I have been effective in communicating the star image as a part of a campaign – considering the distribution of the product and the brand image. Ultimately the brand image I wanted to promote was an alternative/indie and organic artist. This is important for any campaign or concept for example, in the campaign for example this could be compared to actual artists like Lorde. Emily Teadrake from Polydor records argues that the pitch for any concept had to be consistent and marketable e.g. making of the Ellie Goulding music video was key to the success of her song.
Second, I feel that I have given the campaign a unique selling point through the star image. The star image I have promoted is organic, indie and alternative. A unique selling point used in a coherent campaign will provide different opportunities to market the star image. An audience who is able to spread word of mouth about a publicity campaign can ensure success through the engagement with the text as a form of online media – helping spread, circulate and distributing meaning amongst fans.
Finally, I have technically delivered a coherent looking campaign (dig-pak and website) through the use of image and online social media. The music video promotes a release from the album release whilst the website acts as an effective online toll which helps distribute and promote meaning for a fan base. The circulation and spread of meaning by the intended audience helps with co-option (Boyd) amongst the fans and aids me with the marketing and promotion of the album.
Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something.Conventions can be used, supported, reiterated.They can be challenged to deliberately brake and/or subvert conventions, for example a convention that we used in our digipak is to have the name of the singer bigger then the album now, this draws attention to their name and makes them more recognisable.
In evaluation of the question set I feel that I have drawn on the conventions of media products in my own campaign.This use of these conventions is evident in the construction of my own products, for example, having a graphic website homepage with the artists name on the page. This is supported by my own research into websites because almost every website I looked at had the artists name in big on the home page of their website, they also had a logo or a photo of the artist so they become recognisable.
At the same time I have sought to develop and been able to challenge conventions, for example, I have put a personalised message on the inside of the digipak, most artist don't do this, however I felt that as our artist was unknown a little note inside thanking the fans would add a nice touch and help the fans to connect with her. The reason why feel that I have achieved this is to differentiate my product in a competitive music industry market and I have attempted to challenge audience expectations, bring something new to the media forms. Media Conventions are ultimately relied upon for communicating the right message to the intended audience, but also deviate from these expectations helps sell the star image that I wanted to promote. Audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in a text, and their understanding of conventions, for example in my website design the audience said that they liked the photo of Neveah but thought that buttons were to big so we went back to re-draft it and make it so the audience would want to interactive with it.
With our dig pak we have gone with the typical conventions so we have the titles of songs, the name of the artist and the album, the record company, website, bar code and details. We have also decided to have the singers face being shown throughout the dig-pak so the audience can get familiar with her face and her branding.
Tove Lo and Foxes are artists who I took inspiration from because they both are upcoming and relevant and they both have their face on the front of their dig-paks so the audience can see who they is. We can see this with a lot of new artists when they release an album so this is something we wanted to do with our artist since she was new and upcoming.
I like how all the names of the artists are one of the main focal points on the dig-pak cover because this will help to get their name/brand well known. Foxes and Tove Lo also use quite bright colours which will stand out amongst the most other CD digipaks.
We want to make our dig-pak organic and indie to represent our artist. This will be her unique selling point and hopefully make people want to buy her album.
Here are our rough drafts that I drew up:
These rough drafts were a good starting point for our digi-pak however we chose a different direction to take the cover as we wanted it to be more about the artist then the design. But this was a good start to help develop ideas.
Music websites are supposed to provide information in a entertaining and engaging way. They are there to help promote the star image and create an online community or fan base. A homepage needs to be interactive and help to navigate to other parts of the site.
For our website we decided to stick to the most common conventions of a website, these included having a homepage with social media tabs on, photos, links to music, tours and news. Because our artist is a new upcoming indie artist we didn't want to have a website that was to confusing for new visitors. Having a website that is graphically interesting but not to hard to figure out is what my aim and hopefully we would have achieved that.
A homepage design that we looked at for inspiration was Tove Lo's:
A convention of a website is to have a photo of the artist (as seen in Tove Lo's) so therefore that whats I did with ours:
We have a music page on our website where you can go and listen to her music linked from Spotify this makes it easier for new fans to listen to her music:
Tove Lo also has her music linked to her website fro Spotify so this shows that this conventions is normal of websites.
We have tabs and social media links so fans have easy access to everything the artist has to offer and the artists star image can seem approachable:
Tove Lo also does this and so do multiple other artists so therefore it shows that this is a common convention to have on a website. However, Tove Lo doesn't have her social media at the top of her homepage (you have to scroll down) so therefore she may seem less accessible then our artist:
We also have a mailing list so new fans can sign up for emails and updates. This is a normal convention to have so fans can stay updated with tours and merchandise.
In What Ways Do Your Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?
"Conventions are like a language, which when shared operate by means of conventions. They are often not written down but are hidden or unspoken rules that we learn to accept and recognise"
Music Video
A music video is one of the best way to promote an artist and a brand. As our video had a solo artist we decided to use close up shots of her which would make the audience get familiar with what she looks like. I did this with everything element that we had in our music video:
I decided to use a close up for each element to keep our music video consistent and makes the audience able to recognise her face. This also is good position for the eye to focus on her because it is using the rule of thirds so therefore the eye is drawn to her face and it makes the video look more artistic because its not an obvious head on shot of her face.
In my video I used a wide, mid, close and tracking shot for each element. So therefore we stuck to the normal conventions for a music video in terms of camera angles. However, we did try and make our tracking shots more interesting by moving the camera over her body or the dancers bodies instead of their faces which you would see in a typical video.
A music videos function is to promote a specific single (or album), promote an artist and creates a star image. We were promoting a solo artist so we would have close up of her and although we did have dancers we chose to have more shots of the singer so the audience can get familiar with her. I had her lip-syncing because this is a typical convention in music videos that we decided to stick to and not go against it.
A video that is similar to ours in terms of shot angles is Selena Gomez's "Good For You' video. She has close ups, mid shots, wide shots and tracking shots. The only aspect that she doesn't have it the dancers. Selena's video is similar to ours because you can always see the face of the artist, although we did have dancers so we had to cut back to them often, every time we would see our artists she would be lip-syncing to the camera (which is a typical convention of music videos).
A convention that we included to give our video an extra element was adding a performance where we have a boy and girl dancer. I had them in each of our elements to match the singer however, they didn't lip-sync they only danced.
Our video was loosely based around the film The Fifth Element so therefore we had symbolic projections of the elements. This helped to give our artist a very organic star image and make her look more indie then mainstream.
Using just projections breaks the conventions of most music videos because most videos would only have a snippet of projections in the video but to challenge these conventions and to make them stand out against other videos of our genre.
I made the video quite artistic to enable our artist to have a organic and original look to her. The genre of music also does not really lend its self to typical upbeat colourful videos so therefore I think that our video worked well with the genre and style of music.
I used the conventional technical codes of camera angles, sound and framing it was our lighting that was more un-conventioal because our video was quite dark and mainly lit from the projections.
Our video is the same length as most must if a bit shorter. So I don't think that it really challenges any conventions because most music videos are around 2:30-3mins long.
Selena Gomez's video length:
Our Video length:
However, this article "Music Video Length" states that the ideal length of a video is 3-3:30mins long so if we were to analysis our video in terms of statistics then our video would challenge conventions because of how short it is.
I found it hard to find a video like ours so therefore this may show that our video challenges conventions and is new and interesting just how we want our star image to be for our artist.
With this draft I thought that there was too many pictures of her on the dig-pak so I played around with different image
After (Rough Draft 2):
This is my draft dig pak. We did a shoot the other day with our artist and I think that the photos came out really well.
However, I like my dig-pak front cover and back cover but I am struggling to get the insides right. I have tried multiple different designs but haven't managed to find one I like.
With the front and back pages I thought that have the back and an image of her back is quite powerful and I added all the barcodes and the record company.
We also decided to change the name of the album because Nevaeh spelt backwards is heaven so naming the album heaven was a good idea in theory but when I put it on the digipak it didn't look very effective so I decided to change it to "See Me Now" which is the 3rd track off the album.
