T17: Tracking an artist/band throughout their career

I decided to track Beyonce's career through music as she has had a lot of variety, she started off in a girl group called 'Destiny's Child' and then began to go solo in 2003. I included some dates of when she's been in films as she tends to sing in all of them - as we mostly know her as a singer, such as Dreamgirls and Austin Powers. I am familiar with all of her music therefore I know a lot of information about her career from past to present, I included some of her album covers as they made it very high in the album charts and became incredibly popular. Her image hasn't changed much but I think that's a poisitive thing as her fans will always recognise her as she doesn't go for any drastic changes. Beyonce is also a widely-known singer which meant it was easy to find all of the albums/films/appearances she's done.

T16: Audience Research

I created a voki of what I would imagine our target audience to look like, speak like and what she would say. I named her Lucy as it is quite a girly name and it's quite common - as like chart music which is our genre. I wanted to add in features of her interests such as magazines she reads and singers she listens to as it gives an insight into what our genre might include and what the theme might be.

This is the Ratecard I created, I added in images that a girl from our target audience would like/watch/be interested in. Most teenage girls would agree with this therefore I wanted to add a variety of images that can apply to each person in some way. I chose the colour pink for the text boxes as it's a girly colour and the genre of song we have chosen is girly and would suit this theme of interests.
I added logo's of shops where they might visit frequently, it summarieses a middle class girl who doesn't have loads of money to flash about but can use it to her best advantage in shops like Topshop and having lots of shopping bags.

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I created this audience research survey so I could find out from my target audience, what they would like to see in a music video and what they don't like. This will help us when creating our own music video as we will know what to include and what not to include. I will post this survey on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to get the maximum responses.

T15: Analysis of previous students work

WWW
Good narrative - suitable to song
Transitions between shots suited the pace of the music
Including photobooth photos/flashbacks using effects to blend them in
Moves from diegetic to non-diegetic at the start and end of video
Good balance of narrative and singing
Juxts position of boy beating up the other boy.

EBI
They used a better camera in the bedroom
Matched up their lip-synching better
Faster pace at the start/include more
Lighting was thought about more
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WWW
Locations were thought about alot, the band were in a good location
The lead singer was confident and a good performer
Well framed, composed really well
Good use of black and white - for the band
Connecting narrative to song - singing in mirror
Car driving towards camera
Link to Andrew Goodwin
Pace of editing was good

EBI
Narrative didn't make sense at times, made the viewers confused
Mise en scene is not clear
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WWW
Andrew Goodwin - girl group dancing
Really good costumes - suited the song well
Lip Synching matches up well
Transitions between shots, flashing between shots
Dancing is suitable
Good locations
Good make-up

EBI
Camera is a bit shakey at times
Bit too prevocative - wasn't necessary
Items get in the way with green screen
Scene with studio wasn't effective
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WWW
Fish eye lens
Effects - slow motion
Lighting
Outfits of people
Grid effects
Humorous
Lip synching

EBI
Goes out of focus sometimes
Framing - cuts of heads at times
Can see tripod in one of the shots
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T14: Analysis of band/artist websites

http://elliegoulding.com/
I chose to analyse Ellie Goulding as she's done a few music videos in the style that I would want to make my music video in. Throughout her website, music videos and album covers, she includes the same similar colour scheme of bright pink, bright lights shining in the background and harsh lighting. I like the techniques and shot types in her music videos that I have listed in the Prezi beneath, I also like the style of her album covers, they are simplistic however the lighting/added effects make it look much more appealing. In the video 'I need your love' it involves a effective narrative of Ellie herself with Calvin Harris who also contributed to the making of the song. The narrative consists of shots filmed to what looks like throughout a relationship, they both look happy and in love which makes the video enjoyable to watch, the theme of the happy relationship suits the upbeat/dance tempo of the song. This narrative is something I would definitely consider when making my music video as I know it is effective and with having 98,227,538 hits on YouTube, this supports the idea of the music video being enjoyable.

T13: Research into digipaks

I found two digipaks, also in the relevant genre of our music video. They are Beyonce - B'day and Mariah Carey - Butterfly. I have images below of the digipak and what they include. They mostly include lyrics and photographs from a photoshoot - the idea of a photoshoot would be suitable for our digipak as our target audience would be interested in something like this in a digipak.

Beyonce - B'day

The album cover is the first page and includes the title 'B'day'. Beyonce includes a variety of different photos from a photo shoot - which would be really good to include aslong as it suits the album. She also includes a thank you page, dedicated to her friends and family, producers, fans etc where she writes a seperate paragraph for each of them. She adds a 'credits' page where she lists executive producers and productions companies (Music World Productions. Inc) she also links the website (Beyonceonline.com) where you can find lyrics available.  On the bottom left image, she writes in a font which looks like her own writing, to make it look personal, as a personal message from Beyonce. She introduces the 'Dereon clothing range' where she includes an image of her sister Solange Knowles wearing the clothes from that range and includes the website 'www.houseofdereon.com' and a signature of beyonce in the bottom right corner making it personalised for her fans. Other pages includes titles of songs where she writes who produced them, what the overall message for that song was and what it meant to write it. It also is a seperate credits page for each song (only the big songs from that album). She includes a two page spread of an image of her which happens to be the middle page, therefore meaning you could pull it out and use it as a poster to stick on your wall. I really found this digipak useful as it contains all the things I would want to include in mine, photographs from a photoshoot are critical for me as I know it will make the presentation look more appealing.

Mariah Carey - Butterfly

Mariah takes a different approach to her Digipak than Beyonce's, the whole Digipak stretches out into one flat peice of paper - one side displayed with photos including butterflies, suitable to the album name and the other side covered in writing. The writing includes lyrics to her song that belong to that album and on the last page she adds a thank you page. This layout is useful to me in the process of making a Digipak as I would like to include photographs as well as lyrics/thank you's/credits. However I think I would want to include brighter colours as this Digipak only has limited colours - perhaps to enhance the colour of the butterfly, as that is the name of the album. I think this Digipak looks quite boring, and I want ours to look exciting so that a teenage girl will see it in a shop and be captured by it and want to buy it, rather than this that wouldn't make me feel that way.

T12: Analysis of existing digipaks

I decided to analyse Ellie Goulding's album cover 'Halcyon Days' as I have looked into some of her album covers before and analysed her websites and music videos. I like her style of videos and album covers and would want to use this inspiration in my own work when it comes to making my own music video and digipak.

Ellie Goulding Album Cover