Magazine Advert

In order to promote our single 'Ego' it is essential that we advertise it well. To do this each member of our group created a magazine advert for different magazines to use. I made mine with a black background to emphasise the different colour dresses that we each have and to make us stand out. I also used bright coloured titles in order to catch a customers attention as it is essential that it catches the readers eye. I used photoshop to create this and although I found it difficult to use, it gave the magazine advert a professional look as well as giving me the chance to use several editing options such as colour enhancing and the ability to crop certain parts of the images. When I learnt how to use the basics to photoshop I found I could gradually build up more effects and understand how to change and edit different pictures through layering.

At first I created another design for my magazine advert and I decided that I didn't like the style of this. The text at the top looks messy and it is completely different to the other text on the image, also there is no colour showing which defeats the purpose of our outfits and our overall band image, without each member having a different colour our band looks almost 'boring' and wouldn't catch the readers attention. Above shows a screenshot of my process in editing, I created a separate photo shop document so that I could recreate my magazine advert.

Lip Syncing

Today we practised lip syncing in preparation for our music video as a group it is essential that we perfect this, as with bad lip syncing the video would look very unprofessional and it wouldnt be enjoyable to watch, which ultimately is needed so that audiences want to buy the song. We spent an hour and a half learning the lyrics and practising lip syncing in front of the camera.


Below you can see some pictures of us practising lip syncing, we took these so that we could see how we look on camera as well as our positioning, lighting and the shot type which we had to keep changing.

Audition

To see if the boys for our music video would be suitable, we asked a few questions on what makes a good music video, as well as a little scene to see how they were infront of the camera.

Setting up the studio

In order to start our auditions, we had to set up the studio so that it was ready to film. We gathered together all of our props and then we changed the lighting and then tested this on our camera to see if more or less light was needed.

Floor Plan

In one of the scenes we have decided to film at Emily's house. Below shows a floor plan of the layout of her house, in the bottom right hand corner of the image you can see her bedroom which we will be filming in.

Garageband

To prepare myself for the editing stage when our music video has been filmed I wanted to get used to the software on the mac computer. I used garageband to see how to open music files and edit them and how to create my own music. Even though the song that we are using for our music video has already been made, if editing must be done to it then it wont be as challenging from this practice.

Sample Garageband by kerrythompson24

Location shots

We have taken pictures of our locations in order to see where we will be filming and how the scene will appear, these are essential for if any lights need to be added around the location as well as identifying the hazards around us.

These pictures show the bedroom scene which we will be filming in. It shows the TV in the shot as well as the bed fitting in with our storyboard.

Magazine Adverts

To gain inspiration for the magazine advert that I will be making, it is important that I study other current adverts, through this I can see the way the album is promoted and targeted to specific audiences so I can see what makes the album appealing.

This is the magazine advertisement for Ellie Goulding's album 'Lights'. It shows the same image as the front of her album so that the audience will recognise the album when in music stores. Below you can see the reviews given by recognised newspapers through the star ratings given by 'The Fly', 'The Times' and 'G magazine' these reviews entice the audience to buy the whole album without familarity of all the songs. The album name 'Lights' is reflected through Ellie's hair as it appears to be made out of sparks of light. The colours of the bright yellow lights contrast with the black background to make it stand out more, and the style of the music on the album is more likely to be that of a less upbeat tempo, as these are usually advertised through bright colours, a variety of different fonts and textures. The fact that Ellie's face takes up most of the advertisement denotes that she is the singer and her facial expression connotes mystery and innocence attracting a teenage or adult audience. The album cover has been photoshopped heavily which suggests that a flawless look is required of current artists, which is often heavily portrayed through the media, people aspire to look like these artists which look flawless and often advertisements may make it seem that through purchasing a particular album you almost become closer to looking or being the artist as they appear to be 'ideal' people to be.

