Photoshop work

These were some ideas of what we might have used however we figured that they looked too fake and the band was not a "fake" so they would not have suited it as their digipack. We also were making photoshoped versions of the poster but again it stood out that it was photoshopped too much that it just looked bad.

Digipack artwork

Poster image:

Task 4 - directors commentary for the pop promo

The aim of the director's commentary was to help the audience grasp a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve in the pop video. My group and I are going to describe the technical aspects of our pop promo and digi pack, focusing on the 3 production stages; pre-production, construction and post-production. We will go into detail in each stage explaining the different elements that we used and why. Pre-production We saw clips of ‘Now is Everyone’ on their Myspace page and decided to contact them through Facebook. We then schedulable a meeting with the band to discuss ideas for the promo. I know people are really negative about myspace these days, but what an absolute gold mine of visual stimuli it turned out to be! When researching initial ideas for the promo, we searched the internet, using sites like YouTube. We listened to the song repeatedly and wrote down the images and ideas that came to mind. The coloured rain came from an idea to have some of the elements in colour and some in black and white because we thought this was a way of introducing their star quality metaphor, which is “from the gutter to the stars”. Various different types of puddles and rain effects were mocked up on Photoshop, as part of our preliminary planning. They were eventually filtered out due to the lack of time and technological ability. The creative anamtic enabled us to have an idea of how long each shot would need to be and where we would cut it. Construction During the shoot day we took digital stills with a SLR camera. We used them in the construction of the digi pack. It consists of a front and back cover and two inlays. The inlays are made up of a montage of stills from the shoot day, the promo and their private life, giving the audience a voyeuristic view of the band. This reinforces their organic nature. For the front cover we made the title bold to draw the audience in and scaled the band members larger than life to emphasise their importance. The colour reflects both the mood of the song and band, tying it altogether. The poster creates certain enigma codes. The most obvious being the positioning of the lead singer. He is positioned in the background but is the only one giving direct address, just like in the promo, showing he is present but out of reach which relates to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image and reinforces that they are, as a band, different to the audience. When shooting the band in the studio we painted the walls green in order to use the technique of chromo-keying. To make sure it was as effective as possible we used specific lighting in order to eliminate shadows but also to light the band. Post-production We used an Mpeg 2 SD NXCAM which has a hard disk, to shoot the promo, this made editing easier because each take is captured on a separate file. Editing time was reduced, bins easier to manage and extended footage easier to handle. We were able to edit the footage to an effective cutting rhythm for the promo, by listening to the audio we used markers to mark the significant beats to make the cuts clean and sharp. The wide of the band was shot using a green screen and the wall paper and floor were pictures from google images. When editing we placed an omni light into the composition in order to make the room look more realistic. We then keyed in the band by using key light to eliminate the green so the wall paper and floor were visible. The rain was a separate layer, which was filmed on black. In order to place the rain over the footage we used the blending tool ‘liner dodge’, which makes the black go invisible. This then left the coloured rain. For the splat effects we repeated the same process, however we had to construct a separate composition which used an animated splat effect from ‘riot gear’. We used another blending mode, darken, which turned the white see through, then placed this composition into the original and proceeded to edit it in the same way and do another set of keying to remove the black around the splats. Finally we used the internet to promote the video and gain audience feedback by uploading the video to youtube and using a site called ‘surveymonkey’. By using this particular site it allowed us to create a questionnaire, which we then got people who had seen the video to fill out, giving us our audience feedback.

Task 3 - audience feedback

There are three theoretical areas to focus on in our video, these are: Roland Barthes He focuses on audience’s expectations and audiences foreknowledge, his aim is to reinforce who target audience is.

