Ella Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In general, our products predominantly develop on current conventions for both the indie-pop genre and music videos in general. Occasionally our music video as well as our album and website challenge these conventions. I have further demonstrated this by using Goodwin's Theory as a starting point to explain our use of individual conventions, and using examples from our products and influential products as references. I have chosen to use Goodwin's theory because i found it a useful tool for analysing music videos earlier on in the year.

1. Genre

"Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics"

Our video is of the indie-pop genre, and we have tried to make this clear throughout by using genre conventions regarding representation of the artist, styling, performance and the concept of our music video itself. The indie genre has fewer conventions than most other genres, maybe because it has been formed for an audience looking for something that was not previously offered within other genres, and that developed after the industry identified these unsatisfied uses and gratifications. (for various uses and gratifications) However, our music video is a being a hybrid of indie and pop, and so it takes occasional conventions from the pop genre, although considerably less so than in videos made for UK Top 40. 

A. A strong convention of pop music videos is several costume and make-up changes. This is a convention that we have used as you can see below, and an example of this in Lily Allen's "hard out here" (bottom image). However, in the urban dancer scenes, the lead singer is not in a different costume, she is in fact in the same outfit but how she imagines herself to look in the hospital set-up (i.e. make-up perfect, hair combed etc.). 

B. Another convention that we have used is having young artists to appeal to the young target audience. This is also appropriate to the indie genre, the artist is not a group of singers (such as little mix below), but a band playing instruments. However, we have definitely challenged a convention of both genres, by having an all girl group playing instruments. This is uncommon in all music videos, usually the singer is female and the band male, or it is an all female vocal group. 

C. A convention of pop music videos are that they are performance based videos (such as Single Ladies below). Indie music videos are often either full performance, narrative or concept (such as Breezeblocks below). This is a convention that we have developed, by combining our performance with concept.   

The hospital and dance set-ups are the
concept half of the video.

The performance set ups make up the other half of the video,
these are the projection and the grunge set-ups. 

D. Most pop videos have bold bright colours throughout, and vibrant colourful sets (see Little Mix - Wings below). This is one of the ways in which our video is indie as opposed to; we have challenged this pop convention. Our video perhaps fits the indie genre even more here; there is a strong grunge feel to one performance set up, and the second has a projection of films and TV in the background, something which has not been done before and challenges convention. 

This picture shows 4 stills from our projection set up. The films projected are (clockwise from top left) Girl, Interrupted, Fight club, Fight club, Kill Bill. 

2. Links

" There is a relationship between lyrics, music and visuals."

We have definitely used this convention frequently within our music video. We have tried to be innovative and suprising with our usage; sometimes the relationship emphases a lyric whereas other times it is contradictory, even sarcastic. This is particularly appropriate for a concept music video, because it means that different members of the audience, watching to fulfil various needs, will pick up on different links and interpret the music video differently. 




(This is a recording of a power-point presentation using Camtasia. I chose to use these softwares
because neither Slide Share nor Prezi properly displayed GIF images.)

There are also links between the music and the action in our video. For example, in the bridge of the song the pace slows down, and it is in this bit that the lead singer sees the dancer the most, there are cross dissolves between the clips and the sequence there feels more dream like. This is juxtaposed by the choruses, in which the fast paced editing and strong actions reflect the nature of the music. 

3. Visual Hooks and Visual Style

"The demands of the record label include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist (visual hooks) and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)."

N.B. These are our four different set-ups

From left to right: Projection, Hospital, Grunge, Dancer/Urban/Brick Lane

This is a convention that we definitely used a lot throughout our music video. There were many more close-ups of Arianna than there were of the other band, yet motifs such as glitter ran through-out. We also used beauty shots of Arianna in all 4 of the set ups. However, there was a difference between the connotations and the effect on the beauty shot in each. In the projection and grunge set-ups, the beauty shots were for traditional reasons; to present the artist and to show her individual style and emotions whilst singing in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. However, in the hospital scenes, the beauty shots used challenge convention. They are used to connote the opposite of beauty; to depict the main character as desperate, crazy and erratic, to demonstrate the pain and confinement she is experiencing, dependent on the individual interpretation of the viewer. Finally, in the urban dancer scenes, the lead singer is in the same costume as before. However, her make-up is perfect and she looks considerably more stylised. These beauty shots depict her how she imagines herself to look. 

