ALL- Signifiers in still image from music video

Signifiers in this pictures include :

• The hair style, long styled into a slight quiff could signify him being from a upper/middle class, and that he is of a sophisticated manner. 
• The direction of his eyes, his gaze out of the frame, not looking directly at the camera, could signify he is looking or longing for someone else from the distance, this is the preferred reading we have hoped to give across to the audience. 
• The Misc-en-scene of the location being a  rural area, surrounding him could signify loneliness. However the metal railings could give of an oppositional reading, as the railings are maybe hinting a footpath, which shows there will be people walking through this area. 
• The white top, could signify purity and innocence, also the white pale complexion could help signify this more, with the rosy cheeks. 
• Also the white v neck top is open a little bit at the top, maybe signifying sexual connotations. 

All- Mag Ad Draft

This is the 1st draft for our magazine advert.

We have used this picture but it isn't going to be the one we use in our final draft. We chose white text to stand out against the dark background colours. We chose to include the date of release and where the digipak is available so the audience know when and where the came purchase it. 

The words 'New Generation' have been used to show the new boyband.

All- Mag Advert Teaser

Here you will see a teaser for our magazine advert. We decided to do this because it was originally a draft and teasers are a thing that are common in magzines.

We have done a teaser. We found that some artists to this before releasing their magazine adverts. We would publish this in the similar magazine to the advert. Such as Q magazine, which is a music focused on music, mainly indie/ rock scene but does feature other genres for example boyband and rap.

EF- Target Audience

When talking about it, me and Mel, basically come to the conclusion that the male sex would definitely not be the target audience we are trying to attract. It seems clear that we are most likely to be attracting the female audience, with this age 17-18 being the medium age, to show this target audience we are using cast members of a similar age who are going to be of course male. 

By re-releasing a song released originally in 2001 we could be attracting audiences of around 20 - 25 who were say 12 at that age, as N'sync would of originally attracted that age with it being the pop genre. 

Also by using a female in our narrative you could also argue that male gaze theory could be present, which could then attract male audiences.

MA- Cast Updates

Originally our boy band consisted of 4 members. Temour, James. Matt and Jack. As previously said in our audience feedback we were advised to re-shoot our performance, this was due to many reasons for example the boys clothing could of been better and more of a typical boy band and one of the members didn't seem to be taking it seriously and it was therefore bringing the performance down.

The prospect of re-shooting has meant that some of our original cast members cant continue because they have commitments  so we have recruited two new members form our 6th form.






















We will still be using our original footage using the two actors in our narrative. Sophie and Charlie. 

Charlie

Sophie

We now have to re-shoot everything rather than just get more footage, we understand that this is going to take more time.

All- Digipak Draft 1

Back Panel

Front Panel

EF- Magazine Research

Q Magazine 

Q is a music magazine which is published monthly in the United Kingdom. The magazine has an extensive review section, featuring: new releases from music , reissues of music, music compilations, film and live concert reviews, as well as radio and television reviews. The website for Q magazine has a poll questionnaire on the right hand side on the front page, with questions such as Which is Noal Gallagers Best Album? indicating a focus on Oasis straight away.

The website also offers a subscription to Q magazine monthly which is a good marketing technique. You can also sign up to a Q newsletter via the website. It also compiles a list of approximately eight albums, which it classes as the best new releases of the last three months. Most of the magazine is devoted to interviews with popular musical artists. 

Such as Cheryl Cole , Professor Green and Noel Gallagher. Q magazine monthly features well known artists/bands normally about something which has happened that month. Previous covers in 2012 have included Florence and The Machine  in 2011 interviews included Jessi J and Muse, and Adele . The first ever Q magazine published in 1986 cover featured the likes of Paul Mccartney, Rod Stewart and Elton John . 

The only boy band however who was big in the 90's to be on the cover of Q was Take That, who even though N'sync were not on the front cover, Take That were still very popular and still are. 

OK Magazine

OK Magazine is mainly a celebrity and gossip magazine mainly aimed at women, where as Q is I would say mainly directed at males. However they sometimes appear to have interviews with bands/artists about their up-coming songs/albums such as Joe McElderry .

They have also conducted an interview with Westlife who are a popular boy band who were trying to sell their new album, this interview basically marketing the album and single.

A magazine like this would be good to include our magazine add, as it it a magazine with the main audience being between  16+ to around 40 I would say, also fitting our secondary audience. 

MA-NSYNC Magazine Covers

It has been quite hard to find magazine adverts online for NSYNC. Im not really sure why this is but i think it may be because they broke up in 2002. However i have found a few magazine covers and i think these will help us when looking for ideas for our magazine advert. Here are some examples.

As you can see there some common aspects in these pictures. For example the members of NSYNC all wear clothing that ties in together. This was very common of the 'boyband' era. Also they all pose together, they are not about looking individual. Another point is that even though Justin Timberlake is clearly the lead singer (this became more obvious in the later NSYNC songs) he is not standing in the front in every picture, nobody is made to stand out. 

We want to use these examples to influence our own image for our mag ad. We want to use the idea of having the band pose as a close group. It was said in our feedback of our first performance footage that the band should be wearing more similar clothing to help create a cohesive image.

EF- Filming Update

After gaining some vital audience feedback from a 1.00 minute sample we put together for our class to view, we realised we had some changed to make especially to the performance as one of our original members did not appear to take the filming seriously and let the rest of our members down for the boy band this then effectively ruined the whole of the performance we filmed for our music video.

Some people also said we could have done with some more movement and emotion from our boy band members due to the nature of our song being a love song about a break up, the emotion just wasn't shown there. We were also told we could need more behind the scenes footage for our whole music video, but mainly performance.

We were also told that we could make our boy band look more together and as one, rather than separate like they were looking in our original sample. To do this we could increase the costume demand we place on them and insist the wear the same clothes, and also we need more costume changes and maybe more locations.

This has obviously resulted in us having to re-film our performance which we are hoping to do on friday this week.

MA- Nsync CD Covers

These are a few examples of covers we have been looking at as research for our own digipak.

We we found from the research is that the conventions of Nsync. The boy band are always all present on the cover. It is quite common for the boys to be stood in a line. The boys seem to switch position which is surprising because Justin Timberlake is the lead singer but if we look at the last 3 covers these were towards the finals years of NSYNC and you can see that Justin is centre in all of them. 
Also the text placed on the picture the band name NSYNC is always in bold and large font with the single or album name in smaller size. The covers overall see to be rather plain without much image manipulation, something which we may challenge in our own digipak cover.

ALL- Audience Feedback of Sample

Audience Feeback


We put together a opening sequence for our music vid during last week which lasted approximately a minuet and will be uploaded very shortly. 
Below is our audience feedback : 

• Members of our class said we had zero camera movement so this could be improved in our re-shoot of performance
• We need to re-rip MP3 and re-lay audio track 
• We could start with a group shot and then individually introduce members of the band.
• For our mirror shot for the narrative, we could maybe play around with layering. 
• Opening scene is maybe a bit to long for the narrative so cut this down a little bit.
• Overall we need faster paced editing, maybe some jump cuts.
• Bed shot - Multilayering and fade Sophie out.
• Additional behind the scenes footage of the band. 
• Costumes more together, more white colours - white t-shirts etc, bringing the group together more by having them wear the similar things
• Simple Choreography for the boyband.
• Dont introduce boyband straight away.
• Dont need all of the shots of the main boy in narrative.
• More signifiers of relationship needed for the narrative in misc-en-scene.
• For the narrative we could have Car Keys - bottle of drink to signify guilt maybe? 
• Ducks and bread for a romantic scene in narrative.
• Do want some skin showing, not just buttoned up.

Over all we have taken this feedback into consideration and are organising a re-shoot.

EF- Reply from Record Label

EF - Contacting The Record Company

We previously contacted the Sony Records through their feedback page as we could not find an email address linking directly to the licensing company for Sony Music. However there reply to our feedback gave us an email address to their licensing company to contact in order to ask for permission to use the song for our coursework. 


The email address we have now contacted is www.licensingny@sonymusic.com.
This will hopefully be the last time we have to contact the record company, I am now awaiting a reply. 

MA- Digipak Ideas

Digipak Ideas


We have been thinking of some possible ideas for our digipak.
One idea is for the outer panels. We have been looking at some if the digipaks from last year and   have found that one common convention is to have the back panel showing the reverse image of the front image. For example our idea is to have a picture of the 4 boys stood in the moor background and to have the same picture of the boys backs on the moors. 

This is an example of Linkin Parks digipak which shows the front and back pictures being in relation. 


We like the idea of having water in our shot as the performance part of our video is partly shot at a river. We were thinking about possibly taking the pictures from the reflection of the water but we need to test out this idea first to see if it works. 
we have has some idea for what to do for the inside panels. We want to make it different from the outside panels and we also want to use some effect on it. We were thinking of maybe using some pictures from the narrative side of the video and super-imposing the boy band into the picture. We need to play around and see what works.

MA- Digipak Testing of Idea

Digipak- First Draft


For part of our coursework we have to produce 2 ancillary texts, one being a digipak and the other a magazine advert from the digipak. We have to research digipaks and gain knowledge on the common types of conventions and also to gain ideas for what to do for our own digipak.
We are doing a boyband song and therefore need to look at current and past band digipaks.
This is our first draft of the front panel.


We have done a number of shoots and i took pictures at these that we could possibly use for our covers and back. We have decided what we what to put the picture in black and white, this reflects the video and parts of that are shot in black and white and also is common for a slow boyband track. The original video is entirely shot in black and white. The idea to have the boys on the moor was partly ease as we where there shooting and also the background of a grey sky reflects the mood of sadness from the video. 
We wanted to have the boys spaced apart so that they fill the picture. A sticker has been placed in the bottom left corner so that it doesn't interrupt the image and it is done in a deep purple to stand out from the black and white. The purpose of the sticker is to highlight that it is a digipak and that the video is for 'Gone'. 

EF- Contacting Record Label

In order for us to use our song for our coursework, we were asked to research into the record company and either ring or email the company asking permission to use their song. 
Our song is Gone by N'sync, and when the song for released and the video produced the band were under the record label of RCA Records which ultimately is owned by the big record label Sony Music. 


When try to find the contact details on the site me and Mel both struggled to find a contact email, and UK Number to ring so we decided to ask for permission via the feedback website for RCA Records leaving our emails, we hope they will get back to us. 


Unfortuanatly what we sent will not show in the box below when published on Blogger, however this is the image below showing how we contacted the record company. 


When Contacting the Company we sent this : 



Hello I understand this is the feedback centre however me and my partner Melodie Abraham have been struggling to find a contact email for RCA Records. We are both 6th form students at Ilkley Grammar School in England and  We would like to ask permission to use a song produced under their record label it is called Gone By N'sync, as we would like to re-create the video for our school media coursework. And we wondered if this was possible? please reply to ellie-ruane@hotmail.co.uk or melodie.abraham@hotmail.co.uk. Thankyou 


Yours Sincerely 
Ellie Fry and Melodie Abraham 
Ilkey Grammar School
Ilkey 
West Yorkshire 
United Kingdom 



    

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ALL- Sample Footage

This is a 60 second sample from the latest shoot combing both narrative and performance.

Initial Researching Audience

Here is one of the ways we gain knowledge of our target audience. We asked people who we around 18 years old and we asked them basic questions about boy bands. We used boy bands from the 90s including the boy band we have chosen to see is they were fans of the boy band.



From this we discovered this that 12-24 does seem to fit well of our idea of our target audience. They knew the boybands from the 90s although they would only of been 8 when this song 'Gone' was released. Because of this we have decided that a secondary audience could be tweens 8-12 year olds. Another secondary audience could be an older audience. 24-45 as this age range would of been fans of the original NSYNC. Another secondary audience could be the "pink pound" this would be gay males of the same age as our target audience.