When it came to our audience feedback, we used multiple platforms to ensure we had a wide verity of age and gender.
One platform we used to gather feedback was Youtube, its commenting system allowed anyone to give critical feedback on our music video, this really helped as they were strangers viewing our product and giving structured criticism and also commenting on what they liked about the video. Furthermore, we also shared the link on multiple social media pages, such as Facebook and Twitter. This allowed family and friends to view and comment on what they liked and disliked about our final product. We also sent around our school a link a website called Survey Monkey, this allowed them to answer questions on a survey we had created. In addition to this, we also used a more structured technique which involved the age range of 12-15 year old to watch the video and physically write down what they liked/disliked about our product. Social media, survey Monkey,Youtube and getting our audience to physically write down their opinions allowed us to gain the wide age range from 14- 50 year old.
From looking at the feedback given, it is clear to see the younger audience members didn't like it as much as other upbeat music videos created, this may be due to their lack of knowledge of this genre and what conventions were used throughout, in comparison to the older audience members liking our music video and giving more things they liked than disliked. An example was this was a comment from a 14 year old girl who said there were 'too many close up'. We looked into this genre for a long time before story boarding as we wanted to make it look as professional as possible. Therefore looking at Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran was really helpful here. We saw that they too used close up shots and therefore we wanted to re-create this in our music video to make sure it looked as professional as possible. However, from viewing the video a couple of times, I can see where this girl is coming from and I do agree with her to a certain extent, i would keep some close ups but take some out as there alot during the performance. This would be something I would change if I had the chance to do so.
Feedback given through school pupils writing down written response
Feedback given through Social Media
Feedback taken from Youtube
Survey Monkey audience feedback
Overall I have learnt from this experience that there are elements that our music video that could be improved on, for example less close ups of Gianluca's face, and some shots that don't work at certain parts in the video. However there are many parts that I am extremely proud of, in particular the guitar shots as we managed to match all of them correctly to the actually music. Myself and my team worked extremely hard on the video and overall I am very proud of the finished product we created
To start we looked at the theorist Andrew Goodwin, his theory of music videos taken from his book 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' states many things. Firstly music videos often tend to include a demonstration of typical genre characteristics, for example a video of stage performance is typical for a metal video. Secondly, there are frequently references to the notion of looking and treatment of the female body in music videos,mirrors and cameras are often used to show this. Moreover, Goodwin also stages that the music video must have a relationship between music and visuals. Goodwin also expresses how record labels of the artist have certain demands when it comes to there music videos such as close ups. As well as this, he also explains how the '4th wall' is near always broken when the video is a performance.
When researching Goodwin we firstly didn't understand the differences music videos had, such as these key words: performance, narrative and concept. We decided we needed to look into which real media products,music videos, had performance,narrative or concept based themes throughout.
The first real media product we looked at was a Performance Video, 'American Idiot' by Green Day
This is a performance video, we can tell this as there is nothing but this location with the band singing and playing the song. Like Goodwin said in his theory, this music video defiantly breaks the '4th wall' when we see the old fashioned T.V cameras. This band is defiantly punk/metal, we can tell this from their outfits and colours chosen in this video, with the black contrasting to the lead singers tie and also the green colour that appears throughout the video. Furthermore the drums and heavy guitar also indicates to the listener that this is a punk/metal band. Again like Goodwin said, performance videos are usually linked with metal bands.
A narrative real media product, music video, I found is Kodaline 'All i want'. In this music video, it is about a man who just wants to be accepted in life as he looks different. Although this hasn't got any of the band members playing or singing the song, there is a clear relationship between lyrics and visuals like Goodwin stated,for example when the lyrics in the chorus say 'all i need is to find somebody' the man is usually alone or with his dog, indicating that wants someone to be with. At the end this is finally found when the beat picks up as he is walking through the streets with a female colleague that he likes.
A concept music video I found was 'Pelican' by the Maccabees. Like the narrative video, there is no band present, furthermore it doesn't have a narrative, its essentially lots of images going through space. However, like Goodwin said, there are relationships between what we are seeing on the screen and what we are hearing, this is shown when the lyrics say 'Go back to where we came from' this is linked with the images going back in reverse order as to what we see them in, showing a clear relationship between lyrics and visuals.
Forms
My music video was a mix of both narrative and performance. Although it is more performance based, we wanted to link visuals and lyrics. To do this we wanted a flashback story line that would tell the story as well as the song. Overall I think it worked really well, with a good balance between flashbacks and reality that told the story of the song equally.
Comparison to real media Products
Like our music video there are plenty of other real media products (music videos) that have both narrative and performance based themes throughout. One that I found was Mallory Knox 'When are we waking up'
Although not in the same Genre as our music video, we had both had performance elements. We can see this through the use of close ups used in both Mallory Knox's video and ours when it come to playing the guitar. We both used side angle close ups to show the performance of the guitar
Gianluca Volpe 'Your Place Used To Be Mine'
Mallory Knox 'When are We Waking Up'
Furthermore, like ours, Mallory Knox also have a narrative element to their music video. There narrative is about a young boy who has a supernatural power, again nothing like our genre however there are similarities. In their video they show the boys face at a mid close up, in our music video you also see the narrative characters face at mid close up.
How did we Use or Challenge form?
In our music video, we defiantly used Form and didn't challenge it. We took inspiration from lots of different artist in our genre, especially Ben Howard. who has elements of both narrative and performance in his music videos
In our music video, we have elements of narrative set in one location, a corn field, like Ben Howard's video 'Old Pine'. We took inspiration from another Ben Howard song 'Keep Your Head Up' in which we liked the colours of the golds and oranges, we decided to apply this to our music video to conform to the genre and form. Below is an screenshot from my music video and Ben Howard's old pine, you can see the similar colours of the gold and orange in both music videos.
One Music video that i found that did challenge form was Rudimental 'Waiting all night'. This music video is very different as it doesn't feel like a music video, more like a documentary. From the way its filmed using what looks like a phone camera, to the documentary style story line. Although it doesn't follow the conventions of form for a music video, I really like this video as it is different and unique. Looking at this now I think making something like this would have been really difficult to make, thus we didn't challenge form.
Conventions of music video
The conventions of indie music videos are :
Common for artist to perform live in their music videos. this focuses the viewer on the music and artist more
They often have a narrative storyline running through them that relates to the song
They often have visuals that link to an instrument that the artist is playing.
There is often close ups and mid shots of the artist, this highlights the emotion in the video.
They often have an effect on the video
Analysis of conventions of genre to my music video
My music video has the artist singing his songs live, moreover it also has lots of close ups of the artist and his playing of his guitar. We used this to convey the emotion of the song. Furthermore we put an effect onto the narrative parts of the video to signify its a dream state and that the artist is visualizing the past.
Comparison to Other Music Video's on the conventions of this Genre
Close up are shown here in Ben Howard's music video for 'The Fear'
Close Up are again shown in Ed Sheeran's music video for 'Small Bump'
Narrative is shown in Birdy's version of 'Skinny Love'
Again narrative is shown in Damien Rice's 'The Blower's Daughter'
All these real media products have the same conventions as used in our music video, thus we used convention anddidn't challenge it. Conclusion
To conclude my music video uses both form and convention and doesn't challenge either. We used a wide variety of shot types to achieve the right performance and narrative themes we wanted throughout our video. Furthermore we took inspiration from real media products of artist such as Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran to achieve the right look for our music video.
Ancillary Task
Front Cover
Inside Left
Inside Right
Back Cover
Poster
This is my Ancillary Task: Digi pack and Posters. We decided to use form instead of Challenge when it came to our Digi pack and posters as Ginaluca is an Unknown artist we wanted him to be the selling point and therefore made the Digi pack and poster with him on it, so that the buyers would know that this is the artist.
Other Digi Packs and Posters are similar to ours and therefore shows how we used and didn't challenge form.
Comparison in Genre
From this we can see that this poster has the name of the artist, where they are going on Tour and the dates of the venues. It also has what album this tour relates to, My poster has all this information on and therefore shows how we used form when making our poster
Another poster again shows the name of the band, dates and venues of where this band are going. Moreover it also shows which album this tour relates to, further showing how we used form.
This image of Ben Howard's digi pack again highlight the similarities between this one and my own. It has his name in bold letters, images of the artist and the names of the tracks of songs on the back cover.
Comparison not in Genre
This image of Katy Perry's Digi pack again shows the similarities between mine and real products. Although not in the same genre of music as Gianluca Volpe (Our artist) it is clear to see that form for Digi packs don't change.
This poster From Avicii, from the dance genre of music shows the similarities between each genre for the form of a poster. Both have the names of the artist in bold letters, they each have dates in which they are playing, and also have the logos for the record company's they are signed too .
Conclusion
Overall, we did use form when making our Digi pack and poster for our Ancillary task, as we used the same layout and structure too real media products therefore showing the similarities across all genre.
Our next task was to now start making our Digi Pack, this meant
that we needed to get some photos that linked to our artist. But First we needed to do some research. We looked into artitsts in the same genre as Gianluca, a band called 'The Courteeners' and watched msuic video's of their songs. We then made our poster with tour dates on for that band on which we based from their style, music video,genre of music ect. Below is two of there music video's we watched and then my idea of what their poster might of looked like.
More research was needed into the genre of similar artists and what their pictures look like, therefore I researched artists such as Ed Sheeran, Ben Howard, John Mayer and Nina Nesbit as they are all singer songwriters. I had alot of fun searching for pictures of these artist as they gave me inside into what I could achieve for my Digi pack. Below is a collage I made of all these artists.
I also made another collage of our artist Gianluca, to see what his iconography was. Therefore I screenshot different videos of him playing his own songs and his cover of songs on his YouTube Channel, I found that most of his videos were in colour but some were in black and white, (however the image shown below is printed in black and white) I also took screenshots from our music video to give a link between music video and Digi Pack.
We then circled the images we best thought suited Gianluca (shown in purple pen) to use for inspiration for when it came to making our Digi Pack
After doing this, we decided to sketch some ideas of what our Digi pack might look like, this included our album art work and poster. We decided that it must include Gianluca as its his song, But also use some pub features like the dart board or the bar. We drew some ideas and decided that we liked the look of them, below are the sketches we made
Finished Products
We both decided that the Bounty Pub would be the best location as we shot the music video in there. We marked a time that we would go and meet with our artist and
go and take some photos. unfortunately our artist was unable to attend on that
day, therefore we decided to go anyway and get the shots we needed without him
in and come back another day to take shots of him in the bar.
We took a range
of photos in the bar on the first shot such as the dart board and the things on
the walls in the pub, we then put them into photo shop and tested out some
fonts of writing with the pictures just so that we would know what we wanted
when it came to a picture of our artist.This took a while trying to find a right font. Many were the right kind of font but were too bold, some looked good when looking but when put onto our image it didn't look right at all. We knew that it had to be simple and plain but something bold and new as Gianluca is a new artist but is very simple with just him and his guitar and we wanted to portray this through our type face. We still hadn't found a right tpye face but used one just as a filler until we got some photos with Gianluca. We then arranged a new date with our
artist and took a range of photos with him using different lenses and angles.
Typography
Once we had got them and put them into Photoshop we worked very hard in trying to find a type face that wold best suit him, it was easier for other groups as their artiste were well known and therefore had type faces already, however with us it was different as he is an unknown artist. We wanted to get it right and so this meant spending time and effort in getting the perfect type face. Eventually we found a type face we both liked, it wasn't too bold and it was simple, we felt like it was missing something though and therefore put a line underneath his name, we decided that we would carry this line through our design in our album art cover. Moreover the image was originally in colour but we decided to put it in black and white to give it more of an effect, this worked much better and therefore we made sure the poster would be in black and white as well. Below are images of final piece .
Front Cover
Inside Left Cover
Inside Right Cover
It was harder for our back cover as we didn't want it to look messy with the an image and writing of the tracks on his album. We decided that it would look best with a simple black colour and then writing using the same font as the front cover to write the names of his songs down the back.
Back Cover
We then moved onto our poster, which again we found hard to do, We looked at previous posters of artist in similar genre and saw that their poster was an extension of their album Therefore we wanted to make sure it matched not only with the album but with the artist as well as he is an unknown singer songwriter.Below is an image of our poster we made
Poster Draft
However, we were unsure with this design for our poster, so we decided to make a new one. This time we got ride of the square picture and made the whole background the picture, for our first poster we used the same image as the one on the front of our album cover, In this one we used the same image as the one on the inside left of our album art work.. We still liked the white writing however it was getting a bit lost in the white in the picture so therefore we had to darken the contrast and brightness in the image using the Photoshop tool to do so. This made the writing stand out better and more visible,Below is the final product of our poster, we included the tour dates as before but changed the writing on the poster as we felt it was better than 'EP out Now'. Furthermore we added elements which we had seen in other artists posters such as the 'available on iTunes' logo and his twitter name with the image of the twitter bird to give it that edge, we also put the names of record company's we thought would take him on such as Sony and Columbia, as we researched this and found out what other artist they had signed such as Adele, Pharrell Williams, Olly Murs and many more. Below is an image of our final poster.
Final Poster
Overall I am pleased with our Digi pack, both the album and artwork of our poster have come together very nicely.
The image on the advert is very bright and happy, with the blues and greens from the water grabbing the attention. The name of the band is in bold white writing which again grabs the readers attention. it has the names of the places and when they are performing in bold writing writing which again stands out of the backdrop of the image. It also allows the reader to know when the tickets will be on sale. Again Kodaline is a band that are singer song writers like our artist so we will be looking at this advert for inspiration
The advert doesn't shows any of the members in the bad, however it does have the places and dates of when and where they are touring, it also has names of other band such as 'Catfish And The Bottleman' which will be their supporting acts. The blue writing of 'On Sale Now' shows the reader that they can now purchase the music of this band. Furthermore it also has where else you could find their band such as a website. The colours of this advert are very cold with the Blue and white
