Timeline: first draft.

After finalising our three elements we created a rough TIMELINE, which shows when we want to bring in a certain element in a music video. This timeline will be very useful in story-boarding and editing. This will also be very helpful in terms of understanding how to keep the attention and engagement of the audience, so that they do not turn off the music clip after 30 seconds.

How would we attract ourtarget audience?

Music industry is all about making money. 

How much money you make depends on how well you promote your star. In order to create a successful marketing campaign for your music video and for the artist itself you have to do two things:

1. Identify your target audience

2. Address it appropriately

The target audience we chose for our star is girls 14-16 years old, because at that age teenagers are more likely to get influenced by music and artists, as they are looking for role models outside of family, which they can look up to and copy their style.



Another question is - how to address the target audience to make them interested in a new start and her artwork?

It might be helpful to refer back to the Dyer's star theory and some of his ideas:

1. Star should be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.

This means that a star should both try to be away from the audience, so that they want to follow her social network accounts and buy her concert tickets. However, at the same time, she should communicate with the audience in some way, so that they feel as part of her art and life.

2. Star should be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.

This means that a star should appear for the audience at the same time as 'one of them', so that they feel they have something in common with a famous star, which is always exciting. At the same time, she should be extraordinary in some way (looks, very expensive car, e.t.c), so that the audience want to be her and to be like her, which sells her art.

While creating our star and a marketing campaign for her music we will rely a lot on the Dyer star theory, by doing things like: choosing a pretty girl singer, creating a USP for her, making fancy music video, which will help us to establish her as a new artist and address her target audience of 14-16 years old girls, who are already fans of similar artists like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.

Target audience: profile.

Analysing both the moodboard and the Instagram account I've created to show our typical target audience member, it's easy to put together an AUDIENCE PROFILE.

Roughly, our target audience would be:

1) Girls 14-16 years old.
2) Likes pop music.
3) Naive and driven.
4) Creative and open-minded.
5) Likes fancy and creative things.

If we refer to JICNARS scale it might help us to categorise our target audience and help to  create a product, that would appeal to them.

"JICNARS scale - is a system used by advertisers for categorising people. It is meant to indicate class and is essentially based on occupations and spending power. If you are an advertiser you want to know who is reading certain newspapers and magazines so that you can then attract that audience."



However, JICNARS scale was proved to be valueless when trying to categorise teenagers, due to they don't have neither proper jobs, nor their own families, so they don't fall under any of these categories, which means that JICNARS cannot be used in the production of our music campaign for teenagers. 
Later on, another scale was invented, called VALS - psychological profiling, which  we can definitely apply to teenagers and use for the production purposes.

"VALS - is a proprietary research methodology used for psychographic market segmentation. Market segmentation is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them."

In other words, it's a scale, similar to JICNARS, but appropriate for teenagers. This means that we can use this data to manipulate our music campaign in order to create a product that would appeal to our target audience and attract them to our star. 

Analysing VALS, we have decided that target audience falls under categories INNOVATORS and EXPERIENCERS.

 INNOVATORS are confident enough to experiment, future oriented, open to new ideas and technologies, self-directed consumers, e.t.c. Such type of teenagers are interested in anything new and unknown, so would probably want to check out the brand new star when it enters the market. Also, as they are not afraid to experiment, even if they are not pop fans, they might try this style of music, which is beneficial for us as widens the target audience. Lastly, innovators like new technology, so it's easy to get their attention by online promotions, which involves any kind of interaction with the consumer - e.g phone apps or tweeter campaigns.

EXPERIENCERS want to stand out, are spontaneous, introduce new ideas and sayings, are very sociable, e.t.c. Such type of teenagers, if we catch their attention, would be very useful, as due to their good social skills and wide friendship groups they would carry on our promotion through the word of mouth, telling their friends about the new artist. Also, as they want to stand out, they might appreciate the new singer and be interested in her art, as she is not yet a 'mainstream', so the teenagers feel they are unique, 'not like others'. Lastly, experiencers introduce new ideas and sayings, so if they find a new artist they like they might create something that is know as 'prosumer' products - e.g. song covers, clips, hashtags, e.t.c - which, again, helps us with promotion through digital means and the word of mouth.

To sum up: INNOVATORS and EXPERIENCERS are the types of teenagers we are looking for to promote our brand new pop star Cheri.

Target audience: instagram.

This is an INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT I have created to show a typical representative of our target audience:

Our target audience listen to pop music and artists like Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, MileyCyrus, Dua Lipa e.c.t. We would try to create a star, using similar genre conventions to address our target audience.

Due to liking such type of music our target audience are probably creative, open-minded people, who like to dream, beautiful things, fancy goods, love stories and all that kind of stuff. We would show these in our music campaign: use bright colours, beautiful things, focus on the artist's pretty looks in order to meet the needs of our audience. 

Also, being teenagers, they are probably very driven by new trends and fashion that their role models put forward. So, they would try to copy their style in fashion, make-up, their hobbies or even the fancy way they post pictures on their Instagram page. That's why we would create social accounts for our star to increase her popularity.

Overall, our target audience - GIRLS 14-16 YEARS OLD -  are typical young, naive girls, who are only learning how to use make-up and flirt with boys ^-^

Target audience: moodboard.

This is the MOODBOARD I've created to represent our target audience and things they like: soft colours, fancy nails and make-up, music and concerts, boyfriends and love stories, e.t.c.

This is very important to understand what your audience needs and prefers before producing content. We have used VALS to categorise our target audience, as well as analysing social profiles of our potential audience and similar stars, in order to gain data and information, which would help us to create a successful music campaign. For example, now we realise we need to show some romance and intimacy between our star and a male character, because this is what our audience would like to see. In other words, we need to focus more on the visual side of the campaign, rather that music - our star should be pretty and glamorous and this should be reflected in the music video, digipack and website.

Music video: moodboard.

This is the MOODBOARD I've created to show what kind of music video we want to have as an outcome:

Deciding our target audience.

After structuring our final idea, we now have to think about our target audience in order to be able to address them properly, based on what they like now-a-days.
After a short discussion, we have decided our target audience is:

FEMALES 14-16

Completing the targets.

In order to be a good member of the group, I completed some of the targets I've talked about in previous blog:

1) Start looking for essential props.

These are some of the sofas I found online. To be honest, there are not much furniture in Victorian style in red or white colours, but I found something similar:

Most of them cost a lot of money. I've also looked at Ebay and found some nice sofas in the shapes that we need. It would be nice if we could find two identical sofas in different colours, but I think we would probably need to order two white ones and just dye one of them red.

I've also looked for fake hair for our 1st element, as we want our singer to have colourful extensions (or even a wig) as this would make her look unusual and attractive.

2) Find out how to make bulb wall and lit floor.
I spent ages looking for "how to create a bulb wall", or "how to create a back light from bulbs" or "how to make a back light for dance", but I did not find anything! Maybe I'm just phrasing it the wrong way. But I believe it should not be undoable.

The other thing is the lit floor in our third element, which should be red in one set of shots, and white in another. From the videos I've watched it's relatively easy to make one, so there should not be any problems with that what so ever.

Targets for our group.

Now, when most of the essential parts are decided we are coming closer to actual pre-production process.

These are the targets we set within our group:

1) Start looking for essential props for our music video: fake hair, Victorian couches, e.t.c.

2) Start thinking about casting: Who will be our singer? Who will be our dancers? Who will be a male in the 3rd element?

3) Choose a style of make-up and costumes for the artist and the dancers.

4) Find out how to make a bulb wall and a lit floor.

5) Look at the similar artists and their artwork in order to get inspiration.

Changes after the feedback.

After receiving feedback from Luke we had to make some changes in our music video. We were lucky enough, as we haven't been told to re-frame our idea massively, there are just some small changes we have to make. So, they are:

ELEMENT 1: Lipsync part, which features the artist. The first element will consist of two parts - her in a white room, dressed in all white, but on a red Victorian style couchб and, her in a red room, dressed in all red, but on a white Victorian style couch.

ELEMENT 2: Performance part, which features the dancers. The dancers, male and female, will be performing in a white studio, where walls are covered in bulbs. Each time they touch - the lights go on.

ELEMENT 3: Creative lipsync part, which again, establishes the singer. This part, as the first element, will be divided in two parts - her lying on the floor with white lights alone and her lying on the red light with a man.

Treatment feedback.

In one of the lessons we presented our treatment to the class and the teacher, who is in charge of the music videos and this is the feedback we got from him:

-Think more about what type of light to use in your 2nd element and exactly how and why they turn on and off, but the idea itself is good.

-How does the light in 2nd element influence dancers and the room? Think about it.

-Finding a choreographer may be tricky.

-Contemporary interpretive dance style may not be the best choice.

-Choreography in the 2nd element should be exactly the same in order to be able to do wide shots and close-ups.

-Smoke mushrooms doesn't fit the idea, as they are brown. Red mushrooms connote drugs, don't use them unless this is what you want.

-Idea with fish in the aquarium is good. You can even try to film dancers through the aquarium to link 2nd and 3rd elements.

-3rd element has to link 1st and 2nd elements, so needs development.

-Music doesn't fit with slow fish movements in the aquarium.

-Lighting dancers from the back would make them silhouettic, which fits the 2nd element with bulbs. Think about that as a possibility. 

-Could try to add variety to first element - have her in all red in a white room, than swap and have her in all white in a red room.

-Think about 3rd element.

-Choreography needs to be considered.

-Start finding actors and props.

-And....

Treatment in prezi.

This is a detailed treatment I did with Andrew and Anastastasia for our music video, using Prezi software. We have created a detailed presentation, showing our song choice and describing every element with using a lot of visual images:

Collecting pictures for the treatment.

 In a couple of days we have to present a treatment to Luke, explaining our music video idea. I've done a brief outline for each element and now we are collecting pictures to back up and visually present our idea: