Magazine Adverts Research

As well as our digipack, we have to create a magazine advert to promote our artist's digipack to our target audience.  There are many features in an advert that we will have to include :

• Digipack cover
• Artist name
• Release date
• Where to order/pre-order
• Reviews
• Website links
• Facebook pages
• Record label
• Company logos
• Sponsor logos

Album adverts also link with the digipack in the sense that the images and colour scheme are similar. This contributes to the overall image of the artist and clearly defines to the audience what the genre is. We will try and do something similar with our advert as we have taken many pictures in the same locations. 

 Album adverts are there to promote the product in order for record labels to make money. Therefore the advert has to give an incentive for customers to buy it. Some things that we could include are a possible discount code or exclusive content.

 Here we see in the poster above there are many website logos where the album can be purchased. This makes the overall process easier for the customer. It also outlines the different guest artists that collaborated on the album which is an example of intertexuality.

Digipack - Back Cover Content

Barcode

Blackberry Barcodes









Compact Disc Logo









Music Label - Logo

Other things to include :

• Copyright information
• Website links
• Facebook link
• Twitter link
• Serial number
• Other associated companies/artists

Final Cut Tutorials - Transitions

As well as using filters, we have to use appropriate transitions in order to make it look like an authentic musc video. Again I have looked on YouTube where there are various tutorials on how to use them.

Final Cut Tutorials - Filters

We are hoping to use filters as an effect in our music video to make it look more authentic, I have been looking on YouTube to find out the different filters we could use and how to use them.

Digipack - Font Ideas

 The font is an important aspect of the digipack as it has to fit the artist's image which includes the genre. lifestyle etc. Therefore we have to relate our font with our artist's genre which is Pop- Singer Songwriter. We have selected a few fonts which we feel relates to our genre and is suitable for our digipack.

 

Hand is Sean

James Farjado

Star Avenue

Italian Football

Intertextuality References

In this post I will be explaining what Intertextuality is and how it is used in music videos. I will also look at various music videos in our genre and point out the use of intertextuality.

Intertexuality - this is when a media text refers to other media texts. References can shown through :

• Film
• Television
• Photography
• Fashion
• Art

Example of References

Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA 

In this music video, Miley Cyrus references a scene in Grease where John Travolta is singing "Sandy". She recreates the famous scene by wearing similar clothes and singing on swings.

The Killers - Read My Mind

In the music video for this song we see The Killers playing a Japanese arcade game called " Guitarfreaks". This is rather unique as they have opted to break the convention of performing on real instruments and play on toy ones.

Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow - Shame 

The music video for this song is a short parody of the movie "Brokeback Mountain". Many of the scenes from the film are recreated in the music video such as the bar scene below. Also they parody the cliff jump from the film by not jumping in.

Phil Collins - Against All Odds 

Soundtracks for films normally have their own music video as well with clips from the film. The music video from this song interlaced clips from the film "Against all Odds" with Phil Collins singing the song.

Oasis - The Masterplan

The art style of this music video is animated entirely on the art style of the painter L.S Lowry. He is famous for his "matchstick men" and Oasis have used this for their video.

Alicia Keys - Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart

The bike that Alicia Keys rides in the video for this song is a reference to the light bikes in Tron.

As we can see Intertextuality is frequently used in music videos, therefore we will have to decide what references we want to use in our music video.

Ideal Audience Member

• Her name is Lauren and she is 21 years old. She is currently studying English Literature at the University of York. She is staying in a flat with her best friends. She walks to class and on the way listens to her iPod , she likes to listen to audiobooks on the way.

• She likes to buy music but not very often. She instead prefers to watch artists on YouTube and discover new songs by independent artists.
• She is a fan of Indie but does like the mainstream Pop sound. She likes to listen to Oasis , The Feeling, James Blunt , Bob Dylan and Adele. She has a few albums but not many. 
• She does not go to many local gigs but she has been to a few festivals, she particularly likes Glastonbury because it features a range of music that she likes.

• She likes to play the piano and took lessons when she was a child. She never really appreciated it then but she does now.

• She uses the Internet for a variety of reasons. She regularly goes on YouTube to watch tutorial videos of popular piano instrumentals. She also likes to record herself singing various covers of her favourite songs such as "Just The Way You Are" or "Someone Like You". 

• She also is a regular Facebook user , she likes to chat with her friends regularly and she likes to post her videos on her wall. She also has a Twitter account but does not tweet, she prefers to follow her favourite celebrities such as Gary Barlow or James Blunt. She used to have a MySpace account and frequently listened to music on there from artists profiles.  
• She does not read many newspapers but likes reading gossip magazines such as Hello!
• Lauren likes to go to the cinema but does not go often due to money constraints, she normally likes to see romantic/relationship films but does enjoy the occasional comedy.
• She likes to watch X Factor, Glee, Friends, Desperate Housewives.

• She does not have a car preffering to ride her bicycle as she cares about the environment. She has a boyfriend that she has been dating for 2 years.
• She likes to wear colourful dresses and tops when she goes out but opts for a more formal but still casual look for classes.

How Our Genre gratifies Our Audience

Audiences get a lot from a music video and digipack , this varies though by genre due to different audiences lifestyles.

What do audiences get from a music video?

1. Entertainment/ enjoyment
2. Connection to the music/genre
3. Relationship/communication with the artist
4. Icon,style, attitude, role model
5. Latest in genre
6. Identity (part of the group)

Audience Research - YouTube

To try and get a better understanding of our audience I thought that looking at YouTube statistics was a good place to start .

