Our
task was to promotional martial for an album though the creation of a music promo video with an magazine advert
and a digipak. We had to create a brand of an artist that would be reflected in
our video, advert and digipak. These
three promotional martial's would be used in the industry and all play a vital
role in ensuring an artist success.
A promo
videos are used for the audience to see what the artist brand is and what they
represent. It usually allows the
audience to see who the artist is and can help show what the meaning of a song
is (although, there are cases where this isn't true). It is one of the most important
things for an artist to do, especially now that music video are so easy to
watch online. Having a successful video that gains lots of hits online (for
example on YouTube) can and has made the different in ensuring an artist get a
number 1 record , high album sells and high profits earned-even if the song. A
good example of this is Nicki Minaj's song Anaconda. It was a very controversial video for its sexual
nature, but as a result of that it currently has 300,000,000+ views on YouTube,
which help it to be in 24 different countries weekly chart and helped it to go
double platinum in the USA.
A magazine advert for an artist is
used to help promote the artist and there brand on a different platform. It
allows larger number of different types of people to see it and more the more
people that see it, the more likely it is that artist will be a hit. It can be
used to adverts the release of a song, an album or a tour. As long as the
advert grabs people's attention, people are more likely to look into the
artist, become a fan and buy into their brand.
For example this advert of The McBusted Tour appeared in Heat Magazine,
which has an average circulation of 200,000+. This
has help McBusted sell a lot of tickets,with some of the tour dates sold out.
A
Digipak is usually a special edition of a CD.
It gives fan a chance to have even more contents of the artist to enjoy
and can be limited edition, so they may be getting a rare copy. It is used to help sell more albums and boost
sell figures. For example Katy Perry's
Teenage Dream digipak included more images of the artist and included a second
CD with bones, never heard before track, which a fan would really want.
For more information about the things discussed, please read the following below:
music
promo normally requires certain conventions to be consider as a good video.
There are certain elements commonly used in camerawork, editing, lighting,
costume, props, location, narrative and performance. A good example that shows these conventions
well are Avril Lavigne song 'Girlfriend'. The common
shots used in a promo music video is long shots, mid shots and close-ups. The
long shot is used to help establish the location of the music video and
allows the other members of the band to be shown. In 'Girlfriend' this is
long shot shows the audience that some type of studio and that there are
in fact other members of the band other than the sing, Avril Lavigne. The mid
shots are used to
help make the music video seem more real, as it is common for these shots to
evolve the main artist singing the song or being a part of the narrative. This
help to make it more interesting and enjoyable for the audience to watch. In
‘Girlfriend ’ most of the mid shots show Arvil Lavgine either using a
microphone and singing the song or being a part of the narrative (sometimes
even both!). The close up shots are used mainly to show the emotion of the an
artist in the band. These shot help the audience get a feel for a
song/narrative. In ‘Girlfriend’ the song is upbeat and involves the narrative
of trying to steal a another girls boyfriend, so the close ups of Arvil Lavgine
she always looks happy or determined to steal the boyfriend.
In a music video the only
type of camera movement commonly used is a panning shot. This is used to make
the music video seem more real and makes the audience feel that they are more a
part of the narrative/performance. In ‘Girlfriend’ panning shots are used
though the performance part of the video.
The conventions of a music promo video can change slightly
depending on the type of genre the song/artist is. Our song 'Ink Settles In' is
an indie-pop song. Therefore some of the conventions in the pop promo are
different/ not needed in our video. A good example that illustrates the
differences is Ellie Goulding's 'Starry Eyes'. The camera work is similar in
that it does commonly uses long shots, mid shots and close-ups. This has been
done so the audience can fully understand what is happening the video and they
have a chance to see the artist. But the difference is that indie pop videos
contain extreme close-ups thought out
the video. These types of shots usually show something in
extreme detail so the audience cannot fully understand what is happening in the
shot, they only get a glimpse of it. It
is unique, which makes it different from other music videos and it can help
keep the audience interested throughout the video as they will want to see
these shots in full. In 'Starry Eyes' one of the first shots we see is the one
photo. It is an extreme close-up of part of Ellie's face.
