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I hope you have enjoyed my A2 coursework 😄

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

Throughout the production of our music video, album cover, and website for our pop artist we conformed to, further developed, and challenged pop genre conventions. We stuck to typical forms and conventions in order for our products to be accessible to our audience and gratify their needs as consumers. However we also challenged and broke some conventions to keep our content fresh and exciting for our target audience, so as to grab their attention and raise appeal.

Music video conventions

Our music video conforms to many forms and conventions of the pop genre but we developed them further with hyper reality and multiple setups. We also challenged conventions such as voyeurism and the male gaze by deliberately choosing not to linger on the female body. I have incorporated music video theories into our music video from the beginning of our project. This is positively influenced the production of our music video because we were able to construct the basis for the form of our music video.

I have applied theories about conventional music videos from Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis.

Simon Frith

According to Simon Frith, music videos tend to be categorised into three types: performance, narrative or conceptual. The categories are easily identifiable to audiences and they can often form first impressions based on whether the music video meets their expectations or not.

A performance-based music video mainly features the artist singing, dancing or playing an instrument. Gestures and actions a typically over exaggerated and their is often a live performance aspect to the music video.

Avril Lavigne, a pop-rock star, can be seen singing into a microphone, throwing her hands in the air and lunging towards the camera in this scene from her music video "Girlfriend"

Here, GiGi is singing to the camera. She directly addresses the audience just like Avril Lavigne and she sings into a microphone. She does a variety of movements such as pointing to the camera and spreading her arms out.

A narrative-based music video follows a storyline or a visual sequence. Narrative music videos tend to use Classical Hollywood editing techniques to make the sequence as continuous as possible.

An example of a narrative music video is Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe". She is encouraged to help her crush clean his car after she spies on him from afar.

We developed our narrative to be very performance based

Our music video, on the other hand, is not a typical narrative music video. The dolls are part of a side story that runs adjacent to GiGi's performances. In order to suit the hyper-realistic music video, it was important that this part didn't seem too real. Therefore, it does not fully adhere to standard narrative music videos.

Most conceptual music videos are typically full of strong visual imagery and symbolism.

Our music video is not symbolically conceptual but it is thematically conceptual. For example, we use different setups to visually show that it is a different concept for each character. This was drawn from Destiny's Child music video for "Say My Name".

Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin, in Dancing in the Distraction Factory (1992 Routledge) has identified the following features of music videos:

We conform to most of the conventions

1. Genre characteristics

Our music video demonstrates some of the pop music genre characteristics such as dressing the set in bright and bold colours which are typically associated with a positive and happy vibe. For example, Meghan Trainor's music video for "All About That Bass" is bright lit with a pastel colour scheme that connotes the bubblegum-pop genre of the music video and song.

All About That Bass

Bright colours in our music video

Pop music videos also tend to include dancing of some kind. Another convention of pop music videos is that they use fast paced editing and intercut between shots. An example of both of these conventions is CLC's "Oh No No"

CLC's Oh no no

2. Relationship between lyrics and visuals

Our music video's visuals come from the track's lyrics. There is a very strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals because we generated the ideas for the visuals from the lyrics of the song. An example of this is when GiGi is dressed as a puppet when the song plays "I don't wanna be the puppet that you're playing on the string".

Link between lyrics and visuals at puppet setup

3. Relationship between music and visuals

We have cut to the beat of the music. This is clear to see in the first section of our music video where all of our cuts are to the beat and GiGi even walks to the beat.

4. Beauty shots of the artist

Beauty shots, also known as the money shots, are a necessary requirement to the institutions. The record label will need beauty shots in the music video in order to promote the artist's look and appearance.

Beauty shots

5. Voyeuristic treatment of the female body

We chose to challenge this convention because we felt that it did not match with GiGi's personality and what she stands for. We chose not to use the male gaze or the notion of looking but instead, allowed GiGi to own her body and her sexuality and be in control of the camera's gaze.

GiGi is in control

However, we did linger on body parts such as the lips and the side of her face. We also chose to film a shot of GiGi opening her eyes at the beginning of the song as we were inspired by Foxes signature movement in "Let Go For Tonight"

Foxes "Let Go For Tonight" the notion of looking as she opens her eyes

Close ups of the side of her face and the shot of her opening her eyes

6. Intertextual reference

When the lyrics refer to Snow White, we cut to GiGi dressed up in the iconographic colours and sitting behind 7 cut-out dwarfs.

Intertextual reference to Snow White

Carol Vernallis

In "The Kindest Cut - Functions and meanings of Music Video Editing (2001)", Carol Vernallis' theory centres around 4 key concepts that all relate to the way the music video is constructed:

1. Narrative
2. Editing
3. Camera movement and framing
4. Diegesis (the world of the music video)

1. Narrative

Our video is a visual response to the music as we took phrases from the song and generated an idea surrounding the lyrics. As a result, our music video is very literal and it doesn't require any deeper reading into the concept or storyline.

Narrative using Todorov's theory

We made sure that the narrative ran through the video but we segregated it by intercutting them and dispersing the narrative within the performance. We broke music video conventions by using Todorov's theory to construct a storyline.

2. Editing

We edited our sequence to match the beat and implemented music video editing techniques that were 'foregrounded' to look extremely obvious to the audience and draw attention to itself.

Obvious editing style using jump cuts to foreground our editing

However, we didn't completely conform to the convention of discontinuity editing and we even used Classical Hollywood editing styles such as placing our narrative shots in chronological order and adhering to the 180 degree rule (never places action behind our forward vision). We also used a lot of match on action, even between setups as we felt that it linked the two separate dimensions and made the sequence flow better.

3. Camera movement and framing

We used extreme long shots of GiGi walking and paired that together with close ups of the side of her face. This made the cuts more intense because the two shot types are polarising. We frequently use master shots in conjunction with close ups of the singer to give the audience a sense of the spacing in the studio and show how GiGi makes use of it.

4. Diegesis (the world of the music video)

We did not use much of the theory on diegesis but we slowly revealed the world of the singer as the song went on.

All in all, we were selective about the conventions that we chose to adhere to. We followed some of necessary conventions seen in music videos but we did not use discontinuous editing or anything that would confuse the audience such as leaving gaps in the audience's understanding of the diegesis.

This is because we wanted to cater for the needs of a young music video consumer who could easily follow our music video and understand it as it is at the moment. However, if we were to be less literal and more conceptual by leaving questions unanswered, a young child may not understand the message that we were trying to portray. 

Post-modernist music video conventions

Post-modernist music videos tend to feature the following factors. I have underlined the features that we conform to and gave a brief explanation of how we used them.

1. Intertextuality 

In Iggy Azalea's music video for "Fancy" the entire music video is an intertextual reference to the 1995 film, Clueless.

Here, Iggy uses the online dressing app that Cher uses in order to wear the iconic yellow Clueless outfit.

"Fancy" music video

"Clueless' film

They even parodied the scene in which they drive on the motorway in front of a large truck.

"Fancy" music video

"Clueless" film

Side by side comparison of the
music video and the film

In this example of intertextual references, Iggy Azalea has based her entire music video to revolve around the film. 

In Meghan Trainor's music video for "All About That Bass', she makes a reference to "silicone barbie doll". She throws away the doll and shakes her head as if to disregard the idea of trying to look like the doll.

We reference to a Barbie doll in our music video because it is in the lyrics. (Goodwin: relationships between lyrics and visuals) We brought a doll in as a prop and GiGi rips its head off in defiance.

2. Parody

Meghan Trainor mocks the stereotypes regarding women being a good cook. In the lyrics, she says "I never learnt to cook, but I can right a hook" paired with the footage of her burning apple pies and lying on the floor. Similarly, we show GiGi attempting to flip a pancake and failing to do so, instead, getting it on her face and having to fan the flour off her face.

Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband" and GiGi's "Sit Still Look Pretty"

Jennifer Lopez "Ain't Your Mama" parodying the woman's role in the household

In Jennifer Lopez's music video for "Ain't Your Mama" she parodies the typical housewife stereotype. Here, she is seen to be doting on her husband while giving him the food that she prepared for him. She is also doing household chores such as ironing and cleaning the kitchen. In the song, she encourages women to stand up to men and say "I ain't your mama" (I ain't gon' be cooking all day/ I ain't gon' do your laundry)

3. Hyper-reality

We conformed to the convention of using hyper-reality in our music video. We drew attention to the fact that our music video was not real. This is one of the reasons why we chose to shoot all of our footage in the studio, so that we lose a sense of realism that may be achieved with on-site footage.

When GiGi enters the doll's house, the audience know that it is impossible that she physically shrunk herself and interacts with a real life doll. Therefore, we were able to make it clear to audiences that the events were not realistic but we portrayed it in a way that appeared to make sense in a fictional sequence.

Going into the doll's house 

Coming out of the doll's house

Similarly, when GiGi is shown in five different costumes and identities, she is displaying to the audience that she is simply playing a role and is aware of her own character.

In P!nk's music video for "Stupid Girls" she plays the role of multiple characters; including an angel, a devil, a blonde bimbo and a female president. In the video, she is displaying hyper-reality through her over exaggeration of playing each role.

P!nk playing the role of multiple personalities

She exaggerates the characters to make it more intense

4. Discontinuity

In a music video, their is no need to follow the Neoclassical Hollywood Narrative. Shots can be discontinuous and not tell a story. In this music video of Marina and the Diamonds's Oh No, there is discontinuous editing and jump cuts. They use fast paced editing to disorientate the audience and draw attention to the cuts.

Marina and the Diamonds "Oh No" discontinuous editing

We used jump cuts from CUs to LSs so as to draw attention to the varied shot type. This succeeded in making it jolty and made our shots seem discontinuous as it was mainly performance. However, instead of a completely discontinuous sequence such as Marina and the Diamonds, we used match on action so that we could make it appear to tell a story and be narrative.

Jump cuts

Digipak conventions

Website conventions

Our artist's website is the main hub for GiG's marketing campaign and is a platform used to reach current and modern audiences. The website is used to gratify fans in a variety of ways as it allows them to find out more information and generates excitement. We have conformed to conventions in order to gratify audiences' need for realism.

Conclusion

Overall, our media products conform to forms and conventions of existing media artefacts in order to product high level authentic final products which our target audience could identify with. However, we challenge certain conventions which we felt did not suit our artist or appeal to the target audience of young girls, teenage girls and young women. We also developed conventions so that we could successfully reach and appeal to our target audience.

Evaluation question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our main product and ancillary texts work effectively with each other to create a strong brand identity and successfully promote our artist to our target audience. We ensured that we were consistent throughout out music video, album cover and website in order to produce a synergistic and dynamic marketing campaign that adheres to the marketing mix theory. We focused on portraying our artist's star identity using Richard Dyer's Star Theory in order to maximise appeal to our target audience.

Promotional package case studies

There were many marketing campaigns that influenced my decisions. Two of which I have explored in detail.

Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa is an emerging British soloist within the synth and synth pop genre. I was particularly inspired by her marketing campaign for her debut, self-titled, studio album and found my investigation extremely useful to our promotional package for GiGi.

Below, I have created an overview of Dua Lipa's promotion for her album which is set to be released on 10th February 2017.

Meghan Trainor

Similarly, Meghan Trainor's promotion for her debut major-label studio album, Title, was prevalent to our campaign for GiGi. Meghan Trainor is a popular Amerian bubblegum-pop and doo wop artist. In conjunction with her single and music video releases, she also went on tour to support the album. She announced the All That Bass tour on 3rd November, 2014 and started on 11th February, 2015.

I have created a timeline of the important events during her promotions for the album:

Application to GiGi - my synergistic campaign

My main product - the music video - and the ancillary texts - the website and digipak - are designed to promote different products. The music video promotes the single, the digipak promotes the album and the website is the hub of the campaign; directing the user to various media platforms in order to further promote the artist.

However, the three media artefacts must work together to form a synergistic campaign. Similar to Dua Lipa and Meghan Trainor's marketing campaign, I want to be consistent across my music video, digipak and website.

Marketing mix

From my research, I learnt that a successful marketing campaign reaches and appeals to the target audience. The campaign consists of various connected online and traditional promotional strategies in order to raise awareness of the artist and the product so that the audiences spend money on the product.

I used the marketing mix theory when formulating my own marketing campaign:

Star identity

Star identity is an important aspect of the marketing campaign. In order for the audience to understand our artist and relate to her, the artist must be presented as a star figure promoting a certain image. I looked at existing artists to gage an understanding of how they present themselves as a star, differentiating themselves from just being a musician.

As a result of this, we felt that it was important to get GiGi's image across clearly to our target audience in order for them to understand what she stands for and what kind of artist she is. In order for me to do this, I looked into Richard Dyer's Star Theory and applied it to GiGi.

