looking to say, an alternative looking album cover or magazine article, because we wanted to be more creative with what we designed and this worked very well. Below is the best image i took of the character used in the video and the ancilary tasks, and below that is the edited version showing a great difference.
  

The band we have closely linked our whole project on is City and Colour, mainly because of their close link in sound to our chosen artist and their overall style, which is very laid back and modern, and we think that thier targer audience would be very similar to ours so we could strongly link everything we created with this certain bands whole overall image.

As we chose black, white and red for our colour scheme we soon discovered that this is also City and Colour's colour scheme which we found very facinating because of the similarities between their style and our ideas that we wanted our artist to be like.

http://www.cityandcolour.ca/

Above is a link to the bands website so I can interactively show the link between our ideas of what the style of our artist would be like and their overall band image.

It is good that we have strong links with existing products in the market so that the audience can link to the familiar. Another product that I have been closely looking at when creating the ancilary tasks is NME magazine, even though they do not focus on acoustic music in general, the overall style and image is perfect inpiration for what we wanted to achieve. City and Colour are with two labels named- 'Dine Alone' and 'Vagrant' These are probably the kinds of independant labels that would take on our artist for a similar artist because again it is good to stick with the familiar however having something a little different.

http://www.nme.com/home

Everything about the website is inspiring also including the magazine from the images incuded inside from the layout and fonts, it is all very original and modern and this is what we wanted to find when looking at existing products.

Audience

In our group we decided that our target audience would be 16-24, because of this certain age range, we thought would listen to this type of music the most, the artist is within this age range also. From decided this, this is when we went on create the brand image, always thinking about the target audience. From deciding on this target audience we then chose to investigate further into our audience by looking at, teen music magazines such as NME as i mention earlier. We wanted the audience to be specific,

• 
  
  sex- either male or female but probably mostly female
• 
  
  age- obviously between the ages of 16 and 24
• 
  
  occupation- probably mostly students

As I mentioned earlier we used a group of students that are in this age range to question about all of our finished products, below are the questions that we asked.

Q1. What gender are you?

Q2. How old are you?


Q3. What is your occupation?


Q4. On a scale of one to ten how much did you enjoy this music video?


Q5. How appropriate are the following for an acoustic music video?

• Location
• Editing
• Music
• Characters

Q6. Is it easy to understand that the black and white shots are memories?

Q7. Do you think enough effects have been used?

Q8. Does the magazine article and the album cover suit this particular music video?

Q9. Do you think it was effective to put the memories in slow motion?

Q10. Out of ten how believable does the character's relationship look?

Q11. If the album cover was to be sold in a shop would the cover attract you to buy it?

We handed the questionnaires around the group of students and filmed their responses, read the questions aloud and different students out of the group answered different questions. Unless the questions needed everybody to answer. Looking at the answers we were given, all the ones that needed a mark out of ten all got 7 and above by the students, this was very good in helping us with the results from the target audience that we wanted.
All of the feedback that we gained from handing out these questionnaires was very positive and this helped us with our products because we knew that out target audience were pleased with the finished products and this is what we wanted to achieve.

• Technologies used- To create all of our media products we used a wide range of technologies. For the music video we used an Apple Mac computer to do all the editing on and a handheld video camera and tripod to film the different clips, this proved very difficult!
• After we got all of the clips together we then decided to use Final Cut to edit the footage, this was difficult because slight problems kept occuring with our scences so at points we had to re-upload them. In Final Cut we used a few of the different effects on the programme to finish our music video such as adjusting the speed, changing the clips into black and white for the memories and then using the fading tool to fade the clips in and out. In the end using all of this technology proved very effective and worked well together with our other products.

• When creating our album and magazine advert we used In Design and Photoshop, this was not as difficult because I have experience in using both of these programmes before, especially Photoshop which I have used a lot. I used Photoshop to edit the photographs after I had taken them taking advantage of the different editing techniques that I had previously learnt. I used a filter named 'dark strokes'.
• And then we used In Design for the rest basically putting the album and magazine article together, using the sizing on this programme and the different colours and fonts all came from this programme. With help from 'www.dafont.com' for some of the fonts that we chose. This all appeared very effective in the end and pleasing to the eye, all these forms of technology were really good when preparing our tasks. We did have dificulty with images not uploading properly and computers crashing but in the end we came over these issues.

• Looking at the overall products I dont think that I would change much in our overall prodcuts, I really liked how they all turned out and was very pleased with the audience feedback.

Creative Technologies

A lot of these websites and different technologies were helpful however they all had their different problems that we faced. Such as the Macs crashing which obviously was not helpful and also Blogger not letting us upload images and videos, this was a big problem we faced and we had to try multiple times until they finally uploaded. Even though they had their problems they did not limit our creativity in any way, even on mine and my partned Kates' magazine article we magaged to place the lyrics of our chosen song around the models figure as shown below. This took a lot of tries but we managed it in the end!

• 
  
  This was the final magazine article that me and my partner Kate created, we stuck with the black, white and red colour scheme and used our lyrics idea using In Design and Photoshop to create just what we wanted and we were really pleased with the outcome!
• 
  
  These technologies have allowed us to achieve just what we wanted, a calm looking and simple three coloured colour scheme set of products, they look artistic and creative and I am very please with the outcome!

Conclusion

This is an example of an album cover of an artists closely linked to ours however this album cover is bright and colourful and detailed, showing the different acoustic/alternative music can be.

Looking at our overall products I am very happy with what we have all achieved, it was not hard to work in a group with three other girls as I worked alone last year however I found it this year that the challenge was good to work with. It was a very big challenge from having the snow affects our days for filming, one model that we were meant to use could no longer take part so we had to find a new one. And there was a lot of disagreements but I am really glad that in the end we got it all done and it turned out as good as it did. I am very happy with all the finished products and glad that they clearly link well together even when we split up into pairs from out group of four then came back together all our seperate work linked really well!

The ancillary tasks were hard to complete but it made it a lot easier that we split up into pairs to complete, the creative side was really difficult to come up with also.

Overall I think we worked well as a group and we got everything done to a high standard.

Evaluation 1st Draft By Kate Lydon

What is music video?

' a distinctive art form which can allow really interesting creative opportunities' (P.Fraser 2005)

For my media coursework this year I worked in a group with three other girls to create a music video. We also had to create an ancillary task each and we split into pairs to do this. My partner, Jess, and I created a front cover of the album and one of the inside pages and also a magazine advert for our artist.

We used a piece of music called Wednesday Night, which one of our friends wrote and gave us permission to use. The song is in the acoustic genre and quite slow.
The idea of our music video was to tell a story of a couple who had split up and the male singer was writing the song about his girlfriend.

In the video we created the idea of flashbacks of the girl (who i played) when the couple were in a happy relationship. We used the black and white effect to make it easy for the audience to differentiate between the memories and the real life shots.
I contributed to the project by filming the different shots and completing the ancillary tasks and also being a character in the video.

The target audience for our music video was between the ages of 16-25 because it seems that this age range is the group that has the most interest in music and especially new music like Wednesday Night.

Genre
The music we chose falls into the acoustic genre and we used conventions such as black and white effect, slow motion and fading to create recognition and familiarity for the audience. We chose to use these features after researching other types of acoustic music videos for example;



It is vital to use these elements so that the audience can recognise what type of music video it is straight away and also so that it follows the typical conventions of an acoustic music video. However it is also important to bring something new and different to the music industry and break the traditional boundaries of the genre a little. We did this by creating a storyline that didn't completely make sense. We left it to the audience to decide what had happened to the couple and how the male singer had lost his girlfriend. Also stories are usually resolved at the end, however our's didn't which allows the audience to make up their own minds what happened, or leave it as a mystery.
By doing something a little different in our video it catches the audience's attention and keeps them interested.

Our choice to do this was proved successful from the audience feedback that we got. In the questionnaire that we handed out to our target audience we asked whether or not it was easy to understand if the black and white, slow motion clips were memories or not and also if they thought this was effective. We got 9 out of 10 people who answered yes to this so this proves that it worked well.

How our product fulfils the music video requirements
- Most music videos, unless they are experiemental videos, usually give the audience a narrative. This is what we have followed with our video to create a story for the audience and reflect the lyrics of the music.

- Almost all music videos include the band or artist in them so that the audience can recognise the artist and music straight away. The music videos that sometimes don't conform to this usual convention are usually individualistic and again experimental videos.

