Updated / Final Album Poster

After looking at an existing, indie album poster, it influenced us to change ours to make it more conventional and relatable to our artist. 

The background image is the image from the album cover. When looking at Ben Howard's album poster and the exisiting digipaks, it bacame apparant that this is a trend, and makes sense as it maintains a theme throughout promoting this one album. It allows the audience to become familiar with the image, fonts and colourscheme.

Instead of previousley saying 'Out December 12th', I prefer the simplicity of the '12|12|12' as it gets the message across in a more powerful way, and as this specific day has the same number for the date,month and year, we wanted to play on this and make it look effective.  

In my AS media coursework, when making my music magazine, I used the rectangular blocks behind the text, to avoid the writing blending in to the background. Due to the background being quite busy, with trees and general scenery, I think that this is an effective way of making it stand out.

Another effective way we have changed our poster for the better, is that we have taken what Ben Howard did with his poster and had the font sizes of text get gradually smaller down the poster, as it chatches the attention of the audience with the artist first, then the album title and then the release date.

Existing Album Posters

This is the advertisement for Ben Howard's album Every Kingdom that was released a few months ago. Ben howard, as an artist, is similar to Ed Sheeran. He is also a part of the 'indie' music genre and the nature of his music tends to be very mellow, soft songs predominantly with an acoustic guitar as the main instrument. Ben Howard's niche audience are also similar to Ed Sheeran's, in the age range of about 16 - 25 years old and aims to appeal at this age group. The colours appeal to a mixed sex audience and connote that his music is a calming and idyllic. The font sizes get smaller further down the poster and I believe this is effective and reads well. Despite the fact that this poster does not show the artists face, this does not disadvantage it in any way, because the people that listen to indie style of music typically are quite a loyal audience who can identify an artist by their signature font or name alone, and would recognise that this is ben howard. Even though the album is not out and this is promoting it, they have probably seen the cover on the internet in ways such as seeing it on Twitter, YouTube, or iTunes and other networking and internet sites. Another way that this is effective is because the genre of his music isn't one that is image and appearance obsessed compared to pop, for example. The audience aren't bothered about the latest clothes that Ben Howard is wearing or anything like that, and that is why I believe this poster is very effective for its genre and style of music.

As this is an album poster, the exact same photo and font that is on the album is on this poster. 

We have not done this on our existing cover and would be something to consider when we draft the next version. We also should take into account out genre and audience and ensure that everything in the poster appeals to them and they are able to recognise who the artist is. 

Poster | First Draft

Here is the first draft of our poster, to promote the album, to go along side our digipak and music video. 

The image we used is an image that Kelly took herself when she went to see Ed Sheeran live in Birmingham. Due to the crowd , a blacked out effect has been created at the bottom of the photo, which conveniently allowed us to put the title of the album and the artist's name here, and it is easy to read and eye-catching. The colour scheme ties in well, the greeny blues are similar to that on the digipak and work well with the colours in the picture. 

Our Finished Digipak

Front Cover:

• Editing the image by putting an effect was added to the image dull the colours down slightly, as it is not typically conventional to have bright colours, and instead the indie genre tends to use a more serene, natural colour pallete. Such as Ben Howard's album cover in a soft blue tone. 
• The spotlight effect on the image focusses the attention to the 'UNI'
• The small font is conventional of Ed Sheeran's album covers, as they are not 'in your face' and reflect the calming tone of his songs. 

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Here is a video we made to clearly show what part of the digipak goes where, and how it would be viewed. 

1. This is the front cover, and the  cover for our artists album.

2. This is the back cover, and contains the bar code, the QR code which has special features for the 'fans'.

3. This would be one of the plain pieces of card on the digipak. However it features our 'doodle' effect that features key images from his songs, and is the background for other sections of our pack. This creates a theme and continuity through the whole digipak. 

4. Something common with albums is a message from the artist, a thank you note that includes information and would be quite conversational to maintain a relationship with the audience. 

