Ideas for our ancillary tasks and research into other artists

As we have now completed the music video, we need to start working on the ancillary tasks we have been set. Our group decided we wanted to create a digi-pack to go with our song and a magazine advert for the song. We have already decided on a few ideas:
  • As the artists we are definitely going to be on there. It is essential for girl bands to have images of themselves on advertisements so they can target their audience.
  • We want it to look as professional as possible so we are going to go all out on the hair and make-up.
  • We don't want people to be distracted from us by other elements of the digi-pack and magazine advert - therefore we aren't going to directly relate to the lyrics.
  • We want it to be as eye-catching, bright and interesting as possible.

Examples from The Saturdays



This image of The Saturdays has been taken from a magazine where they are meant to be promoting body spray 'Impulse' rather than one of their songs. The Saturdays have created their own brand identity and they use this in most advertisements they do. Each member wears a very similar outfit but differentiate themselves by colour. In this example they are all wearing the same catsuit, except all in a different colour. By doing this they have made themselves unique and easily identifiable to their target audience.


Here is an example of one of The Saturdays digi-pack covers. 'Just cant get enough' was a single they did for comic relief. In this image they haven't directly related to any lyrics within this song (which is what we weren't going to do either). Instead they have related it to the song by making the digi-pack playful and fun which is similar to the song. The image has been super imposed together, this would have been done by each girl having their poses shot individually then they would have been super imposed together on a computer.

Examples from other genres

The example I have chosen is a band called Lostprophets who sing rock music.


Here is the magazine Kerrang! which Lostprophets were featured. They did a photo shoot for the magazine and decided to put the lead singer in the front and the rest of the band towards the back. This is typical of male rock/indie bands as unlike in girl groups where each member has an equal amount of attention, male bands tend to have a lead singer with the rest of the band either no singing or hardly singing at all. Therefore they portray this in their band pictures as people normally only recognise the lead singer rather than the rest of the band.


This image is the bands digi-pack cover for the single 'For he's a jolly good fellow'. The band have chosen a theme of smart and upper-class which is contradictory to their 'hardcore' normal image. Once again the lead singer is more at the front than the others and can be seen easiest due to his bright white shirt. This image is a typical 'indie' band image as it is simple and consists of all the band members.

Our last shot

For our last shot we decided to use the one of the 4 of us in Epping Forest on a fallen tree, in hysterics of laughter. We decided to use this because it is an interesting shot with the tree and the background and includes all 4 of us having a good time. Although the tone of our song and video is more sad, we thought it would make a good ending to finish with a typical girl band shot of everyone looking happy.

Feedback from final cut

We presented our finished music video to our media class and teacher and received their feedback.
Feedback was given in 2 different categories - strong aspects and weak aspects.

Strong aspects in terms of:
  • Camera Work
  • Mise-en-scene
  • Editing For Meaning
  • Sound
  1. The shot of the glass smashing on the floor then piecing itself back together is interesting and clever. (Although Mrs Allison was not sure about it reversing and piecing itself back together and whether it was relevant).
  2. All round good camera skills in terms of match on action and shot reverse shot.
  3. The mise-en-scene was well thought out and didn't look out of place.
  4. The 'Citizen Kane' scene was an effective use of intertextuality.
  5. The heartbeat sound effect used at the very beginning was good as it built up the drama and intensity.
  6. Use of transitions were good, not too over the top and not too common.
  7. The standard of lip-syncing was high, no glitches or timing issues.
  8. The performances by our actors and us as a group were impressive
  9. Our effects were used with restraint such as the zoom we used. Being selective meant it didn't look too cluttered or rushed.
  10. Lighting in most shots were good (except for the one where I am lip-syncing under a tree and appear rather dark).
  11. We took the genre seriously and tried to represent it as best as possible. A quote from one of our class members - 'Masterful'.
Weak aspects in terms of:
  • Camera Work
  • Mise-en-scene
  • Editing For Meaning
  • Sound
  1. The speech between Joe and Emily at the beginning is a bit different. Joe seems to sound much louder and clearer than Emily.
  2. Mrs Allison particularly didn't like the abrupt jump cuts where Emily is in the car and drives off. Possibly transitions may be needed.

