Perfect Fall- '100 Sleepless Nights' Music Video

Final Digipak

 My Front and Back Covers:

My Inside Covers:

The CD will be slipped in the right hand side of the inside cover, and I have created a lyric poster to slide in on the right hand side of the inside cover. 

My Website

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE WEBSITE I MADE FOR THE PERFECT FALL:

http://marccrown.wix.com/mediaalevel

Evaluation Question 4- How have I used digital technologies in the research, planning and creation of my products.

In the following video we discuss how we have used digital technologies in the research, planning and creation of our products. We discuss the website, the digipak and filming the music video:

We initially did some research online, on YouTube, into music videos and decided upon a style of artist we wanted to focus on. We also used our mobile phones to film audience feedback from our pre-production narrative. This was the ‘emo’ subculture which is associated with the Post-Hardcore genre. From this we decided to look online at different artists such as Pierce the Veil and Sleeping with Sirens to inspire the star image further. We noticed that a lot of the fans of these artists tend to be quite angry at the world, society and parents and are alienated and disaffected from society. Therefore we decided we needed to incorporate disaffection as a narrative strand in our music video as it seemed to be something that came across on many of the different websites and fan forums that we looked at during our research. We also noted the costume of many of the artists we researched. They were dressed in dark clothing symbolically representing their anger and animosity towards the society they felt wasn’t enabling them to get ahead and so they turned to music to rebel against society and parents. 

From this we decided to incorporate this in the narrative and performance elements of our music video and looked at locations. We researched online a fantastic location in Brighton called The Upper Beading Cement Works, which unfortunately they wouldn’t let us film in so therefore we researched other locations in London which were closer to home and easier for us to get to. We came across the Graffiti Tunnel in Waterloo, London, which fit the idea of anti-authoritarianism and rebelliousness due to the connotations and associations of graffiti. This is where we filmed the performance element of the video.

When we filmed our animatic we did it differently to AS where we just made a storyboard. But during A2 we cut it to the beat of the song, which helped us notice that we didn’t have enough shots. We decided from this to add a few more to make the video to extend our narrative strands and incorporate a love gone wrong element which we also felt would help target our audience.

I used a semi-professional prosumer camera. It was a Sony E X 5. Its portability was vitally important to us as we were transporting it around London. In addition we could put adaptable lens on it to create depth of field. This was vitally important for shots when we wanted to get the entire band in focus when they were standing a distance apart from each other so we could portray the anger on their faces.

For our music video we filmed it really creatively. We filmed it with lots of cutaways, close ups, wide shots and mid shots. We filmed it over a two-day period. This was far more developed than at AS. We went out for a third day of filming after we showed it as a test screening to our audience. The audience fed back to us and told us that the narrative didn’t quite hang together and it needed more close-ups of the lead singer showing his animation as during the performance filming day we filmed lots of shots of him flipping his hair and this looked really good on film and so we went out and filmed again. We wouldn’t have known this if we hadn’t gotten our feedback from our audience test screening.

We then edited it. We used a new updated Adobe Premier Pro unlike last year where we used a much older, out-dated version. The first time we edited our shot duration was too long but after gaining audience feedback from our test-screening, we concluded that our shots were too long and they need to be more fast paced as it didn’t match the genre of the music.

We also tried to create a theme through all three products. We wanted the digipak, music video and website to all link together through the theme of graffiti. We chose the image of graffiti as after some online research we discovered that the ‘emo’ subculture has stereotypes of anger, anti-authoritarian and rebellion around it and we discovered that graffiti also has these connotations. This image of graffiti also incorporated the organic feel. We used dark colours which matches the conventions of the Post-Hardcore genre as well as promoting the star image and appealing to the target audience

Wix was a new software to us and we learnt how to use it to create our website. We looked online and took inspiration from other artist’s website to fit into the Post-Hardcore genre. We used the digital technologies that wix afforded us in order to create our own digital promotion of the band.

We used photoshop to create the digipak. This was also a new software to us. We did some research into other similar artist’s digipaks and took inspiration from them. we manipulated image, distorted the size and included fonts and colours to reflect the genre and star image and from this we created the design of graffiti that is symbolic of our bands attitudes.

Through our research, we noticed that vinyl is coming back and becoming popular again and so we incorporated a vinyl in the merch section of the website as we noticed other bands such as Neck Deep and All Time Low had also been selling vinyl as well as CD’s and downloads on their websites. Without my online research into this I would have never known this was having such a resurgence. Vinyl is part of the organic process as it is only in more rocky bands.