The main three shot types we used
in our music promo video were mid shots, close-ups and extreame close-ups. We
did uses very simlar camrea shots from pop promos and indie-pop promos as we
felt this types of shots are what help to create the most effective music
videos. A mid shot allows the audicne to see what is happening around the
singer, but not so much that they loose intrested in them. We used this for the
shot where the singer is in the date like setting, the audicne can see that she
is alone which suggest that her date isn't coming, which realtes well to song
as it is about heartbreak. But it the shot also allows her to be the main
fouces point. We a lot of close-up shot,
mainly one of our actress singing the song. These shots are shown thoughout, as
the allow the audicne see our performer (which is imporant in making the
performeer famous) and see the emotions she is going though. At the beginnig of
the song, she is quite calm but as the video goes on she is clearly becomes
more angry and upset- which follows the structure of the song perfectly. All of
this helps the audicne to understand the meaning of the song, which hopefully
people will find reltable. We also used
several extreame close-ups shot mainly at the beginning of the song.
When researching into indie-pop videos, this is a very common that this
type of shot is using at the beginning of a music video. The shot is unique and
makes indie pop music promos stand out from pop promos. We felt that it was vital that we used these
shots in our promo as it is true to the conventions of indie-pop. Also extreme
closes-ups helped to keep our music promo interesting as the audience cannot
fully understand what is happening in these shots so they are more likely to
watch the whole video to understand it, which I think is very important
considering we don't have a narrative in our video.
In
our music promo we only used one panning shot, in which the camera pans across
the romantic table, revealing what's on it in more detail and allowing the
audience to see this. We only did this
panning shot because we did not feel that in was necessary any other part of
our video to have another panning shot and it is more a of common convention in
a pop promo, not an indie pop promo and we wanted to create a realistic
indie-pop promo.
In a music video the main editing technique
used is a straight-cut, in fact it is unusual for any other type of editing to
be used. This is done simply because there is no need for it. A music video
only care about the artist and their song, so technically the video can be very
straight forward to help keep the focuses on the song and nothing else. Unlike
films, people don’t care about amazing editing in music videos so it is
pointless for people to waste time on something which isn’t that important. In
‘Girlfriend’ there is a lot of jump cuts used. For example there tends to be
quick shots showing Arvil
Lavgine singing the song for different angles and camera shots.
The indie-pop music
promo is no different to a pop music promo with editing, as both normally uses
straight cut editing.. This is done simply because there is no need for
anything else. The main focus for this video is the lyrics of the song and the
meaning, so technically the video is very straight forward as it helps keep the
audience focused. In
‘Starry Eyes ’,like most indie pop videos,
the pace of the editing is done to suit the structure of the song. In the bridges the editing is normal
pace, where as when the chorus is on the editing is a lot faster, as the song
is fast at those points. For example the three stills pictured above are all
shots shown in the chores over the space of about three seconds. This is done because it helps keep the
audience interested in the video till the very end. Some shots are only shown
very briefly, so the audience want to keep watching to see the shots in more
detail. Also in connects the editing to the song, as the editing is slower in
the bridges and faster in the chorus.
In most music videos, regardless of the genre they
uses straight cuts as the editing in a music video is not the most important
thing- it’s the song, the artist and the imagery shown in the video. So, we
decided to stay true to this convention
and just uses straight cuts in our video. Most of music video
(especially at the start of the video) was edited to the beat of the song, we
did this because it look visually pleasing for the audience to watch and allows
for regular shot changes. The pace of the editing became quicker as the singer
of the song becomes more angry and upset.
So, at the beginning of the song the shots change at a normal pace in
patterns, whereas towards the end of the song shot change quicker and more
randomly. This is a common thing indie
pop videos do, as it's another way of keeping the audience interested in the
video when there is no narrative. The
other unique selling point of our music video is that nearly the whole video is
edited into four quarters. We wanted to make the video that is different and
would ensure that it would be enjoyable to watch the whole way though and we
felt that this was the perfect way to do it. By having four different shots
playing at once, it means that the audience always have to pay attention to it
so they can understand what is happening, which means they are more likely to
watch the video more than once. It also makes our music promo stand out from
others, as it rare to find a music video like ours that has it split into four quarters
and have no narrative in it. This means that the music promo is more likely to
be remember by people, which would help insure the success of our artist and
brand.
