A2 Advanced Portfolio - Main Task - Music Video: Adash - Take Me Out

A2 Advanced Portfolio - Ancillary Task 1 - Digipak

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A2 Advanced Portfolio - Ancillary Task 2 - Artist's Website

http://kingalfredmedia.wix.com/adash-dec5

A2 Advanced Portfolio - Group Evaluation Screenflow

Evaluation Preparation

Because we have to answer four main questions in the evaluation, we plan to use four different ways of presenting our answers. Our predominant way of recording our answers was using Screenflow, which allowed us to show our video, website, and digipak, as well as any other relevant pages or images, with a recording of ourselves answering the questions. This is quite standard of evaluations, but we plan to use less usual methods too, such as getting people from our audience focus group to hold up cards with their feedback on with a voiceover of someone in our group explaining the way their answers affected our creative decisions. We also want to answer a question in front of a projector with relevant web pages projected onto us, in the same way as when we filmed Adash with the jellyfish animation projected onto him.

Digipak

We have to create a front panel for the Digipak, and decided to use this photograph of Adash which we took during the filming of the video. We are unsure of which font colour or positioning to use, as none of these match the image well but don't fit in with our overall colour scheme, which revolves around blues and greens. It will be likely that we use a white font as it is more simple and doesn't obviously reject any of our conventions.

Digipak

This is the outline of how we plan to create our Digipak.

This is a still from the music video that we plan to use as a panel on the Digipak to maintain fluidity through all our products.

This is the logo for our production team, Tripod Productions.

This is a first draft version of out Digipak. Katie is taking the lead in creating the Digipak, while Rachael is focusing on the website and I am mainly working on the video, but we are all sharing feedback and ideas.

Website

This is the main page of Adash's promotional website

Hovering over the home symbol shows a drop down menu that takes you to other pages we created, and in a lower corner are links to Adash's social media sites.

Rachael, who is currently in charge of creating the website, created some mock-up merch items to put on Adash's website:

These items contain the jellyfish motif that we have kept constant through the video and both ancillary tasks. We also chose to use the picture of Adash that features on the main panel of the Digipak as the main image on the website so that both ancillary tasks are obviously interlinking. We included links to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr because we thought that because Adash was a young, independent artist, he may be more adept with social media sites and more interconnected to his audience as a result.

Adash bio

This is the draft of Adash's biography page on the website. It was based loosely upon a post Tom Milsom made on his Tumblr blog when he hit 30,000 followers as a type of introduction to his new fans. I tried to make it informal and friendly but still informative.

I am Adash. I'm 17 years old and I look like this:

I'm generally referred to as a musician, although I think of myself more as an audio-visual artist. I first started sharing creative content as a Youtuber when I was 14, but now I've given up making videos and become a full-time musician and graphic artist. I've always drawn a lot, ever since I was young, and over the last year I've channelled this into my album, Take Me Out, which is being released soon.

I've been playing some gigs in London recently to promote my album, and I've been really overwhelmed by the response and support from everyone. I've got some dates lined up in the UK over May and June of this year and you can find the dates here. I appreciate the support I get from you all so much, so I'd love it if you could join me.

Creating this album has kept me incredibly busy over the last year, but I have some exciting news for the next year. If everything goes to plan, I'll be supporting one of my favourite bands on their overseas tour. I can't say who it is yet but once everything's confirmed it'll be announced. Watch this space.

Audience Research Feedback

Today we invited a group to watch our music video, which is almost finished, in order to gain audience feedback from varying demographics. Most members of the audience were teenagers from 16-18 years old (our target audience) but we also received feedback from older members of staff at the school, between 20 and 40 years old. One member of the audience was about 25 years old, the top end of our intended demographic, so we thought it would be interesting to see if her response to the video was more similar to the teenage or older audience. These are some of their responses:

Camilla - 25 y/o

Gemma - 44 y/o

Chloe - 17 y/o

Semiotics & Links in Video

What are the links between the music, the lyrics & the visuals?

Goodwin's six point theory indicates that:

• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics

• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals

• There is a relationship between music and visuals

In our music video, we use both literal and abstract depictions of the lyrics & music. For example, the scenes shot in the park reflect the lyrics in a more literal way ("there's some teenage smell to summer"/"there's some simplicity to sunshine"/"breathing in the air here makes it fine"). However the use of fractal jellyfish shots as projections give the video a more abstract feel and while these shots don't link directly to the lyrics, we thought the fluidity and surreal aspect of them worked well with the music.

Audience Focus Group Feedback

We got a group of four 17/18 year olds to watch our music video as they are the primary intended audience demographic. We asked them their thoughts and these were the results:

What did you like?

•         The jellyfish are in harmony with the music and add to the music video
•         General feel of the video is good
•        Said that this video would influence to buy the song more than if they’d heard the song by itself and they’d be more likely to watch and listen if it was being screened rather than listening on the radio
•         The juxtaposition of Calvin and Adam was good

What would you change?

•     Thought the beginning with Adam in the park was a bit incongruous because of Calvin in the same location later on
•      Possibly make Calvin seem more isolated through filters on the shots (e.g. make them less vibrant than Adam’s shots)

Any other thoughts?

•      Adam is better when he’s relaxed – for example in the last shot when he didn’t realise he was being filmed
•       Thought that the genre was ambient dance – this is different to when we asked the focus group without showing them the video, who thought it was indie rock

Kermode's View of Censorship

Film critic and broadcaster Mark Kermode argues against censorship using the following points:

1. Everyone has different reactions and interpretations on what they see in the film.
2. It is unfair that we are being told what we can and can't watch. As human beings we know what is right and what is wrong so it should be our choice whether to watch it or not.
3. The issue of responsibility; policing films is impossible, the films we watch should'nt be seen to be encouraging however they should be seen as showing the audience realistic situations e.g. rape/ murder etc.

Forna's View of Censorship

Aminatta Forna, a writer, journalist & broadcaster, spoke in a Channel 4 broadcast about censorship, saying that as a writer she recognises the importance of freedom of expression but argues that with freedom comes responsibility:

"If my right threatens the freedom of others then it can't be an absolute right and since 1976 British laws have recognised that argument in terms of racial hatred. Allowing some groups to use their freedom to stir racial hatred removes the freedom of minorities to live without persecution".

Forna uses Australian film Romper Stomper (1992) to illustrate the point that extreme racism and violence is being normalised and endorsed in cinemas. She makes three main points to argue that censorship is necessary:

1. The public associate themselves with different characters and may be influenced to put themselves in that situation.
2. Some films may start to break down the barriers us as humans put up, for example there may be a film about a woman being raped however the woman starts to enjoy even though before they watched the film the audience would think it wrong for her to do so.
3. The power of words and images featured in some films may affect the audience and have the potential to stir racial hatred etc.

Media Regulation - Classification

In order to understand film classification decisions and the role of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) better, I looked at 3 films of different genres and thought about why the film was given the certificate that it already has, and if & why I would change the certificate. The first film I looked at was Nightmare On Elm Street (2010), which is an 18 certificate. It is easy to see why this film is an 18, as it shows a lot of gory violence and has deeply disturbing psychological horror themes. In the case of this film, I wouldn't change the certificate as I think it fits the content of the film well.


The next film I looked at was Girl, Interrupted (1999), which is a 15 certificate. This film revolves mainly around adult themes such as suicide, although to a younger audience this may not be obvious. There are a few scenes which make it obvious why this film has a 15 certificate, though these scenes are short and could easily be cut out if the film was marketed towards a younger audience. However I think that considering the film generally would appeal to an older and more mature audience, the certificate is fitting.

Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted

The last film I looked at was Heathers, which was given an 18 certificate in the UK and and R certificate in the USA. I disagree with this rating: although the film does display adult themes such as teenage murderers and suicide, it is definitely not scary or shocking enough to warrant an R rating, as the film generally gives the 'scarier' moments a satirical edge. Heathers definitely should not have been given an older age rating than Girl, Interrupted, however I think that the reason Girl, Interrupted was a 15 and Heathers was given an 18 certificate could be because of the 11 years between their release. I would have given this film a 15 certificate rather than an 18, because of the reasons I listed above, and the fact that recently with the rise of the internet and easier access to films, Heathers has become incredibly popular with a younger teenage audience, and so in marketing this to 18+ year olds, the distributors missed out on a huge demographic.

Winona Ryder in Heathers (above) and the IMDB Parents' Guide page for Heathers (below)

Promotion Progress

Recently we have been focusing more on the online promotion of our artist. We have each focused on different ways of promoting him: I am currently working on Adash's Facebook page, and Rachael is working on the Wix page, which we're using as his official website. The cover photo on the Facebook page (pictured below) is currently set as a collage that Adash/Adam created himself. As Adam is an artist and creates 2D work that can be used digitally, we are considering promoting Adash as a graphic artist as well as a musician, and creating a page on his website dedicated to his art.

Artist Photoshoot

The following photos were taken as promotional artist shots of Adash for us to use on the artists' website and digipak. We projected a short edited film of jellyfish onto him and took photographs as it played, which made it less predictable how the photos would turn out. However I think they turned out well, and we can definitely use these photos to promote Adash in the way we intended.