Research and Planning: Generic conventions and analysing adverts

An advert is a form of print medium that is used to sell and market a product. in the case in which we are focusing it is a music single or album.
Purpose:

• A marketing tool that accompanies a singles/albums release.
• Provides visuel information about the artist and the album.
• Display key information such as main song,after songs, where its available.
• Creates, adopts or feeds into the represntation of the 'star image'
• Appeals to the intended target audience.
• Buy into artist lifestyle and ideas.

Impact:

• To attract the target audience into purchasing the product.
• Attracts a wider audience.
• Reveals key information about the artist
• Audience to feel a stronger relationship with the artist.

Conventions: An advert carries various conventions including:

• Main image
• Title of album
• Artist name
• Features of the song such as the song list
• Audience infprmation if neccesary e.g. parental advisery
• Key dates
• Availibility ( E.g. itunes

What I will include:
-Album title -Artist Name -Conventional typography -Use of dark colours to relate to similar artists -Urban locations that connote hip hop genre -Key singles on the album   -Downloadable content links -Official website

Conclusion

I will use the conventions when creating an advert for my artist as I now the powerful implications in can have on my artist such as: colour schemes, graphics, limited texts, release etc. This will help to gain my artist the recognition from their fans as well as other future fans. My artist will be able to release their up and coming album 'Belong To The City'. I will use materialistic colours such as red, gold and black in my advert as I feel they help to describe and illustrate my artists' persona in an effective and cool way. I will make sure to include additional information so that location by fans will be easy.

Research and Planning: Advert information

Planning the information that will be used on my advert is essential as it enables the viewers to be aware of the information that would be on in the Digipak. Also the audience will have a better knowledge of what to expect on the album such as key singles, the theme of the album, wheather its a collab or solo and most importantly, the album name.

Artist name:

-Frankie Felone

Album name:
-Felone Season
Key Singles:
-The game's mine
-oh well (Most important)

Album release date:
-4th Febuary 2016

Parental advisory:
-Yes

Typography:
-Sketchy, urban look

Available for download:
-Spotify
-Itunes
-Amazon 

 Conclusion
Overall the fundamental factors are to be included when producing an advert for an album. These are factors that I will later take into consideration when creating the advert. I now know how to appeal to the given audience in a conventional and professional manner.

Research and Planning - Generic conventions and analysing digipaks

What is a digipak?
Print material that a company uses for promotional purposes such as a new album.
The purpose of a digipak?

• Helps promote an artists new album
• Allows the audience to gain an understanding of the artist and their product.
• What genre they are expecting
•  It is used to create a relationship between the artist and the audience. 
• If done well, the album can become a collectors item.

What elements does a digipak contain?

•  Barcode
• Song list
• Artists name
• Album name
• Production company name
• parental advisory (if needed)

Common conventions within the Digipaks analysed were:

-black and white or dull colours
-image of star
-either materialistic or artistic
-headshot
-classic typography

From analysing the existing Digipaks I will now include:
-Dark colours to promote a Hip hop vibe
-Headshot of our star image
-Include a messy typography to connote the mianstream conventions the artist possesses
-Have the star image of on the front cover of the Digipak where his face is clearly shown in order for the audience to identify with him.

Research and Planning: Creative brief for digipak

Oasis Academy Hadley 

5 South Street

EN3 4PX

Date: 11/12/2015     
Album Title/artist: ‘What if its Felone season' by Frankie Felone
Project Manager: Lara Lawal
Release Date: 4th Febaury 2016

Product Overview:
Frankie Felone is an American rapper who launched his career from performing in local rap battles and making mix tapes in his home made studio. As his reputation grew, he started being hired to perform at urban   festivals and soon headlining shows Eventually he was known for creating a new sound, experimental Hip hop, which created a new audience for him leading him to get signed to a major label company Esoteric records due to the co founder witnessing his raw talent several years ago. From here, he started to play more of a dominant role for the company where he would write, produce and direct videos for other artist's music. This then enabled him to expand his reputation and name on the Hip hop scene. As he went from performing in small clubs to arenas, it enabled people to know what his music was about and even though his videos were rather commercial, his lyrics were quite niche at the same time resulting in international fame on the Hip hop scene, there is definitely a demand for his 3rd album release.

The Album concept:
What is it?
We want to create an album cover that best represents  star image in order to pull in a variety of different audiences from the international hip hop scene. We want to create something that will appeal to our audience and also that will reflect the genre we are making our music video for, ‘oh well’. The album will be a very informative about his fame and whats going on at the present time rather than his past or what he wants to to work towards. now that he has a strong and large fan base, this album is specifically to appeal to them as they can feel more closer towards our artist. We are creating this album as we want to maintain his star image: this in turn will boost our chances of having a music video on the top 10 charts.

Why are we doing it?
Felone's 3rd studio album will  bring success to an international audience and the digipak creation will help in order to do this. The art work on the album cover will be crucial in our success. The consumers should be able to understand the values and ideologies as well as the themes the artist is trying to portray. The pictures, typography and backgrounds will allow us to communicate visually to our audience. The theme of the album which is ‘about his fame’ will allow the consumers to understand the Hip-hop genre, without even having to listen to the music.

Comparable products

A$AP ROCKY - Long. Live. A$AP : 

sale figures: 520.000 sold

RICK ROSS - Mastermind : 

sale figures: 420,000

What is the reaction we want?
We want the audience and the consumers to feel like they can understand the artist and enjoy his music to live their lives and get over their problems. The target audience should be able to build and develop a relationship that is different from other artist as this one is about getting to know your true self.

How will we know it worked?
We will know if our album was successful from the sales. We will compare these alongside our sales figures to enable us to see if our album was a hit. Following on, we will be hosting a focus group to allow fans and consumers to look at our first drafts and give us there feedback on our album designs. From there criticism we will know ways in which we can improve.

Felones campaign dates:
Press campaign: 29th January 2016
TV Launch: 4th february 2016
Album Release: 4th February 2016

Research and Planning:Digipak information

Artist name: Frankie Felone

Theme of the album: About his fame

Album name: "Felone season"

Tracklist:
- Intro
- Revival
- Insomnia
- The game's mine
- Oh well
- I'm so blessed
- Young Frankie
- This is hip hop
- No bystanders
- Stop that freestyle
- Bonus track : Felone season
- Outro

Music Institution: RCA records

Production Company: Esoteric Records

Parental Advisory: Yes

This has been beneficial so we know as a group what information we need to include in our digipak. We must make sure that we include all this. The tracklist also gave us an idea of the theme of the album.

Planning: Pre production paperwork

It is important to create a pre-production paperwork before filming for our music video in order to avoid any filming infringement when filming in public. It also allows us to create and follow a detailed schedule which will make sure that we don't waste any possible filming time.

Location Recce

This was for initially to make sure that any actors or members of the production team would know where to go, howto get there and what time etc. This is done so that no one gets lost or late.

Location Release Agreement 

The location release form was to confirm on the agreement of using and filming in the room. As most of the music video was being filmed in my own school in different location i had to ask the headteacher personally for permission to use the rooms, allocating that i will take full responsibility for being in charge of the rooms.

Production schedule 

when filming its important to be organised therefore we created a production schedule. this will allows the production team and the actors to be more organised and time effiecient when it come to the actual day of filming.

 Risk assessment form

The purpose of the risk assessment form is so that all casting crew have an outline of the hazard and risk. Ths is beneficial so that if any problems do arise, we know what actions to take when it does happen

Client Release and consent agreement 

The client release and consent form is too make sure the artist knows that we will be using him for educational purposes and the music video will be uploaded onto you tube therefore he must sign the form to clarify that we have his consent.

Planning: Editing

Slow motion editing:

Slow motion editing will be used at the beginning when the camera focuses on the male artist's upper body walking of him in the lift and also in each different location to show iconography before the artist entering the room. I have chosen this to do this in the lift because it almost creates a sense of tension as we want to know who is in the lift. This allows the audience to have an idea of the male artist being confused and discombobulated as a stimulus before the actual narrative within the music video starts. Showing the iconography in slow motion also allows the audience to identify what kind of setting there is before actually seeing the artist there.

Cloning:
cloning will be used in our video to help emphasis the hard working aesthetics male character artist provides to his fans. This editing technique also helps to represent our theme in the music video which is creativity. The music video that influenced us to make this choice was the music video of 'Frozen' by Madonna . The reason is because the video is only 3 minutes and it will take up time to show him doing different things in one shot therefore it would be more time efficient to clone were used to enhance the energy he was showing in the video.

Text flicker:

This is another editing technique that we plan to use in our music video. The reason being is to present the name of the song in a more fancy way in order to catch the audiences eye. It's also mainly used to build hype on the song before actually hearing the lyrics whilst we only hear the instrumental. The video that influenced our decision was school boy q featuring kendrick lamar 'collard greens'. we see the letters 'JDDC' flicker at the beginning however it wont be as quick the flicker will last much longer.

