Record label permission letter

Copyright is the legal right given to the creator of the original piece of work. These rights give the person the control over their product and who can use it and reproduce it. For example a photographer owns the rights to his photographs.

When creating our music video it is important that we have the permission from the owner of the song to use their material to create our own video. As a result of this I have had to email the record label that Rihanna is owned by to ask if we are allowed to use their song.  Without this permission we would not have the right to use her material for own our purposes. 

Below is a print screen of the email I sent to Def Jam music label, which is the label that owns Rihanna's music. It was important as part of copy right rules that I asked for permission to use the song before I proceeded to film the video.  As you can see in the email below I have stated what I plan on using the song for and that if the company does not reply to my email I will assume that permission has been granted for me to use it. 

Story Board

In preparation for the filming of our music video we created a story board. This is so that we could map out how we want the music to look and the different shots that we are planning on using. Whilst creating the storyboard we thought that it would be a good idea to draw the shots on post it notes. By creating it in this way it meant that we could easily move shots and change the order if we thought it wasn't fluent enough.  I think that it was very effective to create the storyboard in this way as it made our ideas easily adaptable.  below are some images of the storyboard that we created. The storyboard does not contain the entire narrative of the video however it does give us a basis of where we want to take our idea. 

As you can see from the above image we are planning on having a variety of different shots. One of the main focuses of our video will be the use of the actresses lips hence why there are several shots above. This is because we want to repeat this element throughout the chorus. The actress will also be wearing a dark vampy lipstick to match the mood of the video.  We thought that it would be a good idea to have a close up on the actresses lips as it will display our lip syncing ability which is a very important element to use when creating the video.  

As you can also see from some of the above images, we want the actress to be placed within two spotlights, in order to make our video appear more professional as it will create good lighting. 

Above are some more images of the shots that we are planning on using in the video. the first row of post it notes displays images of a couple, as the video is focused around the breakdown of a relationship and the feelings you are left with. Therefore we are planning on ripping up images of the couple to make it clear to the target audience that this is the message behind the video. 

Furthermore, you can also see that we are planning on using a lot of split screens. The reason for doing this is because we want our video to appear dynamically interesting to the audience as we are not planning on using a grand location therefore we need to make the video appear more interesting using the editing facilities. 

Overall I am pleased that we decided to create a story board as it helped us to map out our narrative ideas on paper. Although I do think that a way of improving this is by creating a storyboard for the full length of the song as this would've given us a solid structure to follow. 

Music video pitch

As part of our coursework we had to create a pitch for our music video to display to the rest of our A2 media class. We created these pitches to share ideas with our peers and also so that we could receive some constructive feedback on what they thought would work and what they thought perhaps wouldn't. This is useful so that we would be able to adapt our ideas before it came to filming and we encountered these problems then instead.

We created our pitch on Prezi so that it would appear more interesting to our audience. As well as this it shows that we are able to use different forms of media.

Our Artist

It is important that whilst creating our music video and other products to accompany it such as the Digipak and magazine cover, that our artist has their own unique image. This is so that they will become identifiable with the target audience. Therefore they must have their own style as an artist.

Our artist will be a female and she will also be quite young. We decided that our artist should be within the age range of our target audience which is 16-24 year olds. This is so that the target audience can identify with the artist and her image. The artist that we chose will be aged 20, meaning she fits perfectly within the age range category.

Above is an image of our chosen artist. We decided to use this person because we think that she will appeal to our target audience. This is because she is young and attractive. One of the things we that particularly like about using this person as our artist is her hair style. This is because her hair is naturally curly and therefore it is quite different, meaning our artist already has part of her image created for her.  As well as this, because our song choice is about a person going crazy after a break up, it will be easy for us to style our artists hair into looking slightly wild to fit the mood of the video.

It is also important that our artist has a name that our target audience can identify her with. We must ensure that our artists name is memorable and not too long. Otherwise this could affect marketing. Therefore this is something that we need to decide as a group in order to ensure success.

Overall I am very pleased with our chosen artist. I think that she will appeal to our young audience of 16-24 year olds because of her being quite young herself. As well as this she is attractive, meaning she will appeal to both a male and female audience.

Analysis of real digipak

Artists image

An artists image is a very important factor in ensuring that they are successful. As part of our research for our own artist I have carried out some research into artists that are currently in the top 40 to see how they have become a success and how their image can potentially add to their success.

One of the artists that is currently in the top 40 is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift has her own image as an artist. Taylor Swift has had iconic blonde hair ever since she started her career and she continues to do so. This therefore has become a part of her image, as some artists try to change their hair style too often. As well as this, Taylor Swift often wears red lipstick as shown in the above image. This therefore has become part of her image as well. Moreover, Taylor Swift is also well known for not being a very good dancer. Although this could be considered as a flaw in her career, Taylor Swift has played on this image by creating dance tracks such as "Shake it Off" to display to her target audience that she is not bothered by this factor.

Another artist that is currently in the top 40, is Ella Henderson. Ella is a very young upcoming artist at just the age of 18. Ella Henderson was a contestant on 2013 X factor series. Although she did not win the show she has gone on to release a number of tracks since that have made it into the charts, such as "Ghost". Even though Ella has not been in the music industry very long she is already starting to create her own image as an artist. I personally think that Ella's image is similar to Adele's. This is because she is represented as very sophisticated, yet simplistic. 

Moreover, Ariana Grande has also been in the charts a lot recently and has reached great success stemming from her career as a child starring in a Nickelodeon TV show. Ariana Grande is aged 21 however as you can see from the image above, her image as an artist still represents her as someone quite young and innocent to appeal to a younger audience that would've watched her when she starred in the TV show. Also, Ariana Grande's hair style has become quite a large part of her image as her audience recognise her by her half up, half down hair style. 

In conclusion, After looking at these different female artists, it has given me a greater understanding that an artist's image is very important to them. Something as simple as a make up look or hair style can easily became recognisable to an artists target audience. Therefore I have learnt that we do not necessarily need to over complicate our own artists image in order to make her stand out. We only need to make minor changes to our artists look so that they she something within her style that is unique to her. 

Results from Questionnaire

In order to gain some additional information about my target audience, I decided to create a questionnaire that I would give to them. I have previously shared a post containing the questions that were on the questionnaire. Since then I have received the results from the questionnaire.

One of the things that I found out from my questionnaire is that people normally watch the accompanying music video to a song that they enjoy listening to. Peoples main reasons for doing this is out of interest. Therefore this result shows that often the artists song has to be good because people listen to that first and then view the video at a later date to see how the artist has visually represented the lyrics.

As well as this, I also found that our target audience also prefer to listen to R&B and Pop. This is important information to know because it means that we are able to fit a song that falls into this genre of music. As there is no point in choosing a song that is not appealing to our target audience as it means they are less likely to want to watch the music video.

I also found that it varies how many times our target audience chooses to watch a music video. Some people prefer to watch the video just once so that they can visualise the storyline behind the song, where as other people watch the video several times, particularly if they find the video interesting.

Overall, I think that the questionnaire that I created was useful to our audience research. Particularly because it helped us decide on our final song choice, which is Disturbia - Rihanna as this falls into our target audiences preferred genre of music. If I didn't create the questionnaire I would be unaware of what our target audience prefers to listen to and as a result of this we may have chose a song that was unappealing.

If I was to recreate this questionnaire I would add more questions, as the more information we can collect about our target audience the more likely we are to appeal to them successfully. As well as this, I would add more answer options on some of the questions as I think that some of them are quite limited in terms of what the audience can reply with. In contrast to this, I do think that I created a good amount of opened and closed questions as I gave my audience the opportunity to explain some of their answers.