RESEARCHING MY PRODUCTION

I have been looking a lot into the research of the few songs we have been looking at I have been looking at the different target audiences for each song, and each one is very different to the other. I think that ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ will appeal to the largest target audience, from the ages of 10 – 40 which is a massive target audience. I think that younger audience may not really understand the idea of the song but it will be very colourful and entertaining for them, then teenagers to early 20s will appreciate it for different reasons such as the topic and lyrics and the strangeness of the video, then older audiences from 30s - 40s will appreciate this video as they will all know the song as it is one of the most well known songs in the world even now, 40 years later. I also think that the song Landslide will appeal to older audiences as it was a very popular song in the 1970s its target audience is about 16 – 35 the younger audience may appreciate the video for its portrayal of things that happen now. ‘Do you Realize’ will appeal to a target audience from the age of 16 -29 as this is the most common target audience that listen to music and I think that the video will interest people of that age and intelligence.


We viewed various different pop videos in order to influence our ideas and give us a better understanding into the world of music videos. One of the videos we watched was the Lilly Allen song ‘Alfie’ this music video features Lilly Allen singing her song about her brother who is a puppet in the music video, the world and house that they live in is very cartoon like and strangely perfect, much like the neighbourhood from Tim Burtons ‘Edward Scissorhands’ and I think that the visuals in this pop video influenced Gabby in her ideas for her pop videos. We also looked at Nsync, and explored the ideas of a stereotypical boy band image and the target audience for that type of band. We looked at Kylie Monogue and how her image has changed over the years in order for her to still be a success, and this shows us that in order to sell your song or video you should be able to appeal to the main target audience, which is 12 – 29. I think that each one of these pop videos influenced people in different ways and we were all able to take some ideas from these videos. We also learnt that it’s not always necessary to have a narrative to have a successful pop video.

- I have three very different ideas to the people in my group, my first and favourite idea is to do a cover of The Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ but I want the song to have a solo artist instead of a band. I want the visuals for this pop video to be very colourful and to be able to create a dreamlike world. The song will begin with the artist standing in a very naturalistic, surreal and dull world he will then take a pill of some drug and the dull world around him will begin to melt and it will become this dreamlike world full of colour and non naturalistic elements. The main artist will start singing and he will then see a girl (Lucy) and begin to follow her around this colourful world but the harder he tries to get to her the further she moves away he eventually follows her to this train station as the last verse of the song has the lyrics, “Picture yourself on a train in a station, With plasticine porters with looking glass ties. Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile, The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” The girl then looks at him and the falls in front of the train. The sound then stops and the camera goes to a birdseye view of the singer standing alone and we realise that the girl was just an illusion and a figment of his imagination.

- My second idea is a Stevie Nicks song called “Landslide” which will also be a song with a solo artist that will be a homeless women sitting on the pavement outside a station, she lives on the pavement and everyday she sees the same people walking along the road going off to work or school, or people meeting and then breaking up she watches the world go by and no one ever really notices her, the whole world rushes by and eventually toward the end of the song someone drops a coin into her hat and the people who are constantly rushing by on fast forward suddenly stop and she then gets up and walks off. The song then fades out.

- My third idea is a video for the Flaming Lips song “Do you realize” this song has some incredible lyrics and I want to create a very literal video that will coincide with the lyrics some which are, “Do You Realize - we're floating in space - Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry. Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die. You realize the sun doesn't go down. It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round” The song will feature a band of four men from the ages of 24 – 27 who will be playing the song in an empty basement and then the video will cut between the band and these images that will be filmed almost imperfectly in a ‘home video’ type style the song will then end with an image of the world form space.

The discussion and pitch of my ideas to the group went very well, Gaby and Heather are both very different people with very different likes and dislikes which made the pitch very interesting, but although they are almost each a completely separate target audience they both liked my ideas especially the ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ as I think they both found it very interesting and extremely visual I also think they thought that it may be a good challenge to create as it is quite complicated to film and make. John also liked my idea for ‘Landslide’ as I think he thought that the visuals would be very good and the narrative would be relatively simple and that we could shoot some very creative and interesting shots.

The Five Stages of Production

The Five Stages of production

There are five stages; these are: Research and Development, Pre Production, Production, Post Production, Distribution and Exhibition.

- Research and development
For the research and development of our pop video we will research the target audiences for each video by identifying them by age, gender, social class and likes and dislikes. We will also be looking at other pop videos that target the same audience as we need to know our competition and their ideas


- Pre production
The pre production of our video will be the part that will most like take up most of our time but be very vital to our video as the more organised we are before hand will then make our shoot day much easier. We will make a full call sheet which will entail a full list of our cast, locations, people on set, props, wardrobe, makeup and anything extra. We will also confirm our cast before hand and sort out our location and any necessary permission we need to film there.

In our development we will need to do a cast and camera test to make sure our cast fits our requirements for our video. As most of our ideas our very visual we will spend some time doing a full storyboard with animatics so as to be able to get a grasp on the visuals that we will see on screen. Once we have pitched our idea to our film teacher we will need to go through the practicalities and things that we will be capable of doing to then turn our idea into a reality.

- Post Production
Our post production can be just as important as the shoot day as a good edit and the precision is what will make our video that much better and make all the difference. We will be editing one or two lesson a week after our shoot day and during any of our free time.

- Distribution and Exhibition
Distribution and Exhibition is what will make our video more public and so things we will need to look at will be established T.V stations, internet sites such as Facebook or My Space and any other publicity that we can get such as word of mouth, posters and more. We will need to advertise in a way that will intercept with our target audience in order for them to take notice.

POP VIDEO AND MARKETING CAMPAIGN

THE BRIEF


You have to create:
- THREE MULTI MEDIA PRODUCTS
- TO ESTABLISH THE IMAGE AND BRAND OF YOUR SINGER AND GROUP and
- HELP SELL THE SONG FROM THEIR FIRST ALBUM.

The group or singer must be a NEW GROUP (even if they are doing a copy of an existing song).

The song is a SINGLE from their FIRST ALBUM.

The actual products to be produced are:
- THE POP VIDEO
- A DIGIPAK for the ALBUM
- A MAGAZINE ADVERT for the ALBUM.