Audience Feedback

I thought it would be helpful to have audience feedback on the first draft of the advertisement from a colleague on the course. His feedback is invaluable as he is well aware of how to appeal to conventions and is experienced  in the field of media. the questions i asked him are as follows...

What do you like about the advert?

What do you dislike/would want to improve about the advert?

How well do you believe this advert sells the band's image? 


we intend to use this feedback to improve the advert...

Final Cut Pro Screen Grabs

We used Final Cut Pro to edit our music video. We learnt a number of things from using this software. The first thing was importing the files on to the program. We learnt how to desaturate the shots so they looked like we had planned them to look.

The main difficulty we found whilst editing was the lip syncing. It was quite hard to get the words to match up with the actors mouth everytime, it sometimes took us a few attempts to get it right and to either add time on or take it off and decide whether it was from the beginning or the end of the shot.

It took a short while to adapt to Final Cut pro. Adding the desaturation effect took some trial and error, and we had to try two more effects before we got the look we wanted. we used a cross fade audio effect, to counter the harsh ending of the alarm clock at the beginning of the video. once we got the hang of the software we found it increasingly easier to cut in, cut out and modify clip length.

First day of filming 7th November

YorkOn our first day of filming we did all the shots that we needed to do in York.
Firstly, we did the photo for the album cover and a band shot which can be used on the digipak. We did these in college against a plain wall so we can edit in a pale blue colour for the back which we had already decided would be a good colour to use.
After the photos, we went to the train tracks in Dringhouses and did the shots there. This is going to be the anchoring shot which the video keeps cutting back to throughout the video. We filmed the whole song here so we can use it at any time we want to go back to the band.
We used Jemma's house as the location for the morning sequence until the main character (Craig) leaves the house to go to the bus. We had to make the lighting darker so it looked like it was morning. Everything we filmed in the house went well and to plan, this was: the alarm going off, him getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, coming down the stairs, looking in the mirror and going out of the door. The next shots we did were out of the house at the bus stop. This was easier to do because Craig wasn't singing so we didn't have to really focus on the timing.
We used a park in York so even though we hadn't finished the morning sequence we had to make him do the 'fun side of life' bits. In the park, he was in his casual clothes with his hair spiked up, we had shots of him on the swings and on the slide. All of these park shots went how we planned them.

Difficulties on the first day of filming
In the morning sequence in the bedroom when he was getting up, it was quite difficult to make it look dark and give the effect it was early morning, and to maintain a high quality of video.
All the shots we did in the park were of Craig singing the lyrics, this was a bit more difficult for him to sing the right lyrics at the right time and to get everything in the shot and for it to look natural.
The morning sequence which took place in the bedroom faced difficulties because there was a lot of things going on at once and it was hard to get everything to go right at the same time.
At the train tracks, the band didn't really feel comfortable with not having something to actually do, and to just act natural, this was difficult to make it look good and make everyone look like a band having fun.

Extras
We added in a few extra shots just to make sure we didn't run out of footage once we got to the editing stage. We did all the planned shots on the first day that we could do before the camera ran out of battery.
One of the things we added in was a shot of Craig singing against some garages. On our way back from doing the train track shots, we passed some garages which had the right kind of image for the video and the genre of music, so we got Craig to sing the whole song there and that can be another shot whcih we can keep cutting back to throughout the video.
Originally for part of the morning sequence, we had a shot of Craig walking past the doorway and then the next shot being him looking in the mirror just before he leaves. We changed this and added in an extra shot of him walking down the stairs. This linked the getting ready process a bit more and it looked good having him coming down the stairs, putting his jacket on and singing the lyrics at the same time. The fact that he was looking very grumpy and tired made it more realistic and emphasized the contrast between the two sides to the video.