In a music video the lighting is used to represent the feeling and mood
of the song. This is done so the audience can fully understand the meaning of a
song and it makes much more entertaining to watch. ‘Girlfriend ’ is an upbeat,
pop song about wanting to date someone so the lighting is very bright and happy
feeling.
In ‘Starry Eyes’ the lighting is mainly
very natural and bright, so the audience can clearly see Ellie and the
different things around her. However there are also shorter shots that are too
bright and seem to reflect the lighting on set . This is different to a pop
promo video, as that usually only has natural lighting. It has been done to make the video stand out and
be different (which fits perfectly with the indie pop genre), as it not normal
to have bad lighting within a music video and it fits with the lyrics of the
song, as starts are bright. Also this has been done, like the extreme close up,
to give audience hints of the different shots in the video as the audience want
to see the shot in full, so therefore keep watching the video till the very
end.
The lighting our video is quite natural and bright
the whole way though. In previous filming projects our lighting had been poor
and as a result of that, some of the shot were unclear. So we learnt from that
and decided to uses a professional
lighting, ensuring that every shot would clear and could potentially be
used. Admittedly, the lighting maybe doesn't represent the meaning of the song,
it properly should have been darker in some shots. But we really want for the
audience to see everything that was happening, as some shot require the
audience to think of the meaning and we would not of be able to do this with
darker lighting
The costumes used in a music video are
always used to match the genre and narrative of
Arvil Lavgine wears very
fashionable (for its time) clothing, as it is a pop song. This shows her
audience that she is very up to date and is therefore cool.
In the narrative, the girlfriend wear very
unfashionable, nerdy clothing. This done because the audience are not meant to
like her, so by having her in bad clothing it makes her less appealing.
Whereas the girl trying to get the boyfriend
wears black, punk, rebel clothing. This has been done as she is the one the
audience are meant to think is cool and likeable- she is being a rebel for
stealing someone's boyfriend and the clothing represents that.
the video. This is done to
represent the artist in a certain way, for example in this video the costumes
that Arvil is a cool, fashionable, fun young women. In the performance parts of
the song
The
costumes for an indie pop video a significantly different to a pop promo
video. Instead of wearing
clothing which is consider fashionable, cool and stylish (like in 'Girlfriend')
the indie pop video are more concerned about the song itself. So it is a more
likely that the clothing is a big deal with in the video. Also the artist tends
to wear clothing that represents the song and there brand. This is very true in
'Starry Eyes' as Ellie wears quite quirky clothing, that keeps her well covered
up and is quite simple. This has been done to show that Ellie is more concerned
about her music than what she looks like (which is very typical for an indie
pop artist).
We
only had one costume in our video and that was of a white, simple dress with
purple converse. In indie-pop videos the costume normally aren't the most
important element, the artist will wear something that represent who they are,
but not so that it takes the attention away from the song and its meaning. We felt like this was an important convention
for use to follow, so we choose for our actress to wear a simple white dress.
It represents the innocents of her, which makes people sympathize with her when
singing about heartbreak. Also it mean that coloured paint showed up on the
dress really well. We choose the purple
converse for her to wear to give her a bit an edge, as it is not considered
fashionable to wear converse with dress.
This show that she does not follow stereotypes and is unique with her style,
which is a very common for indie-pop artist to do.
The most common props used in a music
video are the instruments guitar, drums and bass. These props are used because
they help to make music videos realistic, as when the artist performs live
there would be instruments. It
also allows the other members of the band a chance to show who they are and it
not just focus on the lead singer. In ‘Girlfriend’ this is done throughout the video in one
scene.
