Pitching to The Class

When I presented my potential ideas for our music videos for my A2 coursework, I listened to feedback of my idea from my peers. The feedback I received was mainly to do with how the set would look as in the studio, there is limited resources, and making a set look realistic within the small space on next to no budget is almost impossible. My peers told me that there was 2 options, where I could try and make a big and fantastic looking set, however, it most likely wouldn’t look as good as the idea that I had in my head or that I could go for a minimalist set design, which wouldn’t be as time consuming and if done effectively, it could look as good as the elaborate set build. Even though the group didn’t go with the ideas that I had for the music video, like the 1920s style video, we did use the main piece of advice that was given and used a very minimalist set build which was used effectively. 

From the feedback from my presentation, we narrowed down the ideas that I had to two final ideas, I chose to develop the 1920s style video to a song by caravan palace and the video for the song fell in love with a girl by the white stripes further. I chose these 2 ideas due to them being my preferred songs out of the ideas and the video ideas I believed were good and I thought that they could be good as developed ideas. The 1920s idea would have had flapper dresses and neon lights to reflect the song which had a modern sound but with 1920s elements and would have started in black and white but as song progressed, more colours would have been added. The second idea was a love story between two people in a crowded bar, and they exchange looks and the man goes around the bar to try and find the girl to the backdrop of a band playing fell in love with a girl by the white stripes with Scott pilgrim style animation coming from the band.

Pitching to a Creative Director

When we pitched to a creative director, we had an idea of what we were going to shoot and we had the idea of objects floating in the air in a house and a woman singing a song while walking through the house of floating objects. The idea was quickly shut down by the creative director due to the complexity of the idea, and we didn’t have the knowledge of how to effectively use adobe after effects to make the effect look convincing, so we searched for a song and other videos we like, and I showed a video called les cactus by the last shadow puppets which was a performance video which had many different aspects to the video which made it more intriguing, so we decided on a performance video with a twist like the les cactus video and we designed the twist to be a behind the scenes of a music video shoot, where it would show the production of the music video as well as the actual music video and a photography shoot and the preparation for the shoot. The song I found, was agreed upon by the rest of the group as well as it had a 70s style and that was the style that we wanted as a group from the beginning, we pitched the idea to the creative director and we got the green light to start preparation for the video.

Test Video

We created a test video to show an idea of what the final product would look like. We showed it to the teacher and to the class and the feedback we got was very positive, some people even said that it was good enough to be the final video. Below is a list of the praise and criticisms we got from the class and teacher.

- Gabbi is perfect for the role as her look fits the voice

- Add the third element to make it more dynamic

- trumpet way too fake

- sweet and sour combination works well

- backstage practice element needs to be added

- some of the costumes works

- maybe reconsider gabbi's costume

- different costume for other sections

- create batch of shots instead of single

- distinction between backstage and on camera

- middle 8 needs a new section

And for the problems, we created a list of our solutions to what we were criticised for:

-Olivia is getting a real trumpet to fix the fake trumpet problem

-We will have a third and maybe fourth element in the final product

-Reconsidered Gabbi's costume, the old one made her look very young, the new one makes her look a bit more like she could be the true artist of the song

-More costumes have been provided by the cast, with cool suits for one of the other elements

-To create a distinction between what is behind the scenes we will change the colour grade and lighting and maybe add channel tags

-The middle 8 will also involve the third and fourth element to make it more dynamic

Focus Group

For the focus group, we created a list of questions that we wanted the focus group to answer, the list consisted of:

-What are your thoughts on the digipack? 

-What are your thoughts on the website? 

-Based on the digipack and the website, what words would you use to describe the band? -Based on the digipack and the website, what genre of music would you expect the album to be? 

-What are your thoughts on the music video?

-Is the video consistent with what you expected from the digipack and website? 

-And would you listen to the bands music based on video, digipack and website?

