Final Evaluation - Part One

 

 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

The first thing we considered when beginning our ancillary product production was the examples of existing products. In this case, we looked at album covers and their cases, and the promotional posters and magazine adverts that went with them to first define the typical conventions of the formats. We quickly noticed that they all had to be intrinsically linked in order for the identity of the artist and the music to be displayed to prospective listeners. In particular, took a great deal of inspiration from Indie artist Gabrielle Aplin first full length album, "English Rain", as we believed it provided as with an excellent genre based example to gives us some idea of what we could do.

When first drafting our initial ideas, everyone in the group became highly concerned with the representation of our artist and, in particular, our music video. The music video, for us as well as the industry as a general rule, is a crucial part of the representation of our artist. It accompanies the lead single from the album, the one song that is meant to give a taster for the rest of the album and present the best of what is to come. Therefore, we knew we had to tie this into the major themes of our video and specifically, it's narrative of finding inner beauty.

Main Cover
The first thing we decided to include in our front cover was the most iconic image of our entire video. The red heart held in the hands of our Amanda was the closing shoot of the video and, according to our audience research, the one shot that left the biggest impression on those watching the video. It remained one of the key images that symbolised both the video and it's ideals (inner beauty, nature)

and came to represent that to us. It was for this reason that we decided to use this as our main cover, along with it's connection to the title and theme of Amanda Rogers album. Heartwood, meaning the very core of a tree, was a metaphor in our music video for looking inside yourself and finding your own true beauty. In finding this heart, our star finds her own confidence and beauty, the "Heartwood" of herself. Another key decision we made in terms of having our ancillary products reflect our music video was the choice of clothing and setting. For the front cover, this meant that we had Amanda dressed in the same white dress featured in the music video in the heartwood tree location, so that a connection could once again be made by the audience between music video and album artwork. The white dress also provided a natural, non-distracting background for the image's focus of the red heart being held in our stars hands, something we knew was important through looking at the typical conventions of other album covers, which are often bold yet quite simple to make sure that the viewer is drawn to the central image or album title. To keep with this simpler theme, we also changed the original font we had designed, based on the red thread we used throughout the video, as it looked far to chaotic when placed with the rest of the front cover. Instead we kept to one font, which looks natural, as though carved into wood, yet still easy to read and quite bold, to keep the cover natural looking but also eye catching.

The final key feature of our cover that was a conscious decision on our part was the lack of visual representation of the artist. We chose to instead focus simply on the hands and heart with the title instead of picturing the artist Amanda, reinforcing the themes from the music video in which nature and the narrative behind our performance based video take the most important role, leaving Amanda to be the one enforcing those ideas, rather than having the location and story back her up. We thought this was a key feature of Amanda Rogers as an artist, who tends to focus solely on the music and the message it leaves and therefore felt we had to reflect this in the way we presented her in the album.


Inside Pages
Along with just creating the front and back cover, we also designed both inside covers too, one the be found underneath the CD insert and one to be on the back of what would be, especially in Amanda's case, the lyrics book. Initially we had planned to create a cd design to match the back inside cover, fitting into the rest of the design, but ultimately changed this idea. We had planned to use a close up shot of a flower, with soft subtle colours to try and match with the overall colour palette of the album and music video. This would have worked well due to its circular shape and natural connotations, however, we couldn't find a flower that would have matched well enough with the album to use. Therefore, in a slight spontaneous move, we used a shot of the headband worn by the artist in our music video as the image underneath the CD. This worked well due to the similar idea of it's circular shape being pleasing with the shape of the CD and also as it allowed for another subtle link to be made towards the music video for the audience to pick up on. The colours were also quite bright and attractive, yet fit with everything we had done so far.

 



The side of the cover was where we decided to solely feature our for the first time, as we knew we had to have a good representation of her on the album in a way that she could be recognised. To keep this as similar to the music video as possible, we once again used the same dress and headband, and tried to shoot in a place that reflected our main heartwood tree location in the video. One key difference to this location was the addition of the path in the distance. We felt this reflected the way in which our Amanda goes on a journey throughout our music video, following the red string towards true beauty. It's almost as if in standing at the beginning of this path, she's on the precipice of that journey, the perspective of the shot making the path long and winding like the string. Amanda is stood looking back as if waiting for you to join her as she embarks on this journey, in the same way that you are about the join her on a journey through the music in her album. You are at the beginning and hopefully the themes in the songs and particularly This Beauty and it's music video will lead you to a new place. The shot is also highly empowering towards our star, with it's gentle low angle, something that is common and crucial in representing artists.


