The key purpose of a music video is to represent a chosen artist within the music industry, evoking emotions and gaining a response from a wide audience. This audience appeal makes the music video overall more successful, and allows the record company to produce more sales both through the video itself being played on various media platforms as well as television and subsidiary products such as CDS being sold to a targeted audience which makes the artist more of a success. Myself and my group members, Georgia Crandon, Jenna Van Bergen and Rhianna Maclay were given the brief to recreate this through the creation of a music video and a variety of subsidiary products including a promotional poster for our fictional artist, and also a Digi pak. The products and video all had to link together and appeal to our chosen audience within the genre we chose. We had to be consistent at appealing to this genre and follow the majority conventions in order to make our artist more of a success.
The purpose of a music video is to show a short narrative that represents the artist in order to promote them and their song. A music video is a market tool and can also advertise and sell artist products and allow the audience to remember the song that the video is portraying. Each music video conventions according to the artist and songs genre, for example a rock music video features the instruments being played, where as a RNB artist usually features expensive cars and sexualised images of women who are wearing minimal clothes.There are 3 different categories to look at when analyzing a music video. These are performance, the artist performing the song; narrative, the story behind the song; and the concept, selling the idea behind the video. These all help to sell the music video and the song it’s depicting which ultimately makes it more successful. This is evident in Christina Aguilera ‘beautiful’ video where she is pictured singing in a dirty flat, which fits in with the concept of the video and the narrative that everyone should be accepted, and its ok to be different. Music videos promote these conventions of their music genre in order to appeal to an audience who enjoy the genre different styles and concepts of particular videos may challenge these conventions however to do this is considered risky and can either be initiative and unique which boosts the artists credibility and success or be too risque and damage the artists fan base as the video is seen to be too strange and therefore unsuccessful.
For our media product we chose to appeal to an indie/pop audience with our representation of a female indie artist who is alternative in many respects but still follows enough pop conventions in order to appeal to the mainstream market. We chose this style as we believed to choose two genres mean we can have more creative freedom, and appeal to two types of audience which strengthens our artist and makes her more of a success. The conventions of an indie artist we had to follow were designed to appeal to an audience interested in this genre of music. Dynamic iconography is often featured in many indie music videos, with Florence and the machine using over sized props in her video 'kiss with a fist'. In our music video we had our artist 'Georgia Ray' playing the guitar. this strongly follows the indie conventions as nearly every indie artist features instruments being played. this is evident in indie bands videos such as the arctic monkeys and peace. The reason behind this is when an indie artist shows that they can play live music, the audience can follow the band or artist by seeing them play live, something which the indie audience do frequently. We included this convention to appeal to the indie genre, but also portrayed a rebellious teenage relationship which is conventional of mainstream popular artists such as rihanna, and it also fits in with dyers theory as rebellious teenagers inspire an audience and make the artist more of a success. The music video and ancillary task is complete keeping with our chosen music video. The music video, digi pak and promotional poster all link in with each other and appeal to both the indie style of music as well as mainstream pop culture.
Both our music video, digi pak and magazine advert work well together to create a successful overall product. The reason being is they are intertwined and have visible links with each other. This was done in order to conform to dyers theory of a star to build a relationship with the on screen representation of the artist and how she is portrayed through advertising. We followed examples from Nina Nesbit who is the artist we are portraying, this was because we wanted to make our artist an authentic indie artist and live up to the conventions of a small time indie artist. We did this by choosing mysterious and isolated locations that are typical of the indie genre. This was the forest and also an abandoned train track. We planned to shoot this images in order to make the most of our products and insure that we build the strongest relationship possible the audience. We also believe our products to be successful as we chose to portray our artist with a guitar, this strong convention of indie music ensures our audience will want to see our artist and live which was what we aimed to do. We decided to submit my own digi-pak and magazine advert as it followed the most conventions of an indie artist and we thought as a group it would appeal most to our target audience who would wish to see a rebellious yet ordinary teenage star that they could look up too. Our ancillary tasks work well with our actual music video as they both follow similar conventions and the motif typography is kept within all our products. This was done as we thought it could further build a relationship with our audience and make our artist and her products more recognizable. We also shot images whilst filming our video to insure she had a similar style whilst performing as-well as being pictured for both the digi-pak and the magazine advert. This gives the artist more of a recognizable image for the target audience who can see her as a performer and a successful artist in all 3 final products.
When speaking about important aspects to consider when producing a music video, an unforgettable one is defiantly the evaluation process and gaining feedback. This is important as it allows us to successfully analyze our work and see whether or not our plan of targeting a niche audience was successful. We chose you tube to showcase our work as it is one of the most recognizable social media platforms and can be easily accessible through mobile devices (something which our research found to be a main source of what people use to watch and listen to music artists). Another reason we chose to use YouTube is because its easy to gain effective feedback through comments likes and even views. We received various comments on our work, one of which was that This is really good! Great shots and brilliant song choice :D” This kind of feedback is reassuring and makes me as a media producer feel accomplished in knowing that our work has successful reached an audience and is viewed by our target audience. Another comment by a female who also falls in our target age group said that our video was “So professional and really cool!” This again makes me feel proud of our work and that all our hard work has paid off. Before we uploaded our rough cut some of the feedback we obtained was that we needed to “add more dramatic footage... too make it more intense” As a media producer we felt we then needed to get more footage in order to make our video a lasting success. We were fortunate enough to have gained this feedback before we had finalised our product there for had time to make the appropriate changes. The feedback would help me if I was working as a music producer because it would give us a better idea of how to reach our target audience and also gain a better understanding of what our audience would wish to see within the video. Working in the media industry there is a much longer process of audience testing therefore I would have more time to try different things and be able to get feedback before the video went viral. This would help me in making a successful product and also improving my work .
We used new media technologies in the research process. We watched countless amounts of music videos on YouTube in order to get a better idea of what makes a music video a success and how it appeals to an audience. We used blogger also to construct research posts about the most successful videos in the world. Once we had chosen an artist to aspire too we looked at their twitter and also their home page and iTunes to gain a better understanding of their personal style and how they appeal to the target audience. For planning blogger was also used in a similar way with digital cameras being used to plan photographs of how we wish our artist to appear in the ancillary process. We used tripod and other equipment when constructing our photo shoot with iconography such as the guitar being used to appeal to the conventions of an indie artist. The construction of our video was professionally done using final cut pro, we also use a variety of techniques on Photoshop in order to make the process appear professional and well planned out. This was done in order to make our products look completely professional which we knew would appeal to our target audience. When evaluating our work PowerPoint digital video as well as audio and photography ensures every medium is covered and we have a better understanding of how well our work went and how it affected our target audience. By using a variety of evaluation software we are able to cover every base and provide visual evidence as well as written examples when looking back at our work. The strengths of using written examples was that we can look back at our research and come to a conclusion however the reality of video analysis means we can have a more broader scope on our evaluation and add in information that would otherwise not be put into software such as PowerPoint which although effective is generally quite to the point and as a media producer we can elaborate more through audio and video evaluation. Using a variety of media evaluation products proved beneficial and ensured we looked in depth at our media product and how it affected our target audience.
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