Progress Update 27/11/14

Today, I brought the camera into school and put all our film on the Mac's and started editing for our first draft. Doing this will allow us to see what bits we need to refilm so we have our final product in on the deadline.

Progress Update 24/11/2014

Over the weekend, we as a group filmed some material ready for editing in our next Media lesson. However, we only filmed the majority of Eoghain's parts as we didn't have the appropriate costume for my bits in the music video, so at the next opportunity we will make sure we have the appropriate props and mise-en-scene in order to film the rest of the music video, which will be done at a later date.

Dolby

Hi,
I would like to see some drafts of your ancillaries with reflective comments to see the progress you are making rather than wait for one final product that may need improving!

Progress Update 20/11/14

Today, as a group, we discussed when we're going to film and what parts we're going to film. We also looked over our storyboards again and discussed what props we needed to get in order to film.

Progress Update 14/11/14

Since my last progress update I have analysed a few websites so I can look at what I will need to include in my ancillary tasks. I have started creating my website for the ancillary but won't be posting this until I have completed. In order to finsih the website we will need to take pictures of of our main artist to add to the gallery pages.

Props List

Our main character (who is portraying Sam Sparro) will be seen in only one outfit throughout the whole of the video:

• Black suit trousers
• Black suit jacket
• White shirt
• Black tie
• Black smart shoes
• Slicked back, tidy hair
• Gold body paint (only at certain points in the video)
• No make up
• No jewellery

The mystery woman will also only be seen in one outfit:

• Gold dress
• Blonde/golden hair, neatly done up
• Gold shoes (heels)
• Gold body paint
• No jewellery
• Basic make up - face covered in gold paint

We will only be filming in one location, which will be a house. Other props include:

• Sparklers
• A bed
• Cup of water
• Gold paper stars
• Table

As we want our video to be as simple as possible, and we want the main focus to be on the two characters and their image/style, we're not going to use too many props that will make the video look too busy or steal the attention away.

Crew List

Max Austin - Director
Christian Barrett - Cameraman and props
Ruby Davies - Editor/actress
Eoghain Kilbane - main actor and lighting

Planning for website ancillary

As I am creating a website as one of my ancillarys, I'll need to analyse other websites so I can gather ideas and inspirations on how to create mine. I will be analysing Sam Sparro's website and others found on the webpage wix that I feel will help in the creating of this task.

This is the top of the homepage for Sam Sparro's website. This is a good example of something that I will want to use when creating the homepage to my website as you have the artists name in big, bold letters at the top which stands out against the white background. His name is also repeated in the subtitle, 'THE OFFICIAL DIGITAL HOME OF SAM SPARRO' which emphasises the artists name and creates a sense of professionalism. There are also links which feature in a smaller font in the structure of a banner which is useful as it takes you to the part of the website that you want to look at. Just by looking at the top of the homepage we can already see a colour scheme starting to take place with a white background and bold, capitalised font in either black or grey. This makes the homepage look classy and professional, promoting Sam Sparro in an appropriate way as we expect this colour scheme to now run through the rest of the homepage to create a sense of continuity.

This is the homepage of a site that belongs to wix (follow link here) that follows a similar layout to Sparro's website. The artists name is in large, capitalised letters at the top of the homepage but has their logo on top of the writing which promotes all aspects of the artist. The links at the top of the page are slightly easier to read than on the Sparro website as they're in a darker font and more spaced out. The layout is also very simple, so your attention isn't pulled in all different directions and everything is easy to read/find. I'll take inspiration from this website in terms of using a logo that we might create for Sparro or for the production company and making sure the colour scheme makes the writing stand out on the page.

This homepage (follow link here) takes quite a different format to the other two above. The layout is different in terms that the artists name is beside and below the banner of links. However, the artists name is seen twice on the top of this homepage for emphasis. There is also an image of the artist playing a violin, which suggests what type of artist she is and what genre of music she might fit under. The colour scheme runs through this part of the homepage as the dark brown, black and beige colours run through the image, writing and background which neatly ties in the whole of the page. This is an interesting technique to use as it makes the homepage more interesting and lively. A colour scheme like this would also be good to use when representing the artists personality and how he/she would like to be percieved to the audience (ie. using a bright, neon, multicoloured colour scheme could be used to promote a pop artist).

