Digipack - Record Label

We have researched a number of record labels, to get an idea as to which label our artist Jose Vanders would be signed to. To do this, we looked at a variety of female artists, more similar to our artist and her image, we found that most of these artists were not signed to commercial labels such as Sony, EMI and Warner Bros . Cherrytree Records has a number of female artists signed to them such as Ellie Goulding and La roux, we have decided to that our artist will be signed to this label too, as it is not very commercial, and has a number of female artists with similar images to our own but are still well established. The logo of the label will feature on the back cover of the album -

Digipack Planning

As a group we have done a vast amount of planning, and we have spent a lot of time deciding on what we would have for our front and back cover of our album. We had planned to have the theme of picnics and tea parties, relating to alice in wonderland and helping to create our artists image. We planned for the title of the album to be called 'stuck on dreams' again linking to alice in wonderland which is a story of dreams and fantasy. We learnt from making our music video that we had to become more organised and manage our time more efficiently, although we tried to do this, by creating a time table with all our available frees, and finding appropriate times to use the hall. We did not manage to shoot our digipack in time, and due to members of the group being absent on different days, there was not many opperunities to take our photos. Due to this we have been forced to re think our ideas, the deadline being very soon. We have gone back to our original plan of using photos we took on the day of filming as the front cover, and therefore the album will now be called 'faces going places', the song we used for our music video. The back cover will be piano keys linking to Jose Vanders and the importance the piano is to her as an artist, and we aim to create a booklet that will be inside the album, however our evaluation seems more important at this time and therefore we may have to abandon that ideas.

Rough Copy of Digi Pack

After editing the image and getting it to the right size , we have produced a rough copy of the back cover which will need further editing, as the colour of the keys will ned to be changed .
 

Digi pack- CD dimensions

Although we looked at another website for the dimensions, we had to google for more specific measurements. below is a screen shot of how we changed the dimensions in photo show to the size of or digi pack.We had a few problems with changing the dimensions as it cropped our image. After several attempts ! we managed to find a way that cropped the image to the size we wanted it.The screen shot below shows how we changed the dimensions.

Digi pack - photo shop

We found out how to create the right size template for our album cover.

Digipack - Tracks

We looked at a list of our original artists songs, to decided which tracks would be included on the album. Rather than picking at random, we aimed to find song titles that linked to the theme of the album and the music video.
The selcted songs are :

• Stuck on dreams
• Puppets
• Summer
• Literature lovers
• A little love song
• Mother theresa can't dive
• Without your kisses
• Faces going places
• New ride

The image on the back cover of our album is piano keys, relevent to Jose Vanders who plays the piano. We will show the list of songs on the piano keys.

I attempted to create the back cover, but found because the keys aren't straight, adding the titles were difficult and I had to cut some on the song titles down.

Creating the digi pack

We have we have found several pictures which we can use for the front cover and pictures of the artist which we can include in the digipack booklet. We planned to do a shoot with the piano and tea pots but as the weater had turned (snow!) we can continue with this idea. We have decided to use one of the pictures that we took when we were filming at the train station. We also have several shots which we can use for the back cover.

Digi Pack - Tea Pot shoot

Here is a slide show of the photos i took for the digipack.

Digi Pack planning

I have taken several shots of the hand drawn (back cover) pictures I have previously posted about.

If we decide to use either of these shots of the piano keys or of the tea pot then we will need to edit the colour in photo shop to make them brighter and also to straighten the shot . We will also have t decode what colour theme to have through out the digipack, and where to put the bar code website and record labels .

Digi pack planning

I have drawn up a few ideas which we can consider for our digi pack.

 This is a hand drawn copy of what the front cover might look like . We could have the artist sitting on the piano (on a picnic blanket) with cakes and vintage tea cups and a tea pot .  This will work well with our artists innocent image, as it wont have any voyeuristic characteristics.

 This is a hand drawn picture of what our back cover could look like, with the track numbers and titles displayed on the piano keys , this will emphasise how our artist has a strong connection with playing the piano.  

