Planning - notes

Where to advertise?

One of the main considerations is advertising. This is a key dynamic in order to pursue the product making. Our target audience are the main key factor when deciding where to advertise. Our target audience is teenagers of both genders. Therefore, we need to make sure the video is neutral and not too feminist and vice versa. Also, this means we have to advertise accordingly.

Where we will advertise:
- Social networks
- Music Channels

Social Networks
Social networking has grown to the point where 84% of the world use some source of social networking - e.g Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Myspace and Bebo. Social networking is all free and due to the reason that such a huge population use it, it is very helpful to expose your product and get instant feedback. This is very crucial for us as we need to save as much money as we can due to the low budget. Also, it will instantaneously get some recognition. It is also the fastest way to communicate with our potential viewers. Since our target audience is mainly the youth, advertising online will be very beneficial and appropriate for us.

Music Channels
Music channels are a good way to promote your new video before it has been released. This spreads awareness to the channel viewers. This makes them want to watch the video when it is released due to all the promotion for it - creates a positive alertness to the mass audience.

Meeting 8

During this group meeting, we decided to apply the feedback from the questionnaires onto our music video. This meant that we changed our initial ideas to suit the response from the audience. This therefore meant that segments were adapted for appropriateness and out of circumstance. We managed to resolve any issues we had with the acknowledgement of what was going on in our video as everyone received certain handouts which allowed for a good and detailed understanding. 

Inspiration - Celebrities

This is a scene from 'California Girls' by Katy Perry. The reason I posted this was to show how unique she makes her music videos, as a result making the work piece very memorable. She has now got a trademark for her over-the-top music videos, her colourful outburst she puts in every video and her bright coloured wigs she wears for almost everything - she possesses her own identity. We hope to attain along the lines of what she does, in order to make our video also exceptional and exclusive. However, due to the fact that our record label is low budgeted, we would need to take that into consideration and we do not want to make it too fancy. I hope for it to express simplicity but in a memorable manner.

Inspiration - Celebrities

Katy Perry is a huge inspiration for me. Her huge sunglasses for one really intrigued me. Those are the type of sunglasses we hope to use for our album cover and maybe in the music video too. Her fun personality and attitude towards all her work and music videos has fascinated me.I hope we achieve an entertaining and enjoyable music video as she does. The way she over-exaggerates in her videos, we want to also do something along those lines in order to make the video eye-catching so the viewers do not go elsewhere when our video is exposed.

Inspiration for Album Cover

Our album cover idea is to have everything black & white except for the word 'famous' which will be written in huge, funky sunglasses. Each letter of the word will be written individually on a different glass. 'Famous'  will be written in a bright colour in order for it to be striking. Also the stars in the image above gave us another idea - we are going to have a flash of light in the corner of the album to represent paparazzi taking a photograph of what is happening on the album cover. This idea came about originally from the actual song promotion itself (as shown above in the image). We liked the concept of sunglasses but did not want to do the exact same thing. Subsequently, we interpreted the idea using our own imagination. 

Which music channels would play our music video?

The genre of our chosen song is Indie-pop. Therefore, when thinking of where to play our video, we need to do it according to our target audience and what music channels they watch. Through our research we asked 16 people, whom mainly listened to indie-pop music, what music channels they watch or would watch. All of them either said MTV dance, VH1 or/and Viva. This research was done very easily. We asked each person individually in our own time and simply noted down what they said. The sample was randomly chosen out of all the people who listen to indie-pop music. Consequently, we are now aware what channels to play our music video in order for it to be recognised and appreciated.

Inspiration

Charity Work

Scouting for Girls fundraise for two charities, the members are official ambassadors for the children's charity, Wellchild. This is a national charity helps sick children and their families throughout the UK to manage the consequences of serious illness and complex health conditions through our programme of care, support and research. The band also support the Help for Heroes charity. They fundraise for both charities.

