February Schedule

Here is what I intend to do over the course of February. It is mostly editing and blogging, due to us wanting to re-shoot the interview scene to make it look more professional. Also, everything is due on Valentines Day, so I need to make sure I blog and edit the video to completion.

Music video plan // club scene

Music Video // Club Scene on MindMup

Here is the plan for our club scene shoot. We need various equipment, people and we will be using our schools drama room for the location. Everything is detailed above.

Digipak poster // audience poll results

Above are the voting results based on my target audiences response to my digipak designs. I asked them to view all the different variants to my digipaks and then decide which they feel is best.

In last place was digipak 4, receiving no votes whatsoever:

Digipak 3 received a single vote, so therefore will not be considered any longer:

Digipak 5 did slightly better, receiving 5 votes, but not enough to be my final digipak:

Digipak 2 also received 5 votes, but again not enough to win this poll:

In second place was digipak 1, which received an outstanding 12 votes, but just missed out in becoming the final digipak:

The winner of the poll was digipak 5, with 13 votes. This will now be my final digipak design:

January Schedule

This is what I intend to do over the course of the month of January. Our video features quite a few different scenes, so we decided to do different scenes on different days to make it easier for us, and that way we can edit the music video as we film, leading to it being made quicker.

This month we also have to screen our first draft, so we are going to try film as much as we can to show to the class, and of course, blog as I go along too.

Digipal poster // audience poll

Digipak poster

Here is my analysis of posters advertising the albums, featuring Rudimental - Home, David Guetta - Nothing But The Beat and Rihanna - Loud. Both Rudimental and David Guetta are of the same genre of our artist Scott Garcia, but for the third, Rihanna, I decided to look outside of the dance genre to get an idea of what others do for these posters, which may give my group a better idea on how to make our own when we come to do it.

Survey responses

Click to enlarge

These answers show that those who answered were in our target audience, as we feared that if they weren't we wouldn't be able to include their responses. It is important to note that, as a surprise to us, the responses showed that appearance is important for an artist, so I have decided to look a little more into my digipak and see how I can make this work for me. Dance music was the most popular genre along with pop, which is a very pleasing result.








To the left shows how the audience reacted to the name "Scott Garcia". The responses were positive, saying how the liked the name and it fitted well with the dance genre. This is good news to us, and we had some difficulty selecting the artists name, and opted to us a random name generator due to the fact that we just couldn't decide, and by the audience responding in a positive way is a huge sigh of relief.








We also asked people to respond to our brief for our artist. Again, we received positive feedback, with someone saying "he sounds like someone I would listen to" and "fits the dance genre" and various other good comments on our brief.











Here we asked peoples opinion of the look we have chosen for Scott Garcia. We were very pleased with the responses, as we wanted Scott Garcia too come across as smart but have a sense of mystery behind him. One person said "Looks very sophisticated and mysterious" which is exactly what we wanted. Also, someone said "Nice but wouldn't associate it with dance genre" which we took into consideration, but have dismissed as everyone else has agreed.







Finally, we asked the audiences response on the song choice "Warrior's Dance by The Prodigy". The responses were again positive, some saying "good choice", "catchy", "such a tune" and various other praising comments. We thought people would like this song choice as much as we do, and glad that our assumption was correct.






To summarise, as you can see the audience have reacted in a very positive way. This shows that we are most certainly on the right pathway, and that our ideas for our artist work with the genre we have selected. With that comment on the appearance not working with the dance genre, we already decided that we wanted to break the mould of the dance genre, and offer the public something new and not conventional, so we have justified why we won't be taking their comment into account.

Audience survey

We decided to conduct audience research on our artist before continuing further. We sat down as a group, and planned what questions we would like, prioritising which would get the best possible answers. Above shows the types of questions we asked.

Logo selection

The image above shows the logos we liked for our artist Scott Garcia. Our goal was to find a logo that is simplistic, with a slight dance edge as we looked into other artists and they had a similar goal to this.

The first logo seemed far too simplistic, and didn't have the edge we wanted, and by receiving no votes from our audience, proved that we shouldn't use this logo. The same for the second logo also.

The one that received the most votes was the one we liked the best. We felt this emulated our goal the best, with the slightly weird styling of the 'A', and adding the red gave us that slight dance edge we wanted. The font itself is very simplistic and bold, which would definitely stand out on an album, and be easy to read and recognise.

As a group, we did like the fourth logo, it had that edge styling we wanted, but we thought it wasn't simplistic enough, and we thought the 'S' was too strange, and we felt that this would be harder to comprehend than the third logo, due to obscure lettering.

 For the fifth logo, we said that this was our second favourite, if the third was too fail we would select this one. It had that simple design, with minimal but effective twists too the lettering making it stand out more, and far easier to read than the fourth one, which would be important when someone is buying it in a shop as they need to be able to recognise whose album it is.

Finally, the sixth logo received the second highest votes on the poll. I was surprised by this, as this was one of my least favourite logos. I felt it just didn't work with the image we are trying to create for Scott Garcia, and I just didn't like it.

Music video // ideas

Our group decided to make a video to assist us in describing our ideas for our music video, almost like a storyboard in a video format. The song choice "Warrior's Dance" plays in the background.

Description:

Our video will begin with our character with a rabbit head. He is walking through in a busy street with his boom box, places it down then begins to dancing. Dancing is his dream, and he just wants to be noticed, but as he starts, he attracts the wrong kind of attention Unaware of the disgust from the public because he is a rabbit, he just carries on dancing. He begins to notice that they are not impressed by him, and they start throwing things at him. The rabbit gets upset, so he runs away. He decides to be normal, he should get a job. He begins his job hunt, and comes across a suitable role. He goes to the interview, where he is turned away for being a rabbit - no rabbit signs are placed around the room. The rabbit has had enough of this discrimination and chucks the table over in the room, where the interviewer calls for security who chase him out the building. He is then running home again, the stress has became too much and he begins to cry. He stumbles across a leaflet advertising this new nightclub, which he wants to go to as everyone dances there. He arrives at the club, knowing he probably won't get in, so pushes his way into the club trying to hide his rabbit face. He feels great and in his element when he is in the club, as he is surrounded by dancing people. He soon forgets about his rabbit head, but others don't let this slide by. They start chanting and want him out, as they too don't like rabbits. He is oblivious too this, and continues his dancing. As he makes his way around the club, he finds a female rabbit head, the first he has seen in a long time, and they fall in love. 

Audience response survey

Click to enlarge

Click here to take survey


















Above is the survey we have created to send to our target audience to help us get a better understanding of what others think about our artist, if our idea will work and where better to do it than online.

Audience profile

Mood board

We were asked to create a mood board that would communicate our artists style of genre easily. Firstly, we opted to use glitter as a border, as we felt this would make our mood board stand out and make it appear 'techno'. We also used various clubbing scenes, with laser lights coming out of all directions, as this is where this type of music is played, which would help the receiver make a connection between our mood board and the dance genre. The use of the cool/chilled colours of blues and silvers further gave our mood board a 'techno' feel and we felt these colours suited best for this style of genre, due to use perceiving it as chill/cool. The various words like "party", "dance", "digital", "clubbing", "DJ" and some others were placed to help the audience make a distinct to connection on what type of artist Scott Garcia is, and are also words that are commonly associated with the dance genre.

The main purpose of creating the mood board was to communicate our style of genre, what our music video style would be like and just show a little about Scott Garcia, which I feel we have achieved effectively. 

Green screen analysis // video

Planning green screen analysis

I found four different digipaks which I have considered to analysis

Michael Jackson

in my green screen analysis. They are:

•  Michael Jackson "This Is It",
• ,Rihanna "Talk That Talk" and
•  Rihanna "Loud"

Rihanna

Rihanna

The one I have decided to analysis for my analysis for the green screen task is Michael Jackson "This Is It". This is becdause I own this album and I feel I would be able to analysis it better than the others due to liking him more, and his digipak is quite different to other artists digipaks.

Genre Conventions

Digipak Analysis

Digipak analysis from Lucy Ford

David Guetta ft. Nicki Minaj // Turn Me On

At the start of the video, we see straight away that the video uses Goodwin's theory of music match with the visuals, as we see a CGI female robot miming along to the lyrics of the song. This could also been seen as an intertextual reference to Bjork's music video for "All if Full of Love" as they use a white skinned robot in both videos, and they both share distinct visual similarities.

Also, David Guetta features within this music video, which is uncommon for a dance genre music video. This approves of Goodwin's theory, as he stated that the artist features within the video, with close-ups which is true for this video of David Guetta's. David Guetta does not feature in all of his videos, with examples being "She Wolf" and "Titanium".

