Photos for ancillary task before editing

These are the images I used for the poster task before I superimposed the photographs onto one another using Photoshop. My Photoshop skills developed rapidly when creating my poster; I cut out the artist and placed him into the centre of the image of Canary Wharf, to link back to the city aspect of the music video. To do this I used the magic selection tool to cut out the person, and then I pasted him on top of the background picture, creating two different layers in order to edit each separately. I then used the eraser tool to get rid of any colour around the artist visible in the layer, so that the superimposed image is not so crude and obvious.

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

The aim of my music video and the ancillary texts, as well as the marketing of the video, is to promote the artist and encourage the viewer to want to hear other songs by him, see him live or just find out a bit more about him.

I would promote the video mainly through social- networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as these are websites used by millions every day. The target audience for my product spans from teenagers to adults of about 40, therefore I would use these sites to gain some exposure, because this is an easy method to spread the product through word-of-mouth. It is cheap and easy for the distributor. I would then put the video on Youtube so that it is available to a much larger audience; also the video can be found easily and watched by people at work/home/school. Moreover, to catch the attention of the facebook users, I would make my own advert on the social- networking website, directing them to the video by supplying the link for them to simply click on, and watch.

Furthermore, I would take inspiration from one of the methods used by the marketers of the film Cloverfield, by using a widget to promote the video. The user would have to add the widget, which can result in them winning prizes for the more sharing of the widgets they carry out. It is found on the Cloverfield website (my widget would be found on the website that I have created), which people have to add directly to their Facebook page. A successful 'share' occurs when someone views the widget on an entrant's facebook page (or other internet location), and clicks on 'grab this'. This person must then put it on their profile, and at least one person must view the widget on that new location. Prizes given to entrants were:

1st prize- screening tickets

2nd prize- video camera

3rd prize- digital camera

4th prize- Cloverfield prize pack.

My prizes would consist of things like: tickets to the artist's concert, a signed CD, a T-shirt.

This method of marketing encourages awareness of the product, as well as offering participants something at the end of it, thus making them more likely to pass on the video. I think this is a clever marketing tool.

The video does not give a lot of information about the artist, as in, their appearance

or their characteristics, therefore the website serves as an information hub for the interested viewer, because it features photos, videos, news about the artist, event dates and a biography on them, giving the audience a background, enabling them to relate more with him, and to understand why he makes the music he does.

As the video receives more recognition, I would start to show it on television music channels, and this will increase even more the chances of the video being seen. All of these distribution techniques are less expensive, because they mainly depend on the word-of- mouth of others, as well as the power of the internet.

The poster features the song’s artist, Professor Green in front of a backdrop of Canary Wharf at night, with the captions reading ‘Jungle’, ‘Professor Green’, ‘Ft. Maverick Sabre’, ‘Virgin Records’, ‘Coming Soon’, so that a viewer who has seen either will be able to identify that both texts are related to each other, and they will be reminded of the product, possibly creating more interest around the song featured in the music video.

Grime music is normally associated with dark colours due to its character, so the website colour scheme consists of dark green, to tie in with the name of the artist, Professor Green, and black, and this scheme also coincides with the poster, which includes a backdrop of Canary Wharf at night, to relate back to the title of the song 'Jungle', because I find the image of the city reminds me of the saying 'concrete jungle', where things can become wild and fast paced, just like in an actual jungle.

Storyboards

Above are the storyboards for the video, which I made to give an idea to the pacing of the video, and the shots I was likely to include. This method of planning made the filming process more time efficient because it gave me a firm idea on what I needed to film, so that I wasn’t just randomly selecting shots that I had filmed. I used paper-based storyboards.

Jungle Poster

Jungle Music Video

This is my final music video. The most significant aspect of the video that I changed was the frequency of the shots. In my drafts, they were longer, and less of them were used due to this. However I decided to speed up the movement and use of the shots, to keep the audience’s interest, and to correspond with the rhythm and energy of the song itself. The video features buildings situated around central London, and this matches the image of the poster (made using Photoshop), because it features Canary Wharf in the background, with the artist placed in the foreground. Therefore these texts coincide with each other and emphasize the video to the audience, making it more memorable and boost the chances that an audience will watch it.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

After posting the video on Youtube and Facebook, I received positive comments from the viewers, with people saying how the colours used added to the feel of the song and the overall effect of the video. They said that London looked gloomy, but that this corresponded with the subjects that the artists discuss, rather than making the video off-putting. I put it on these websites to try and capture the largest audience possible, as the video focuses on places and sights rather than the artist. The quick frequent shots kept up with the tempo of the song, keeping the audience’s attention. The audience enjoyed the video as a whole, and they understood that the video was a piece contrasting different areas of London.

