Task 7 - Marketing Context

DRAFT my music video will be partly promoted by the digipak

Digipak - blue and green world setting, circles, natural image with a bit of surreal quality through the character of the artist (repeated images) - want to add a 'space' shot - purpose is to create an image for the album, and be a collectable item, of fan memorabilia, give info and intrigue about the artist

Music Video - setting, green colour, surrealism - transitions, effects (flashing), images of the world/globe - direct ad for one track.  doesn't have to be the same message as the song on its own - can add to/distort the original music.  can tap into this to build the sense of surrealism.

Website - keep the colour theme - got to be easy to navigate but this could be a kind of space/world journey to continue the theme and obviously this is a display board for the other two products - can sell the digipak and showcase the video including link to youtube channel

Task 3 - Synthpop music video examples - La Roux

The following images are from La Roux's video - 'I'm Not Your Toy'

For the majority of the song, the artist is performing to a somewhat estranged audience. The shots of her performing show her enthusiasm for what she does and give the audience a glimpse of her talent.

Task 3 - Synthopo Music Video Example - Lights

The following images are from Lights' music video 'Ice':

Close ups of her face with wind blowing in her hair is a very common convention of a pop video, usually used to show the artist's passion as they sing and adds a dramatic edge to the video.

Blue is the colour for babies and shows Lights to be sweet  innocent.

The 'dark side' of her personality, dressed all in black with a hoodie and her hair covers her face which connotes danger and mystery.  Her smile is a 'bad girl' smile, like she is planning mischief.

casually sitting on the sofa playing her electric keytar. the instrument shows she is quirky and possibly a bit of a hiptster. she is wearing grey and white to show she is pure, innocent an cool.

This shot shows Lights is a powerful, confident and energetic woman. Orange flame connotes enflamed passion, energy, and being generally amazing

The 'Evil' Lights is shown to be quite small in this shot which, along with the song says being bad doesnt make you a bigger person.

It is very common for a music video to have a message or moral. In this clip her "dark side' is reaching for the good side which suggests she is in control of her darker thoughts and is able to overrule it and make the right decisions. The moral in this case is 'you can be bad, but you can control yourself and be good.'

Similarly to La Roux's music video, there are plenty of special effects which you would expect in a synthpop video. 

Task 8 - Ideas About Representation

I want my artist to be represented as being very 'normal' and not the typical famous music artist with designer clothes and lots of money with his own chauffeur etc. Luc will also be represented as being a down to earth, good guy and because the song is about being creative and setting your mind free he will also have to be a little eccentric.

To convey my representations in the music video my artist will be dressed in dark jeans, a white jumper, a long jacket and a mustard coloured scarf. The dark jeans and the long, black coat make him look like an everyday person with nothing to make him stand out which helps the audience relate to him. The jumper is white to convey purity, calm, and goodness. Finally the yellow scarf is there to add a little colour and personality to his physical look and yellow is the colour of fun, humor, intellect, creativity and personal power, all of which are are part of the meaning of the song.

Luc will also have some props to add to his representation, such as sunglasses, a book and feathers. the sunglasses show he is cool, the book shows his intellect and want for escapism, and the feathers are linked with being free. The scarf is also a prop used as an accesory, representation of the song and an interesting transition between shots.

Other ways I will convey the artist's representation is my camerawork and settings. Almost every shot will have some form of nature in it whether its a greenery, water, fire or animals. Nature is seen as relaxing and calm and a place to escape reality. The city will also be used in contrast with Luc's dreams with nature and shows him as a normal, everyday person

my storyboard so far

this is the only bit of my storyboard that is set in stone:

Task 4 - Other Student's Work

I have had a look at some Media blogs by other students online and I have noticed that in all music videos, the students experimented on different cuts and edits to the beat whilst I, on the other hand, have been focusing on the editing of effects rather than how I'm going to shape the actual video to the song.

Task 1 - Music Video Conventions

First of all, all music all music videos have a purpose, to promote the artist(s) but also to visually express one of their songs.

There are many different conventions of electropop as it is such a large umbrella genre. Specifically synthpop music videos, these are the conventions:

• the artists are the main focus of the video. the whole video is centered around them as apposed to other people in different segments like a pop video.
• singing and playing instruments. in a synthpop video it is very common for the artist to be lip-syncing to the song and/or using a synthesizer. most likely to be an electric keyboard (look at Owl City or Lights)
• Every synthpop music video I have encountered so far is fairly eccentric and has very abstract narratives.
• there is a very common use of visual effects and green screen. I am yet to find a video without any visual effects.

Digipak

This is my Digipak:

Task 2 - Practice and Techniques

Previously, before A2 Media, I created a music video as part of my GCSE Media Studies coursework to the song 'Disturbia' by Rihanna. My current music video is very different from my previous as it is part of a different genre and isn't being used to raise drug awareness. However, from creating the video I have gained a far greater understanding of the visual effects in Final Cut Pro and how far I can go with them in my current video.