This is another magazine advert in which The Killers' new album was being promoted. It has an almost old fashioned mosiac effect on the whole image which fits in with the album title "Day & Age' as it it has a prehistoric theme to it. There are no reveiws or a lot of text used to describe the album, which keeps the songs mysterious and appealable to a wide audience. The fact that 'The brand new album' is written suggests that the band have made many previous albums and are well known, and because it mentions a recently released single that is also on the album it entices those who enjoyed this track to buy the rest of the album. In the image we see a moon and what appears to be stars over land which looks prehistoric, this is a different theme to many other album covers usually portraying the individual singer or a picture of the band as a whole, the fact that the album has been advertised in this way may attract a wide audience as it connotes a new, different style.

This magazine advert is for Plan B again it holds a simple design which is very eye catching when looking through a magazine, straight away the audience is drawn to the bold font that tells us the name of the artist. This particular advert holds a simple pattern using the colours black, red and white with the same font but in different sizes. Again like the Ellie Goulding advert it shows various ratings given by newspapers and magazines influencing others to buy the album.  We get the impression that this particular theme on the album is quite jazzy or blues like as the old fashioned style picture of the artist denotes an Elvis type look. This is more likely to appeal to an older audience due to the old fashioned appeal it gives. The fact that the artist is looking to the left and we see the star ratings on this side highlights the importance of them and also his facial expression connotes a sense of mystery persuading people to find out more about the songs on the album. 

Minute Sheet

Minute Sheet 10

Costume and Props

As a girl group, we allocated a different colour to each member which we found was a similar trait in most group music videos. This also gives each member a unique identity in the video and prevents some of the similar scenes from appearing monotomous due to the fact there is always a new colour for the audience to be attracted to.
Props:
A HD Camera

Tripod

Four microphone stands

Telephone

Desk/Table

Chair

Bed

Pictures

Matches

Costume Design:
We all chose the outfit we are wearing based on the coloured dresses that we already own, for convenience and also because we know that even in different colours they are all similar and fit the conventions we need for our girl group. Below shows a picture of each of us in our dresses:
Emily- Green Chloe- Red Lauren- Blue Kerry- Yellow
We have decided to all wear black shoes so that our dresses stand out.

Risk Assessment

In order to film in our locations, we must make sure that a full risk assessment has been carried out of each place so that it is safe for the cast and crew to film in.Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment Template
Risk Assessment Template

Target Audience

Target Audience

Moodboard

When creating a music video, it is essential that a range of ideas have been explored so that only the best story lines are used in the video. To gain ideas on possible storylines as well as costume, props and settings I created a moodboard of the things that gave me inspiration. Some stem from simply a colour or a mood that I felt from looking at the pictures as well as others connoting a deeper meaning like friendship or togetherness. I used photoshop to create this in order to gain familiarity with the programme  which I will be using for my magazine advert and digipack.

Storyboard

Group Meeting

Minute Sheet

The Saturdays- Ego- Lyrics

We used to go together
Looking after each other
I thought that you were better,
Look at you

You used to be so laid back
You always kept it so cool
I loved you cos of all that, that's the truth

I don't think you know where your head is
I was always there to help you break the fall

(Chorus)
And now you wanna pretend that you're a superstar,
And now you wanna us to end what's taken you this far
Don't tell me that you're done as far as we go,
You need to have a sit down with your ego

When everyone's gone and you're all by yourself,
You know that you're gonna come to me for help
Don't tell me that it's time for going solo
You need to knock some sense into your ego

(Ego x4)

(Verse)
You act like you're on fire
Livin your delusion
You just need you to take you higher
Off you go

You can make the call
When your ready
I will not be there to help you break the fall

(Chorus)
And now you wanna pretend that you're a superstar,
And now you wanna us to end what's taken you this far
Don't tell me that you're done as far as we go,
You need to have a sit down with your ego

When everyone's gone and you're all by yourself,
You know that you're gonna come to me for help
Don't tell me that it's time for going solo
You need to knock some sense into your ego

(Verse)
And when it's time for you to come back down to
Where you started but we parted
I think you'll find that it is very hard to face
Reality's a simple thing

(Chorus)
And now you wanna pretend that you're a superstar,
And now you wanna us to end what's takin you this far
Don't tell me that you're done as far as we go,
You need to have a sit down with your ego

When everyone's gone and you're all by yourself
You know that you gonna come to me for help
Don't tell me that it's time for going solo
You need to knock some sense into your ego

These are the lyrics that as a group we will have to lip sync to, it is vital that we learn the words so that when filming we will be confident in lip syncing them and it allows for a lot more filming to be completed without having to stop and check the lyrics. We chose this song not only because we enjoyed the beat and the rhythm but also because of the lyrics, as a group we gathered together a selection of ideas that can be used in the narrative part of the video relating to the lyrics for example all of us being angry with our boyfriends.

