THE BLOG IS NOW CLOSE.

Final Products

Final Poster

Using Canva I created this new poster, illustrating different performance locations and dates. The background is zoomed in shot of the last shot of our music video. After trying different backgrounds, including our 'star' I thought it looked better to highlight the ending of our video. Including numbers and websites to find the artist helps create hype as well as an fan base. At the top of the poster I state the production companies which have supported the artist, and which they are signed to. After looking at various of different posters similar to this format which I mirror, all feature this element in small writing, either at the top of the poster or the bottom. Throughout the poster I keep consistent with the greyscale effect conforming to the indie genre forms and conventions. Highlighting the 'available' at iTunes logo signals to the audience that they can buy the song/album helping promote the album which is the purpose of the poster. I considered putting an code on the poster however I didn't think it would be suitable as it didn't conform to the format of artist's posters in addition to this, due to the progression of viral marketing and its success, these would likely be emailed or put on various of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, therefore making it impossible to scan the code. Conforming to a simplistic layout is commonly done, as its sole purpose is to highlight important information to the readers, therefore the format must maximise the information to get across without the reader losing interest, I believe I have achieved this.

Creating my Final Poster

After showing my previous Lana Del Ray inspired posters to a few people, they said that although they like the poster and it looked good, it didn't looked like an advertisement for the aritst or the album. Therefore after trying to adjust and modify the current poster I had, so I decided to make a new poster. Using an website to help me make the poster called Canva.
 These are a few screen photos of me in the process of making the poster:

Stuart Hall - Audience Positioning

Hall says that there are three different positions audiences (receivers) take in order todecode the meanings within cultural texts, particularly televisual discourses. They are thedominant-hegemonic position, the negotiated position and the oppositional position. (Hall1993, 101)

The dominant-hegemonic position is when the viewer, or audience member, is locatedwithin the dominant point of view. (Hall 1993, 101) Within this position, there is littlemisunderstanding and miscommunication, as both sender and receiver are working underthe same rule set, assumptions and cultural biases. It is this position that will allow thetransmission of ideas to be understood the best, despite certain frictions that may occur dueto issues of class structure and power, specifically between the elites who are able to dictatethe rule set and the non-elites who must adopt the elite's rules as dominant. (Hall 1993,101)

The negotiated position is when the audience member, or receiver, is able to decode thesender's message within the context of the dominant cultural and societal views. (Hall 1993,102) The messages are largely understood, but in a different sense than the dominant-hegemonic position. The receivers in the negotiated position are not necessarily workingwithin the hegemonic viewpoint, but are familiar enough with dominant society to be able toadequately decode cultural texts in an abstract sense. (Hall 1993, 102) However, it isentirely possible for the audience member to decipher the message as a more personalmessage, which is when their own biases and viewpoints muddy the decoding process. This"near view" of the message usually occurs in certain situations that are close to theaudience member, as opposed to the general "long view" they take of cultural texts in theabstract. (Hall 1993, 102)

The oppositional view is when the audience member is capable of decoding the message inthe way it was intended to be decoded, but based on their own societal beliefs, often seesanother, unintended meaning within the message. (Hall 1993, 103)

Research Source - Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall - Audience Positioning from reigatemedia

Brand Image - Clothing

We made a conscious deception when creating our music video to have our star to wear simple clothing, mainly in the colours of black, white or grey as we wanted to direct the attention of the audience of to the content of the the songs and the narrative. We want this to be a consistence feature of the artist, as this is an common convention from the indie genre, therefore we conformed to this convention. We researched into different looks as we wanted to be consistent throughout. We looked at look books from different websites to gain inspiration.

Nasty Gal Lookbook   

Tumblr Inspiration

Evaluation Question Four

Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question Two

Evaluation Question One

Second Daft Poster Advert

I decided that my poster will be advertising an tour. It features the artist as it uses a shot taken from our music video. I debated whether to get another photo of our artist, which is commonly done by artist when they want to promote something new which they are releasing, however to create a link between all the media texts in which I have produced I thought by using a shot taken from the music video will creating consistency in addition to create interest in the music video as well.
The overlaying of text was an editing feature we used throughout our music video to create a link between the shots. by following this feature I create consistency as well as create depth to the shot, making it more interesting, I was inspired by Lana Del Ray's poster for her tour as it follows the same simple design. By featuring the track list of the album I was able to link the media texts together. The use of using different graphological  features for each track helps create hype from the audience as the font helps reflect the context of the song.
The framing of the artist is consistent to my digipak as the artist is framed in the same place, the audience's attention will be directed towards there. I have chosen to keep to the the greyscale effect conforming to the indie/pop rock genre as well as our music video.

The final Poster:

UPDATE: After talking to other people and asking them to review my poster, all of them agree that they thought it looked good and liked it. However some raised that point that they didn't think it had enough information on it to look like an magazine advert, saying that if this poster was produced by someone well known such as Lana Del Ray, Beyonce or Rihanna this would be expectable as people would search to find out the other details. Therefore I have decided to take on board what audience feedback   and modify my current poster. 

Poster Advert Draft

For the advert poster created as a promotion for the artist from our music video I thought it would be effective if I stayed consistent with the music video. As throughout the music video I used a lot of overlaying shots link the shots together. I was inspired by Lana Del Ray's promotional poster and thought the use of having the different songs of the a;bum would help connect both media texts. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to have our artist on our poster or create a poster like Britney's. After much discussion with other and pondering the question with my self I thought it would be best if I followed Dyer's 'Star Quality'. Having Poster 2 would be conforming to this theory as well as creating intertexuality between the music video and the poster. 

I havent yet decided on which on will be the back ground and I haven't finished the overlaying text. 

However Poster 1 doesn't illustrate all the text clearly as some of the text is restricted. Therefore if I were to choose this background I would need to alter the text colour font or brightness of the background.

Poster 1:

 Poster 2:

Lana Del Ray - Poster Analysis

• The colour scheme for the poster is mainly pink with some black, white and green, which is a complete contrast from the artist album which is mainly blue. Creating a fresh angle/tone to the artist album. 
• The lighter shade of pink is used to state the artists songs which will be performed, creating a sneak peek/ excitement from her fan base. 
• The use of the colour green for the concert dates is critical as it creates an contrast between the rest of the poster, highlighting the dates to the audience, as well as illustrating it as important information. 
• The capitalisation used for her name and song names in the background is common convention from the artist as she does this for her album, twitter and when presented in magazine articles. This creates consistency from the artist. in addition to this this feature also presents a sort of importance from the artist. 
• The artist placement in the frame mirrors her album. Breaking the rule of thirds as she is placed in the centre of the frame, looking into the camera creates an intimate tenor between the audience and the artist. 
• Her hair and make up replicate how she is usually presented to the audience. Conforming to her  vintage style. 
• As she is presented cartoon like, this creates a sense of variety from the artist, creating excitement from the artist fan base. 
• The different fonts in the background display how they are different songs. As well as giving an insight into the context of the song through grammatical features used such as dollar sign used inside of a 'S'. 
• The format of the poster mirror the one of the album
• um with the text being at the bottom of the poster and the artist featured in the middle, creating consistency. 

Questionare on Music Video

Due to the progression in technology music videos have become an popular topic of conversation. Artist are constantly pushing the boundaries on the limits, gaining hyper and creating controversy. Therefore I thought in order to known the placement and effect our created music video will take it would be critical to question  a few people on this topic in order to have a clear understanding. 

1.Age?

Person 1-21 years old

Person 2- 31 years old

Person 3-17

2.Gender?

Person 1- Female

Person 2- Male

Person 3-Female

3.What do you prefer, fast pace editing or slow?

Person 1- Fast pace, due to the fact her preference on genre is dance music. 

Person 2- What ever is consistent to the song.

Person 3- A combination of both of them. 

4.Do you like when an music video as dance routine? why?

Person 1- Yes, because I could learn the dance, however I like when I dance routine reflects the meaning of the lyrics.

Person 2-Sometimes if appropriate to the song. 

Person 3- Not really no, its irrelevant to the song.

5.Do you have a favourite music video? Why?

Person 1- Sia, Chandelier. Due to the fact the dance reflect the song as well as the ambiguity of the artist.

Person 2-Maybe Sam Smith's new track as it is for charity. 

Person 3- Sweater Weather by the Neighbourhood I like the grey scale effected used and the different combination of camera shots and movement. 

6.Do you have a least favourite music video? Why?

Person 1-Katy Perry, California Gurls. Too many things happing at once, in addition to sexualising the female body creating an image of herself as an passive object. 

Person 2- Not specifically any artist but abstract videos as like there to be some sort of substance in the video.

Person 3-FourFiveSeconds I think its a bit boring, does have a climax.

7.Do like the lyrics to mirror the visual? Why?

Person 1-Yes, because I like to understand the lyrical meaning, rather than having a contrast in the music video to the lyrics.

