This is the 3rd draft for our mgazine ad. Since the last one we have changed:
the font for the text
some of the wording for the product
We showed this nearly complete version of the magazine advert to both A2 media students (aged 17/18years old) who fit within our primary target audience of 15-24years old but also to some adults at home who fit within the secondary target audience of original Robbie followers who will remember his time in Take That and when he first launched his solo career.
We showed this to our teacher who is part of our secondary audience and an original follower of Robbie Williams, remembering his time in Take That and when he first launched his solo career. We also showed this to some students in Year 13 who are part of our primary audience as they are aged 18years old.
Front Cover
Back Cover
Inner Panels
Spine
These are our final designs fror our digipak.
We feel that this digipak relates to our video because the front and back show the cheekyness of our performer (which is usually the way Robbie Williams is portrayed) and the inside is lots of little pictures from our film. We put a bow and ribbon on the present to make it look more obvious and 3D. The spine is the same as the front and back design.
We used Photoshop Elements to create all our digipaks (rough cuts and final piece). We didn't find it easy to create as after many tries with creating a digipak we didn't seem to grasp the genre, after feedback we realised that the original images looked 'too country' so we decided to re-shoot. We had problems with the writing as the font we picked for our final piece seemed to move the letters down from the original in line postition. We also had to use the Clone Stamp Tool to make the pictures big enough to fit the digipak canvas size.
Our research did help as we new the common codes and conventions of digipaks. It meant that creating the back cover, especially the small print and logos, we knew exactly what to put after looking back at our research.
From our research and feedback we developed the digipak, after changing many things that we recieved from feedback we think this is the better draft we have done. This digipak is based on audience feedback and without it we wouldn't got such a good product, although I am not keen on the inner panel as i don't think i works as well as it could.
We showed this to our teacher who is part of our secondary audience and an original follower of Robbie Williams, remembering his time in Take That and when he first launched his solo career. We also showed this to some students in Year 13 who are part of our primary audience as they are aged 18years old.
This is the 2nd draft for our mgazine ad. Since the last one we have changed:
the background
the presentation of the date
we have removed the image of the product we are advertising
altered the text that accompanies the product
added a list of his number ones
Changed the layout of Robbie and Regeneration
By using only 'Robbie' instead of 'Robbie Williams' we are developing the conventions of magazines ads that we have researched.
We no longer need the image of the digipak itself because there is a clear connection between the two, in this case with Robbie leaning on the 1 which has replaced the lampost that is seen in the digipak.
This is our latest rough cut. We have tried the layering of the different generations walking and it has sort of worked however we had to change the picture size in final cut and now they are not all the same. This has given it a jumpy effect.
During the creation of this we happened to be researching one more aspect of Robbie and found that on his Greatest Hit albums there is normally around 19 tracks listed whereas on ours there was only 10. After seeing this for the next draft we have added some more songs to the tracklisting. We also realised that a convention of a digipak is on the DVD to have exclusive gig footage whereas the Live at Knebworth that we chose was released as a DVD on its own. Because of this we have found a new exclusive performance session and changed it to this instead. New back cover, spine and inside:
Robbie Williams is releasing his new album while "tucked away at the top of a mountain". The pop star, who is currently working on his ninth solo studio album and his first since 2009's Reality Killed the Video Star
He's released a 2012 calender, "Featuring thirteen glossy pictures of Robbie at his finest, including a picture of him by him, it's guaranteed to make you smile every day next year. With beautiful colour and black & white photos from the last 12 months, including close-up shots from the mammoth Progress Live 2011 tour, backstage shots from video shoots and more, it's possibly the best calendar yet! " (Robbie Williams Official Fan Site). This information says it contains no topless shots etc so therefore the target audience of this is 30+ because it is more mature.
This is a vodcast to show where we are potentially going to shoot when it comes to filming:
The area we are filming in is middle class and the house is well kept. We chose this location because it was easy to access because it's Gina's house to it is easy to film whenever we want. Also it's not far for all the cast members to go as it is local to the school. We are challenging the codes and conventions of music videos because not many pop videos are set in a middle class house and because we don't have a high budget it means we can't film in a studio with all the lighting and effects.