The hand drawn picture of the tea pot above can be another contender for the back cover it can relate to the front cover with th use of the tea pot. I also included a bit more detail on this drawing as to where the barcode and website can be displayed.   

Website Progress

I have edited he website so that it includes the same conventions as the websites i looked at for research, the website is not finished.

The picture above is of our websites home page. The side bar includes the same features that were included in the other artists websites. 


The Screen shot below is of one of the links on the website with an embedded video. This will help to advertise the artists music.

Website research

I have looked at several English female artists with a simula image to our artist, to find out what features tiheir websites  have in common. So i can apply this to our website. I looked at Pixie Lott, Kate Nash, Lily Allen and Ellie Golding's websites.

Ellie Golding's website

Lily Allen's Website



Kate Nash's website



Pixie Lott's Website

When looking at the four different websites i found that they had quite allot of similarities.
they all included :

Blogs-So that the artist can contact a wide variety f fans , this makes the artist seem as though (s)he are normal , and also keeps fans updated on what the artist is doing.
News- Continuous updates on what the artist is doing and positive articles of the artist.
Shop- Personalised merchandise for fans to buy.
Tour Dates- so fans know when the artist s performing next (a good way of advertising their next tour)
Videos - To promote music and also gives the fans and market visual understanding of the song
Photo Gallery- Shows different images to the artist ( casual shots which can show what a different image to the airbrushed posy pictures)
 About (the artist)- Gives information about the artist ( usually abut their up bringing and how they became involed in the music industry) .

Website

I have created a website for our artist. By having a website it can help to get the artist known and let their music be heard. As the Internet is increasing and becoming the most popular way of searching for artists and finding upcoming artists , this will be the best way to advertise our artist. The website i have created is also free to set up. This helps as we don't have a big enough budget to buy expensive advertising space in magazines. The website is very new and still under construction. 

http://www.nfgsjosevanders.webs.com/

Digipack - Planning

We have decided on what our digipack will consist of, we aim to have a front cover, back cover, and a booklet that slots inside the album, which contains a list of all the song lyrics. As a group we looked at a variety of album covers, which also included a booklet. We discovered that all of these contain, song lyrics for each song included in the album,  who wrote the songs and various pictures of the artist on each page. Beyonce's booklet had pictures posed purely for the album, but also had links to her upcoming tour which, like the album, was called 'I am Sasha Fierce'. We felt that we should include pictures of the music video we have created, we are not linking the video to the front and back cover, but as we plan for 'faces going places' to be Jose Vanders establishing song and video as an artist, we thought it would be relevant to include pictures from the video in the booklet to have something that consumers can relate to.

- We took a number of pictures when filming our video for the digipack, so we already have a number to chose from. 

We looked at Pixie Lott's album. She too had a booklet inside her CD, also containing song lyrics, the writers of the various songs, and a number of pictures of herself - the artist. She has used the 'x' in her name 'pixie' as a signature symbol, it appears on both the front cover, CD and in the booklet. I thought we should take this into consideration for our artist, especially as she is being introduced into the music industry. It gives her a signature symbol that consumers will remember her by and associate with her. I felt this couldn't be something random, and for the sake of it, so I thought about things we included in her video, and what we plan to include in her digipack, such as - cupcakes, a piano, teapots, scones etc. One of Pixie Lott's pages in the booklet, was a number of pictures, all of her personal life and her backround, such as school pictures, pictures with friends and family and holidays. We decided that we would like to do this too, as we have always planned for Jose Vanders to be relatable to the audience, and down to earth.

- As I am the artist, I have looked through many pictures from my personal life and picked ones which I felt would be suitable for the booklet, and maintained the image of Jose Vanders. We also took a few in school, again to ensure Jose Vanders' image remained. 

Questionnaire

I have composed a mini questionnaire for audience feedback.

Analysis of digi pack

Pixie Lott- Turn it up  ( indie/pop)

Pixie Lott is an electro pop artist. This is her first album (Turn it up ) although she is not indie  i have decided to do an analysis on this artist as she has a similar image to our artist. she is also very new to the music industry and  has only been on the music scene for a short period ( from summer of 2009 with her first hit 'mumma do '). We are also aiming at the same target audience. She aims at girls of 16+, but also appeals to boys as she she shows slight voyeuristic features as in seeming like ' the girl next door'.