How our product fulfils the acoustic genre requirements

- Acoustic music videos tend to be similar in terms of the style and the way it is shot. Obviously with it being a slow song the filing has to match. We have tried to create this with out video by shooting calm shots and some of the faster shots that we got we have put into slow motion which I think works really well. This is different to other genres of music for examle R&B where the tempo of the music is upbeat and the speed of the video tends to match.

- Our ancillary tasks also match our genre of music. The pages of the album are simplistic and not too bold to look at. Even though most album covers are bright and colourful so that they stand out on the shelf, our audience feedback has told us that the black and white image on the front would stand out even more that the rest on the shelf because it doesn't blend in with the other colours. Here is an example of a contrasting album to the image that we have chosen for the front of our album;




Branding and Brand Image
We first started to develop different ideas for logos that looked like this;



However in the end we decided not to put a logo on the front cover because we didn't feel that it fitted with the image. Instead we chose to use a font that continued throughout the products we created. I think that this is a good idea because even though they are different pieces they all like with similarities.

How we maintained a brand image across our products

There is a need for distinct brands in the music industry as a result of mass production, and competitive branding because a necessity of the machine age in all types of products and this has reflected on the music industry which is now a big competition between the different artists across the world. 

We had to create a certain brand image because today consumers have so much choice that every product needs a certain personality that jumps out at the audience and makes them want to buy it.


As well as the font that we used throughout the product we also used a similar colour palette. All the images we have used have been put into black and white to create continuity. This also links with the black and white we have used in the film and I think they all link together really well.

In the magazine advert that Jess and I created we used red font like on the front of the album cover. My idea was to somehow type the lyrics of Wednesday Night out on the page so that it followed the outline of the photograph. At first this was hard to figure out how to do this but after lots of attempts we found a pen tool on photoshop that allowed us to do this.
For the text on the page which was him name and the date his album is due to release we used a bold red font that would stand out to the audience straight away when they looked at the page. We also used a white font in contrast to this which was in italics and this text was quotes that we made up to be from well known music magazines to interest the readers.


Brand Image & The Music Industry
There are thousands of artists in the music industry and today and it is a world of competition of sales and promotion to fans, therefore it is important to stand out to your target audience which is what we have tried to do with our products.

After looking at various record labels I came to the conclusion that EMI, which is a British music company and the fourth largest business group and family of record labels in the music industry. I think that EMI would be interested first of all because our artist is British so he would represent the company and also I think they would possibly distribute our media product because of the various artists that they have already signed onto their label. For example Jamie T, OKGO, We Are Scientists and Norah Jones especially because I would say she is the female version of what our music is like. Also most of these artists are what our target audience would listen to so therefore they would show and interest in our music product.

Another record label that would suit our music, if not more that EMI would, is Columbia Records. They have signed artists such as Adele, who has similar sound in her music as Wednesday Night


MGMT, an individual band who are very popular with our target audience


and also Temper Trap, another very new and popular band already.

Our product may stand out to be a little different to these artists because the music is a lot slower and more relaxing, so this is a way in which it could catch the audience's and also the record labels attention because it is something new.

Audience

All media products need an audience for the institution to target and so they can construct the product to appeal to them. As I have said above our target audience is between the ages of 16 and 25, a large group that seems to be the most interested in music. 

As the media industries grew following WW2, a need to identify and target different segments of the audience grew in order to market their product to the 'type's of people who would buy it. This is what we have done so that we could make a product that would suit the ages that we chose. We thought it we went lower than 16 years old then the group wouldn't be mature enough to understand the relationship between the couple and also the lyrics of the music. We also thought if we went older that 25 then they wouldn't show an interest in Alex Johnson's music because he was a younger singer. 

Before we started to create our music video we had to research a case study called 'Project Phoenix' which in 2003 Emap set up this UK based research to map the fan economy. Project Phoenix looked specifically at the attitudes towards music of people between the ages of 15 and 39. They were looking at the attitudes and behaviours of the different groups in relation to the way the audience consumes music. 

They identified 4 main degrees of interest in music;

1.  SAVANTS - for whom everything in life seems to be tied up with music

2. ENTHUSIASTS - where music is a key part of life but is balanced by other interests

3. CASUALS - music plays a welcome role, but other things are far more important

4. INDIFFERENTS - who would not lose much sleep if music ceased to exist

When looking at which group we wanted our music to appeal to we immediately eliminated the 'indifferents' because they wouldn't pay an interest in music at all and therefore we wouldn't have many sales of our product. The other three groups however we decided we would try to aim our music.