I also made a Vinyl as we realised that this is what our target audience demands, Also, our competitors had also made a vinyl such as pierce the veil:

How i made progress when first using digital technology when making my digipak

From the photoshoot, I collected the individual photos of

 the band. I cropped them to get half their faces; having The Strokes as an inspiration. After cropping the picture, I edited the pictures so the background would all be black and white. I did this so their faces and image stood out so people can start to recognise who the band are as they enter a new market. 

After cropping the images, I was able to draw around the band members so the background would become a seperate image, and then I would click on image, and desaturate the picture, so the background would go from coloured to black and white. 

Evaluation Question 3- What have I learnt from my audience feedback?

Using quantitative and qualitative research

In our pre-production questionnaire we used our competition loyalists who then told us why our media brand isnt their preferred choice, however our post production questionnaire was aimed at our loyal customers- who are much more familiar with the post hardcore genre and enjoy this type of music. In order to get a broad cross-section of participants, our focus group included people of all different backgrounds

It was important that in order to get strong audience feedback, we would use both Quantitative and Qualitative Research as they both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Quantitative Research gathers information in numerical form which can be used as a measurement of audience feedback by asking closed end questions. For our quantitative research, we carried out 2 surveys in which we would be able to make generalisations, and compare figures while putting them into context. Because Quantitative research is cheap and quick to carry out, we were able to conduct this research on a large scale and as a result we had reliable and representative data. Qualitative research gathers information of descriptive detail which reveals participants thoughts and feelings. We carried out two interviews in which we were able to consider the thoughts and opinions of our interviewees to see what parts they liked, disliked and why by asking open ended questions. The main reason we decided to use this type of research was to uncover the meanings behind their answers in detail so we could then make improvements to our products before they were finalised. An example of this is that one participant said we did not have enough close ups of the artists and therefore we cannot connect with the product as much as they would have liked. As a result we took this constructive criticism and arranged another day to re-film in order to include more close ups of the lead singer, in which we included more lip syncing which overall expressed more emotion leading to a closer relationship between the artist and the audience.


Pre-production Quantitative Research:

Although the majority of people  did not like the Post-Hardcore genre, over half of the candidates liked the idea of the narrative for the music video. With the information the candidates gave us we have seen what parts of the narrative the candidates liked and what they did not like. As a lot of the candidates liked the narrative my group and I would like to film our video in a way that the narrative will attract a mainstream audience for a Post-Hardcore song. This would then increase our audience for the video as it would be viewed by the mainstream audience. In order to do this I will be researching how to sell a alternative genre to a mainstream audience.

From this chart of the results from question one we are able to see that no one has mentioned the Post-Hardcore genre. This shows that we should be looking at a more diverse audience. As the most common answer was mainstream charts, which would not feature anything close to the Post-Hardcore genre. Several of the other answers given such as Pop and Soft Rock would fit into the mainstream charts, increasing that category's actual figure. 

Although, the demand for watching the video is not that high, I am not overly worried as we asked a mainstream audience so the response we achieved was quite good, however I hope to increase the figure when attracting the post hardcore market when interviewing emos and goths. I would be interested to see the results and feedback when these questions are asked to an alternative audience, which I will do in the near future.

As we had now found out we had asked a very "mainstream" audience we were not surprised to find out that 25% of the candidates had never heard of the genre, however a few people said that they would listen to it as it was "alternative, which is cool." This shows two things. The first thing being that we would be targeting this at an alternative audience and the second thing being that we may be able to get our music video to appeal to some of the mainstream audience as its "alternative." Although two people said they did like the Post-Hardcore genre 55% (13 people) did not as it was "too loud" or there was "too much screaming." However these were the answers I was expecting after I had realised we had asked a very mainstream audience which is anti Post-Hardcore.

Post Production Quantitative Research:

We sent some further questionnaires to Hurtwood house media students to hear what a media student thought of our product. This was important to us as we would gain more media orientated feedback relating to camera shots, editing and mise en scene.

This was feedback on a choice of preference between the products. Although we received positive feedback on every product we made, the website seemed most popular. We made the website clearly link to the other 2 products by using similar images, using a graffiti wall background which helped us make a cohesive package.  

The majority of students believed we did create a cohesive package due to having a similar colour scheme, similar fonts and similar styles throughout our 3 products. 

The audience feedback confirmed that we portrayed the band we wanted. we aimed to portray them as alienated, disaffected youths and our audience agreed that this was clear in our star image. 

Although over half prefered 'No Ones There', the feedback on 'Power' was also positive- they said that it fitted in with the music video and was edgey and presented the star image well. 

