Music Video

Digipak

Website

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

Media task 1 from francesca_biondani

Task 2 _ How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Star Image

What is Dyer’s main point about ‘star images’?

Richard Dyer’s star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that whilst stars are constructed to be realistic, they serve a purpose: the make money out of their audience (who respond to various elements of the star’s personality).

1. The star as a construction

The images of the artists that we are shown through advertising, television, magazines, etc, have been created by their management.

2. The star as a commodity

The star has been constructed by their record label to appeal to their target audiences. Certain music magazines feature bands or artists on the front cover as their image becomes the commodity that will attract the target audience to buy the music magazine. Artists such as Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have refused many record deals as they don’t want their image to be controlled. Therefore all their success is theirs.

3. The star as an ideology

This is what the band or artist represents and believe in, they could make this fit the target audience to gain a larger audience. The spice girls represent girl power and friendship.

Identify some real stars with similar images to that which you have attempted to construct.

MØ and Bishop Briggs

We have attempted to recreate Bishop Briggs’ alternative star image, retaining her fashion sense (which has become a large aspect of her general image) and cool persona. Similarly, we have likened our artist to that of MØ given her role as an empowering young woman, whose rebellious and anti-authoritarian attitude has greatly resonated with our target audience. She is highly individual and has a very eccentric and unconventional style which has been reflected in our own artists’ star image.

What are the key meanings of your star image?

Youthfulness and Rebellious

These two aspects are important values of our artists’ star image as they greatly appeal to our target audience and help to market our artist. Among female solo artists, the values of youthfulness and and rebellion are highly popular, and in representing these meanings in our artists’ star image we helping to identify her as a personality.

How does your video construct these star meanings?

Our video presents our artist as youthful and rebellious through a number of different means.

For instance, her association with a group of both youthful males and females makes the distinction that she is a young artist who involves herself with likeminded individuals. This helps our target audience to relate with our artist as it effectively portrays her to be like any ordinary young girl, having fun with her friends. The inclusion of male friends alongside female friends possibly also denotes a further idea of promiscuity which is often seen hand-in-hand with being young, supporting sexuality among youths. Through her actions with her friends, we see her appreciation of what it is to be young, and the celebration of the energy and excitement that young people possess. The costumes worn by this group are individual, alternative and appealing to our target audience. They are contemporary and thus relevant to the youth of today, and are considered to be highly fashionable. Equally, they serve to reflect the unique genre of music that is indie-pop. The quick paced and energetic editing of our video serves to reflect such qualities in what it is to be young and creates a fun-loving, restless atmosphere to the video, supporting such a value within our artist. 

Her role as a rebel and anti-authoritarian attitude is shown through aspects of the video such as spray painting the abandoned house and skate boarding through its corridors. In both of these cases, the actions are often considered to be recalcitrant and reckless, and are regularly associated with youthful delinquency. By showing other members of her group to also be partaking in such activities, it supports the notion that these actions are widespread among the youth of today. They are acts of rebellious considering the fact that, especially in the case of spray painting, they deface property and undermine the respect of ownership and correct behaviour. It’s potential to be called ‘graffiti’ stresses the illicit nature of the act, and thus highlights our artist’s role as an anarchic young lady. Alike with how the costumes portray our star image as youthful, certain accessories also support her role as a rebel, such as the use of a choker, ripped tights, and large golden hooped earrings as these generally have connotations of the wearer having high amounts of attitude and being generally disrespectful towards people in positions of authority and their property. Our use of camera as being square-on can be seen as confrontational and direct, which emphasis our artist as being a rebel given its support in establishing her aggressive and strong attitude nature. By including a number of effects within the editing of our video, we subliminally support the quality of our artist being rebellious by going against traditional conventions, and creating visually striking images in which the world is distorted. This attracts target audiences as it is an interesting spectacle to observe.

How does your digipak construct these star meanings?

Our digipak presents our artist as youthful and rebellious through a number of different means.

The digipak’s colourful marble background successfully constructs our artist’s image as youthful given its vibrant and bright nature — which are qualities of what it is to be young. Similarly, by having our artist’s image upon the front cover of our digipak, we are showcasing her youthful appearance which attracts audiences given her beauty and reliability. By having her in black and white in contrast to the colourful background, it creates an aspect of photo-montage and associates the cover with collages which is a fun and youthful way of presenting artwork. The emphasis on the colour green used in our digipak is a direct relation to its relevance in our video, which thus offers a coherency between the two products. The colour green is often associated with freshness and fertility, thus serving to further support our artist’s youthful star image.

The pose, positioning and facial expression of our artist as square-on, with her chin-up and head held high, creates the impression that she is empowered and unafraid. This constructs her image as a rebel given the departure from traditional conventions of solo female artists in which they are sexualised and objectified. It resonates with our contemporary target audience given the role of feminism in modern day society. The appearance of a choker and hooped earrings once more support her role as a rebel given its connotations of being worn by those with attitude, and the fact that the image is in black and white aids in lessening her naive nature and instead further supports her role as a cool and courageous rebel.

How does your homepage construct these star meanings?

Our website presents our artist as youthful and rebellious through a number of different means.

Similar to our use of colour in the digipak, the colour green and vivacious marble background also make an appearance on the website, thus reaffirming our artist’s youth in a similar way. We used a simplistic design as its simple-to-use navigation serves to encourage use from a youthful target audience and the inclusion of a moving image (the gif) makes use of technology and is visually striking, which also attracts a youthful target audience given their enjoyment of such technology and originality. Equally, considering the gif shows our artist being sassy and confident, it aids in constructing her star image as a rebel. The different backgrounds, although of a similar colour scheme, used on each subpage keep the website fresh and original, which also helps in constructing our star image as youthful. The popups make the website easy to use and also interactive which once more helps create a star image of youthfulness as it means our audience are able to participate more and are thus more interested.

Audience

Who is the target audience for your promo?

From researching similar artists to our own, we discovered that the target audience for our promo is 18-25 year olds of both genders.

How do each of the three products communicate with / appeal to this audience segment?

The three products communicate and appeal with our target audience through a number of different ways, predominantly through our artist’s youthful star image as they are able to relate with them. For example, in the video, the cluster of young people, youthful activities (such as spray painting and skate boarding), stylish costumes and cool music all serve to be the epitome of what it is to be young, and as such create a benchmark for consumers to aspire to. Similarly, the rebellious undertones of the video resonate as popular with such an audience as people regularly connect with “the bad girl/boy”. In terms of the digipak and website, the vibrant and bright colours are youthful and appreciated by such a target audience, and the simple to use features and interactive potential means it it simple yet stylish for our target audience to use. Across all the products, the inclusion of our artist who is young and beautiful is attractive to such a target audience.

Cross Promotion

Explain about how your 3 products are part of one promotional, marketing campaign — what are the aims of the campaign?

The aims of the campaign are quite simply to market and promote a new female solo artist. Through the video, digipak and website it aims to advertise the release of her first studio album and establish her star image as youthful and rebellious. The video showcases her image, performance and a bit of her personality, the digipak advertises her new album and reaffirms the image established in the video, and the website provides a concise location on which information regarding the new artist can be found. On all three products, our artist’s style comes across very clearly as being very indie and unique whilst still fashionable (seen to be wearing chokers and hooped earrings in all). Equally, our use of colour is consistent across the three products, regularly using dark shades of green, red and pink due to the connotations such colours have (such as green relating to youthfulness, red relating to attitude, and pink to having fun). In each product, we also include our artist’s name of SIOUX as we figured it is important to drill such a name into potential consumers so that they will more easily recognise it in the future, and given SIOUX’s translation to ‘little snakes’ we also regularly include a snake image across our products as this will aid in promoting merchandise in the future. We also use the same font across the products, ‘Futura’, as to create a sense of synergy.

How do your 3 products promote the products and services that the record label are selling?

The video advertises our artist’s performance quality and encourages viewers to see her live on the basis that they will want to experience her vocal quality and see the attitude and personality of our artist that the video has suggested to. Similarly, the rhythmic editing of the video brings awareness to the music and gives audiences a great appreciation of it which will encourage them to buy the song and album. By including SIOUX’s name in the video, and images of snakes, it familiarises audiences with such a name and image and thus encourages them to buy her merchandise and recognise her more easily in the future (such as when her tickets go on sale). The website is an effective product of the record label to promote what other products and services they are selling, as it regularly encourages viewers to buy our artist’s new album, as well as watch her videos and attend her shows. The inclusion of being able to buy tickets right there off the website makes the process easy and effective, and shows exactly when and where she will be performing. Equally, by having links to her social networking sites, fans are encouraged to learn more about the artist’s personal life and thus become more familiar with her, which, by extension, will encourage them to buy yet more of her products (whether concert tickets, albums, or merchandise) in the future. The ability to sign up for a newsletter means that her audience will be able to stay up to date with all SIOUX related news, and as such this would successfully encourage them to buy her latest releases and performances given how they are the first to hear about such news. The digipak encourages audiences to obviously buy the album and the tracks included on it, but also encourages them to watch future videos and further familiarise themselves with the music which in turn would inspire them to see the artist live and attend her concerts.

Does your promo attempt to construct a branding for your artist, for example through the use of a logo?

Just through her distinct name of SIOUX as this encourages immediate recognition from audiences, and a rapid distinction amongst the masses of solo female artists.

Evaluation Task 3 _ What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

To complete the research and execution of our project as a group we used different equipment and programmes to obtain a successful result.

For the music video, most of the research and the distribution were made with the use of YouTube or Vimeo, as easy to approach and to quick to download and find that was needed.

Use of technology during the test shoot.

To make the test shoots we use an Iphone 6 to film the different scenes and Imovie to edit them for a ‘final cut’. We used our phones because we weren’t looking for high-defined quality images but to see the overall look of the music video, analysis the appeal and see possible changes to be done before the actual shooting day.

To communicate with each other.

All this was then recorded uploaded and showed into blogger, so as group we had the opportunity to share all the information and technical aspects made.

