Some Props and costumes

Inspiration: Central frame shot while dancing

I love this shot and how it showcase the dancing in the centre from the show "Shake It Up" on Disney Channel. The shot strongly resembles the proscenium staging commonly used in theatres in which the audience directly face the actors on the stage. As the Actors are performing, in this case dancing the audience directly face them and because of this, it is easier to watch the dance moves.

There is also a mid-shot  of the character as the speak about performing the various dances. Doing this will ensure that the audience are not too far away from the conversation as well as showcasing the various characters confidence of their abilities with their arrogant bodily expressions after completing their little dance segments.

The scene cuts from mid-shot to central frame and back to mid-shot every time they dance. The flow of this is used to interest the audience. The central frame is used to show the actors' full body and the surrounding area while they dance so the audience can see it better, and the mid-shots are used to show the bodily reactions of the actors to the dancing, which the audience will also be interested in seeing. The central frame used while the actors were dancing also shows the importance of dancing to the show as the central frame is only used to showcase the dancing.

The audience are more involved with the scene as the central frame keeps you in line with the performers. The scene impacts on the audience even more when the camera slowly tracks "Ty" as he moonwalks which reflects the way the audience would watch him. 

As my music video will contain varied individual dance performances, this sort of camera shot is vital to make the audience more interested in the video and the dancing shown on it.

Audience secondary research

The results of this questionnaire where varied to say the least, however the three most importannt questions to my music video were questions 1,4 and 5

The results to number one were similar because 9o% of poeple circled most of the options, so this made my decision on the type of song more difficult because the answers were more widespread.

The answers to number 4 leant more towards comical, but I did get 30% of my responses stating other and writting that they would like a sexy video. In the end I am more likely to make a video comical, as I am not sure of the boundaries of sexuality for this music video. Although perhaps the actors I use for this video may be described as sexy by some or many.

For the fifth question 60% of the aswers circled Sak Noel while 30% circled Michael jackson and 10% circled Adele. I wanted my video to be more comical so my audience choosing Sak Noel worked to my advantage.

Target Audience

When recording the songs, I decided that based on the songs themselves, my target audience would be a younger audience who like a wider variety of music, but louder music nonetheless. I believe the age group would be from 15-26 which is a larger age group than most music has because most of the songs I recorded were based on songs that had a larger age group.

I have to keep my target audience in mind when choosing the song as I feel it would be too unpredictable to have no target audience for my songs. When having a target audience, it becomes easier to research into similar products, thus making your own product better. However most pop songs do appeal to a general audience even if they only have a small target audience anyway

Audience Primary research

This is the questionnaire I have done for my audience primary research:

What type of music do you like?
Hip Hop  R"n"B  Rock  Pop  Dance  Folk  Country  Soul  Other
Please state if other.................

What is your favourite music video?


How often do you watch music videos?
Everyday  5 days a week  3 days a week  Not very often  Not at all  Other
Please state if other.........................

What type of music video do you like
Artistic  Real life-like  Performance based  Comical  Other
Please state if other...................................

Which of these artists do you lean more towards
Sak Noel (Loca people)  Michael Jackson  Adele  Chris Brown

The results of this questionnaire where varied to say the least, however the three most importannt questions to my music video were questions 1,4 and 5

Initial ideas

My initial idea is a basic one with plenty of people miming the words to the song at various parts of the song. However based on my research on pop videos, I have been inspired to use some of the various camera movements and editing techniques used in those videos as well as the content of the music videos.

The slow zoom in on Adele's face in her "Rolling in the deep" music video at various angles repeatedly during the video was something that I liked because the slow zoom in slowly brings the audience closer to her, or feels like it does anyway, although my first choice song is not as emotional as "Rolling in the deep", but the slow zoom in does attract an audience so it is a good idea if I want my video and mimers to be attractive to the audience.

