Closing Post

Dear Moderator,

Thanks for looking at my blog! I hope you like my work. Please click on the AL Research and Planning label in order to look at my research and planning for my AL coursework.

Thank you :)

- Simon (Candidate no. 3218)

Post 10: My Production Review

Feedback was extremely useful for me throughout my project as it provide another view on my project that helped me fix any problems or missing content.


Initial Plans and Storyboard Teacher Feedback

• Overall the feedback was good as there was a structure that enforced the verse-chorus structure of the song itself.
• My initial storyboard ended the song with a water fight. It was a fun idea, but filming that sequence would be problematic as there a too many variables that could change between shoot days if we needed to re shoot anything. 

Rough Cut and Performance Bed Teacher Feedback

• The initial colour grade varied between shots, as performance shots for each different framing had different lighting due to technical problems, shadows in unwanted places and white balance issues once the initial grade was complete. 
• Slow motion shots were flickery when slowed down due to the house lights we had used. We fixed this during a reshoot of the scene where we used the natural lighting of the sun to light the scene.

Website

For my website, my teachers praised the design and interactivity of all the elements. However there were a couple inconsistencies and bits of missing content that I needed to add such as a biography and tour section.

Here is a picture of some example feedback I received

Post 9: My Website and Social Media Pages

I took inspiration for my website design from Khalid's and Ed Sheeran's website

Conventions

-Logo Placement

Logos are typically placed on the upper part of the page so as the viewer scrolls through different tabs they know  

-Clear Naming

Sometimes when creating a website, creativity sacrifices clarity. Cute and clever naming is fun and catchy, but users want information first, cute second. 

-Main Navigation

The Main Navigation normally appears in a bar across the top of the site. This convention is another that, if broken, may frustrate users. If directions are too complicated or not there at all, users will become discouraged and leave your site.

-Button Functionality

A button is a great feature to include in your web design because they are extremely intuitive. They look 3D and clickable, making it clear that you should, in fact, click them. But! Be sure that all buttons actually link to something. A button that doesn’t cause anything to happen will be confusing to users.

-Standard Icons

Icon conventions are particularly useful because they provide a clear explanation without words. An envelope icon signifies email, a shopping cart or bag icon signifies the checkout page, and social media icons signify social sharing. But icons only work if they are common enough that no explanation is necessary. Replacing a shopping bag icon with a rainbow may get points for originality, but your users will most likely be more than a little confused.

-Visual Hierarchy

We encounter visual hierarchies dozens of times per day: newspapers, billboards, invitations, even cereal boxes use this hierarchy to let us know what to read first, which information is the most important and what comes next. Using visual hierarchy on the website brings readers back to this familiar structure. Processing the page becomes almost automatic and users know where to go. Losing this hierarchy is only going to confuse viewers.

-Link Styling

Clicking links has become second nature for web users. Users want to know instinctively what’s clickable and what isn’t – as soon as the rules are broken, it becomes confusing and forces users to think. A classic link typically appears as underlined text like this.  Text in a different colour and underlined text can also signify links. This means you should not underline words that aren’t links, and avoid using different coloured texts for non-links. 

My Plans for my website

A basic sketch to help visualise what overall house style I wanted

I based my design around the a strips design similar to what Khalid has. Each section would have a strip with the starting letter of the title as a signifier for each section. I went for a bright and colourful colour scheme as it suits the joyful nature of my artist. Following the conventions of the other websites I had scene I added the following sections to my website:

Music, Music Videos, Socials, 

Post 8: My music video

Before planning my video, I looked at other popular music videos to find out the codes and conventions as well as get inspiration for my video. This helped me develop my ideas while making sure I was

Mika - We Are Golden

This is a very conventional music video as it has a heavy use of disjuncture in its editing which keeps the audience interested and wondering what could happen next. However, mismatched shots doesn't mean the pacing of the song stays the same throughout, in fact, it instead matches the song. In this case, the song starts off slow but builds up throughout ending in a big chorus at the end, the shot lengths match this as at the beginning the shots are relatively longer compared
to the end where there are up to  3 shots per second. These intercutting shots make sure the audience doesn't get bored as the video goes on.

The video also focuses solely around the artist which is very conventional of pop music videos. It is mainly a performance video but it features some loose conceptual elements that could be interpreted as a narrative which is not unconventional but is not seen as often nowadays as most pop videos take a more cinematic approach to their videos.

Mika has a very expressive and intense performance throughout the video, dancing about the room and having fun just like a kid would, which helps adds to his star identity as a passionate but joyful artist.

Planning my video



For my pre-production, I started by noting what aspects of the video I wanted to include and thought out ideas that I could do throughout the video. From this, the narrative was formed and these notes allowed me to structure my ideas properly so the pacing of the video matched the song.

I took pictures of where I was planning to shoot and created a location reccie so I could visualise what could be shot where and how.

For location risks, the only main risk was that we were shooting in a relatively small space, so I had to remain aware of the area around me and the camera crew at all times.

A rough idea of the structure I wanted in the video and where it would be.
















An initial storyboard that I created to help with planning and creating shootboards.

I created a shootboard so that my shoot day was efficient, I knew what I was shooting and how long I can realistically spend getting the shots.

Post 7: My pop artist

As construction of my artist's persona began, I knew I wanted him to be a very relaxed, relatable and chilled out person. This was based around the main theme of my video, laziness, and I wanted him to fulfil the dream that many people have when going through a bad or boring time of their lives.

From here I planned what I would where during the video, creating this mood board to help me visualise what I wanted.

When creating this, I researched some real life examples to help inspire me in the character design. My main inspirations were Marss, Troye Sivan and Justin Timberlake.



Marss is not a musician but rather an eSports player. The relevance? Two things.
1. I was greatly inspired by something he is known for, he has a very relaxed mindset; so much so that he goes to tournaments in pyjamas for ultimate comfort.

2. He has a friendly online personality, often talking to fans through social media, and posting random photos from behind the scenes of big events.  This is something I wanted to try and imitate when creating my social medias.

Troye Sivan is an Australian YouTube star turned singer and is a more conventional show of how pop singers are represented. Pop stars are typically represented as attractive charming personalities who are made to be the perfect friend or partner. They will usually present themselves as relatable, portraying themselves as human and considerate to their fans.







This can be shown through Toye's social media; Instagram, for example, has a blend of professional looking photos as well as random photos from his real life which creates an overall journal look to his page. This gratifies the audience through self-identification as they may feel special getting an exclusive look into his real life.

Post 6: My chosen track

A shortlist of the songs I thought of choosing



In the end,  I choose "The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars

I ended up choosing this song as it had a theme that was unconventional for many pop songs, it was not themed around love or relationships but around just having fun which I thought was quite refreshing.

Some info about the song
Produced and released in 2010 as part of his debut studio album "Doo-Wops and Hooligans"

The song reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100, while it topped the charts in Denmark and the UK. It charted on most international markets within the top five.

It has been certified six times by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), five times by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and four times platinum by Music Canada (MC), respectively. Worldwide, it was one of the best selling digital singles of 2011 with sales of 6.5 million copies.

The songwriters were Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine and K'naan.

Development of "The Lazy Song" began while Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine were hanging around the studio and didn’t feel like working.

Mars wrote the song in collaboration with singer-songwriter K'naan and his production team The Smeezingtons, who also produced the track.

After confirming my choice of song, I analysed the lyrics to find themes that I could build the narrative of my music video around. Here are some of the plans I made.

My lyric interpretation + an initial plan for my narrative

Post 5: My target audience

Research into my target audience

My target audience is 'fun loving 16-25 year old's'. By investigating their habits I am able to understand what is the best content of music video for them.

The most common listening time is 2 hours

By developing my understanding of the target audiences habits and preferences, I am better able to plan how best to present my music. By including not only a video, but other options to stream the song, then I can increase the amount of time or amount of views my track will get. As of this 2 hours, not all will be spent watching the music video.

From my research, I found out that the most popular genres of music are pop, rock and hip-hop/rap, especially for my target audience of 16-25 year olds.

By looking at the graph to the right, I was able to find out how the audience views their content. With the largest proportion viewing their content through video streaming, we can see that the music videos are the best way my artist to appeal to them as it is their preferred method of viewing.

There is also a large proportion of those who listen by audio streaming, both paid and unpaid, which indicates that music streaming services like Spotify are also essential for appealing to the audience

A large part of the audience also likes to stay even more up to date and connected to the artist. As such they will buy merchandise and tour tickets. The audience enjoys being able to support the audience either live at a concert or through buying and wearing clothes to associate themselves with their favoured artists.

This idea of wanting to stay up to date is also reflected through how they follow an artists social media, searching for extra content and information about the artists. They are also able to directly show their support or leave statements that the artist may see.

The menu bar for Ed Sheeran's website, with hyperlinks to all sorts of extra content.

Therefore through my research into the target audience, I have created a list of features that I should include in order to make my pop artist suit the target audience. This includes social media, merchandise, tour dates and music that can be either watched or streamed (music on multiple platforms). The audiences desire for more content via platforms such as social media means that I plan to construct a consistent star identity for my artist; I will make him relatable but also a figure to aspire towards. This will allow me to draw in the target audience to my artist and any products that go with him.

As most of my target audience will stream the song through the music video, I believe it is very important to create a music video that will appeal to them. Therefore I will make my video light-hearted and fun with relatable characters that my audience can enjoy the presence of.