In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I decided that we would make a digipak, a music promo and also a magazine advert, this is meant that we could tie one idea into all of these different media techniques of promoting.
Creating a digipak and magazine advert it was a good way to show the audience who Andrea Storm Kaden was and promote her in a way that would interest the audience and show that there is something about this song and artist that would interest them.
The task in which was given was to create a music promo and two ancillary tasks. I was given this task to promote an artist and/ or track where I could find on unsigned.com.
The purpose of putting together and creating this promotional package was to do as the name says, to promote this artist to the music industry and public. JEM Productions wanted to show our target audience who this artist was and why we think that they would like her as much as we do. This is why we wanted to do the magazine advert and also the digipak. These are both very good products to use for promotion because you can make them how you want them to be, with as much information as possible. A digipak is a very good way to promote a record. With digipaks, artist commonly use these as a collectors item or a special edition. This is because of the many sides and extra areas where the designers, promoters and artist can put the different information onto. With these sides it enables you to have the information that you wish to share. Such as information on the artist or the track, how they found the artist or track, what is coming next, what the ‘fans’ or audience members can look
forward to. The magazine advert is a good way of letting the audience have a say on what they think of the product. We have done this by having star ratings on the magazine advert. Another way of doing this is by having comments on what people that have given a review to show that on the advert.
In a music video there are elements in which help to create the foundations, these are performance, narrative, camera work, editing, actors, mise-en-scene and also the sound.
In a music video there are a lot of elements in which are needed to make a good music video, these elements are split into sections. Mise-en-scene, camera work, editing and also sound. With these there are many different elements that branch off of these, with the mise-en-scene there are costume, locations, props and lighting.
All music promos must- in my opinion- have some sort of narrative to the video, I feel this because it keeps the audience interested in what the actual song is about. This is where a narrative is taken- from the song. The producers and/ or the filmmakers will listen to the song and take certain lyrics out that they can then interpret into a music video. They also take the theme of the song whether that is finding love, losing love, losing someone, running away, finding a place, anything that will be able to be unfolded and made into a music promo that the audience will enjoy and understand. Having a music video with a song helps the audience to understand what the song is about more than what they originally heard it as.
In my music video ‘Ink Settles in’, I wanted there to be a storyline but not one that the audience would be able to follow that easily. Throughout the song and music video it is obvious that the song is about a break up. But in this video we have decided to make it different to any other normal break up, sad song. So to do this we made it so you do not see the person she is singing about, this isn't what you would normally happen in a break up music video. Another music promo that does this is Ed Sheeran’s Don’t, he sings about the break up of a relationship but doesn't actually show any girl that could be classed as his Girlfriend. This music promo is about a guy dancing through a neighbour hood, this neighbourhood slowly change the more he moves through the promo. He gets higher and higher in the ‘social ladder’ and shows that he is leaving her and that he doesn't need her to get to where he wants to go. This is how they have not showed the female interest that you would expect to be in the promo. When I saw this music promo I liked the idea of not seeing the love interest it meant that just because its about them doesn't mean you have to see them and understand why the two aren't together in that way. That’s when I got the idea of having symbolism of there being a love interest but not to actually have one to show the audience. In my music video you see a girl on her singing to the audience about someone she loves but has hurt her deeply, she is then shown with the guitar in another shot, at a date setting, laying down, covered in lines and covered in paint. She is singing and telling the audience that the pain she feels is like ink settling into her skin and being permeant. That she cant get them out or get rid of them at all.
Performance is very common with a music video, especially if the artist is a band. It is very common for the artist to perform to the camera. It gives them an impression that the performers are performing to solely to them. MAGIC!’s Rude music video does this well, they have a whole band set up and the leader singer is leaning down and singing to the camera as though he is singing to the audience. This makes the audience feel like they are the special ones because they are singing to them not anyone else.
Camera work is important to a media film performance, the camera work is the thing that keeps the audience engaged and interested. If you use the same shot throughout the performance it is going to start to get tedious and the audience will lose interest. So by using a number of different shots this means that the audience will see the music promo from different angles, to keep their attention, and not make them want to watch something different. In my music video there are a lot of close ups, high angles, low angles, long shots, mid shots. I film most of the music video which gave me experience of how you have to make sure that the track is playing while you are filming, making sure that you know what you are doing, that the actor/actress know what they are doing as well.
I have edited quite a lot of videos during my time as a media A level student, I have edited the thriller task we did for AS, I have edited focus groups, vox pops, stop motion and many other different types of videos. However, I found that editing a music video was by far the hardest one I have done. It was good to be able to film it and having to have the track along will you are filming, but what I found that cutting to the beat in the editing stage of the project was even harder.
I took this picture to show what my point of view was when I was behind the camera, I liked this shot because it shows the point of view that the audience doesn't see because of the editing and the camera cant show you what the producer sees before the product is all finished and presented to the audience
Cutting to the beat is where you have a shot that changes on the beat of the track. This is what makes it hard because Ink Settles in doesn't have a distinctive bear to it. I have used iMovie before so that was as hard but with the music video I learnt that iMovie could do a lot of other different effects that I wouldn't have needed to use any other time.
I used Beth Pattison a team member of JEM Productions, she had exactly what we was looking for, she was young, innocent looking, she could play the guitar, she knew how the song and new the lyrics to them as well. JEM Productions auditioned a lot of girls, which we narrowed down to 5 and then from them 5 we picked Beth. I filmed the auditions and then put it into a short film so that we could look at them all together and then picked who we thought would be better for the music promo. Everyone was very good and had many different things that they could of brought to the project, but we felt that Beth had that something about her that would capture the audience and make them feel sorry for the things she is feeling and want to know why she is feeling these things.
This is our actress Beth on the set the music promo, I was sorting out the lighting, where the camera was sitting and also what she looked like on a whole with her make up and hair on camera as well.
For the ideas of the music promo we needed to have a large bare space that aloud us to use and also be able to put a giant white sheet up and then later the backing that you can see in the background of the shot above.
We decided that we would use a hall for the music promo, this meant that we had room to spread out and have enough room to feel comfortable with what we was doing as well. This is a picture of the backing and the main area in which we filmed the music promo. We decided that because of the images and board that is behind the wallpaper we couldn't put up the big sheet we had originally bought for the wall. So we decided that with some of the wallpaper we had found in a charity shop when we was out buying the items we needed we decided that it would look more interesting to have a coloured background rather than it all being white.