Group Meeting

Meeting Minutes Sheet 30

Our song

Our peers voted on 'The Saturdays' 'Up' song as being the one we should choose to make our video with. We looked up several songs by 'The Saturdays' and decided to change it to 'Ego'. We decided that this would be better to use for our music video as it has a storyline within the lyrics that would lead to many ideas and narrative storylines for our video. The song is split up with each member getting the chance to sing one verse and the group are shown together singing in the chorus, which as a group we thought really appealed to the audience.

Group Proposal

Below is our group proposal, together we presented our ideas to our peers so that we could come to a conclusion about which one of our ideas to use for our music video.

Proposal

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Music Video Proposal

To decide what our final proposal will be, each member of our group will create a seperate one in which the class we are presenting them to will decide which one they prefer the most. Our class members will be the target audience of our video and so it is important to choose the best proposal so that the music from our group would be more likely to be sold.

Proposal

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Music Video Analysis

Above is the music video for Britney Spears' song 'Piece of me' created in 2007. It is a stereotype to the pop genre as you would expect to see a video that has the main focus on the singer and fast cut scenes to be shown throughout. It fits the 'pop' genre as you can see the outfits Britney wears as being provocative and voyeuristic. The relationship between lyrics and visuals correlate as at one part the lyrics are "Im Mrs.She's too big.Now she's to thin" and then the scene cuts to the paparazzi taking several pictures of her this could connote that what she is singing about reflects her real life situations. The scenes often cut to the beat which allows for many different scenes to be shown e.g the paparazzi, Britney dancing etc which holds various themes. There are often close up shots throughout of her body rather than her face when dancing, which is common in the 'pop' genre of music videos as they are often voyeuristic and try to sell the artist to the audience as well as the song. There isn't a reference to the notion of looking in the video at any objects in particular, possibly so our eyes are focused on the artist herself rather than other aspects to the video. We freqeuently see intertextual references as we see magazine covers and camera's of the paparazzi throughout showing the different media forms that Britney has publisising about her. This video is mostly performative as she is shown to frequently sing and dance on her own,however this is also a narrative storyline in which we see Britney escaping from the press and going to a club with what appears to be friends of hers.

Mock up Digipack

For our chosen song 'Don't know why' we must create a suitable digipack for the customers who would be buying our single. This is a mock up of one design that could possibly be used for our digipack, as it is a rough design, the actual digipack would include photographs of our actual faces and text including why and who we made the single for and how we came together as a group as if a real band would have created for them.

Mock up- digipak- Don't know why

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Song choice

To decide on the song that we will create our music video to we had to research different music videos and decide on the type of song in which a good storyline could be created for. I have decided to work in a group to create the actual music video as we decided together that to recreate a girl group it would enable us to pick from a wide variety of songs.
At first we thought of choosing this song:

However, as a group we decided we wanted a 'pop' type song but with not such a fast a beat, as this would make editing much more time consuming and may be harder to film. Although we are looking for a challenge when creating our music video we decided on a different song as in a group we all agreed it would be more suitable and we would enjoy recreating it more.We also found that the song we wanted to recreate would have to have a more distinct beat as well as it being slower so that when scene changes occur it will be easier to cut and create 'on the beat' editing.
This video is set in one scene and is a performative video, common in the 'pop' genre. There are mostly close up shots shown of the girls' faces and parts of their body when they are dancing, this is to show that the main focus of the video is on their performance. We see fast paced editing taking place throughout as it often cuts to one members face and then to another according to which one is dancing or singing the most. Although the scene is set in what appears to be a dark allyway the low key natural lighting appears on the bodies and faces of the band members, giving us a focus on them rather than the dancers in the background which aren't shown as much. All the members are shown to be very dominant, they are seen pushing away men as if they are in control of them and making them appear wanted and independant. Often it is men who appear dominant over women in music videos and this rejects Laura Mulveys theory that patriachal views on women in society are reflected through the media.