These are examples of conventional beauty shots used throughout
our video in the performance set-ups

These shots are similar to conventional beauty shots, but the effect
is different

An motif example of a motif that runs throughout our products is the blank facial expressions. Whilst these occur less so in the video, this is strong iconography on the album cover, and this is mirrored on the website as well as in some promo-shots.

4. Voyeurism

"There is frequent reference to the notion of looking, and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body"

The is a convention that in some ways we have used, and in other ways we have challenged. 
The audience very much are taken into a new environment and concept during the 3 minutes of the song. They are invited in by the direct address of eye contact and singing by the lead singer. This leads the audience to either relate or feel opposed to her more, or to become offset by the atypicality of the situation, and thereafter either feel empathy or opposite emotions towards her. Her constant eye contact is then notably ended every time the dancer has appeared. She no longer has interest in communicating with the audience, but instead has become infatuated with the boy in the urban setting. Whilst it is never made clear who he is or even if he is real or not, he never returns the look to her, which makes him seem more imaginary and unattainable. 

Voyeuristic treatment of the male body was something we definitely wanted to avoid and challenge. The music industry itself is currently challenging this convention of the male gaze (Laura Mulvey). An example of a music video actively doing this is Lily Allen's hard out here. In this video she directly confronts the over-sexualisation of female artists in the music industry through the satirical concept of the video. Whilst we do not actively challenge this stereotype anywhere near as much, the female body has not at all been over-sexualised in the video. The lead singer is an active subject  and it is clear that she is in a struggle to control her freedom, and that she desperately wants to make her own decisions and do things on her terms. 

The notion of looking is a convention developed in the projection set-up, in which there is a screen within a screen but the audience see clips from pop culture that they already recognise, instead of the artist appearing multiple times in the screen like in many pop videos in which this convention is used. The projection reel is posted below in references. 

5. References

"There are often inter-textual references (to films, TV programmes, music videos etc.)"

The majority of the inter-textual references in our music video come from the projection that is in the background of one of the performance set-ups. The projection is used to give a selection of different connotations, mainly relating to the hospital. It is intended to raise questions for the audience: why she is there, should she be there?  Not everyone will pick up on every reference, which means that the audience will interpret the video in a wide variety of different ways. This is called polysemics (Stuart Hall's theory).  It is good for our music video because we do not have an intended interpretation, our video is a concept music video.

 

6. Performance, narrative and concept

"Videos are either performance based, narrative based, or concept-based."

Our video is concept-based, as demonstrated by the scenes of the hospital and the dancer. After having come up with this concept, we were told to look at the video for This Is Gospel by Panic! At The Disco. From this we took influence for the concept of our video. It gave us the idea to try and make the doctors very faceless and intimidating, the only clue of their identity being the glitter make-up which is the same as that on the band in the projection set-up. The projection set-up demonstrates that our video also has performance aspects to it. This is not unusual for music videos, so I believe that we have used this convention. 

Vernallis' Theory

Vernallis' theory can be used to explain the technical conventions used in our music video. 

• As Vernallis' theory suggests, our video does not use linear or continuity editing. However, there are some sequences in which the sequences are more structured to time, in order to explain the concept of the video more clearly for the audience
• Jump cuts have been used often in our video, to offset the viewer and to keep a fast pace.
• The pace of our editing is generally quick, however we developed this convention in the bridge in which the editing pace slows dramatically (as Goodwin's theory suggests the actions are reflecting the music)
• As is conventional, in our video there is a wide variety of different camera shots, the vast majority of which are moving. 
• The diegesis is revealed very slowly: the dancer only appears in the second verse, and even then the concept/slight narrative is left up to individual interpretation.

