Emily Patrick - Question 3

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

----Our group chose the song Secrets by artist Natalie Lungley. We
identified the genre of the song as being Trip Hop, a mixture of blues and
jazz music infused with electronic music created in Bristol in the 1990s.
Our main inspiration for our video was Lana Del Rey, a highly popular and
successful Trip Hop musician, but we also took inspiration from similar
artists. These included artists Paloma Faith and Mariana and the Diamonds
for they also share either a Lolita-like energy and/or a vintage Americana
and American sweetheart appearance and theme. We addressed all the
typical conventions within Trip Hop, but also developed upon some so that
it would assist our video in becoming more unique to us.
We also made sure to analyse the target audiences of such artists so that
we could figure out how to target their likes and dislikes, as well as
discovering ways in which to distribute the promo to them so that we
could get the best possible reaction from them. Firstly, we established the
age of our target audience. We felt that it was best to aim our promo at a
young audience, within the age range of 15 to 25. The themes within triphop can contain themes of drugs and alcohol which are inappropriate for
the immature audience, but our song choice luckily does not heavily
involve such themes so we allowed for a slightly younger age rating. The
youth also spend most of their time listening to music because it is a
popular emotional outlet for them whilst they suffer through hardships
within their personal, social and school lives. As well as this they have a
lot more free time to dedicate to listening to music. Whilst we want our
video to appeal to both, it is most likely to appeal to females more so then
to men. They may consider it too emotional or maybe even consider it as
a song where the vocalist is just 'whining' and have preference to more
upbeat songs. But females stereotypically are more emotional and
sensitive, so it may appear to them more because they may feel they
closely relate to the emotions within our video.
In terms of demographics, we believe that people of the C2, D, and E
socio-economic categories will be the main consumers of our promo. This
was because music is likely to pay a large part of their daily life. They can
consume it during school during their studies, through radios to create
atmosphere in a shop or to listen to whilst going about a craft, such as
builders work. We feel that group E would most likely consume it due to
having more free time, but C2 and D groups may consume it more so for
the purpose of escapism. With psychographics we think that Aspirers and
Strugglers will most consume and enjoy our video. Aspirers are likely to
enjoy the materialistic imagery in our video and the appearance of our
actor may appeal to their enjoyment in pursuit of status and materialism.
Whilst the Strugglers would enjoy the escapism elements of our video
because it will be something that they can relate to and use to outlet their
emotions.
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Emily Patrick - Question 3

For our preliminary we decide to recreate Rihanna's Diamonds. At the time

we did not have access to the advanced camera equipment that we had
for our final piece so our major piece of feedback was to make sure that
when we created our final video we used higher quality equipment. Our
preliminary was filmed on an iPhone, but our final piece was filmed on a
Canon E0S 100D using a Tripod. We also had access to a GoPro Hero 4
which we were planning to use for our underwater shots. However we
didn't end up using any underwater scenes in our final piece. We also
wanted to focus on the editing, making sure that the quality of the piece
was not further decreased in the post production process. For our
preliminary we used iMovie, but when we created our final piece we had
access to Sony Vegas Pro 14 and After Effects CS6 which allowed us to go
through post production using the highest quality settings and it meant
that when everything was rendered, we had no quality decrease. These
programs also allowed us to be more precise, making our editing sharper
and more professionally edited. We also wanted to use better composition
within our shots as they were either too close or the framing of our actor
was off and it didn't look right. In our final piece we made sure to really
concentrate on our framing and how everything looked within it to make
sure that it looked professional and well thought out. In comparison, the
jump between the quality of our preliminary and our final piece was huge.
Our preliminary was a huge learning curve and it taught us how to
approach a music video.
During our research stages, we used various strategies to learn and
establish what the audience seek in a video and how to approach our final
video. One way in which we did this was with the creation of vox pops. We
took a diverse selection of people with different musical tastes and asked
them a series of questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

What genre do you listen to?

