FINAL DRAFT Social Media Page

Here are screenshots of our completed instagram feed, I am really happy with the final look of this instagram page and am confident that it does everything necessary to make it an interactive successful social media page. We aimed to create a theme through our feed which reflects our genre and follow our key descriptors. This was important to ensure our instagram page didn’t look disconnected and followed the themes and image that our music video and digipak had presented. When designing posts for our page we made sure to this about AIDA. This is important for each post to be successful, as each post needs to attract a audience, create further interest when the audience clicks on the post, produce a desire for the audience to interact through the post (like, comment and sharing) and then have a call to action. This was very important on our posts which were advertising upcoming events that our star was part of (world tours etc) as for this post to be successful and do what the star requires it needs to include information and links on how to get tickets to these events. The audience does not want to hear about an event their star is in if they cannot get involved and buy tickets.

It is also important to include all areas of uses and gratifications (Blumler and Katz) within our social media page. This includes, personal identity, social interaction, information and entertainment. It is key to include all of these elements to please the audience, social media is the easiest way to create interaction for your audience which you cannot create produce from a music video or digipak. We produced quite a few posts which gave our audience this interaction they crave such as a Q&A which we created on our story allowing our audience to ask any questions they have for the star. We then answered these all on our story also and saved into our highlights, this allows the continuous new flow of fans to see these stories permanently.

Building up excitement was also something that we wanted to do through our social media page, we did this by creating posts which gave sneak peaks to upcoming releases giving our audience something to look forward to and keep them checking our page to find more information. We also wanted to include some cross-media convergence which connected our star to brand which are popular to our target audience. We chose to do this with a well known headphone brand, Beatsbydre, and also a clothing brand which we feel reflects the interests of our desired audience, motel rocks. We also creates this cross-media convergence by involving our star in other types of media such as a radio debut and our star taking the front cover of a magazine. This allows our star to be pushed past just a social media page and be represented through many types of media attracting a wider audience.

More goals that we had when designing our social media page was the idea of creating a star which is represented as being ordinary and extra-ordinary. We did this by not only showing achievements and professional events our star was apart of for example, photo-shoots, album cover releases, song releases and tour date but also posting about our stars everyday life such as holidays and casual selfies. These ordinary Images give our audience the perception that they can relate to the star giving them more of a desire to interact.

Here I have created a slideshow of all the posts which we shared on our social media page, I put these into sections of main posts and then the different highlights on our page. I really enjoyed promoting our star through this social media page and it was definitely one of my favourite elements of the promotion package which helped all of the products come together.

FINAL Digipak Draft

We really didn’t change a lot for our final draft as we worked really hard to make our third draft exactly what we wanted after not being happy with our first or second draft. Therefore it was only small details that needed amending such as rotating the MM on the left spine and slightly altering the position of some of the text. Overall I am really happy with the final draft for our digipak and I think it represents our star and our genre very successfully whilst being very appealing to look at. It also includes all of the necessary conventions such as the barcode and copyright text swell as tracks, album name etc. which are essential for a successful Digipak.

We spent quite a lot of time making sure that the colour palette was coherent through all 4 pages and it think this was successful. Initially we struggled to make sure all pages were recognisable to have come from one digipak although we found a way to match the background colours with the colours used in the glitch effect on the back cover, we then made red a feature throughout the whole digipak so made the beats headphones a feature in the middle two pages. The main form of media text which is shown through our digipak is visual images which portray a meaning towards our EDM genre, this type of media language allows the active audience to decode it and interpret it personally. We used elements such as the beats headphones which we highlighted to ensure they stand out In order to represent the stereotypical DJ look, this will require cultural competence to understand this representation although I think we successfully ensured that these same EDM themes can be picked up through other elements of the digipack such as the type face and graphics used. After doing market research from our third draft I was happy that our digipak was identifiable as belonging to the EDM genre which was key for it to attract the desirable audience.

Digipak draft 3

What has changed?

we changes a lot from our draft 3 digipak including :

  • we changed the background colour on the front cover
  • we redesigned the two middle pages completely as in the last draft we rushed these pages
  • we also redesigned the whole back cover by editing a new image with a glitch effect
  • we made sure all 4 pages aligned with a colour scheme to make them come together more as in the second draft there wasn’t a clear theme and they all looked quite separated
  • we then ensured we had all of the necessary conventions that we missed in draft 2 – barcode, copyright text etc.

 

Here is our draft 3 for our Digipak, I am really happy with this draft and we presented it in a actual Digipak to see the full effect of it.

We then did some market research to see what genre people thought it was. The majority (7/9) people guessed correctly and said EDM which shows that we have represented our desired genre successfully.

Draft 4 changes

  • rotate the ‘MM’ on left spine to fit with the rotation of ‘BlueLight’

FINAL DRAFT music video

Here is our FINAL draft for our music video to Low Down by Venbee.

I am really pleased with the overall final outcome of our music video and it has changed so much through the drafts with all of the different feedback we have received. In this video the star is presented to be quite ordinary in some scenes allowing to her to be in reach of her audience and have more of a relation through the narrative. As our narrative is based on a story of a girl who has lost touch with her mother and it struggling on her own, this may be a relatable story for a minority of the audience and therefore presenting the star to be ordinary allows fans to relate with the story even more. Although in order to make this a successful and exciting music video we did try and also present the star to be extraordinary (Dyer) through some shots such as the performance clips which have been shot professionally and edited to a high standard with effects using AdobePremier Pro.

When editing and shooting our music video it was key to ensure there were some conventional elements to ensure the audience can understand the video as well as being able to recognise the genre and enjoy it overall. Before beginning the editing process we looked into what was conventional in a EDM music video so that we could follow the repertoire of elements (Altman) making it easy for our audience to recognise the genre of the music video. Some of these elements which are conventional to EDM are combination videos which means the narrative and performance clips are combined and shown through one star. We did this in our music video and really liked how it turned out as it allows the viewer to connect with this one star a lot more than they could if there were multiple different stars within the video. Editing to the beat was a another convention we tried to follow as again this is very relevant with EDM as this type of music generally contains strong beats throughout which can be very effective when the music video is edited well to these beats.

When filming our music video and then selecting the clips we wanted to use ensuring the clips were filmed with a steady hand was key as shaky clips would look very unprofessional in the final video. Choosing a variety of shots is also very important as it makes the sequence a lot less boring, I think we did this well by including a range of long shots, close up and mid shots throughout in order to not let the audience get bored from one shot distance. Miss en scene was another element which is important within a music video and we ended up with at least 5 different costumes throughout our music video to show different times and places in the video. For example the performance shoot were shot In different costumes to the narrative in order to give these scenes some more separation. Choosing costumes is very important and I think we had some very effective costume choices in our music video such as the long dress in the pool clips which worked really well and portrays the sorrow ‘drowning’ image we aimed for.

We used a range of effects in our music video to make it more exciting and align with our genre such as the heartbeat edit which we included twice in the sequence for the chorus along with the colour change edit which matched the beat of the song. We also used transitions such as fade to make some changes in clips less harsh and this was also very effective.

At first we struggled to ensure that our narrative made sense In our video as the order was jumbled and there were too many gaps in the story although in the final draft I am confident that the narrative is much more clear and easy to understand by the audience which is very important for this to be successful.

Social Media Page Draft 2

Above is some feedback on our second social media page draft. This feedback helped us see what is good and what can be improved to make the page even better for our final draft. This gives an insight to what our audience want to see on our social media page by getting another opinion.

These are two of the recent posts that we added to our stars social media page, announcing a collaboration with Motel Rocks and also the release of the album BlueLight.

What is good :

  • good interaction with the audience
  • good snipet/sneekpeak video of new music video
  • good use of synergy and promotional work used with the collabaration of the beats headphones
  • good use of bts shots, makes the audience intriuged
  • shows her ordinary side of her out with her friends
  • good use of the spotify wrapped
  • good use of using music magazine to make her look extra ordinary
  • good use of merch

What needs improving :

  • Name the other star in the second post
  • Where can you buy the tickets from for the tour??
  • could create a competition to allow fans to win tickets to xmas party
  • no guerilla marketing

Digipak Draft 2

Here is our draft 2 for our digipak. We have now completed all four pages of the digipak which makes it easier to see the digipak as a whole and have more of a vision. There are definitely still elements of this that we don’t like and need to change although are happy with the overall ideas. The middle two pages are very basic currently as we rushed to get them done in order to get a draft up and get feedback from our teacher.

Summary of feedback – 

The feedback we received was very useful to see another opinion on our second draft. Miss gave us very useful tips on how to improve such as ensuring the star image on the front cover doesn’t blend into the background by brightening the clothing to make it stand out. it was also suggested that we change our album name from Firelight to one of the songs we already have on our album such as ‘BlueLight or ‘LivingHell’ as both of these titles could also be abbreviated to BL or LH. We definitely also need to work on the middle to pages to make them fit in with the colour scheme more and ensure we have all of the necessary conventions.

Things we like:

  • we like the design concept on the front page
  • the different coloured numbers for the tracks on the back are very effective
  • we have used a range of images from different shoots throughout the digipak which looks appealing

Things to improve:

  • im not sure about the background on the front cover as it seems too much and takes away from the main image, it also discolours the star image
  • the middle pages are very basic and don’t match the theme of the two other pages
  • we need to add the conventions such as copyright on the back cover as well as the album name and artist

Social Media Page Draft 1 – self assessment

This is our first draft for our stars social media page. I have been really enjoying making this instagram page and designing posts and collaborations for our star. We decided to  design a beats X meg collaboration as our star was wearing beats in one of our recent shoots so it was easy to do. We made sure to design our page around being conventional to our genre and making sure the colour scheme reflects EDM. We have stayed active on the account as this is important for a star to do in order to give their fans the personal interaction they want.

so far some of our posts include sneak peaks into one of megs new releases and music video as well as casual pics from our star at a festival making her seem more ordinary to fans and speaking about her interaction with her listeners. By designing a collaboration with beats by dre this is an example of synergy as the star is gaining more attention by working with other brands which attract the same audience. We have included links to eventbrite for tickets to her performances as well as store links to buy the stars merch, this is important as these links create a call to action for the fans. We have also received interaction through this instagram from followers asking whether products are sustainably sources and whether they support any charities this has been important to be able to share this information with our fans as it may draw them closer to the star knowing they are in support of charities and ethically made clothing.

 

Here are some of the stories which we have posted on our stars account so far. We designed merchandise for our star and use the publicity of a social media page to advertise this as it gains the attention of her fans as well as working as marketing for the star when the fans buy and wear this merch they are promoting meg as a star.

Going forward with our social media page we would like to continue the countdown to the release of our stars album as well as involving our star with more cross media convergence such as a radio debut and potentially more collaborations with brands such as ASOS, we may also create a collaboration with another EDM star as this is another very successful way to gain our upcoming star some more attention. We are also looking to include some more interactive elements in our page such as a Q&A on our story to answer any questions fans have about the star.

click image to see PDF

 

Social Media Page – Marketing Timeline

A important step before beginning our marketing campaign through instagram was to plan out the posts, events and brand collaborations that we were going to promote through our stars instagram. In order to do this we created a timeline consisting of the posts which we are going to do to create our campaign, this makes it easy to know what we should we posting and when so that our social media page successfully promotes our artist how we want it to. In our timeline we ensured that we have posts which will build excitement up over time towards release dates and events our star is holding. It was also key to make sure we had posts which allow for social interaction such as Q&A’s and planning meet and greets which make the star seem more ordinary towards their fans but also promoting world tours and merchandise which show the star to be a extraordinary image. The social media page needs to be informative but also entertaining for fans. The posts need to be designed to high standards and exciting in order to go viral and create a buzz around the star. The page also needs to follow the steps of AIDA – attention, interest, desire, call to action. This refers to a post needing to be able to catch the attention of fans and intent them to view the post, give them a desire to interact and then have a step which allows them to interact, for example buying the merchandise by having a link available.

 

Digipak shoot 2

We decided to do a second shoot for our Digipak to gather some more images as we have to design 4 pages and wanted to use a range of images not just from one shoot. These are the most successful images from the second shoot and I am really happy with how these turned out. We chose festival/rave related costumes such as Adidas track pants and crop tops to represent out genre as well as accessories like belly chains and chunky earrings.

Social Media Website Design

Here is a website page which I designed to sell our stars merch. I was unable to make this website public to upload to our social media page so have just created snapshots of the website on here to show the page. This was an extra task we worked on to display the merchandise we had designed for our star. I think the website has big potential and was designed successfully to make the merchandise easy to shop for fans and also gives a small insight into the star herself.

here are some more images of the merchandise we designed for our star. we chose to use a graphic design from promoting her new album ‘Firelight’ on the back and have her artist name bold on the front. These designs would be very successful at giving the star promotion through her fans wearing her merch.

Audience interaction with a social media page

What is conventional about the page in terms of technical conventions?

We have chosen to analyse the Instagram profile of Calvin Harris as he is a well known EDM artist with an established profile. 

His profile has a large following of 10.5 million which demonstrates his popularity and success as an artist. This following also reflects how this platform has been a success for him capturing attention from fans and acting as a marketing campaign.  

As you can see his profile picture displays himself performing at potentially a festival, which shows he is well known in the EDM industry, along with his other posts displaying many other festivals he has performed at which helps to advertise his music.

This profile is conventional to the EDM genre as his feed has a bright, neon colour scheme promoting his fun energetic festival performances which are key values of EDM. 

He also has highlights at the top of his page which promote some of his recent song releases and as well as his experiences at known events and festivals. These highlights create easy advertisement and information for the star.

His bio features a link to his website of merch allowing fans easy access to purchase his music on CD’s and vinyl records as well as his personal clothing line. Therefore his personal profile is acting as advertisement for these products.

His bold neon feed will help to gain the attention of fans and interest them to interact with his page, giving him further exposure which will help him gain more attention through the platform. 

Promoting his festival sets and new releases makes it easy for fans to stream his music through the platform and also become aware of where the DJ will be playing, allowing them to buy tickets, this makes his platform a call to action. 

Moreover this platform allows viewers to be informed and entertained by his content but also have a level of personal interaction by liking,  commenting and sharing his posts.

This platform is a successful example of promoting an artist through social media as it is a free way of gaining further promotion through the interaction of fans. 

Calvin Harris is represented as a extra-ordinary star through his instagram profile as videos of his live sets in front of thousands of fans makes up a large proportion of his feed. On the other hand, his highlights show the star reposting fans stories of his performance interacting with his followers and making him seem more ordinary allowing him to relate with his fans more and giving appreciation to those promoting his music.

 

This task was useful as it allowed us to analyse a professional social media page and how the audience interacts with the page.  Here we have created a script to analyse a soclai media page, we decided to look into Calvin Harris’s social media page as he related to our genre and therfore we were able to look into the overal desired aesthetic of a EDM social media page aswell as the general conventions. This was very useful as it will help when designing out own social media page for our star. We chose to analyse a instagram page as this is the platform we would like to use for our own page as we like the overall aesthetic of instagram the best aswell as it being easy to use, we also feel this fits with our audiences prefernces best.

 

click to see Calvin Harris Instagram page

Digipak Draft 1

Here is our draft 1 front and back cover for our digipak, I do not like a lot of this first draft although this allowed us to start seeing what works and doesn’t work. We need to work on making sure representing our genre EDM is clear through the digipak as currently the genre of this cover is unclear. The colour palette is not currently portraying the key qualities of EDM and the design needs more modern design graphics to make it exiting. The star image is presented well although a variety of different shots would benefit the digipak.

Things to improve –

  • I would like to try and redesign the cover using different images in the shoot to create an echo image which changes as it gets smaller. I think this would create a very modern and EDM style Image using different colours to separate each image as it dissolves rather than all pink images.
  • We also need to look into other EDM style fonts which could be appropriate as the current fonts are very basic and not clearly EDM related.
  • We need to design the spines on the back cover
  • we need to ensure we have all conventional elements such as copyright text and barcode.

 

Digipak Shoot Contact Sheets and Shoot Evaluation

Here are some contact sheets from our digipak cover shoot. We decided to do some shots in both the white and black studio although found we preferred the outcome in the white studio as the lighting produced a brighter image. Our model wore a colourful festival style top and gold summer style jewellery to demonstrate our EDM genre. We also used props like bright red beats headphones to create the image of a DJ. It was important to ensure we got a variety of different shots including close ups and mid shots as we are not completely decided on the image we want for out digipak covers so having different shots gives us more options to play with when designing the cover in InDesign.

Here are some of my favourite images from the shoot which could be used for our front cover. I chose two images where the star is holding eye contact and two where they are looking away from the camera as these images create very different images for the audience. Overall I am happy with how this first shoot went as we have a few options which can be used for the cover of our digipak although we may decided to do a further shoot in order to gather more images for the inside and back cover of our digipak so that the whole album is not complete with images from one shoot in the same MES.

Social media page – key terminology

This task allowed me t0 analyse EDM artist social media pages and identify the key terminology within these pages. I chose to pick apart one instagram page and one Facebook page as they both have different elements to be successful at promoting the artist. Comparing the two was useful for me to see which social media platform I would prefer to do for our own platform to create a campaign of our artist. It is also important to recognise which of these platforms would be most successful at capturing the attention of our target audience. The layout and general target audience for Facebook and instagram are very different therefore this task was essential to recognise which is best suited. Analysing these technical conventions gave me a better understanding of the purpose and importance of the conventions within these platforms.

 

DigiPak mock up

This is a digipack mockup sketch that we did to show our initial idea for our digipack cover. Our main idea was to have one mid shot/close-up image which is duplicated 3 times across the cover and the images fade out over each other. We came up with this idea as it is unique and also modern and creative which are 2 qualities of EDM, we think this design does represent our genre. We would also like to use to effects to add neon lighting strobes across the images to further display the EDM genre. This design allows the star image to be the main focus of the cover which is important to promote the artist.  On the back cover we are going to print a firework image behind the song text. In the middle two pages we came up the the idea to have a close up image of the star which is printed over the two inside pages so when opened the face is together. We then annotated the image to explain the elements within our design.

This mockup will be useful when designing our digipak o indesign as we can look back to what our desired design was.

Colour Palettes

We used a colour palette generator to find colour swatches which we liked.

DigiPak Production Meeting Agenda & risk assessment

The importance of doing a PMA ensures that we have a detailed plan of the costumes and MES that we want for our desired DigiPak. Without a plan like this we would go into the shoot not having a clear idea of the image we are trying to achieve and would not be able to ensure we have all of the costumes and props needed. This production meeting agenda is also important to make sure we are aware of the equipment we need for the shoot and to plan the time, location of our shoot. We are both able to look back at this during the shoot to see what we had planned so that we don’t come away from the shoot without the desired photos we had planned.

Draft 4

Reflection

This is our draft 4 which I am really pleased with and this is the first draft we have had which is now complete with footage and doesn’t have any gaps. Now that we have all of the footage there are just minor adjustments which need to be made before our final draft. Being able to watch the video through with no gaps now makes it much easier to adjust clips and move things around so that the order makes sense.

What is good: 

  • we now have a complete full draft
  • the storyline makes more sense now as we reordered it
  • we have a range of close up and extreme close ups throughout

Things to improve :

  • ensure all clips used are shaky
  • make sure all lip sync is perfectly timed
  • add some extra FX to make some scenes more exciting

This is some further feedback that we got from our teacher about what we can improve for our final draft.

Digipak Conventions Analysis

Analysing this Digipak allowed me look at some of the competition in the same genre as well as allowing me to pick up on the key technical conventions that are part of an album cover such as the album name, artist name, copyright, tracklist, barcode and record label logos.

This Digipak displays the common bright colours which are seen throughout the EDM genre and features design elements such as the colourful border surrounding the album which follows onto the back of the album to making it coherent. This cover shows elements of creativity and design which are key traits within the EDM genre. It is important that the genre of the album can be recognised from the digipak and therefore the colours and design used should be specifically chosen to portray the desired emotions and genre.

It is important to understand the difference between denotations and connotations as this digipack simply is a edited side portrait  where the facial features are replaced with a blend of colours although to me this connotes fun, dance and creativity which are 3 main themes in the EDM genre.

Focusing forward this task has given me a more clear understanding of the technical conventions within a Digipak and also a look into the competition within our genre. This will help me when designing our own Digipak as I need to remember to include all of these elements in order to have a successful Digipak.

The Look Book

This padlet has created a detailed moodboard of any images which we think relate to our genre and what we envision for our digipack. These images represent EDM stars, colour schemes, moods and qualities associated with EDm and by writing about how it links to the genre helped me to create an image in my head of the type of colours, emotions and qualities we are hoping to express through our digipack. Some of these images at a glance may not seem like they relate to EDM but when the connotations of the image are looked into further there are qualities within it which align with the qualities of EDM. From this task I am able to sum up this genre as bold, exciting, loud, powerful and uplifting. These descriptors will be useful to take forward into producing our digipak following these themes.

Focusing forward, this padlet gave us inspiration and a better understanding of our genre by gathering inspiration and figuring out a repertoire of elements for our audience. This task will influence us when creating our brand to advertise and promote our star image in our own style.

Made with Padlet

Digipak And Mission Statement

Reflection

The first step in creating our DigiPak was identifying our audience, competition, USP and identifying how we are going to sell and promote this digital pack.

We created a slideshow to display our research upon each of these topics and this task was very useful in getting some initial ideas of the type of audience our DigiPak needs to attract and how we can make it stand out from others similar in the market. This helps to create our brand for the album in order to promote our star image. This package’s purpose is to promote our star and create a way which our audience can interact and with our artist through purchasing the album or through a social media page. We took time to create our mission statement really thinking about the values and attitudes we wanted to portray through our star across all three products.

Final mission statement –

Megan is taking over EDM with her electrifying energy. The rising star is bringing modern dance music promoting a creative and upbeat atmosphere. Her aim is to take over the festival world with a new spin on EDM combining emotion with electronic dance, with her upcoming album BLUELIGHT. Bringing female power into the electric genre, Megan presents an extraordinary image to her audience.



Peer Feedback

In order to get more feedback on our music video we had our draft 3 peer assessed to give us another opinion on what is good or bad in each element of the music video. This showed us what we can work on to make sure all elements of our video in draft 4 are as good as they can be.

from this feedback I am able to recognise that we can work on adding more transitions, making sure our shots display a variety of movement and that all of the clips used are steady and not shaky unless on purpose.

This feedback was really helpful as It gave us our best element of the video so far and the biggest thing that needs to be worked on which for us is the narrative at the moment as we have not finished all of our filming therefore the storyline doesn’t completely make sense at the moment.

This task will be really useful continuing onto our 4th draft as it gives us clear things which we need to work on to improve.

Shoot 3 Reflection (narrative)

This was another shoot we did to gather most of the remaining narrative footage we needed. This took place at my house to capture footage of the star at home with sentimental items such as photo albums, the cliffs and also in a swimming pool which allowed us to get some very effective and distressing underwater shots of the star image.

What went well :

  • the underwater footage turned out really really well and the long satin costume is very effective in the water
  • the narrative footage with the photo album etc has helped make the storyline more clear in our video
  • we managed to get a lot of close up shots

what we need to work on :

  • the main thing we need to focus on is filling the remaining narrative gaps in our music video by doing a few more shoots at my house as well as the pier

Draft 3

Here is our music video draft 3!!

I am really happy with how it is looking so far and we have managed to fill a lot of empty gaps since draft 2 and now just need to gather the rest of our narrative footage to fill the gap where the man is singing (therefore cannot be performance).

We were able to make this draft of a better standard after taking in the feedback we got from supersavers about our draft 2 and use these editing tips to add more FX to our video.

There are still a lot of things which need improving before our 4th and then final draft but I think we are making good progress and gathering the reaming footage we need for draft 4 will help us then focus on the little details in editing to make it perfect.

Below is a screen castify from Miss giving us another perspective and more useful feedback to help us when creating our 4th draft:

Feedback overview:

  • dissolve shots between bathtub clips to make smoother transition
  • longer on letter shot to make it clear to read it
  • more footage on the photo and slow down of it smashing
  • look at what shots are in black and white, need to make sense
  • over shoulder shot of photo album
  • fade out flame shot
  • jump cut on cliffs to 3 different shots
  • rearrange cliff shots to create more variety
  • get remainder of footage!!!

Specsavers Feedback

We were very lucky to get some further expert feedback from Lenny at Specsavers on our draft 2. We learn some really useful tips and tricks on how to improve our music video as well as more tips of how to use Premier Pro in a more advances way.

The main feedback we were given was –

  • Take time to organise our workspace on premier pro, including organising all of our footage into folders for each shoot and categorising the footage in our video into colours so that we can see if we have a balance of footage from each different location
  • They also complimented how effective our pool footage was and suggested we slow the footage down to make It more of a feature as well as take up more empty space in the video
  • Try out more FX and play around with different filters, speeds and graphics
  • Concentrate on getting a complete music video and then focus on the detailed editing and switching out clips but having a full music video to watch will help with our vision of the final piece

This feedback was all very helpful especially the tips and tricks of how to properly use premier pro as we learnt so much about easier ways to edit which will not only speed up the editing process and make it easier but also make it a more advances level. This feedback will really help us moving forward to work on our 3rd and 4th music video drafts.

Shoot 2 Reflection (narrative + more performance)

For our second shoot which was equally narrative and performance based we had 3 main locations – the cliffs, inside with a white background and the bath. This gave us a huge range of contrasting shots which we can choose from and use throughout our music video. All of these locations worked out really well and we got good footage from each. The bath and white wall we chose as settings for more performance shots whereas on the cliffs we tried to capture clips presenting loneliness which is key to out narrative.

What went well – 

  • The MES was successful as we had different effective costumes for each change in location all of which worked with the genre and themes
  • we got a variety of close up and long shots
  • we got a lot of footage which we can now select our favourites from when editing
  • the cliff footage was very effective at presenting loneliness

What could be improved – 

  • we still ended up filming more of performance footage to fill gaps and need to focus on getting the remaining narrative footage as well
  • some of the footage from the cliffs came back out of focus which was a silly mistake
  • we need to keep following our plan to make sure we are getting all of the required shots we need and not going off the plan

Draft 2

This is our draft 2 for our music video, there are still quite a lot of gaps which need to be filled so we have just inserted text for what needs to be filmed there. We are still lacking a majority of the narrative as we weren’t happy with some of the footage we had filmed and would like to re do it to a higher standard.

Here I have self assessed our draft 2 to help me see what is good and what is missing/needs work in this draft. This self assessment is very useful to help see what I know needs more work to make everything excellent.

What is good – 

  • the effects and filters we have added In are minimal but effective
  • the performance lip sync clips are in time with the song
  • we have made good use of close up shots as well as long shots
  • the pool footage is very effective

What needs work- 

  • we need to finish the narrative shoot to complete a full draft with no gaps
  • we need to rethink the narrative to not focus on drug substances and base the storyline more on her emotions
  • insert more cliff footage as it is very effective
  • add more colour flashing lip sync clips like one at end throughout

Teacher feedback 

  • extend the slo motion of the smashing photo frame clip
  • make sure the note is long enough to be able to read
  • add more FX
  • bring some of the current narrative footage forward to make more sense

Risk Asessment Narrative

Here is our risk assessment for our narrative shoot. This is an important part of planning for our shoot as it makes us aware of any potential risks with our filming locations and makes us take responsibility to make sure our filming is all safe. This also states what locations we will be in at what time so that our teachers are aware of where we will be for the shoot if anything goes wrong.

PMA narrative shoot

Here is our second production meeting agenda, this one is for our narrative shoot. Again this was very important to help us plan our costumes, makeup and props for our shoot. Without a PMA we wouldn’t be organized when it comes to shooting our music video as we wouldn’t remember what Mise en scene we had planned for the shoot. It is important to make sure this is detailed enough and our group found that this planning was a necessity last time for our performance shoot as we kept looking back at it to make sure we have the costumes we planned.

Performance shoot evaluation rough cut

 

Above is our first rough cut that we edited from our first shoot, although the aim of this was to be a rough cut of the whole song purely with performance footage we did not gather enough footage to do this so have uploaded the three sections of the songs that we have edited with performance footage. This was an issue because we didn’t film the song the whole way through and ended up only filming a few clips of the same lines multiple times, this made us realize that our priority is to film the whole song through in different locations using different cinematography multiple times rather than just filming short clips of specific lines. I am confident we have collected the majority of our performance footage and now just need to focus on our narrative shoot to fill in the gaps.

What I like about our rough cut:

  • I am pleased with the quality of shots we have
  • The close ups are very effective and look really good in the rough cut
  • I am pleased with the editing we have used – glitch effect and fade in effect as well as colour filters
  • The slow-mo on the smashing of the photo frame is very effective
  • we managed to sync the shots to the song well

what needs improving:

  • we need to gather more footage so that we can create a rough cut of the whole song with more footage
  • Need to ensure all of the clips are synced perfectly
  • make sure we are getting a range of shots including high angle, low angle, long shots swell as close ups
  • film whole song though in every location so we have loads of clips to choose from when editing

Narrative photo board/shot list

Here we created a photo board with shot ideas showing our shooting locations and ideas for the narrative shoot. We included potential shots that we wanted to do for each scene and what the model will be doing in those shots, this was helpful as it has given us a clear structure of what we need to shoot for our narrative. We can keep looking at this throughout our shoot to make sure we are doing all of the shots that we have planned. Cinematography is key to making sure your music video is exciting to watch and not just filmed in a mid shot throughout as this would be very boring to watch.

The type of shots use are also very important as to how the star image is portrayed in the video as without close ups the audience doesn’t get to interact with the facial expressions of the model and same goes for having a music video without long shots the viewer cannot get a true idea of the stars costume or body language.

Editing is also obviously a key part to a successful music video although in order to be able to edit well we need to make sure we have a range of well filmed shots to edit with, to make sure that we are happy with our footage after the shoot it is important that we shoot every scene at least twice so that we have more of a chance of coming back with good footage.

Focusing forward this task was very beneficial to giving us an exact idea of what we need to film for our narrative shoot and a structure of the precise shots we want of the model for each scene.

Shoot 1 Reflection (performance)

Our first performance shoot location was a storage warehouse which we were allowed to use as it gave the impression of a run down tired barn setting that our model lived in. This suited our narrative as the star lives alone without her mother so this beaten up house gave the ideal setting for our first shoot. We focused on getting lip sync footage using make up effects such as mascara running down the models face to create a sorrow but dramatic appearance.

We also got some footage in my room using my red LED lights lip syncing for the hallucination scenes of our song (chorus). For these scenes we used euphoric makeup such as gems and eyeliner to create a more presentable and preteen look on our model.

I am happy with how our first performance shoot went overall as we managed to get a range of shots focusing on close ups due to these scenes prominently being lip sync and I think that we worked hard to ensure we had the best costumes and makeup for that shot.

what went well –

  • our costume and makeup for our model went really well and how we wanted it to
  • we used a variety of shots including close ups, mid shots and low angles
  • our location was perfect for the narrative and scene we are trying to portray

what could have been better –

  • we ended up shooting the same line quite a few times over and therefore didn’t get a lot of footage for the rest of the song
  • we need to shoot the whole song through in a variety of backgrounds so that we have the whole song worth of footage to edit with
  • the red LED lighting made the camera quality quite bad so we could try reshooting these scenes with bright lighting and editing on red lighting effects later
  • little things like hairband on wrist!!

Focusing forward we now know what we need to do better next time after looking at our footage from our first shoot. It was expected this shoot may not come out with the best footage although we now know exactly what we need to do next time so this was a successful first go.

PMA Music Video

This is our production meeting agenda which we had to complete before starting our shoot. The purpose of this was to gather our final ideas on costumes, makeup and general mise en scene for the shoot. We also decided on our final locations and recognised little things that were important to remember when and before shooting.

Production meeting agendas are key before any shoot as it makes sure we are as organised as possible before trying to film so that our footage turns out the best way.