He does this by asking himself: - what age the target audience is - what gender they are - where they come from (so if they relate to where the music video is made) - what social group they are in (if they relate to the same social group as the band) - what sexual orientation they are (gay/straight) Katz and Blumner What did the audience get from the video/what experience did they gain from watching the video? Was it a diversion to the audience’s life, for example was it entertaining? Also did it make the audience reflect it onto their personal life, such as personal relationships? They may have had, as our video is an emotional song so it starts off sad and depressed then changes into a happy mood. So in this sad mood the audience may feel sad themselves and think about sad parts in their life. Stuart Hall Producers create an encoded message (pictures/sound) and the audience has to de-code the message. There are three clear areas to Stuart Hall’s theory: - the preferred reading – when you look at results and the way they reacted you have done a good job of creating the right message to the audience if they get what you mean - The aberrant reading – the audience do not see what you intended at all – think its bad, cant see it represents the genre you gave it etc. - Negotiated reading – audience could come up with a different interpretation, interesting academically but not good for business

TASK THREE – WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK Defining the audience It is useful for institutions and academics to be able to build up detailed accounts of how audiences are constructed. Rather than seeing audiences as masses or in simple numerical terms, it is common practice to find ways of segmenting the audience. This segmentation can be achieved both demographically and psychographically Demographic segmentation This is where an audience is segmented according to various significant social criteria eg gender, class, race, sexuality. One of the most common demographic approaches to audience involves the Jicnars scale: A - Higher management/ administration/ professional B - Middle management/ administration/ professional C1 - supervisory/ clerical/ junior management C2 - skilled manual D - Semi and unskilled manual E - Subsistence income/ pensioners/ widows/ casual labour/ unemployed Psychographic Segmentation (Also known as lifestyle profiling) This combines a psychological profile of the consumer, with ideas about how they conducted their life in the market-place. The various attitudes, values, beliefs and ‘lifestyle’ choices are sorted into a number of distinctive categories which are used to predict consumption.

My target audience is around 17 and 18 year olds as that is the age of the band members in the video so the audience can relate to them. The band also attract an indie style towards the audience by what they wear (skinny jeans, boots and jackets) so any audience who wear a similar outfit could relate.


The band could relate to girls if they find the band attractive but also it could relate to boys if they think that the band is influential to them, so if they think that they could be like the band and could be as talented then they could relate to them to influence them.

To see what our audience thought of our video we thought that we would give a questionnaire to some groups of people who have watched the video, which we did on www.surveymonkey.com. We put these questionnaires on facebook and myspace as these would be the network sites which the target audience would use. We also created a focus group that watched our video then answered the questions on the survey. The importance of doing the questionnaires was that it would also allow us to check that we have read our target audience correctly and that they will understand and most enjoy the band's star image and their music. Data from these questionnaires which included open and closed questions and included questions to find out if it is the right target audience such as age and gender and what type of music they listen to. The open questions included data about the audience’s opinions and thoughts they had when they watched the video.

Here are the questions from the questionnaire we gave our focus group:

THere are three parts to the questionnaire so we can gather as much information as we can from it:

1. Audience expectations

1. What kind of music do you like?
2. Do you play in a band?
3. Do you want to be in a band?
3. Looking at this product what type of music do you expect this to be?
4.What things in this picture helped make your choice?
- clothes
- hair
- location
- all of the above
5. From this picture who do you think is the lead singer is and why?

2. Reactions from target audience

1. Do you find the lead singer attractive?
2. Do you think they are musically talented for their age?
3. Would you download their music?
4. Would you pay to see this band live?
5. What type of relationship would you like to have with the band?
- a relationship
- part of their social group
- part of the band
- not bothered

3. What the target audience gain from the product

1. Do you find the video entertaining?
2. Did the video hold your attention throughout?
3. Did you feel any emotions during watching this video?
4. if yes which ones and why?
5. Can you identify yourself with either the lyrics or the band?
6. Anything else you want to add



QUOTES FROM YOUTUBE:

“I love the blue rain effect throughout the video”

“I liked how it was so emotional”


















According to the theorist Stuart Hall we had a preferred reading. This means that we successfully portrayed the star image of the band to correct target audience. This was shown in the first section of the questionnaire by a majority of people answered that they where either already into the Indie rock, in a band themselves and then correctly answered what type of genre “Now is everyone” is from. The majority of people also answered that Elliot was the lead singer, because he was standing in the front, middle of the group and wearing a brighter coloured top. Most females anwserd that they would like to be in a relationship or in the social group, where as the males anserd they would like to be in the band. 




