Analysing the success of music videos

    

From looking on the top best selling music videos on iTunes, it is clear that the pop genre dominants the sales. This is a good type of research to conduct as it allows me to see the most successful video for its visuals, rather than the song having an influence. The top best selling is Adele's 'Hello' video, which is filmed using a variety of shot angles, with the most common being a close up of the artists face. In addition the music video is slow paced and has a series of slow-motion shots, as well as being in sepia effect all the way through. 

Overall through looking at the majority in the top best selling music videos there is a common theme of dance moves, big effects and close ups of the artist. Through this research we can therefore take these themes and portray them within our music video so that it attracts our audience more into watching it.

Editing for our music video

One type of editing that looks effective on our music video is the use of still pictures. We took 12 different stills of our artist holding the guitar at different angles, all in the position of clock hands. We then lined them up along our timeline in the right order and made the speed faster for each individual one. This way when played the still shots would look like a moving image/timelapse of the guitar representing a clock going round. This additionally looks successful as it matches the lyrics of our song through "Don't wanna waste my time on you again", and still keeps the rock feel to the music video.

Getting ideas from different social media

To portray what type of props we have used in our music video i have used the website Pinterest to make a 'board' displaying pictures of the items. Each prop is stereotypical for our rock, therefore our audience will be able to decode the genre of our video fairly easily. The only prop that does not stereotypically fit our genre is the rubix cube. This is because we have decided to make our video stand out, so that the audience will want to view it more than once and not follow the usual look of rock genres, as through our research we have found they are not as popular amongst our target audience as pop genres are.  Through this change we hope to attract more audience and additionally link to the lyrics of our song, for example "I am not your game".

Researching the Design of Marketed Products in HMV



Rhianna stood by the top sellers

she is telling someone to be quiet

she is biting down on a chain

HMV
As we are about to start creating products like CD covers, we felt that it would be a good idea to visit somewhere that has a diverse amount of similar products (like HMV) in order to see what we like and get an idea of what we want our own CD cover to look like. One of the most influential factors we obtained from visiting was the fact that we could see which CD's were selling the most, giving us an even better idea of what a good cover looks like. For example Adele's CD was the best seller and unlike the rest it stood out due to its desaturation and boldness with the close up on her face.
P!nk

We thought it would be a good idea to look at our main inspiration (P!nk) as an example of what our CD cover may look like. Having looked at 2 of her CD's it is obvious that she opts for a fierce independent look, something which could be a great aspect for our artist (as her lyrics are about the fact that she is independent).

this CD shouts rock to us

this CD cover shouts rock to us

this CD cover shouts rock to us

Rock Genre



When we visited HMV we thought it was imperative that we looked at rock genre CD covers, as we feel our cover also needs to display what genre we have chosen. Having looked at multiple ones we felt that the use of darker colours like reds and blues seem to be identified more with the genre (perhaps due to their intensity) - we want our song to be associated with intensity also. Furthemore rock styled CD covers seem to have quite emotive figures on them. for example Paolo Nutini has a very emoive face and Thin Lizzy has a powerful stance on his cover - these powerful and emotive poses leaves the suggestion that their music if good (as it is very moving). This could be something we incorporate in our own CD cover as we like the idea that the artist is displayed at moving and perhaps even inspirational.

    

guitars central to CD

guitars central to CD

            Guitars

We found a couple of CD's which focus purely on the music rather than the artist. For instance both these CD covers have guitars as their main feature rather than their artists. This is something really important that we have tried to incorporate from the start of our process, as we don't want our artist to be too sexualised (we want the music to be the main feature to the video and other products like the CD).

the thermal colours and geometric style

the colour scheme

          Colour
For something to stand out it usually means its got a lot of colour that makes it appealing to the corner of your eye. These 2 CD covers both have a lot of colour and the this makes them stand out well. Particularly with the use of our rubix cube theme, we feel that colour on our CD could be a significant choice. 




Positioning



the logo placement is intriguing

his placement and the background



the movement of her hair

Each of these 3 CD covers along with many others have been carefully and cleverly positioned to attract buyers and make the artists appear within their personality types and genre of their music. For instance each artist is positioned centrally as it makes them the main feature of the cover, however The Vamps are positioned in a roughly with serious expressions (in an attempt to make them appear amnly - perhaps because they dont want to be associated as a teen boyband anymore), where as Ellie Goulding is portrayed as angelic (as her hair has been positioned to mask her from others - creating an innocent look), and Bieber is positioned looking downwards with a prayer like position to make him seem almost 'holy' perhaps because he wants to be portrayed as a good person. Because positioning can change so much about the way an artist is portrayed, it is very crucial that we position are artist carefully.

  

         Other forms of marketing we saw in HMV





Record covers



 Merchandise

We saw lots of records which we could also look at as inspiration for the cover of our CD; the records that were instore also seemed to be mainly rock (this was helpful as we furthered our ideas - for example their was one record which simple had a stage light looking down onto a rock artist)! Another thing we saw in store which could relate to our music based coursework was the selling of t-shirts with different music logos on them (ACDC...).





A few things I've learnt along the way

Working on my Media Studies coursework, I have learnt various things:

1. I have learnt to blog properly - I can use plenty of external applications such as Scribd... and submit them into our group blog easily. Having the capability to do so, I feel has enabled me to broaden my knowledge on computing and given me a diverse understanding of marketing on the internet.
2. I have also been able to further my ability when it comes to editing - although having been able to edit successfully last year when producing my opening sequence to a thriller film, I feel that this year I have increased my ability to edit via the use of filters and transitions.
3. Using the camera this year, I have been able to lengthen my skill when handling it, as I now know multiple camera shots - some even more interesting then last year! For example using a tilt is something I have found intriguing.   
4. This year I have also learnt more about the audience and their desires for the video by asking them directly.  For example the responses from my Survey Monkey questionnaire and our Twitter/ Facebook accounts. Using audience feedback like this, I expect our music video to be better than if we were to just do it in our own style, as it has been analysed more and adjusted with not just our opinions but varied opinions.  

Overall there are plenty of new things I have learnt this year and there will probably be some more to come as well; learning new things will only help my progress and make my coursework a better project, as it'll benefit from these improvements.

Storyboard changes and progress

We decided to make a video discussing our storyboard changes and why we have decided to remove clips or edit our storyboard. Additionally we explained what more we were going to do and how we were going to film certain clips.

Technical Difficulties