Further technical conventions

The lighting in our music video challenges the conventions of pop music videos in which the lighting is usually high key, soft white light (or coloured light for backgrounds). Our performance set-ups are lit very differently to this. Furthermore, the infinite white light in the hospital scene also challenges convention. Infinite lighting is not uncommon in pop videos, but it usually has much more playful connotations than our representation of a hospital, such as in Jessie J's Price Tag video. Having said this, we did take inspiration for our lighting for this set-up from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance Video, which is a pop video. Another big influence for lighting and mise-en scene though was Panic! at the Disco's video for This Is Gospel, who are a pop-punk artist. However, overall I believe that our lighting is more similar to that of indie or alternative videos. 

A gif of a clip from Panic! at the Disco's This is Gospel

A gif of a clip from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance

Something very unconventional throughout our campaign is how we never mention the lead singers name. We have done this in order to raise enigma and to make her seem more unpredictable and exciting for audiences.  

In conclusion, we have used, developed and challenged conventions so that our target audience will interpret our would interpret our video in a variety of different ways. This is very likely to happen because we have a large ranging target audience, who all consume music for different reasons, and for varied uses and gratifications. We want our audience to be left with questions, as we feel this creates enigma and a buzz around the artist. I think that this is suitable for our video as concept videos conventionally offer lots of different interpretations. This is augmented  by the fact that people interpret videos in different ways anyway, as Stuart Hall suggests, we cannot create a product will only one possible interpretation, we may only lead audiences to take that interpretation. 

Album cover

We took influence from this Strokes album. We liked the way in which is raised enigma and was an eye-catching image yet was ridiculously simple. 

However, this type of album cover could not work for two reasons. Firstly, it would not properly connote the genre of the band's music: pop albums conventionally feature the artist on the front whereas an image like this is purely alternative/indie. Secondly, it would not fit the brief as it would not fully establish the artist identity seeing as this is a debut album. 

(This GIF image shows the development in terms of conventions used
 in the album cover on the front and back)

On the whole, we stuck to the conventions of the album cover. There is eye-catching imagery on the front and back covers, and a motif runs throughout of water: this is synergy. The album name and artist name are on the front cover as well as on the spine, and the track listing, institutional text and bar and QR codes are on the back. The imagery is representative of the indie genre. There is a strong colour scheme of white, purple and red. 

There is also a theme running throughout of blank expressions. The inside fits to convention of the album revealing more to fans who buy the physical copy, by displaying the difference between the perfected band, and the stripped down band. 

Website

Early on in the project, I analysed some websites to get an idea as to what the conventions were, what works well and what does not. Below is an annotated screenshot of the strokes website. 

We have used similar conventions in our website. 

• Social media links
• Options to subscribe to newsletter
• Based on album
• Singles can be played
• Merchandise available, which can be added to cart and purchased
• Consistent colour scheme and fonts
• Banner and menu remain consistent across all pages

In summary, we have used conventions with our website, rather than challenging or developing them. 

Ella Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is on the whole very effective, because artist identity is established and there is strong synergy running throughout. We have a fully integrated cross-platform campaign, which is incredibly important for artists today. As well as this, all of these platforms work together to construct the brand consistently and synergetically. The main artist images we wanted to get across throughout the whole of our marketing campaign are the band as a new indie break through artist, and the lead singer as over-the-top and uncontrollable; overshadowing the rest of the band completely.  However, I believe that there is definite room for improvement within all three products. 

We took influence from bands such as Blondie, Florence and the Machine, and Ian Dury and The Blockheads, who all have a very strong lead. 

From left to right: Ian Dury performing, a Florence and the Machine
 Promoshot, and a crop from a Blondie album cover

It was very difficult to find girl bands similar to ours, as it is unconventional for all instrument playing band members to be women. For this reason, I researched Beyonce's marketing campaign, as she is also a strong female artist. 

Beyonce's Marketing Campaign

A selection of stills from 4 of her
new music videos

Beyonce recently released a fifth, self-entitled album: Beyonce. This album was secretly produced in order for a surprise release, and by not being at all leaked, massive buzz was suddenly generated and the entire campaign went viral. 

The album has been referred to as her visual album, as there are 17 videos for just 14 songs. The medium of music videos has been used to promote the album, which give considerable insight into the messages intended behind the music and the lyrics of this secret album. Furthermore, Beyonce has used this shock and buzz generated to help to enforce her new branding as a "modern day feminist" and subsequently the album as a feminist album. 

The campaign effectively plays on the audience's needs and wants; 30 second teasers are available for every video, but the whole song must be purchase from iTunes, the links of which are on the website. The record company have made sure that there are very few leaks or illegal downloads available, and the songs are not even available on Spotify. This maximises buzz as well as profits. In this way, the website becomes the hub of the campaign, and generates much more traffic that it may otherwise do. By drawing audiences to the website, they can then attract them with other social media links, content and teasers. 

Influences that we have taken from Beyonce's campaign:

• Establishing artist identity must be constant and evolving and most importantly clear to audiences throughout any marketing campaign
• Teasers work effectively for identifying which audiences your artist appeals to. Our website now automatically plays a 30 second sound clip of the single we created the music video to, encouraging audiences to pre-order to album. 
• Music videos can generate buzz, if they present questions to audiences and make them want to continue either listening to the song or album, or interacting with the campaign. We have tried to do this with our video; it is a concept video and we have purposely left many questions unanswered and many different interpretations possible, in the hope that this encourages audiences to go further than just watch the video, but to buy the single, and buy the album. 
• The website must be very strongly linked to the campaign, and whilst the music videos have less of a link, all three must work in synergy to create and reinforce artist image.

Our Marketing Campaign (in chronological order)

Logo

This was the first stage of creating our artist image, and something that we knew would be used throughout our marketing campaign, and so we took great care in creating our band logo. We wanted to stray away from girly pop connotations to really emphasize the indie nature of or band, and so decided to go for and urban and edgy logo. Our initial idea was simply "warped grafitti".  However, this looked dull and so we decided to shape it into a circle, as this would fit in our bass drum anyway. To give the logo more depth, we used a dinosaur clipping mask on the text to add depth to the image, in a subtle way. We finally added a circle around the logo and erased some of the text to make the it more cool and edgy. 

This is the final logo.

Facebook Page

After this we created a Facebook page, so that the small audience who had heard of the band by word of mouth could be kept interested and engaged. We posted teasers on our page along with updates as to what the audience could look forward to in the future and when, along with what stages of production we were at. 

See the full page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaos-Killed-the-Dinosaurs/412357298891700?fref=ts

Facebook was very important for our demographic of 15-45 year olds (combined primary and secondary target audiences).  48% of 18-24 year olds check Facebook as soon as they wake up. This age group are the most prolific users of the social networking site and a key segment of of target audience. Furthermore, the 35 years + audience is rapidly expanding and now makes up 30% of the entire database. This means that Facebook was a very effective tool for reaching our audience. 

This is our "official" band Facebook page. (click to enlarge)

Our facebook page also had links to twitter and instagram and the website. 

Twitter Page

Twitter again was a very important platform for us as the most rapidly growing social network. We used our twitter page for similar reasons to Facebook. Our twitter account was not our artists tweeting, but rather as the record label tweeting on behalf of the band. We did this to try and maintain the anonymous and enigmatic nature of the unnamed lead singer. Again, we had links to Instagram, Facebook and the website from here. 

See the full page at: https://twitter.com/CKDofficial

We then went on to make our website, album cover and music video. Below I have discussed how well these work individually and synergistically as part of our marketing campaign. 

Website

Album Cover

Music Video Screening

In order to get feedback and to finally showcase our music videos, we organised a screening for them. To raise awareness of this I made a Facebook event. 

After this we released this the teaser trailer that I and two others made to the event and on YouTube, as well as on my own social media pages. This raised some buzz about the event and encouraged people to come. 

We then made the following teaser posters, and put these up around school. 

Synergy (& release dates)

One of the main reasons for why I think that the establishing of our artist identity was successful is due to the synergy across the different products and platforms. For instance, the logo, which connotes us as and urban and edgy, indie band, is synergetically featured across most media.

Synergy and Links Between Social Media 

This video shows all of the social media used for our marketing campaign, and how they cross -link together. 



Combination of Products

Whilst our music video strongly relays the images associated with artist identity, it is a stand alone product from the website and album cover who link together closely - this is very conventional because websites are often based on the album cover. An example of a campaign that has done this is Lady Gaga's. 

There are still links through all of our products though. For example, the band colours of black and red run throughout all texts, but the website and album cover focus more on a white and red/purple theme, due to the design and styling of the album. The diagram below shows the synergy between the album and the website. 

With all of our products, we have marketed Arianna more than the rest of the band. Furthermore, she does everything slightly different to them, such as wearing a red dress when they are in black, or having sequins on her face as well as glitter. Her overshadowing and dominance is also clear from the music video, the majority of shots feature the whole band or just her, with the occasional single shot of the musicians included for the fans that want to get a better knowledge of each members individual personality. Whilst I think that this message is clear, I think we could have gone further with this in all aspects, such as changing her hair styles to something more bold, or making her gestures wilder and crazier. I think that if we had done this it would have made our campaign more effective on the whole. 

Ella Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been very useful throughout our project, and we have used it at many key stages to see what we can change and what is successful with our target audiences. Our target audiences are as follows:

Primary audience: UK 15 - 45 year old females
Secondary audience: UK 15 - 45 year old males
Tertiary audience: Foreign, non English language speaking *

*We initially planned to reach this audience, as we were aware that the pop-genre and its spin offs are very popular especially in Europe. However, as our project developed, we came to realise that this was unrealistic, Revolutionary Records are a small, independent record label, and would not finance the marketing of the band overseas. The record company would focus on getting mainstream UK audience appeal before investing in expanding overseas. Also, I think it would be more worthwhile trying to break into the American market if the band were successful in the UK; from there the European market would follow.

Feedback

We got feedback throughout all stages of the project, in the following ways:

• Questionnaires handed out at a screening
• Focus groups and Interviews
• Teacher and peer feedback
• Online responses to a survey shared via social media
• Informal conversations with friends and family

While we were still in production of the music video, it was very important for us to get feedback in particular from our target to see how we could make changes that would increase audience appeal. The following video shows the difference between our initial edit and the feedback we received on it, and the changes we then made. 

Feedback on Band Name

Brainstorming our band name was something that took a lot of time, as we were aware that it is the first thing that most audiences will hear in reference to the band, and so we had to think carefully about our connotations. We wanted to connote the lead singer as very over the top, much more dominant than the rest of the group and so came up with the name "B*tch and the Band". Through this name we would connote the lead's overdramatic nature, and "___ and the ____" is often the band name format used when there is one strong lead in the group. Furthermore, we wanted to take back the word b*tch and associate it with the connotations that we had chosen, rather than the insulting implications it usually carries. Lily Allen has done this with her recent video - Hard Out Here (below).

However, after receiving feedback, we decided that there was too much of a risk that we would cause offense and potentially alienate some of our target audience: "crikey, that's a bit much!". Also, unlike in Lily Allen's video, we are not directly satirizing the way in which it came to receive its connotations, and so the chance of audiences taking offence is even more likely. In Lily Allen's video there is very little offence likely to be taken due to the context given by the satirical feminist nature of song. 

Screening

To get some feedback and to have an opportunity to show our friends the music videos our year group had made, we organised a screening of the music videos. Myself and two others made a trailer for the event in order to generate some excitement around the event and to encourage people to come.The screening was a very successful way of getting qualitative feedback. We handed out questionnaires to a random selection of people. Here is a sample of what they thought of the finished music video. 

What did you enjoy most about this music video?

• Unusual storyline
• The running shots at the end
• The crazy mental institution bit
• The asylum bit. She went crazy when the music picked up 

This feedback correlates to the feedback we had on survey monkey: the hospital scenes seemed to appeal to the audience the most. 