This is the album cover
It is a close up shot of Pixie, with her iconic back combed hair. Although their is no eye contact she is showing voyeuristic characteristics, she is drawing the audience in by the way she is looking toward the direction in which the case is opened, by having the sight line at her eyes its creates a slight sex appeal as the artist is drawing the audience to her eyes. Their is also a sticker on the top left corner advertising pixie Lott's three hit records. This help to advertise whats on the CD and also makes the album seem familiar as the buyer will be familiar with some of the songs .

The second Page of the Digi pack booklet includes , Track 1 and 2 with their song lyrics and song titles. They are in a pastel blue back ground with a pale blue cross which symbolises the X in Pixie. The opposite page is a picture of the artist with more voyeuristic characteristics. This is the artist creating a different image to what can be seen on the cover.

Page 3 consists of a green back ground, with a lighter green X. with the  songs continuing on from the previous page.


The denotation of page 4 is the artist in with Bright coloured lighting, with her signature hairstyle, the connotation of the bright colours are to create a different image for the artist, this makes her seem less serious and pouty.

Page 5 is a continuation of the lyrics from the previous page . The background is a darker purple with a lighter purple cross.

Page 6 continues with the previous layout where their are lyrics on the left page and a picture of the artist on the right. In this shot the artist is showing More sex appeal with the m-e-s- of the picture, she is wearing a black dress and darker make up.

Page 7 and 8 is a double page long shot of the artist showing voyeuristic characteristics. This is to appeal at an older audience as she is trying show her maturity. But the out fit she is wearing is to lower the sex appeal by wearing a girly pink dress.

Page 9 is a continuation of the song lyrics, on a pink back ground with the signature X.

Page 10 is a casual image on the artist in shorts, a t-shirt and her signature hairstyle. This adds to her image of the girl next door.

Page 11  includes the last song and lyrics.  It then follows on with a list of acknowledgements for each of the songs ,this includes writers and co writers etc.

Page 12 is based solely on acknowledgements , advertising her website and the record labels she is signed to.

Page 13  is a thank you from the artist , with a hand written signature. This makes it more personal from the artist to the audience.

Page 14 a whole page of smaller tiled images, which are personal images of the artist. This makes the artist seem 'normal' which can make her more relate able for her target audience.

The back cover is a close up of the artist looking straight at the camera, with a pouty expression,  this is creating more sex appeal then the from cover , as the sight line of the artist contains voyeuristic characteristics as she is making eye contact with the audience.

The back cover of the CD case is a long shot of the artist, creating a sex appeal through the m-e-s, she is wearing black leggings and a baggy top. 

Use

M-E-S : From Kate Nash - Foundations. We took the idea of giving food a characteristic from Foundations by Kate Nash.

Filming : from Vanessa Carlton - a thousand miles. roughly same angles, close ups. We used the same angle on the piano to show our artist playing. The reflection from the piano gives a good effect and is something that we user a lot in our video with the piano.


Developed

M-E-S : from Roger Sanchez - Another chance. physically holding having their heart

M-E-S : from Kate Nash and Lilly Allen high cut tops but show a bit of leg one bold colour all the way down.  Very English

Challenged
M-E-S : playing for other people getting money, and loads of different scenes, very all over the place where as we have only her in the room playing for herself. They don't have a narrative
Editing :  Avenged Sevenfold & the kooks or oasis wonderwall. Do black n white for behind the scenes and all of ours is very bright and colourful
 

Evaluation

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

Used

When planning for the performance part of our video we researched into music videos which incorporate the piano as a main instrument, we decided that this would fit in to our video to show a performance of the artist.The conventions of this image relate to Steve Archers theory, he suggests that 'Music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the artist to show 'real connection' with the music'.Relating to this theory we decided to use the bird’s eye view shot of our artist playing the piano. We liked the shot from the Vanessa Carlton music video ‘Thousand miles’, and felt that it fit well with our music video, as it adds variety to shots which we used, We decided to used the same M-E-S which is used in Vanessa Cartons video, we did this by using a grand piano, the high angled shot gives the audience a clear image of the artist playing the piano, this makes the performance more realistic.  





Used

When planning for our music video we wanted to make it very literal and describe the lyrics. We looked up several artists who had similar conventions to what we were planning to include in our video. When looking at Kate Nash’s’ video ‘foundations’ we found a close up shot which we wanted to include in our video. The conventions of this shot refer to Andrew Goodwin's theory. Goodwin suggests that 'Visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music'. We have Incorporated this in our video by illustrating the lyrics through anthropomorphism's(giving objects human characteristics) to give a visual illustration to the lyrics. We thought this would be a good shot as it shows the audience a comical side to the video, it also fits well with the humorous mood which we wanted to create in our music video. It also the other lyrics have been emphasized in a comical way.

 Adapted

 

 When planning for the ‘looking at another woman’s heart’ scene we had several different ideas of what we could to keep the theme of describing the lyrics continuous throughout the video. When researching in to videos in the same genre we couldn’t find a video which could relate to the lyrics. We could remember that there was a video where the heart is a main feature throughout, we searched for it in Google and found the video by Roger Sanchez which distinctly show the heart growing and shrinking. As we didn’t have the technology to do this and that the heart wasn’t the main feature of our song we made a paper heart which was very iconic.




Adapted

When looking at similar artist’s image and style we found that all the artist we looked at had similar fashion characteristics. We noticed that Kate Nash had a distinctive vintage style. We decided to research her to influence our choice of costume for our artist. The photographs we found of her performing and posing at a shoot, showed similar styles. They were high-necked with a vintage collar (as shown above) the dresses had very distinctive, unique patterns on them. We adapted this to our artist by incorporating a similar dress styles. We chose a high necked vintage style dress, with a poka dot pattern. We had matching shoes which were the same color as the dress. When choosing the color scheme we found it matched discretely with the conventions of the station colors (red, blue and white).






Challenged

When researching into similar artists, who use the piano as a main feature of their video. We found this video ‘love song’ by Sara Bareilles she includes similar features to what we wanted to include in our video. But we challenged her take of playing the piano to an audience by having our artist play to an empty hall. This made it more personal as the artist is seen to be playing to the audience watching the video, compared to in Sara Barellies where she is playing to an audience within the video, which makes the audience watching the video seem like an onlooker.


Challenged

We also challenged the conventions of the video by Katy Perry’s video ‘Teenage dreams’ her video is very natural and seems as though it’s low budget and not professionally filmed. This is common with in the indie genre as the bands and individual artists want to show that they are ‘normal’ people, and show an approachable side. Our music video challenges this by having the artist in an unnatural location at the miniature railway station and singing to the camera, also how we emphasized certain lyrics 'women with a basket full of all her eggs, shes counted them to quickly she'll wake up and they'll be dead' makes the video unrealistic and challenges the conventions of this natural indie video.






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How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research Planning and Evaluation Stages

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How effective is the combination of your main product 

and ancillary texts?

Part 1





Part 2

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What have you learnt from your audience feedback ?

The embedded link above shows an annotated version of our video, showing what we found from our audience feedback. We conducted the audience feedback by showing Newport Free Grammar schools 6th formers, they are a mixture of  males and females aged 16-18. We got a mostly positive feedback which we have annotated on the youtube link above, along with the negative feedback. 

The diagram above shows the audience feed back, although only 153 people have watched the video they haven't left many comments. So we made a questionnaire for the 6th For Newport free grammar school to complete. 



Digipack Planning

Below is a link to a 'mind map' of the groups original thoughts and ideas into our digipack.


Digipack planning

Evaluation - Nadine Board

Audience feedback

• Write an evaluation questionnaire for Monday when our videos are shown to year 12 & 13
• Youtube embedment of both videos and talk about the comments written on it
• Quote some of the comments from Facebook and talk about their age and what it shows
• Talk about how some of the comments influenced our video and the changes we made from the rough draft
• Ask a group of our target audience

Questions to ask audience:

• Is it convincing??
• encourage to buy album??
• fit to genre??
• particularly effective parts??
• criticism??

Audience Feedback 1

It is important that we get as much audience feedback as we possibly can, and therefore we have made a youtube account for our video and have posted the video on facebook, the video linked to each member of the groups profile page. By doing so it will allow friends, family, and anonymous people to comment on the videos and share with us their feedback. It has been successful in both getting audience feedback and showing different technical skills. We have recently made some last minute tweaks on our music video, which we exported in todays lesson and transferred onto disc, we will need to upload this onto our youtube account as the finished product, in which we hope to get as many views and comments as possible. We tagged the video with a number of things from a2 media coursework, to train (all being relevant to our video) to ensure the number of views increases. Miss Mapp has also planned a showing of each groups music videos, and we have devised a survey of questions for the viewers in the assembly in order to get further and more detailed audience feedback.

Youtube Account - http://www.youtube.com/user/Siamese06?feature=mhum

Audience feedback

We have written a questionnaire for audience feedback where our video will be played in assembly to pupils at Newport free Grammar School. Their age range is between 11-18 and mixed gender. The questions we will include will be

1. Are you male or female ?

2. How old are you ?

3.What genre do you think this video is ?
Pop    Indie    Rock    R&B  Punk

4.Did you enjoy the video? Why ?

5.Do you feel the train worked with the piece? Why ?

Costume for Digipack

I have done some research into our artists costume for the album cover, we need to maintain the image we have created and therefore I have looked at the same clothing websites we looked at to find costume for the video. Websites such as topshop, urban outfitters, and independent vintage clothing websites. I looked at clothes by a designer called Catherine Ellis, who emphasises on the fact her clothes are made in England. This is appropriate to our artist, as we aim to emphasise on her being british, and we had previously done this in the music video by having her costume the same colours as the union jack flag (red, white and blue). This website was also great as many of the dresses were 'tea dresses', the type of dress we aimed for, these dresses being typically high cut.

Unfortunately we are unable to do the album cover we had originally planned and will now be using shots we took when shooting the video, therefore our artist will be in the same costume from the music video.

Album titles

We researched the original artist of 'faces going places' in order to find a number of songs she has also written. We selected three which we felt would be appropriate as the album title in our digipack, and that suited the theme of the cover. These three were 'stuck on dreams', 'swing life away' and 'sweet dreams'. I decided to get some feedback from other people, out of our group, to help decide on which of the three to pick. I also explained what would be on the album cover to help with their vote.

 As you can see 'Stuck on Dreams' was the more popular vote. I felt this feedback was very posistive as it helped me to realise that this probarbly was the most appropriate song title for our album and it suited the
theme of our cover well. I will take these results in

to consideration, when choosing the album title.

Researching Tearooms

Our album cover for the digipack, will show our artist (me) having a picnic on top of a piano, mixing her image with her music. The picnic will consist of small cakes, tea and scones, teapots and hampers all traditionally British elements that also match Jose Vanders image. We felt it important to include things specifically associated with Britain as we always wanted to emphasise that Jose was a British artist, and we have done so in the music video, her dress being red, white and blue and the location also consisting of these colours, that make up the union jack. The album title is a choice of 'stuck on dreams', 'sweet dreams' or 'swing away', and to suit either of these we wanted to incorporate a theme of Alice in Wonderland, which links to the idea of dreams but also works well with the picnic, tea and scones element as a famous scene in the story, is the mad hatters tea party.

 We have a limited amount of time to shoot our pictures for the digipack, and we need to do as much research as possible in that time, to ensure we get the image for this cover exactly right. We have decided, to visit some tea rooms in the area to get a feel for certain decor in the rooms, but also to understand certain elements we'll need to make up our picnic such as scones and teapots. We'll have to do this soon due to the time limit but we have only recently created a timetable to know when all of the group is free and we will use one of these hour periods to do so. We have also re searched tea rooms around the area to ensure we do not waste our time, in stortford there is one called 'delicious' which has been recommended by a number of people, however there seem to be a few more in saffron walden such as 'cafe cou cou' and 'Kims cafe' and saffron walden is closer to newport so we will save time. 

Planning for photo shoot

We took the time to create a time table which have a list of our frees and when our media lessons are so we can organise a time when we can take photos for the digipack. We have also spoken to the teacher responsible for the hall time table in order to book a slot in the next two weeks to take the pictures.

(we uploaded the pictures below by taking a picture from a blackberry, then uploaded to facebok and the transferred to the blog)

Music videos which include the Alice in wonderland theme

http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8215/Alice-in-Wonderland-Music-Video-Alice-Underground

The music video in the link above uses the same conventions as the Alice in wonderland film. The music video is a different genre to our ours and so includes allot different conventions. But we can still use this as inspiration to our digipack.

This digipack cover (the one for the link above) Shows a close link with the Alice in wonderland film.
The artist clothes shows a link to Alice, as she wears a similar style of dress .But as she is a more punk singer she has a black dress to show her image. Her tights have a pattern of the cards which are in the film, they are known as being a 'baddy' in the film as they would for the evil queen of hearts. This has been done as it can relate to her rebellious image .

The font is also linked to the film Alice in wonderland as they use the same font for the title. Which they have displayed on the cover .
The setting of the shot is also very pop/rock as it is a green screened back ground , whereas our digipack cover will be less animated as the indie genre is about more natural shots and including the artist main instrument.

songs

As a group we discussed briefly about songs.
We want this to be a big album release as it throws our artist into the music industry rather than taking little steps.
We went through a list of her songs to pick out which one will be the title of the album and Ellie & myself thought that one of the songs about dreams would be good as Alice in Wonderland is like a big dream. Although we are sticking by the original cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland we thought about the fact that Alice remembers a dream from when she was little and she finds out near the end of the movie that it wasn't actually a dream, she just thought it was.
For an album we have a maximum play time of 74 minutes which is roughly - if each song is between 3 and 4 minutes - 21 songs
Some of Jose's other songs

• Faces Going Places
• For Now
• Mother Theresa Can't Die
• New Ride
• Without Your Kisses
• Alberto Morrocco
• Swing Life Away
• French Place (ft. Jonah Maddox)
• Puppets
• Me Without you
• Matthew
• Ode to Gilbert
• A Little Love Song
• Peter Pan
• Literature Lovers
• Fins Song
• Madame Lenormand
• Man On Wire/Coffee
• Let The Light Into This Dark Room
• First Attempt at logic
• Deeds Not Words
• Canada's Hero Composition
• A Song For The Ignoble

Digi pack ideas

When planning the digi pack our group decided to  have the theme of the album to be inspired by Alice in wonderland ( the mad hatters tea party ) . We thought this would be appropriate as we have used a miniature railway which can be related to the Alice in wonderland story with the miniature doors . I have had several ideas as to how we can include the Alice in wonderland theme but still keep the shot focused on Jose and her music. The pictures i below show an idea of the props which can be included in the shot.

This picture shows the type of cakes and tea cups which we would like to include in our Front cover shot. The pastel colours are what we would like in our shot as they create the tea room image . 

This picture is a shot from the original Alice in wonderland 'mad hatters tea party' we are going to include the same conventions and themes as the film .

 This again is another picture to show the type of props we are going to include in the digi pack front cover.

Gwen Stefani

'WHAT YOU WAITING FOR'
Incorporates Alice in Wonderland very strongly into this music video
However she has added a very sexual feel to it and we do not want this. We want the innocence of Alice, the British side of it and the dream like random events.

Themes of album

The theme that all of our smaller themes originate from is Great Britain.
From Britain we have taken the idea of cupcakes, tea & scones, the colours (red, white and blue), trains, Alice in Wonderland.
Our main colours that we have aimed for when finding the costumes for our music video and Digi pack are the red, white and blue.
We have a lot of cupcakes in our music video and we plan to carry that on in our digi pack.
We have incorporated links to Alice in Wonderland into our work. There are little links in our music video which aren't as obvious until you see the digi pack. In our video we have a cupcake and Alice eats a cupcake to make her smaller in the film. We also use a miniature railway station and train, this links to the miniature door that she must go through. Alice in wonderland has also been used by Gwen Stefani in 'What you waiting for' She uses the tea party, being bigger than her surroundings and the maze. We are using the eat me cake, drink me label on the bottle of pink lemonade, the mad hatter's hat and the stop watch. We are also talking together about ways of having the white bunny. however this may be too much and rather hard to do.
We are have planned for Ellie to have a picnic on the piano with tea and scones as it is very traditionally British.

Pictures from railway- Digi pack

To do list

Tomorrow (11/11/10) we have a day off timetable to edit our music video's. We've done a vast amount of editing already but there is still alot that needs to be done. By organising a to do list we can use our time efficientely

• Start by filming close up of cupcake/meringue on piano
• Film more close ups of artist if needed
• Upload footage onto final cut express
• Go through each section of video, making changes and tweaks if needed
• Add suitable clips to where there are gaps in the film
• Edit film from the morning into the video
• Edit lighting in each clip
• Watch video and make more changes if needed

Tomorrow I will need to bring the costume our artist (me) wears in the piano clips and I need to check if Nadine is bringing the meringues which I can do over facebook

Genre - major record labels

1. Universal Music Group

The Universal Music Group sells more music than any other major label. They accounted for 25.5% of the market in 2005, according to IFPI. The group's well-known label imprints include Geffen, Interscope, Island, Motown, and Universal. Key artists are:

• Black Eyed Peas
• Mariah Carey
• 50 Cent
• Gwen Stefani
• Kanye West 

2. Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is the second biggest major record label in music sales. They accounted for 21.5% of the market in 2005. The company's well-known label imprints include Arista, Columbia, Epic, J, Jive, and RCA. Key artists are:

• Kelly Clarkson
• Alicia Keys
• Outkast
• Shakira
• Britney Spears

3. EMI Group

The EMI Group is the third biggest major record label in music sales. They accounted for 13.4% of the market in 2005. The group's well-known label imprints include Astralwerks, Capitol, EMI, Mute, and Virgin. Key artists are:

• The Beatles
• Coldplay
• Gorillaz
• Rolling Stones
• Robbie Williams

4. Warner Music Group

The Warner Music Group is the fourth major record label in music sales. They accounted for 11.3% of the market in 2005. The group's well-known label imprints include Asylum, Atlantic, Lava, Reprise, Rhino, and Warner Bros. Key artists are:

• Green Day
• Madonna
• Alanis Morissette
• My Chemical Romance
• Rob Thomas

(taken from wikipedia)

Progress

So far i would say our group is making a positive progress. We have a rough cut which its in the process of being tweaked ! which well hopefully be completed during our editing day on Thursday.  We also have a lot of extra footage which is very useful when editing. As in some shots we didn't realise at the time of shooting, that their was something in the background ( usually chairs ! ) but we have figured out away to crop the shot in order to get rid of the obstacle in the background.

During our editing day we are planing to film a meringue and gradually get closer so we can create a series of jump cuts, which we will include in the opening sequence. When we tried to edit it previously the shot became pixilated which didn't look professional. 

During our editing day we are also planning to take photos for the digipack.

Music Video Conventions

We have used most music video conventions in our video, such as camera movements, camera shots, editing and mise en scene. We didn't address lighting as much as we should of, and this has left us with the issue of fixing lighting issues in our editing sessions. Our video includes a varitey of camera shots, such as long shots, wide shots, high angle and low angle shots, mid shots and close - ups. Originally we were short on close ups of the artist (me), which are key in a music video so the viewer has a more inimate relationship with the artist and to show lip synching. After discovering the lack of close ups we had, we planned a slot of time where we could specifically film a number of close ups of our artist, we also showed close - ups of my hands playing the piano.
We mainly used the technique of panning for our camera movement, to establish the location of the miniature railway and to follow the movement of our artist. There are many jump cuts in our editing, to suit the beat of the song, especially in the sequence at the beginning when the music is quite jumpy. We also had to adjust editing to when the music changes in tempo, parts of the song being jumpy and fast and others being slower. The mise en scene in our video has not been used to create a particular theme, but to determine a certain style and to create the image of our artist. Both costume's and props contribute towards this, and the location added a certain random element but still linked to the song.

