Audience Profile

Based on my Audience Research, I am now able to produce an audience profile of the average person I will be aiming my music video at. This will be based on both the demographic information that respondents gave, but also their opinions and musical tastes, etc. As such, the Audience Research Survey and corresponding analysis document should be viewed in conjunction with this part of the coursework, however the key relevant findings are summarised as follows;

• More female responses 
• Most responses ranged between 16-20
• Most respondents were students 
• A lot of people favoured both colourful exciting videos and dull emotive videos
• Rock, dance and heavy metal where the most favoured music genre
• People like videos to follow their genre conventions 
• People listen to music to relax and engage with the lyrics 

I have tried to utilise this information, as well as specific responses given, to produce who is, in effect, the average respondent to my survey, and thus my target demographic. 

This is Kate, she is seventeen and has just started her second year at college. She studies Media, English and Photography. She made a lot of friends in first year and thoroughly enjoys college now. She listens to music all the time! When she is at parties all of her friends like different genres so variations of music is played and she personally likes all types of music but favours rock.  Part of the "digital age", Kate has a musical encyclopaedia at her fingertips in the form of the internet and will share her favourite songs and videos with her friends on Facebook and Twitter, who in turn do the same. Her musical taste is ever-evolving and becoming more refined like most educated young adults, and as a result enjoys unusual, creative and "arty" music videos that challenge the conventions of her beloved rock genre. 

Websites like Digital Spy and music forums keep her up to date with the latest showbiz gossip, and the latest music videos. On such forums she has recently discovered the likes of indie pop bands Goldfrapp and The xx, and likes the former's simple iPhone-filmed video for "Yellow Halo", but still has almost paternal love for today's mainstream artists.

Kate has a rather dull pessimistic approach on life so she can really relate and understand the rock genre as aposed to others who think it's boring depressing and irrelevant.  

Kate' scope of the rock genre is expanding. It is becoming much wider and as such, she has recently discovered the likes of The Rolling Stones. Also she said she now uses Spotify which is a music app full of every single song. She often uses the uk top 40 rock charts to see what's new. 

One of Kate's playlists:

1. Welcome to the black parade - My Chemical Romance
2. Hope for the best - You Me at Six
3. Rat Race - Shikari
4. Still into You - Paramore
5. Dont Stop me now - Queen 
6. Bring me to Life - Evanescence 
7. Young Volcanoes - Fall Out Boy
8. Rockstar - Nickleback
9. Back in Black - AC/DC
10. You wanna know - Don Brocco

Music Genre

Music genre from chanjam

Digipak Research

Digipak research from chanjam

Filming Updates

When concluding our rough cut, we realised we needed a few more shots of footage. As some shots appeared shaky and we came up with new shots to make the video more diverse. We have arranged to film again with Emily at the weekend which will be 23/11/13. This time we will have an idea of what looks good and what doesn't so we can really perfect certain shots and also have variations of shots which show that as a pair we have thought it through to have the best possible outcome. When we next take footage we aim for extremely different shots so the video as a whole looks aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to watch. Emily will be wearing the same clothing so the video looks continuous and we will try and replicate hair and makeup so it's not obvious to the audience we have filmed on various occasions. Before filming again I will show Emily the rough cuts so she knows what she looks like and gets a feel of the video. We will go to the location around about half three as it begins to get dark just after that and some of the shots needed show rock conventions if they are in the dark, we will edit lighting on the final cut so it's the same throughout. Looking at the rough cuts, what we need to film is parts where she is just wondering around in her own little world to make it look mysterious. We aim for the final piece to be complete by 28/11/13!

Personal Skills Audit

The Personal Skills Audit serves, in effect, as a review of the G321 Coursework Portfolio which I completed as part of the AS Media course. It

It discusses  what skills I acquired, how these skills helped in the production of my group's horror film, and how I will improve these skills at A2. It does this by means of five key areas; Digital Technology, Post Production, Research and Planning, Using Conventions of Real Media Texts, and Creativity. As such, the document will prove useful in the G325 exam, where Section will require me to discuss my coursework and how I have progressed from first to second year in terms of my practical skills.

Nine Frame Analysis

Rough Cut Three

Rough Cut Three

Magazine Advert Mood Board

Not purchasing music magazines that often, it proved difficult for me in sourcing magazine album adverts that belong to the "rock" genre, and as such I've complied a variety from across the web. 