Back Cover
The shot for the back cover was once again quite unplanned and based of the location we were in, something that also happened when we were filming for the music video. Nature and it's beauty constantly influenced us in our creative decisions and I think this is very evident in the ancillary tasks and the video for the lead single. The image of the bird box left a lot of space for the track list to be displayed appropriately whilst also giving of a homely feel to the whole album, inviting and natural. We also felt that it reflected not just the themes in the music video well, but also the sounds of the rest of the tracks on the album. The album opens with a track entitled I'm Awake, opening with the gentle calling of birds in the morning. In this sense, having this image really reinforced the sound of Amanda's music and her connection with nature, something very important towards prospective buyers of the album. The colours also reflect key shots in our music video, such as the panning shot on the line "And those greens and those blues" in which the sweeping blue sky is the main feature, as in this image.

Magazine Advert/Poster
As this was one of the only big marketing tools we could use for our video aside from new media technologies such as the internet, we knew it was important to really get across who Amanda Rogers was and what her music was about. Therefore, we decided to use the same artist shoot from the inside cover to be our main focus of the poster, for many of the reasons I mentioned above. It was empowering and connoted that sense of the journey you will go on through listening to her music. Along with this, we decided to use to self designed red thread font from our first designs of the album cover to bring the theme of This Beauty and the music video we created for it into the poster design and the albums promotion. It reiterates that idea of journey and also leads towards the heart in the music video, symbolising that the red thread on the poster could lead you to the red heart on the albums front cover. Hopefully, in making these small connections, both designs seamlessly come together.
We also included a small image of the album cover in order to allow that link to be more easily established. The overall colours we used for the poster took directly from the main colour themes of the album and the music video, with the dark browns of the forest locations our main background, pale creams reflecting the innocence of the two main costumes our star wears and of course, the bright red of the thread and the heart standing out over the top of it all.

Overall, I believe that the combination of our main product and ancillary tasks is quite successful, making obvious and detailed links whilst also allowing subtle themes to shine through and create connections between video and more traditional product. Each backs up the other, reinforcing themes and ideas and all staying within the same colour palettes and style ideas. Whilst there are things I definitely believed could have been made clearer, particularly in the music video when looking at the feedback from our audience, we linked all three products well and hopefully presented our artist in a way that makes her music something that people would love to get involved with.

Final Evaluation - Part Two

Remaining Questions

How has your media product conformed or contrasted conventional media products? ~  by Cary Banks

The idea that I would argue is that there are never set genres and the conventions will continue to change so this could be more related to the idea of all music videos collectively. Not just conventions of one.
There were many factors that contributed to the overall production of the music video which we created. This includes mise en scene, camera, editing and sounds.

Mise en scene

Location:
Nature is a largely used convention within music videos of the Indie genre as it reflect a natural and raw feel that tends to accompany the natural lighting and the clothing. The artist is also featured in a confined area, yet has freedom, they have the woods to themselves which could create a sense of isolation by at the same time shows the idea that they are almost at one with nature. One idea that is used in music videos of this genre is the use of rooms such as The Lumineers 'Ho Hey' music video. We had an idea to take a room and cover it in the colour of magazines whilst having the artist in black and white. As the music video progresses and she realises that true beauty is within, she become colour and tears down the images - making them reveal the black and white newspapers.
this was set in the woods and forest which reflects the natural and raw sound that Amanda Rogers music is all about. Keeley made a good point that her genre is not confined to a typical genre as she has so many influences, but it was suggested that the natural language and themes that are used within her music could be her own genre of 'nature'.
The natural imagery shows the idea that real beauty is found in nature and this is the idea that the song This Beauty is trying to convey - perfection is not within magazines - we should find beauty within ourselves and within nature. There are several shots which depict this idea, especially as the shots begin to change in time to the drum beat, this shows the predominance of the theme behind the music and lyrics, furthering the meaning of beauty and colour in relation to nature.
The location further takes away from the star image, as she tends to represent nature but the clothing which she wears does not overshadow the fact that nature is the largest part of the music video and the lyrics. This is also the way in which Amanda Roger's appears too, in many of her images and the singular video featured for one of her songs, she is place within a woods and tends to walk within the confines of this.

