Research: Music Video (Controversial)

'Heart-Shaped Box' - Nirvana (1993)

Research: Music Video (Contemporary)

'Shape of You' - Ed Sheeran (2017)

Research: Representation and Online Identity (PointlessBlog)

Logo for PointlessBlog  

This is the face of PointlessBlog (Alfie Deyes) 

23 year old Alfie Deyes is an English Youtuber and a successful author that runs the Youtube channel PointlessBlog in which he covers a range of different activities. He doesn't only have a Youtube channel, he also branches out through social media and through his successful clothing brand and merchandise lines. As of July 2017 his main Youtube channel has over 5.5million subscribers. 

Even though there is no official PointlessBlog website, Alfie's Youtube channel page reflects how he can stay in contact with his fans and to encourage new people to subscribe to his channel. For his main page for aesthetics there is one central image at the top of his page which is his channel's logo and this can help to promote the channel and his successful clothing line and merchandise. The logo can help serve as a synergistic link to especially his channel and clothing brand as his clothing brand has this logo on most of his lines. The logo is simple so people can easily make a synergistic link between the logo and his Youtube channel.

Alfie also quite prevalent on social media as shown on his Youtube channel page with different links to his various social media accounts, for example Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google+. This allows him to stay in contact with his fans and helps him to respond to anything his fans might ask him in terms of video ideas or in response to tweets he might send out on Twitter.  Here are examples of some of his tweets:

Alfie's target audience based around children and teenagers as his content reflects this as he has other channels such as his vlogging channel and a gaming channel. Where the main and vlogging channels both conform to both gender stereotypes with the content, the gaming channel is conforming more to the male gender stereotype and male target audience (overall). Due to the fact that his content for his videos are family friendly content it appeals to all age groups and doesn't exclude anyone. 

An example of a daily vlog on the Youtube channel PointlessBlogVlogs 

An example of a gaming video in collaboration with his girlfriend and fellow Youtuber, Zoella, which is found on his PointlessBlogGames channel. 

Alfie's convergence to other media platforms 

Clothing Brand 

The different books that he has written which have become best-sellers 

Research: Music Video (Seminal)

'Take On Me' - a-ha (1985)

Research: Magazine Advert Analysis

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More (Oct 2009) 

The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights (Mar 2010) 

Online

Targeting Audiences

Different genres of music target their audience in different ways. I think this is in order to reach as many of their fans as possible and many different genres use different ways to achieve this. Many genres have their own magazines that specialise in their genre of music and appeals to the mass fanbase, for example Kerrang is a Rock/Metal magazine that specialises in focusing on rock orientated music and bands - they include different albums from a range of bands that span the whole genre. Other genres for example Indie music might not have this so they might promote their genre of music through television - for example many indie bands/artists are found to promote their music through a television programme called 'Sunday Brunch', where they have specific sections throughout the show where they have different bands/artists perform their music and it is mostly smaller/less well-known Indie bands/artists - this can help to create a target audience or help the band/artist expand their target audience as this is one of the largest shows on the tv during the morning on a Sunday. 

Research: Digipaks

What is a Digipak? 

A type of packaging for CDs or DVDs, typically made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one or more discs. It is a marketing tool intended to offer the buyer an incentive for purchasing the hard copy from a high street or online retailer than downloading/streaming the music. The incentive is basically extras added to the CD in addition to the actual disk and its case with front and back covers. 

What is the layout of a Digipak? 

6 Panel Digipak 

Advantages

- The fact that there is multiple panels means that the digipak can be 'filled' with more extra content that can encourage more fans to buy the product, maybe also people that has just started to listen to the band. 

- There can be more exclusive artwork within the digipak which helps to enhance the experience for the fans that buy the product. 

Disadvantages

- The 'extra' panels can make this digipak quite thick, in a sense that if fans wanted to place these on a shelf with other digipaks/CD's these types of digipaks would take up quite a lot of shelf space. 

         

4 Panel Digipak 

Advantages

- The fact that it is 4 panels shows that it can be compact - which appeals to fans that are avid collectors of CD's as they can help to fit on people's shelves or in a place where they keep their CD collection. 

Disadvantages 

- Due to the fact that this is only four panels this limits the amount of content that can be placed within the digipak is limited - which doesn't really encourage fans to buy this as they aren't really getting their value for money - there wouldn't be any point so they instead buy either the digital download copy or stream it.  

Digipaks include:

- A Front Cover 
- A Back Cover 
- A Spine 
- At least four other panels within the Digipak itself 

The Additional will comprise of some or all of these things: 

- Membership Postcard/Flier 
- Lyric Section 
- Disk Impression 
- Band Info Section/Booklet 
- Free Image/Poster/Set of Postcards 

Retailers 

HMV (Online/High-Street Retailer)

Amazon (Online Retailer)

Examples of Digipaks

Digipak Analysis: Wu Tang Clan - Enter the Wu Tang - 36 Chambers (1993) 

Preliminary Task - Continuity Editing 

Original Video 

Brief 

We were tasked to produce a short film that showed specific skills and actions. We were informed that the film would need to show continuity editing, match on action, 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot. These were included in our short film.

Match on action

This is where one shot seemlessly cuts to another. Here we can see the character walk through the door and then the camera cuts to the inside where we see the character walk through the door on the other side.

180 degree  rule

The 180 degree rule is where the camera stays on one side of a conversation so it wouldn't interupt the flow of the conversation and also wouldn't confuse the audience as the characters don't change sides. We used the 180 degree rule with shot reverse shot. Shot reverse shot is when the camera switches between two characters while they are in conversation with each other.

180 degree rule

Shot Reverse Shot 

Pre-Production 

Due to the fact that we had such a small amount of time for this task we had very limited planning and the Pre-Production was very quick and rushed.

Storyboard

Due to the short time frame we were unable to create a storyboard for our preliminary task so we decided on an idea and put it together before we started shooting the task for real.

An example would be like this:

Story

Initially we decided to do a horror, psychological narrative but during the filming stage we found that a more romantic comedy style would work better with the footage that we had shot already. On the way back from filming we decided with the footage we had how we would edit it together to look more like a romantic comedy.

Location 

Due to the fact we were limited to our school grounds, we suggested using locations which were familiar to us so we could get the scenes shot quickly and that we prioritised finding a few locations which would be noticeably quieter. This led us to use the main strip in the car parking area and the toilets within one of our school blocks. This enabled us to adapt our script and story to the surroundings so we could get the perfect shots for shooting the footage.