Final Cut


Here is our final cut of 'Missing You'. Although our project is not complete as we still have to do the ancillary tasks. There is still time to edit and change our video as this is not the deadline but we there is no allocated lesson time to do this

Fascination Records

Fascination Records are a UK based record label which is owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as an imprint of Polydor Records. The label was launched in spring 2006, and is managed by former TOTP Magazine editor Peter Loraine. It concentrates on a relatively small number of pop acts and will complement the re-activated Fiction rock imprint.
Here are some examples of established acts owned by Fascination Records:
Obviously The Saturdays!
A five piece girl group, The Saturdays consist of Frankie Sandford and Rochelle Wiseman, formerly of S Club 8, along with Mollie King, Una Healy and Vanessa White. They have supported Girls Aloud on the tour for their Tangled Up album and fellow label mates Jonas Brothers at one of their recent live dates in London. Their first single, "If This Is Love" was released on 28 July 2008 and peaked at no. 8 in the UK singles chart. The follow up single, "Up" was released on 13 October 2008 and peaked at no. 5 in the UK singles chart. Up has become their best selling single, shifting over 300,000 copies.
Sophie Ellis-Bexter
Shooting to fame as the singer of Spiller's "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)", Sophie went on to score a string of Top 10 singles. Her multi-platinum album Read My Lips peaked straightly to the UK Top and was a success throughout many European Countries and Australia.
Girls Aloud
Having become the first all-girl group ever to score 20 consecutive Top 10 hits with their first set of releases (as part of Polydor), taking the record from Destiny's Child who had 11 to their name, Girls Aloud are one of the most successful girls bands in the UK with all albums being certified platinum and having 4 number one singles. Girls Aloud moved to Fascination for the release of their greatest hits album The Sound of Girls Aloud which went triple platinum and selling over1 million copies the UK.
Cheryl Cole
In the hiatus of Girls Aloud, Cole released a solo album, 3 Words, which charted at number 2 in Ireland and at number 1 in the United Kingdom. Also her debut single charted at number one in the UK and also in Ireland. The single "3 Words" has been released under the Fascination label in the UK and under the Polydor label in Ireland.

Fascination handles the UK releases of several acts who are signed to USA label Hollywood Records
Here are some examples of artists from America:
Demi Lovato
The Camp Rock star is releasing her music in the UK with Fascination. Her first UK release was "La La Land" from Don't Forget, it peaked at 36 on the UK Top 40. She released her second album on the 5th October 2009 called Here We Go Again.
Miley Cyrus
The Hannah Montana star released her debut album Breakout in the UK with Fascination in 2008. On the 9th November 2009 she released her new album The Time of Our Lives, with the lead single being "Party in the USA".
Jonas Brothers
Fascination are releasing the UK singles and albums for the three piece American pop rock group. Their debut UK single, "SOS" was released in June 2008 and peaked inside the UK top 20 at no. 14.rs
 Selena Gomez
The multi-talented star's band released their hit single "Naturally" on April 12, 2010 and their album Kiss & Tell the following week , the single debuted and peaked at 7 on the UK Top 40 and the album at no. 12.

Here are some examples of the sound tracks and complications:

St Trinians
The soundtrack to this film (which featured the label's own Girls Aloud singing the theme from the film) was released through Fascination in December 2007. Fascination also released the soundtrack for its 2009 sequel, St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, which featured contributions from Fascination artists such as The Saturdays and Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding and five new songs produced by Xenomania from The "Banned" of St. Trinian's - who released their debut and only single, Up & Away for digital download on 30 November 2009.
Mamma Mia
The soundtrack to the film version of the Abba musical was released through Fascination in July 2008.
Skins
The soundtrack to the Channel 4 drama series was released on this label in September 2007.
Britannia High
Fascination in collaboration with Globe (the TV production arm of Universal Music Group) and ITV1 released the soundtrack to this new Fame-style TV series, that went to air in the UK on 26 October 2008.

