Like many pop promos we have used a narrative and our pop promo tells a story, this is used in many pop promos to attract the audiences attention and then keep hold of that attention of they watch the whole music video. We challenged mainstream pop promos, who chose to show of the artist by using close up shots and revolving the whole music video on them to construct a star image, by choosing to not include our artist in our pop promo, we created a mysterious star image. Although some bands similar to ours don't always show their artists explicitly they usually have a cameo role like Fat boy Slim does in some of his videos whereas we chose to not represent an artist at all, This was critiqued by out lecturer and classmates as they felt it would have been nice include maybe a DJ set or even the artists name on an iPod or CD cover just to break up the narrative a little bit.
Our narrative broke the conventions of typical pop promos because in stead of using a heterosexual couple we decided to use a homosexual couple this helped to break down common boundaries and prejudice in the media.
How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?
Our Promo, Digipack and Print Ad are all linked by common themes,.
In all three the idea of rushing traffic is present with the time lapse footage in pop promo, and the blurred rushing traffic photos in the inside cover of the digipack and the print ad. Our Print Ad and Digipack are also linked with the type of font we used, the computer style font runs through both texts this helps to link them together giving the maximum marketing potential. We also used saturated bright colours in our Print Ad and Digipack this is also apparent in the pop promo with the use of bright costumes and scenery especially the coloured cushions in the bar scene. The Digipack design contrast nature and urban moods with the use of sunset versus traffic and our pop promo also does this with the rushing traffic contrasting against and ambient song.
Our artist is a mystery across all three of our texts, as he is not in the print had or the pop promo, although he does appear in the inside cover of the digipack, his face is blurred so there fore he is still cloaked in mystery, we chose to do this create suspicion and rumour about who the artist is and we thought it would be a nice homage to other bands of the same genre.
We decided to use a homosexual relationship in our pop promo but we strayed away from using the stereotypes of lesbians, we used normal girls to portray them this helped to create the representation that homosexuality is normal and everywhere you look, you just have to notice it.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The typical audience for our pop promo would be 18-25 year olds as our music has quite a niche audience although younger people may finding it appealing as well, the average age of the participants of our questionnaire was 19, I don't believe that there is any gender preference for our genre of music and in our research we found that 45% of females and 55% of males like electronic ambient music, although there is a slight increase towards males its not significant enough, I feel our audience would be more middle class because of the genre of music and the settings in the pop promo I.e. the university and the modern bar.
When we viewed our pop promo in class we good both good and bad feedback, everybody understood the message we were trying to put across with the idea of both characters being in same place and the randomness of being in the same bar but they all said they wished there had of been more “almost meetings” with the characters. People also commented on the amount of time lapse this worked for some people and other people said their was too much of it.
The class also said that it was easy to follow the characters and it was the narrative was clear throughout, everybody said that they understood what was happening and the relationship between the two characters was clear.
We got good feedback on our experimental use of cinematography in particular the use of the camera as a mirror, the time lapsed traffic scenes and the use of a good variety of shots.
In regards to mise en scene, the feedback showed that the audience liked the use of colour in Jessica's characters clothing and in the bar scene they said that it worked well with the song and the bright colours really helped to make the scene stand out but I feel that Nicola's character could have been wearing more colours in the everyday scene as her costume didn't stand out as well as Jessica's character.
Our final edit works well with the music and the pace of the song, the edits change with the beat of the music and the action is timed to the beat of the music for example when Nicola's character taps her fingers on her leg when she is in the bar. I feel that the locations in our pop promo are good as they reflect a modern life, the university building is new and the bar is vibrant and fits in well with the song, the bar was a more suitable chose that a club as we felt we were creating a representation of more middle class people and they would be more likely to hang out in a wine bar than go to club and this also helps appeal to a slightly older audience.
I particularly like the shots we used in the bedroom scenes of the characters putting on the belts and the graphic match we used from on character to the other and this is the same for the make up shots we did where the camera acts as the mirror and I feel that the shots are framed well. Although if I could go back I would have lit the bedroom scenes with Nicola's character better as they were slightly too dark.
The audience reacted well to the print ad and digipack designs, the feedback we got (which can be seen in previous entry) shows that they felt that they linked well with the use of the same font and the idea of nature and traffic, they like the fact that the rushing traffic theme flowed from the digipack through to the print as and they felt that this connected the two texts rather than them being two separate texts. The layout of the text was well received by the audience and the word arrangement of the album name and artist name was particularly well received although some felt that the text didn't stand out enough. The use of colour was also liked by the audience and the saturation of the colours in the digipack helped the picture to stand out. As a whole the audience feedback suggests that our promotional package works well together because of the linking themes in all three elements, the rushing traffic, urban feel to the setting in bother the digipack print ad and pop promo and the use of bright colour. If we were to be advertising this album in real life I would probably use the internet and forums to display the advert as this is what other bands of the genre have done, as their audiences use the internet a lot. I feel the 3 elements of our promotional package would appeal to the target audience as it uses abstract ideas and concepts and is a bit intriguing. I feel our target audience would react well to the digipack and print as design because they make the ordinary look extraordinary.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the research stages of my project I used the internet to help find out about similar bands, the history of pop promos and in finding out which Lawrence King song to use. I found that bands how are similar to Lawrence use the internet to promote their music and albums therefore the internet was a very valuable tool in helping my research, websites such as You tube helped me to find the music videos I need to research pop promo. Lawrence King also uses a site called “last FM” where he posts songs he has made for the public to listen to this was really helpful when it came to choosing a song for our promo.
In the planning stages I used blogger to publish all my research and planning this helped to keep track of all the work I had done and made it easy to reference the research in my planning, on here we also posted out storyboards which were scanned into the computer, I also used photoshop to create a mood board for our project, this helped me to create a visual representation of what I wanted to tone of our promo to be and it also helped to highlight which types of costumes and props I wanted to use,
In production we used a Canon HV30 DV Camcorder to film all the footage we needed, using this camera I have learnt how to manually focus to create effect. We also used a Velbon DV-700 tri-pod to keep the camera steady while filming. To gain the photos I need for the digipack and print ad I used an SLR camera and I decreased the shutter speed to allow more light in creating the traffic blurs in those texts. We then captured our footage into Final Cut pro editing software were we edited our captured footage to create our pop promo, during the edit we increased the speed of the footage to create the rushing traffic time lapse effect we also reversed some of the footage and sped it up to create the effect of going back in time. Photoshop was used to enhance the picture I took on the SLR camera to create the print ad and digipack, after enhancing the colour I cropped the pictures to the size I wanted, I also added the correct text need to make it look like a digipack and a print ad.
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