Shooting Script

A great way for a music video to go to plan is by creating a document that specifies every initial shot that you would like to include. My partner and I have both created a shooting script so that we are aware of what we need to film before we go out to shoot. Although some ideas may be changed, incorporating this at the beginning of our work is a great way to begin. As a way to enhance our organisation, we have included a 'key' for all of the different locations that we will be filming in. This will make sure that have recorded everything in the current locations that we are in, so we will not miss out on anything. This can be seen below:

Blog Reflection - Week 7

This week was quite a difficult week as it consisted of a bit of work. My partner and I managed to film, edit and analyse the market research vox pop this week. This was a great step as we both obtained useful feedback that told us how what we were doing would appeal to our target audience. We also got to look more specifically at genders as some male opinions differed from the females, which allowed us to know who prefers our chosen style more.

We also managed to begin working on our hand drawn designs for our digipak and magazine advertisements. Although we did not manage to finish working on them for this specific week, they will hopefully be complete by next week. As it takes a lot of time to draw them to our required standard, we have chosen to take our time so that we do not make any mistakes due to us rushing. However, I am definitely pleased with the way both of the pieces of work are going as they are working out to be the same way that we imagined it to be.

Another thing that we have started is our production schedule and shooting script. We managed to complete the schedule, which is great as when it comes to filming and editing, we know what to do and when to do it. This has enabled us the ability to work as a pair better as we can both refer to this when we are confused. When creating it we kept in mind when the deadlines for filming and editing were so that, based purely on initial prediction, we were accurate with our timing, leaving enough space for either task. The shooting script is a little harder than what we have at the moment, but will be up by next week on our blog.

Production Schedule

This schedule has enabled us to be more organised. We would rather stick to a pre-scheduled timetable as oppose to making it up last minute as my partner and I both aim to get this completed before the deadline, so that we can gain feedback and edit it to the standard that we aim for. A key has been designated so it's clearer to follow, and both the schedule and key can be seen in the document below:

Market research vox pop

As a pair we have decided to make another focus group based on our pitch idea for our chosen song, but instead of having it with members of our class like last time, we went for people that are not as educated in the media industry so that we could get a response from the general public. This allowed us to have another view of our idea as we got a range of responses.

We asked a few people what they thought of our idea and here is a more detailed summary of our results and what we obtained.

1) What do you think of the idea of a positive breakup?

Everybody was fond of this as idea as it showcased how "not everyone comes out of a relationship heartbroken" (0:17)and how it was unique due to it not being seen in most music videos. As everybody gave us a positive response to this, telling us that they are fond of the idea, we can definitely connote that we are heading onto the right tracks and can keep up with our current idea. This is a particularly important attribute to our production as our artist is somebody that likes to think optimistically; the fact that our audience has told us that they like this idea is particularly ideal as it means that it can be quite popular within our target market, which is something very key for success.

The way people responded to this especially the females in this group where that they found the idea to be very empowering. They liked the fact that is was something different because not everyone comes out of a relationship extremely heartbroken or sad and it shows the other side to coming out of a relationship. They also thought by having a positive breakup it can also help females and show them that it doesn't always have to be so bad and can act as inspiration towards young females. They also thought that the theme had potential and could go far because it was unique, because the word breakup is usually associated with bad things so if we were to associate it with good things it would allow the audience to change their perception on it.

Other people said:

Clip 1: "not everyone comes out of a relationship heartbroken" (0:17)

Clip 2: "I think its good because its different, because breakups are usually shown as negative things and putting a positive spin on it makes it different from everyone elses." (1:35)

Clip3:"I think that theme has potential as you don't really see a positive breakup in most music videos, I think it will go far, its unique"(3:34)

Clip 4:"It'll give it a good insight on how break-ups could be" (5:54)

Clip 5: "It will engage more people" (6:56)

2) What are some female artists within the R&B genre that you like?