The animation of the "Loca people" music video by Sak Noel when the colourful bars are shown as subtitles of what they are meant to be saying is what I liked the most about the video. It adds a simple but very effective comical effect to the video. As my first choice music video is going adhere towards comical more than serious, I believe it is a good idea to add silly comedy and not always necessarily intellectually stimulating communication betwwen actors and audience.

The individual dancing from Chris Brown in "Beautiful people" inspired the performance based part of my first choice music video idea. I wanted to have performnaces but didn't want a big choreograped number, so looking at how this music video incorporates the dancing shows me how to make match the music video, even though there isn't a particular storyline in the music video.

Ancillary Product research: Magazine advertisments

The following image is a magazine advert of Ellie Goulding's album "Lights". The image is of a mid-shot close-up of the Artist, which shows a bold side to her which helps her to promote herself showing that she is confident to have her face as the main image that helps sell the album and that the magazine is confident in her that her face is enough to help the album sell, which in turn gets more people to buy the magazine, if they have advertise successful artists.

The Artist name is bold to signify that she is the important one. Not only that but both the artist name and the album name are lit up, linking to the name of the album "Lights" The font is plain but expressive as it has a certain edge to show to the costumers that the artist has more to her than is seen on there.

I would like to use the font to as an inspiration to make mine expressive to the type of artist I eventually  come up with as I am just in the initial stages of the product.

Ancillary Product research: Album covers

This is the Jim Hendrix album cover for the album Axis As Bold As Love. I like the colouring of the cover as the colour makes the album quite bold, which obvioulsy bodes well with the title as well as making it brighter and it makes the animation look like a trendy painting, making it look quite cool..

 I like the animation of the cover. I originally wanted, for my cover, to have the artist masthead with various figures or objects surrounding them. i wasn't sure how this would look so I went investigating mirror effects on paintings and album covers, thus finding this. Looking at this cover, I realise how I could possibly make my cover similar to this, and look good using the resources at my disposal.

I have been stuck on with of these covers I like more. They are both just mastheads of Michael Jackson from the albums Ben and Forever Michael, but with two differences in the angles. The Cover for Ben is at a high angle, whilst the cover for Forever Michael is at a central frame.

If I make my cover similar to Ben and the high angle of Michael Jackson then it would create an idea of my artist as being slightly dominant in a way, perhaps in a "He or she is a famous musical and your'e not", indicating he is dominant in only that term, or maybe in a more composed sense t show wisdom or talent beyond the artist's years, which the latter does here for Michael jackson in his Ben album cover.

The Forever Michael album cover creates an idea of maybe an equalness between buyers and the artist as Michael Jackson is looking at the camera, meaning he is looking at the buyer and the central frame. I personally prefare the High angle of the Ben album, but I can take certain things from the Forever Michael album cover, like the font, the boldness of Michael Jackson's name against the much smaller font compliments his importance to the marketing of the album.

Target audience

A target audience is a way of marketing to a specific group of people ie age, gender, fiancial status e.t.c. It is known to be easier to market to a specific group than to everyone because it is easier to know what, for example, a group of teenagers would want to listen to in terms of music, than it is to know what everyone would like. Although if you do manage to appeal to everyone from different age groups, genders and financial statuses, then the benefits are a lot greater. This can be seen with artists like Adele and Michael Jackson, who have set household names for themselves making music that a lot of people can like.

Chris Brown Feat. Benny Bennasi Beautiful People

I have chosen this video as part of my research into similar products mainly because the actual plot of the video doesn't actually match the actual song but the rhythm and pace of the video do. This video is a key inspiration for my music video because the plot of my music video could be some dancing to the beat of the song with no strong plot.

The artist is featured on here as well as a load of other artists that are his friends. I want to include myself in my video but for a lot of the video I would like to show a lot of other people maybe dancing to the music or interacting in some way.

The music video is aimed at a younger audience, from the awkawrd pre-teen age till the twenty-somethings, which is similar to one of the song I have in mind.