I find music videos to be a very good form of entertainment. I like all different kinds of videos, and I find that they can be the cause of the successful, or the not as successful, outcome of a song, because it seems that the simpler the concept of a video, the more likely it is for someone to remember it. I think this is very true when looking at videos such as 'Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)' by Beyonce and 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinead O'Connor; these are both iconic videos, with very simple concepts

Single Ladies was directed by Jake Nava, and is shot in black and white, with the video consisting of a continuous dance routine. This brought about thousands of imitations and parodies from people all over the world, with the video winning many awards such as Video of the Year at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. This is a very simple video concept which is known on a global scale, because even though it is simple, it is shot very effectively and professionally, adding to the overall quality of the video itself.

The majority of the video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" was shot in Paris, and directed by John Maybury. It focuses almost only on a close-up on O'Connor's face as she sings, with the rest including shots of her walking around an area of Paris called the Parc de Saint-Cloud. Towards the end of the video, two tears roll down her face, one on each cheek. The clip won Best Video at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards and this was the first video by a female artist to win in this category. There is nothing too adventurous about this video, however it is critically acclaimed and is very well-known, even today, bearing in mind it was released over 20 years ago.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

TV channels such as MTV show all genres of music video, so in the research stages, I was able to define conventions for the different types using these channels. They broadcast music videos around the clock, so a viewer is able to watch them whenever they feel like it.

Youtube is a means of watching virtually any text of your choice because it is part of Web 2.0, therefore anyone can upload things on to the internet, available for anyone to watch. This meant that I was able to watch videos for research, as well as put my music video up for anyone to watch, welcoming them to make comments and give feedback.

Social-networking sites also enable you to put videos on

your profile, and you can then encourage friends to watch and send on the link to the video to someone else. This makes it easier for a product to travel around through word-of-mouth.

Photoshop was used to create the promotional poster for the video, allowing me to superimpose one image on top of

another, adding text also. The programme is easy to use so I was able to learn very quickly, having

never used the programme before, how to create the exact poster I made in the planning stages, which you can see below.

I used a photo of the artist Professor Green and superimposed his image onto an image I found which was taken of Canary Wharf during the night time (both found on the internet through Google). I then added words onto the poster- Jungle, Professor Green ft. Maverick Sabre, Coming Soon, Virgin Records, making each of the phrases correspond in colour in relation to where they were placed on the poster. The background is in black and white, so most of the words are too, with the artist being in colour. I did this to make the central figure stand out and be noticed by the viewer.

Remix culture was a factor in the construction stages of my poster. This term defines the product of people who have used the work of someone else, however they keep it original, it is not plagiarism.

Above are the Twilight Trailer Spoof, and the Why Is The Rum Gone?- Remix. These are examples of the success that can be had within remix culture, as both videos have received well over 10 million views on Youtube.

The Spoof replicates the shots of the original trailer, however they add their own humour to the product, whereas the remix uses the shots from the film ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’, however they are arranged so that they make a song, which is played over a reworked version of the film’s theme tune.

I used the software Webplus X4 to create my website, and in order for it to be interactive for the audience, I added multiple different areas of the website for them to look around. I made a tab for news, one for videos, pictures, bio, and tour dates, with the news and tour dates including a link which would take them to the information they intend to find, as they will be the most up-to-date. The pictures on the site have all been edited by myself using photoshop, and they feature the artist Professor Green.

It is now so easy for anyone to create their own websites; this is known as Web 2.0. In the past, production and distributing media was expensive and time consuming, whereas now, we have laptops, and even our mobiles enable us to upload things to the internet. For example, a video from your phone onto Youtube and Facebook. This stage of t

he internet is known as Web 2.0, because it is the second stage of the web, as media consumers become media producers, empowering the audience because they now have more say in what they are looking at.

During the construction stage I used a Sony HD Handycam, and this was both a hinderance, and an advantage. The advantage being that I could easily take the camera around with

me, bringing it out to film what I needed, very quickly. However the disadvantage was that the quality of the footage was not as good as it would have been if I had used a professional camera. I edited the video using a program called iMovie, on a Macbook Pro. This was a time efficient process because the program is very straightforward and easy to utilise, meaning that I could get more tasks completed in a shorter space

of time.

The poster and website connect to the video by promoting the song and the artist; they all feature the artist's name, which then encourages the audience to become familiar with him, therefore if they want to find out more about him they can just type his name into a search engine and find the webpage I have created, which provides much more information on the rapper.

I used Blogger in the evaluation stages of my product, because it is an efficient way to present all of the work and planning that I put into the texts, as well as being able to present the final texts themselves. It is much more interactive than a powerpoint presentation, or printing off the ancillary texts, and it also means that anyone can view the products, rather than the people that I would have to show individually.

The main difficulty that I came across was the construction and editing of the webpage. It was a completely new program to me, with many different features which, if not used properly, will cost you more time in editing, because you will then have to put it right. On each page of my website, on the right hand side there is a large photo of the artist which I have edited using Photoshop. Originally I did not want this image to appear on every page, but then when I looked back at other artist's websites such as Drake, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Jazmine Sullivan, Florence and the Machine, and Plan B, they all feature the same background for each page, just with different information included.