What's your favourite music video?
Do you prefer narrative or performance?
What is your preference: illustration, amplification or disjuncture?
What would you like to see in a music video?
Where do you watch music videos?

We found this tremendously helpful as we were able to establish exactly

what our target audience like and dislike about music videos and
furthermore it gave us information as to what social media to target when
posting our video. Through our vox pops we cumulated the following
results:
1. The most common genre that people listened to was Rock and Pop.
Two very juxtaposing genres. Pop videos are usually oversaturated
and promote a positive lifestyle with themes of love and sex within
the narrative and lyrics. However Rock is the polar opposite.
Typically, rock promotes negative emotions because it is a common
outlet of depression or other issues within the artist's life. Unlike pop
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Emily Patrick - Question 3

they do not contain many, if any, colour. Usually they're in black and
white. They're performance focused, as opposed to pop songs which
contain narrative, and go against the norm of the mainstream song
industry. Trip-hop contains some elements of both these genres. It
expresses the artist's inner emotions like rock, but uses narrative
and vocals like a pop singer. The colours are not oversaturated, but
they're not black and white either. They're almost earthy or have a
vintage look about them.
2. The answers were incredibly varied here. But the most prominent
answers here were Gangnam Style, Anaconda and Bohemian
Rhapsody as they were incredibly successful and watched by
millions. We evaluated what it was about each video that
contributed to its success so we could figure out how artists made
their songs stand out from the crowd. Gangman Stlye was created
by Korean Pop singer PSY. It reached the top of the charts for a while
in Britain in America, something that K-Pop usually doesn't achieve.
So we took a look at what it was within the video that made it so
successful. The video follows all the typical conventions of a pop
song, it used oversaturated colours, there was dancing and a large
amount of performance pieced together with small narratives. But
overall we decided that what made it so successful was its comedic
charm and the dance routine featured within it, which became a
popular dance craze around the world. We then looked at Anaconda
by rap artist Nicki Minaj, the video featured Nicki twerking half
naked with other women with lots of sexual connotations and
innuendos throughout it. We believed that perhaps it was the
controversy of this video that caused such an outrage and that
therefore established more publication of the video and added to its
view rates. Overall though, the video follows typical pop and rap
genres in which women are over sexualised and they're featured
throughout the video with close up shots and high angle shots so
that they're shown off like a product - which most videos of this
genre do as the artist and the ideal is essentially the product that is
to be promoted. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was also another
video we took a look at. Bohemian Rhapsody is a song that is well
known by all generations due to its diversity throughout the song's
melody and themes itself. But at the time of its release - 1975, most
companies did not create music promos to accompany their songs,
so it was revolutionary that Queen did. It enabled a way for the
artists to appear on such shows such as Top of the Pops without
even being there. As well as this it also used revolutionary special
effects which were not achieved from post production editing, but
created using tricks on the camera such as specific camera lenses
or filing monitors. From these three videos we established three
ways in which a video could be made successful and unique: add
something that is out of the box and unusual so that the audience
becomes surprised and replay the video and share it with a friend,
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take advantage of the press by using them to publicise an article