We weren’t in the room for the focus group as we would have intervened while the group were answering the questions and made them be more complimentary to the video as they wouldn’t want to offend us. So we got someone else from a different group to ask the questions about the digipack, video and website and they asked the questions that we prepared for them. We took careful consideration over the questions, as not to make them leading, this meaning that the focus group would answer truthfully as we don’t guide them to answer what we as a group want to hear, instead receive a variety of criticisms and praise. We however did record the focus groups audio so that we could review exactly what was said.

From the focus group we got these criticisms:

Digipack:

-Problems

  -The front page didn’t fit the style of the rest of the pack

  -Eddie is the least pixelated which shows him clearer which makes him look like the lead

    singer

  -The orange colour isn’t as good as the rest

  -Change the back cover also as it has the same issue as the front cover

-Solutions

  -What needs to be done is to put Eddie on the bottom panel and Gabbi on the top

    panel, create a new front and back design, and make Eddie more pixelated/make the

    rest of the band less pixelated.

Website

-Problems

  -Get rid off the cream colours

  -Have more information of the band

  -Get rid of the clay models of the band

  -Don’t fit the style of the video or digipack

-Solutions

  -To change this, we only need to remove the claymation, write a bit more about the band,

    add in the merchandise, and remove the cream colourings

Video

-Problems/solutions

  -Add more of the behind the scenes so that it looks less random

  -Maybe change a few of the shots, track shots to hand held don’t work

-Praise

  -Matches in well with the other products

We recently showed our digipack, website and video to a focus group. A focus group, is a group of people meant to be representative of the target audience for the three products, they review the products and tell us what they liked and what they didn’t like. This lead to developments in the products based on their criticisms.

In preparation for the focus group, we exported an early cut of the video, printed off five copies of the digipack and shared a link for the website, and gave them to a person that was responsible for asking the questions which we prepared in advance, we could not be in the room with the focus group so that we would not influence their answers. Emily created 7 questions which we asked

What are your thoughts on the digipack? What are your thoughts on the website? Based on the digipack and the website, what words would you use to describe the band? Based on the digipack and the website, what genre of music would you expect the album to be? What are your thoughts on the music video? Is the video consistent with what you expected from the digipack and website? And would you listen to the bands music based on video, digipack and website?

We took careful consideration over the questions, as not to make them leading, this meaning that they answer truthfully and we don’t guide them to answer what we as a group want to hear, instead receive a variety of criticisms and praise. We however did record the focus groups audio so that we could review exactly what was said

There was a fair bit of criticisms, however, there was also a lot of praise as well.

Digipack

-The front page didn’t fit the style of the rest of the pack

-Eddie is the least pixelated which shows him clearer which makes him look like the lead singer

-The orange colour isn’t as good as the rest

-Change the back cover also as it has the same issue as the front cover

What needs to be done is to put Eddie on the bottom panel and Gabbi on the top panel, create a new front and back design, and make Eddie more pixelated/make the rest of the band less pixelated.

Website

-Get rid off the cream colours

-Have more information of the band

-Get rid of the clay models of the band

-Don’t fit the style of the video or digipack

-Gave the image that we wanted

To change this, we only need to remove the claymation, write a bit more about the band, add in the merchandise, and remove the cream colourings

Video

-Well received

  -Add more of the behind the scenes so that it looks less random

  -Maybe change a few of the shots, track shots to hand held don’t work

  -Matches in well with the other products

The first piece off apparel that I made was a yellow jumper to reflect the upbeat tone of the band and also be more representative of the video to reflect the yellow appearance of the performance aspect of the video. The jumper has the bands logo on the front and back to make it more visible which band it was, and the tour dates were on the back in a big font, this means that people that see the jumper will be able to see when and where they are able to see the band, thus turning the people that are buying the bands merchandise into advertisements for the band which will increase interest in the band.

I used the software Photoshop CC to create the image, I found an image of the front and back of a plain yellow jumper, I then added the band logo to the front on a separate layer, adjusted the positioning and scale of the logo and blended the layers, and for the back, I used the same font that is used on the digipack and website to write the tour dates and added another logo on top of the tour dates to show which band was playing in those locations.