Second day of filming Tuesday 8th November

The second day of filming took place in Leeds, we met early so as to get the grim establishing shots we need of the city to show the draining situation the main character (Craig).After getting the first establishing shot of inner city life, we headed to Tesco extra to get a 'way to work' shot. Upon getting this shot, we went to film the shot in the centre of leeds in which Craig reaches his place of work and places his hand on the camera.
We then walked to Brigate, one of the busiest streets in leeds city centre to get another shot of his walk to work. Craig then changed into another outfit so we could shoot the rest of the shots.
In more casual clothing, we then went to the arches near leeds train station to film a drinking scene. We then picked up a couple of props and proceeded to millenium square. At Millenium Square, we filmed a band shot in which we all sat on some steps, with Craig singing the song. when we got this, we went to Hyde park to film the shots in the play park that we didn't get the day before. We got the final shot in hyde park also, due to how efficiently we filmed on the second day.

Difficulties on the second day of filming
Burning the tie was problematic as the tie wouldnt actually burn.
At times we were all in the shot meaning that we didn't have anybody to film.

Extra shots
A few shots of the city we filmed were not planned, we filmed them to give us more material to work with. 

Draft of Digipak

We want the digipak and advert to have the same theme as the music video. The theme is the contrast between work life and fun life. This is what the music video shows. For the front cover of the digipak we are going to have the actor from the video standing in front of a pale coloured backdrop in a suit with a party hat on. Once again this shows the contrast between the work life and the fun side of life. In the digipak there is going to be a CD and a DVD, on the CD we are going to have the actor stood in front of a coloured backdrop and he will be split in two halves, one will be him dressed formally in his business suit and the other half will be him in his normal punk clothes. On the DVD, an idea we have thought of, is having the disc as a clock face and at 5 o'clock, which is typically the finishing work time, have a party popper or something that resembles fun time like in the music video. The back panel is going to have the track list on and have some sort of image behind the words, but not covering the whole panel because this might make it difficult to read. The inside panel which is in the middle of the two discs is just going to have the band name 'The King Blues' written on it, covering the whole panel.
The magazine advert will be the same image as the front cover, which is the actor in a business suit and a party blower in his mouth, wearing a party hat. There will be the band name at the top of the page which is different to the digipak, as the writing on the digipak is across his legs, this is to make is stand out more in a magazine. There will be information about the digipak under the image towards the bottom of the page.

Shooting Schedule 7th, 8th November

Below is the shooting schedule for our music video, the times are arranged so we can shoot the majority of the material in just 2 half days...
Other shots, such as the stop motion sequence, will be done at college.     

Shooting Schedule

Client: The King Blues                

Project: I Got Love  A2 music video            

Crew: Lowri/ Sam/ Jemma           Contact  Sam:07847098667                          Cast: Craig Martin                                  

                                                               Lowri:07816952215

                                                             Jemma:07875140383

Date: 07/11/11-08/11/11

Time	Activity	Location	Cast/Crew	Resources	Shots
9:00 Onwards	Pick up camera	college	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig
9:30 Onwards	Park shots, tie burning shots	Park in York (rowntrees)	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, Football, party popper, tie	15/18/26 /29
11:00 Onwards	Train track shots (band messing around)	Train tracks in York	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, Punk clothing	/17/20/22/26/
12:00 Onwards	Bedroom sequence (knock a door sequence) Bus stop  (shot 9)	Jemma’s house	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, Alarm clock, towel,	(9)   1-8 penultimate sequence /
Next day 9:00 Onwards	Shooting establishing shots for Grim early shots in the video Also, way to work shots (bus shots)	Leeds City centre	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, Full work attire	12/13/14/16/
11:00 Onwards	Millennium square loitering scenes + drinking in street scenes	Leeds City centre	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, Beer cans (empty)	23/28
13:00 Onwards	Final sequences	Leeds City centre	Lowri, Sam, Jemma/ Craig	Camera, band	/30

location screenshots

We are going to do some shots of the band and we want an urban, grungey setting by some train tracks and we have found some in Dringhouses which we are going to use.

We are going to do some shots in a children's play park and we have chosen Rowntrees park because it has the things we need and it's local for us. Here is an arial view of the park:

we are going ot have some shots of the band sat down, messing around and singing in Leeds at Millenium Square. We chose this location because it's a built up city so it supports the working class life. It represents his job and his life. The actor in the video will be wearing punk clothing so him being in Leeds city centre will be going against the culture and the style of life there. This shows his anti system attitude.

When the singer gets off the bus and is making his way to work he is going to be walking down a Leeds high street which will show how busy and chaotic the city is.

