EVALUATION

For this brief, I was required to produce a three minute music video along with a working website for a fictional pop band / artist signed to Sony Music. As the target audience was a 16-25 year old mass market demographic, I thought it would be best to conduct a survey on a diverse range of young adults too see which approaches would be most successful.

 

From the results, I found that less mainstream music, & genres such as Rock & Indie / Alternative were the most preferred. Because of this, I researched a lot of artists / songs that could be suitable & eventually chose to use 'Still Feel' by Half Alive. This song combines aspects of Rock, alternative, indie & pop genres which means it not only fits the 'pop genre' brief but would also interest & appeal to my target audience. Another thing i found was that music videos were a lot more popular when their main focus was on performance rather than narrative & also when they pay attention to the technical aspects such as shot types, camera angles, editing, etc...

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Something I knew I wanted to include in my music video was animated motion graphics. This is a post-production editing technique which involves digitally drawing hand-rendered illustrations onto each frame of the video. I used this to emphasize & highlight certain elements within the video which also allowed me to use media representations to visually connote meaning to the audience. Having never used this editing style before, I think it was successful & added depth to my video - even though the overall process was very time consuming. 

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I also wanted the majority of the video to be in black & white as this creates a strong aesthetic & also correlates to my own interests. I decided to include flashes of red as this is a very bold colour & would be an effective contrast to the black & white.

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For the actual video. I spent the day filming a friend dancing in different locations around our local area. We choreographed a dance routine to the chosen song but found it was more successful when dancing freestyle as this portrayed different vibes. The majority of it was shot at the local skate park as I felt this would match the aesthetic that was being created & also appeal to the target audience. We also shot in other locations such as the town centre & various other outdoor areas. 

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In preparation for creating the artist website, I analysed the conventions of various, existing pop band / artist websites. I knew I needed to make the website fairly minimalistic & very easy to understand in order for the information to be easily accessible for the audience. I included a horizontal navigation bar at the top of the page along with various working links, buttons & anchor points. 

I also wanted to produce a strong brand identity for my artist. To do this I ensured that the logo, fonts & colour scheme stayed consistent within both the music video & website. I created a series of GIFs to feature on the website as these produced a similar aesthetic to the animated motion graphics used in the video. I also created merch for the artist which included clothing & physical music releases which also allowed me to create an album cover for the Vinyl / CD releases.

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Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of the music video & website. I feel as though I have successfully responded to the brief by using a range of effective & unique techniques. If I were to change anything about this project or was given the chance to do any of it again, I would have shot more footage & potentially added more of a narrative to the video as I think this would give it more depth & meaning.

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