Richard Dyer's Star Theory

Richard Dyer stated that celebrities are a construction and are not real people. He believes that stars are manufactured by institutions for financial gain.

His theory can be split into three sections:

1. Audiences and Institutions
2. Ideology and culture
3. Character and personality

I have created a presentation, applying Richard Dyer's Star Theory to our artist GiGi, which you can view below. Click the button in the bottom right to enlarge and use the arrow to go through the slides.




In accordance with Richard Dyer's theory that suggests that the artist must have individual characteristics, I have created this wordcloud to represent the construction of our artist.

I have also decided to produce a more interactive wordcloud. When you hover over the word, it will highlight itself.

From these wordclouds, you can see that I have made feminism a large aspect of the construction of GiGi as a brand image. This is largely due to the fact that it separates her from other existing artists in the pop industry and it makes her stand out in the solo female market. In addition to this, being a pop star and a role model for fellow teenagers contributes to Gigi's image as a trustworthy icon for her target audience.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts effectively encourage the target audience to invest in the artist's album and single. We have successfully created a synergistic marketing campaign that promotes GiGi's star personality using Richard Dyer's theory.

Evaluation question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback

Our target audience played a vital role in the construction process of our music video, digipak and website. We learned a lot from our target audience feedback and were able to make changes to our media products in order to tailor it to our target audience.

Our target audience

We aim to target an audience that is predominantly female because GiGi is a solo female pop artist who sends a clear message to young girls through her music. Due to the different age demographics within our target audience, they would consume music in various ways and have distinct reasons for listening to music. I have tried to explore this further in relation to our artist by using the Blumler and Katz model - the Uses and Gratifications theory in order to understand how we can optimise our marketing campaign.

Primary audience

• Female teens and young women aged 15-24
• Fans of the pop genre but more into niche pop sub genres such as alternative pop/synth pop as opposed to mainstream pop
• Supports feminism or is aware of the cause; wants to know more about it

An example of our primary target audience

Our primary target audience are millennials, born from mid-1990s to early 2000s. Learning about the habits of this demographic will prove extremely useful to my understanding of how to target this audience.

Wikipedia entry about millennials

and digital technology.

Please click the image to enlarge

My initial research into millennials has taught me a lot about the way that they consume media using digital technology. A survey of over 7000 college students revealed that 97% of these students owned a computer, 94% owned a mobile phone, and 56% owned an MP3 player. This gives me insightful information about the kind of technology that our target audience are using. The large majority of teenagers own a computer or a mobile phone, more so than any other demographic.

Nielsen report: smartphone ownership
 by age group

This report from Nielsen shows that there is a definite trend in smartphone ownership with relationship to age groups. Millennials are the largest population segments in developed countries and their online communities are growing even faster with the help of smartphone technology. They dominate the smartphone market; 98% of generation Y own smartphones. While age plays a role in smartphone ownership, this technology doesn’t have a gender divide.

Music consumption habits

As the Ofcom report shows, the 16-24 age group spend a larger proportion of their time listening to their own digital music or streaming music than any other age group. Note that the graph does not represent the total amount of time that adults listen to music, simply the proportion of their listening time spent with each activity.

Ofcom report: graph displaying music consumption
habits by age category

Despite the fact that our primary target audience age group consume the most music, they spend the least amount of money on music. This is largely due to the fact that, as students, they are tight on money and are price sensitive. Therefore, they usually consume their music using streaming sites on the internet.

Secondary audience

• Young girls: 8-14 years old
• Fans of the pop genre/ teen-pop/ bubblegum pop
• More susceptible to mainstream music (wants to fit into the social norm to be "cool")

An example of our secondary target audience

Our secondary target audience comprises of young children born in the early 2000s. The term Generation Z is loosely used to describe this age demographic. As Generation Z children have grown up using digital technology, they are well versed with social media and spend a lot of their time online.

Wikipedia entry about generation Z and

their use of technology and social media

Please click to enlarge

Music consumption habits

Ifpi stats on young
music consumers
Click to enlarge

The report on the right is from ifpi. It states that 13-15 year olds are nearly rivalling the 16-24 year old age group when it comes to consumption of music. While young children would also consume music using online streaming sites like millennials, parents may be more wary of the lack of censorship of music on the internet. Therefore, it is quite likely that young children would listen to music on the radio, which parents would deem safe and reliable. Additionally, this age demographic are conscious of trying to fit into social norms and would make an effort into knowing the songs that are on the charts.

Tertiary audience

• Older women (parents)
• Want a good role model for their children

An example of our tertiary target audience

Our tertiary target audience are likely to be mothers of our secondary target audience. The generation X cohort are born in the range from mid 1960s to the late 1970s. As I have explained in post 14, mothers would make sure that the music their children listen to has a positive influence on them. They are likely to approve of GiGi as a good role model and would not be sensitive to price because they are willing to spend money on their children.

Music consumption habits

As this chart from nielsen shows, 35% of money spent on music is used to buy live concert tickets. While our tertiary audience are unlikely to buy GiGi's album for themselves, they will probably spend money on concert tickets for GiGi's tour and attend the concert with their daughters.

Case study: Taylor Swift

I have chosen to study Taylor Swift and the relationship she has with her audience. Taylor is a popular pop singer who writes her own songs and has a young target audience. Learning about her will give me insight in how to appeal to my target audience.

Katz and Blumler model - uses and gratifications theory

The uses and gratifications theory is based on the face that audiences are actively consuming media and have power over their media consumption. They choose media products that meet their needs in order to achieve gratification.

I have applied Katz and Blumler's uses and gratifications theory to GiGi and her audience using my knowledge of my target audience and my study into how Taylor Swift interacts with her fans.

Construction of our media products

During the construction stage of our project, we constantly got target audience feedback so that we could adjust anything to suit their preferences. We used a range of different methods so that we could improve our understanding of our target audience.

Focus groups

We regularly held focus group sessions with our target audience. We made changes based on the feedback that we got.

Music video

 Before and after grading

Digipak

 Before and after grading

Before and after grading

Website

Before our changes

Changes to colour scheme and background

Evaluation of our media products

One-to-one interviews

Doing one-to-one interviews was extremely useful to me because I was able to ask them any questions and they were able to express exactly how they felt. Gathering qualitative data from one-to-one interviews was helpful to my project because I was able to understand the likes and dislikes of our target audience.

Survey Monkey

We used Survey Monkey in order to get quantitative data from our target audience. While Survey Monkey was not ideal for in-depth feedback, it was very useful for getting a general representation of the views of our target audience.

Click on this image to view our survey

We have gotten quite positive feedback on all three of our media products. Our most well received media artefact was the website. If feel that most people were impressed by the high quality mock website that we produced, using only a free web tool to do so.

I have analysed the feedback that we have gotten from people on Survey Monkey.

Music video

Digipak

 Everybody who filled out our questionnaire said that they thought that our digipak belong to the pop genre. When asked why, they said that the bright colours and glittery background made them think that it was a pop album. Everybody who filled our our questionnaire said that they thought that our digipak targeted a young female teenage audience.



However, we had a few comments about what we could improve. Feedback from my one-to-one interviews has also revealed that they did not like the different shades of purple for the tracklist. Most of the target audience during feedback have stated that they would prefer it to be in one block of colour. If I had more time during construction, I would have spent time getting more public opinions on this matter.



Another issue that people brought up was that the pictures of GiGi looked 2 dimensional. This was due to the quality of the photos that we took for our promo shots and unfortunately, there was nothing that we could do to remedy that in post-production.

Website

When saying what they liked about the website, our target audience said that they like the quiz as it is interactive and fun, the behind the scenes because it gives it a personal touch and shows GiGi's natural character; and the merchandise that is available to buy in the shop page.

For what could be improve, some people asked to have a link to Snapchat, another social media site, and one person said that the pink and purple colour scheme was not their cup of tea - they'd rather have a black background throughout.

Conclusion

To conclude, my group have learned a lot from our target audience feedback. We were able to implement changes early on in construction because we scheduled feedback sessions into our timeline. When evaluating our media products, our target audience gave us a lot of positive comments as well as things that we could improve.

The main thing that I learned from my audience feedback was that, just like institutions in the music industry, we did not always get it right. Some of the choices that we made in order to specifically appeal to our target audience were miscalculated. As a result, our media artifacts may seem to target a younger demographic than our primary audience. If I were to do this project again, I may make different decisions such as choosing to primarily target a younger audience such as our current secondary audience.

Also, comments that we got during construction often conflicted with feedback from our evaluation. For example, people in construction liked the different shades of purple whereas our target audience from our evaluation preferred the text to be in a single shade.