Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Design Ideas (1)




53. Photos I plan to use


I want to have various pictures of the artist, as well as having pictures of him with the featuring artist to promote to the target audience their upcoming song and music video in the website, as grime artist don't have websites they promote themselves through social media, so I wanted to create a website focused solely on news and social media. The pictures I  want to use of my artist allow the target audience to see the use of mise en scen associated with the artist brand, the main picture I want to use is with my main artist wearing  a bucket hat as I want the bucket hand to be apart of our brand image and synergy, also our target audience will be able to relate, as our target audience are urban young teens/adults that are most likely be appealed to the fashion accessory (bucket hat).

Friday, 11 December 2015

Ancillary decision making

In our music video our artist is wearing a camouflage coat, so we wanted to use the camouflage as part of our synergy by incorporating it in our colour scheme
We used snapchat to create a video which give evidence of our decision making.

Here is our mock up for our digipack. 


From our research we decided we wanted the placement of our album title and artist name to resemble 'Avelino's -Iconic Ambition' album. We notice a lot of grime artist have used this placement.  

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Branding

Branding 

As time went on we realised we needed to brand our main artist. I noticed in the music industry, artists have their own sort of brand that also helps audiences identify them and make them somewhat different than other artists of their genre. Since our artist is upcoming we wanted to start giving him a brand that is similar to his genre but also helps him stand out. Our synergy idea contributes to this, our synergy item is a bucket hat that he wears in one of the base tracks of the music video, we will also use a shot of him in the same bucket hat in this album cover, this is what will help him be recognisable as an upcoming artist because he'll be seen as "the guy that wears bucket hats most the times".

Also we decided to re design our background theme to also brand him. We picked black because it's similar to grime and we thought white smoke infuses well, especially since grime artist/ UK afrobeat artist like to identify themselves with expenses such as luxary cars, bling and smoking. 


Research into UK afrobeats

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Updated social media


Personal reflection on work so far


Exploring music videos of my genre

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Blogging, Filming and Editing. Getting the balance right

Reflection on balancing blogging,filming and editing 


As we grew deeper into the coursework and we were now filming our videos, editing and blogging I noticed i struggled to keep up and fell out of the habit of blogging. I ended up solely focusing on filming sessions and neglected blogging, which resulted in me dropping marks and having to work harder to build my blogs up.
 If had a chance to do it again I would blog after every media lesson,and then again over the weekend that way i would be blogging a least three times a week and this would've have prevented me from losing possible marks. I fund it even more hard to juggle all three when we started editing. Even  if I was blogging a reflection on a filming session that would've helped me since I would've been  blogging along the way, whilst my memory is still fresh. Since I didn't do that sometimes I find it hard to think of what to blogs and what forms of media I can use to present it.  
Now I'm starting to find it easier because I've had to catch up on it but yet again If I had done that from before I would already be in the routine of keeping up and wouldn't find it so hard.

Final day of editing!

Deadline Day

Prior to the deadline day I felt very stressed and anxious about completing everything. I was worried that we would have to rush towards the end of our editing session and just deal with what we had. I also expected editing rooms to be really busy. Surprisingly it was calm and relaxed and we ended up completing everything to the standard we wanted it to be. I didn't take pictures but take a look of these short clips I have from the day, you can tell things went our way!


Snapchat updates

 




Grime old skool vs new skool


Expectations vs reality

Expectations Vs Reality 

In this blog I'll be sharing my personal opinions on the extent to how far the music video reached my original expectations. I'll discuss each stages, right from my first individual thoughts, the original group original plan, after pitch adapted plan, the second adapted plan and the final product.

EXPECTATION 
My first individual thoughts:
After being put into my group and deciding on the song 'bae'. I already had a vision on what I wanted the video to look like. In the original video Tion Wayne (main artist) and Afro b (featured artist) had their separate girls, I wanted to keep to this idea. I basically wanted to keep it  similar to the original video but have different locations. I mainly had the different shot types and camera angels/movement planned in my head i'll illustrate this on our storyboard at what I specially had in mind. At one point I even wanted to somehow use a drone to get birds eye establishing shots!. I feel my individual idea wasn't over the top apart from the fact I wanted to use a drone baring in mind i don't own one!

