Diary
15/11/2018
Today I opened up all of the survey results in a spreadsheet and went through and analyzed the results. It took me quite a while as I had over 170 responses and therefore needed to make sure the results that I talked about were representative of all of the results. I used the premade Google Forms graphs for the quantitative answers and listed the main points from the qualitative questions. Now I need to analyze three clips from Edgar Wright movies to talk about in my video essay.
Inform our own idea...
The people who watch all of these shows I have looked at are all different age groups. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is one of the shows with the broadest range of people watching, the reason this show is like this because of Ant & Dec and also the show has a big range of content.
The findings suggest that if we go with the Saturday evening, ITV, 7 pm as this is one of the most popular times for viewing TV as a family. At this time people will put the TV on and just watch whatever show is on. For the group, this shows us that we need to make sure that our show doesn't collide with a popular show as everyone would just watch the show. If we did have to show our show at the same time as a popular show we would have to make sure we were appealing to a different target audience.
Based on our idea we now need to research our target audience to find out what they would want from a show, we need to think of ways we can make our show different from others. We need to research what the shows we want to borrow ideas from do and how they are really successful. ​
Production meeting 1
You don't know me - Jax Jones
We have chosen to make a music video for "Jax Jones - You don't know me." We chose this song as it is very upbeat and clearly portrays pop.
The video shows a girl moving between rooms dancing to the music, the girl acts in a sassy manner occasionally miming to some of the lyrics. The girl's manner clearly portrays some of the lyrics of the song. I think the idea of having the little girl makes the video more comical to the audience.
The type of music video is halfway between narrative and concept. Narrative, in the sense that it follows a girl as she somewhat is displaying a story. Concept, because the whole
video is a one take shot in which the camera moves from room to room of the house showing her moving around.
The video includes some music video conventions. Firstly, the music video contains creative filming and editing as it is made to look like one shot as the girl moves from room to room. The video is also engaging as it shows the girl moving around and makes the viewer wonder what she is going to do next. It also includes emotions as you can see from the video the girl is trying to be sassy conveying the video through her. I think there is some correlation between the video and the lyrics as emotions are transferred but I think it could show more that relates to the video.
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This shows some symbolic and technical codes. Technical: the video is combined of one shot which moves around the room following the girl. All the sound is non-dagetic which means it it added in post production. The pace of the video is very slow and I think as the song has a good beat the camera angles should change more frequently. Symbolic: the girls facial expression shows that she is trying to be arrogant.
Diary Entry - 19/09/2017
I started today by learning about primary and secondary research. Primary is where the data is found by yourself and secondary is when the data is found from other sources. We also learnt about quantitative and qualitative types of information. Quantitative is when the data gathered is numbers or information that could be presented in a graph. Qualitative is data which is written in words. I then started researching aspects surrounding the video such as the artist and his online presence. At the same time I wrote a bibliography giving links tot he website I found my information from. My main aim was to find out information which I didn't know about him and his social presence.
Considering this was the first time I had ever had to do something like this, I think I found a good amount of information which I could expand upon and write about. To improve I think I could have spent more time focusing on specifically him and the social media he uses.
After this, I need to finish my research adding some primary of my own. This will allow me to finish finding out about Jax Jones, his music video and codes and conventions relating to pop music videos.
Secondary Research
As Jax Jones has removed comments for this song on both the music video and the lyric release song, I have looked at the comments on another song of his instead to study his fan base and what his fans think of the video.
The above comment shows me that his fan base is excited to watch this video and they really enjoy listening to the song. This is vital as lots of people read the comments and will feel encouraged to find out others like the song. The comment feels like someone has spent time trying to write something funny and has looked to see how many views the video has. Also, I am surprised because if he had enabled comments on his newest video he would have gained so much engagement from his fans.
As you can see above his fans are interacting with each other and happy that there are other people that like the song too. This is good for him as if his fans are interacting it helps to improve his brand image as more people will find out about him. This is helpful to me as it shows that he has a clear fan base and that the video needs to be hosted on a site which allows fans to comment.
Jax Jones has the right idea posting his videos to YouTube. His latest song released last month and in the last 30 days, he has gained 26 million views and 41 thousand subscribers. You can see from above he has gained fewer subscribers this month but still has gained a good amount. As he has really good YouTube stats I can clearly see his video is very popular amongst a range of people. Also, lots of views would mean he will have some keen fans who would then go and buy the song. You can also see from this in the year he is likely to earn between £51k-£816k this is a huge amount and would usually take a lot of record sales.
After this, I studied the codes and conventions of pop music videos. Codes and conventions are what specifically makes something what it is. I found out that pop music videos generally are performance based and the lyrics represent what is happening in the video. Pop music videos are normally shot in the summertime to make them seem in a happy environment. Artists usually wear designer labels, some of these are sponsored and some are just showing the artists wealth. A lot of these videos are filmed in exotic locations as the videos often have a big filming budget and filming in places like this represent a happy video to make the audience feel in awe when they watch it. This tells me that I need to try to make my video have these same connotations even though I have no filming budget which means using the resources I have around me. I need to do this because if I don't follow what people want then my video would get less audience interaction.
As you can see the above review is very positive. It’s also really good that the writer of this blog has decided to take the time and effort to write a review on another website. He could have easily written it on social media and been done with it. This review is also very positive and talks about how the video relates to his life and his family. This is really good for Jax Jones as it is showing others that people have been listening to his songs and it has made people think about their life. As this point of view isn't necessarily from his target audience it shows that other people know who he is.
I can also see from the number of likes his music videos have that he clearly has an engaged audience. One of his music videos has been public for 6 months and has 531K views and his other which has been public for 2 months has 504K so I can already see that this video has done a lot better than his last.
This music video is a one-shot video, which means that the camera continually follows an object for a long time. Throughout the video, the camera moves to different angles (mainly high and low in this video) as it follows the girl around the house. This is very difficult to do as everything has to be planned extremely well, as one mistake could mean the whole video has to be shot again. In one take shots, the lights are usually positioned above the character to remove all the shadows and so the shadow of the cameras can’t be seen. These shots also have to be very engaging as this is a point where lots of viewers may be distracted. In the video I am studying, the character is constantly dancing as she moves around the house which engages the viewer along with the fast camera movements.
On the JaxJones website, he has a Pacman game which you can play as either Jax or Raye. This is a good way of fans engaging with his brand. He also has a leaderboard which the public can add them to do. When you play the game his music plays in the background which is good as it gets more people to hear his music. It is also very likely the people will share the game allowing more people to find out about it. It's good that JaxJones works with brands such as Pacman as it builds his brand image and allows fans to get involved with each other.
Jax Jones also has an online store where he sells t-shirts for £20. This is a good way to get his brand recognised so more people will find out about it and eventually have gained him a stronger brand image.
Jax Jones has a public Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. He seems to post mainly pictures of what he is doing with a line or two. He puts the same post on each social media. This is a good way to make sure his fans see everything; however, it can be a bit boring for some people if they follow him on one social media. On Twitter, he has 22.6k followers which is quite low for a music artist but is still a good amount. On Facebook and Instagram, he has over 50k followers, which is good for a social media which has an older audience. As he has different amounts of followers on different sites I can see he has a range of audience. This is good because if he has a ranged fan base he will grow his viewership quicker than if he has a smaller one.
Bibliography
Diary Entry - 20/09/2017
Today, we started by learning about different types of questions for a questionnaire. I decided to make my survey through google forms. I thought of my questions carefully and what question type I should use because I didn't want anyone to be put off and not complete the survey. At the top I wrote a paragraph about myself and what I am doing with the information I am collecting. I decided to distribute my questionnaire via social media as I think the audience through there is the audience I wan't to find out information from. I have received seven responses in about one and a half hours. I do see if my survey doesn't get enough responses or only lots a specific target audience respond to the survey, I may have to look at other distribution methods.
I have made a few surveys before so I was fairly confident with how I should go about this. As I made sure I was happy with each question so it would be relevant for my research it means all the information I get will be helpful.
Production Meeting 2
Primary Research
For my primary research, I decided to send out a questionnaire to people so I could ask specific questions which would help me find out what people like and dislike about music videos. I distributed my questionnaire on social media as I thought this was the target audience I needed to find out about. I had 25 people fill out the survey and I have studied some of the results to help me to find out what people enjoy about music videos.
The first question on my survey asked them for their age, as you can see above the most popular age is 13-18 which is the market of people who I believe watch music videos the most. As I have a slight range of results it means my opions are varied.
The second question asked for their sex. There was a fairly even split between male and female and 2 prefer not to say. As I got a fairly even number of results it means that my results should be more accurate because I have lots of opinions from both males and females.
The third question asks how frequently they check for new music videos. From my results I can see the majority of people either don’t check at all or only check if its a artist they really like. This shows that a small artist wouldn’t get seen very quickly because not many people check to watch all new music videos. However this doesn’t really matter for larger artists as they will have a big fan base who will watch the video because they specifically like the artist.
