Guidance for making music videos at A2

I found this PowerPoint presentation on the school's common files, and thought it would be helpful to embed in my blog so that I can come back to it and check that I'm not doing things that Fraser mentioned should be avoided at A2. 

Audience Types

• Passive= the product is received but the audience is not choosing to engage with it.
• Active= the choice is made to consume the product, and to engage with it.

• Preferred= the target audience whom the product is aimed at.
• Oppositional= the potential target audience whom an industry needs to persuade.

• Traditional= stick to safety and familiarity by watching videos on TV and buying CDs.
• Hedonist= take risks by watching/listening to new, different and challenging conventional music videos/music.
• Post-modern= use new ways of watching music videos/listening to music, such as streaming and parodying etc. 

The reading is how an audience receives a media product. If an audience has a negotiated reading of a music video, this means that it has multiple meanings and interpretations. 

My target audience:
Keeping in mind these audience types, I am aiming my product(s) at an active audience (they can communicate through social networking, leaving opinions about the product(s) and possibly making suggestions towards them) and a post-modern audience (as my target audience are adolescents/young adults, it would make sense that they are technically knowledgable and so use websites such as YouTube to watch music videos, and download an album via iTunes etc. I would also expect the video to be parodied if Toby were a more well-known artist). I wouldn't expect the audience to have a negotiated reading of the product because, the way we're planning it at the moment, we have a fairly simple and conventional concept in mind, although this may change. 

Music Video Genre

I created the following presentations to explore the genre and sub-genres of music videos, so that this could aid me in the types of conventions I need to make sure are included in my music video. The first focuses on sub-genres such as pop music, hip hop music and rock music, as well as Andrew Goodwin's theory and guidelines for music videos:



This second presentation is more in depth about the key features and conventions of music videos:



My next steps are to analyse videos by existing artists similar to mine (e.g. Ed Sheeran) and determine the conventions I will have to meet for Toby's specific genre. I could also create a moodboard with this knowledge of the sorts of props/colours/locations I should be using when I film.

How to Fold a Digipak

I also decided it would be helpful to have a quick look at how an album digipak is folded, as I'm not quite certain about how I'm going to do this. If I'm prepared in advance for this part of my brief, I'll avoid as much panic as possible when I'm more worried about deadlines. 

This site provides templates for digipaks and also allows you to view how they are folded, which is really helpful. I assume that, for my brief, I'm only supposed to create a '4 panel 1 tray' digipak so, when the time comes to make mine, I'll come back to this site and put it to good use.

Comparing Artists' Website Homepage Layouts

I looked at some existing artists' website homepages and roughly noted the layout on pieces of paper in order to compare them, and get an idea of what I need to include on Toby's website. Below are the links to the websites followed by pictures the rough layouts. 

Taylor Swift

Ed Sheeran

Michael Buble

So, according to these examples, the main elements I need to include in my artist's website homepage are:

• the artist's name at the top
• navigation bar to different pages (Home, About/Biography, News, Events/Live Dates/Tour, Media, Music/Lyrics, Contact/Connect/Forum, Store)
• 'Join Mailing List'
• advert for latest album(s)
• images of the artist
• links to the artists' official pages on social networking sites
• new music video
• the beginning of news articles about upcoming/recent events and appearances (with 'read more')
• the artist's latest tweets and/or Instagram uploads
• about the artist
• gallery of images and videos
• 'Launch Music Player'
• logo of record label and copyright at the bottom

Obviously, with Toby not being a big, successful, famous artist like the examples above, some of these elements may be hard to include or do much with. However, I can always try.

Research on How To Edit a Music Video

I've only ever edited an animatic for a music video, and I think it's going to be much more of a challenge to actually film one and make sure that the visuals and the music is in sync etc. With this in mind, I thought I'd research how to edit a music video to see if this will help me when I come to do mine. I also felt that YouTube would be the best source for this because I can easily follow what they're doing on the tutorial, as well as this being the centre for creative people creating and posting their own music videos.

Below is the best video I found, which is really helpful. It shows me that the easiest way to do it is to film the different scenes for the whole song (rather than just the parts when I want them) in order to make sure they're constantly in sync with the music. Then I can simply switch between the shots when I feel it will look good by deleting blocks and dragging the clips.

Research on lighting

I decided that I need to expand my knowledge on lighting (especially outside), as this is definitely not one of my strong points, and I don't want this to negatively affect my music video. So I've created this presentation in order to present the main lighting tips that will assist me in my work:

Survey

Here is my target market survey on music videos/artists. I have also posted the link to Facebook and Twitter and, once I've collected some results, I'll analyse the data.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Planning with Toby

I met with Toby (my artist) for lunch before I left for Mallorca, and discussed what I'd planned to do with him and also took any ideas that he had. Above are the notes I made but, in case they can't be read clearly on the image, I'll type it below as well:

DISTRIBUTION

• Brickmakers open mic night on Wednesdays- advertised on website that they'll record your set so you can have it on DVD
• Toby has a video from Sprowston's Got Talent (our school's annual talent competition) when he performed

MUSIC VIDEO IDEAS

• in the recording studio
• walking through forest/woods
• writing lyrics
• cinematographic shots of Mallorca

BRAND IDENTITY

• acoustic/chilled
• casual
• blazers
• hair quiff
• Ed Sheeran-y

PHOTOSHOOT

• Mark Cotter- school photographer
• Photography students eg. Morrighan
• advertise on Facebook (for photographer)?
• Photography lighting studio at Sprowston High

RECORDING STUDIOS

• Epic Studios in Norwich
• Plug Studios
• my friend's home studio

Pitch of my initial ideas

These are very basic ideas in order to act as a starting point, and also an outline of what I'm planning to do for my peers.