When asked about the relevance of the dancer, and what happened in the video, these were the responses:

• The dancer symbolised her freedom and lost hope
• It was about the girl breaking free from the asylum/conformity
• He was a love interest
• It was about her pyschological problems/mental state deteriorating
• The dancer was an ex-patient at the hospital
• She imagined/had a dream that she met the dancer
• He was a hallucination
• He is an angel

I think that this varied feedback shows that the concept nature of the video was successful, people made different interpretations due to the way in which they viewed our representations within the video: this is polysemics. However, some people responded with "I don't understand the storyline" or "The dancer appeared randomly". This is something I would improve on if remaking the video: the dancer should be introduced more gradually and the concept nature made clearer. 

We also got some general feedback that was less positive:

• The steps to the story didn't follow well
• The band didn't feel connected as members
• Chaos did not kill the dinosaurs, it was an asteroid. 

This feedback has been very useful. I think that whilst we were unified in costume and make-up, we could have definitely improved our unity as a band in shots by having more interactions together. I also think that our band name may have too niche an appeal to be good. "Chaos killed the dinosaurs" is a quote from the 80s film "Heather's", and whilst this may strongly appeal to those who recognised the quote, seemed "random" to audience members who did not understand. I think that we should have chosen a band name appeal to a younger demographic; half of our target audience were not alive when the film was made. 

Online Survey

Using survey monkey, an online web tool, we were able to get people to feedback on our video. We shared the link through social media, via both the band page and our own pages. 

(click to enlarge)

This was probably the most effective way for us to get qualitative data; participants were anonymous and therefore more likely to be honest, and we got over 50 responses, making our results more reliable. 

Average Rating: 8.7
I was very happy with this feedback! To me this means that we have generally met the needs of our audience. 

This again was feedback that I was pleased with. As a band member I do feel that I tried my hardest, although if I were to do this project again I would try to be more relaxed and confident. In our last survery question, What could be improved? "Band performance" came up a few times. Also, many respondents stated that they would have liked to have seen more of the band "so we get a sense of their individual personalities". Although we wanted to focus on the lead singer, and connote the band as her support, I think that we should have included more band shots to gratify the needs of the more musical fans. However I do not think that the lead singer's performance could have been improved and the audience generally agreed, with comments such as "[the lead singer's] acting was incredible". 

Interview with Secondary Audience

Interviewee Profile:

• Male
• 30s
• Guitar and Piano Teacher

This feedback is feel is very positive; we successfully communicated the concept of the video to audience in just one viewing: "the girl is crazy or people think she is". However, I think that it may not be very clear that the video is concept, and that we have intended for people to take different interpretations, as when speaking to the target audience, some seem unsure as to if what they are saying "is right".

I think this demonstrates that we have successfully appealed to the target audience; on a technical as well as creative level. Something I would take into account though, is the pace of the editing. Whilst it is a convention to have quick cuts, and non linear editing, much of the feedback from the older age group in our target audience has been that the video is too quick, or hard to keep track of. I think that due to the complex nature of the concept of our video, we should have slowed down the pace in the beginning to establish the concept further, and allowed the length of the hospital shots and dancer shots to go on slightly longer.  

Focus group of Primary and Secondary Audience

•  From this interview I have learnt that audiences like something unique in music videos, and some members also like concentrating and making interpretations.
• They also fed back that they did not pick up on the films being projected in one of the performance set-ups. This lead to an interesting debate on how much each person read into the music video. It was said by one interviewee that he believed men did not look for meaning or unanswered questions, rather viewed the interview as a whole. Conversely, a female interviewee stated that she enjoyed looking for the deeper meaning. This lead me to think about the different uses and gratifications audiences may have when watching a music video. In this instance, whilst males are looking for simple entertainment, female viewers may deeper look into the music video in order to identify with characters, or for escapism of daily life. 

Feedback On Our Album Cover

We got feedback on this throughout the duration of the production. Firstly, we planned to use rope and chains as a motif throughout the video and album cover. Feedback from our peers and teachers suggested that this was a good idea, because it the album cover would very strongly connote what we wanted it to with regards to artist image, and Arianna being the lead. However, we changed this after doing further research when we decided we wanted to conventionally separate our album and music video. Here is our final Album Cover, and feedback from someone from both our primary and secondary audiences

Primary Audience



Secondary Audience

When asked what made him think of the suicide connotations, this was his response:

What I have learned:

• There is a strong need to be careful with subjects such as suicide, and we did not think of these possible connotations. This, linked linked to the hospital scenes could alienate members of the audience who find it offensive. 
• The album reinforces the genre of our band, the alternative, indie side to it. In this was I think that we have been successful. 