Their most notable fundraiser to date was cycling from London to Brighton on children's chopper bikes for WellChild. (research below taken from BBC Gloucestershire)

Pop band Scouting for Girls are to auction their chopper bikes to raise money for a Cheltenham-based charity.

The trio - Roy Stride, Greg Churchouse and Pete Ellard - used the bikes for a fundraising ride from London to Brighton, where they also played an intimate acoustic show.

Having already raised over £20,000 for the Wellchild charity, they're now offering fans the chance to bid for the bikes online.

"No one has ever attempted riding choppers from London to Brighton before, so we are over the moon!" said Roy Stride, Scouting For Girls' vocalist.

"We ache all over, but it was worth every minute as we have raised thousands for WellChild.

"We are now going to auction the lucky choppers off for WellChild so get bidding on eBay!

"Thank you all for being so generous. We're now off to bed for a week to recover!"

'Amazing'

It took the group over 24 hours to cycle 60 miles from Wandsworth Park in London to Brighton.

Colin Dyer from WellChild said: "We couldn't be more grateful to Roy, Greg and Pete for choosing to support WellChild in this incredible way.

"Like most charities we spend our time trying to persuade and cajole people into fundraising for us and helping us to raise the profile for our work.

"The fact that the challenge and concert has been totally the band's idea is just amazing and I would like to thank everyone who has supported them along the way."

Scouting For Girls - Awards

-Scouting for Girls were nominated for three BRIT Awards in 2009 for British Breakthrough Act, British Live Act and British Single ("Heartbeat"). (the picture below shows other performers that were also nominated).

-They were nominated again in 2011 for Best British Single with 'This Ain't A Love Song'.

-Scouting for Girls were also nominated in the Best New Act category in the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008.

-Scouting for Girls have been nominated for the Ivor Novello 2011 PRS FOR MUSIC MOST PERFORMED WORK award for:
This Ain't A Love Song Writer: Roy Stride Performed By: Scouting for Girls UK Publisher: EMI Music Publishing.

Meeting 7

As a group we analysed and discussed the results of the questionnaire that we handed out to the audience during our pitch.

We found that overall many people believed that we have many good ideas and we have embedded the genre conventions of comedy and pop effectively. However some individuals suggested that 'less is more' and our video can be just as effective without too complicated and intricate ideas.

The most favourable extract of our music video was the 'Dream Sequence' and  the idea that we were including Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis and James Dean look alikes. Our logo of pants made of Smarties sweets was greatly approved as well as the technique of stop motion which will be used towards the end of our music video.

Everyone in our audience believed our music video of 'Famous' by Scouting for Girls fall under the genre of Pop. This is a good sign as it suggests that our ideas and techniques incorporate the conventions of the pop genre and it is apparent to the audience what the genre of the extract is.

The audience also managed to estimate our demographic of being teenagers which is what we set out to achieve. Ages ranged from 13 years old to 17 years old. 

Mostly all our audience were willing to watch all our video as they believe they would find it funny and comic. This is a good sign as it shows that the comic aspect of our music video is achieved.

However one individual commented that they would not watch the extract, as it is not a song our genre of We calculated the mean score of the ratings of our overall ideas. The score we gained was 7.5. We believe this is a good score however we shall try and improve our ideas to achieve an even higher score by taking into consideration the suggestions made by our fellow classmates.

Questionnaire responses

Notes: More scribbles

Notes: Application to lyrics

Notes: Split Screen & Costumes

Notes

Notes

Notes: Scribbles

Notes

Notes: Map out of shots/scenes

Notes: Audition Ideas

Notes

Inspiration

In regards inspiration two music videos which I have recently become acquainted with have provided such and are great example of the simplicity of music videos. Both also possess certain qualities which we wich to include in our video.

The first of these is a music video for Godley and Creme's "Cry". The inspiring qualities arisding from this are the simple nature of this video. Although its pace and basic ideals will not be reflected in our music video, the idea of having multipule people singing who perhaps are not the actual or intended singer. This idea was one which we initially had as we found it to be a good idea to have other people singing as well as the singer. We also had the idea of using this type of close up and segment the images into quarters so we would end up with a different part of a persons face in each quarter.

The second of these, is U2's "Sweetest Thing". Although this song is exceedingly different from the which we have selected to do as our music video, I have found it to be a rather inspiring as it portrays the ability and amazing effect of using just one shot. This gives the video a great effect and conveys the difficulty in organisation needed to provide such an effect, which reflects the immense planning which we need to ensure we do. It also possesses a slight element of humour which reflects what we want to include in our video. This video is all about timing and this is something of great importance in the editing of our footage.

Inspiration

Inspiration For Auditions

For our music video we decided to do auditions and that made me think of this TV show, Britain's Got Talent. This show had The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Amazing. But nevertheless it inspired me. Some of the ideas in our auditions were inspired by this show.

The Good:

The Bad:

The Ugly:

The Amazing:

These people were remembered for different reasons, which is why I thought of them. However in our music video our Susan Boyle is our singer. The gymnastics act at the top, is why i thought of the cheerleading act, taking it to the extreme with the stunts and dancing. Another part of Britain's Got Talent that has inspired me is that they have buzzers.



Costume Ideas

We have researched costumes we can purchase on Amazon. below are images of a few:
Audrey Hepburn £13.99

Banana £12.10

Gorilla Mask £7.00-£11.00

Judge £11.00

Bamboo Cane £3

Union Jack £12.00-£20.00

Chicken Mask £11.00

Babygrow £15.00

Meeting 6

We designed a questionnaire, which we would give to our classmates a chance to give an insight and evaluate our Pitch and that therefore helps us when looking back at our ideas for our music video. On which was stated things along the line of: what do you think of our ideas, what would you change, rate our ideas out of ten and other such questions which would allow us to gain an insight into the true nature of our video, whether it would have a good and successful comic effect and if the context of the video is appealing to our target audience.

We also applied our ideas to a timeline, producing a step by step guide for when it comes to filming our music video. This timeline was put in sections that broke down the verses and chorus' allowing us to view our ideas together as a whole. Therefore letting us see whether their was anything out of place or anything we had missed out. 

Meeting 5

In this meeting we tackled two main tasks: Applying our ideas to the lyrics and starting our pitch. In terms of the application to the lyrics, we found it to be a worthy idea as we needed to ensure that EVERYONE gained a detailed insight into what would occur at each stage within our video. We stated what we thought would be the best to put where and developed our ideas into a detailed account as to what would occur in our video. We did this to obtain a greater understanding of the video and the creation process, as we had to ensure that all aspects within the video, despite the random and obscure nature of it, flow, in the hope that it is not jumpy. We also did this to ensure that we got as many ideas as possible into it, without it becoming over crowded. This therefore means, that the ideas should fit together well, and make sure we are not putting footage in places for the sake of it.

The pitch we began to create, is one which would be presented to our classmates, on the basic elements that would be occurring in our video. This would allow us to see whether the ideas for our music video would be successful and appeal to our target audience.

Album Cover Ideas - Sunglasses

Ideas Discussed

Here we have collected a group of pictures that relate to our idea for our chosen songs album cover. we decided in one of our meetings that we wanted to use bright colours to attract our audience. When researching example frame for our album cover, we discovered lots of different frame colours, frame shapes and patterned that caught our attention and was our inspiration for the idea. Above we have grouped together the frames and colours we thought are the best and later on when we come to making our album cover we will then decide what design we wish to use. Personally i am drawn to the colour orange and also the colour green. these pictures catch my attention the most and i feel they would be a good attraction for the target audience. 

Meeting 4

Once again, we sat down to discuss our ideas for our music video in length and so brainstormed our ideas, some of which were accompanied by illustrations. In this meeting we covered many possibilities and as a result everyone has had a great impact in the planning of this video. We each shared our ideas and expressed our opinions on them as well as developing good ideas into even better ones. Some of our ideas that were developed were: The old fashioned movie star idea who is dressed exceedingly glamourously and being 'snapped' by paparazzi. We developed this idea into a dream sequence which we have managed to tie into our auditions, which is our main idea for this video.

Aerosmith - I Dont Wanna Miss A Thing

Aerosmith – I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing

I have chosen to analyse the music video of ‘Don Wanna Miss a Thing’, by Aerosmith. Throughout this analysis I will mention the use of Costume, Make-up, Location, Lighting, Atmosphere, Sound and also other details I feel relevant. I will be comparing this music video with Andrew Goodwin’s writing in 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' (Routledge 1992) 6-point analysis theory. This music video is more performance based than narrative or conceptual; however they do play a slight role in this video.

Aerosmith are an American Rock Band and the famous director Mark Wright produced this song ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’. It was recorded in 1997 and released in 1998. This song was however, originally written for the film, Armageddon. Hence, the clips from Armageddon throughout the music video. This music video is very dramatic and passionate; it also creates tension for the viewing audience.

Throughout the music video there are lots of close ups on all the Armageddon characters, showing their emotional facial expressions. By showing their facial expressions it makes the viewing audience relate and listen more the words being played in these scenes. Similarly, the artist gets a lot of camera time. This relates to Goodwin’s 6-point analysis, as the record label wants their artist to have publicity at the same time as they are getting viewers for their song. The camera movement and camera angles play an important role when creating dramatic effect. For example at the beginning of the video, during the introduction to the song, the camera slowly zooms through space toward earth. This helps to create the dramatic tension before the song; the director uses this to set the mood before the song.

The director Mark Wright uses graphical matches to link the song with Armageddon. They uses special effects to have the rocket taking off in the background of where they’re performing and the smoke from the blast covers them when singing. they do this by using CGI. Also to have more exposure for the artist but still have the theme of Armageddon, the artist has been put on the TV, in the place of the father. This also helps to create more of a link between the artist’s performance and the film, Armageddon. Along with everything else, it also ends the same in the music video as it does in the film of Armageddon. This helps the viewing audience to link the two together. Once again, this relates to Andrew Goodwin’s 6-point analysis theory, relating to his point that the music links in with the visual relationship.

During this music video, Goodwin’s 6-point analysis comes into play when matching the lyrics with the visuals. There is a moment in the music video when the two Armageddon characters kiss just as the lyrics ‘when I kiss your eyes’ is sung. The kisses within this video also help with the idea that this song is passionate, although they are a rock band they use this very well to keep their rock like music but also create soft passionate love songs. Another way the director helped o emphasis the passion is by having the daughter on Armageddon crying in a close up shot, this makes the audience feel for the girl, especially if the viewer has seen this film and knows what is happening.

The lighting when Aerosmith are performing is very low key lighting. The lighting is placed on the main singer, this shows the audience he is the main singer and by having closes up with low-key lighting helps to create the dramatic effect the director wants. When the rocket takes off the lighting helps to emphasis the smoke and creates a mysterious yet dramatic atmosphere. The location of the music video is performed in a church; this could symbolise the love, life and death faced in the film Armageddon. The stain glass windows in the background also help to emphasis the idea of God and how he will be watching over them. By having the camera frames go back a forth between the all the Armageddon characters crying creates emotional feelings within the viewers and the fast changing pace helps heighten this.

To conclude, this music video uses all the techniques to create the perfect dramatic effect. Engaging the audience and keeping there full attention the whole way through, not only through their music but through their visual outlook as well. Personally I feel that this music video is fantastic and has all the elements needed. It made me want to watch it over and over again. By using clips from Armageddon it helped to create an emotional atmosphere, as all the passionate, dramatic and sad bits from the film were used. I felt like crying when watching that video along with the lyrics and visuals together, they created the perfect atmosphere. Mark Wright has used Andrew Goodwin’s 6-point analysis very well.

By Sasha Thompson