Being nominated and winner of many British awards show that his British fans have kept him going and voted for him. The target audience being 15-25 and the primary audience for the Brit awards being the same age shows
The fourth single, "She's the One", a cover of a track from World Party's album, Egyptology, became his second number one hit in the United Kingdom.[14] The single was released as a double a-side with "It's Only Us", the official theme for FIFA 2000. Williams featured in a campy and tongue-in-cheek music video where he was a figure skater. In the video he performs a backflip, which is actually illegal in competitive figure skating. The song went on to win a number of awards around the world, including a BRIT Award for Single of the Year and Best British Video in 2000, and it also won a Capital Radio Award for 'Best Single'.
Wikipedia 2011
The video starts off with a video type clip showing Robbie as the coach and his students winning. It the pans to him performing, sitting on the ice skating seats, this is a side angle. The team takes a tough knock when the lead male hurts his foot. There is then footage of Robbies childhood, showing him falling over and people laughing, the music then cuts off and shows an arena of people clapping Robbie and the female lead. They dance together and it's perfect, the camera always pans out so it's a long shot, this is because it isn't actually Robbie doing the lifting. There is then romantic lighting filled with shadows and spotlights, this sets the seen and signifies Robbies characters love for ice skating. He then does an amazing back flip whilst the other male looks on upset that it isn't him. They then win and soak up all the glory.
The video doesn' signify the lyrics that much, but the tones of the music is soft and like figure skating very smooth and graceful.
The primary audience for this video is 15-25 and the secondary audience is 30+. The female audience are most likely to watch this video because Robbie is a sex symbol and are most likely to relate to the lyrics of the song. We will not be using any elements from this video
this is a useful e.g. of the lack of good research into conventions as regards rw's vids: what have you actually said here about portrayal of RW? shot types, his appearance, mode of address? in your earlier vodcast you don't really get into this either, meaning there's nothing to go on when you're seeking to justify your choices (e.g. for Eval Q1 but also any post on draft/planning/ideas) you haven't analysed clothing, hair (incl facial), body language (espec facial expressions + direct-to-camera gaze), place of dance + dancers, occurrence or not of band, locations (studio or not), use of SFX, pace of editing (variation - comparing ballads to dancer tracks), elements to appeal to M/F/gay/young/older etc, intertextuality + humour, role of director (you didn't really get into style of dir?) etc etc
History of Music Video In 1894 the nearest thing to music video was illustrated song. This was first used by Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern (sheet music publishers), who used a magic lantern to promote sales of their song. This involved projecting a series of still images on a screen at the same time as live performances. In 1926, many short films we produced as a result of the arrival of "talkies". Vitaphone shorts were usually approximately six minutes long and featured Art Deco-style animations and backgrounds in addition to a footage of the performer singing. In 1930 Spooney Melodies was the first true music video series. Cartoons in the early 1930s featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney featured several interpretations of classical pieces and were built around the music. Live action musical shorts were also distributed to theaters. Another early form of music video were "promotional clips" which were one-song films. They were made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These generally consisted of short films of musical selections, normally just a band on a movie set bandstand, made for playing. Musical films were another important step towards the creation of music videos, and several well-known music videos have copied the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s-50s - eg. Material Girl by Madonna was closely modelled on "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the late 1950s the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists to accompany their songs. Its use spread to other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented. In the UK, British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s where a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. As a result of this, by the mid 1980s music video would play a very central role in the marketing of popular songs. Artists of this period such as Madonna owe the majority of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos. There are two key developments towards the making of modern music video: the creation of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and visual effects created with techniques such as image composition. In addition to this, the development of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras enable many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply in comparison to the higher costs of using film. In 1983, the most successful and influential music video of all time was released — the nearly 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film. In 1984, MTV also launched the MTV Video Music Awards (later to be known as the VMA's), an annual awards event that would come to underscore MTV's importance in the music industry. Another important development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time), without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics. The show moved to ITV in 1989.