Magazine styling:

A magazine style will be utilised when we use our artist at the end to pose for a magazine with the female models with a fade to black edit around him to make it look more professional. As the instrumental of the beat slowly fades away so will the image of the artist, turning into a black screen. the purpose of this editing technique is to prove to the audience that there is a string presence around him.

Overlay:

The overlay editing technique will be used when the artist is in the car being driven to the next location. This will show the multi-talent of my artist so the audience will admire him and this will enhance his star image. We also realised that by using this technique it make the visuals flow and change in a relaxed manner. 

planning: Location

The location of a music video is a essential part of the production, and the final product itself. A conventional location relating to the Hip-hop genre would enhance the interest shown to the music video and would appeal to the target audience even more. We have done this by looking at our audience feedback and coming out with 5 main locations that our music video would take place at. We also went into deep analysis of each location and what would be happening at each location.

Conclusion

All the locations were equally important as each other so the emphasis on planning each location was the same. The planning of my location helped me understand and evaluate the relevance of each location and also the advantages and disadvantages. With these locations the advantages had over-weighed the disadvantages as this was also a significant factor in determining which location to use and not to use. 

Planning: Characters

In this section of our planning we had to decide on who our characters are going to be in our music video. We had to think of suitable characters that would fit in our music video and be able to portray the storyline in the best way possible. Characters would play a significant role in determining the success of our music video as they would have to appeal to the target audience and stick to conveying the generic convention.

Most of our characters consist of having shorts cameo roles assisting the main artist within the music industry as we want to show that its not just him as an individual having all this success. Instead we want to show all the people who contribute behind the scenes and what it is, they actually do.

Office workers - our first set of characters will be introduced at the start of the msuic video where we will see them mimingand deciding what to do with the digipak. this will be whilst the song is playing and the artist enters the room. an example from where this is seen, is Chris Brown's official music video for 'Till I Die' ft. Big Sean & Wiz Khalifa. The idea of these characters is inspired from this music video however the difference in this is that the office worker's in Brown's video dont expect him to be there and are rather annoyed with his presense.

Producer - the purpose of having the producer within the visuals is to show he's the man behind the artists sound. As the artist enter the room we will see the producer greet the artist and tell him what to do by miming instructions towards him. This is an example as well as an inspiration from The Game's music video 'dreams' where we see the notorious producer, Dr dre at work with the artist.

Dancers - The use of the dancers in the music visuals will be back ups for him creating a music video. they will enable my artist to look more appealing and entertain aswell as knowing he can rap, the artist will discover he has more traits and skills. Justin Beiber's msuic video 'confident' is an example we will use as its a perfect represention of the kind of dancers we want, we dont them too have much of a personaltility, they're mainly there to show their skill.

Female models - Lastly we plan to have 2-4 young women to play as the young female models in the final scene where the artist will be seen at a photography shoot. a sense of mulveys theory of male gaze in music video inspired us as by having attractive girls we will attract a more mature male audience. An example of where this is seen is Action bronsons video 'Acting crazy'

Planning: Lighting and colour

While planning for lighting and colour we have decided to look at the use of lighting in these music videos bellow. Lighting and colour help set a mood or feel for the set of your music video.

Colour

Band aid 30 - 'Do they know it's Christmas?'

The colour in this music video shows where artists are presented with a performance. The colour represents a glamorous effect which helps to enhance star image. This helps the artist to appeal to the audience as the audience is attracted to the appealing star image on screen. We would like to use something similar when presenting our male character in the music video as he will be in a studio himself performing. Due to us focusing on the hip genre the dark colours make it a lot more conventional as its common in existing music videos. there weren't many videos that created the studio theme which is why i went along with it. Lastly, this is because we want our male character to appeal to our audience members as I believe this is the most effective way of attracting an audience.

Chris Brown - 'Turn Up The Music'

*insert video*

The opening scene of this video shows Chris Brown in a car during night time with the street lights on.This creates a slightly orange/green filter, making the area look very urban. We plan to implement this in our music video because,as Hip-Hop traditionally stems from urban areas, we want to keep that conventional characteristic by alluding to an urban setting.

Lighting

Lil Wayne - A milli 

The lighting in this music video is natural lighting in the scenes which the artist patrolling the streets preparing to shoot a music video. The lighting represents a natural effect which makes the scene look more realistic in comparison to the other parts of the music video which contain various amount of lighting techniques. Moreover, we would like to use something similar when showing him patrolling the corridors of the office building in order to make everything look naturalistic as we don't want the audience thinking its some sort of flashback. In addition, this is because it will help the audience to relate more to the scenes which take part as they look realistic. Lastly, the use of this lighting will help as the colours through editing will be able to stand out more.

Austin Mahone - Dirty Work

This video has very high-key lighting which fits with the office atmosphere. It makes the characters seem more alert and ware of their workplace, which is how we hope to portray our artists, as he is a businessman. Therefore in the opening scene of a meeting room, we will use high-key lighting to emphasize the professional environment. 

Planning: Artist image

Personality and trait for our artist within the experimental hip hop genre 

passionate- As the genre usually involves past experience and their struggle to success, the lyrics will be performed with a sense of passion from his body language and facial expression
egoistical- the entire song is about what he is,what he was and what he did in the past
deterministic- the lyrics amplify our perspective of him as well as the visuals 
influential - due to the visuals showing his hard work within the music industry the audience will be aspired by what he's doing
arrogant- the visual will mainly consist of the artist being the main centre of attention

*image of artist*

Age: 21

Ethnicity: asian ethnic

Physique: slim and tall

Costume: We will begin the video with our character smartly dressed however not too formal because the artist belongs to the hip hop genre. The artist will then switch to a more casual all black attire.

Representation within my music video: A young asian teenager who strongly believes in a hardworking lifestyle and appears to be very relaxed and friendly but also madly arrogant with the people arround him.

 

Interaction with others in the video: Centre of attention, shows the people in the office how he wants his album cover to be, gets instructed by the producer on what to do, perform a short dance piece with background dancers and interacts friendly with fmeale models.

Planning: shotlist

The camera operator would receive this draft as it allows them to know and be able to envision the types of shots they will be taking in the process of making our music video.

Planning: storyboard

Planning the storyboard greatly improves the structure and organisation of the filming of our music video. We would be going through the scenes step by step and coming to an agreement of what would occur during each scene. This erases any confusion within the group about the duration of each scene, frame number, and the amount of scenes that would be used.

Planning: production roles

Planning production roles are really important to make sure our production goes smoothly and would enable us utilise the specialisites of the members of our groups.

Khaled 

•  Editor 
• Director 
• Lighting 
• Location Manager

Gizem

• Camera person 
• Costume, hair and make-up
• Cast control

Lara 

• Producer 
• Print designer 
• Photographer 
• Storyboard

Camera person: This is the person who films the scenes, We chose Gizem for this role as she has previous experience in filming from last year's AS production. The camera person would work alongside the storyboard organiser and the director to take instructions from them about how to operate the camera. Such as what shot, angle and movement to use at the specific scene or time.They should create shots which are effective to use for the thriller genre and not to confuse the audience by using the appropriate camera techniques.

Editor: These are people that edit the scenes. I was chosen for this role as I have previous experience in editing for last year's AS thriller production. They would work with the storyboard organiser and also the camera operator to decide the parts which would require cutting, and what type of montage to use and what sequence of shots should be used. They would make sure that the cuts they use do not confuse the audience and that they are effective for the R&B genre.

Director: This is the person who is in charge of everything that goes on in the music video, but mainly controls the characters, I was chosen as director as I have past experience in directing from last years thriller production. I am also very organised and haveleadership skills suitable for this role. The director makes sure everything is effective and reflect the film producers ideas. Moreover, they control all the elements of mise-en-scene. They work with the whole team and makes sure they are pursing in the producers aspirations.

Location manager: This is the person that chooses the location of the scene, I was chosen for this role as I was the only group member to access the locations we needed, therefore, I was chosen for this. The location manager makes sure that the location would be conventional for ouyr music video, and also he/she would have to work with the film directors to decide what time of the day and what area to set the scene at. This is to make sure that they have the best place to film the scene at the correct time to enhance the impact the scene has on the audience by choosing appropriate scenes so they can relate to making the audience more engaged and interested in the scene.

Storyboard organiser: The storyboard organiser is the person who creates the film on a storyboard which displays all the other workers of the film in rough idea of what’s going to happen in the scene, they make it relevant to a music video. Lara was chosen for this role as she has previous experience in storyboarding. Also, Lara is the most creative in the group which suggests why she is suitable for this role. It implies the shot number, cinematography, actors involved, editing style narrative, dialogue and duration of the scene to give the workers a more detailed guideline and a general idea of what they are meant to be producing. The storyboard organiser would make it as detailed as he/she can so there would be less work to do on the day of shooting.

Lighting: The lighting person creates the set up of the lighting. For example, if there needs to be high key lighting they will ensure that there are lights set up around the location in order to create this atmosphere. I was chosen for this role as I already have the lighting equipment for the production making me suitable for this. 

Costume, hair and make up: The costume, hair and make-up person takes on the role of organising what the characters image is. This is important as this is what the artist will be represented as and this needs to match the conventions of the genre. We chose Gizem for this role as she has the most experience in this. She is extremely interested in fashion which is why we thought she would be suitable for this. 

Cast Control: Cast control consists of gathering the actors for the music video. Gizem was chosen for this role as she is organised and was able to get characters easily as well as the main artist. 

Producer: Lara was conducted to be the producer as she has previous experience  from our foundation portfolio. This is beneficial to our group as she has developed attributes and skills such as organisation, spotting risk and assisting the director. Additionally, Lara is also able to keep an eye on the campaign as a whole. 

Print designer: The print designer role was given to Lara as she has previous experience in photography, art and design. This is beneficial to our group as we will be successful when designing our digipak and advert.

Photographer: The photographer role was to take pictures for the digipak and advert where we chose Lara for this. Her previous Photography skills suggest why she is suitable for this role.

Planning: Analysing three music videos

Video: sing for the moment

Performance from the artist:

Whilst analysing this video, I was mainly interested in the structure and artist representation. 

this music video does have a clear structure as the lyrics link to the visuals of the music video, the artist is presenting himself as an independent character and he is showing this by the use of inter sexual inferences he is making. the music video contains different chips of the artist performing on stage. This links to our music video because in our music video we will be suing the dig-pack to make links to the artists life and in Eminem's video, he uses key events to make references to his life e.g. him performing on stage and getting ready for shows. 

Artist representation:

The artist is represented as an strong individual and this is shown through his lyrics, 'Sing it with me, just for today, maybe tomorrow the good Lord'll take you away...' This means that the artist is trying motivate his fans.

Video: Action Bronson - Actin Crazy

Whilst analyzing this video, I was mainly interested in the content and visual style of the video. 

Body language and facial expressions of characters and artist:

• The artists body language show that he isn't as interested as he is eating while shooting for his music video

Setting and editing:

• The settings that have been used in this music video is very interesting because the director uses a green screen to capture different shots. 
• The editing skills is simple but very creative

Planning: copyright letter

Whilst planning a music video one of our tasks to create a copyright letter which I’d send to the record company of diplo music regarding the usage of one of his singles. this letter was purposely wrote to explain how this single will contribute towards our A Level grades. It was vital that we wrote this letter as it clarifies our intentions and stops the company from taking any legal actions such as getting sued. 

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

Oasis Academy Hadley

South Street

Enfield

London

En3 4px

Date:

RE: Use of single, ‘Oh-Well’

Dear copyright holder,

                                                We are ‘esoteric records’ and I am writing to you from Oasis Academy Hadley 6th Form in order to request for authorization of the single 'oh well.' We ask for permission for this audio simply to create a music video which is required in our A2 Media Advanced Portfolio coursework.

We are a group of students who are hoping for your permission in order to produce a creative music video that reflects our own creative ideas. Our coursework task involves creating a music video with a song of our choice, and we have chosen G eazy’s single because of the mainstream sounds it provides which can be very appealing to our target audience. In addition the themes it portrays are suitable for our audience category’s chosen

If we received your permission, this track would ONLY be used for educational purposes only and for the OCR exam board moderator. It would not be used for promotional reasons and we have no intention to display this video for commercial use.

I and the rest of my group would be very privileged if you take our request into consideration and give us the authority to use the audio. The artist and your company would of course be recognized throughout pre-production work, through the actual video production as well as being credited if you please on our work blogs. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project if you would like us to do so. If this is required, please send the full details.

Thank you very much for reading this letter.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Khaled Jaffer

Gizem Mayil

Lara Lawal

_________________________________________________________________________________

After creating a copyright letter we then made an attempt to send it off to his manager's inquiry email account, stating that we would use the track strictly is for educational purposes, to prevent any illegal issues with the artist. A few weeks down the line and we have had no response from the account we sent the email to. As a result of this if we was to be convicted of copyright we could simply say we did ask for permission and they didn't respond.