How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? (synergy, cross promotion)

The combination of our main product and ancillary texts are quite effective as we have managed to keep the same themes throughout the making of each. For example both the CD cover and tour poster are similar, as they use the same colours, text style and basic layout. If they were not placed together people could tell they were part of the same package. They also have the same picture on them so have that link to. Both the CD cover and tour poster can also link to the music video. In certain parts on the music video they have club scenes, and dancing just the general message of the music video fit in well and link with the digipack. They all fit in very nicely as a package, as they all sell the artist  and portray her the way we wanted her to be presented. What I would say is that we maybe should have focused on her face as that's what a lot of pop music artists do, but I guess it's good that ours is a little different. I think the CD cover, tour poster and music video have presented the artist exactly how we wanted. Obviously as a girl in pop you have to sell stuff through your looks as well as your music so we've tried to go for a more sexulised, rebelious look on the CD cover and tour poster, focusing on specific body parts. This also links with the music video because it also communicates that she is quite rebellious. The song is about her moving on from her boyfriend going out and having a good time without him and the covers link, showing that also. I think the colours used on the CD cover and tour poster also link into the whole going out clubbing and enjoying life thing as we have used black as the background colour and also the text is bright and we have used a glowing effect which could be seen as looking like strobe lights, or glow sticks, so overall I think the music video, CD cover and tour video all fit in as a package really well.
















In terms of making our Album cover and Tour poster similar we wanted to make sure we used the same conventions in both so you would know they were connected to the same artist or the artist is playing that particular album at their tour. For an example, I have shown Example's tour poster and CD cover above. You can clearly see the relation between them both and that they go together. I feel this is a strong example considering you can see that they are related considering the colours, text and images used. This is what we wanted to achieve in our CD cover and tour poster, making sure that when they were put side by side you could see the correlation between them. Example has used the exact same photo and text for the tour poster as he has for the CD cover. We didn't do the exact same, however we did use the same photo, although we cropped it to make it look like a completely different image. We thought this would still keep the connection between them both considering the cropped image on the CD cover is still featured on the tour poster.

Audio Commentary - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

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

Our music video predominately uses conventions of real media products. When analysing music videos at the start of this project, we had ideas of which we wanted to involve in our music video. For instance when looking at one of Scouting For Girls music videos, we saw that they use a lot of slow motion and have editing quite a lot of the scenes within the video. This is where we got ideas for the types of editing we used in our video, for example when she dives into the pool and the lyrics are 'but i gotta let it go' this shows narrative and is a convention that many artists use in their music videos to get a point across or show an important part of the video.
We also had some shots where our actress was in a bikini, which shows voyeuristic behaviour. Many female artists are known for their videos to be quite sex related. Therefore we wanted to include in our video sex appeal, so our audience isn't just females.


In terms of our CD cover and Tour poster, include many conventions that are used when marketing an artists product. Our CD and poster both feature either a barcode, dates, website, track name, artists name etc. These are all common conventions that you see on advertisement on sale today. The image of our artist on the CD and poster both relate with one another so that they don't look like two separate campaigns. We have made it so the image used on the CD cover is the same as the Tour poster but changed it slightly, by showing just the legs of the artist on the CD and then revealing the artist on the Tour poster. 

Rihanna's tour poster has conventions that we've used in our work. For instance the name of the artist and the name of the album is on the poster, showing who is playing and what music they will be playing, which is something we made sure of in our poster and CD cover.

We wanted the tour poster and CD cover to look similar since it would be that music they would be playing at that particular tour. This is something Rihanna has done with both her CD cover and tour poster, in terms of the colours and text that was used.

In our poster and CD cover we wanted our artist to be stereotypically sexy, being a solo R&B artist. This is a another convention that Rihanna uses in her poster and CD cover being that she shows skin and wears the colour red. Therefore the photo we used for the poster and CD cover was aimed to be revealing and attractive, leaving little to the imagination. 

In the CD cover we just showed the artists legs, but it was the same photo that was used for the tour poster. We thought this worked well together, being that they then both relate with one another.

As you can see, the colours that have been used are the same as the tour poster, also text for the name of the tour and album are the same, this is a convention we used in our CD cover and tour poster. 
Another thing is the appeal of the photo, the image has been taken to look good and attract viewers. Being that it is a close up of her face and once again the colour red being used. 
This is another similarity to both our CD cover and tour poster since she has used a mid/full body shot on the tour poster and then a close up on the CD cover. This is something we incorporated in terms of the full shot of her body and then the close up of the artists legs on the CD cover.

How did you construct new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the whole project we used blogger to show our progress through the researching, planning, making and evaluating stages of the project. It was a good way of presenting all our work because we could design the blog how we wanted and make it our own. It also made your work look very neat and in order and was very easy to use. The only problem with the blog was that the dates were tracked so you had to keep up to date with it all which was hard to keep up with as you get sidetracked with making the project and forget about the blog,

meaning that you ended up with massive date gaps between each post.

We also used iMovieHD, which is the programme we used to edit our film and turn it into a music video. At first we tried to use final cut pro but struggled using it, so found iMovieHD and found it a lot easier to use. We liked iMovieHD because it allowed you to use effects and transition and all the options were simply placed which made it easier to work with and get the rasp of over a programme like final cut pro. We liked how the programme allowed you to be quite free with the editing, but there was a limited amount of effects, audio effects and transitions so we had to make do with the ones they had, which I think limited us in making the music video better, but all in all it was a very easy and useful programme.

When creating the CD cover and tour poster we used photoshop as it allows you to create unique designs easily. I found it really easy to create the digipack because after looking at other peoples tour poster and CD cover you are able to see that they don't have to be anything artistically spectacular, so I was able to make a simple CD cover and tour poster, without it looking bad. It also allowed me to use the same themes with both the CD cover and tour poster because I was able to easily copy over the same text fonts and photos so they looked similar. The only problem I had with making the the digipack whas that I had to use text from word, as I didn't find any of the fonts on photoshop appealing, but that wasn't a massive deal.

Through the research stages of the coursework we used youtube to look at different types of music video and analyse them. It was very helpful because it was easy acsses to a bunch of music videos and allowed you to look into many genres of music video. The only problem with youtube is that sometimes you are ristricted from watching certain music videos because of the country settings or copyright infringements, which limited us a bit. We were also not able to watch all of Jonnahan Glazer's Mirroball episode becaus youtube had blockd certain parts of it. 

For CD cover and tour poster analysis we had to use Google to look for them different CD cover and tour poster that are already around . it was versy useful and as there were many options you could look for all different types and genre's of CD cover. This piece of technology had no restrictions at all really, the only problem was that they may not have had the specific picture you were looking for, but overall we found everything we needed.

Music Video

When making the music video we realised that the majority of the clips had been recorded horizontally instead of vertically. So to get this fixed we had to finish the music video, then get it rotated. Once we finished the video we went to get it rotated, but they were not able to rotate it all and the only way to rotate it was by putting each separate clip into final cut pro and rotating them on there. The only problem with that was that when you transferred the clips over to final cut pro they returned to their original uncut/un edited form. Meaning that we'd have to re edit and re cut everything and start from the beginning again which would have taken us ages, and we didn't have enough time to do that, as we had a deadline. So the final video looks a bit poor because the majority of the clips are horizontal. We've learnt from this and next time we do a project like this will know to only film vertically or it won't work.

Final CD cover

Final Tour Poster

The making of the CD cover

                                                                        Front cover

For the front of the album cover I used the same image, with the same effect, from the tour poster, but cropped it down, so it was just of the bottom half of her body. I then slanted it slightly an placed it on a black background.



I then added the song name to the CD cover. The effect on the title was done by first using the text tool to type out the song name over the blue part of the picture. I then highlighted the text and print-screened the effect that came out on it from the highlighting. I then cropped the screenshot of the text and pasted it back onto the CD cover, resized it and then added the filter 'Glowing edges' to it, which gave me the text effect shown on the cover. I then slanted it slightly , so it could be placed just above the picture in the left corner.

 

I then added the song artists names to the CD cover and used the same effect that was explained above. and also slanted it and placed it on the bottom right corner on the picture.


                                                                          Back Cover

The text used here was done in the same way as explained above except for 'We found love (remix)' I used a different filter called ink outlines which didn't change the colour too blacks and blues like the other effect did.

I then added light grey Ariel text to the cover mentioning the producers, executive producer, associate producers an anyone else important who was involved in making the song. I also added some important websites at the bottom, which are the artists website and the record labels website.

I then added the bar-code, as every CD cover has one, and placed the logo of the record label, the artist is signed to, at the bottom of the cover next to the websites.

                                                                           CD skin
                                                             

 

This is the blank disc template I got off of google.





I then filled in the outer part of the disc black, by using a shape from Photoshop that fit the shape of the disc.





I then copied the name of the artists from the front of the CD cover and placed it on the disc. I did this because I though it would be effective to use the same colours and themes throughout all of the designs.



The making of the tour poster

I then did the same thing with the dates for the tour and used word art instead of Photoshop. I decided to go with blue outlining this time so the dates stood out from the rest of the text. It also fits in with the colour scheme of the photo.

As I wasn't very keen on the fonts in Photoshop. I went to word and used their word art tool to write out the theatres the artist will be performing at, on tour, and copied them onto the poster. I decided to use the black text with the white outlining because it stands out on the black background.