5. Although you can't see it  fully made, this is where our lyric booklet would go, and the front page of it. This is something that is common with albums and is simply for the benefit that the audience can read and learn the words to their favourite songs! As Ed Sheeran's songs are full of meaningful lyrics and tell stories, we thought this was important to include.

6. This page is simple, yet it keeps it branded and heavily associated with the artist. It also fits in with the overall theme and colour scheme of the digipak. 

Editing | Incorporating Lyric Videos

EDITING



Something that is becoming more and more common is artists releasing lyric videos along with their actual music videos. Although these don't appear on television and music channels, they are put up on YouTube. Often, people watch music videos on the internet now anyway, and with these lyric videos gaining millions of views, they are clearly a successful way of people listening to their music. As well as this, people can also learn all the lyrics to the song they like.

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We noticed that these lyric videos related to the song and artist in terms of the lyrics, nature of the song, and if the artist has any particular trade mark fonts etc. 

For example, Taylor Swift's We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, is quite a childish song in terms of the lyrics and is intentionally like this so it is catchy and infectious! Taylor is also associated with being a young, innocent character and therefore her lyric video is fitting with this. As this song is clearly a girl singing about a boy, and her fan base is mainly girls, it enables the lyric video to use feminine colours and little features such as a sun, stage and the 'girly diary.' 

Opposite to this is One Direction's That's What Makes You Beautiful. One direction has a massive audience, and although they are mainly girls, they are still a boy band and therefore wouldn't have a very feminine lyric video! The use of gender neutral colours like red black and yellow,  fits the mixed sex audience. It is a way of the band maintaining their young image with the use of notepad paper, 'doodle' drawings. They also have their logo constantly in the corner as a way of enforcing them as a 'brand'. 

Pink's  lyric video for Try is altered to fit her song and overall image as an artist. Pink is quite a pop-rock artist, and has a mixed sex fan base. This song in particular is particularly meaningful and slow, therefore her lyric video uses a dark colour palette which is gender neutral, the use of dark colours fits in with the emotion of the song. 

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After analysing this, it influenced the way we created our lyric section of the music video. 

 As previously said, one of the reasons people enjoy watching these is due to the lyrics on screen. As our video is a very literal video, and the lyrics are very meaningful in general and with relation to the music video and we want to reinforce this by including these lyrics. 

We decided to have the lyrics in a simple black colour, and use varying different fonts. This makes it look more interesting than just sticking to one font. 

Ed Sheeran is associated with very basic colours in his CD covers and they look very illustrated,and has almost become a trade mark for him. We conveyed this with the stick couple, as this looks hand drawn. 

To make this work when putting it into the video, so the words appeared one by one as they were being said, using Pic Monkey, we had to create lots of different images as we would expect them to appear on screen, like this; 

'Thats why you..."

"Thats why you and.."

This took quite a long time to do, but it was worth it and I think it works very well in the overall music video, as it is quite coherent with our music video. This is because of Ed Sheeran being associated with this art work, and also in our video we have the 'I love you' doodle that is used throughout, which is another reason that makes it 'flow' better as a video. 

Ideology

What is ideology? 
The ideas and beliefs behind a media text. These sets of beliefs are those held by groups within society, and the prevalent ones are those held by the ruling/dominant groups. Individuals/Groups hold these to be important. 

Dominant Ideologies
It is apparent that the accepted and agreed beliefs, that are repeatedly shown through the 'ruling class' and those with 'ruling intellectual'. Such as the government. 
Generally, these are the ideas such as gender roles, and those about society and what is socially acceptable and not; that we have become accustomed to and believe to be right and normal. Similar to this is a Hegemony, which is not an idea forced by political movements, but are taken hold by many and used to 'fit in' with the cultural values of their time. An example of this is football, which is extremely popular among many... but no one is forced to watch/listen/play.  In the media and music related business  at this moment in time the pop/r&b artists appear to be the hegemony, and are hugely advertised and popular. However recently it has become apparent that people enjoy listening to music outside of this, and the term 'main-stream' defines music that 'everyone listens to', and some people enjoy finding artists undiscovered and that are not 'mainstream.'