All of our respondents told us that they liked Beyoncé. Plenty of reasons for this included her portrayal of a "positive image" as opposed to showcasing "too much sex appeal". This is definitely a relevant piece of research as our artist presents exactly this; we want her to have this positive vibe highlighted with her actions whilst remaining clothed. The fact that our audience have told us that they like this attribute within a female R&B artist is very ideal due to it being so relevant to what we will soon produce. Other people told us that they were fond of people like Ciara, Aaliyah and Zendaya because of their good dancing and soulful vocal abilities. Again, this was a great piece of feedback as our artist is very similar to these people and has the exact same aspects that our audience told us about. However, something that was interesting was that at4:08 our respondent was not too aware of who Ciara was; as our artist that we will be creating is very similar to her, this was a negative piece of information as we would like her to be successful within our target market. However, our main audience is within the female gender, and this person was a male, so it does not matter too much (especially as the male at 6:03 liked Ciara) as it is not the priority. After a bit of reminding, our respondent did know who she was and found her "alright". From this we can understand that maybe we should not link our artist too much with her as this may not receive the positive outcome that we want (as the preference would be for both genders to like her) but the fact that others told us that she was a good R&B singer shows us that she does have a following. Overall, this question has taught us to showcase a positive vibe from our artist, as well as making them unique. So we can still use some conventions that other musicians have incorporated into their work, but by adding our own creative twist we can become successful within our target market.

Other people said:

Clip 1: "I like Beyoncé because she portrays a positive image compared to some other artists who portray like too much sex appeal" (0:31)

Clip 2: "I like Beyoncé, but everyone loves Beyoncé. Also Amelie, I like really soulful voices and any artists who have really clever lyrics" (1:52)

Clip 3:I like Zendaya Coleman, she can dance, shes my age, shes beautiful. I like Beyoncé, shes the queen" (3:53)

Clip 4:"Ciara and Aaliyah because their music is deep and it has a good meaning"  6:02

Clip 5: "Beyonce, because she comes up with new, fresh ideas" (7:03)

3) What do you think of our chosen artist?

This again allowed us to obtain very positive feedback as people told us that she was"confident", something that is a notable attribute of a successful R&B singer. Another person said that she's somebody that "is not afraid to try - new things". With the response that we took from our previous question, it is clear that people like creativity, so by choosing somebody that is not afraid of that is definitely useful as we can achieve something in terms of pleasing our audience from it. 

Other people said:

Clip 1: "Yeah I like Jalbby, because shes confident, I like the way she thrives to do things" (0:59)

Clip 2: "I think that is a very good choice because Jalbby is very confident .... especially if you want to portray someone who is very confident and cool in your music video" (2:39)

Clip 3: "I think that will be a really good idea because Jalbby is confident and she will make a good impact on your music video"(4:31)

Clip 4: "Shes a good candidate because she is very confident and outspoken, and shes not afraid to try new things" (6:17)

Clip 5: " Shes a strong character and she is really confident, I think she will be able to play the character really well" (7:47)

4) Do you have any ideas on what we can include in our music video?

The idea of having a black and white production was very popular within our market research as it was said to"match the theme of a breakup". As we would like to meet the artistic view by making the mise-en-scene connote a particular meaning, this piece of feedback has definitely highlighted that, which is a wonderful thing to hear. Another person said that we should avoid the conventional aspect of having people "ripping photographs up" and "on her own, crying" and have our artist with her friends, and happy. This is something that we have decided to include through the scene where there will be backup singers on the stage with her, so it is great to know that our audience likes our current plans. Others said that they wanted to see some "dancing" with we have contemplated on but will only use to a bare minimum. As the song is not very fast paced, having a choreographed dance routine would be particularly odd. Somebody told us that they liked having dancing as it is what makes it a typical R&B video. However, we already have a few conventional aspects in it, so by adding in yet another one would defeat the whole creative aspect of it, so we will most likely not include this choreographed routine. Nonetheless, we will definitely include some swaying and a bit of movement when the girls are on stage so that our audience can be happy with our result.

OVERALL

What we understood from it was that artists such as Beyoncé are very popular within our target market. Our artist is also comparable to these two so this is very good.

Also, the idea of having our musician lip sync to the camera was popular as it helped the video "flow" and enabled it to be more enjoyable than a plain narrative; even though many liked the narrative idea, this showed that both styles of video were popular.

When we asked about our idea in general, we did not receive any negative comments so this is a really good thing as we do not need to change anything. This is also a great compliment as it means that we have already done enough research and understanding of our audience and can now begin production on the video as it will most likely please the audience, based on what we have found out already.

Blog Reflection - Week 6

This week was one of the final weeks we had to work on for our planning, as based on our pre-scheduled timetable. As my partner and I had already completed most of the work that was set, we did not have as much to do as we expected, which showcases how we have managed our time very well and gives us great hope for our actual production.

