The Final Blog

“Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't”
-Robert Wyatt

This is a statement which I can fully understand. Before making the pop promo video I thought pop music and its videos were all very simplistic. Using simplistic music and visually attractive videos to target a younger audience. However, after planning and creating our own pop video I realized just how challenging this task was and how complicated pop music in fact was.

During the research and development stage of the pop video we as a group encountered many problems and difficulties. We had three main problems, the treatment, location and the song. The first problem we had was the song, we had chosen one song but then we got an opportunity to work with The Toy Hearts. This meant we had to think about whether or not we wanted to film the previous song (Up in the Clouds- Darwin Deez) or The Toy Hearts. Once we had decided on the song we then found difficulty thinking of a treatment for the song as we thought a performance video would suit them best but needed a way to make it original and interesting. This is how we came up with the orbiting camera. The third and final problem was in the location. We initially had planned to shoot at a very grand location in Winchester, which would make the environment for the performance very spectacular. Unfortunately this location fell through due influences out of our control. This meant we had to come up with a new location, in the end we used the TV Studio as we felt we could make the visual interesting through the spinning camera.

If we were to re-do I think we all decided that we probably wouldn’t use the same orbiting camera technique as we just felt it added a slightly comedic tone to our pop video. This is not the style of video we were aiming for so this was an oppositional reading.

Although we probably wouldn’t use this orbiting camera technique if we were to create the video again it was received very positively in the focus group. When we asked the focus group if they liked it they all but one thought it added something very interesting and different to the pop video which hadn’t been showcased in any other pop promo videos they had seen.

Director's Commentary - Audio Recording

The director's commentary we did for our pop promo video is above. The directors commentary was simply a voice recording of me and Storm commenting on certain aspects of the pop video whilst the visual was shown. The purpose of the directors commentary was to try and get the audience to understand better why we did certain things. It was also a way of getting the audience to engage better with the pop promo video as they understood it better.

Task 3: What I learnt from my audience feedback

We gathered a range of feedback of our pop promo video and our ancillary texts, the Digipak and the magazine advert. We collected the feedback from the target audience and from other audience demographics according to the JICTAR model. We also got the data from a focus group, YouTube a questionnaire and other sources. Once we had collected this feedback we looked to answer this question:

“What I learnt from my audience feedback”

When constructing our pop promo video we had to think very closely about what audience we were going to target in order to sell our band as a brand. We had to think according to JICTAR who we were aiming for. We decided that for our pop video we were aiming for A,B and C’s. This is the higher spectrum in the socioeconomic climate, they have more interest in high culture and would be more interested in folk music. . This accounts for 50% of the population in the UK. We were also targeting a mixture of males and females, however some may believe we were targeting males more due to the two attractive female members of the band. Our main target age group is 16-25 and then 25-60, this audience would be fairly well educated as the video is fairly abstract. We also had to think about our audience’s aspirations, we decided that these were to make money and to retire at a young age and live comfortably. We didn’t really have a particular area for our target audience to live in, however on a real movie or pop video they would have specific areas and locations where the audience would live.

Unfortunately, we were unable to put the video up on www.youtube.com. This made it difficult to gauge quite how popular the video was, as we couldn’t count views or see comments. The only way of having a similar experience take place was to show it to family, friends and peers. We tried to do this as much as possible as we needed to try and get an all round view of how the video was received.

To try and get some audience feedback we held a focus group. This consisted of 11 16-18 year olds, this was one of our target audiences so was very helpful. There were 5 males in the room and 6 females. We had a very lively discussion about their thoughts and opinions on our pop promo video. We wanted to ask this group a few questions about out pop promo video. This was so that we knew what to do better in future; it would also show what we should avoid. We wanted to ask this focus group several questions about the video. For example: Did they enjoy it? Did they understand the message? How might it be improved? We decided to hold a focus group as opposed to a questionnaire or any other means of data collection for many reasons. The main reason was that we could follow up any answers that we found interesting or helpful to our data collection. This method is also instant, which means less time is wasted handing out questionnaires or asking people to fill them out. It is also very easy to see whether people are being truthful, this is essential for us as younger people may be more inclined to fill out a questionnaire slightly sarcastically. We also wanted to ensure all data collected was as accurate as possible. We had to write a set of questions to ask our focus group; we had to think very carefully about exactly what we were trying to find out. We wrote our questions and kept them very open to ensure the focus group had to think about the answer rather than just a yes or no answer. The questions we asked are listed below, the answers are listed below the questions:

1) What did you think of the video overall?

“We couldn’t understand the lyrics” “It was very amusing”

2) What message do you think was being portrayed?

“All about having a good time” “Having a fun, carefree time”

3) Do you agree with this message?

“Yes, they looked like they were having a lot of fun whilst shooting the video” “This is what pop music is about, having fun”

4) What narrative do you believe was being shown?

“I don’t believe there was any narrative being portrayed” “If there was a narrative, it was unclear”

5) How is each member of the band represented?

“They all have a natural chemistry” “They look quirky, slightly odd” “The blonde girl looks slightly in your face” “They all look very natural” “They all bring a different aspect to the image of the band, all individual”

6) Do you think they had the potential to be stars? (This was to see if they had what Richard Dyer defined as “stardom”)

“Not in England, no” “Possibly in Europe” “They look too random to be stars”

7) Is the video entertaining?

“It was at the beginning but began to feel slightly repetitive” “It was very different to any other pop video, so yes” “It was broken up nicely by the different backgrounds”

8) Do you identify with any of the band member? (This was to see if the audience were provided with “personal identification” in terms of Blumler and Katz theory)

“No, they are too old for us to identify with” “They are in too much of a niche market to identify with”

9))What do you think could be improved?

“More time focused on their faces” “Slower spinning” “Stop the spinning every now and then to allow a rest”

10) Did you find the spinning distracting?

“Yes, slightly” “Only towards the end of the video”

11) What would you give the video out of 10?

“7” “5” “8” “9”

We found the answers to these questions all fairly positive and what we had hoped for. We were very pleased of how highly they rated out pop video on a scale of 1 to 10, especially given that the video is targeted at more of an older audience.

As well as the focus group we also showed the pop promo video to a lot of our friends, family and peers. This was to try and get another form of audience feedback, as we weren’t able to put the video on YouTube. When we showed the video a lot of people commented on how much they liked the spinning aspect of the video. They really liked the originality of it, the fact it had never been done in a famous pop video before was something they loved. They did also think that the video could’ve done with a bit more of a narrative to the video as they felt it was slightly repetitive after a while. They really liked the stage setting towards the end of the video as they felt it was showing this band in their natural atmosphere.

Blumler and Katz are 2 sociologists. Their theory states that a media product should provide the audience with 4 aspects, these are: Diversion, Surveillance, Personal identification and Personal relationships. We looked to apply this theory to our pop promo video:

1) DIVERSION
During our focus group we asked them whether they were entertained by the pop promo video. This is very essential as Khuleshov states that a media text has to entertain the viewer for 70% of the time to provide the audience with a sense of diversion. 7 of the 11 focus group said that they were entertained for 100% of the pop promo video so were subsequently diverted. The other 3 members of the group were not entertained were only entertained for 50% of the time so were not provided with diversion.

2) SURVEILLANCE
Surveillance means providing an audience with a feed of information from the outside world. This is very difficult to portray through pop promo videos, however some acts, such as Live8 and U2 have been able to do it. These are called Electronic Shaman’s in Carlsson’s terms.

3) PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION
In our pop promo video we had the two attractive and young girls then the older men. We were aiming for the girls in our focus group to identify with the younger girls in the group. However none of them said they identified with them. The boys in the group also said they were unable to identify with the male members of the group, as they were all quite a lot older than them.

4) PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

When asking the focus group if they felt any relationships were formed we had very mixed responses. Most of the group, 9 of the eleven said they didn’t feel as though any relationship was formed. This may have been due to the fact that the band were all quite a lot older than most of the focus group.

Stuart Hall’s is another theorist that can apply to the pop video and its audience. His theory states that a media producer communicated a preferred meaning through a media text. The audience then has one of three reading, preferred reading, oppositional reading or a negotiated reading. This can be applied to our pop video, we as producers communicated a preferred meaning through our media text (the pop promo video). Our target audience then had one of three of the readings, meaning they accept the message, negotiated meaning they partially accept the message and oppositional, meaning they oppose the meaning and reject it. We saw this same theory apply to our pop video during our focus group. Around 8 out of the 11 members said they accepted the message that they were having fun and enjoying themselves. However, different age groups may see this is different ways. Some older may think they are having sexualised fun. Whereas younger people would think more obviously, just fun.

Another theorist that can be applied is Aristotle. Although his theory is not specifically designed with television in mind he can still be applied. His theory has 3 different categories: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos (credibility) means convincing by the character of the author. These “characters” can be anything from pop stars to presidents. The second category of Aristotle’s categories is Pathos (emotional), this means persuading by appealing to the watcher’s emotions. Our media product didn’t include this; this was to subvert conventions of other pop videos. The third and final of Aristotle’s categories is Logos, this means persuading by the use of reasoning or writing.

If we were to re-make our pop promo video we probably would’ve included more of a narrative. This is because we found that the focus group believed more of a narrative would’ve helped the story vary. We also may have considered the orbiting camera shot a little more to see how different audiences responded to it. This was because the audience said that the spinning became slightly tiresome after a while and made the video slightly confusing. The spinning camera also meant that audiences weren’t able to engage with the band members, as there was no close up shots.

Blog Task 2

The Creation of Magazine Advert

A magazine advert is a document designed to be placed in a magazine to advertise their tour, a new album or a relaunch. For our magazine advert we chose to do an advert publicising a new tour which The Toy Hearts would be performing. The magazine advert should be carefully designed to promote the band in a good light to sell the brand. An audience will look at an image and will initially have a denotation, this is what can be said about an advert, and for example, it is a green background with numbers and letters. A connotation is what an audience may deduce from and audience or what they may read, for example, an audience may read this background as sci-fi and very technical. These connotations can vary dramatically from person to person depending on their JICTAR class and their socioeconomic background.

Our magazine advert was designed to do two things, sell the brand image. This means that the advert must make the band and their music seem appealing. The second is to sell tickets to the gigs, which will ultimately earn money. This is a huge part of the music industry due to illegal downloading and the fading CD industry, bands now make most of their money doing tours or gigs which are also very costly to put on. This means they must very carefully market their gigs or tours to ensure as many tickets as possible are sold as possible to ensure the tour is profitable and the band can make more music.

On our magazine advert we used many of the same elements as the Digipak cover to ensure a sense of synergy across the whole of the Toy Hearts brand. This is to try and increase brand recognition so the band’s literature is instantly recognisable by a large audience. These synergistic elements were both the brown paper background and the stickers and pin up girl design. We also placed some different elements on the magazine advert to provide the audience with some jouissance in Barthes terms. Jouissance in Barthes’ terms means pleasure through the unexpected. We included all the dates for the band’s tour to ensure the interested audience could purchase tickets. The font of the band reflects the band’s essence which is eccentricity and playfulness. We also put “sold out” images over some of the dates to make it look more realistic, and to imitate the conventions of other magazine adverts.

The Creation of My Digipak Cover

A digipak is a paper CD cover designed to encase the CD in a plastic tray. A digipak contains a front cover, a back cover and two inlays. These all feature different aspects to the band which we want to audience to see, this is to help construct their band identity which will help sell them as a product. We created our digipak on Adobe Photoshop as I am very experienced with this software so I took most of the control in this task with input of my fellow group members who helped me to brainstorm and come up with what we thought the band were about and what we could put on the digipak cover.

The digipak is what a potential audience will see first off in a music store, this means it is essential that our digipak cover stands out and reflects the band in a good light. We had to think about all the different connotations that an audience could draw from each image or typeface put on a digipak cover. The brand image for our band was a fun, playful and slightly eccentric. To try and create some sense of synergy across all The Toy Hearts products we kept two elements the same throughout the whole project. We thought about different images which would reflect this idea of eccentricity that we could include on our digipak. In the end we thought about an old rustic style background to help reflect their heritage as an organic band that have been performing together for a long period. We also thought about a way of demonstrating their personality as a fairly retro band, this is where the stickers in the bottom corner of the digipak came in. These two elements synergise across all of The Toy Hearts literature that we created. This is to exaggerate synergy and to help “The Toy Hearts” brand be instantly recognisable.

Our front cover features the same background and bottom left design as all the products. It also features an image of the whole band overlaid onto scrunched up paper to give it more of an “unpolished” effect as we want the band to seem rugged and slightly carefree. We felt the scrunched up paper was the best way to reflect this. Another element on the front cover is the band name and the album name. The band’s name is written in a fairly wacky typeface to help represent a bit of the band’s personality. Whereas the album name is written in a fairly sinister font, this was to represent the two girls in the band and the message in the song.

The first inlay features the typical background and corner design. It also features each member of the band’s instruments close up. This was to help exaggerate the fact that the band’s music is organic and they play all of their own instruments, unlike many pop acts in the charts today. We wanted to keep this inlay fairly plain and simple because all of the other inlays are quite busy and have a lot going on in them.

The second inlay features the same background and corner design. It also features the lyrics to the song we did the pop video to. We put these in to imitate other digipak covers that are on the market nowadays. This is also to help the audience feel as thought they have some interactivity with the digipak. This inlay also features two images of the band’s logo. The top logo I created by copying a Jack Daniels logo then getting rid of the logo and creating our own for the band. I did this because The Toy Hearts said to us that they liked this style. The logo below is The Toy Hearts real logo which we used. This is to promote the real band as this loo will be instantly recognisable to any fans.

The back cover features the same background and corner design as the other Toy Hearts literature. This cover also features the tracklist to the album; this was partly to imitate convention of other album covers. It was also to tell the audience what was on the album if they were considering buying it. There is also a large image of a double bass, I took this photograph and believe it looks quite good on the back as it is a nice photograph and showcases the band’s real essence. The back cover also features a barcode, a copyright logo and a record label. This is to imitate conventions of other digipak covers and also to make the digipak seem as realistic as possible.

TASK 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are five stages to a production according to film theorist Richard Maltby. These are research and development, pre production, the shoot, editing and distribution. Exploring the conventions of a pop video we imitated in the main but subverted on occasion.

During the research and development stage we looked very extensively at other pop promo videos. We did this for many reasons, first to think about a potential treatment. Then, to see whether pop videos similar to ours subverted or imitated conventions of pop videos. The main ones we looked at were artists such as Mumford & Sons, Imelda May and Sarah McLaughlin. This was after the band had said that they favoured this style of pop video. We thought about whether they imitated or subverted conventions in terms of Keith Negus’s 11 conventions of pop videos, these are:
· The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption

· The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)

· A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement

· Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing skeletal structure for the promo)

· A possible narrative structure

· A possible performance element

· The flexibility to disregard realism

· Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track

· Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGI, in-camera effects)

· A carefully constructed Mise-en-Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

· High impact instantly

Khuleshov, the Russian film theorist, says that over 70% of the meaning and feeling of a media text comes through the visual. Even in a pop video where the song is being sold the visuals are crucial. So we had to think what out message about the song and band was to be and how we would put this over visually.
We also had to think how we were going to communicate genre through the visual not just the audio. We studied the theorist Roland Barthes, who believes that to realise genre audiences should have two main factors, jouissance and plaisir. He believes audiences require these two factors in order to realise the genre of a media product. Plaisir is the pleasure through the expected and jouissance is pleasure through the unexpected. We paid close attention to Barthes’s theory during the creation of our pop promo video. We imitated some conventions in order to fulfil the audience’s need for plaisir, the joy through the unexpected. We also subverted the conventions in order to supply the audience with jouissance, pleasure through the unexpected.

When constructing a pop promo video the director must think about the song and the video combined and how they will come across to the audience. Our song was trying to portray a very seductive message that a girl should be free, and should not try to be constrained or caged in. It is also trying to portray the story of a promiscuous girl who likes to lead men on. This fits the band’s image very well as the two main singers of the band are attractive females. The band’s image is a very simple one they are an eccentric, wacky British born and raised band. They are an organic band, meaning they are performing music of their own accord and are not being forced to by a record label. This adds to their band image as this makes them a more alternative band.



This shot depicts the basic idea of our pop video, the orbiting of the camerae. I believe our whole video follows the Negus rule "High impact instantly". This is because it is a very alternative to any other contemporary pop videos. The colours in the orbiting shots were all very carefully crafted to ensure the shots worked as a whole.

When I say the camera is orbiting I mean that it is doing a constant tracking movement through 360 degrees and then carrying on to do the same again and again. Tracking is a gentle movement in our pop video, taking the audience into the action and very close up to the artists. The camera is circling which is a gentle movement which goes left to right with the viewers eye. The shapes in the mise-en-scene are gentle shapes also, such as the double bass and violin and there were no threatening diagonal or sharp lines anywhere in the background. All of this works on film making conventions to say gentle and pleasant. We do cut to the beat in the main when the track does cut and follow Negus in this. But we subvert Negus in our sense of almost unreality for the group as portrayed through that orbiting camera.



This shot depicts the whole band in their entirety, as our pop video didn’t really have any specific storyline it is difficult to relate it to Keith Negus’s conventions. However, this does follow “The featuring of the artist, almost without exception” rule. It also follows the rule of thirds as the two attractive girls heads are in hot spots 1 and 2. The colours are also very relevant in this shot as the colours are bright and vibrant, exaggerating the band’s personality and the song we did, as it was a very upbeat and fun song. This shot is very similar to a shot shown in the Mumford & Sons video of “Little Lion Man”, this is a good thing as when we asked the band for inspiration they said they were very fond of this particular video. The Mise en scene in this shot is very plain; this is because we wanted the audience to focus on the band rather than being distracted by busy backgrounds.

This shot depicts very clearly a member of the band playing their instruments. This follows the “Wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement”. This shot also demonstrated the fact that the band is organic and play all their own music rather than singing over a pre-recorded track or lip-syncing.

This shot depicts the band on a stage singing whilst there is an audience, as well as lights. This shot follows Negus’s rule of “Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGI, in-camera effects)”. The lights in the background followed this rule and ensured the scene was flooded with light. It also supplied the scene with some sense of special effects and creativity.




The Digipak also has an instrumental role in the challenging and imitating conventions. The Digipak does imitate the Negus convention “The featuring of the artist”, as it depicts the whole band on a stage. I feel the Digipak reflects the band very well as it looks aged due to the worn background, however features bright colours which I feel makes the Digipak feel more modern and will stand out on a shelf of CD’s. I also believe it promotes their brand image as it is quite retro and features some iconic elements such as the Coca Cola sticker.







This is the back cover of the album cover, the background and corner design is very similar to the front cover and both the inlays. This creates a sense of synergy and also a sense of recognition throughout the whole brand and this background and corner image will also be on the advert poster. This also uses a mixture of dark and bright colours to exaggerate the heritage of the band, as well as also showing the retro feel with the corner images.






This is the magazine advert. It uses a lot of the same elements as the Digipak such as the background and corner design. This creates a sense of synergy across the Toy Hearts brand and their products. It also makes all of the elements instantly recognisable to their target audience. The use of the brown background suggests a Khaki theme, linking back to soldiers in the second world war. The image of the girl in the bathing suit is also from that time and I used Bookman Old Style font which is one often used to convey the 1940's and 50's. This era is one that our band are fond of and play a lot of songs from, hence the very colours, images and shapes connote the nature of our bands music. The red, white and blue of course stresses the American links.