We decided that our target audience of 16-25 was the right age due to financial reasons. The younger end of the group would be the teenagers with part time jobs who don't have to pay bills and so the money that they earn is spent on items for themselves including albums. The older end of the group are maybe students who are in or coming out of university who won't necessarily buy a whole album but may opt for the internet buying of the single online. 

I think that the secondary target audience would probably be girls of a younger age who go through the stage of collecting posters of a particular male artist and treat one album as a bible, listening to it over and over again. I don't think that anyone older than 25 would be a secondary target audience because of the artist being quite young and they tend to listen to music of their generation. 

After we had shown our music video to our target audience we handed out a questionnaire for them to complete about what they had just watched and listened to. 

Here is the questionnaire;

Q1. What gender are you?

Q2. How old are you?

Q3. What is your occupation?

All the people that we asked to fill out this questionnaire were students.

Q4. On a scale of one to ten how much did you enjoy this m

usic video?

I found that only three numbers on the scale were selected; 7,8 and 9.

Q5. How appropriate are the following for an acoustic music video?

Location;

Editing;

Music;

Characters;

Q6. Is it easy to understand that the black and white shots are m

emories?

Q7. Do you think enough effects have been used?

Q8. Does the magazine article and the album cover suit this particular music video?

Q9. Do you think it was effective to put the memories in slow motion?

Q10. Out of ten how believable does the character's relationship look?

I found that only four numbers on the scale were selected for this question; 7,8,9 and 10

Q11. If the album cover was to be sold in a shop would the cover attract you to buy it?

Most of the feedback that we got from these questionnaires was very positive and reassured us that what we have done with our product has worked well and achieved what we wanted it to in terms of pleasing the audience.

When we gave these questionnaires out in class we filmed the responses that the class gave when our teacher asked the questions out loud. 

Here is what some of the audience said about our music video;

"I thought the characters made the narrative believable"

"I thought all the effects worked really well together"

"The music fitted really well with the narrative"

"At first I didn't understand that the black and white shots were memories but as the video went on and the male characters facial expression became a lot sadder I understood that he was thinking about the past"

The only improvement that we got for our music video was to include more shots of the artist singing the song. We found that because it was a slow song it was really hard to get interesting shots of him singing it. We had looked at other music videos which were more upbeat and the artist were able to jump around or dance to the music but with Wednesday Night this wasn't possible because the music is too calm and if he did this then it wouldn't fit with the music and wouldn't look right. Therefore we thought that the singing parts would bore the audience if we included a lot of those shots and instead we decided to include more memories and make more of a story to interest the audience. 

We tried to attract our target audience with the different ancillary tasks that we have created:
 Album - The album may seem to be quite simple but also I think the style of it works really well with our music video. I like the idea of the artist on the front cover facing the camera to create a personal shot and then my idea was for the back cover to have the artist with his back facing the camera and the names of the songs down his back. I think that Emily and Vicky who further developed this idea and created the back cover made it look just right.

I also like the inside cover on the left which Jess and I created. We chose to use the wall of the train station which is in every shot that we have used and to use a font on the computer that looked like handwriting. We then put text all over the wall to create a dedications page. I got this inspiration from an existing album by Leona Lewis and I thought that it looked really effective.
I the image that Vicky created on the inside where the CD goes is a really good eye catching background with the four shots put next to each other of the artist. This is individual and stands out when the case is open.

Magazine Adverts - These adverts attract our target audience because they are young looking, don't have too much information that will bore the reader and have a great image of the artist on each.

Advert 1 that Jess and I created

Advert 2 that Emily and Vicky created

Use of Creative Technologies

Throughout our project we used many media technologies to create our music video, our album and our magazine adverts. I am going to go through each part step by step and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using media technologies. 

RESEARCH - Whilst doing our research we mainly used the internet to find out information about our genre, other artists that has the same style of music, album covers and magazine adverts. We then copied pictures from the internet and pasted them onto our blog to show the research we had found. 

Album Covers - We looked at existing album covers such as these ones and analyzed the conventions they had used and how they may have inspired us to create our album the way that we did.;

   

 I liked this album cover of Paolo Nutini's best and I think this is what inspired usto do the four shots of our artist in the middle of the album.