The first video I look at was the official video of Nick Gardner's Out Of The Clouds song. Looking at the map for where the music is popular , it is clear that the video is most popular in Britain. The video is also gaining popularity in the Americas particularly the U.S.A  In terms of of the audience, we can see that the video is more popular with Females aged 13-24. But there is also a strong audience with Males aged 35-44. This shows that Nick has a wide diverse audience of both genders ranging from teenagers to adults. We can also see from the referrals that the video has been watched the most on a mobile device such as a tablet or phone. This is an example of technological convergence and it shows that his audience are tech savvy.

The second video I looked at was Adele's "Set Fire To The Rain". The map shows that this video is hugely popular worldwide which shows how diverse her audience is in terms of culture. America, Europe and Oceania are where she is most popular. Looking at the audience statistics, we can see again that the video is most popular with Females aged 13-24. Also we see that it is popular with  Males aged 45-54. Again this shows we will have to target our music mainly at Teenage and Adult women whilst also hitting the male audience above 30. Looking at the referrals we can see that most people searched for the video via YouTube, but also we see there are a lot of views from Facebook. This shows that social networking will be a key factor in trying to target our audience.

The third video I  looked at was James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover". The popularity map shows that the video is most popular in North America and West Europe. This shows that his audience are very local and not as spread out as other artists. Looking at the audience views we can see again that the video is most watched by Females aged 13 to 24 and Males aged 30 and above. We can also see from the referrals that the video was most referred from YouTube.

The final video I looked at was Bruno Mars' song "Just The Way You Are". Looking at the map we can see the video is popular worldwide particularly the Americas , Europe and Oceania. Looking at the audience views again we see that he is most popular with Females aged 13-24. But this time he is also popular with male teenagers aged 13-17. Looking at the referrals we can see most of his viewers have come from searching his name on YouTube or by watching his other videos. We can also see that 11 million people came from Facebook which shows that his audience use Facebook on a regular basis.

In conclusion, we can see clearly that our audience will mainly be Females aged 13-24. We also need to use YouTube and Facebook when promitng our digipack and music video as this is where most of the viewers have come from.

Audience Research - Online Survey

We created an online questionnaire in order to thoroughly research our audience. We chose suitable questions which we feel will give us an idea into who our audience is. We will analyse the results next week. I will be sharing this survey online to try and get as much feedback as possible.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q6KDF7N

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

Nick Gardner - Genre Research

Nick Gardner is a singer-songwriter who is gaining popularity for his videos on YouTube. He started out covering songs by Bruno Mars and Adele which has gained over 250,000 views ,  before he released his first single "Where I Go" in 2009.  This increased his popularity and was well received by his fans that watched his covers.

Nick released his second single "Out Of The Clouds" in September 2010 which was the 60th Most Viewed Video for Musicians on YouTube. 
This is is the song that we have chosen to do for our digipack and music video. We will create an image for our artist and make a narrative for the video based on the lyrics.

Singer Songwriters
Singer Songwriters are a type of musician who write, compose and sing their own music. Typically they perform the entire song using a guitar or piano. 
Nick Gardner falls in this category because he has written his songs and peformed them accomanied with his piano. He then uploads his videos to YouTube, many famous artists today have got their recording contracts due to a big YouTube following  such as Ed Sheeran or Justin Bieber.




Example of singer songwriters

 James Blunt

 Noel Gallagher

 Norah Jones

 Bruno Mars

Alicia Keys

Plans For Audience Research

Because we have to create a digipack and a music video for our artist, it is essential for us to know the audience that we are aiming this product at. Therefore we need to plan how we will research our audience.

Surveys

Last year we used Survey Monkey which allows you to create an online questionnaire which can then be shared across many social media platforms. We will use this to create a survey asking various questions like "What are your hobbies?" etc.
This will give us the feedback we need in order to create our star image and tailor it to our audience.



YouTube
I plan to look at YouTube comments and statistics for research. This is a good resource for us as we can feedback on what people like or do not like about particular songs or videos.

Facebook

Facebook is another good site for researching into our audience as we can create pages or send direct messages to hundreds of people at once. This allows us to get a variety of opinions into what our typical audience for our genre is.











Interviews
We will go out and find people who are particularly fond of the Pop genre and interview them of what they expect in a digipack and music video. We will also ask specific questions relating to Singer Songwriters in order to get  in depth research into what they expect to see.

How A Music Video Is Made

There are many stages to how a music video is made and it can vary by artist, genre, director and the budget. These are the general steps into how they are made :

Step 1. Choose A Song, Record Company which choose a song they are happy with.

 

Step 2. Choose A Suitable Director out of a shortlist

Step 3. Budget and Deadlines are agree with Director and Video Commisioner

Step 4. Storyboard is developed clearly depicting the narrative and shots that need to be filmed, locations are chosen

Step 5. All staff are employed ; art director, director of photography etc.

 Step 6. The Sets are built and all personnel turn up for shooting. Filming commences.

Step 7. Filming is finished. Raw footage is sent to the managers.

Step 8 . The label , artists and manager view and comment on the footage 

Step 9. Changes to film are agreed and visual effects added. Editing takes place, cutting rate is decided and transitions are added.

 

Step 10. Finished video is passed to Label for release online and TV stations.