Re-formed Artists:

Bananarama
Bananarama have signed a deal for a new album titled Viva. Viva is the tenth studio album recorded by the British vocal duo Bananarama. It was released by Fascination Records on 14 September 2009 in the UK.

Former Artists:

Tokio Hotel
The German punk pop band released their debut UK single "Ready, Set, Go!" under the label on 27 August 2007 but could only reach no. 77, and were dropped from their label in April 2008.
Girls Cant Catch
Girls Can't Catch are the newest artists to join Fascination Records. They have released a song, "Keep Your Head Up", on August 3, 2009, and peaked at no. 26 on the UK Singles Chart, their second single "Echo" peaked in the top 20. It was reported on 12 July 2010 that the band had been dropped by their record label

Rumoured Artists:

It is rumored Rachel Stevens is set to relaunch on the Fascination label.

Television Tie-ins:

Connie Fisher
The winner of the BBC1 show How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? released her debut album Favourite Things on Fascination on October 9, 2006. Her debut album peaked no. 14 on the UK Albums Charts
Lee Mead
As with Connie, Lee, the winner of BBC1's Any Dream Will Do has been signed to this label. His debut single of the same name entered on downloads at no. 18 before peaking at no. 2 the following week behind "Umbrella" by Rhianna feat. Jay Z.

Facts About Fascination Records:

  1. Fascination Records is Polydor Records' boutique pop division, which basically means it's on the same floor as Polydor but has its own logo (and some other more complicated things but that's the long and short of it).
  2. Fascination was invented four years ago (it is 2009 at the time of writing) by Peter Loraine, who'd overseen Girls Aloud's career from its very beginning and at Fascination helped steer their career to a record-breaking run of 20 consecutive Top 10 hits. In his previous role as Polydor's Marketing Director Loraine helped drive the successful careers of many artists including S Club and Boyzone, having joined the label several years earlier following his editorship of BBC Worldwide's phenomenally successful Top Of The Pops magazine. He knows pop inside and out, from its top to its wonderfully pert bottom.
  3. By the fall of 2009 Fascination had clocked up sixteen top 10 singles and twelve top 10 albums, having opened for business in 2006 with only two acts in the shape of Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Girls Aloud. Both those acts are still a huge part of Fascination and jolly good they are too.
  4. Perhaps rather more by accident than design, Fascination has also become the UK's unofficial home of the girlband with Girls Aloud, The Saturdays, Girls Can't Catch and even Bananarama on its roster. This, ladies and gentlemen, is surely what all those women threw themselves under horses for.
  5. Fascination are in charge of the terribly important business of looking after the work of LITERALLY THE GREATEST POP BAND OF ALL TIME. The label oversees all Abba's UK music comings and goings, from ‘Mamma Mia!' and 2006's ‘Number Ones' album through to the more recent tunes from The Benny Andersson Band. Unfortunately Fascination is not in charge of bullying the band into making a comeback. It's never going to happen, is it? Very sad. Very sad indeed. But what wonderful songs they gave us in their time together. *Dissolve to late-1970s footage of Abba strutting around on stage, fans a-wailing etc*

Differences between us and 'The Saturdays!'