Feedback on Website

I asked a sample from our primary target audience what they thought of the website:

• Navigation is very straightforward
• The visuals are showcased very well but I don't like the dotted lines on the homepage
• It is very interactive, I particularly like the twitter feed on the side of the homepage
• I would like to know more about the band - how did they come to form?
• I like the opening pop-up page, it links well to the album and general theme

When asked about the album name, respondents correctly identified the album name as "I". 

I think that this is very representative feedback. I am very happy that our usability and interactivity are good as these were main focuses for our group. I also think that we have successfully raised awareness of the album with the website. I would agree though that at some parts the aesthetics of the website can be improved. Also, through audience feedback in general, I have learnt that the audience are very keen to learn more about the band; they like to go beyond just watching the video once, and like to get "insider knowledge". This is the main thing that I would bare in mind if I remade the website or music video.  

Ella Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used new media technologies and web 2.0. considerably throughout all stages of this project. Whilst some were new to me and some I had used many times before, I felt that all were very useful and were something that, in general, our marketing campaign depended upon.  

Research and Planning

We made a facebook messaging group so that we could all stay in contact on the same thread. This proved very useful when planning shoots or discussing any issues or problems that arose. 

At the beginning of the project, we presented our basic ideas with regards to artist identity, music video and album art to our class, in order to gain feedback to get feedback on whether or not these proposals would be successful. In order to do this we used online website "Prezi", to make a presentation that was more interactive that the software we already had i.e. powerpoint. The prezi is linked below, and we accompanied it with this handout.



Following this, we gave a technical presentation, to explain how we planned to film and light etc. This presentation was made on powerpoint, and we presented this to the class and uploaded it to the blog via Slide Share. Here is our technical presentation. It further explains the technology we planned on using.

Technical presentation from aliced1996

GoPro
In the technical presentation, we mention the use of the GoPro camera. We planned to use this over the bridge of the song, to make the dancer seem more surreal after she has just been injected. The GoPro would have been good for this because it can shoot in higher numbers of FPS which meant that we would be able to slow the scenes. Furthermore, it is very durable and can be attached to pretty much anything. We shot some footage in which we attached the GoPro to the dancer's chest. For this, we downloaded the GoPro app for iPhone and Android onto our mobile phones. This meant that when we shot these scenes, we could watch what the camera was recording on our phones as it was being transmitted by wifi. 

Although we did not end up using this footage, because it looked very different to what we shot on the Sony HVR V1E, I found this a great experience of using new media technologies through both the hardware of the innovative camera itself, and the software of the app on a smart phone. 

Construction

QR Code

Whilst researching album art conventions, I realised that next to the bar code was often a QR code. These codes can be read by smart phone cameras and then provide a link, most often to a website. I used the website qrstuff.com to create our QR code, which I made link to our website, as this is the hub of our campaign. However, it is useful to know that if we ran something like a facebook competition, I could now make a QR code link to the facebook page, or an iTunes page. 

Our QR code (you can scan it it works!)

Wix

To create our website, we used Wix, a free Java based site for creating your own website. This had the great advantage of meaning that my group and I did not have to learn how to code HTML. Furthermore, Wix often had pre-designed features that we wanted to use, such as colour changes when the mouse scrolls over text, something that again would have taken us a long time to have learnt to code using HTML. A disadvantage of Wix, however, is that it only has a certain number of options and features, and so our creativity was limited to a certain extent. For some features, such as the social media feeds, we had to download widgets which were HTML coded as Wix did not provide these as an option. Overall, Wix was a very good web technology for our project and served our needs well. However, in the future I would be interested in learning more about HTML, due to the freedom and possibilities that this provides. 