Following on from the digipaks, these adverts will hopefully inspire the creation of my own through a greater appreciation of their trends and conventions on a wider, collective scale. Alas, there is less to discuss in relation to a compilation of adverts as their designs are largely based upon, and reflective of, the accompanying digipak. I will however give a brief discussion of how this is done, and any general trends which I will need to follow (or deviate from as the case may be).

As already mentioned magazine adverts follow same style, themes, colours and layout as the album they are promoting - often the same images are used also, only larger, If this is not the case, the images that are used tend to be from the same photoshoot.The main difference between the two is obviously the available space and so all elements have  the capacity to be much bigger, particularly the text, for a greater visual impact on the reader. However, the image still remains the biggest selling point.


Almost all magazine adverts that we researched, had either the band name or the band itself in the centre. This draws audiences in immediately and puts dramatic focus on the band member as the page is about them.There are various configurations in which this is done, but almost always the artist's name is bolder and bigger than the album title, again emphasising that a lot of sales purely come through reputation alone. 

Brief

This brief for my A2 Coursework Portfolio in Media is as follows:

A promotional package for the release of an album to include a music promo video, together with two of the following:

• A digipak for the album's release; 6 panes
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak

The project is divided into four sections; Research, Planning, Construction and Evaluation. Research will involve looking into the trends and conventions of a given genre and planning will involve planning my products around these conventions. Construction will involve lots of draft work as I strive towards the final product. The final Evaluation stages will be based on looking back on the success of the product - did I set out to do what I planned?

Hello Moderator

Hello Moderator. My name is Chantelle short and this is my blog; it contains all of the work I created with my partner Jamie Ingram undertaken as part of the G324 A2 Coursework Portfolio Unit within the OCR CGE course in Media Studies. 

I chose to work by myself to produce a music video to the track "My Heart s Broken" by an American band "Evanescence". The project lasted four months, commencing in September 2013 and cumulating in February / March 2014. There were also three weeks of progression work in June 2012. 

I hope you enjoy our work and find it both successful and interesting.

Please use the navigation bar at the top of the page in order to access our work, as organised into the five stages: Research (including progression tasks), Planning, Construction, Final Products and the Evaluation. 

Yours thankfully
Chantelle Short

Props/Gathering equipment

For our music video we do not need any props apart from a guitar in which our newest actor William will be using for the sequences in the video we can hear a guitarist. Emily, our female actor did not require any props as we thought the narrative is so emotional and heart felt, it didn't need any. All that was required of us to take to film was a camera and a tripod which made it easier to carry.

Rough Cut Two

Rough cut Two

Rough Cut 2

Even though there's still a long way to go, with lots of gaps, and some major issues with the video, We have made some good progress within the editing. 

A large portion of the rest of the video, although synced, is disorganised with clips and short sections of editing jotted around in an incohesive fashion. This is because I have been editing on what I call "staple basis"; I've been using all of the clips that I consider to be the best out of the footage and then the gaps can be filled at a later stage and amendments made to make the narrative flow. However, I do feel I've been using a variety of clips from all the different scenarios. 

A few single shots have been placed randomly for experimental purposes, i.e the shot where 

At the moment narrative has been quite easy to follow, but the sections which have been edited work very well and look relatively professional and cohesive when considered on their own. We are particularly proud of the overal look and style our video is portraying and the darkness within. A few parts do need to be more speedy and/or jumpy to complement the music. This would then match the flash at the beginning of the video. 

My main concerns for the next rough cut, apart from to fill the gaps and to re-sync the beginning the video of course, are to reconnect the offline media and to look at the gaps. We have begun to use this technique to remind me of what I need to fill in or look at. In the case of the overlayed studio shots where there's text, which does look very good, adding an extra visual dimension to the video, I'm unsure if it is synced properly or not. It is difficult to tell with clips overlaid and so I'll have to hide them all and check one by one. This will take time but will be worth it. 

Additionally I feel that so far most of the excitement comes from the editing and camera movement so there needs to be a few more dancing shots also. 

Rough Cut One

Rough cut One

Rough Cut One

In this first rough cut, we managed to do edit one minute fifteen second, because of location difficulties we did not follow the storybard as such however we made it more creative and safer for Emily. Some of the shots where rather shaky however as a group Jamie and I figured the shaky shots could be metaphorically symbolic of Emily's emotion.  In terms of continuity, i think the clip does flow quite well and there are no major errors. Some shots do appear a little but blurry but again it does make it look rather unique and again represents emotion.