The Saturdays version of 'Missing You' has definitely influenced the way our production has been made. Although it is important that we make sure our production has not been copied from theirs and that it is not too similar!
Similarities
The use of nature
In both videos there is a significant amount of natural environment shown. For example, in The Saturdays video they use a natural beach, where-as in our video we use a forest. Both the videos feature the girls in the natural environment individually as well as in a group.
The use of close-ups
The Saturdays use a lot of close-ups when lip-syncing. There is a close-up of Frankie at the beginning of the song where it looks like she is laying on the ground and the camera is laying next to her. We have a similar shot to this at the start of the song where Charlotte lip syncs to the words 'I miss missing you'. Although instead of a close up we used an extreme close up of just her lips.
Group choreography in the natural environment
The Saturdays dance to a complex routine on the beach in front of the sea which looks very effective and beautiful. We also do a dance routine in our video - although it is much simpler!
Differences
Our use of flashbacks to do represent our story
When you watch The Saturdays music video you can see that there is no story in their video and consists of them solely singing in different parts of the beach. However we decided that we wanted to make our version a bit more interesting and create a story that is a visual representation of the lyrics. We did this because we thought it would be more appealing as the video may have looked boring if there was just us 4 girls singing the whole way through.
Despite our same use of nature, we have used completely opposite locations
The Saturdays decided to film their video in a hot country, which we would have loved to have done, but was simply not possible so we brainstormed other natural environment locations we could use. We came up with the idea of using a forest as this is also a very aesthetically pleasing, although not as glamorous as a beach. We would have liked to have used a summery scene, but we realised the time of filming was during autumn so the shooting in the forest would suit the weather and look effective. The Saturdays only use 1 location through-out the whole video which is the beach, where-as we also included another location which was a very big, beautiful, old house which meant the backgrounds to our shots were all different and interesting.
Outfits & costumes
Our locations obviously influenced what we needed to wear in the video as it would have looked funny with us wearing nice dresses in the middle of  a forest. However in our video we use 2 completely different outfits (the autumn casual and the smart black dresses) where-as The Saturday's 2 different outfits are very similar (summery/flowy dresses and casual summer clothes for example denim shorts and bikinis).
The anti-climax part of the song
Where-as we tried to make this part of the song very dramatic and quick paced, The Saturdays have gone for more of a calmer feel and created a party scene. One of our first ideas was to have a party scene inside the house, but we decided against this idea as we realised it would be too complex to compose and even wouldn't have looked professional enough. When we actually completed our film we realised what we had created for the anti-climax part was very fitting with our video and we wouldn't want it any different.

Editing 3-12-10

Today was a good day as we managed to completely finish editing our final production! 

What happened today:

We edited together the sequence where Emily and Joe are sitting at the table and they get further apart. We cut down each shot to around 2 seconds each and edited them in.


 These shots were separated by individual close-ups of each of us girls against a brick wall and wearing white tops. We made the transitions smoother by using dip-to-whites in between every shot.


We edited the rest of the song to the end. Rather than super-imposing we used a different editing technique where we left a shot on for longer while the other appeared. This editing process wasn't too complicated and we found that it was what we were looking for and that it looks very effective. 


 We began with me standing to the left singing 'Sometimes im just missing'.


 Then we introduce Laura who sings 'Im missing' as I fade out.


 As Laura finishes her line I am completely gone out of shot.


 Then I am introduced again singing 'Missing you' as Laura fades away.


 Then as I finish my line and begin to fade out, Charlotte is introduced singing 'I miss missing you'.


We are then left with just Charlotte who finishes the last line by herself.

Here are some pictures of us editing together this sequence:



After countless numbers of editing session and numerous filming days, our video is now complete!


Initial ideas for editing effects

Here is a video we made when we were practising and trying out different editing techniques.



Before we began working on our main production, we created a video which shows some of the editing techniques we practised and intend on using in our video. The video shows:
  • Reverse play
  • Sped up footage
  • Slow motion
By practising these skills beforehand - it meant that when we decided to use them in our production, we already knew how to do it and had the skills.