I then added the artist name and the tour name to the poster. The effect on the titles was done by first using the text tool to type out the artists/tour name over the blue part of the picture. I then highlighted the text and print-screened the effect that came out on it from the highlighting. I then cropped the screenshot of the text and pasted it back onto the poster, resized it and then added the filter 'Glowing edges' to it, which gave me the text effect shown on the tour poster. I then used the text tool, again, and chose the ariel font to write a bit of extra information about the tour tickets and placed that at the bottom of the poster.



The first thing I did while making the 'Tour Poster' was  place the chosen image onto  a black background. I then used the filter tool to add an effect called glowing edges to the picture to give it a bit of an edgier look.

Mood Board

Just looking at styling ideas, location and a bit of stuff on Rihanna.

Record Label Letter

We tried to get in contact with the Island Def Jam label by emailing LA Reid who is the owner of the company. We were asking for permission to use the song for our coursework. We didn't get a reply so just carried on and used the song.

Costumes

This was the item of clothing we chose for Emma to wear within the second verse. We thought it was a suitable change from wearing a bikini. Also throughout each scene her outfits became smarter.

This was the scarf she wore in the 1st chorus along with the black dress below. This scarf is by Alexander McQueen.

This is the dress Emma wore in the chorus along with the scarf above. This dress is from H&M.

These shoes are designed by Steve Madden. Emma wore these shoes but in a different colour. Purple.

This bikini was worn in the opening scenes, by the pool. It's from New Look and is from Emmas own closet.

Personnel

Filming: Charlie
Editing: Charlie and Rianna
Cd cover: Rianna
Tour poster: Rianna
Evaluation: Charlie and Rianna

Promotion idea

Female artists music videos can have particular reference and voyeuristic treatment of the female body. Therefore for our CD cover and tour poster, we thought it would be good idea to add that sex appeal by focusing on the female body. It will consist of 2 panels, where each side will reflect/promote the artists music and create synergy. The image will be a particular photo of the artist, one that will relate to the music video that we have produced, therefore it will match the themes that were in the music video. The song itself is a dance song, therefore we will include this into the promotion so it's understood by the target audience. This is why we think having a slightly voyeuristic image would work well considering the theme of the song and where it would be played at.

StoryBoard

Scene Breakdowns

Verse 1: 

Scenes that were shot by the pool, in the pool and in the garden outside the pool.

Bridge:

In the garden outside the pool.


Chorus 1:

Memories, which include various of scenes in different locations.

Chorus 2:

Outside the pool dancing.

Verse 2:

On the walkway next to villas of a compound.

Bridge:

In the garden outside the pool and clips of dance scene.

Chorus 1:

Scenes of cars and traffic. (sped up)

Chorus 2:

Club scene.

Female Actress

Emma is going to act out as the artist in our music video. She is a close friend who lives in Dubai, which is why we chose her. Emma is currently studying performing arts and has a background that consists of school productions, singing, children's parties, pantomimes and more.

Shooting and Editing Ideas:

Verse 1:

The video  starts off with a mid shot of the girl sitting by the pool looking through her iPod, it then slowly zooms in on the ipod to show that she is looking for a song and also show what she has selected. This would be a point of view shot. It then moves to a wide shot of the girl lying by the pool, which is where she then starts singing the first verse. It then moves to a mid shot during the same verse. When the music starts to kick in, there will be a close up of her foot tapping to show rhythm, but also slowly zooming in to get even closer. After the second sentence, in the verse, she could move to a different position in the water, and we could use a wide shot for example. When she's singing the last word, of the last sentence, of the verse, which is 'alive' it could slowly zoom into a close up of her holding the note. We also want to get footage of the artist swimming underwater using a wide shot, also full body shots of her getting out of the water and diving into the pool.

Verse 2:

The chorus will be wide shots of memories. Clips taken from a various of events and places to fulfil the concept of memories. However on the second chorus it will be focusing on a club scene, where it will include flashing lights and the use of an earthquake effect. We might go back to her singing throughout the chorus, which will probably be a close up shot.

Chorus':

This verse will hopefully start off with a full body shot of the artist, where she will be standing on a walkway in the sunshine. Surrounding her will be trees and villas.  She will then walk towards the camera singing the lyrics of the song. Most of this verse will be shot with a full body shot, however it will zoom into a mid shot at some points of the song.