We also thought on using this song:

We came to the conclusion that only artist is shown in the video and as a group we didn't want just one member to be in the video and that different members with the same voice throughout would be confusing for an audience to watch or understand. It shows a narrative type video throughout as we see a story of the artist going to play Pool with a group of friends. The shots are often slow and unfrequent as they dont emphasise the artists' body and it isn't performative. There is low key lighting to reflect the natural scene she is in and to make it seem realistic possibly so the audience can relate to her. Arguably it doesn't fit the genre characteristics that you would expect to find when looking at a 'pop' music video.

We then thought of the girl group 'The Pussycat Dolls' as the wide variety of members would be more suitable as a group to recreate, however this song has gained so much recognition from the music video it would be very difficult to make better even with a different narrative or storyline. We found that our video would not be able to relate to the lyrics as we would not be able to afford expensive cars which would not reflect the 'glamourous' lifestyle portrayed in the video. We see many fast cuts in this video and the group is portrayed in a typical voyeuristic way that you'd expect to find in 'pop' music videos.


I thought that this new song from the girl group 'The Saturdays' would be an exciting video to remake, however we decided as a group that we'd prefer to recreate the other music video as this is a well known group and the other song we felt would be more fun to recreate as we enjoy listening to it more.


This song was the one our group had originally chosen to recreate, however we felt that another song had an easier beat to follow as well as lip-syncing being so challenging. The reason we did not choose a hip-hop style type song to recreate was due to the fast paced lip synching which would be very hard to perfect.

Music Videos

Investigating different music video styles and genres are important so that as well understanding the different shots, lighting, props and the way the music is edited I can see the difference between a music video media piece as opposed to a magazine advert or other form of advertising music.



This is a music video to Diana Vickers' song 'The Boy Who Murdered Love', I wanted to see how the video was made and so I tried as best I could to recreate the video, I had to consider different places to film,  lighting techniques, camera shots as well as matching the video footage to the actual track. I also re sang the song as if I was the artist and if you compare the official music video with the one I created you can see that each scene took a lot of time to plan mainly due to the props and costumes being made. I used windows movie maker to edit the video and I found that the software often crashed and became glitchy, which is why I have decided that for this years music video to make it using the mac computer software as I found through my AS course final cut pro easier to use and of a better quality with a wider variety of editing effects. Below is my attempt at recreating the music video.



Through my impersonations of Diana Vickers I found recreating her videos enjoyable and so decided to recreate her latest song 'My Wicked Heart', this time I made sure that the shots were exactly made at the same time as the official video and so when played simultaneously you can see when the scene changes the one in my parody also changes. Through recreating these music videos, I am looking forward to using professional software this year and to make a better quality video also through the camera I will be using as opposed to a cheap hand held one.





Through these music videos I have developed the hobby of impersonating people, this clip shows my Diana Vickers impression in a local talent show, through doing music videos it is clear that much inspiration can be gained.

Digipack

Digipak

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This shows the Digipack's that I have looked at for current music artists, as you can see it is important that they are advertised effeciently in order to appeal to the target audience and generate as many sales as possible, through this research I have found that it is important when creating my own Digipack to advertise is properly. I found that all current successful Digipack's followed a simple colour scheme and appealed mostly to a teenage audience.

This is an Eminem digipack in which I found particularly interesting as it holds more images of the artist himself compared to the others, it's also  a different style to the other digipaks I have looked at. It doesnt have a simple design and looks quite 'busy' as there are a lot of different fonts and gives the impression that the album was difficult to make as for example the image on the back shows the artist in the recording studio with his head in his hands, whereas in the other digipacks making music seems fun, exciting and relaxing through its simple designs. This digipack reflects the music Eminem produces as he talks about his struggles in life and this aspect makes his album very promotional and attracts a variety of audiences as we can all relate to hard struggles throughout our lives, perhaps it is digipacks like these that causes such popularity in the media and appeals to audiences, giving the artist a new theme and unique style.