Risk Assessment

Before doing our shoot we had to complete a risk assessment to identify potential risks that could occur whilst we are out filming. For example we recognised that we need a lifeguard if we wish to use a pool for filming. We all signed the document so that our teacher knows we are aware of the risks and can allow us to go ahead with filming.

Star Image

Here we created a mood board for the star of our song. We actually decided to use a different artists, Bru C, who produces similar music to our chosen song as our artists is not very well known and therefore we struggled to find enough media coverage surrounding her to make a mood board. By using a different artist we were able to understand the task more and create a better image surrounding how a star is portrayed in the media.

This task helps us think about how we want our star to be portrayed in the video which can be very much determined by use of mise en scene. Looking at how we describe this well known artist simply from his social medias and media coverage can help us see how we need to portray our star to get the desired look across to our audience. For example we picked up that Bru C was cheeky and fun just from looking at this colourful outfits and poses and facial expressions in his photos. The audience should also be able to identify the genre of music from the cinematography in the music video as well as the mise en scene chosen for the star image. Editing techniques such as pace of edit can also completely change the appearance of a music video and have an affect on the aimed genre.

For our music video and chosen narrative I want our star to be presented as a lonely, sad and drained image as our storyline is quite sad and distressing. This contracts the image that we found Bru C presents through his social media and music although showed us that these emotions can be shown through facial expressions, body language and the correct use of mise en scene. Our song is EDM which is generally associated with cheerful and uplifting music although this contrast with the nature of our chosen song as the words are quite deep and therefore we are matching our star more to the lyrics rather than the genre.

For the digital and social media page I think it is important that our star is presented as someone relatable and approachable to her fans and someone who can be seen to help people going through similar situations that are presented in our music video. It is important that our star is presented as the same person across al platforms including her music, social media and magazine. Our audience need to see the same image and personality being displayed across all products in order to feel connected and related to the artist/

This task was helpful before deciding on our final mise en scene as it helped us recognize the importance of not only costume and body language and how that presents the star but also how the star is presented through social media and what personalities and opinions can be gathered from that.

 

Conventional shots and Narratives for my Genre

Made with Padlet
Here my group created a padlet to show the importance and use of different camera shots. We chose some of the cameras shots we are hoping to use in our shoot and analysed why they are good and what their purpose are as well as how they will help show our narrative and present our chosen genre. Cinematography is key to presenting your star how you wish with the use of lighting, lenses and camera shots etc.
This task allowed me to realise that we need a wide range of shots in our music video not just for purpose of entertainment and excitement within the music video but also to suit different parts of the performance and narrative best. For example as shows above close ups can be used to show emotion when we are trying to display sadness in our narrative whereas long shots are much more suitable to show a wide camera view of the setting.

Final Pitch

Here we performed our music video idea to Miss in order to gather some feedback about our narrative and overall ideas and give us an idea of what we still need to think about and change.

positives 

  • LED lighting scenes will be effective
  • our model already knows the lyrics which is a advantage
  • our narrative some what follows the lyrics of the song making it an amplified music video and may make it easier to follow

targets to consider 

  • make sure we plan properly as our narrative and performance are merged together and they do need to be told apart from each other to be effective
  • make sure we use a variety of angles when filming especially in studio filming so that It is not boring
  • have the model looking into the camera for interaction but also away from the camera to give different depths of eye contact
  • make sure our narrative is completely clear and we understand how we are going to show the mother within the narrative

This task was definitely useful as it made it clear to us what we still need to work on and ensure that our narrative actually makes sense and is properly planned out.

 

 

Final Song Choice

Final song :

After doing all of our own individual pitches and ideas for a music video, we then came together in our groups and shared our ideas with our team so that we could decide together on a final song and narrative. The aim was to include ideas from everyones pitch and we did this successfully.

We ended up deciding on the song which Lani initially pitched and then used a combination of all our narratives and performance ideas to come up with out final plan.

We decided on low down as a song as it was best suited for the narrative which we wanted to go for and also fit best with our idea of how we want our star to be portrayed in our music video.

Perfect Production Group

Above is our team agreement which we did as a group, this is important before we start planning our music video as it makes it clear how we can distribute the roles evenly within our group and prevent disagreements when producing our music video. This is important for our communication, organisation and delegation without our group.

It also allows us to have something to look back on and see what we have agreed to before we started the music video.

My Mini Pitch

Reflection

Here I have created a mini pitch to present to my group about my ideas for our music video. It includes my song idea aswell as my narrative and performance ideas to go with my song.

I embedded to lyric video of my song In order to not give people a vision of the existing music video so that they can just envision my narrative with the song and focus more on the vibe and words in the song.

The synesthetic world cloud helped me pick out elements and get an idea of the song and what it feels and looks like just by listening to it.

I also have visions about editing including editing the clips to the beat and looking at pace of edit to reflect tense or dramatic situations going on.

 

Narrative Exploration

RUNAWAY – this video is amplified but also illustrated as AURORA is the main star image in the video creating a story through lip syncing the song. The narrative is linear as it is based around feeling the words in the song. The chosen mise en scene  portrays that she is running away from pain and now trapped in harsh landscapes in a lonely circle. She was in search of a soft happy place but her energy gives the adrenaline of escaping or running away from danger, pain or even loss and shows how she is a lost in a world that she doesn’t know. I think this music video is powerful as it is a performance of the song with the use of lip syncing to act like the model screaming through these empty landscapes.