Person 2- To a certain extant yes, but not a direct link like that Ripetide music video. 

Person 3-Yes just not over done or it gets boring. 

8.What is your preference on the length of the music video?

Person 1- However long the song is, I don't like additional bits. 

Person 2- Have no real preference, I don't mind.

Person 3-Don't mind really.

9.Do you enjoy a narrative in the music video? Why?

Person 1- No, because I prefer an performance from the art it rather than them acting in it, however if there is someone else acting I don't mind that.
Person 2-Yes, I think its effective as its like a mini film.

Person 3- Yes but I like a mixture of everything keeps the video interesting. 

Our Target Audience

For the music video we have produced I believe our target audience will be for young adults, this therefore starts from the ages 14 to 18 as the basic age range however it would not be subjected to only these ages, as suggested by our target audience. As this age would be our intended demographic we would use viral marketing, due to the progression and development in technology, this would be the most effective for this age range. We would use websites such as twitter, Facebook and youtube, this would be effective as these age range usually are consistent users of theses sites, accessing these through apps, I therefore highlighted these feature in my magazine poster and digipak stating the artist's links of these websites, this is common feature done by artists in all genres, as shown in my research into other artist posters ad digipak.

Intertextuality in Artist's Posters (50 Cent)

50 Cent

•  All the poster connote an sense of danger and fear through the use of dark colours ( ex. black and dark red). 
• Violence is presented as an theme in all the posters through the iconographical features of gun, the smashed glass and gun bullets. This is an common convention of the rap genre, as there is a affliction with violence and crime linked. Artists usually presented this through their miss en scene, this would be an expectation from the audience due to the aritst personal background with crime and having been shot 7 times.
• The artist is placed in the centre of the frame, breaking the rule of thirds, creating an intimate tenor between himself and his fans, as well as an intimidating tone through is breaking of the fourth wall, as he looks directly into the camera. 
• In all the posters the artist is presented not wearing a top, highlighting to the audience his physical appearance, and his strong physic. Using his appearance to sell him self to the audience. This creates a universal tone to his poster as he presented to the male audience as inspiration and someone to aspire to, and to the female audience is presented as a 'sexy symbol', and some in which they want to be with. 
• The mise en scene is significant in creating the artist 'image'. Through the presentation of showing off his tat tots reinforces the image in which her is trying to create, of a strong male, this is common in the rap genre. 
• In all the posters the artist is wearing expensive jewellery presenting wealth and prestige. He is wearing it in all the poster creating a link between all the texts. 
• All the posters feature the artist 'logo' name stamp. Usually placed in the right top corner of the poster, near the head of the artist. However this logo is not large, therefore not drawing a lot of attention to the artist name, suggesting that he is well established and the audience would know if name.
• The poster all have low key lighting, creating a mysterious tone. 
• The serious facial expression from the artist sets the tone for the poster presenting the artist, as a serious character. This is common from artist from the rap genre as they present themselves as 'hard' and not to mess with, due to the violent, crime association in which they have as suggested through the use of the gun pointed towards the audience/camera. The smashed glass also suggest a sort of violent connotation. 

Beyonce - Poster Analysis

• The colour scheme of the poster is similar to the artist album, 'I am Sasha Fierce...', having the same grey gradient font colour. 
• The font and style of the poster is the same as the album, creating consistency from the artist and her works. 
• The simplistic poster follows the artist album cover, common convention from posters from the Ballad genre. 
• The placement of the artist is in the same place of the album, adding consistency, creating a link between the poster and album. 
• The mise en scene of the poster, illustrates the artist as a glamours, illustrated through the sequinned floor length dress, as well as the seductive pose from the artist, looking into the camera. Through the pose the artist she is highlighting her figure, to attract the fans. 
• The 'Encore' text looks like her signature, showing how famous she is.
• The subtext is in capitalisation, illustrating that although the text is in a smaller font, the information is still important. 

Britney Spears - Poster Analysis

• The use of primary colours creates a universal tone towards the target audience, allowing it to aimed towards women and men, as well as all ages. 
• The boardered edges follow the conventions of the cirques poster which is the theme in which follows. In addition to following the style from the the artist's current album. 
• The style follows the format/structure/font of an orginal cirques posters.
• Subverts from Dyer's theory of 'Star Quality Image', as there is no picture or representation of the artist other than her name. 
• The iconography of the stars promotes a sense of high quality from the artist. 
• Change in font when wanting to highlight important information to the audience 'womaniser'. 
• The font of the artist name is larger, highlighting it's importances. 
• The text is capitalised showing its importance. 

Evaluation Questions

The Questions 

1)      In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

2)      How effective is the combinations of your main product and ancillary texts? 

3)      What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

4)      How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

STATIC Digipak

Here is an Vlog where I explain all my choices I made.

UPDATE: after creating this video I changed certain elements of my digipak, therefore this is an update on the changes and why I made them.

Front Cover

Using the symbolic mirror shot as the cover, a self reflecting element, helping introduce the narrative in addition to helping set the tone.

Introducing the grey scale, a common feature used in the genre, keeping consistent to our music video.   

The juxtoposion of the artist in colour and grey scale effect helps create the narrative as it presents the notion of 'looking in', almost like observing another world. 

Using the same font as in the music video, creating a link. Helping create a band identity, as the artist name is consistently in this font it creates an sense of familiarity to the audience. 

Back Cover

Being inspired by Taylor Swifts album, I wanted to replicate some thing similar where her track list alternates between her colour scheme, however I wanted to adapt this to alternate between the two different fonts. However after trial and error I decided that it was not ascetically  pleasing, and decided to keep the same font as the album name, as it is also a track too.

I followed the colour scheme of grey, white and black throughout, following the grey scale effect which is used throughout the music video. 

The track list is all capitalized as I thought this was more effective and as recently become a more popular tend in albums, as shown by 'Lana Del Ray' and '1975'.

Using another shot from the end of our music video emphaise our inferred reading (Stuart Hall). As well as conforming to our vague ending, adding mystery to the ending. 

The back cover also features an bar code and an Parent Advisory Label  which is an common feature of digipaks from all different genres. 

Inside Panels

After reviewing our audience it was made clear that the concept of the pebbles, and the link to the biography of Virginia Wolf's suicide was not made clear, therefore by highlighting this icognolgrahical feature in digipak may highlight this element of the narrative. 

The CD will also follow this theme, creating the setting  as the audience are 'picking out' some pebbles when taking out the CD. 

The lyric book is a common feature in many albums therefore conforming creates a more realistic digipak.

The use of the qr code allows the auidence to access more of the star, this is highlighted in the text which states their links.

FINAL VIDEO

Lily Allen -Digipak Analysis

As our music video follows exclusively Stef flowing our 'Star Image' conforming to Richard Dyers theory on Star Quality Image. I decided to look at other female solo artist and their digipaks. I though Lily Allen, a young female artist would have the same demographic in which we were aiming for and therefore our albums would help us see what would apple to our intended target audience.

Her 2006 album 'Still Alright'.

• The album title 'Still Alright', isn't the main featured on the cover, suggesting how she is an established female artist, therefore the title will be known by the audience. 
• The cover is packed with different iconography features, linked to her type of music of being up beat and fast past. 
• There is a colour scheme following black/grey and white, as most of the cover's mise en scene follows this. However this for the album title is in red subverting from the colour scheme of the album, highlighting the album name, as it is hidden by all the miss en scene's props. 
• The type of font is similar however not the same for the artist name and album title.  It is in block font which was a popular font type in the 2006, illustrating being on trend. 
• The direct mode of address in the artist cover subverts from the artist being straight on, as shown in Lana Del Ray's 'BORN TO DIE' front cover. This creates a more colloquial tenor in from the cover, which may be prefer from the audience during that period of time. 
• A common feature of mise en scene from male artists is the feature of flashy jewellery, Allen subvert from the convention as on the album cover she highlights this feature despite it not being a convention for female pop artist. 

Taylor Swift Digipak Analysis

• There is a direct link with the title 'RED', and the colour of the capitalised title. 
• The capitalisation of the font is consistent throughout the whole album as well as the colour scheme of white and red. 
• Follows the Richard Dyer theory of Star Quality Image, the close up of the artist highlights her importance to the audience. 
• The red lipstick uses reflects as well as links the artist to the album. 
• The use of large font of the album cover clearly illustrates the album as well as making it recognisable. 

• The back is the same as the cover but with a red tint, removing the vintage feel but reflecting the music and the tone. Keeping consistent throughout. 
• There is no track numbers for the song list which recently has become more popular feature in albums. 
• The song names are written in capitals, keeping to the convention of the album as the artist name as well as the album title is written in this style, creating a consistency from the artist.

• The CD foollow the red and white colour scheme as well as the style of font and size.

