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
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.
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.
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.
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.