WILDEST DREAMS –  this narrative is a linear amplification of the song as the story is presented in chronicle order, Taylor Swift is the main star image and has use lip sync to give emotion through the video and tell the story through her lyrics. The story behind this follows the lyrics as it shows Taylor filming a video with a man who she falls in love with and then has dreams about him. The video ends when Taylor attends the awards at the end of the film production where she then sees the man she is in love with alongside his wife so remembers their love was only meant to be pretend in the film. The ending puts her dream of love in reality that their romance is not real.

LOCKED AWAY – This music video is an episodic illustration as it contains multiple different clips of stories from separate families. It presents situations of family being split apart through war or offences or money problems. At the beginning of the narrative there are sirens and a clip of cops arresting a girl before the music starts, this introduces the story before the song has even begun. The video is edited well switching between clips of fighting and also includes some slo-mo scenes to make the fighting and emotion more powerful.  Although this is also a combination music video as it keeps switching to the artist lip syncing throughout the video. I think this music video makes the song even more powerful than it already is and is emotional to watch.

My narratives 

Poisoned Love – a girl completely in love with her boyfriend living in her dream world, finds herself poisoned after a night out only to find it’s her love that is poisoned and her world with her boyfriend turns upside down as she finds herself drawn to his best friend through poison.

Drugged up – A girl trapped in a circle of loneliness with her drugged psycho parents, she’s never seen the outside world but through online dating she’s soon to meets someone who will change that.

Hallucinations – A boy with a lifetime illness involved with hallucinations feels like he is living in the past with continuous flashbacks finds himself involved with drugs which turns out to be his only way to reality and way of escaping.

Reflection

This task was important to be able to analyze key elements of music videos such as if the structure is linear, episodic,  thematic or anachronic and the narrative is illustrative, disjunctive or amplified. I was also watching the videos to try and understand the meaning of the story behind the video.

This task helped give me ideas and inspiration for when creating my own story and meaning behind my music video.

The second task I did in this was to actually come up with my own mini narratives which can be explained in a few sentences but would work to be extended into a video.

 

Narrative Sequence

Reflection

Here is the final outcome and the planning storyboard for our narrative sequence. Planning was important before trying to film so that we knew the order of our clips and the story line as well as what shots we wanted to do for each clip.

When planning we ensured to include a variety of shots into our storyboard as this is what will help make such a simple story of making tea more exciting for the viewer. Although we planned out each type of shot we wanted to use for each clip, we changed some of this when it come to filming if something didn’t work as well as we hoped.

In our final video we used several cut to close up shots to capture simple details such as the kettle boiling and pouring the milk, we also used jump cuts and attempted a J cut which means the viewer hears to sound before the clip, this worked well for pouring the water into the mug as you can hear the pouring sound before you see it. Using a range of different shots helped convey the narrative of ‘making a cup of tea’ which is such a simple task and by using these different length and angled shots is what made our video more exciting to watch.

I am happy with the overall editing of our video although some of our clips could have been filmed better for example when the actress is getting the tea bag from the box, this shot is not very well filmed. Perfecting these shots would have improved the overall quality of our video.

We were also unsure on whether we wanted to add music to our video although decided against it in order to emphasis the sounds we used such as the kettle boiling and water pouring which were an important aspect of our video.

Focusing Forward

This task was very useful to see the importance of different shots for when we make our music videos because even though we will have a more exciting and creative story line for these videos, a variety of shots is still very important to keep the viewer interested. This is especially the case in performance music videos as it would get very boring If there was just one shot of the band the whole time, the viewer wants to see close up of each individual and capture the atmosphere from different angles through the screen.

Previous Students Work

Here I was watching previous student work in order to peer assess and help understand the standard of work I need to aim to produce when making my own music video. By deconstructing various professional music videos and these student music videos I notice that all music videos share the same conventions including being narrative or performance as well as the the use of mise en scene and lip sync

Reflection of overall music video

  • The performance of the music video very much reflects the genre of the song
  • The MES perfectly demonstrates the desired genre and emotions which are portrayed through the song
  • There are a wide range of shots used which are appropriate to the narrative
  • Overall the lip syncing of the performance is well executed
  • There have been some good edits and cute which fit with the narrative

By deconstructing these students work I have been able to identify what they have done well and what isn’t so successful which will help me when planning my own music video. I can recognise the importance of MES in music videos and how strongly they back up the genre which is being portrayed in the video.

Analysing these videos made me watch them thoroughly to see whether they met the desired success criteria, I was specifically focusing on the use of mise en scene, star image, camera shots and editing skills. 

Music Video Conventions

click to view PDF

Above shows my research that I did looking into conventions of good successful music videos. I deconstructed different types for example a performance based one and a narrative based as well as a combination video, this was important as it taught me how to decode all different types of videos.

Music videos are a key part of promoting an artists music and therefore them being the main star image in their own music video can enhance their recognition as they can then be recognised as the artist, this is common in performance and combination music videos. When pulling apart these videos I started by focusing on the MES used and seeing how it was or wasn’t related to the genre and overall narrative of the music video. I then spoke about the themes and meaning behind the video depending on whether it was narrative or performance based. In narrative videos I identified whether it was made to be a illustration, amplification or disjunctive – meaning the story in the music video is mirrors the lyrics, has a link. but also another complicated element in the story or is completely separate from the story told in the song .

Focusing Forward

This task helped me to think about important elements of a music video and what is successful but also what didn’t work so well even in these famous music videos. I now understand the importance of music videos more and the difference between performance, combination and narrative.