The first thing we created was the audience profile. This was a way of showcasing what a typical member of our target market would like so that we could refer back to it when we were unsure of what to include in our video.

We also completed a magazine advert analysis of three different artists. This included Beyoncé, Ciara and Miley Cyrus. We wanted to dwell into our own market so we chose artists that shared some form of similarity to our own. This was a great way to understand the marketing sector of the music industry as we understood quite a bit. We found out that sexualisation was important as it enabled the audience to have their attention caught. However, Ciara's advert taught us that sometimes elegant women are also used for a promotional tool. With makeup, a nice outfit and a strong pose, we get a certain atmosphere delivered from the celebrity. We can take both of these things into consideration when working on our artist as we could sexualise her in some form, but as we would like to keep her class, having clothes would be a useful tool. We can still sexualise her by the camera positions, but the way she acts and dresses is very important, as taught by these analysations.

This was also complimented by the completion of our music video analysis. As we had previously analysed three digipaks, as well as what I have already said, this was our third product that we looked at. This taught us many conventions of music videos such as what they wear, what type of shots they include and plenty of other aspects. If you would like to understand what we learnt from this, then click here.

Last week we completed our survey and this week we reached our aim of gaining 20 responses; in fact, we obtained 22, which is great! This can be seen here and it should be noted that we tried to take in every response as possible, but plenty of the options were more popular than others, so it was safe to go for the popular responses as oppose to the unpopular ones. We understood that conventions that we chose such as a street wall, performance style video and more were very popular. This was a great response as we had understood that our idea was something that our market liked.

Towards the end of the week we completed a focus group that was used to see what the general public thought of our idea, as oppose to members of our media class. This gave us a similar response to our survey as we got completely positive feedback on our idea. This was a wonderful thing to hear as we can now move on with the production of our project with the mind set that people will like our idea, if we film it correctly!

Analysis of market research survey

So that I could understand what my target audience wanted to see in an urban musician, my partner and I created a survey that was uploaded onto Survey Monkey. As a pair we posted it on several social networks which includes Facebook and Twitter. This enabled us to gather a better understanding of what we could incorporate in our production, and this is what we found out from each of our questions:

1) Use at least three words to describe your ideal R&B artist.

From this, we could quite a range of answers. From very helpful responses such as "Fun, mature, confident, sexy, glamourous" to "not Miley Cyrus", which in some respect is actually quite helpful. The three most popular words that we got were:

• Mature (11)
• Confident (8)
• Glamorous (6)
• Promiscuous (6)
• Fun (4)

This has allowed us to understand that most people within our target market like to see someone that is quite confident and is respectable. This reminds me of artists such as Alicia Keys and Ciara as they have a bit of each of these five attributes. This is a very good thing as this is the path that my partner and I wanted to go for, so as far as things are going, our audience are fond of our idea, even if they do not realise it. Other mentionable comments were things such as "intimidating" and "street" - this is a typical urban aspect and does not change our idea at all, which is good.

2) What costume style would you prefer to see in a female urban artist?

This was a multiple choice question. We chose to make it multiple choice as we wanted to see what they thought of our options. We have an "other" option in case our ideas did not fit their's. Here are the responses for this question:

As you can see, the two most popular options were "casual" and "promiscuous". There is a three response difference between these two where "casual" has more options. The "other" responses said they wanted an "urban" style, which is quite interesting. However, for an urban artist, the casual look seems to be the most popular option as it clearly has the most votes. I believe that we could definitely work with this by using a similar style to Cassie that she used in her video, which is quite casual but still looks nice.

3) Which ethnicity(ies) do you feel suits R&B vocals?

This was also another multiple choice response. The answers to this were very mutual when it came to analysing it. 18 out of the 22 responses said that they believe that black people suit the R&B vocals best, which is great as our current artist is black. The next popular option was mixed race, which had 5 less votes at 13. This can be a good guideline as to who we may use as a backup if our first option does not work out. We also asked our audience to tell us why they believed it and most of them said things along the lines of how it originates from that, as well as popular artists such as Ciara and Mariah Carey being from their selected skin colour.

4) In terms of location, which of the following are your favourites? Select as many that apply.