This video also complies with Goodwin's theory of the lyrics matching up with the visuals, due to the fact that Nicki Minaj says "Make me come alive, come on and turn me on" as he appears to be constructing her, and being this robot he is making her come alive. The use of this gives the song a better meaning due to it fitting closely with the narrative of the video.

This video can be seen as a performance, due to the fact that the singer, Nicki Minaj, is miming along to the lyrics. This supports Goodwin's theory, as he stated that music videos are performance based, narrative based or concept based, with this video being performance based. This can also be seen as a narrative based music video, as it is about a doctor who creates people, which is shown through the video of having him create Nicki Minaj's character and also the lyrics stating "Make me come alive, come on and turn me on".

To conclude, I believe this video works well with Goodwin's music video theory more so than other dance music videos, as this features the artist with close-ups within the video (this being uncommon for this genre), also having intertextual referencing to another artist. This video still managers to come across as a dance music video, due to the style of song, the unique narrative and CGI it uses and people are now aware of who David Guetta is, and what kind of music he produces.

Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch // Sweet Nothing

At the start of the song, we immediately see the artist who is singing the song. This is not a common characteristic of the genre of dance, as they usually have actors playing their role throughout the music video. The way the setting is created, makes it appear as if Florence is performing the song too an audience of people, which supports Goodwin's theory as he suggests that music videos are performance based, narrative based or concept based music video, with this video being performance based with a bit of narrative also.

Not only does the singer feature in the video, but so does the artist - Calvin Harris. This complies with Goodwin's theory of the artist featuring in the video, with close-ups. They use some close-ups of Calvin Harris, which is not a common genre characteristic of dance videos, as they tend to not even be in the video. In previous videos, he has not featured in his music videos like he has done for this video.

In this video, there is also a link between the music and the visuals, being complementary, which again is supporting Goodwin's theory, as as soon as the beat drops, Calvin Harris is punched in the face at the same point. This emphasises the fight, making it more dramatic. There is lots of cuts between him arguing with Florence and the fight scene, and with the music being played over the top makes it more fast paced, frantic and makes it come across as more violent.

The video also uses Goodwin's theory for link between music and visuals, but this time it contradicts, as it uses very dark lighting which goes against the song, due to the fact that the song seems upbeat and fast. This gives the narrative a darker tone.

As a whole, I think that this music video complies with Goodwin's theory more than most dance genre music videos, as it features the artist who made the song and who sings the song together, and they are both part of the narrative of the video. It also features miming, various close-ups of both Calvin Harris and Florence Welch, but still manages to come across as a dance music video, due to the visuals not particularly matching up with the lyrics, which again, is a common genre characteristic of dance videos.

Naughty Boy ft. Sam Smith // La La La

Since the genre my group has selected is dance/house, I have decided to analyse La La La by Naughty Boy. At the start of the video, we are introduced to a young boy and his father. They seem to be having trouble, as the father is shouting at the boy. After this, there is a part where the video supports Goodwin's theory of lyrics matches the visuals, as the young boy places his fingers in his ears and then this matches up with the visuals as the lyrics state "La la la" and the young boy places his fingers in his ear and mimes this - as if he is trying to cancel out the noise from his father.

The video also has intertextual reference to the film Wizard of Oz. Throughout the video, the kid is walking around meeting various people. He first meets a dog, which is meant to represent The Cowardly Lion. After this, he stumbles across a man, who is almost all silver, whom is meant to represent The Tin Man. The video continues with the kid coming across a man working the traffic in a street, as if he is dancing to the beat of the song, who is also meant to represent The Scarecrow. With all of this, the kid maybe represent Dorothy. This gives the story a narrative, and acts as a tribute to the film Wizard of Oz. At the middle of the video, there is a shot of them all together, which again, is further showing the intertextual reference to Wizard of Oz

Due to this being a dance genre music video, there isn't much that matches up with Goodwin's theory. The artist of the song does not appear in the video, so there are no close-ups of the artist to try sell their brand. Also, the narratives of the music video tend to not match up with the lyrics, and tend to have completely random ideas. This have became a genre characteristic of dance music videos.

Overall, I believe that this music video shows what type of genre this belongs too, due to the music itself and how the narrative isn't as closely matched up with the lyrics as songs from the pop genre would be. Also, how the artist doesn't feature in the music video also shows what type of genre this is, due to the fact this has become standard with dance music videos and is becoming rare to see the artist feature in their own videos.