Storyboard

Storyboard

View more presentations from jemmagraham.

The storyboard that we planned our video from...

Location and prop list:

this is a basic list of the places and props we will use during filming:

LocationsLeeds city centre
Train tracks (dringhouses)
Park (dringhouses)
Jemma's house (York)
Millenuim Square (Leeds)

Props
alarm clock
towel
tie
football
newspaper
hair gel
cans
lighter

Song Rights

This screenshot is a request to Transmission recordings to ask permission for the rights to use 'I got love' by The King Blues....

Audience profile

This audience research information has helped me create an audience profile of the exact demographic at which we are aiming our music video.

Our target will be most likely be young and male, and be passionate about their genre of music, probably wear ripped Jeans and a black or red t shirt (also potentially ripped) on their feet may well be a pair of doc martins or tatty shoes  and their body may be scattered with piercings and complemented with an unconventional hairstyle. Their entire appearance suggests going against the flow.
The chap is socially aware in that he is constantly contemplating how much capitalism has ruined his existence and how many problems he can point out within the system. 
From interviews we found that in his spare time, this skapunk follower would enjoy drinking alcohol, indulging in occasional drug use, loitering around buildings and again complaining about the system.

He wants people to know of the existence of his punk subculture and is proud of it.
He is likely to buy merchandise such as wrist cuffs and perhaps a band shirt of their favourite Ska or punk musician.

Above is arguably a bygone typical view of a punk rock, which today is actually quite a different thing, not that nobody adheres to this style anymore. I believe that although we attained some good ideas (some of which we will use) from the surveys and interviews, the actual demographic we are aiming at is much more mainstream. Peircings are still prominent and perhaps even torn clothing too, although you are now less likely to see as many of the liberty spike/mohawk style crazy hair choices. Despite the changes in the definition of typical punk, the views expressed by those who listen to the music will be largely unchanged, in that they probably aren't too keen on capitalism and are very outspoken. This has led to an evolution of ideas within the group, meaning that we are not going to make a video full of leather jackets and vandalism but there will definately be elements of it feeding off our audience research. 
     

Survey monkey Analysis

Sam's survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VL95536
In order to get some varied responses to guide our style

 choice, I designed a survey on surveymonkey.com and posted it on

 Facebook for my contacts to complete. Overall, I had 10

contacts do my 5 question survey, not a staggeringly big

 sample, but I gathered some helpful information about my areas of interest.

For example, my first question inquired about the choice of colours that an audience would expect to see in a Ska/Punk themed music video.

how the participants saw the survey...

As indicated by the screen shot, Black, and red and black were common choices. Also, we had a response of a tartan pattern and also of bright neon colours such as electric pink and green.
the second question was centred on what people thought counted as mindless and fun entertainment, we had a mix of answers that ranged from hitting people with a broom to house parties, also, interestingly, the majority of the answers involved drug use. An evaluative point may be that my questions in the survey need to be more specific.

My third question asked what kind of clothes would be expected to be worn by a member of the Ska/punk genre. The majority of response was jeans (sometimes skinny), torn shirts and other clothing, studs, denim and doc martins, accessories include safety pins and dog collars.

 
The fourth question asked if the music video of a song influenced how much you like the song, we yielded  perfectly equal answers for yes and no, both having 50% of responses. This, in hindsight, was perhaps an ambiguous and superficial question to ask, considering we got no answer we could use in making the actual promotional material.

The final question in my survey was aimed at finding out what the consensus was of the attitude that punk conveys, the answers we got all surrounded the idea of defiance, anger and rebellion. We also got a reply of the notion of ‘sticking it to the man.



Jemma's survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VL6BM8X

Survey results

View more presentations from samewenmedia

Audience Research- definition of genre

PUNK:

Punk is notoriously known for its anti-capitalist and anti-establishment movement, aimed at raising awareness of those typically with less money and the ultimate punk goal is to smash the oppressive money oriented state.
This message is explicitly argued within the songs themselves.

 Clothing and accessories typically worn by fans of the genre includes ripped jeans and shirts, braces, wristbands, spiky dog collar, safety pins and perhaps a loose tie worn around the neck.
Also the main colours for these clothes are black, complimented often with red, purple or tartan pattern.