Artist continued to explore other ways of presenting their songs through music videos for example the 1985 Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" which used computer animation and also in 1986 Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. Both then went onto be hugely successful songs and the latter won nine MTV VMAs. In 1988 MTV then began showing hip hop music in their new show 'Yo! MTV Raps' With the creation of the Internet, music videos are now shared online with viewers. In the beginning, the people who put them on the net were part of IRC-based groups who recorded them as they appeared on TV then digitised them, exchanging the files via IRC channel The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music video By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music video
In 2005 YouTube was launched making the viewing of online video faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. Other artists such as Soulja Boy Tell 'Em also achieved some level of fame initially through videos only released online. In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels.
MTV now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The Internet has become the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos. More recently the iTunes Store has begun selling music videos for use on Apple's iPod with video playback capability. VEVO is a music video website launched by several major music publishers in December 2009. The videos on VEVO are syndicated to YouTube, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue
This week we are focusing on getting the digipak and magazine ad out of the way so we can focus on the final product. So this Saturday we are meeting up all day to catch up on blogging and hopefully finish our digipak and magazine ad
Audience: We showed this version of the rough cut to members of our A2 media class (all aged 17/18years old). This is an ideal audience to show the rough cut to because it fits within our primary target audience for the music video of 15-24year olds.
In yesterdays lesson we got feedback on our rough cut 4:
Jack on the rocks (zoom, out of time)
Two pizza scenes
End gets faster then slower
Fade music
More footage at the end/slow down the existing footage
Jack :multiple images
Smaller layers of narrative
Performance on too long (leave first one)
Refilm performance
Shot distance
Fade into one another (narrative)
Artificial zoom
Zoom into a heart, transition to the next shot
mobile phone shot, bit awkward and out of place
Flying: shot should be held longer to time in with music
Good layering
Intro of Jack gazing
Reflection in the tarn and throwing bread to the ducks
First perfromance: hard to see?
no order to the narrative, simple linear edit wont work
We have kept a very equal gender representation throughout our video. We have used attractive actors however we did not cast them on this aspect. We chose the people because we were friends with them or their family and especially with the younger children we needed the consent of an adult. As it turns out we could say that the older generations provide male/female gaze for the audience.
The person we cast as Robbie is a male and in the video he is very much in control, however in some places he is showing his more emotional side which is not expected of the male gender in media.
One place in our video where the woman may be seen weaker than the male and purely there for sexual attraction is in the baking scene where the man graps her bottom and leaves flour hand prints there on her trousers.
Our video includes a cast of both males and females which keeps the target audience wide.
2. Sexuality
Our video portrays a hetrosexual relationship as the norm. We chose this because it is a male singing about a female that he is in love with therfore this scenario made sense and worked well with the lyrics.
This relationship has also been used because it is the one that traditionally has always been more accepted by society.
In addition to this it more appealing to the majority of both our core and secondary audiences as hopefully they will be able to relate to what is happening in the music video.
3. Ability
In some ways we are following the codes and conventions of music video as it is very rare that a physically disabled individual is used.
This was not decided in a discriminative manner, Jess and I just decided that it would not fit in with our idea very well.
Casting would have also been a problem because there are very few people at school or in our friendship group who we could have been suitable for the role.
We are also inexperienced music video directors so using people with disabilities would have been an added challenge.
Also it appears it would be more appealing to the majority of our core and secondary audeinces as hopefully with the cast we have chosen they will be able to relate to the narrative story.
4. Ethnicity
Our video includes a purely Caucasian cast however this was not intentional. Due to the demographics of our school and where we live, finding an ethnic variety of people to cast was not possible. I do not think that this aspect will narrow the target audience of our video as many existing vidoes are not commercially suffering from this.
Also, Robbie Williams is a white British singer so we have used a Caucasian cast although this would probably been different had be been a black American.
5. Age
We have used a variety of age groups throughout our video. The youngest generation add the 'cute factor' whereas the older two couple add to the music video's appeal to the core and secondary younger audience. By using actors of this age it would allow our target audience to engage with them further and be able to relate to what was happening in our production.
Robbie has been cast as a younger male, age 18. This was because Jess and I didn't really know anyone who was older to play the part. By using someone older we may have had issues with finding times to film between us being at school and perhaps their work or family commitiments. However I think that by casting Jack he would appeal to all audiences as a cheeky, well brought up young man.