Ideology of the Indie Genre
The term indie used to be a term used for unsigned bands who got into the industry without a label and weren't particularly well known. It has since evolved into a music style, and is a very natural way of performing the song that may appear rough and improvised, but this seems to be one of the attractions to it. The music is narrative and tells a story of particular emotions. In the particular subdivision of indie music that I worked with, which is indie pop/folk with the use of guitars and fairly up beat tempo. Fans enjoy the ideology that the indie music is still almost of the unsigned nature and produced not as a part of the global industry, but for the 'fans'

Effecting our representation...
Our music video is influenced by dominant ideologies and those of the indie genre. Dominant ideologies include the use of a heterosexual couple, not that a homosexual one is not 'normal', but it just so happens that in the videos studied, when a male artist sings a song about love, a girl is featured in the lyrics and also in the video... and the same goes for the opposite sex.  Having said this, gay couples is becoming a lot more 'normal' in society so this dominant ideology could perhaps fade in years to come. 
Our target audience are both genders, so we did our best to convey equality with the sexes. The male in this music video is showing his emotions and how it is normal for a boy to show feelings. This is important as the male sex of are target audience are not stereotypically harsh, strong and with no emotion! They are just regular young people, who are often at the stage in their life where they experience different relationships and break-ups. Similarly, the female is not objectified in a negative way. In keeping with this theme of 'normality' is the mise en scene. Props such as the guitar, are associated with the indie genre and reinforce the musical interest of the audience and artists. The people and location were fairly basic , as this is meant to be a story of two people who the audience can relate to. 
Our genre would drink alcohol, but socially. In our video we showed the main character to have the beer cans pile around him in quite a comical way. We wanted to make sure that we were not promoting drinking in any way, and therefore showed him alone, implying that this is not something that he does normally. We ensure not to feature them again, so people do not associate the success of them getting back together at the end, as anything to do with being a benefit of drinking alcohol! 


Audience Pleasures

-Diversion: Escape from routine and problems; an emotional release; entertainment

-Personal Relationships: being part of a group; conversation about media; substitution of media for companionship

-Personal Identity: Value reinforcement or reassurance; self-understanding; role models

-Surveillance: Information about the world around us

The pleasures used in our text are Diversion and Personal Identity. This is because our text tells a story, and is a form of escapism. When watching and familiarizing with the characters in the video, this is what the viewer focuses on instead of anything in their own world. The narrative nature keeps them entertained and interested, and the happy ending would typically reinforce a positive message, linking in with Personal Identity, because in seeing the eventual success of this relationship in the video, it could convey a happy message to them leaving the audience feeling positive reassuring that if they were perhaps experiencing a similar breakup, they could also have this 'happy ending' that is featured in some existing music videos. Although this sounds slightly cheesy, it is still reassuring  and entertaining.  


Memes & Tropes
Those that occur in our media text include;
-non aggressive
-artistic
-instruments featured
-no sexism
-fairly well dressed, but appearance is not the main focus.

Filming Day | U.N.I

"How did you do that...?"

Jump Cut: is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way. For this reason, jump cuts are considered a violation of classical continuity editing, which aims to give the appearance of continuous time and space in the story-world by de-emphasizing editing. Jump cuts, in contrast, draw attention to the constructed nature of the film. 

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Inspired by Ed Sheeran's 'Drunk' video, we decided to incorporate a collage of pictures on the main characters bedroom wall, of images related to the girl he has just split up with. It adds quite a comical value to the nature of our narrative video, where the lyric says "Now I'm in a position to be another stalker" We focussed on this particular 'I love you' picture, and used it as a way of transitioning to flash backs of when they were together, creating a quite emotional narrative in doing so, the audience are able to get inside his head and understand better his emotions in this way. The close up of this picture in the video also works well , as it is featured several times throughout our video. 

To create this, we had to leave the camera videoing as we placed more images on the wall one by one. 

This meant that in editing, we could use jump cuts to create the look that we wanted, when our actor stayed in the same position, so it looked like the images were appearing on the wall.  

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Another way we used jump cuts was to fit in with another lyric, is for the line " I don't drink like everybody else, I do it to forget things about myself."

Therefore, to make this quite literal, we decided to have him, on his bed. We wanted to make sure he was alone as he 'doesn't drink like everybody else.' 

We used empty beer cans and placed them on and around him one by one so they build up, with the same effect we used before. 

I think that jump cuts work effectively to signify time passing. As he has just experienced a bad breakup, he is naturally going to feel depressed and sad, so things around him will move while he stays quite still, and we wanted to convey this emotion.

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Updated Draft

What we changed:

• The beer can scene fits in more with the lyrics 'I don't drink like everybody else..'
• We added in a scene of my stuff on my dresser disappearing, as it looks effective and reinforces that she is leaving... and leaving him feeling 'empty'. While this may seem quite cheesy with these hidden emotions behind our work, it is sentimental to the song and therefore we see it as a must!
• We wanted to convey that she didn't answer her phone and actually talk, but that he left her a voicemail. To do this, when we were editing we recorded the voicemail woman speaking, we assume everyone is familiar with this as the audience use technology. 

Uni | First Draft

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Here is the first draft of our music video to the song U.N.I by Ed Sheeran. 

We kept these the same, as it is a powerful close up that fits in well with the lyrics.

We slightly changed this bit, but I prefer how it looks on the video. Instead of having a side shot of the flash back, it was easier and looks better the way we did it, having the camera behind them. 

We adapted this as we loved the idea to use jump cuts for beer cans to appear one by one. The room we used to film, the desk was facing a wall and it proved difficult to film him sat at the desk from different angles. We could film the back of his head but we couldn't find an effective way of having the camera facing him, so we couldn't get a good angle of his face and expression.

We improvised by keeping him sat on the bed that he had been on before, and view the pictures on the iPad. The beer cans still built around him, but they were positioned on him and next to him on the bed and I think it creates a comical effect that he has got really drunk!

We managed to make this work exactly, as we think it was such an effective sequence of shots, where he is on the bed writing the song, and this is his way of conveying his feelings- by putting them onto paper! As this is a sensitive, heart-felt song, we think this fits quite well and although he is not the main focus of this scene, it still fits in well. The main focus is the wall behind him, where the images of his girlfriend and memorabilia of things they have done together build up on his wall. We created this in the same way as the beer can scene. It shows the audience just how upset he is by this break up. 

The only slight thing changed here is the fact that we chose to focus on one particular image, which was the I love you drawing, which creates continuity in the whole video as it features more than once and is how we signified a time lapse. Similarly to what Ed Sheeran did in his video for Drunk, we zoomed into the feature wall and then on the main drawing, and once it was in an extreme close up of the image, we cut to a shot of the same drawing in an extreme close up, but it is a scene from when they were together where the drawing originally came from. 

As our audience are mainly teens, and constantly on social networking sites and using technology, we decided to feature a tweet, posted by the girl saying how she 'Can't wait for Uni!' As they are not in contact anymore because their relationship is over, this was an effective way of him still being able to know what she is doing and how she is feeling. When he see's this tweet which implies that she doesn't feel too upset about leaving him and everything behind, the audience can relate and sympathise for him. 

He then has a moment of 'madness' and in his fury, rips down his wall of photos. It isn't until he sees a photo of her on the floor and 'realises' what he just did, he then phones her to speak to her.

Things we changed

As predicted, when filming day arrived, some of our initial ideas on the story board proved difficult to create in reality. Such as the train station scene. Although this was a good idea, it was a bit difficult to recreate in reality. We could not 'hire out' the train station and therefore had no control over when trains are arriving and leaving, how people would react to being filmed and it was just too ambitious. Instead, we had the boy waiting for the girl about to leave for uni outside her home. It turned out that we liked this better as the audience would be more familiar with the surroundings and can assume they are outside her house, leaving. 

We also added in the jump cuts of the drawing in the chorus. This fits in with the similar sketches throughout the video such as the 'I love you' drawing.

Next steps

To make the animated chorus scene look more professional and potentially computerise it instead of the hand drawing. 

The lip-syncing scene where he is leaving her a voice mail, needs to be more in time with the music.