Lighting:
A largely used convention of Indie music videos is the idea that raw and natural lighting is used to keep the natural and almost DIY convention to the music video. This is one of the reasons why we tended to have me shakicam, because it reflects the idea that she is creating it herself and the journey is being followed by the audience in a real fashion because it appears as though they are taking the journey with her. The lighting used is typically very dark in the first verse, representing the opening to the song which talks about the façade that accompanies magazines through the 'thinly to peel' the idea that people can see through the typical media representations and she can reveal the real beauty within herself. The second verse begins to take on a lighter role in which she sings to the audience in a close up and the colours and lighting were much brighter. And finally, as the song comes to an end, the lighting takes on more prominent role through the shots that are in time with the drum of the song and we represent nature's role within beauty and finding yourself. The final shot leaves the audience with a bright and clear image of the heart.

Colour:
Colour is used to represent the innocence and natural portrayals if the artist. For example, the clothes that the artist wears are very neutral whites and nude colours. This could reinforce her role as an individual who is virtuous and pure - also similar to the demographic within audience research - perhaps they want to see more women who are portrayed in a less sexual light through the male gaze as Laura Mulvey suggested. The innocent female representation is unconventional of a music video, as teens are seen partying and getting drunk which sets our music video apart from others.
As I mentioned in the previous section of Colour, the idea that the light gets brighter as the song progresses also applies to the colour as the colours become more brighter and striking. Especially so within the nature shots with the red thread being featured towards the end. The final shot is of a bright red heart being held and this represents the passion that she feels towards true beauty.

Costume:
The way in which we represented Rogers was in a very feminine manner, as opposed to the 'gender neutral' way in which women can be portrayed in Indie music videos. In many music videos of this genre, women are shown to wear flowing and natural style dresses which connote the idea of being within nature and like the wind, this is similar to the final dress that is used in the music video when she runs and lets her arms out to the wind.
The costume is a remind of the natural and elemental features of the song. We also didn't want the outfits to overshadow the nature featured because that is a key element of the lyrics to the song.

Sound:
Typically within music videos of the Indie genre, they tend to use diegetic on-screen sounds which create the idea that the Audience is there with the artist and following their journey. It creates a real effect to the music video. This creates a stronger connection between the audience and the artist.
Furthermore, we had to match the visuals to the sound as opposed to last year in which we had to apply the right sounds to the product. This means that there will be more lyrical links to the video. One example of this is the lyric "silver lining" in which there is a shot featured of the camera in a high angle shot pointing to the silver lining of the clouds that were featured. The idea of "tear[ing] the pages of the magazines" is reinforced later on in the music video in the sequence where the performer tears down the images of 'perfection' from the trees. This is iconic because it creates the idea that she will no longer be dominated by the media and she can look to herself and nature for true beauty. Matching lyrics to visuals is a key convention of any music video. Further to this, there are many other areas in this project that we link the visuals and lyrics together to create the sense of intertwining narratives and ideas between the song and the video.

Camera:
Camera is a key part of any music video - what music video doesn't use a camera in some way to portray their ideas?
The shots which were used were shakicam, as I said before this is due to the DIY effect that is used within music videos of the genre because it makes it more relatable to the audience and they can feel as though they are there with the artist.
The high angle shots represent empowerment of women and trying to connote positive ideas with beauty inside and nature. This reinforces the idea that true beauty inside an individual leads to empowerment and perhaps more confidence, as you stop comparing yourself to others and find that you are enough.
Initially, we did not have many close ups as we began to edit and this posed a problem because this is key to creating a music video and a connection between the audience and the artist. So we went out and filmed more sequences, in which she sings directly to the audience, in a tracking shot, to convey the idea that she is trying to represent telling them directly to find beauty inside of themselves. This also create the idea that they are following her journey. This could be linked to the ancillary task as the shot of Amanda looking backwards to the camera connotes the idea that she is asking the audience to come with her on the journey that is ahead of her, connoted by the path the precedes her.
The long shots towards the climax of the song create a distance between her and the audience as she runs away from the conventional idea of beauty and tries to find it herself.