All the females who answered the questionnaire said that they found the lead singer attractive. This is important for the record label to know as it shows that the girls will be likely to become fans of the band because of Elliot’s looks. The majority answered that they thought the band was talented. This shows that they have respect for the bands ability and reinforces the fact that they are a talented young organic band which is one of the major selling points. All answered that they would download “Now is everyone’s” music and a majority said that they would pay to see the band live. This shows that band to become as profitable as possible would need to make most of there money touring, over people legally buying the album. Most people also said that the song and video made them feel reflective and empowered. The most common reason given for this was that they felt like the band was speaking for them and that the images coming from black and white to colour made them feel better about life as a teen or young adult. The video also managed to hold the target audience’s attention throughout, this shows that they found it both interesting and entertaining. These are two important things to note as if the audience find it interesting they are likely to show it to friends and re post the video on sites like face-book. The more the video gets published though new media means the more recognised the band will become within the target audience and to a wider audience.
Many of the males who answered the question said that they also found the band inspirational, as they where almost the same age as them but had been able to manage so much (have a following, perform at a music festival, have a music video and many professionally recorded songs), most of these also anwserd earlyer on in the questionare that they where themselves in a band. Being inspirational and succeeded against the odds if also one of the major selling points of this band.

Task 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

In our music video we aimed to apply the conventions used in real media products such as certain graphics and editing choices, for example close ups to show emotions and the choice of colour combination for the video e.g. the black and white effect throughout to put across the emotional aspect of the video. Our music video tends to challenge the forms and conventions of media products, shown through the use of a melancholy story throughout the video and that it makes the audience see that even though the band are talented so they seem different than other individuals in society that they can be normal everyday people, walking pass. The use of colour is used to heighten the eerie and depressing feel to the video. Also the use of close-up shots shown in order to portray the dialogue in the lyrics of the song. All the editing and shots are there to be symbolic in terms of the message being represented.

In this shot we see the lead singer walking towards us, this introduces us to the lead singer and introduces the audience to the location they are in. This shot is deigning the audience to form a “relationship” with them as they keep their heads down or eyes away from the camera and are far away. In this respect we have used the forms and conventions of real media products in terms of the use of cinematography. This shot is aimed to emphasise the lyrics at the time of the shot as the lyrics are saying that people tend to walk endlessly around an area that they are familiar with and they never see any true meaning behind it all as it is not intriguing to them anymore. 

In the performance shots of the band it emphasises and introduces the band as a band not a solo artist as the audience see them playing together. This is common in most bands to have a wide shot of the whole band so the audience can know what member plays what. In this shot however we are different to other videos in the way we used the lighting changing from black and white and the coloured rain which make it symbolic and it makes the audience understand the meaning behind the lyrics of "what we see" as we see colour. Whereas other videos use lots of flashing lights for example so the coloured rain makes our video more unique. An example of a video which has the similar wide shot of the band is "teenage dirtbag" by Wheatus.



Other similarities in the video that share amongst others such as showing the band members with close ups on their instruments to show their organic side of the band with real skill and talent as the audience actually see them play. 


Another part is using direct address with the audience, this is when the band member looks directly act the camera making it look like they are looking at the audience, so the audience feel as if they have a relationship with the band. This is used in many different genres in music videos as all audience's want to feel part of it and have that special bond.

  There is also a similarity in when the band gets turned into colour with special effects like someone is spraying paint on them in the video "whip my hair" by Willow Smith where people are in white then they get paint sprayed on them and they turn into colour.