6. Social Class
Because of where our school is located Jess and I have used actors and actresses from Northern England. There a preconceptions that people from Yorkshire are poor and unsophisticated. However this is usually determind through their accent and we are only using lip syncing so this should not effect our target audience.
The mise-en-scene has also been heavily influence by the area we live in. All of our scenes are in comfortable areas and the footage that was taken in the house shows middle class.
Narrative theories generally do appear in music videos. The narrative in music videos can be put into three main theories for analysis: Todorov (equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium), Propp (each character has a purpose - hero, sender, villain, reward etc), Strauss (the exploration of binary opposites). An example of Todorov's theory in existing music video is in Hero by Enrique Iglesias. Equilibrium - Enrique Iglesias and the girl (Jennifer Love Hewitt) are together and happy.
Dis-equilibrium - The car they are travelling in breaks down and they are attacked by a group of men.
New equilibrium - Enrique Iglesias dies however he knows that Jennifer Love Hewitt is safe away from the men.
A number of features within a music video help determine the theory. These include camera angles (close ups, low angles etc symbolise a hero as someone we look up to), mise-en-scene (rain for a sad scene).
We have decided to include both narrative and performance footage in our music video for a number of reasons. First of all we though that is we only used performance then the audience would get bored very quickly as it was all the same. In addition to this it would have been very hard to film enough performance with just one person as Robbie to fill the 4 minutes 25 seconds of the song. Had our video been purely performance it would not been appropriate for repeat viewings. The song we chose was 'She's the One' by Robbie Williams so, like the title suggests, we made sure that our narrative focuses on how the girl of our couple was 'the one'. We did this by showing them growing up together thoughout the video, starting at the young age of 6 through to the beginning of their adult life at 18. Our narrative ideas fit with the lyrics of the song therefore what you see on screen generally emphasises what is being said in the lyrics, presenting it in a way that makes sense to the audience. Although we have included narrative in our music video, none of the footage that we have used really fits with any of the three narrative theories or Propp, Todorov or Strauss. We have used flashbacks in our footage to the couple when they were younger. This is all part of the narrative explaining why 'She's the One'.
We showed this to our teacher who is part of our secondary audience and an original follower of Robbie Williams, remembering his time in Take That and when he first launched his solo career.
Front cover
Back cover
These are both unfinished with the lack of some extras such as copyright information because before we could finish them we recieved some feedback saying that the images we had chosen portrayed the music genre as country rather than pop, the genre that we are wanting to show.
The QR code is a fully working one, linking to our company blog, NUmusic, when it is scanned.
We have edited the twitter and facebook logos in Photoshop Elements 4.0 and made them greyscale because this fits in better with our digipak. The coloured versions of them would have looked out of place.
For our next design we are going to go back to the original font that we used for digipak draft 1 and we are going to crop the barcode down from the top because as it is currently it is too big.
We have planned a reshoot with our Robbie performer for the 21st February to get the new images that we need. He is going to be dressed in a suit as his costume for this draft is too informal. We are still going to try and go for the same scene but from the front and behind idea but this time of him in a tree.
But we recieved feedback:
Issues:
-Long shot
-Nothing light
-Tree shot
-Similing but not cheesy
-Date being sold in 2012
-Change the name:Regeneration
-Kate Bush
-Doesnt feature music video
-old fashioned title
-Just bonus DVD - 3 part list
-Spine, code number and title, artist
-Needs to be pop
-Company logo
-Bar code too big
-Fit text into the back of his jacket
-front cover of digipak-gift wrapping, unwrapped, can sneak a look inside (gift tag)
BRITs Profile
Artist: Robbie Williams
The video starts off with a video type clip showing Robbie as the coach and his students winning. It the pans to him performing, sitting on the ice skating seats, this is a side angle. The team takes a tough knock when the lead male hurts his foot. There is then footage of Robbies childhood, showing him falling over and people laughing, the music then cuts off and shows an arena of people clapping Robbie and the female lead. They dance together and it's perfect, the camera always pans out so it's a long shot, this is because it isn't actually Robbie doing the lifting. There is then romantic lighting filled with shadows and spotlights, this sets the seen and signifies Robbies characters love for ice skating. He then does an amazing back flip whilst the other male looks on upset that it isn't him. They then win and soak up all the glory.