Original plan:
 The original group plan was yet again similar to the original video. We also planned on filming in Leicester square, the London eye area, Westfield or Oxford Street and Tottenham Hale Village local area, also Manor House local area. We also decided we would have two separate date scenes, one in Creams Cafe(Featured artist with his girl) and Frankies and Bennies restaurant (main artists with his girl). We never really considered seeking permission to film because we figured people film with cameras in these public areas all the time for example tourists, not knowing in this case it's different. We also (mainly me) had quite crazy ideas for example  getting our artists to perform in fancy cars like Mercedes Benz rather than your common Vauxhall Astra. The drone idea was also still considered but we figured that we wouldn't be able to use one and so thought about ways we could still get birds eyes establishing shots without a drone. 

Second plan:
Our locations we kept the same, but the main change was we came up with a plot twist. Instead of the artists having two different girls, we decided why don't they have the same girl and not know they're seeing the same girl and then at the end of the song reveal this. We were really excited about doing this idea but also worried about if it didn't work. By this stage we've changed who were going to use in our video bare in mind they were from outside the college.

After the Pitch: 
After the pitch we learned that we needed to get permission to film in our location and we needed to ask well in advance, we still intended to use our planned locations but just ask for permission. we figured we'll just get establishing shots of London. We didn't have intentions of using expensive cars since none of us own any!. By this point we deiced that we were going to make sure they were dating the same girl and include three main base tracks. We also had a clear idea of the outfits we would use.

REALITY 
Final product: 
 Looking back to my first thought,  a lot had changed. In the end getting permission for our locations was quite difficult and because our artists were from outside of college, arranging sessions started to become difficult so we ended making our sessions more local. Our locations in the end were Stratford Westfield (TGI Fridays restaurant) ,Olympic stadium Stratford, Manor House residential area and Tottenham residential area. We ended up having more footage of one of our artists with the bae than the other artist and so we had to try harder to ,make it clear they were seeing the same girl. In the end we didn't use restaurant scenes. I also noticed all our shots ended up being night shots.


Premier of music video


Music video preview and group introduction








Direct Audience Feedback - We asked a few people to describe what they thought of our video in 3 words.






Premiere ending



Digipak preparation

Digipak preparation


As we are going to be creating album covers , the use of adobe photoshop will be essential. I am not that familiar with the programme so I decided to attend a workshop held by my media department.


During the workshop I learned how to cut out images and copy on to others and I also learned how to blend images together nicely






We were also given detailed hand outs on how to use our new techniques in case we forgot them in the future or we needed them


What is the importance of cross promotional package ?

Digipak display in lesson




What is a digipak?

In this context our digipack is our artists album packaging

Digipak importance

The digipak acts a promotional tool for our artist and also gives our artist a platform for expression. In order to achieve the aim of cross promotional package we need to have a different form of media from our music video and this will be shown through our digipaks and websites.



As a group , within our lesson we discussed the generic features of a digipak and came up with this list.

  • Title
  • Colour scheme (usually 3 colours)
  • Some type of graphic
  • Song list
  • CD
  • Barcode
  • Font types
  • Recording artist
Therefore individually we will work on digipaks and come up with different ideas for our final product. As we are only in the beginning stages , I can only say as a group we have decided on a black,grey and white colour scheme as they compliment eachother well and also reflect our artist , genre and links in with our synergy.

How i need to achieve this

I will need to analyse digipaks from my genre and stick to the conventions of my genre however I am aware that finding digipaks from my genre will be hard because it's core target audience are teenagers to young adults who use more of social media than CD's so therefore there is lack of digipaks for me to observe. 

Group feedback


Featuring artists feedback.

We filmed an interview with our featuring artists to get his personal opinion on how the felt filming went, highlighting both good and bad points. Unfortunately we weren't able to get an interview with our main artists.