Effects in our production

After looking at our practise editing footage, we as a group decided we wanted to incorporate some of these editing techniques. We thought that for the anti-climax part of the song, using reverse play would help build the tension and make the dramatic part of the song as dramatic and effective as possible. It showed the couple being very happy together then the reverse play comes in and undoes the happiness as if it never happened. Originally we had this in our production but decided the sequence looked too comical and just didnt fit in with the tone of our video or the rest of our footage, so we decided to take it out.

Target Audience


I think it is important to know exactly who or target audience are so that we can incorporate some of the ideas that they like into our music video.
I have asked 6 different people who all like the song 'missing you' and are fans of the band The Saturdays. I believe these are 5 people that we will be targeting with our video. All the people I asked were between the ages of 14 - 30 and they are both male and female as we think the music video target both genders in a different way.
The 5 people I asked were:
Louis Francis - 24 years old (male)
Charlotte Bilton - 30 years old (female)
Laura Halfhide - 14 years old (female)
Phil Pearson - 18 years old (male)
Harriet Carter - 16 years old (female)
I asked each person individually what they're favourite music video was and why they liked it. I told them to choose their favourite video based on the actual video rather than the song and tell me 4 things they especially liked about it. I have analysed the information each person has given me and to see if there are many similarities and differences between their favourite video and ours. I expect the video they chose will have been slightly influenced by the song. I also expected that the video they chose would be a more recent video rather than an older one because newer songs are more remember able because they may have recently seen them.
1. Louis Francis
Name of song: Forget You
Artist: Cee-lo Green



4 favourite things from the music video:
  1. The drastic time changes (you see the main character getting older, for example, in his high school years, to his college years, to his current age).
  2. The acting and performances by the actors and artist (funny and comical)
  3. The fun, enjoyable element
  4. The costumes and bright colours (exaggerated mise-en-scene)
2. Charlotte Bilton
Name of song: Check It Out
Artist: Will.I.Am Feat Nicki Minaj



4 favourite things from the video:
  1. The quick, frequent cuts from Will.I.Am to Nicki Minaj
  2. The modern/futuristic feel
  3. The fact that Cheryl Cole is featured.
  4. The bright colours and strange costumes

3. Laura Halfhide
Name of song: Just The Way You Are
Artist: Bruno Mars



4 favourite things from the video:
  1. Very simple yet meaningful
  2. Romantic and lovely
  3. The special effects on the tape reel
  4. Realistic and well represents the song

4. Phil Pearson
Name of song: Telephone
Artist: Lady Gaga Feat Beyonce




4 favourite things from the video:
  1. Very weird costumes
  2. Cool dance routine
  3. The very strange storyline
  4. The quick cut editing

5. Harriet Carter
Name of song: Only Girl (In The World)
Artist: Rihanna




4 favourite things about the video:
  1. It uses autumnal colours (red and orange)
  2. A good performance by Rihanna
  3. Interesting scenery (flower field)
  4. Her fashionable outfits

Analysis

Looking at the results I have made a list of the main features of the music videos they like and added up how many people liked each feature in their chosen video.
  1. Actors & artist performance [3]
  2. Costumes [4]
  3. Dance routines [1]
  4. Special effects [2]
  5. Editing [2]
  6. Storyline - [3]
  7. Locations [1]
  8. The feel of the video and representation of the song [4]
In conclusion

From my analysis I have found out that the feel the video gives off and how the video represents the song is very important in why our target audience chose to watch and like these videos. This is very good for our group and production as one of the main things we are trying to do is represent the lyrics of the song by having flashbacks. We have also included the other top features that people said they liked in my survey, such as a interesting and realistic storyline and excellent performances by our actors as well as each girl in my group. We have featured everything that our target audience like in a video except for good special effects as the only special effects we have used is black and white for the flashbacks and reverse play in the bridge.

This mini survey has been successful as it has proved that we are targeting the right audience and are providing them with things they want in a music video. Although this was only a very small investigation therefore it is not big enough to generalise the whole of our target market. The fact that all 5 people chose modern, new videos is not a surprise and the songs and videos chosen were what I expected.