Some famous punk bands include The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

SKA-PUNK:

The music genre Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat.
Ska connotes an alternative to chart music and is usually very optimistic.

The characteristics of ska punk vary, due to the fusion of contrasting genres. The more punk-influenced style often features faster tempos, guitar distortion, on beat punk rock-style interludes (usually the chorus), and punk-style vocals. The more ska-influenced style of ska punk features a more developed instrumentation and a cleaner vocal and musical sound. The common instrumentation includes electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, brass instruments (such as trombones or trumpets), saxophones, and sometimes an organ.

Some key Ska-punk bands include The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat, and Madness.

Audience Research

To gain useful information, we put a number of surveys on facebook and kerrang:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QF2CGXS


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VL6BM8X


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VL95536

the questions in these surveys have been designed to give us an array of views from an array of viewpoints,
the result will be a detailed profile of who we are producing our video, digipak and promotional material for.

Audience Research

We created 11 questions to gain an overall picture of the demographic we are aiming for...

1. Describe yourself in 4 words...
2. What do you like doing in your free time?
3. What kind of clothes do you wear?
4. What genre of music do you like?
5. What bands do you like?
6. Why do they appeal to you?
7. Do you like their music videos?
8. What is it about the video you like?
9. What's the album art work like?
10. Do you like that style?
11. What merchandise do you buy?

we will be asking these questions to people who like punk/ska and using their answers to guide our choices whilst creating our video.

we also carried out another interview, the results of which are in written form...

1. Describe yourself in 4 words...
Loud, outspoken, politically orientated, outgoing.

2. What do you like doing in your free time?
I love listening to music, socialising, drinking, going to gigs.

3. What kind of clothes do you wear?
I uasally wear dark clothing, jeans, denim jacket, doc martins.

4. What genre of music do you like?
Mostly ska punk, indie, rock.

5. What bands do you like?
My favourites are The King Blues, Frank Turner, Sonic Boom Six.

6. Why do they appeal to you?
I like their music and their attitude, they don't care and I like that attitude, I think that's the most appealing thing.

7. Do you like their music videos?
Yes.

8. What is it about the video you like?
I like that they are usually low budget which I like because then it's more about the performance of the song rather than having a fancy video.

9. What's the album art work like?
Mainly it's dark, grungey and urbany.

10. Do you like that style?
Yeas because it reflects the genre and attitude of the band.

11. What merchandise do you buy?
CDs, T shirts, Posters.

The results of this interview, added to the video interview and the survey results will help to give a clear overview of our targeted demographic.

Existing Material Research - Magazine Advertisment

Less Than Jake – GNV FLA

This small advert in Rocksound magazine is displaying a new album for the Ska band, Less Than Jake. The King Blues, the band we have chosen for our video have Ska influences and themes within their music so this advert is relevant to that choice.
The background imagery on the advert is of a non-descript building on a street corner in black and white, in an unspecified American city. I believe this imagery has been chosen to show a sense of normality and an absence of any eccentricity, contrasted with the distressed and multi-coloured font styling of the album cover. I think it is this contrast that conveys the band’s attitude, e.g. the mixing of different elements to create a worthwhile composition.
Other than the imagery, the font has connotations within it; the band name Less Than Jake is in a characteristic, informal handwriting style. This style is employed across many albums and would therefore appeal to fans of the band. This is similar to the body of text, also typed in a ‘scribbled’ fashion which supports the band’s mild anti establishment/anti convention style.
overall, the advert is aesthetically pleasing if not a little out of synch with other typical Ska stylings.

Machine Head – The Blackening

The magazine advert for Machine Head’s new album ‘The Blackening’ is from Rocksound magazine. People who buy Rocksound magazine are the ones who are most likely to like Machine Head that’s why it’s been advertised in this magazine. It’s being advertised to the target audience. The advert is overall very dark and dull and only uses two colours. The background is a faded black colour with a white image and white text. These colours reflect the band and the genre of their music, that’s why these colours have been chosen. The image is very gothic and morbid and it reflects the audience of the band. The font is block capitals which is plain and simple and nothing elaborate. This advert is a sharp contrast to the stylings of the king blues, as the king blues do not posess a morbid attitude. I have learnt that simple drawings against a solid black background connotates metal and will be therefore something we will avoid when designing our advertisment.   