Lyrics

Yellow diamonds in the light
As we're standing side by side
As your shadow crosses mine
What it takes to come alive

It's the way I’m feeling I just can't deny
But I've gotta let it go

We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place

Shine a light through an open door
Love and life I will divide
Turn away cause I need you more
Feel the heartbeat in my mind

It's the way I'm feeling I just can't deny
But I’ve gotta let it go

We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place

Yellow diamonds in the light
And we're standing side by side
As your shadow crosses mine...
We are not including these lyrics due to the video being to long. Also it seems to be a perfect place to end, considering 'yellow diamonds in the light' is also the first sentence of the song. We are planning on fading the song out at the end.
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place

We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place

Mise en scene and Locations:

Verse 1
Location: At the pool in a compound called Arabian Ranches (Dubai)
Costume: Bikini and shorts, ray-bans, black dress, Alexander McQueen scarf and bare foot
Weather: Sunny, around lunchtime

Verse 2
Location: Still in the same compound, but on the road and path of the street
Costume: River island Jumpsuit and Steve Madden heels
Weather: Sunny, afternoon

Chorus 1
Location: Catamaran, Beach 
Costume: swimwear (mixture)
Weather: Sunny, lunchtime


Chorus 2
Location: Party, club
Costume: N/A
Weather: Night


Bridge - Random shots to include in the video also memories
Location: Nighttime traffic (Sheik Zayed), nice cars (JBR), underwater (Pool), dancing (Park), walking away (Park) and towards the camera, in a taxi, whipping hair and cartwheel (Park)
Costume: Bikini, black dress, shorts, Alexander McQueen scarf
Weather: Dark, lunchtime and afternoon

Locations

Palm Jumeriah

 Alvorada villas

 Arabian Ranches

Jumeriah road

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Jumeriah residence walk













Dubai

Final Idea - 'We found love'

We have decided that we are going to go with our second idea which was making a music video for the song 'We Found Love' by Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris we decided this because we felt when shooting the footage It may turn out rubbish and not have the effect we wanted so decided to go with our second idea. As Charlie was going on holiday to Dubai in the October half term. We thought it would be a good idea to get footage filmed over there since we wouldn't be able to get the same locations and setting over here in england. Also, as the song is an uptempo song we though it would suit the sunny scenery and nightlife over there.We both agreed that it would be good if Charlie shooted in locations such as, the pool, clubs, nighttime, buildings, motorway, and parks. We then thought in contrast to the sun in Dubai, to have footage also in England of the ‘boyfriend’. Showing that the female is in a better place now and she has left the boyfriend behind.

The story in relation to the lyrics:

'It's the way I’m feeling I just can't deny
But I've gotta let it go.'

This part of the lyrics shows that she is trying to escape her past, and her being where she is, is a better place, as she says she's 'gotta let it go'.

Love and life I will divide

This is another example showing that she has to think of herself and what is best for her. 

Second video idea - Rhianna ft Calvin Harris

The story that we want to achieve within our music video includes a woman trying to escape love by being on holiday in Dubai. The video is about her having a good time without her ex boyfriend. Also the video will show memories of the ex boyfriend in England, on a miserable day which shows the contrast of good and bad. Showing she is in a good place now rather than where she was when she was with her ex boyfriend which clearly shows they weren’t good days through the contrast in weather.

Ellie Goulding

Album cover

Advert

This is Ellie Goulding's album cover and advert. It's obvious to say that the image is once again the main focus on the advert and it exactly the same as the album cover. Also it's similar to what Gwen Stefani has done, therefore this is a conventional theme.
This album is called 'light's' and the title has an luminous effect, which is a direct component of the title.
She is represented in a very casual and cool way as she is positioned looking down with her arm above her head. She doesn't have that much make up on whereas other pop/indie artists usually do, which creates a very laid back view of her. This could suggest that her music is more important than her appearance. Her hair is styled quite naturally which matches her make up reinforcing the importance of her music rather than her image. She is wearing a black top which is quite bland and it makes her look natural and plain as an artist, but due to this she appears to be unique as most pop artists dress glamourously and over the top. The camera shot is a close up of her as the main focus and her name is written as the masthead in a retro style font which stands out, underneath is the title of the album written in the same font. The fonts are very bright which reflects the title of the album. The colour scheme for this poster is quite natural with blacks, whites and vibrant yellows. The vibrant yellow text connotates the title of the album which is 'lights' due to them being yellow and bright. The masthead also stands out more due to its brightness. The artwork used in her hair also brings 'light' to the poster and reflects the connotations, it also attracts more attention to the artist as it adds more sophistication and glamour to the poster. Underneath the title of the album there are 3 positive reviews from websites and magazines which will help promote her album. Also at the bottom of the poster there is the institution (record label) and copyright information.

Magazine advert analysis

Album cover

Advert

The layout of this advert it very similar to the album cover. The image of the advert, seems to be the same one on the cover but cropped slightly. This works well though, since the colours and style match the artwork of the album. The texture is a paint type texture, which enhances the colours. I think the texture of the image is made to look as if it's made up, along with the crown and the chair, considering its clear that Gwen Stefani isn't the queen. The font is very suggestive, in that it's distinct to the artist and uses the same theme throughout. The colour of the writing matches the colour of the chair in which Gwen is sitting in. Also the border around the picture is the same colour. This draws an audiences attention to the image. The colours also indicate royalty as do the crown and stick she's holding. This is in my opinion is to promote the artist as a royal performance.