Album Poster - Research

Amy Winehouse's album posters often reflect a style from the 50's with the retro typography neon glow that is given to the text.This is further supported with the black and white photography that casts dramatic shadows across the poster, which is contrasting the blue glow of the text that makes both the name and the image stand out. This poster centralises the artist by having her take up 90% of the poster and showing her in a perfect light. I want to use these conventions by centralises my artist and maybe using the idea of this reoccurring selective colour.

This is 'rock up' poster connotes the aggressiveness of rock and roll, it also uses the iconic sign of rock within the form of an animated hand. Furthermore the bold use of two tone colour within the poster with reds and blacks often connote the idea of agression. This means that I have to think about what I am using within my poster because the colours can connote certain messages towards and audience  which wil in turn help them decide if they want to buy the album.

This album cover shows an example of the two previous examples almost combined to create a knew image and idea for an album and poster. This shows the combination of the retro 50's style from Amy Winehouse mixed with the harsh bold colours of the Rock up poster. This repetition of the bold colours wihin these posters is an aspect that I have to consider putting into my album poster and I have to decide if I want this to translate into my album cover. 

This album cover closly relates back to that black and white idea which helps centralise the artist. Ariana Grande's poster is advertising a concert, this means that I will either have to decide is I want to advertise the album or a concert. Another option is to make two different versions of the poster while still maintaining the synergy. The same conventions are used again in the terms of centralising the artist and using selective colours to help direct the audience where to look. I will also have to look at inputting a date of release and the name of songs maybe even the name of the album.

This album poster features the artist like most of the posters on here but this one puts him in a location. The location reflects nowhere glamorous more making the artist seem down to earth and more relatable. In addition the album connotes the idea of reflection because of the light and colours offer a dream like state showing the artist looking back at where he came from. The bold text of the artists name supports the image to the left, which stands out on the white background and helps offer vital information to the audience. The image of the album uses the same colours as the poster showing the synergy between products and helps the audience recognise the product easily. This is something that I am defiantly going to do for my digipak.

Another poster that I looked into was Eminem Encore because his music videos are going to have an strong influence because of the genre of music that I have chosen. This album cover almost sets a scene  with a narrative, the fact that we are positioned in the crowd denotes us as his audience which is a interesting dynamic to explore for my poster. Furthermore the use of contrasting blues and reds gives the idea of confusing and conflicting emotions much like the artist himself, it provides a memorable image for the audience and gives the connotation of performance.

Jay Z's poster present a parody towards president posters that are seen all over elections, this links to the statement at the top of the poster. This idea of making a red and black version of the poster contrasts the pur image that most presidents want to connote. Furthermore the idea of being a president of hip hop is a bold statement to make and supports the idea of ego. This could be a fun aspect to play with on my album poster by parodying this to add a layer of comedy.

The typography on this album cover connotes something harsh and hard hitting. This shows the power of typography within my poster. The iconic emblem of ACDC is used to bring in the audience that already know who they are but the use of colours and bold use of text is to attract new people to buy the music. Most of these posters have statements to say something about the music genre or the artists. I want to include this in my poster.

Popular band The Script's album 'Hall Of Fame' is a classic example of the photography, font and layout which is typical of an album poster. The poster is bold and eye catching, the type of font is consistent across both posters, the font for the band title being more decorative, and the album title and release date being much larger and more of a block font to really stand out. Equally, the motive of the band is evident form the posters, the leader of the band is clearly  featured centrally in both posters, he is positioned furthest forward in the image to the left, and his face is far larger than his bandmates in the image to the right - to connote his importance and superior status within the band.

Feedback - Focus groups

Focus Groups

To get feedback for my music video I created several focus groups both online and at school, this allowed me to see what people thought of the music video so far and allowed me to change certain aspects appropriately. The focus groups at school consisted of older teenagers to young adults because I felt that this was my target audience for a 'rap' music video. I further included a balanced variety of ethnicity and gender to try and get an accurate source of feedback. I wanted to ask questions to do with editing, pace and style as I felt that these were all important aspects in my video. I further wanted to see if they understood the mini narratives within the performance style or if it was too much to communicate in such a short space of time. 

In the school focus groups I collected my results using paper as shown in the image above and I asked for the positives and negatives of both the music video and the album cover. I felt that audience theory played a close part to this and it took a lot of time to set this up correctly to get an accurate result. I needed the results to be accurate because it would heavily influence my product, this meant that I had to make the experience easy for the viewer so that this doesn't effect their result. This includes making sure that the sound and video are working; that the audience is comfy so this doesn't make the experience bad. This is because a bad experience will make people think that the media they are about to watch is bad, I discovered this when researching audience theories. I will be showing the audience a variety of versions that they can compare.

Video Feedback

The feedback that I received was fairly positive for the music video but I also received a lot of criticism to improve the video. Common aspects that the audience liked included editing, which was mentioned throughout the feedback I received, often commenting on the VFX and fast pace. These are both elements that I am going to translate into my final product because the audience seemed to respond well towards them. The blue version within one of the edits caused some controversy because some loved it and others hated it and said it look amateur. My response to this is that I may use it in certain parts of the video but not throughout. Another scene that was well liked was the 'mints' because it was fast and clever, this will be included within the final version. 

A common improvement is that some shots have been held too long that causes the fast pace to be ruined and really took the audience out the experience. In addition a lot of people said some shots were too dark, which is an issue that has to be address before the final product is shown. On the other hand the lighting in some sections was praised, so I will have to evaluate my approach to keep it consistent throughout the video.  

Album Cover

The feedback for the album cover again offered vital feedback but it was hindered at one point by the projector not showing the full range of colours that were required to see the album cover, this made it harder to get an accurate response. I overcame this by hosting an online session with the fans of the artist. The strengths of the album included the professional look and style of the cover, this included typography and photography. There was not many major improvements in the school session, they mainly consisted of touching up colours and positioning of the photos. However in the online version someone pointed out the text was slightly to dark and that the colours created a grey boarder. Another improvement was to maybe have the whole album black and white and maybe have more variety of photos and poses. This will be easier to create once I have completed the video because I know what actions will be included, which I can translate into the album cover.

Music Video - Draft 4

For the fourth draft I took in criticism  and applied it to my work, I further evaluated it myself and proceeded to improve the video. Within this draft I had changed several of the clips with colour correction to make the background darker to create a stronger contrast between black and white, because I wanted to still maintain the Filmnoir style. 

Around 00:09 I decided to lighten the left character to even out the tone within the shot because I felt that the it made the shot blend together seamlessly. I further adjusted the muzzle flashes and lightened the frames when they go off to integrate them further in the scene. In addition to brightening the the muzzle flashes I made the aspect ratio bars a pure white instead of grey to establish a clear boundary. I further re-keyed the the blood to match the body's movement better and I added motion blur to match the blur of the movement.

To add an intertexual reference towards the platform I added jumpcuts that zoom into the shots because this is what vloggers, it further adds variety and avoids the problem of one shot being too long. The skeleton was re- corrected to stop it having the bits of black the made it seem fuzzy, this was due to dodgy colour keys. I also increased the volume on the sound effects within the sound track so that they stand out int the track, this includes the guns, lightsabers and screams. Lastly I used crossfades to smoothen the transitions and gunshots within the scenes.

Music Video - Draft 3

This is the first 're-shot' draft of my final media, it improves on several aspects that hindered the original drafts. These include the grainy footage, which has been replaced by the new re-shot footage in the studio. This version of my music video has an altered location compared to the previous because I wanted more controlled lighting to achieve the lowkey lighting of Film Noir, the location further allowed my footage to seamlessly be edited together. This allowed the fast pace to be maintained throughout and still include the cutaways within the studio. As for the white aspect ratio, some people are loving them others are hating them. I am now going to get to work on the next draft.

Audience Theory - Final Product

To research how I would construct an effective focus group I looked into audience theory to try and understand who I should select for the group to get a well rounded response from my target audience.This would also further help me change certain aspects of the film to best satisfy the viewer. I knew from my previous survey and audience research that my target audience would be between 16-20 year old meaning that my video had to meet young teens to young adults. This was a vast group in terms of age so I knew that I had to understand audiences in order to appeal correctly.

My research began looking into Halls 'sender and receiver theory', this theory suggested that there are three types of reactions form an audience: Dominant, Negotiated and Oppositional. To further understand these theories I had to understand the meaning behind them:

Dominant - Goes with the most common view of the product. 

Negotiated - Understand both sides of the points being made but doesn't pick a side.

Oppositional - Already has a set view and will not divert their opinion.

This means that my intended meaning could be obsured by aspects of the film people in general are opposing or views that the viewer alreadt opposes. This will impact my casting of the roles, who is in the focus group and look at my intended meaning behind my music video. Furthermore this links with immoral panic over a certain group of people depending on who I cast as the bully. If I show the bully being darker ethnisity it causes people to have an excuse to support the idea of that group of people being violent and can create/support sterotypes. 

Another set of theories that have had an influence over my work has been the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory' and 'Cultivation'. These theories share the idea that the audinece are passive and are just injected with infomation without any reaction or opposition. The 'cultivation theory' focusses more on people grouping together over a product and forming relationships with the characters. I don't fully agree with these theories however it does suggest the power of the media that I am creating and why I should be prepared to censore some of the more controversal scenes.

The 'Users and Gratification theory' looks at the audience being more active and offers a lot of detail into why an audience may react differenrly to a media product. This theory had more influence over my media product because I beleive that it carried more weight.It influenced me because the theory stated that the audeince find meaning and expectation through what they have already experienced: personal relationships, experiences and identity. This will cause me to research into the topic of bullying more and see if I could either improve the message or if I should just scrap it. 

Shooting - [Final] Product

For the final product I want a much stronger set of lights to create much higher contrast lighting, this known a chiaroscuro. I want to do this to convey the convention of film noir style and look of my film, I have experimented with lighting and editing techniques to create a unquie viewing experince. I will furher we shooting on about 2-3 differen locations and have different scenes taking place that will be edited at a fster pace. I want to reshoot because of the camera settings and how my exstended research has influenced my process.