Some parts; Emily does come in a little late in which we will sort and make look perfect. i especially like the part where she is in the garden reaching out of a photo frame , i think it looks creative.

Overall the filming that took place and the editing that was done shows what we wanted to portray and we are quite happy with that, we aim for our next rough cut to be better in terms of editing skills, also maybe include some different lighting techniques to make it look professional and varied.

Advert Analysis (Green Day)

We needed to analyse an magazine cover advert as we will be required to produce such a print as a part of this project. We will analise the advert concentrating on it's design (i.e. font, typeface, colour, style, iconography), it;s function, including a little media theory where relevant.

This is the advert for GreenDay. We know they are a rock band and they do portray typical rock conventions, i enjoy this advert as it is graphologically aesthetically pleasing. This advert is very colourful with the band being rock, this creates a dramatic contrast between the band and some of their lyrics, this does portray their "star image" extremely well. The connotations that relate to the bands style of music help emphasise what they associate with.The vibrant flashes of green throughout really liven up the cover and make it more interesting! All of the writing on this advert, is bold white, geen, black or yellow, this is a busy advert but effective and it looks good, this is a current theme throughout which makes it professional and continuous. The positioning of the members has been arranged in the way that the lead singer is in front and the musicians who don't sing as much opposite each other just a bit behind.The deranged, weird and blunt look they are all showing fits what type of music they create, this shows their rock, grunge look and as they look quite serious; it informs us as the audience they mean business. The whole frame is brightly assembled and is very eye-catching, as aposed to this, the band members are all in black, they bright colours juxtapose rock but add excitement and a sense of wildness in their music but their clothing which includes : leather shirts, studded belts, stripy tie and black trousers which presents them in a more rock way. The green has ironically been added because of the band being named 'Green' day.

The references to other brilliant rock bands and artists on the page insinuate that GreenDay are a good, talented rock band and support them well. This advert is bringing GreenDay back into the limelight with a new album, "return with the album of the year" which is in a red box drawing the readers attention immediately. It is the only red asset on the page which indicates, importance and emphasis. A quote has been included im guessing by the band which states "we are gonna do this band till we die" - this has been added because the banda the time had not been making music and publishing it, they took a kind of gap year to do what they want, this quote is really hyperbole and makes the audience think that GreenDay are back better than ever! Black clothing makes them look more pale, this shows them in a more rock way as they are showing a stereotypical gothic look which suits the band well. 

Mise en scene is fantastic in this frame, the heavy editing of the colours etc. helps maintain design and illustration, it's is kind of made cartoon like which is entertaining and appealing. the resulting effect is easily achievable but has pleasing aesthetic qualities. As everything around the band is rather bright and flamboyant, it draws direct attention to the band members which is what the intention was. The GreenDay name on the page is one of the aspects that stands out the most again reiterating the idea that the band is the main driving force. 
In the top left region, it says "new music first" this would also draw the audience in because the band had not made an appearance in a while so when they see that they are returning with new music, it would make them want to listen and find out more.

Choice of Editing software

We will be using photoshop for our editing, it's inference and the abundance of high-quality, professional and flexible features it offers. As such, Photoshop will be used to edit the images for the digipak and advert. It filters, tools and abilities are very create and as such i expect myself to create some ver interesting imagery, bearing in mind genre conventions and what i've planned. Unlike Final cut, which is almost industry standard.  

Editing Software

Final cut Express will be used to edit my music videos. It's considered one of the most comprehensive and advanced pieces of semi-professional editing software. It is very nearly industry standard and offers a number of features such as: tracks, slicing (jump cuts), and the slug which will make the process of editing much more efficient and quick. These specific features will probably be explained in the Evaluation stages when the project is finished. The software also offers a number of high-quality visual filters, e.e. mirrors, changing the colour etc. which will make the video more interesting and dynamic, visually unique - but again very professional. it also  offers support for my HD-quality videos.

We have also experienced with the programme at AS for coursework and so editing should be ideally efficiently quick.  We are familiar with it's inference furthermore the "Test Editing" process will allow us to get back into using it before i begin any serious work that will actually be used in the best product.