Blogger is a very useful media programme as it permitted us to show the development of out project, it has easy access for anyone that would like to see our work and leave additional comments, plus you can personalised your blog by changing the templates assigned as well as the visual impact by introduced different usage and media elements for example SoundCloud, YouTube, Pinterest, PowerPoint, Prezi and many others (all those has helped to illustrate into more creative way our work). To communicate with each other we used mains, Whatsapp and Facebook.

Use of filming camera and lenses.

The 50mm lens helped us to get close up of the performance, showing the different face features. This specific lens also creates a smooth effect onto the face of the artist, creating a more appealing overall look.

The 25mm lens was used to create the mid shot, specifically in the fire room where we show a pyramid of the different characters in the music video as well as emphasising the feeling of confidence, and upright people represented in the frame.

Also it shows all the different elements incorporated in the video and the frame, for example costumes, location and other details, which help to clarify the type of artist we are portraying.

One the main elements we used to make the music video was the camera, Black Magic Mini, which by being a digital high quality camera permitted us to have a lot of good footage to be worked on during the post production process.

One of the main technical features about this camera was the different lens that needed to be changes depending onto the type of shot required. The 25mm lens was used for wide shots, while the 80mm for close us and extreme close ups. The settings of the camera were pretty straight forwards; we changed the white balance to achieve a more blue effect onto the footage.

Other technical aspects about the use of the camera were the additional utilisation of the tripod as needed to created low and high angles and the hand handle to add movement to a particular scene as well as a different type of shot.

Post Production with Adobe Premier Pro CC.

For the postproduction process we used Adobe Premier Pro CC, to obtain a professional final effect and increase our knowledge toward such important software in the actual industry.

One the main things that have been done through it was the shaping and cut of the footage by selecting the best shots and naming them ordering them in specific order to match to the lip sync in a more efficient way.

All the varies effects were also made here following a different procedure and tool in the software. Quick shots and layers in the timeline, reverse shots, speed duration and the mirror effect were all executed though the usage of it. This helped to make the video more interesting and add movements to certain scenes. It also helped covering some mistakes made with the camera hiding them or covering. The final result was successful as the video can be recognised as entraining and appealing to the audience.

The colour coded was made through Adobe as we wanted to obtain a colder overall effect, lowering the saturation exposure of the frame, adding a more professional look and atmosphere to the whole video.

We made a photo shot for our digipak and website. This was done and in the photography studio as all resources needed to accomplish the best result.

The studio is provided of different lightings, we only used three, which were; the main flasher light box, a standard light used to create the general lighting in the picture this can be adjust by changing the intensity of the automatic connected flasher, which it was 2/3.

Use of the studio and its equipment.

Another light used was a spot light with the additional feature of a green colour filter to add a more interesting look adding set colours to it, also this type of the light was controlled automatically and manually adapted for the intensity needed, the last light we used was a beauty dish to create a clean soft effect onto the skin of the model.

The camera used was a Canon 100D, it’s ISO was 100/200 and the white balance setting Tungsten, all the images were shot in Raw and Jped file.

Post Production with Photoshop CC.

Those picture have then gone through the postproduction process were I have used Adobe Photoshop. I mainly used few different tools to obtain the final effect wanted and needed for 2 of our final products.

I turned mots of then photos into black and white with setting Black and White were you could then adjust all the different shades of grey included in it. I have used the Soft Brush tool to smooth the skin and the model and create a clean effect, Contrast and Lighting was lighting adjust and I finish off with Curves to emphasise even more the different shades and face features. For the colour picture I have used Colour Filter to lower down the intensity of the green filter.

For the actual Digipak the execution of this product was all made in digitally with the usage of Photoshop, as it permits to create your own new file with your chosen measurements, resolution and addition elements. It is pretty straight forwards to use and it also gives you the opportunity to change a single feature included at any given time.

One of the main tools I have used was the Selection Tool as it carefully automatically gives a selection of the interested object that you can just drag and move were it appeals best.

All the background went through the postproduction process with the usage of the Saturation tool to change the colour scheme to green and Lighting and Contrast to lower the intensity of the colours.

With the use of Photoshop you can create your own file adding any given images as well as texts, those can be edited and changes as like for example the font, size, location and colour of the writing creating a unique file. It gives you plenty of choices and you can also easily transform the document into different formats for an easier and clearer view to those that those have this software (change the file to Photoshop to Jpeg).

Designing the website with WIX

For the website we used WIX a software that provides premade templates to use automatically, making the whole procedure a lot easier and more straight forwards than building a whole new website from scratch with codes and number.

There are lots of different elements included in a completed website, for example interactive link, multiple pages, simple navigation, social media links, sign up, pop ups, tour dates and music streaming sites, all those were done to show an advance simple straight forward site to navigate to and find enough about the marketed artist.

The landing page starts with the coming news of the advertising of the music video, and the album cover promoting the products. We than created a centrepiece which created the idea of movement to the page maintaining a simple design. All the link and features included are functional creating a more realistic feeling to the video and the artist.

To add this sensation to the whole page social media link have been made with functional link were varies representative photos have been uploaded, giving extras to the audience to follow and know more about the questioned artist.