about our video so that it creates attention, and try something new
and never seen before, so that it changes the way in which people
approach videos.
3. We established a draw from this question, people seemed to enjoy a
mix of both narrative and performance. It created an equal balance
between the two. If it was just performance heavy then it would
become boring to our audience, but narrative alone could not be as
exciting. We felt therefore, amplification would be the best approach
for our promo. Because through this we can establish a narrative
from the song and mix in some performance shots to create a
harmony between them both and establish a form of synergy.
4. Most amount of people said that they preferred disjuncture, then
illustration and then amplification. Those who said that they
preferred disjuncture told us that it give the producers entire
creative freedom when working on it. It makes it different amongst
other videos and it is exciting for people to watch as they don't
know what to expect from the video. Also, it provides a uniqueness
to the video and makes it somewhat more memorable to the
audience which can spread into publicity through people sharing it
with one another.
5. Factors of a music video that people told us that they enjoyed were
attractive performers and a strong narrative and performance.
When it came to our actor auditions we made sure that aside from
being reliable, our performer had pleasant features. The camera
focuses on the performer for the majority of the video, so we feel
this is why people want an attractive performer because they may
feel more engaged. This supported by the performance and
narrative of the song itself will make it an exciting video that the
audience can engage with and will enjoy watching.
6. This question was incredibly useful as when we posted our music
video, we wanted it to reach as many people as possible. YouTube
was the most dominating answer. Most people would use YouTube
on their mobile phones or laptop when they're at home. YouTube has
a number of features we felt would be highly valuable to our final
piece. YouTube has a feature in the video description to share the
video to a number of social media websites, including the most
popular ones such as Facebook or Twitter. The video gets shared
with their friends or followers and it will gain more publicity and in
turn be shared on by other people. A lot of our target audience
consume such media sites and bring things that they have
discovered on the internet into their social life when at school or are
hanging out with their friends, so by taking advantage of social
media we can be on a more personal level with our audience. This is
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Emily Patrick - Question 3

also useful for us as well, because YouTube will provide a link to the
video which we can share to specific people to gain their responses
and feedback.