The props is also very different
in a indie pop video. There can be props such as instruments or things that
relate to the song, but it also very common for these types of promo video to
have very little. This is because the main focus of the video should be the
song it self and the artist, so by having little props, the audience does not
get distracted. This is very true with 'Starry
Eyes' as there are no real props throughout the video, only two dancers. The
dancers help to keep the video interesting, but do not take the attention away
from Ellie, so the audience will focus on her instead.
In
our music promo we did uses a lot of props, which isn't commonly done in indie-pop
promos. We wanted to challenge this as the props we used really helped to get
the meaning of the song across and give another interesting element to the
video. Our five main props shown
throughout the videos are; a rose, I heart-shaped pillow, a heart shaped
ornament, a love teddy bear and a heart shaped candle stick holder. All five of
the items represent love and during the course of the video, these items get
covered in paint starting slowly with drips of paint and then getting covered
all over in paint. We did this because to symbolises the lyrics of the song and
its meaning. The song is about heartbreak and realising that you never going to
get back together with someone, 'the ink settles in' and these love items
getting covered in pain is one of the ways we show this in the video. We used six different coloured paints in our
video all of which a pastel colours. We choose these because individually they
all pretty coloured, which symbolised how pretty love can be. But, when these
colours are mixed together they become ugly, like a breakup. So at the
beginning of the song (when it calm) the colours are dript individually, then
when the songs become angrier all the
colour are drop onto our actress-suggesting she has been though an ugly break
up and the ink is settling in that they are not going to get back together.
For
one of our main performance scenes our actress is in a date like setting. There
is a heart shaped balloon, wine, a candle and lots of rose petals- all of which
would help make a very romantic date.
However in our scene, our actress is alone and the other wine glass
clearly hasn't been touched. We choose to place these props in the scene
because again it helps to represent the meaning of the song- a breakup and realisation that you are never going to get
back together with the person. It also suggest that our actress has either been
stood up or the date has left, which gives the audience something to think
about while watching the video.
The
other prop we had in our video was a guitar. We chose to have this as it is a
common convention found in most music videos. Our song only has one instrument
and when researching into our artist, we found that she could in fact play the
guitar, so made sense to show this in our video. We also included it because we
wanted to smash an instrument in our video, as we thought that once again this
would be a good way of representing the structure of the song. It calm to begin with, so the
audience see the artist playing the guitar
but then the song becomes angry so the audience see the guitar being
smashing- showing that are artist is so upset and hurt by the break up that she
is smashing something she loves.
The
location of a music video very much depends on the type of genre the song is
and what the songs meaning is. If the song is a apart of pop genre than it is
likely the music video is going to be filmed in ‘normal’ location. Where as if it was a part of the rock
genre it likely the location is going to be somewhere dark. This is done so the
audience can fully understand what the song is about song is about and what
type of artist created it. Also having a good location can help to create a
good narrative storyline. ‘Girlfriend’ is an upbeat, fun song about wanting to
steal someone else's boyfriend, so narrative part of the story is set at an
arcade, as there I s plenty of different actives to try and steal the
boyfriend. The performances part of the video is a studio, as it allows the
audience just to focus on the artist at certain points in the video.
We
filmed our music promo video is a primary school hall, which is not a common
place to film a music video. We chose to film there because we could have it
for two days for free and we were allowed to do all that we had planned with in
the hall, including covering our actress in paint. We didn't have to worry
about staining anything with paint as we were covering the walls and the floor
was wooden. All of this made planning for the video a lot easier and less
stressful. To make it look like a set, one of the members of our group had
wallpaper which we felt was appropriate
for our video. They are girly colours with girly designs on them, which
suit the artist and the style of the song. We felt that it made the background
of the video look visually pleasing which can help ensure a successful video.
Also the wallpaper made it look like we weren't filming a primary school, but
in fact a studio.