Also, I have just completed my first bit of experimental editing for my upcoming music video:

When in the final product, this shot will be about 30 seconds long and will be in 5 different locations. I will also attempt do this without using a green screen and film it on location to see if i can get the same effect without the need for excess editing.

Problem with Digipak Concept

   Whilst in the middle of designing my Owl City digipak I encountered an extremely annoying dilemma. My original concept design was a city in the clouds, I was going to use a landscape shot of London, specifically the skyline from either Primrose Hill or on from a view point in Epping Forest near my house. I was then going to merge this image with another image of a cloud to make it look like london was in a cloud.
   However, it turns out, Owl City's first Album has an alternative album cover (one I didn't know existed) which has a city in the clouds as well. Now I need to design a new concept idea and complete it before half term. Although this is extremely aggravating, it's good that I realised when I did. Also, I've now learnt to make sure I have absolutely looked at all albums of an artist AND the alternative cover designs. Another positive thing about this incident is it shows I have an accurate understanding of how the artist is represented.

Original Album Cover

My Unfinished Album Cover (without colours added)

What Representation do I want for my Artist and What impact do I want it to have on the audience?

   For my A2 production coursework I am going to use ‘The Real World’, a song from Owl city’s most recent studio album ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ to create my media text. To help me decide on my artist’s representation and the impact I want on my audience I referred to Owl City’s ‘Fireflies’ music video as it was his debut single from his second album. Owl City’s first album was independently released and did not make any of the charts, however, after the success of his second album and first professional music video, Owl City’s musical career had finally made a real start.

   In all media texts there will be examples of media language, genre, representations, a narrative, and of course, there will be an audience. Owl City’s ‘fireflies’ is in the electronic/synthpop music genre and the video represents the artist as a creative, young with a quirky personality and could be viewed as a ‘cool geek’. The music video narrative is centred on young adult (in early twenties) who is playing an electric organ in a room full of mostly retro toys that magically move by themselves, getting faster as the song crescendos and suddenly halt at the finish. Finally, the audience demographic for Owl City is a mixt of males and females (mostly females) in their late teens to early thirties.

   The active audience Encoding/Decoding Model can be applied to this media text but passive audience theories such as the hypodermic needle, Cultivation and Copycat theories cannot be applied to the text because of the innocent, abstract narrative which involves no imitable behaviour. The Encoding/Decoding Model is a model used in the Audience Reception Theory created by Stuart Hall, first seen in his first publication ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’ (1973). The model says the producers construct the text (encoding) and the audience will read, understand and interpret the text in their own, individual ways. An example of this would be the lyrics to ‘Fireflies’ as many of the audience decoded them to be about clinging to childhood, slowing down time because of stress or people’s individual thoughts and creativity but in fact, Adam Young wrote the song about his insomnia, nothing deeper than that.

   The passive audience theories cannot be applied to this text because there are no negative, violent denotations and there isn’t any behaviour to imitate because of the prolonged use of inanimate objects. The hypodermic needle theory can’t be applied to the music video because the video is abstract and therefore is polysemic which means the audience cannot be told what to think or feel.

   After looking at the music video and some audience theories, I have decided I want my artist to be slightly omniscient and not really a personality type. This enables the lyrics of the songs to be about other people and will in turn make the artist seem more ‘down to earth’ and attractive to an audience.

Re Creation of Album Cover

In class we were given the task of recreating the Album Artwork for one of the Digipaks or CD's that we had in class. We had to use each other to model for the photo's and anything else must be cut from an online image but not the original cover (i.e. I couldn't use the same mirror from the original cover)

The cover I recreated was the cover to Sandi Thom's album 'Smile... It Confuses People' and i definitely struggled to complete it. My classmate Finnette was my model and as she didn't have a dress and there weren't any large cloths around she had to pose with two grey jumpers laid on her lap. I used Photoshop to edit the image, and before i changed the colour, I used the 'lasso' tool to cut the image into five layers: the body, the grey area, the gold area, the green area, and the legs.

I gave the 'Body Layer' a high contrast and slightly raised the brightness so the image would be more clear when I made it black and white. To get the effect on the 'Grey Layer' I used the 'Burn' tool. For the 'Gold Area' I added a pattern-overlay to the image and then a gold-ish colour-overlay, the same procedure was used for the 'Green Area' except I used a green colour-overlay instead.

The text and mirror were added last. I got the mirror by searching 'hand mirror' in Google Images. I cut out the white background, de-saturated, then re-sized and positioned the image to look like it was in Finnette's hand. The text was a major let down, I couldn't find the same font and i din't have enough time to make the edges rougher.

                               Original:                                          Recreation: