Ancillary Tasks

Here is a link to our website: Aurora website


Digipak:

EVALUATION

Q1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?



Q2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


Q3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?


Q4- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

MUSIC VIDEO FINAL PRODUCT

Social Media For Our Artist

We created an Instagram and Twitter account for our artist as the majority of music artists use these two social media sites/apps to promote themselves and their music. It is also used to connect with fans and to let them know what the artist Aurora is getting up to.

From Instagram we created a link so that her audience/fans could also connect to her twitter from her instagram account. 

The bio on our Twitter account is "Make love in ths world". This is because our artists portrays inequality in her music videos and she wants to make a change. Also, it is the lyrics in her song 'Burn' from her album Awareness. 

The construction of our website

We changed our original template design to a more dominant purple so that it can relate the our other media texts more (Digipak and music video). The emblem is also featured on the home page so that the artists iconography is seen throughout all media texts. We also inserted Apple music onto our main screen so that the artists audience could purchase the album straight from the start.

We included a merchandise online store while using photoshop to include our artists iconography and song names on to her products. For example we used photoshop to create a T shirt with the artists peace symbol on it. We used an online store as many other artists such as Ellie Goulding also have this.

 We have included a tour page which includes tour dates, each 'ticket' button links to ticketmaster and when the venue is clicked it takes you to the homepage of the venue.

We also have a social media page so that Aurora's fans can see what she's been up to and where she is travellling around the world.

Audience Feedback on the Draft of our music video.

We created an short clip of an Audience Interview to see what the audience liked about our music video and what we could improve on. Their points were extremely helpful as it gave us things we could improve on for our next shoot. For example we need to make the inequality between the poor and rich mire clear and in particular the rich. Also, some of our shots are quite basic and our feedback was to shoot different types of shots as some of them are quite basic.

Here is a clip of their feedback:

Website Planning

Here is a basic draft of what we want the front page of our website to look like. The search bar will consists of links to the home page, the tours, the merchandise tours etc. At thw top of the draft we hve also listed each things that will be included on each page. For example, the 'about' page will have pictures of our artist, a bio of our artist and a link to subscribe to her Youtube channel.

This is what our website looks like so far; we have continued the purple theme from our digipak but it is still a work in progress.

Front Cover Analysis For Our Digipak

Rihanna

I have looked at Album covers from artists who are categorised in the pop genre. This front cover from Rihanna's digipak "Loud". The artist is is the main part of this front cover and takes of most of the space. The font is fairly small to imply that Rihanna is the main part of this cover photo and shows she is of high importance. The red hair and lipstick implies the album could be about love or danger as red signifies this.

Sia

Another front cover I have looked at is from one of Sia's albums. This is unique as it does not involve the artist but still symbolises her with the wig that the artist wears. The font shows the artist is unique and promotes 'fear' in some of her music. This is useful for the front cover of our digipak as it implies it is not always conventional to use the artist on the fron cover, it can be her iconogrpahy.

Katy Perry

Another front cover I have looked at is Katy Perry "Teenage dream". In this front cover katy perry is using her sexuality, this differs to Sia as that doe not involve the artist at all. It also differs to Rihanna's album cover as it is a close up of Rihanna. Katy Perry being in the clouds is trying to imply she is 'godlike' and is of high importance. This is useful to us as we want our artist to be of someone with importance but from a political point of view and not in a sexual way.

Draft of opening sequence

Here is a draft of our opening sequence which sets the scene. In the draft we was checking what our shots looked like on Final Cut Pro. We sped up some clips and shortened certain clips so that the shots matches the beat of the music.

Digipak construction

Digipak planning

Here we have drew a rough sketch of our digipak. We have decided to go with a 6 pannel digipak so that we had enough tiles to fit our ideas on. On the CD we have decided to put the peace emblem which is our artists iconography with stamps of different contires passports behind the CD to show a sense of our political theme as it includes people travelling freely/ freedom of movement. We are going to incoporate a purple lights them in our digipak which is what we are looking to use in both our ancillary texts and our music video. We have also decided to go with the theme of sillouhettes similar to Sia's album cover in our digipak research. As we also want to make our artist mysterious and unique. 

We are going to have a close up of the artist on the front cover of our digipak as we have realised this is a typical convention of a artist in the pop genre. 

Here are two ideas for our peace emblem and our artists iconography which we will be using in all our artists media texts and it will go on the CD of the digipak. The ideo of the circle around the hand is useful as it means it is the same shape as the CD disk.  

Sven E Carlsson- Media Theorist (1999)

Sven E Carlsson is a representation theorists who talks about 3 different types of music videos. Commercial exhibitionist to try and sell themselves for profit such as Jennifer Lopez. Televised Bard which is the story teller of the music video such as Ed Sheeran A Team. Electronic Shaman which is a mixture of both.

According the Sven E Carlsson's Theory, Aurora is a Televised Bard as she is telling a story/message throughout the music video. Aurora is explaining the inequality of wealth in todays society and how social hierarchy is effecting our world today. In the video she is comparing the wealthy and the poor and telling a story about it. 

Aurora also had aspects of Commercial Exhibitionists in the music video as she is from the pop genre and her performance is also promoting herself for profit. 

Location Scouting / Shot types (to portray inequality)

Sloane Street

Harrods

The Strand

We have decided to film at these locations as it will show the inequality of todays society. Both Sloane Street and Harrods are places where people who are very wealthy would shop. At The Strand there are many homeless people and we are looking to film them to show a contrast in lifestyle between the wealthy and the poor.

Filming- Day 3

On our 3rd day of filming we again went to london but this time went to chelsea and harrods. We found that it was difficult to obtain footage of the rich in society as it was hard to identify a difference between the rich and the middle classes. Also, at harrods we found that it was not necessarily a rich destination, as we saw more tourists than we did rich people.

Not only did we have difficulties filming the rich, but also the poor. We found at times the homeless did not want to be filmed and this meant we had to travel further and for longer to find certain homeless people who didn't mind being filmed. We then decided to buy the homeless food in exchange for filming and this was seen to be more successful.  

Filming- Days 1 and 2 (including vlog)

On Monday the 13th Feb we began our day meeting at Twickenham Station to take the train from Twickenham to waterloo Station. We went to many places including Southbank, Westminster bridge and leister Square. When we was there we was filming significant London buildings such as the houses of parliment and busy streets using a time lapse.

On Friday 17th we went to ricmond park to do some performance shoots and to geta shot of the skyline of London. On this day we also set off our purple smoke bomb as a test to see what it would look like in our music video.

Plan For Our First Shoot: Including Animatic and Voice Over

On Friday, we are filming the performance aspect of our video. We have put together a plan of the shots we are using including the mise en scene such as the costume and the lighting. We also included a voice over explaining what we was going to do and where we got our inspiration from.

Listen to here more.

Anamatic Storyboard

This is our anamatic storyboard we have put together for our music video. Each image/photo has a caption which is a description of the type of shot used and what the image is. This has helped us realise that we need more locations when filming our music video as when we uploaded the images we realised we was short on time.

Call Sheet

Marketing Our Artist

We thought of many different ways to market our artist. An idea that we all agreed on was to use social media to market our artist and in particular use a snapchat filter. Snapchat is a very popular social media app in todays society and we created a snapchat filter for our artist.

The filter shows the view from a fan using a mobile phone, filming the artists (Aurora) tour named THE MARCH. 

More photo testing for website and digipak

We done extra photo testing but this time we used a diferent room with lights flashing on the artist. When doing research came we liked one of the ideas Ellie Goulding used in one of her music videos.

We tried to use this idea when doing our own pictures. We found the lights at times made the artist too dark which is why we decided to go for more of a sillhouette approach. This made our artist look mysterious and hid her identity. Like other artists from the pop genre such as Sia.

Test shots for our website and digipak

For our digipak and website, we wanted to use a mixture of coloursin an effective style, such as dark blue and purple. We found a clip on Youtube which used these colours in an effective way by continuously moving. This suited our music video as the song burn is about lights that we used for our test shots. We then projectd these clips of colour onto the projector to create a background behind the artist. Here is what they looked like:

Digipak Analysis

Joanna Newsom

This digipak for the Album "have one on me" by Joanna Newsom intrigued me due to the different design compared to the usual digipak. It is set up in a box which opens out and inclides 3 folder/slips for each CD. As seen in other digipaks I analysed, the front cover has the name of the Artist and the name of the album and a picture that symbolises the artist. For example, in this case the image involves a messy room with the artist lying on the sofa. The image is some sort of painting which suggets the album is very artistic.

Like other digipaks, this digipak uses a black and white colour scheme to have an eye catching effect. The pictures inside the box use a monotone scheme and focus on the artist, this is a common convention I have seen in digipaks. 

This digipak, like others also has a tracklist in the digipak and the album same on the spine which shows it is unique in its structure but shows similar conventions to other digpaks.   

Rita Ora

The front cover has a close of image of the artist. from the pose we can see that she is quite a revealing figure and uses her feminity in her songs. The jewellery such as the watch and the rings connotes wealth and desire. The vibrant Red is very effective against the monotone picture of the artist and makes it stand out against the rest of the digipak. As like many other digipaks, the artist is looking straight into the camera which also attracts the audience. This a common convention when looking at digipaks of artists from the pop genre and something we want to do in our own digipak.

The CD again uses the vibrant red colour, this colour gives insight to the digipak as it can imply passion and determination in her music. On the back of the digipak there is another image of the artist with the record label and the production credits. The image of the artist differs to the one on the front cover as she is not looking striaght at the camera. This suggests she is looking at something in the distance. Having the production credits at the back of a digipak is a key connotation I have found when analysing digipaks.  

Digipak Analysis: Flying Lotus

One digipak that I have analysed is 'Until the quiet comes' by Flying Lotus. This digipak has four panels. In the inside of the digipak there is artistic pictures which use a dark colour scheme to give a very mysterious effect. The CD is also on the inside of the digipak and is matt black. The writing is more of a jet black colour which makes it very effective as the black colours combine to suit the dark images from the pictures.

The front cover has the name of the band and the name of the Album with an artistic picture which is seen to be a common convention for digipaks. As you open the front cover there is the names of each song in white writing on a black background which makes it engaging as the colours contrast. Each song is numbered from 01 to 16.

What I liked about this digipak was that the pictures used was very unique, it did not give away what the band was about but gave insight into what kind of possible genre they were and what their iconography was. From this I want to use our artists iconograohy for our digipak.

Representations of David Bowie- Lazarus

Lazarus is the subject of a prominent miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death. So in this context, it is about the resurrection of David Bowie as the music video was released after he passed away due to cancer. 

the first line of lyrics is "look up I'm in heaven". This is a disjuncture of Andrew Goodwin's literal interpretation as he says "look up". However, the Camera is looking down at David Bowie and it is a crane moving away from David Bowie. This suggests that his illness (cancer) has weakened him as the camera angle makes him look small and vulnerable. The 'death' aspect coming from under the bed is a sign that someone is taking him to his death/afterlife. 

Inspiration for political message- Katy Perry Chained to the Rhythm

We as a group were inspired by this music video as it brings a political message in a unique way. It has a much deeper meaning about the American people than it might seem. Katy Perry has called this kind of music 'purposeful pop' and this relates to something we want to do as we are also trying to bring purpose into our pop music video.

The video is implying that the public are becoming brainwashed by superficial things, hence the marching together in the video with no record of what they are doing, just following each other. She is doing this to draw attention to American politics as she was a huge supporter of Hilary Clinton.

This has been useful to our group as it has meant we all agree to continue with using a political message in our music video as even if we can't make it extremely obvious, we can show it through a hiden message as Katy Perry does.

Representation of the Artist- Pink and Taylor Swift

PINK

From the artists name we can see that she is very unique. The 'i' has been switched to an explanation mark which shows she is loud and outside the mainstream. The hair of Pink is resembling Marilyn Monroe or Betty Grable with the curls. However, her hair is pink which resembles her iconography.

the feministic roses and the doves would normally be associated with love and. However, it is a counter stereotype as her pose portals that she is passionate but not about love. The "Im not dead" quote also contradicts the roses and doves being associated with love, as it has skulls either side to represent rock.

The red shirt resembles her sexuality as it is a cut down shirt which is showing off her body. The colour red is very loud which also implies she is an explicit, loud artist. The institutional code on the bottom left implies that it includes explicit lyrics which is linked to her mouth being open. The stars above her head refers to a link to paramount and the facial expression fires to MGM and in particular the lion which implies she is like a lioness. 

Taylor Swift

This image is from the album cover RED released in 2012. The entire image is focussed on her red lipstick. Which not only links to the name of the album but also reflects the bright personality and type of music she performs. The lipstick can also make Taylor Swift seem quite provocative. This is because the Red implies love and this gives insight into what her music might be about.

The shadow cast from the hat suggests that she is mysterious and that some of her identity and personality is hidden. It is also meaning that people focus on her lips rather than the rest of her face. Taylor Swift is allowing the audience to focus on the titles rather than herself. The font of the titles is very bold and a common convention of album covers as it is clear and easy to spot and the title RED is in the colour red which helps amplify the title and compliments the lipstick.

Comparing PINK and Taylor Swift 

Compared to Taylor swift, Pink is very outgoing and is exposing her sexuality with the cut down shirt. However, Taylor Swift is not exposed and is very secretive as she is hiding her face. They are both repsenting women in different ways. Pink portrays women as lionesses and Taylor Swift portrays women as very elegant.