Showcase Evening and Audience Feedback

We had our showcase evening were able to show our music video to a large audience, ranging from 60 plus to 16 years. This allowed us to talk to people after viewing and get some audience feedback and she whether our concept was understood. We were able to explain what gave us inspiration and what we were trying to achieve. This was really helpful (and nerve-racking) experience as we after months of work it was officially finished. We left a green sheet of paper on each seat, with a set questions for the audiences to answer to help us with our evaluation.

These are some photos I took.

Adele '21' Digipak Analysis

• Uses a black and white colour scheme, a common code and convention from the slow ballad genre. this cover is universal not really targeted to a certain audience. 
• Conforms to Richard Dyer's theory of star quality image, highlighting to the audience who the singer is through a close up of her face. the position of the artist illustrates her to be sad, as she isn't smiling and looking down, reflecting the tone of the songs. 
• The artist name is clear, written in white against a black background, with the album title written next to it in a slightly off white/grey - showing that it is the title. 
• Both the title and the artist in the same font and size following the pattern, staying consistent. 
• A contrast to the the cover, it is in a bright green which is a contrast to the black and white. introducing a pop element to the CD.
• The 21 is a contrast to the font and size of the CD.

Music Industry Apps

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service that provides digital rights mangment restricted content from record labels. Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Paid "Premium" subscriptions remove advertisements and allow users to download music to listen to offline.
Spotify was launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB; as of 15 September 2010, the service had approximately 10 million users, including 2.5 million users with paid subscriptions.The service reached 20 million users (5 million paid) by December 2012,and 60 million users (15 million paid) in January 2015.
Source: Wikipedia

Tidal App according to iTunes description is the world's first music service with high fidelity sound quality. Created by artist Jay-z this recent 2015 app is signing a various of different artist. The app is similar to the popular app Spotifier. 
Source: iTunes

Digipak Ideas

So following the theme of our virgina wolf suicide, I thought following the theme of water and other of the element which we included in our video would be a good idea to use for our digipak. Adding consistency to the brand of our star image, Stef.

The pebbles shot in our video is critical to video as it adds content to the other shots, tying it all together, as well as adding a narrative. I thought the pebbles would be nice to be highlighted in the album digipak, as it links it to the video, as it is the EP  album.

This is what I'm thinking of for the CD of my album.

The black and white, grey scale photo is consistent with our music video as it is all in this filter. However i'm not sure if this is differently the the CD that I will use in my digipak. 

Adele - Someone Like You

Adele's, someone like you video is were some of our inspiration came from, when me and Stef were filming during our lunch break I decided to take some shots of our star, walking, to add some motion to our quite static video footage.

Adele's video, for the whole song is the camera on a dolly, following  her singing by bridge, with a city miss en scene. The video has a grey scale title on throughout which is something which we also wanted to use, as we through it help emphasis the lyrics as well as suiting the tone of the song. The video is all one shot, which is well suited as it is a balled, this is a common codes and convention of this genres music video.

Questionnaire Audience

As our media showcase is coming up in a few weeks, we thought it would be a good idea that after the audience view our opening we would ask them questions on our music video. Allowing us to have a wider range of feedback as people from all ages and genres were coming.

We thought we would as questions such as:

• What do you think is the intended audience for our music video?
• Is the editing style suited to the song?
• Do you understand the narrative in the music video?
• Any specific shots or camera movements that you liked?
• Any specific shots or camera movements that you didn't like?
• Even better if...?

Taylor Swift - Style

A feature in which we used a lot in our music video is overlapping footage. Music videos uses this often in music videos as it is a good way to tie footage together as well as making the footage not look as plan or static, adding movement to the shots which don't move much, adding this effect adds complexity to the video, making it more interesting to watch as well as making it look better.

This is done throughout the Taylor Swift music video, at the beginning the image or her is linked to the music video through the cutaway shot/overlapping

Fisheye Lens

When filming on our last day we though it would be a good break from our normal footage to have a variety of different types of shots, using fish eye lens as a break, creating more complex/ dimintional video. So on our last day of  filmed some of the shots with a iPhone fish eye lens, we did this for shots such as point of you and established to illustrate to the audience a turning point in the video. 

Arctic Monkey's - Arbella

The music video of Arctic Monkey's Arabella, is from the same genre of what our video is aimed for, the indie, rock genre. The video has a grey scale title throughout similar to our video. The beginning of AM's music video starts out going backs, almost like it broken, we created something similar at the end with the sort of flash back sort editing at the end. The video includes a performance element which is a common from this genre, we also in our video did this through having stef perform at a variety of different locations. However the video also had a narrative, adding to the complexity of there music video.

Performance element of the video.

Narrative element of the video.