Editing:
This was a crucial part of trying to get the idea of the music video across to an audience. The pace within the first verse of the music video is very simple and calm, suggesting that Rogers is trying to cope with being dominated by the media, however, as the chorus begins to take place, the pace speeds up and the drum beat become extremely predominant, this creates the idea that she is trying to run away and immerse herself in nature. The idea that it is an extreme close up creates the idea that the audience is following her walking in time to the beat, again, creating a journey.
The pace is relatively fast for the second verse and chorus. As the bridge brings to take place it is slowed down and the singular shot almost gives time for the audience to calm down and contrast the rest of the music video before the sudden tempo picks up. This is the only point in the music video where Amanda Rogers' song slows down, so we decided that it would be one of the perfect opportunities to slow it down, as it gives the audience time to think over the previous themes conveyed and then ready to pick up the pace once more. The idea of pace slowing down during the bridge is a typical convention of any music video, as it slows down the pace - a whole music video set at a really fast pace would be exhausting and tiring, so this could be the reason why they are used as a prime moment to slow the song and pace down. It contrasts the rest of the song significantly and this is the reason why we chose to use this convention.
The shots after this feature her running and tearing the images down eventually, these shots of the images were edited in order to match the beat of the drum because we thought that it would create a sudden and almost angry effect that the song suggests about beauty within the media.
One other thing that we were told about was the use of pace in relation to the music at the end of the sequence, due to the fact that the music slows down before we finish reversing the video to follow the journey of beauty to the Heartwood tree. This was kept the same throughout because we cleansed the idea of the pace to end at the point in which she says "to me" where it suddenly changes the song to a personal level and create a the idea that she is talking about beauty and the ways in which it is important to her. This pace, we thought, was ideal because the music doesn't officially finish until she sings the "to me" line.
Conventionally, the shots would be around the 40-60 marks for an Indie music video, due to the idea of the songs being calmer, but the fact that our genre crossed over into the pop category meant that we had more shots than that of a typical Indie genre music video. I think it was around 130 or more, this meant that we contradicted the typical genre conventions due to the idea that we have had too many shots than typical. This also meant that we had to do a lot more editing due to the fact that there were more shot than that of our previous project and other Indie products. This meant that our skills developed in terms of editing because of this very fact. The idea that we have also edited some areas more suddenly, meant that we had to look more in depth the shots and depict the areas in which we had a quick transition.




What have you learnt from your audience feedback? ~ by Lorna Edwards

Feedback

Comment No 1.
Positives: Setting and location was appropriate, good shot of camera coming round the tree, good lip syncing.
Negatives: Shaky camera work

Comment No 2.
Positives: Good use of red string, nice setting, good costumes
Negatives: Wobbly camera focus, not a clear narrative, reverse goes too fast towards the end, too slow during bridge

Comment No 3.
Positives: Good setting, aesthetically pleasing costumes, good lighting- reflects appropriate mood, appropriate casting
Negatives: Bad camera quality, too shaky at times, unclear use of red string, unclear narrative, too fast furing rewind, inappropriate use of jump cuts and pacing too quick at times.

Comment No 4.
Positives: Structured well, movement in camera work appropriate for song, clear message, satisfying ending
Negatives: Bad lip syncing, too repetitive, locations too different, quite boring- no build-up.

Comment No 5.
Positives: Good setting, good narrative, good lyrics, realistic, good build up towards the end, warm and natural, flowed with the lyrics
Negatives: Scene does not suit music, different range of settings, camera is too unsteady, bad lip syncing, message wasn't clear

Comment No. 6
Positives: Clear narrative, great use of magazines- complimented the lyrics
Negatives: Unclear metaphor behind string, camera was bad quality, message unclear

We felt that one of the most talked about points from our audience feed back was the middle section that we like to call the bridge of the song and the pacing of the visuals. Many people thought that this section should have a faster pace to match the tempo of the song. We chose to put a long slow motion clip of our protagonist walking through the forest. At that point in the music, everything sort of slowed down in terms of the instruments and all the singing and notes were held on for longer. We wanted to reflect this in the visuals and so chose that certain clip to portray that section. However people still disagreed saying that it was too slow and the clip was too long compared to the rest of the song.
We thought that the combination of the two was nice and they complemented each other. Occasionally in the music video conventions the contrast in pacing of visuals and sounds deliberately because it is aesthetically pleasing. This is something we also felt, even though we had the opportunity to change it we wanted to keep it the same because it felt right to us and it just worked. Unfortunately the audience did not see from our point of view and we now fell that if we could have edited again, that is the main section that we would have chosen to improve in terms of audience feedback.

The next section that we felt was talked about quite a lot was the reverse sequence. Many people didn't think that the reverse sequence fit the genre, or didn't look right in that certain place, or didn't match the sound of the song. I think the issue was that as the song slowed down after the massive climax at the end, the reversing should have stopped. We wanted to carry it on so that it would stop on the phrase "to me" to act as a rounding off point, and to convey that the protagonist is reversing her journey back to the beginning to start again and to show the true meaning of beauty was inside herself all along. We wanted this change of journey and direction to be seen though the visuals, and that is why we chose to have the reversing sequence. We felt that this challenged our conventions slightly but helped us get our message across to the audience.

Most of our feedback from the year nine class consisted of the narrative not being easy to follow. We understand that it is not easy to follow, but our demographic was actually supposed to be the age of sixteen and over,and the fact that the ear nines didn't get it, shows us that we had a more selective demographic than we originally thought. Because they didn't understand our easy to follow narrative made us feel that they actually didn't take the lyrics into account when watching the music video. This means that thy were just looking at the visuals and sounds, which proves that this generation is more visual based, and that they would rather view a video than read an article. We feel that if they had listened to the lyrics they would have had more of a connection with the video. Adding to this point, Amanda Rogers writes all her own songs so the lyrics are so important and is something that we strongly had to take into account when producing our music video.
Staying on this point of narrative, when I posted the video onto the social networking site Facebook, we had more positive comments and all the people that commented were in our age demographic. This made us feel that this video had a more personal response on them than it did to the year nine's. Because this audience is older, they have had a chance to go though this journey that almost every teenage girl would have gone through; the feeling of not fitting in, wanting to be like the airbrushed models in magazines and the pressure of beauty as a whole. We felt that being a younger age such as fourteen, they wouldn't of had the chance, and because they are a younger generation they probably look at media in a different way and think that an air brushed perfect model is normal and being yourself isn't.

A few point were made about the lighting of the music video and the unsteady use of the camera. Some of these points such as lighting we could not help due to the location and the conditions in which we chose to shoot in. The lighting when shooting was very temperamental and we could never get the same exact lighting in every single shot. And due to the time of year we were shooting, we did not get a lot of time in the day to get what we wanted before it got too dark. We felt that shooting on two different days meant that the lighting on the two days were completely different, and if we could redo it all, we would start earlier and try to get everything done in one whole day to reduce the risk of different lighting. However, the use of natural lighting can not be predicted. Furthermore, the fact that the end shots are done at the end of the day when the sun is setting gives off the effect that the video is coming to an end just like the end of the day. We also did a lot of colour grading in a programme called colour to even out the lighting in our shots better. Instead of just putting a filter on our video like we did for the film opening, we went through and edited every single clip to make sure it was the best that we could have got it.
Most of the year audience feedback commented saying that the camera wasn't very steady. This was due to the fact that we were low on time, so we didn't get to shoot every single shot 5000 times to get it perfect. Most of the shaky shots were tracking shots, and we wanted to give a realistic feel that the audience is actually tracking her in real life. We wanted our protagonist to seem attainable unlike the air-brushed models in media, we felt that the use of shaky-cam helped with the realism of the music video, and to create a real role model that people can aspire to be like.

Overall we leant a lot from the different types of feedback that we got (positive and negative.) We learnt that the key things such as pacing, lyrics, sound, instruments etc... that are going on at the time in the music, will be what the visuals will have to follow.




How have you used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? ~ by Victoria Paul

New media technologies have played a major role throughout the production and distribution of our music video as we have employed them throughout each stage of this project. The research, being the initial step in the creation of our video was conducted almost entirely using social networking. The variety of music video genres available on the internet allowed us to get a broader understanding of conventions of music video, which we chose and applied suitably. The niche genre of our chosen song naturally meant the music videos we would mostly be researching would be smaller-budget, less institutionalised music videos. Had it not been for the accessibility of the internet, it wouldn't have been possible to conduct our research thoroughly. As we mentioned in the video, Amanda Rogers herself is a niche artist who mainly uses social networking websites to market her music, therefore meaning that nearly all the information acquired about our chosen artist was conducted through new media technologies. Likewise, the distribution of our music video would not have been possible without the platform of social networks. This not only enabled our audience and artist to watch our video but also respond to it instantaneously through the comments on YouTube.

Finally, new media technologies played an absolutely crucial role in the production and post production of our music video. Having used a camcorder for our preliminary task last year, we were able to appreciate the possibilities that came with using a DSLR for our next project; the most obvious and important difference being the quality of the image. As mentioned in the evaluation above our low light conditions meant the camera would pick up on less detail in the frame. However, the DSLR made this possible, with the varied ISO settings. The high quality of the image also meant a more professional looking music video, which allows viewers to become more immersed in the music video. In addition to this, the high quality allowed us to produce a music video of the same professional level as our chosen artist, resulting in a more believable representation. The adjustable frame rate was also crucial in the production of this project as it gave us the opportunity to use slow motion. We established early on in our research, that slow motion is arguably the most important convention in music videos that is not specific to necessarily one genre. We used the adjustable frame rate to ensure that when we applied the slow motion to our rushes, the viewing experience wouldn't be worsened by the jolting of images. Instead, the FPS meant a smoother and more professional viewing experience. Close up shots were another convention we established through our research, allowing a closer relationship between the musical artist and the viewers. The variety of lenses that came with the cameras allowed us to include a variety of shots in our music video, especially close up shots which would not be possible on an non-adjustable camcorder.

In the post-production stages of our project, we employed new media technologies throughout the editing of our video. The variety of professional editing techniques and equipment available on Final Cut Pro meant that, again, our project could be put on a par with existing media products. We were also able to add a logo and letter-boxing to complete the look of professionalism and make it as close as possible to existing media products. We also used the colour alteration software "Color" to address the problem of vastly varied lighting. One of the most important lessons learned through this experience was how drastically lighting can affect the final media product. Even having adjusted lighting and colour to the best potential in post-production, our audience feedback proved that it was still a noticeable issue. The low light conditions lessened the detail picked up by the camera in a shot, meaning that even when we adjusted the lighting in Color, the software couldn't fill in the missing detail in the frame. As a result I think a couple of our shots were a little grainy and blurred, however as Keeley mentions in our video it is a lesson only understood through experience. Were we to redo this music video again, we would perhaps employ the use of filler lights during the filming to ensure the scene would be as brightly lit as possible.

During the designing stages of our ancillary products, we used professional software programs such as Photoshop to achieve a more professional looking product. Specifically, this provided us with the opportunity to create our own font and import it into our final poster design. Whilst many would argue that software such as Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Color has been available for a long time and therefore cannot be classified as "new," it's important to note that audience accessibility to these products is a recent occurrence. The rise in audience use of final cut pro and Photoshop and even use of DSLR's has developed the "prosumer" movement, of which our production group is a part of. As we were conscious of this, we made informed and specific choices of how we would use this professional software and took advantage of the possibilities now available to us.

To conclude, the new media technologies we used ultimately allowed us to attain a professional level of production as well as meet many of the conventions of the genre.

Ancillary - Album Artwork Final Designs

The main noticeable change we made to the front cover was simply the positioning and style of the font for our artists name. Despite loving the idea of having the name designed in thread, when it came to placing it onto the background image, it just looked a little too busy and distracted the eye from the main title. I'm pretty please with the way this turned out in the end, as I think it represents our music video perfectly and also maintains the themes running throughout the album. 

As we had a front cover that focused on our music video, we thought that different aspects of the case should represent different aspects of the tracks on the album. The birdhouse used on the back cover symbolises the bird calls heard in the first few seconds of the opening track, a reference to nature and tranquillity that we thought worked really well with the front cover. We also added all the usual things found on album artwork, such as the copyright information and links to websites, as well as the record label logo.

[Currently not to the right dimensions. Will adjust later. Sorry for any inconvenience.]

Ancillary - Poster Final Product

Above is the final version of our poster designed to work as a magazine advertisement for the release of Amanda Rogers' 'new' album. Since we decided not to use the thread on the album cover, we thought it would be good to use it here to maintain the iconography seen in the music video for the albums lead single 'This Beauty', whilst also using a different image to the one seen on the front cover of the album that allows the viewer to get a visual representation of the artist. As it also uses the image seen within the album, further connections can be drawn once the album is purchased. We made the decision not to have any performance dates on the poster due to the nature of it being shown before the release date and tour, which with an independent artist such as Amanda, would follow the release of an album. Having critiques of the music is also one of the common conventions for an album advert pre-release, especially when the music is as diverse as what is seen on her album. There are a few things that I think are not exactly right but overall, I think it matches the themes and iconography seen in our music video and on the pre-existing album and represents Amanda and her music in a positive light.

Ancillary Task - Album Artwork and Posters

When an artist releases new music, the way in which the artist is represented is crucial to how people see them and how well there music is understood. Each decision made about the appearance of the album and marketing of it is deliberate and is drastically influenced by the artists meta narrative. The design of the artists image helps promote their style of music, communicating to a prospective audience the sound and feel of what the artist has created. It serves as the best form of advertisement for new artists with debut albums and lets people know what's in store for them.

There are two main ways that this representation is created: through typography and iconography. Typography refers to typeface and font, or perhaps what some people would refer to as the bands "identity" or "logo", where as iconography refers to the style and representation of the artist through things related to imagery.

Album Artwork

This

On

Posters/Advertisements

This poster serves as both an advert for her two upcoming promotional shows and for the release of her debut album.

Research - Amanda Rogers and Record Companies

Amanda Rogers is mostly thought of as an independent artist - not just in her style but also in her production and marketing
She herself approaches record companies to distribute her music to audience's across the world, rather than being signed to one main distributer who undertakes everything for her. This is also shown through her website, on a link to part of her page where she designs album artwork for other independent groups and artists and her own. This way, she has complete control over all decisions, from creative to financial.
Some of the record labels she has distributed music with are:

2nd Records - Germany
Immigrant Sun Records - Brooklyn in New York
Make My Day Records - Europe
Do it Together records - USA


Immigrant Sun Records:

An Independent record label from New York (USA) that began in 1996 and disappeared in 2003. For this reason, not a lot is known about the company.

2nd Records:

This is a record label within Germany, they have been publishing music since 2000. In 2005, Amanda Rogers was touring as a support act, and heard about this record label as they were releasing her albums 'Something Borrowed, Something Blue' and 'Daily News'. This was so that her music can be broadened to a wider audience.


Make My Day Records:

Founded in 2002, they distribute from Europe,  something that counts towards widening Amandas audience range.

"Hope From the Forgotten Woods, is a 16 track album that was conceived of and written 3 years ago, during which time Amanda explored other musical ventures, and while these songs sat and simmered in her heart and mind, the story began to unfold - revealing more to Ms. Rogers about herself than she ever expected. Amanda is always sure to let the creative process happen to her rather than to make it happen, and so once this story unravelled, she spent night and day alone in the studio and recorded every spark just as it flowed into her, creating a dark and intimate sound scape that supports the confessions of a would-be serial killer full of pain, passion, vengeance, and liberation. Can you dream up an alternative ending to the story to help mend your broken soul and seek revenge on a wicked world without leaving the confines of your mind? Well, yes, with songs like "Get Your Heart", and "Ms. X" , Amanda's Hope From The Forgotten Woods has done just that."

         - From Make My Day Records Website


Do It Together Records:

Many of this record label's artists are self reliant and produce their own music independently. It consists of a promotional team and an industry network to help promote the artists and distribute the artists' music. This is the record label that the album 'Heartwood' was released with and therefore the company that had the most influence over our chosen track, "This Beauty".

Ancillary - Typography and Typeface

When designing our album cover, typeface was one of the things we had to be the most careful with. Our decision would influence the entire perception of our artist - a typefaces effect, although small and unnoticeable, really makes a difference. We had to come up with a balance between something that looked professional yet also hand written, to stick with the natural theme running throughout our music video and initial designs for the album artwork. Therefore, we decided to use a separate, hand designed font for Amanda's name. We wanted to make it appear as if the red thread seen in our video was used to create the title, further affirm the link between our video and the artwork.

This Beauty - Finished Music Video

And here it is... our finished video! We're all really proud of how it turned out and of how much our hard work paid off. I think it's clear now watching this just how understanding the conventions and styles of the genre impact the creation of music videos. We're now free to start the process of gathering audience feedback and opinions, and for this we started with the artist herself.

After letting her know of the completion of the project, she responded with this email:

This was fantastic news for us as a production group, as it felt as if all our efforts were finally validated and acknowledged, particularly since Amanda believes we have captured the meaning of the song so well. It makes me especially feel as if we have achieved what we set out to do in a way that stays true to the original artist. Our next step will be to use various methods of marketing to get the audience feedback we now require.

Typical Conventions of Our Music Video Genre

The genre of music video is greatly determined by the sound, style and genre of the song that is being portrayed, which means that to develop good music video, we need to understand and apply the conventions of our genre as fully so that they can become an integral part of our own products.

Amanda Rogers is one of those artists that is hard to pin down to a particular genre, but her style is easily spotted in some other artists videos. Therefore, we chose to stick to Indie videos with influences from Blues, Pop and Piano music as Amanda's main genre.

Conventions 

Mise-en-scene

• Often use of retro/vintage inspired clothing to reflect older influences of music and evoke an aged sound with a modern twist
• Natural Lighting is often favoured over artificially lit or particularly bright areas. 
• Use of instruments in music video 
• Exterior Locations (tends to be- this isn't a strict convention) 
• Sometimes vintage filters used- e.g. black and white, washed out colour etc.
• Not as wide a variety of settings used, generally 1,2 or maximum 3
• Similarly a limited number of costume changes
• Editing 
• Not a very fast editing pace (strictly depends on the song though) 
• When compared to other genres such as R+B for example, this genre doesn't shrink time as much. Of course, being a music video, the general convention is that generally time is shrunk in indie music videos, however not to a great extent as in other music perhaps. 

Camera

• Generally steady shots- when shaky cam used- not to great extent, tend to be of nature
• Slow panning shots, slow motion
• Close ups of artist to create identity
• Low angle shots, empowering artist

Ancillary - Cover Designs and Ideas

After drafting a few different interpretations of what our album artwork could look like, we set about combining the aspects of each that worked best to create the best cover we could. We had to consider the conventions of album artwork whilst making these decisions, along with the representation of our artist and most importantly, her music. Amanda has a very unique, independent style and therefore we had to capture this in the presentation of her music just as we had done in the music video we created for "This Beauty."
Below is a rough sketch of our finished design:

We aim to design this to ahigher standard on Photoshop at a later date, where we should be able to refine the font used for the word "Heartwood" and improve it's overall appearance. We discussed wanting to make the cover look very natural and handmade to reflect Amanda's style, but also to keep it looking professional and of a high standard. Amandas name is written in a unique font meant to emulate the "red string of fate" theme that runs throughout our video. depending on our final designs for the back cover and the inserts, this thread may continue from her name and run throught the album.

We had quite a few different ideas drawn up by seperate members of the group, each of them accuarately representing aspects of Amanda Rogers' artist identity but all focusing on different features that they saw within her style and music.

 

 

For each of these seperate ideas, we focused on bothe the typography of the font's used and the iconograohy. We decided as a group, with input from people who had watched our completed music video, that our most iconic feature in the video is the red heart and string, and the shot at the hand of the heart being held in our Amandas hands. For this reason, we felt that we had to include both of these in the album, if not on the front cover then at least inside or as a motif.

 

Along with this, we felt that even though conventions of album covers show that new, unknown artists tend to feature on the front covers to create conection between the music and artist, the connection of music and ideas was more important for us to focus on. it is for this reason that only one of the designs above shows Amanda, yet still mainly focuses on setting and location. The second idea was ruled out quickly, as whilst we felt it could reflect the artistic nature of Amandas work, it didn't fully represent the concept behind the album and "This Beauty".

 

Hopefully, with this idea in mind, the rest of the album design can now be based around it, along with the poster advertising the album in which the cover must be a prominent feature.



 

 

Marketing in the Music Industry

Today, marketing techniques have changed a great deal since the peak of the music industry in the mid twentieth century. In the digital age, marketing is nearly all done online since there are so many ways to reach the public and spread word quickly. In fact, because of the variety of artists emerging onto the scene, now more than ever is a chance to find new, niche music. 

There are a few types of marketing that are used by nearly all artists in all genres of music...

Posters - Nowadays these tend to be distributed in magazines, on-line newspapers and websites rather than distributed physically round an area- although many still opt for this method.

Promotional Gigs -Previously bands would tour areas, performing various songs from the album to be released and generate a hype up to and sometimes after the release date of their album. Nowadays, because of the large crowds and fan base sizes, these gigs tend to be at other live events. However, other more unusual methods still occur.  

Taylor Swift for example sent out an impromptu tweet advertising an unplanned performance on Hollywood Boulevard, New York to which thousands of fans turned up. The size of her fan base made this possible, but it still drew massive amounts of attention to her and her new music.

Radio - Many artists still get a significant amount of radio play before an album or single will be released to see how well the song plays

Some other methods of marketing include:

Social Networks- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Bandcamp are just a few.
Word of mouth/Viral campaigns
Adverts- TV advertising in particular, along with radio, magazine and online adverts showcased on websites.