Another multiple choice question that we added was this one. We had a few ideas in mind and wanted to see if anybody agreed with other possibly locations. We did not put anything that we could not actually film in ourselves, but we also wanted others to give us any other possible options. There was only one person that said "other" and they wanted a green screen (one colour background) as well as a stage. The stage idea is a great way for us to dip into multiple locations, so we will be taking this on board with us. The rest of the results are as follows:

A 'street wall' was a popular option, and so was a club. I believe that as a club is very conventional, we could possibly use it but this depends on how well it fits with our song. We could attempt this but as it is a very slow song about heartbreak, I am not sure whether or not it will work; but we shall give it a go. The 'one colour background' got the same amount of votes as the club idea (if you include the "other" comment) which is quite simple to use. This was our initial idea and it clearly is quite popular with our audience, so we can definitely use it because of this.

5) Which of the following music video styles would you prefer for a video of the R&B genre?

We gave our respondents options to answer this as well as the definition of each style in case they were not aware of the answer. Below are our responses:

The most popular response was "narrative", by 3 votes. We initially wanted to have a bit of a narrative in our video so this is good. Also, "performance" was the main part of our idea and that was also a popular option. However, as most people are fond of the narrative option we may have to slightly change our idea a bit as our audience is more fond of one than the other. Nonetheless, it is great to know that our initial ideas have not been rejected by our target market one bit as this means that we do not have to change much of it.

6) Please rate the following themes in order of preference. 1 being you’re most preferred and 5 being you’re least preferred

The responses for this question show that people rate feminism 27.3% which means 6 people have picked that as the first theme out of 22. Positive break-up theme is placed at first with the same 27.3% with 6 people voting it first as their most preferred theme. Negative breakup is rated 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen it as their preferred reading. Sex theme has been rated 18.4% which means 4 people have chosen it out of 22. And lastly the theme of friendship is rated 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen this out of 22.

Feminism is ranked fifth with a rating of 18.2% meaning 4 people have chosen this as their least preferred. Positive break-up is 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen this as their least preferred out of 22 people.  Negative break-ups are ranked fifth as 13.6% meaning 3 people have chosen as their least preferred.  The sex theme is ranked fifth at 22.5% meaning 5 people have chosen this as their least preferred. Friendship themed is ranked fifth at 31.8% meaning 7 people have chosen this out of 22.

The most popular theme is tied between Feminism and Positive Break-ups. We believe that people like this the most is because firstly feminism is very empowering to females and as this song we have chosen is targeted towards females seeing that is something in which they can relate too. And the theme of positive break-ups is something very different and is not usually shown so by doing something like this we are giving something refreshing to the audience. The most disliked course is friendship, and we think that the audience says this is because when showing friendship in a video it can be shown as something very boring and can be drawn out so long that they start to loose interest. Especially to a r&b music video it is unusual to see a theme of friendship so if we were to do so it would look very out of place.

7) How many people should be included in a video for a song about a unfortunate relationship?

They were given options from 1-4+ the answer that came up the most was 3 people and the least that came up was 0 and 2 people. SO this shows that they prefer around 3 people in the music video which would be are main artist who we see frequently, the guy who plays the love interest and then in some of the performance scenes we would see back up dancers/singers.

The most dominant answers are 3 and 4 so to please our audience we have decided to include around 4+ people because by doing so we are able to expand on our ideas and explore more topics and techniques.  The least amount of people that our audience wanted in our video are from 0-2 and we think this is because after a while the same old face can get really boring and by introducing new faces and having them reappear and disappear it keeps the audience interested.

8) In terms of appearance as well as music, please rate the following artist in order of preference. 1 being your most preferred and 5 being your least preferred.

Ciara was ranked first at 22.7% meaning 5 people out of 22 people chose it first.  Miley Cyrus has been ranked also first for 22.7% meaning 5 people out of 22 have chosen this option first. Alicia Keys has been chosen first with a ranking of 9.1% which means 2 people out of 22 have chosen her as their favourite. For Rihanna people have chosen her first with a rank of 13.6% which means 3 people prefer her as their favourite artist. Ariana grande had a ranking of 4.5% which mean only 1 person prefers her as first.

And lastly Beyonce having a ranking of 227.3% meaning 6 people out of 22 prefer her as their first choice. Out of all these artist Beyonce has had the most votes as their preferred artist and the reason we think this is so because she is so iconic and well known her classy yet sexual style really tied in the audience and helps to create a different atmosphere when watching her music videos. The individuality she has as a female artist outweighs any other r&b artist that is out this moment and when creating out music video we will try to take aspects of Beyonce style in her videos and herself and try to re-create that in the best way in which we can.

As for the artist that is least liked from the survey we can see that people do not prefer Miley Cyrus with having a ranking of 31.8% meaning 7 people put her as their least favourite and we believe this is because her style can come across as really raunchy and tacky as an artist and it not as tasteful as other artist in this area.  Also Ariana Grande has been ranked as an artist which they dislike the most with a ranking of 40.9% meaning 9 people have chosen her as their least favourite and we believe this is because her style comes across as being happy all the time and when we see her we don't see her being genuine and real. The audience reads her as being fake and not her true self. So when creating our music video we will try to stay away from these two artists style of music video and the way they are an artist in themselves.

9) Please rate the following videos from 1-5. 1 meaning you really liked the video, 5 meaning you did not like it at all. If you did not see the video, please click the "have not seen" option

Beyonce - Broken Hearted Girl : Was ranked first at 40.9% meaning 9 people had ranked it first out of 22. And it was also ranked fifth at 0% but had have not seen percent of 27.3% which means 6 people had not seen it out of 22.

Ciara - Like A Boy : Was ranked first at 40.9% meaning 9 people has ranked it first out of 22. And it was also ranked fifth at 0% but 22.7% which is five people who have not seen the music video.

Alicia Keys- Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart : Was ranked first 4.5% which means only 1 person out of 22 people chose it as first. It was ranked fifth at 0% but 18.2% have not seen the video meaning four people out of 22 have not seen it.

Rihanna- Stay: Was ranked first at 27.3% meaning 6 people out of 22 had chosen it first. It had been ranked fifth at 4.5% which means one person out of 22 placed it last. But 2 people have not seen that video.

Katy Perry- The One That Got Away : Was ranked first at 18.2% meaning 4 people out of 22 people had ranked it first. It was ranked fifth at 13.6% meaning people people didn't like it the most and was not seen by 2 out of 22 people.

Fifth Harmony- Miss Movin' On : Was ranked first at 13.6% which means 3 people out of 22 had liked it the most and was ranked fifth at 13.6% meaning 3 people out od 22 had disliked it the most and there were 9 people who had not seen it.

 10) What affect does Mulvey's "Male Gaze" theory (the belief that producers film certain shots to emphasize a women's body parts for sexualisation purposes) have on an R&B video? Please explain.

Here were some responses from the 22 people on their views ...

We received a lot of feedback for this section and have understood that many people are fond of our idea. However, as similar artists such as Beyonce are sexualised, we believed that our audience would like this. From our feedback we have received mixed views about this. Some people say that they like the idea as it is something very typical within the genre of R&B, whilst others were highly against the idea as they believed that females should not have to show off their bodies in order to be successful. From this we can understand that we can include both of these aspects so that we can somehow manage to please both sets of audiences. We will be incorporating this factor into our work by allowing our artist the privilige of showcasing her body at some points, but not much. We can pan the camera on her body but instead of having her showcase her skin, she could be clothed, and the camera could be the one sexualising it alone, as opposed to the girl being involved in the process. This will allow our audience members to possibly be pleased as it is not as overdone as many artists today, for example, Miley Cyrus.

Music Video Analysis

For us to have the knowledge of what conventions music videos have and how that makes them successful, Rianne and I analysed three music videos.
Rianne analysed Ciara - "Like A Boy"
I analysed Rihanna - "Pour It Up"
We both analysed Cassie - "Long Way 2 Go"



This enabled us to have a better understanding of similar artists and how they create their music videos for a certain reaction from the media. Ciara's is very similar to ours and it has taught us how colour can affect the mood connoted from a production. The lack of colour made it seem much more serious as oppose to a frilly video that would've possibly taken away the meaning, hence why we are doing that with ours.
"Pour It Up" helped us to understand how a small budget can actually lead to a good result if we use the green screen correctly. We will be incorporating a green screen so that we can get a certain image, just like Rihanna did.
Cassie's video taught us about costume. The costume our artist will be dressed in will have to be casual but her actions will be different. Having her fully clothed but acting a little sensual gives off the urban vibe that Cassie gives off, which is what we want.