Indie genre

Although many people associate the term 'Indie' with a style of music. Indie can also be associated with the selling of music.  When searching for distribution of music online i came across this website http://www.indierecordshop.org/ . Which is an independent music shop which specialises advertising major bands and also local music shops ( not just of the indie genre ). This website shows a list of independent music shops. That can be classed as indie as they are not being funded by a bigger organisation E.G. virgin records is a huge organisation which doesn't solely focus on selling music but has also branched out in to selling other products which will give them a bigger budget to spend on advertising which smaller in dependant stored wont have.

Distribution of music in the news

Indies band together to stem UK music store decline

Physical music sales - such as CDs - have been falling in recent years

An online database of the UK's remaining independent record stores has been launched in an effort to stem a decline in the sector.

Fewer than 300 indie stores now exist compared to 774 in 2004.
The rising popularity of digital music is one factor that has hit the sector - of the 150m singles sold in the UK last year, 98% were downloads.

Indierecordshop will help people find their local store and showcase what it can offer, such as in-store gigs.
The website has been built and sponsored by Digitalstores and is supported by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).  ( copyed directly from the bbc web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8512404.stm )

This article shows how purchasing online music is becoming increasingly popular apposed to the original way of purchasing music via music stores . The indie genre has been a major influence on streaming music through the Internet as most unsigned indie band start by uploading their music to myspace and using the Internet as a way of getting their music heard. It is also a cheap way of distributing music which indie bands usually pref because they are working on a low budget as they are their only source of finance.

Album cover

I would like to enhance the theme of tea and cakes that has been seen throughout our music video.
I also want to develop the piano theme as Jose uses piano in almost all of her songs and it is a clear link to the music video. I have been coming up with more ideas that fit in with piano and picnics.
Picnic images:

 I think this is a really nice image of a picnic  to work around as it is very girly and vintage - vintage means that it is not effected by time, it will never go out of date or out of fashion). It has a big use of flowers which makes the audience think of summer and picnics is a summer thing. The use of poppies is also patriotic, it is to remember the sodiers lost. This could make the artist more marketable as it shows she is considerate of those lost and because there has been a big trend in help for heros.
From this I think that we should get some flowers for the set, put them in the basket as shown on this picture or have a bunch that look hand picked from a wild garden to the side.
This image also gives me the idea of a shot without our artist. It would still be very powerful.

I think the colouring of this image really brings out the vintage - however, it is a juxtaposition to our artist's bright and bubbly image given in the music video. The idea of having a teddy bear, on the other hand, gives it a vintage feel as well as girly as it links with having tea parties with teddy bears and dolls which is a very stereotypical thing for a little girl. This also sends out the image that the little girl in her has not died.

 In the majority of pictures that I found of picnics they had used a red and white checkered blanket. I think that this would be best to use so that we have the traditional picnic set up. Going for a traditional set up links in with the idea that we want to have a traditional British tea and cakes theme.

This is a good picnic hamper for our set as it is very red which is one of our main colours. Polkadots is also in fashion with girls 12 - 27 which is perfect for our target audience. It is very girly and bubbly, perfect for our artist image.
The actual picnic basket is very cute but small so it will all fit on to the set we have chosen, but is also a very traditional wicker picnic basket. Sticking with a red and white checkered lining.

This is a very good example of the kind of set up we want; as it is very girly and child like, the teddy gives it that vintage feel and it incorporates our cake theme. This picture is another example that we could add in a picture without the artist in our digi pack.

I need to think about the kinds of foods to have at the picnic.
I want to stick to the theme of cupcakes and these show as a nice example of the kind of cakes we could have. Fairy cakes with light pink icing. Having light pink icing gives an extra hint of girlyness without it being too girly.
Fairy cakes are good as they are very dream like.
Meringues would also be good as they are a link to the video as we use them on the grand piano.