 Magazine advert for Maximo Park -

Quicken the heart is simply the album cover with extra information on the bottom of it. They have used the album cover as the background for the whole advert so that people can quickly recognise it and will read it. The album name is bigger than the band name because they want to get across that it’s a new album, people will already know the band. The font used on the advert is all the same and it’s recognised for what the band use on their other albums. They have used a computer generated font which is clear and easy to read. There is no photo of the band members on the album cover, it is an orange/yellow background which is of the constellations in the southern sky. The layout of the advert is the big album name in the centre of the advert with a smaller font used for the band name and the font gets smaller towards the bottom of the page which is the information of the CD/DVD and their new single, everything is centred and looks very organised. The album name which is the biggest font on the page is the most important thing because that’s what’s being advertised. The colour scheme of the advert is very bright and is all orange and yellow which are bright colours and the font is in white. This reflects the bands genre of music which is alternative rock and the band personality. The brightness of the advert and the album cover is eye catching because of the colours and that's what the band want to be like.



Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History

Photography
There is a single photograph on this advert which takes up the whole of the page. However, the main focus of the photo is the cat's face which is placed centrally. The top half of the image seems to have been digitally burnt out in order to keep the face as the focal point.

Colour Scheme
The colour scheme of this advert is almost black and white, with only the slightest amount of saturation left in the photo and all the font in a cream colour. The only part of the image which still holds any significant colour is the cat's eyes, which again ensures this is the first thing the viewers eyes are drawn to.

Fonts
There is at most two fonts used so the majoritiy of the writing is in the same typeface. This font is also sans serif so this combination gives it a very clean look.

Layout
All the writing is centred which gives the advert a nice balance.

What we gathered...
This analysation has allowed us to gather that the majority of digipak adverts have very simple designs, almost minimal in some cases. we also found that there is usually synergy between the album art and the advert designed to promote it. this is probably so you can recognise the album from the advert and to promote a brand loyalty. We will carry this over and as a result our digipak will be closely linked to our advert. 

Existing Material Research - Digipak

Textual analysis of a Digipak-

As I found from my research, Digipaks are an alternative to the standard jewel case and usually have extra content such as a gallery, commentary or DVD material.
I chose to use The Clash’s London Calling 25^th anniversary Digipak as it has links with The King Blues genre, being anti-establishment in their attitudes. The style of the album art is interesting as it closely mimics an Elvis Presley CD, being a black and white image with the text ‘London Calling’ in the same font, colour and positioning as ‘Elvis Presley’ on his album. This link was created due to the controversy that Elvis caused in his early days by shaking his iconic pelvis, mirroring the controversy caused by being against the flow of the system, this is further supported by the imagery itself. The image of a guitar being smashed in performance. It is arguable that Elvis was ‘punk’ in his day. Similar to what the clash were aiming for during theirs.

The Clash have clearly gone for a very simple design, regardless of the link to Elvis. This simplicity is characteristic of the genre, similar to the king blues, in which less is more. The minimalism is equal to their view about possessions and money. With punk music videos and promotional material, imagery tends to focus on performance, which The King Blues, The Clash, Rise Against and many others tend to do.

Arctic Monkeys digipak

This album cover is a photo transferred onto the digipak, although it is simple, it is very effective. The album name isn’t shown on the album cover but usually digipaks are named the same as the band. It looks like the colours have been dulled down a bit which makes the ‘arctic monkeys label stand out. The album cover shows the whole band and the mirrored effect adds a bit more to the cover instead of it just being a normal photo. The album name is only shown on the back of the digipak and the side. The back of the digipak is very plain and it has no image on it, only the list of tracks and the band name. They band obviously want to keep it very simple and quite plain. There aren’t any bright colours used, it is a lot of the same colour which is the deep red and that’s what the text on the back is to keep with the theme. None of the band members are looking at the camera or showing their face much, they are looking at each other or downwards. It is a natural photo in a natural environment and not posed.