Filming session vlogs

We have created a vlog on our filming session, to show you what we usually get up to during filming.

Editing session vlogs

We created to a vlog to show you what we get up to in our editing sessions (evidence of editing)

Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Mise en Scen (costumes): grime vs mianstream

I created a gif to show the conventions of grime artists mise en scen (costume).
We stuck with the conventions of the genre grime. Artist dress according to London urban culture as they want to reflect where they come from, as that's how they connect to their fan base by using shared identify. We wanted to do the same thing, in order to connect to our fan base.

Compared to mainstream we noticed that the clothing is very simply, affordable brands such as nike, adidas ect. They not only reflect urban culture, but they represent it as well. Their target audience recognises it as part of their brand image, also that's what they most like feel comfortable in, and it compliment the gritty London setting.

Through research I looked at Krept and Konan who are popular on the grim scene, but are transitioning to mainstream, as their music has transitioned, so had their image. I think is to connect to wider audience, but also to reflect the certain lifestyle they have now that are on a bigger scale.
These two  pictures reflect how they represented themselves before becoming mainstream.

These two pictures show how mainstream has changed their image and brand, rather than reflecting them 'repping their ends' they reflect an expensive lifestyle that most of their original fans wouldn't have.

With our own artist we used a combination of basic dark coloured tracksuit bottoms/jeans with a sweatshirt or hoodie, but in some scenes we dressed the look up bit, so the fans can still relate and recognise them, but still reflect the lyrics of the song.

47. What is a cross promotional package and what do we expect to see from them?

A cross promotional package  includes different media forms that work alongside each other to promote the same thing i.e our artist.

 
What's the importance:
It's a promotional aspect which helps bring awareness to the artist thus selling the artist and encouringing consumers to buy and listen to their music.
 
The front of the DigiPack will have aspects of what the artists represents and their genre. This helps emphasise the brand image which increases popularity. It also gives an idea of what to expect from the music itself. If a fan actually buys a DigiPack instead of downloading/streaming, it can suggest their loyalty to the artist.

What we expect to see?
A CD package/art work that promotes the artist's album:
  • Title
  • Image of artist and synergy
  • Song list
  • Record labels
  • CD
  • Colour scheme to suit genre
  • Leaflet/ Album description
  • Barcode
  • Anti- Piracy
  • Font Types
  • Parental Advisory

47. What is a cross promotional package, what do you expect to see in them

What is a cross promotional package

A cross promotional package is different media forms that work alongside each other to promote the same thing. In this case for our artist promoting them (the artist) through a album a music video abnd artist website would be a cross promotional package.

Using Cross promotional package to promote my artist:

Digipack
This is a modern way of CD packaging. It allows more inclusion of info about the artist and also adds value (since it literally sells the artist). It also plays on our love for music
Conventions of a digipack, what you expect to see:
There are three parts to a digipack, the outer layer, the inner layer and the spine, below is a example of all three parts

Outer layer 
Inner layer 

Image result for spine of cd albums
Spine 

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Teacher feedback before last editing session


Re Shoot



Here is some footage of us recording our base tracks again on the 1st of December . These videos have been posted on to our twitter account and on our snapchat because we feel that social media is a necessary factor for promotion especially with our young target audience.

1 day until deadline !

Pre-deadline update 




As tomorrow is the deadline for our music video we have been spending a lot of our time editing our video and putting things together. Our re-shooting was successful and allowed us to improve some of our shots , our final aims for our final lesson before the deadline are to carefully sync our second verse as we have been struggling to do so , rotate our picture of the image of the two love interests as it is currently shown sideways and finally fill in anymore random gaps that keep popping up due to a lot of shifting and moving of videos.
I am confident we will meet the deadline as we have worked according to our schedule , after re shooting we put all our effort into editing and have made progress. I can see that there is a difference with our current product and our rough cut. Our establishing shots cut more on beat , we have more footage than we had previously and better lighting in the majority of our videos.


How the effects of filming can effect editing (filming session)


Branding

Evidence of editing