The first stage of planning feedback was our focus group. The job of
creating a focus group was to pick a small number of potential target
audience and place them around a table with a feedback sheet then play
them our song of choice. The feedback forms were as follows:
Our focus group was established so that we could ask them what they
would expect to see in our music promo, just by listening to it. They would
write down their answers onto the sheet and give us valuable ideas. We
accumulated similar answers, which was that they expected to see a
young woman throughout the video with depressive themes and imagery.
One idea that stood out to us specifically was one member envisioned our
actor walking along a train track, thus the idea for that came about.
Heartbreak was another prominent theme through the answers, of a love
lost or forbidden. Overall from the focus group, we established a strong
narrative. We initially decided that we would have a female actor and
performer, and a male actor. There would be a hint that they're in a secret
relationship, to tie in with the title and lyrics of the song, and for whatever
reason can only be together at secret places. We decided to make a
disused railway station that had been converted to a home in Rippingale
as our location for their secret hiding place as it was one of the only
places we could visit that still had rails and would be safe enough for us to
use. This was the most fitting storyline for our song as it amplified a lot of
ideas and themes within the lyrics and created a strong synergy between
vocals and visuals.
Our initial idea for our ancillary was to incorporate our male actor and
performer within opposite sides of the ancillary, to give it more of the
impression that they were searching for one another. The front cover
would feature a photo of our performer, the reverse featuring the lyrics
and the CD would have petals incorporated onto it. However because we
eliminated our male actor, we decided to give more focus towards petals
and our actor. We decided to have use colour isolation on our cover so
that it was black and white, but anything coloured red was still coloured.
We wanted to really focus on the colour of roses and make them the most
important feature of our video as well as our ancillary. To further expand
on this theme we featured photos of our artist in our forest location to
emphasise the down to earth lifestyle that is prominent in genres such as
trip-hop.
When planning our MeS we wanted to incorporate our audience's ideas as
well as our own which we created from our influences. In regards to
costume, we took most of our inspiration from Lana Del Rey. Lana always
wears elegant clothing that looks like it could've been assembled from
pieces of clothing found in an attic room box. Her choice of clothing give
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off vintage impression and it isn't over stylised or boasts expensive labels.
It made her appear more down to earth and natural which fit the themes
and ideals of her music and her image. But it also still gives her a
glamorous appearance. We also took influence from our focus group which
gave us the impression that our female actor should appear quite
effeminate and so we made sure to add to the glamour of our actor by
giving her glamorous looking makeup which had a rich red colour,
therefore it also fit in with our themes of roses and the repetitive feature
of the colour red. Then for our poster, we also made our performer the
main aspect of, making sure she was the center of the composition. At the
top of the composition we incorporated the artist's name in a stylised font
which was influenced by the ones used by the artists who inspired us.
Then at the bottom we placed our record labels, social media and other
such similar information in smaller writing. The decision to do this was
because the artist is the product of this promo, so they must be the most
prominent image of the poster. The second biggest feature was the title,
so that people could quickly associate the face with a name and it could
be quickly recognised. Lastly, we placed the other information at the base
of our poster in the smallest text because it will be the last thing that
people looked at. The aim of the poster is to primarily draw people in and
get them interested in it and then its secondary aim is to inform the
viewer of the details.
One issue that we had with our raw footage was that a lot of clips weren't
steady. We unfortunately had to film on an incredibly windy day which
shook the camera during filming. But because we wouldn't be able to
return to the location again after our allotted dates, we turned to post
production to fix our clips. In Adobe After Effects there is an effect called
'Stabilizer Warp' which analyses the clip to detect motion, then processes
it so that it can be steadied. It eliminates a shaky camera and instead
gives it either a still impression or a look as if the clip has been filmed
using a stedicam system. This feature was incredibly useful in our editing
process at it eliminated the need to do any extra filming in one location,
therefore more time could be dedicated to other film locations and no
need to return to the same locations. Another problem with our raw
footage was that the camera was too still. It became apparent in our
rough edit that it could be somewhat boring to watch because they didn't
have much energy to them. So we made sure when we filmed
replacement footage for the railway that we didn't keep the camera
cemented to the tripod, but also film scenes whilst we held it. We did this
for our forest scene photos and made sure to hold our tripod so that there
would be movement within the clip. When we applied this to our video it
made it more exciting to watch as it put more energy into our video before
even changing the pace and choice of clips.
When we finished our initial first edit, we found that the pace of our clips
were too slow for the song - even if it is a slow song. It became boring to
watch and some of the clips didn't work. It was apparent with our railway
scene clips that they just didn't work well. Our actors were shy around one
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another and it showed through the clips, which made them look too
awkward together to pass as a couple. Therefore a lot of the railway
scenes were cut from the final draft as they didn't work with our video and
they didn't portray the themes of love and relationships as well as we
wanted to. We felt that instead of using railway scenes, we could go about
other means to portray themes of love and dying relationships. We did this
through the imagery of the rose. We felt this was most appropriate as it
synergised with our other locations, most of all Grimsthorpe gardens, but
because roses have connotations of love and are usually given as a
romantic gesture. But roses also have thorns on them which could be
symbolic of wounds and scars, which could connect to a damaging love.
Therefore we could establish the themes of love and heartbreak in our
video through alternative and reliable means without having to worry
about a male actor within our piece.
The initial design of our ancillary incorporated a rose into the center, in
front of our artist. However our feedback informed us that it didn't work
out. We especially found it hard to place onto our poster as well, because
it stood out awkwardly instead of blending naturally into the piece. Our
feedback also stated that our artist was too low in the composition, and
that she needed to be centred. So when we created the final draft we kept
this information in mind. We took out the rose in the center and replaced
it with numerous petals because we could eliminate or duplicate as many
petals as we felt was appropriate for our poster. We then moved up our
artist and placed a box at the bottom of the poster for all of our detailed
information so that it was kept apart and separated from the rest of the
piece, giving more attention and emphasis to the artist and artist's name
on the poster.
The feedback we received on our final piece was positive. We managed to
improve the pace so that it was more entertaining to watch and we
managed to stabilise the majority of our clips. We added in clips that
contained deliberate camera movement and incorporated different
versions of a dying rose projection scene. This created more energy, depth
and symbolism to our video that linked well with the lyrics of the song and
created synergy with our ancillaries. There were only minor things that
needed to be fixed within our piece. There are still some shaking clips
which needed to be addressed so that our video looked more professional.
But overall we had addressed previous issues faced by our initial first
draft. The use of the rose projections were also successful, the theme and
idea of them were obvious and it added much more depth to our video
which made it open to interpretation.