The narrative of a music promo video is very depend on how
the song is interpreted, what the artist wants to do and what genre of music
the song fits into. ‘Girlfriend' is all about disliking a boys girlfriend and
wanting to steal the boy. So, the narrative in this video is all about Arvil Lavgine sabotaging a girlfriend and
boyfriends date though a series of different actives because she wants to date
the boy. (for example in the images, the girlfriend is go-karting and Arvil
knocks her off the root). This has been done because it relates well with the
lyrics of the song- ‘Hey! Hey! You! You! I don't like your girlfriend! No way
No way! I think you need a new one!'. The unique part of this video is that
Arvil is the girlfriend as well, which is comical to watch and would be very
appealing to fans. At the end of the video Arvil gets the boy and the
girlfriend is dumped.
Indie pop promo music videos commonly don't have a narrative
and are purely performance. This is a very simple concept that allows the
audience to focuses on the meaning of the song and not get to distracted by the
looks of it, which indie pop does a lot. To help keep the video interesting, it
common for them not to reveal every shot at once. What indie pop does is show
shorter shots that are unclear (often though an extreme close-up) or a shot that
is shown too quick to be fully understood, then later on in the video the whole
of the shot will be shown. This is done in 'Starry Eyes' as one the first shots
the audience see is an extreme close up of a Ellie's face, which is not the
full shot. It is not until one minute into the video that whole shot is
revealed.
For
our music promo we decided not to have a narrative and just a performance based
video. This is something that is very commonly done in indie-pop music as it allows the audience to focuses on the meaning of
the song and not get to distracted by the looks of it, which we something
really wanted as the lyrics to our song are not straightforward. The risk of
doing a video like this is that can get boring for an audience to watch. Luckily with our song it develops from a calm
song into an angry song, so we were created the idea of the girl getting
covered in paint when the song get angry which gives a interesting ending to
the video. But this doesn't happen until the last minute of the song and we
didn't want our audience to stop watching before then. So, we used lots of
quick shots and extreme close-ups which show the what will happen towards the
end of the video . This meant that the audience would want to watch the video
until so they could fully understand see what they were shown earlier in the
video. The other thing we did in our promo to keep the performance interesting
was has most of the video shot in four quarters. All of this meant that even
though it is just performance but still managers to keep the audience interest
throughout as there is so much going on, which means we are more likely to have
a successful music video and have a successful artist.
Another
thing that was important for us when creating this music promo video is that we
really wanted to break the serotypes of how women are portrayed in the media.
Laura Mulvey created the theory
called 'The Male Gaze' in which women
are show in certain ways to pleases a male audience. This is very true
especially in pop promos. For example in 'Girlfriend' Avril Lavigne wears very short shorts
which does look appealing for a male audience. In indie-pop music promos this
is less common especially as the artist are usually more concerned about the
song and the music rather than their image. So, we were able to show this in
our music promo as well. The dress our actress wore was very simple design that
showed no cleavage and not too much leg.
This meant that the our audience would not get distracted by the looks
of our actress and instead focus on the song and its meaning.
Directors' Commentary
There was several music promos that inspired and influenced
our video. The one had the most influence was Gotye’s video for ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’. This was
because we felt that there was an element to the song that was like ours, and
this was how it begins with only one or two instruments, but it becomes more
powerful and louder as the song goes on. This meant that we looked at the video
for the song to see how they approached this style. We liked how the artists
were seen in just one room and had strange face paint on. In the video, paint
builds up across the walls and goes onto the bodies of the performers. We found
this very creative and thus were keen to use face paint to make the performance
of an artist more interesting than just seeing their face as they sing. For the
chorus of our chosen song, the lyrics are ‘underneath my skin, as the ink
settles in’. Therefore the idea of paint building up and spreading across
someone’s skin could be linked to the lyrics.
For our performance style and imagery we
were influenced by Adele's 'Rolling in The Deep'. We liked the idea of the video alternating from the performer on their
own, to lots of other shots of varying length that showed simple actions;
glasses of water vibrating, somebody
drumming, someone dancing on a floor covered in white powder, plates
being smashed etc. The song we chose did not lend itself well to a video with a
linear narrative. Instead we thought a better approach would be similar to this
video as it has performance but also a whole range of other occurrences that
link to the lyrics and the tone of the song.
A technique that wanted to uses (and did uses) in our music promo video
was stop motion. A famous music video that does this very well and influenced how we
did it, is Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’. Throughout the whole video we see the
singer’s head, and around it stop motion has been used to animate lots of
objects that link to the lyrics. For instance, as he says ‘You could have a
steam train’ a track is built around his head and a toy train starts to move
around it. We believed using stop motion was another way of keeping the
video interesting and would challenge us
to use more skills. As the song uses only one instruments it gives a simplistic
feeling and we think that stop motion would be very suitable for this as it is
quite a simple technique itself. For the part of our song where we used stop
motion was when the lyrics are ‘as it heals, they scabs the crack and bleed
all-over again' , we used stop motion by showing cracks spreading across our
performers body.
A music promo that influenced our editing was Mumford
and Sons video ‘Whispers in the Dark’. The whole video splits the screen into
quarters showing four different things at once. This is interesting to watch,
as there are lots of different things to focus on throughout the video, which
also means that the audience are more like to watch the video more than once.
We thought this would be a very good idea for our video, especially as there
wasn't a narrative so we needed find alternative to keep the video interesting
and enjoyable to watch throughout.
For our ancillaries the biggest
influence and inspiration was defiantly Andy Warhol pop art. As he would show the same
picture in different colours four times. His work is world know and high poplar
among lots of different people, making it easily recognisable. We thought this
type of art would work really well as the main image on our advert and as the
cover to our digipak. We wanted to create a strong brand that is recognisable
and relates to the song. The paint we used was perfect for having the same
image but in different colours, so we took full advantage of this idea and
created our own take on it.
Another
skill we learnt was how to uses lighting effectively when shooting the music
promo. In previous projects we had just
relied on natural lighting when filming and sometimes we couldn’t use some of
our footage as the lighting was so bad. To ensure that this didn’t happen again
we borrowed a professional nature flood light used in drama productions. This
gave brilliant lighting, which meant the we could use any shot we filmed as it
was clear. However, we did have problems when using this lighting which we had
to overcome on the day of filming. The light we used need a high stand to stay
on so throughout filming so that light was directly on our performer. We didn’t have a high stand, so we had to
create one. Using a ladder and duct tape we were able to stick the light to the
ladder at a suitable high for our filming.
By doing this it allowed uses to move the lighting around very easily
and it meant that it was secure so we didn’t have to worry about it falling off
during filming. 
The
biggest challenge we had had out of the whole production was learning to use
Final Cut Express. In all of our other
projects we had used iMovie, however because we wanted to spilt our video in
quarters and iMovie cannot do this, we had to learn how use Final Cut. I took the main role in editing the video, so
I was the first person to learn how to us it in our group and I also had the responsibly
of teaching another member our group to uses it. This program is far more complexes than
iMovie, so it did take me a day just how to work out how to add shots, cut the
shots, move the shots and resize them. I did use Google a lot to help me
understand the program and asked for lots a advice from other students and
teachers. Not only this but this version of Final Cut renders anything and
everything once something is changed. This
meant that using Final Cut was a very time consuming program to uses- by the
end of the first week of using the program I had only managed to edited four
seconds worth of the video. My skills in using the program did in improve and
by the end of the second week not only edited 1 minute and 37 seconds worth of
the video, but also I was able to show the other member of our group how to
uses the program. It did work out really
well using Final Cut, as we were able to produce something that we not only
proud of, but also looked how we wanted it to. 
We also had considered the creation of the digipak and advert, not just the music promo. To create these two elements we used Photoshop in which we used several different tools to help create our final products. The most helpful tool we used in Photoshop was that Magic wand tool. This allowed us to select certain parts of the photo (mainly the paint) and edit this without affecting the rest of the image. By using this tool we were able to change the colours of the paint but still just using one image, something which our audience complemented us on when gaining feedback. Also by using the magic wand tool we were very easily able to change the main four images of our artist into black and white by using the adjustment opinion. This once again helped to make the digipak and advert stand out and look professional. The only issues that we had using Photoshop using different layers made it slightly confusing when trying to edit certain points of the products. But as time went on we got used to the different layers and it became no longer an issue. 
