Photos from 3rd Shoot

YouTube Account

To gain more fans and more audience we decided to create a YouTube account as this is how are target audience mostly consume music. To do this I had to create a Google+ account, and then go and make a YouTube account. We are going to add videos of grace singing so that Grace can gain more attention.

CD Cover Analysis

 

UK Top 40 Album Chart

The genre of this album chart varies, from indie/pop to jazzy/blues type of music. This is because the people who consume music have different taste to eachother and everyone likes different genres of music. Also, the album downloads can define the age group of people that have downloaded them and the age group of people that use downloads. Ella Henderson, Ed Sheeran, Jessie J and George Ezra are very recent artists into the music industry and are very popular with a broad range of people from young people to the elderly. However, people like U2 and Barbra Streisand are aimed at more of the older audience as they have been around for a long period of time. The ratio is 2:5, which you can tell that the younger people tend to download music more as they may be more aware of the technological things available to us and the older generation may not be aware of them so they go into the store and are more likely to buy the CD. We feel that our album 'In Time' would fit well in this album chart due to her being a new artist just like Ella Henderson, and her target audience is young adults and they tent to be the people who know the most about technology which will therefore know that the album is abailable to download and not just to buy in store.

UK Top 40 Single Trends

Here is the UK Top 40 Single Charts. I have noticed that there is a link between all of the singles that are in the top 20. They are all either dance songs or slow meaningful songs. I think our song would fit in well to this chart due to the dance/club feel to the pace of the song. The target audience for 4 of the songs in the charts are for the younger generation of people that consume music, like 12 year olds who are fans of the artists. E.g. One Direction- Steal my girl, Taylor Swift - Shake It Off, Jessie J Ariana Grande Nicki Minaj- Bang Bang and The Vamps- Oh Cecilia. These type of songs are all for the young teenagers who tend to fangirl over the artists. There is two songs in the charts that tackles an emotional situation, Ed Sheeran- Thinking out loud and Sam Smith- Im not the only one, who had a very wide audience range of young children to elderly people. This genre of music is more indie/pop music. Whereas all of the other songs in the charts are more dance/pop. Our song 'My Everything' is a very dancey song.

Music Comsumption

Here is a graph of the UK market in 2011 of how we consume music. Although this graph is 4 years old, from my own knowledge I know that the use of CD's has dramatically gone done due to the availability nowadays and how much technology has advanced. From this information we have decided to make Grace a YouTube channel so her popularity can spread and people can become more familiar with her name and image. We will also arrange radio interviews for her as the use of music consumption through radio is high. The amount of people that pay for downloads is also higher than people who download them for free, therefore we have put a link to iTunes on our website so that people can download the tracks.

Here is some information about how different age groups consume music. Our primary audience is people between 16 - 30, therefore this is why I have selected these two groups. The younger generation tend to listen to music through free media sources like You Tube, which is the main reason that we have decided to make a You Tube account. This is because this is the easiest way to find more fans and draw more peoples attention to the artist so her popularity will grow.  62% of people listen to music that is free over only 38% of people actually paying for it. Our target audience consume music through things like You Tube, therefore to create our own account sounds like the best idea to spread Grace's image. When it comes to the 25-34 year olds, there is still more people of 55% that download music for free. Also, under a quarter of people actually buy a CD.

Exclusive MTV Interview!

Here we decided to create an MTV Exclusive Interview so that fans can get an insight into Grace's life and how she became famous. We created our own MTV question sheet, MTV microphone covers and filmed different angles of the two different people involved in the interview.

Interview Preparation

We decided to film a MTV interview aswell as create one for RADAR. We looked at inspiration(see other post) so that we could look at how MTV interviews were done and what sort of things were included. We noticed that most MTV interviews have the MTV logo in the top corner, so once we put together all of the footage we dragged an image of the logo over the top so it was shown in the top right hand corner. We also printed off the MTV logo and created a question sheet, which had all the questions on the back so that the presenter could read them off. Also, we printed miniture MTV logos so that we could create signs to stick to the microphone so it did infact look more professional and believable.

Our video so far

Here is a screenshot of our video on Adobe Premiere so far. We previously filmed all of our shots and we are very pleased with how they have turnt out. However, when it come to editing it all together we found that we do not have enough footage even though we over filmed by mass amounts. This is because most of our footage is either lip syncing in the dark outdoor with fairy lights as back ground, or the scene in the woods. We thought to keep repeating these scenes for over 3 minutes could be quite boring as the audience may feel as though they can predict the rest of the video. Therefore, we have gone through and discussed what else we feel could be included in our video. Our artist, Grace Starr is a very glamorous girl who loves beauty, therefore we feel that in our video we should show this side to her aswell as just the darkness. For an extra idea we have come up with filming in the day time with a constant aerial shot of grace singing to the camera, on a white sheet that is covered with rose petals and all things beautiful. We then feel that this can give off the beauty side to Grace and this can be communicated also through the video to the audience.

Here is the exported video. The parts of the video that are blank show the extra things that we need to film.

Steal-o-matic

This is a more accurate description of the storyboard and enables people to have a visual in mind of the sort of things we want to include in our music video. I have used clips from different videos to make this.

Costumes

Hair styles:
Wild Curly Hair
Some girls half up half down

Makeup:

Smokey eyes
Tired look
Different coloured lipstick on different girls

Clothes:

Skater Skirts
High wasted shorts
Tights and ripped tights
Baggy, chavy hoodies
Black dress- Charlotte

I was the makeup and hair artist, so I done everyones hair and makeup suitable for the role. We met at around 5 o clock and we left to film at about half past 7.

This is a before and after shot of the makeup and hair.

Here is a close up shot of the eye makeup I done on Emma.

Magazine Interview

Magazine Interview Inspiration

We are creating a magazine interview for our artist Grace Starr to be a part of. This gives fans answers to questions that they are dying to know the answers to. RADAR are famous for their famous interviews with famous celebs, therefore we are looking at their interviews and taking inspiration from them so we have a guideline on what to create. 

Exclusive Interview

After looking at alternate interviews, we came up with a variety of questions that our star can be asked whilst being interviewed by MTV.

Here are the questions we are going to ask Grace Starr:

1. Did you ever think so much would happen in a relatively short amount of time?
2. Are you scared about everyone knowing your business?
3. Do you think people will scrutinise and read too much into what celebrities wear and their personal lives?
4. How do you think you will stay grounded when your career takes off?
5. Finally we took to the MTV twitter and facebook page and asked what the fans wanted to know. Here is a question picked at random. When did you decide you wanted to become a singer?

Interview Inspirations

We have been looking at interviews online that we can take inspiration from so we can duplicate this idea and create our own artist interview to promote our star and let fans into questions they have always wanted to know. This enables fans to have a more personal relationship with the star and make it feel like they are close with her as they will have an insight into her life and have answers to personal questions.
Here is some music interviews that we have took inspiration from.

For this video we were particularly fond of the layout that the star and interviewer were, this enables the audience to view both people involved. We are going to use this idea when we film our own.

Letter to record label

Here we was given a task to write to Ellie Gouldings record label 'Polydoor Ltd' as we felt it was respectful to gain persmission to use the song and create a music video for. We are going to be sending this to Polydoor describing what we need the song for and how it contributes to our final A Level grade. Here is my letter.

 



DigiPack: Album Cover

I started to try and design some CD cover photos that we could used for our album in time. This is the original image that I started off with.

Here is what my first sample looked like. I decided not to use this because i think it is too boring for our artist 'Grace Starr' but i think the effect looks good due to the electo/pop genre of artist Grace is. Therefore i went on to create this design as i think it looks better with a lot more going on.

 

I then added 4 of the same shots and flipped and reversed them so it looks more effective. I then blurred together the images so they look more put together.

 

I then went and added our album title 'In Time' to make it more professional and add the final touches.

 

Here is the back page I made of the CD Cover.

 

I then went for a whole new look, a completely different idea. Which encounters the girly side to Grace. Here is the first draft. I added an effect over the top of the original image to make it feel more soft and cute.

 I then thought about how I wanted the album title to appear, and as the effect is soft and the overall image I want to give off is cute, I feel as though the title should be soft and not bold. Therefore I added the title in white, enlarged it and placed it in the centre and changed the transparency. This is the outcome.

 Then I needed to add Grace's name to the album, so people who are unaware of her can look at the album on the shelf and decide whether they want to buy it or not. This is why the album is so important as for people who are not familiar with this singer, this is their first impression and first attempt to draw the audience in.

I then decided to play around a bit with the font, and add a boarder around the text. I prefer the design before due to it feeling a lot softer than with a black boarder.

 Here is the same album cover but in a black and white font, but I think the colour copy is more successful. 

I also decided to add another affect on the original image to see if I could find a better effect, this effect seems to bring out a brighter image to show the electro/pop image.

 

Next we decided to have a key link for all of our digipack photos. Here is the final album cover:

 

Filming shots

Other Student DigiPaks

Here I have looked at other student blogs from other schools to look at their digipaks for their artist. Here are some I particularly like, and think look very professional.

DigiPak Analysis

Here I found a digipak analysis online where someone has explained what they have done and what is included in their digipak. I am taking this as inspiration as I can look at this when creating my own digipak and apply some of the features that are included there, into my own.  Hopefully this will help me gain the best possible marks and have the clearest understanding on what a DigiPak consists of.

Pete Fraser

Today we had a talk from a media teacher that has been in the industry for over 20 years. He gave us some advice on our music videos are gave us some advice for our blogs and progress. I found this talk very useful due to him giving us advice on how we get the top marks and how we can achieve the grade we want. The advice he gave us for our music video is to stay away from the skins video. He went into more detail telling us to stay away from the video that someone has already created of clips of skins as he believed that this is what we wanted to accomplish. But this is not what we want to do, we have only used skins as inspiration, not to copy any ideas. When coming up with this idea we was very inspired by skins as some of the things that are shown in skins are what we want to use in our video. Here I have embedded the powerpoint that Pete showed us.

 

 

Here is the video that Pete told us to stay away from, someone has created clips of the skins episode that this song was played on to create their own video. This is not an official video, as there is no official video for this song.

Music Video Teaser Trailer

We were given a task to create a presentation to show to the class so we can show our work so give and give the rest of the media students an insight to what our artist is like and how she everything we have done so far. At the moment we have completed some of our filming and collated some of our shots, but we have not filmed them all because they are in different settings. With the footage we do have, I put together a quick teaser trailer of some of the shots we have to show the rest of the classes what our video is going to be a like and show them some of our shots. This helped us in class as when we presented everything to the students, they answer questions and mark different things out of 10 for our production. This then gives us a chance to improve anything that isn't perfect so we have the chance to make sure everything is how it should be.

Grace Starr- Official Website

http://gracestarr.wix.com/gracestarr

Storyboard

4 Key Choices

Record Label

The record label that we have chose to be signed by is Polydor Ltd, due to the other artists this company signs are very similar to ours. Also, we are using an Ellie Goulding song, as one of the record labels Ellie is signed to is Polydor Ltd.

" Founded in Germany in 1946 as the popular music arm of the long-established Deutsche Grammophon label, the UK division of Polydor was not established until ten years later - perfectly timed to coincide with the rock'n'roll revolution that was transforming the musical landscape and establishing youth culture for the first time as a significant phenomenon. Initially, the label concentrated on releasing continental-made recordings - but with Germany a popular touring destination for the emerging British 'beat' groups, there were rich pickings to be had. In August 1961, German Polydor released a single called My Bonnie by Tony Sheridan and The Beat Boys. Nobody realised it at the time, but the record was destined to change the face of popular music, for the backing group was none other than the Beatles"

 

 

Audience

Primary Audience: We are mostly aiming at girls at the age of 16+. The reason for this is because we have made our artist unique by her singing about personal situations, and some of them can be quite graphical due to her bad upbringing. The music video we have created can be considered as explicit due to the drug use that is shown. We have made the target audience older compared to the target audience of someone like Katy Perry, as she usually sings about things that young children can relate to or appeal too. Whereas our artist, Grace Starr, sings about things young children will not yet understand or know about therefore this is why our target audience starts at an older age.

Secondary Audience: Our secondary audience is going to be boys are the age of 16+. Although boys may not be interested in the music, they will be interested in Grace as someone to look at and someone they may find 'attractive'. Due to the tackled situations that are sang about, boys could also relate to this music. Our music video shows drug use and stereotypical things people presume teenagers do. This is why this will appeal to boys as well as girls because all genders may get into this sort of thing.

 

 

Artist

When we chose our song, we then had to chose an artist. Originally, we was going to make it so that all three members of the group (Me, Charlotte and Emma) were going to have a main role. But we did not know how to create this idea when there is only one singer in the song. Ellie Goulding also have a very distinctive voice, therefore we would not be able to have this voice being lip synced by three different people. Therefore, we chose Charlotte. We are very aware that there is several female artists in the music industry, but we think that Grace's unique selling point is the fact she is still young as she is only 19 years old. Another unique selling point is that she talks about situations that not a lot of female artists sing about, and approaches explicit situations in her music videos. Although she is young, she targets an audience at the age of 16 + and strictly no one younger due to the situations that are shown in her music videos. Many of the female artists that are already in the music industry target a wide audience range due Carley Rae Jepsen, who is also a young artist. We wanted to go more towards the Katy B style. This is what makes our artist unique.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Track

We come up with three different song choices, and had pros and cons for each one. We finalised on Ellie Goulding- You my everything to make it more upbeat and fun. Our first idea was Ellie Goulding ft. Eric Hassle - Be mine. We could not do this due to not having a male in the group and we did not want to go down the cliché boy meets girl and falls in love music video, we wanted to create something new. We didn't want to bore our audience with things they have already seen... We wanted to make sure they have not seen something like ours before, therefore we decided to not use this song and move on to a different one.

 

Next we came up will DJ Sammy- Heaven. We decided not to go with this idea either due to staying on the same page as the cliché love idea. We wanted to stay away from this completely, therefore changed our mind to a more upbeat song that would not make the audience bored and make guess what is going to happen next.

 

 

We then finalised our decision with Ellie Goulding - You my everything. This steers away from the genre of our previous songs as it is much more upbeat and fast which will keep the audience interested into what they are watching. Our video is very unpredictable, as if you heard the song without the video we are creating you would never guess what we have come up with. And this is why we loved this track idea. It leaves the audience wondering and intrigued to watch what we have came up with.