PLANNING

When we were planning how we were going to create our music video we did a practice test using Final Cut Express and we recapped what we had learnt last year from using iMovie, and used a clip and some music of the computer and put them together. This was the basics of what we had to do to create our music video. We also learnt how to edit the footage and cut parts out that we didn't need. 

CONSTRUCTION

To get our footage we used a video camera that college supplied us with. I found this quite simple at easy to use which was helpful and we recorded all our footage on our own tape so that we didn't get anyone else's footage mixed up with ours. 

Like in the planning we used Final Cut Express to create our music video which I thought was an easy program to use once you had got the hang of it. It was hard for me at first to understand what to do because last year I created a music magazine instead of a film trailer so I didn't have the experience of using iMovie which would have helped me get through the work quicker this year. 

However my skills from last year got put to use when we had to create the album pages and the magazine advert. For this we used Photoshop we enabled us to crop and resize images, edit the contrast and colour, add texts and also effects. Jess took the photographs at home with her digital camera and the images came out really well. The only disadvantage I would say about Photoshop is that it is very time consuming and takes a lot of trial and error before you can get your image perfect. Also because there are so many different things that you can do on Photoshop there a lots of different icons that you have to learn what they do in order not to get things wrong on your image. Luckily there is a 'undo' button that allows you to go back a step if you made a mistake on your work. 

On our ancillary tasks we downloaded the handwriting font from www.dafont.com and there were plenty of choices for us to pick which I found really useful and would definitely use that website again. 

EVALUATION STAGE

As you can see in my evaluation I have used the internet to get images of other album covers to compare to ours. I have also used youtube to download some videos to show other artists work within the different music labels that I chose to research. 

Also to collect our target audience feedback not only from the questionnaires that I typed out on Microsoft Word, but also the video footage that we have of the audience watching our music video and giving responses. To do this we used the video camera again and set it up and the front of the classroom. As each person answered we filmed them so we could get a clear idea and reason for the answer they had given on paper.

These media technologies have allowed our group to create something that would be standard to be sold in shops today and to appear on music channels. I think Final Cut Express is a really professional program with many different things on it to edit our video. For example we changed the colour on the parts where our artist is singing because the light wasn't brilliant in the original footage so we made it brighter so that it didn't look dull.

Looking back at my AS project when I created a music magazine I also used many media technologies. However this year I seem to have used my skills I had already gained last year and also advance them this year with new knowledge.
Last year I used Photoshop to create my preliminary and final task which is what I have done this year. I also posted my research and progress on my blog.
Instead of a video camera I used a digital camera to take photographs of the model I used to be my artist.

Last year my target audience was completely different to this year. I created a music magazine with fashion twist which was aimed at women aged 16+. I definitely had to make my magazine very feminine to appeal to this audience, including the text that I used on the contents page and the front cover; words that would attract females to want to read it. I definitely pushed the generic conventions by linking fashion into the music theme and this was a risk because there are very few magazines out there that do this. If I had to do this project again I think I would have stuck to one genre of music and not tried to incorporate something else in it as it was a lot of hard work to try and explain this in every piece of work that I did.



CONCLUSION

I thought the research that we did was in enough detail to try and explain what we were looking for and what was inspiring us to create what we have with our music magazine. The only thing that I would change in the planning aspect of this work is how we showed development on the blog. It is hard to have a practical lesson and then type up at home what happened in the lesson or when we were out filming. Also I don't think we explained how we changed from having a logo to not having a logo very well.

I am very please with our overall products and how they have turned out. At first it is hard to vision how it will look from your ideas that are on paper, and also very difficult to try and select what footage we wanted to use and which bits would really explain the narrative well.
I think the album cover looks really authentic and our ideas have worked well, with the magazine adverts too. I like how even though the adverts we created in pairs are different they still like because of the images we selected with the train station wall behind each shot. This has created continuity and familiarity for the audience.


In my opinion I found it hard at first to work in a group with three other girls after doing my project last year on my own. I always seem to have a clear intention of what I want the outcome of my project to look like and I found it hard to try and mix it with three other points of view. After time though it got easier and I think we all understood each other's ideas better and were able to work with that. Also we split the research tasks up which gave us each something individual to work on which is what I liked.