Evaluation
For my AS media
studies coursework, I chose to do the Music Industry brief with a partner. We
chose to do the music industry brief as it was the brief we were most
interested in and knew the most about. We created a three minute video to promote
a pop girl band called Move (made up of two members, Ryleigh and Clara both age
eighteen) that we had created, the video promoted a new single, album and tour with
the aim to ‘reach a bigger and more diverse audience’, this aim follows through
to the print were we created a full page advert to be run in a relevant popular
magazine, a flyer to promote the tour and a press release to also be published
in a relevant magazine. My role in the broadcast was the filming, acting and a small part of editing, but mainly helping with what should and shouldn't go into the video, however
my role in print was the editing of all the pictures, and doing my own
independent work.
We created a
promotional video that was based on an interview with Move (Ryleigh and Clara)
on The Tess show, the interview consisted of two insert videos, one being a
snippet of the bands new single and music video Best Song Ever (that we sung ourselves),
and the other being a short promotional tour video for the UK and Ireland. The
interview would be aired on 4Music, as shown by the logo in the corner of the
video; 4Music is the largest music channel in the UK with 16-30 year old being
the target audience, it shows current artists and songs making it a good
channel for our promotional video to be shown on, due to the mass audience, with our brief stating to reach a larger audience it seemed appropriate. The
choice of music channel we chose helped easily ‘promote the act in a way that
will appeal to more than just a niche audience’. Twitter was also included in
our video as Tess asked fans to ask Ryleigh and Clara questions, using the hashtag
#AskRyleighandClara encouraging more people to join in and get involved, making
people talk about Move and reaching a wide audience, the water cooler theory
being evident in trends like this one. Again
Twitter reaches a youthful mass audience, fitting in with Moves target audience
of females aged 10-17 who enjoy similar pop groups like ‘Little Mix’ and ‘One
Direction’. As our target audience was for young females we tried to create a
brand for the group that was appropriate, we wore non-revelling cloths, didn't wear
a lot of make-up and aimed to be friendly and approachable. We tried to create a
stereotypical, promotional video for our girl band as we followed the normal
codes and conventions for a pop group when being interviewed, we kept the
interview light hearted and fun, we wore casual cloths and we were asked
questions that were relevant.To promote our girl group through print I created a range of work promoting the tour and album aiming to reach a wider audience. The tour was promoted through a flyer to be handed out and the album to be run in a relevant magazine, along with my press release. The flyer included tour dates and where to purchase the tickets, whereas the advert includes the album information, where it will be released and when and an album cover. The use of companies such as ‘ticketmaster’ and ‘Itunes’ helps reach a larger audience and helps promote sales for the band. I created my full page advert with the album cover on the front to be run in magazines like ‘We Love Pop’ and ‘Top Of The Pops’ as they have a target audience of 10-15 females, fitting well with the bands younger audience. With the advert being run in such magazines it also reaches readers that may have never heard of the band but are in the target audience to be interested. These types of teen pop magazines are always fun and bright so I tried to do the same with my advert knowing my target magazines. I used a lot of pink, which is stereotypically a girly colour and I used light blues to appeal to the less girly audience as well, the two colours contrast and make the advert stand out. The advert would either be run as a full page somewhere within the magazine or it would be run on the back cover of the magazine, ensuring a larger audience as more than just the target audience would see the back cover of the magazine. My press release would also be printed in similar magazines as the pictures used are fun and are stereotypically found in these sorts of magazines, as some could be used as pull out posters. My flyer for the tour however would be given at other music events reaching a diverse and different audience and that is shown in the style I used in making my flyer, I didn't use as much pink and it has a slightly more mature feel as it is aimed at the older part of the target audience 15-17 year olds, however some of the music event it would be handed out at would have an even older audience so would reach more people and create a wider and more diverse audience for the band helping go from niche to mass.
For our broadcast we created an interview with a new girl band called Move, they were asked questions from fans and there were two insert videos to go along with it. We used a variety of different camera angles to add to our interview and insert videos to make them more interesting and diverse for the audience, We used many different shots including long shots, medium long shots, over the shoulder shots, close ups, tilted frame and more. The mise-en-scene was simple for our interview as we wanted the main focus to be on the group and interviewer, the room was bright and the only props being chairs and cue cards, keeping it simple but effective. However a weakness to our piece was the lighting of the main part of our video, it was too bright but would have been very time consuming to alter, we instead focused our time an effort into the rest of the video and our print work. Also the sound was an issue in our video as it was muffled and not completely clear, if we had the correct equipment and more than just a camera we would have had better results with the speech in the video, however for our music video we did sing the cover of Best Song Ever that was playing. At the start of the video there was a fun introduction, introducing Ryleigh, Clara and the Tess show, it gave the video context, making it clear to the viewer what the interview would be about, also the 4Music logo in the corner helped do this as well, as 4Music is only a music channel. The insert videos add to the interview and make it more interesting for the viewer, but it also gave us the chance to use more camera angles and locations all again making it more appealing for the viewer. We did research into different pop interviews, for example One Directions interview on VEVO and found that they were all more than just an interview in one room and often had many short or snappy videos, so we imitated this in our work by adding in the insert videos.
We made a lot decisions throughout our production , from things like where to film each element of our broadcast, to the type of camera angles used, to the pictures used in each print piece, all parts being important so required time and thought, each element added to both our promotional video and our print work. Our audience was also a big decision we made and effected how the rest of our work would look and feel.We also however did make many changes along the way due to either not everyone being organised or free, due to our inability to use chosen locations or props, and the time limit on the video altered decisions we made. In our original plan we were going to have another music video and a bloopers video, but due to the time limit we cut both sections out, we were also planning to have 'fans' of Move talk in the video, but it was difficult to find time when everyone was free, so we adapted and changed the idea to a small promotional video of the tour. In print though the difficulties and changes were different, for example the sizes of the pictures and the quality caused problems, so ideas had to be changed and different pictures had to be used in place.
For the third platform I had done a little research in case I chose to do the website, I looked at the 'Little Mix' website and I would have designed something similar. The webpage would have included a main home page, with a centre picture of Move, it would have also included drop down boxes for any pictures, events and information about Move. It would have also included a Twitter, Facebook and Tumbler link on the homepage, giving access to social networks making it easier to reach a mass audience.