Hardware used 

To shoot the majority of our shots, we used a Sony HVR-V1E. This is because the camera is very versatile, and has a wide range of settings for aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc. The main reason for us using this camera, was because it could pick up the projection well, unlike the 5D. The adjustable shutter speed in particularly was another advantage of selecting this camera, as we knew that we would want to slow many of the shots, particularly for the dancer, and so we would need to shoot these in 50 FPS or higher. Another benefit of using this camera was that it enabled us to do smooth focus pulls very easily.

However, for the opening shot, we needed the F-stop to be very small so that we could do a focus pull from the singers hands to her face. The V1 was not as good for this as we would have hoped as the focus pull was not noticeable enough; too much was in focus. For this reason, the opening two shots were shot on a Canon 5D mark II, on which we achieved this focus pull with very shallow focus.


We shot three of the set-ups (hospital, projection and performance) in the school studio. We used the studio lights for each of these set-ups, in all three of which we faced a different challenge. In the projection set-up we had to light the band without making the colours in the projection fade away. For the grunge set-up we had to light not only the band but a large set in different coloured light. In the hospital set-up we had to create infinite white lighting. We did this by lighting the cyclorama in the studio with as many lights as we had available, and turning them all up to create full intensity. We then put sheets of paper over the metal arch between the cyclorama and the white flooring to eliminate shadows and create infinite white! Finally, we lit the bed and the lead singer. 

The unlit cyclorama!

Website and Social Media

Beyonce's recent campaign not only influenced our decisions with regards to marketing, but it had an influence on how we have used certain new media technologies. 

• Confirmed website as "hub" of campaign
• We put a 30 second teaser sound clip that automatically plays as you open the webpage
• Changed our banner bar from buttons to plain text as hers does
• Also had album teaser pop up before getting to main home page

New Media in Our Website Homepage from latymermedia

This video below also shows all of the social media links that we used. 



We also took influence from Lorde's website. On her homepage there was bold text that had images of herself from various shoots coming through where the text appeared. We created a similar effect with our teaser image, the first pop up on the website. This image was made using the album cover image attached with a clipping mask to the I symbol. 

The teaser page itself was made by creating a new web page, as it was not possible to create pop-ups on Wix. This was one its limitations, but it was something that we managed to work our way around it. The teaser web page, once clicked, links to the main homepage, and so in this way the initial web page acts just like a pop up. 


Adobe Photoshop

Whilst most of what we did on photoshop I had seen before, some was new to me. The main new tool that I used was the "Skin Smoothing Action". This was a tool enabled that blurred and perfected skin on photos. We used this most for the dry shots in the inside cover, in which the band are meant to appear stripped down but also made up, and perfected. 

Adobe Premiere Pro

This was not software that was new to me, however we used the software differently in this project. First of all, when editing, we lay down a performance bed, from which we cut in between so that we only had to lipsync each shot once. Our grading was also very different to that of film openings or TV trailers: it was much more dramatic. See the video below for the changes in grade from the original shot to the final grade of it. 





 More interesting though, is how we edited the dancer scenes. Towards the end, we had to make the dancer disappear gradually, both through running and increasing the pace of editing, but also by fading him in and out. In this final shot, the camera was static and we filmed the empty street first. We then filmed the dancer running, and intercut between the two to make him flash in and out. Finally, we added a zoom onto both of these shots. See the shot below. 

We also time warped shots by cutting them up and changing the speeds. This was particularly noticeable in the shot from which this still has been taken, which made it one of the most memorable shots of the video. The echo effect is also visible on this still, again creating emphasis in addition to that provided by the slow motion.

 Adobe After Effects

Another shot in which we used techniques that I had not seen before was the shot below. We needed to introduce the idea of the dancer disappearing earlier on, and he does so in this shot. Again in this, the camera was static, and we filmed two separate shots of the actors running. We then cut out the lead singer frame by frame, and placed this shot above the shot of the dancer. To make the dancer fade at the end, we cross dissolved the two shots. 

Evaluation

Throughout the evaluation I have explored new media technologies in order to present my answer. Some of my favourites are Camtasia (a screen recording tool), surveymonkey, imgflip (a gif generator) and slide share. I hope that they have made my evaluation enjoyable!