This is the rest of the homepage for Sam Sparro's website. We can see a couple of clear images of the artist in a full frontal, close up shot which allows us to identify with him. It also gives links to 'blog' and 'news' which could be followed through earlier at the top of the homepage which will take you to other pages of the site and structures the site into particular sections. Sparro's new single is also advertised in a large space right next to his image as a form of promotion so viewers will click on the advert which will take you to a seperate site where you can hear a preview of the single and buy it. These features will be good to use on my homepage as it gives audiences the latest news and posts that Sparro may have written himself, so the audience can connect with Sparro and get all the information they need just by looking at the homepage. 

This is another page from a site from wix (follow link here) which specifies under the title of 'gallery'. The page consists of photos of the band 'Magic Unicorns'. Most of the shots are of the band performing and playing instruments which advertises what their concerts/gigs look like and may encourage audiences to buy tickets to any shows they have going on. It also allows the audience to get to know the band more and look at their style and chosen image, representing their genre and other aspects of themselves. The colour scheme of dark, grainy colours runs through the whole of the site which makes the website look professional. Using this idea of having a gallery of pictures of just our artist is something that I'll include in my website so people who are unfamiliar with Sparro can get to know him by looking at pictures of him performing or in photoshoots. 

This is at the bottom of the homepage for Sam Sparro's website. This is quite an important feature to have on a website as companies can get into contact with the management to book Sparro for events or appearances. I will probably include this on my website (however will be making up the contact details). 

On this website is an 'About' page which tells the audience all about the artist including their background, interests, how they got into music and their general hobbies. This is a good page to have as it allows audiences to familiarise themselves with the artist if they don't know that much about them and it tells readers a little bit more about their style and genre of music. I will definitely have a section of this on my website so readers can get to know the artist a bit more. The page also has a clear title written in bold letters so readers can see the artists name clearly and uses the pun 'A STARR IS BORN' to make the page entertaining. I will try to incorporate this into my website somehow to keep the readers interested and enjoy reading about the artist. 

Research and Planning Improvements

Since Tuesday, I've improved my research and planning by going back on my digipak and adding in theorists and more analysis on the Sam Sparro website to create a more detailed analysis. Also, I've added more posts by writing about location, the version of song we're going to do, progress updates, moodboard, props list, description of target audience and planning for ancillary.

Location

Here are pictures of the inside and outside of the house that will be our location for the music video, including the rooms that we will film in.

Version of song

As we can't make our music video too long, we will be using the shorter version of the song.
Here is the shorter version which is almost a minute less than the original version:

Progress Update 10/11/14

On Friday, myself and Max went to Christian's house to take pictures of the inside and outside of the house as this is where we will be shooting our music video. This is helpful as we can plan which part of the house we want to film particular parts of the video in so when it comes to shooting we will be spending less time planning and be able to film efficiently. I will upload these pictures to my blog shortly. 
Over the weekend, myself and the rest of the group discussed when we were going to film and who needed to get what in order to prepare for shooting. This allowed us to come up with a shooting schedule which will also shortly be uploaded and allowed us to allocate who would take what role in producing the video.

Moodboard of music video ideas

Description of Target Audience

After doing a lot of research into who our target audience will be, I've discovered that our implied audience will be of quite a large range as Sam Sparro covers more than one genre as an artist (pop/electro/dance) so other audiences will appeal more to certain parts of one genre than others.
For the electronic and dance aspect of the genre, I've found that audiences who enjoy it the most are age ranged to be between 16 and 25. This confirms that the electro sound is more popular with younger audiences than older ones. Also, I found that the majority of this audience were male, coming in at around 70% and females coming in at around 30%. This will be useful when filming our video as we will take into account what stereotypically a male would like to see in a music video opposed to what a female might find entertaining in a music video.
The genre of Pop is arguably the most popular genre in music at this current time so I think choosing a song that had this particular sound was a clever idea as it will appeal to a mass audience. Pop music is generally heard and enjoyed by the younger generation, so an audience with an age range of 14-21. As most pop artists are female, we can see that this reflects throughout audiences which dominate in the female gender. Also, pop boy-bands attract a lot of female attention so this is of whom the majority of their fan base is made up of. However, a pop audience is also largely made up of the male gender (not as much as female) as they may primarily find the artists attractive so will then venture into listening to their music, and some genuinely enjoying it. 
For dance music, we can see that this is predominantly targeted for the younger generation too. Dance music is widely and famously played in clubs and bars, which 18-25 year olds will attend so this would be the main age range for target audience. However, younger ages from as young as 15 may also find that they enjoy this genre of music. Many dance tracks that are in the charts have been mixed and created by DJ's, who begin their careers working in clubs so this is where the 'buzz' for dance music has generated from. From doing my research, I've also found that both genders are quite equal when it comes to who enjoys dance music the most. There isn't one that dominates in this area, so this will become useful as we will have to make our music video appeal to both gender audiences.  

After researching the general target audiences for all different genres, we can see that they all have an audience of the younger generation, aged from 15-25. Therefore, this will be our intended target audience for our music video. Saying this, we will need to make our music video entertaining and interesting for this target audience and relate to them, either in terms of their hobbies or what they like to do leisurely. For example, the majority of the audience this age (18+) enjoy going clubbing or socially being with their friends, so this could suggest as to what our location should be and what characters we should involve. This will also give us an idea as to what our main characters should wear and what their image overall should represent; we want to create a main character that the audience can relate to or aspire to be like - what they think is 'cool' or 'attractive'.  Trying to appeal to our target audience will also include choosing the right props, body language, facial expressions, camera, sound, and putting across the right class, gender and age of our main characters. 

Planning for Ancillary (digipak)

For my two ancillary tasks I will be creating a webpage and a digipak. This is my planning for my digipak.
After analysing Sparro's digipak for his 'Black and Gold' album, I can take ideas from how he linked his digipak and music video to the theme of the single in terms of colour scheme and imagery. This will help in creating our own digipak for the single but also making sure that we're not copying any of Sparro's ideas.
Firstly, I think our front cover should feature a black and white/gold theme without a lot of colour. This is due to the fact that we want our music video to feature a very simple, classy theme so will most likely film in black and white. So this could be a black background with the titles in gold.
We also will need to decide what font we will want to use; whether we want it to be bold and large so it stand out or whether we'll want it to be in small writing to give a classic look.

This is Justin Timberlake's album cover for his album 'The 20/20 Experience' which sports a similar theme that we would like to go for - black and gold. The album cover comes across as very sophisticated and classy as there isn't an abundance of colour or too much going on.
The font on this cover is in large, capitalised letters which makes the words stand out against the black background and the image of the artist - this may be something that we will do if we use other images on the cover to promote the artists image. 

This is the back cover for the album by the Stereophonics. I like this back cover as its very simple but has mixed the colour scheme up a bit by using a gold background with black font, which will make the CD stand out on the shelves. This again follows the colour scheme that we want to use. 
The font used here is very small and simple and has a continuity in terms of size and colour. This makes the audience only have their attention focussed on one part of the back cover and keeps a running theme going throughout the digipak.

This is the back cover of Miley Cyrus' album. This roughly follows our colour scheme but is different as it has a picture of the artist on the back. This may be something that we will do if we only have the titles on the front without a picture of the aritst so the audience can still see what the artist looks like and have a feel of their image. 
The font here is in yellow which definitely makes it stand out from the background, we can also see that the yellow font is a feature that Cyrus uses as most of the other typing is in yellow, which could be a technique that we'll use as it makes overall digipak look well thought out and planned.

Ellie Goulding's cover for her single 'Anything Could Happen' follows the black and white colour scheme which gives the overall image a classic look as she hasn't used any other colours (apart from the font) which doesn't make the cover appear too busy.
The font here is in capatalised letters and in a shade of pink which makes it stand out against the black and white colour scheme and image. All these techniques are features that we'll look at using as we want our digipak to stand out as much as possible. 


Taking ideas from the above album covers, we will use a colour scheme that will have a continuity throughout the whole of the digipak; this could be the colour of the font being the same through the front and back covers to the inside booklet and typing on the CD itself. This will help keep a running theme throughout, so the writing will perhaps be in either gold or black to stick to the title of the song. If we don't feature an image of the artist on the front cover then we will either on the back cover where the song title will be or on the inside booklet. This will help the audience see an image of the artist and his mise-en-scene in terms of costume will represent his chosen style which will perhaps reflect the genre of song. All techniques that we use will help promote the artist and song in the best way possible in terms of getting his chosen image across to buyers and properly presenting his genre of music by relating the digipak to the genre of the song.

Digipak Analysis

Sam Sparro offical website

http://samsparro.com/

Above is the link to Sparro's offical website. We'll use this as an inspiration to our colour schemes and ideas when it comes to creating a website or album cover/posters for our music video. It also gives us a flavour of Sparro's personality as most posts are written by him and we can see his latest 'tweets' and links to his Facebook page which allows us to see how he reflects this into the music video for 'Black and Gold'. The website is also useful when analysing the digipak so we can see how similar or different the digipak, music video and website are. However, we won't be copying Sparro's ideas at all when it comes to creating our own digipak/homepage/advert, but it's always good to look at his ideas and what his inspirations would have been.