After this I asked them for their favorite genre of music. As you can see by far pop is the most popular with 14 people picking this. I think this is because pop songs generally feature quite a wide range of music. This is good for us because the music video we are creating is for a pop song. Rock and hip-hop are the next most popular with four and three votes.
The next question asked which type of content in the music video do people enjoy most. As you can see this question was very split and there wasn’t one clear winner. Six people liked Narrative, Performance and Dance I think this is because these are the most used and possible more engaging than the others. Closely followed this was Conceptual which was selected by 5 people, this is probably because people like how these videos can be very different and that excites people. There was, however, a clear loser, this was animated I think this is because people want to see a video which contains the artist. Which tells me that my video must not be animated but should have some narrative and dance.
Following this, I asked what would make them share a music video. There were lots of similar responses. A lot of people said they would share it if they thought their friends would also like the video. A few others said if it was a clever video, from their favourite band/artist or being funny would make them share it. This shows me that to have a music video shared it would need to stand out and make a reason for people to share it.
Next, I asked how likely are they to follow an artist on social media. Generally, people are not very likely to do so. From the results, I think a lot of people were unsure and follow only artists they really like because they wouldn’t follow an artist of which they only enjoy one song.
For the 8th question, I asked what site do they generally watch the music video on. I found out the majority of people watch the music videos on YouTube which was expected as it is such a big platform which is so widely used. This is good because we will distribute our video through YouTube too.
After this, I asked them what keeps them engaged throughout the whole video. The results were very mixed with this which shows what a range of conventions people like. The greatest amount of people said they like to see the music artist in the video which I think is important because it gets the audience to know the artist better. Slightly fewer people said the video should have a storyline which I guess means once the person starts watching the storyline makes them keep watching as they want to know what happens. Below that, people said they liked creative camera work, characteristics that fit the genre and the shots being in time with the music, these all make the look of the video easier to watch and flow better. I now need to work with these answers to make sure it is what my music video includes.
Finally, I asked what comes to mind about pop music videos. The majority of people used words like colourful, bright, exciting and happy, these words are good because they show me what are video needs to be like. If people want a video to be like these connotations then that's what it should be as the more people who watch the better. A lot of people said dancing in the video and a few people said lyrics on the screen. I don’t think we will use lyrics on the screen as this will distract people from the narrative story line we are using.
Evaluation
I think my information has been reliable in some ways but it could have been made stronger...
Secondary:
With my secondary research, I found all my information from websites online, some of which are mainstream sites like YouTube and others are smaller sites. Doing this has given me a range of information as different sites have given different types of information. To extend this research further I could have looked at journals which show how pop music videos have been in the past and how they have changed.
From my secondary research I have found out that JaxJones creates videos which are typical pop videos and carry a lot of the general conventions of pop music videos and this has shown make that my video must include a lot of these so it fits the feel of a pop music video and therefore is appealing to JaxJones’ audience.
I will use all the information I have found out in the secondary research to allow me to plan in a which will allow me to make my music video fit the style of his. The secondary research also allowed me to find out about JaxJones’ fan base and I can see that lots of his fans interact with each other which develops his brand image and in the long run gains him more fans which will hopefully watch his other music videos and make the JaxJones brand even bigger.
I can also see from his partnership with brands such as Pacman and his clothing company that he wants to grow his brand image quickly, this tells me that the music video needs to be good for his brand and not show him negatively in any way.
To improve my research, I could have looked at a bigger range of websites to give me more information relating to each specific topic this would have allowed me to strengthen my information. I could have also researched how to make a music video on a budget because it would have given me guidance to help me with mine.
Primary:
For my primary research, I decided to make a survey which I posted on social media as I believed this would be there for a range of people and also lots of people from his target audience.
I started my survey with questions that are easy to answer and allow me to find out about them. From this I found out that I had a range of answers which is good as it means my results will all be different.
The results were sort of what I was expecting but they gave me lots more detail and gave some specifics to what I should be doing in my music video. I have found that most people see the same things in a pop music video and they also have similar wants for a music video.
As I sent out my survey through the internet some people decided to put some answers which were “funny” instead of helpful. To remove this issue, I could have given out the survey on paper to the person and they would be less likely to mess around.
With my survey, I included 8 quantitative and 2 qualitative questions because when I thought of the questions I thought they would be easier to analyse and they were they just didn’t give lots of detail. To improve this aspect I could add some qualitative questions as this would allow me to find out more specific needs and wants of a music video.
I think my question asking about how likely are they to follow an artist on social media is a bit pointless because it doesn't really have an impact on my music video and another question could have been added instead which is more helpful.
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To improve my survey I could have also distributed it on other websites and also a few paper copies to enable me to have a bigger range of answers.