Many commented on our lead singer, who put a lot of emotion into the performance. We were really happy that the majority said that that was their favourite part as the  lead singer was the main way we could help the band connect with the audience. 

The audience overall understood the storyline and believed it reflected the anti authoritarian youth subcultures and fitted in with the star image of the band.

Gaining Demographic and Psycographic information

The key to a successful music video understands who your target audience are and making sure you are giving them what they want. Developing a demographic and psychographic profile of our audience was essential to help us plan and create a music video. We gathered information through our qualitative and quantitative research in order to create a mental picture of our typical audiences’ members’ profile. We also achieved this by looking at similar artists audiences and how they managed to expand their fan base.  Demographics statistically measure the non-psychological attributes of an audience. The primary demographic variables are age, gender, ethnicity, income, occupation, geographic location and marital status. Demographic data will describe the characteristics of an audience. Demographic trends will describe the changes in the demographics of an audience over time. Psychographic factors are more fluid and subjective in nature, and relative to the behaviour of the audience. Determining the psychographic profile of the group would be useful for singling out a specific target audience. Our target audience are typically young, in their late teens that are rebellious and alternative. Psychographic factors include values, opinions, political views, lifestyles, behaviours, leisure activities, social activities and cultural interests. When considering both the demographic and psychographic factors, we have been able to refine our audience and can help us target them with the right promotional products.

Pre-Production Qualitative Research:

Analysing Pre-Production Qualitative Research feedback:

I asked 5 different questions to both male and female students of the age between 16-18 year old's about the music video. The first question is a broad one, asking their taste in music, to see the percentage of people that are into the genre that we are using, post hardcore. Most of the people I interviewed did not like this genre as it was loud and too "scream-ish". The next question was about the target audience and who it should be for our product. Most of the audience recommended was teenagers and early 20's. this is typically because it is a time in their life when they like to rebel and go against the 'norms' in society. The post hardcore genre fulfils this as most parents enjoy slower mellow music. Next, I explained our narrative, how the lead singer has been cheated on by his girlfriend, and as a result, has written a song called '100 sleepless nights'. Most people thought that the narrative fits into the name of the song and works with the genre. One girl found the storyline confusing (which is included in the video above) which may cause one or two concerns, but the rest of the feedback seemed positive and promising. Furthermore, when askin whether people would watch our final product, most girls said no because it is a nicher audience and the genre does sometimes alienate females as they look for something much brighter and lighter. However most boys seemed to be interested in the music video as a whole and would watch it.

In order to attract a few more females as part of the audience, we believed it was a great idea to pick the lead singer as a good looking boy.

Using a Focus Group

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which are group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a certain product, service, concept, advert or idea.

By using a focus group of our target audience we could further develop to understand their needs and demands. By using a focus group, it is a form of qualitative research in which we could gain detailed and descriptive answers while also asking more detailed and specific questions than we would have done when creating a survey. We could therefore get closer to what people really thought of our cohesive product and any feedback they would give. It was therefore appropriate to use a focus group as it helped us gain more effective and realistic feedback while helping us single out our target audience even more and as a result we would know the beliefs, opinions and perceptions our audience have. By knowing all of this information, we could make a cohesive product to the best of our abilities. 

Post Production Qualitative Research:

From this feedback, we could hear an audiences' reaction to our screening. We learnt the positives of our product- which the feedback informed us that we made an exciting cohesive package, with compliments on our choice of location, the flow between the narrative and performance and the emotion of the main singer showing his anger and rebelliousness. We had also learnt some negatives; where our audience informed us that some shots were too long however after taking this feedback on board, we refilmed which gave us an even more variety of shots to choose from.


Our Perfect Target Audience Member

Danny King is our perfect audience member. Danny is 18 years old, and is from London. Danny isinterested in new and upcoming music and works at the Roundhouse in Camden.  Danny King is always looking for new music, but in the same genre. Danny's favourite genre is the Post Hardcore genre and pop punk. He attends meet up with his friends- who are also categorised as 'emo's' and as seen from his profile, his favourite bands are Pierce The Veil, You Me At Six, Of Mice And Men and All Time Low. His favourite movies and TV programmes include 'Cut', 'The Walking Dead' and 'Crank'. 

According his psychographic and demographic profiling, he is part of the emo subculture who very much fits into our target audience and rebel against society but in an organised way. The Emos all have a subcultural capital as they seek identification and validation through their differences yet conversely theres a uniformity to their differences. It is important to use this and take this information on board as part of our research for our target audience. If the audience did not believe in our product, they would not buy into our product.

Secondary Research of Emo Subculture:

I looked online for further secondary research in order to gain a better understanding of our target audience and how to relate to them.

Exploring Dress and Behavior of the Emo Subculture 

The emo subculture, derived from “emotional hardcore,” or “emo-core,” is a sub-genre of punk music that came into existence in the mid-1980s. It consists of male and female youths transgressing beyond standard dress and expectations, often presenting an androgynous look as male and female “emo kids” share similar hair- and clothing styles.

Emo is kind of like gothic-light, to some, emo means not knowing how to deal with the large amount of emotions that rage through adolescent and teenage bodies so the emo-subscribing teens act as if they have no place in the world. Some say that they just don’t know where they fit in the world and don’t know how to deal with that lack of connection.

What was it about this subculture that allowed for boys to dress so androgynously that it both bordered on femininity and avioiding traditional masculinity to the point where, while observing these individuals in a public gathering place, many cannot immediately and definitively ascertain certain individuals’ genders.

Emo’s resistance to identity in general, whether as a fixed form or as an individual’s or even entire group’s. That is, most kids who appear “emo” are not willing to identify as emo. Referring to these individuals in the subculture as “emo kids,”, many believe that this is simply the most appropriate term allotted for these individuals, even though many would resist the term and would necessarily refer to one another as such. Because a distinct style, behavior, and musical interest is present within this subculture, one that all of my interviewees agreed upon, it seems to be the most fitting and organized way within which to refer to these individuals. Although they may appear similar, it is important to remember that these individuals are unique and differ from one another in addition to the rest of society, and that therefore can complicate understandings of these people as members of a distinct group.

Emo Music History To the emo kid, musical taste trumps all else in discerning potential friendships and in assessing an individual’s coolness. This is perhaps troubling in a psychological sense because membership, or acceptance, often is extended to others based upon surface similarities, as well as similarities beyond the individual’s direct control, such as his or her socioeconomic classification. Musical taste does not exist in a vacuum, but is instead developed and encouraged by many social and individual factors. It is, however, a primary method of including and excluding among many subcultures, with emo certainly being both excluded by others (including the emo kids themselves) who laugh at its silliness or femininity and by the emo kids who include those who wear the same band tees and attend the same concerts.

Emo kids all have one crucial characteristic in common: they are all drawn into the emo subculture by their love of music. The connection between the emotions and instances of their lives and the music speaks that to them is undeniable for teenagers in general, but for the emo subculture in particular. Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower shows the relevance of music and literature to high school student Charlie’s Schmitt 8 and his friends’ lives and has received wide support throughout the emo subculture. Though emo was not quite at its peak during the publication date of 1999 (and in the, presumably, years prior that Chbosky was writing the novel) it had been in the periphery, evolving from hardcore punk since the mid-1980s.

Though this book was likely not intended solely for teenage emo youth readers, their own lives and obsession with music seems to parallel the focus on music for the characters in the novel. Formerly a private space not present in the mainstream, emo initially grew out of the hardcore punk music genre (abbreviated to “hardcore”) during the mid-1980s, reaching its peak in the summer of 2002. According to the 2006 documentary American Hardcore, the hardcore genre emerged out of “a bad economy, inflation, change of administration. [The election in 1980 of Ronald] Reagan was the kind of antithesis or the reaction, a whole new, like a paradigm shift. There was a lot of concern of, you know, what might that mean in terms of all kinds of issues: freedom of speech, repression, and civil liberties, and that was sort of that era.”


The anger represented within hardcore is further expressed in the opening commentary of the film by lead vocalist and guitar player Vic Bondi of the Chicago-based band Articles of Faith: In the early ‘80s there was a sense of reestablishing the order: the white man, the Ronald Reagan white man order, is coming back.

Cultural symbols indicate that the members are similar, and they help the members of the group identify one another in a crowd. Without even speaking a word, two members of the emo subculture could identify one another by similar hairstyles and clothing choices; importantly, members of the emo subculture could also identify non-members, all without ever exchanging words.

Evaluation Question 2- How effective is your promotional package?

We had to ask a member of staff to read the questions to us but we wrote the questions ourselves. We were interviewed on the Culture Show to talk and promote the Perfect Fall.


Keith Negus said that the 'pop music video is used as a promotional tool.' We promoted the Perfect Fall by using visual images in order to market the band despite them being an organic artist. The star image is used to brand the product. Branding is then used by the music industry to create a range of products for audience across a range of genres and musical styles. This is used to create what Anderson calls the Long Tail. A band like ours is aimed at a niche audience, and being an organic band, we regard them as having a long career in the music industry. A way we promoted the music video was having it on our main screen on our website. Everyone that clicked on the website will have seen a link to the music video as it is on the 'Enter Site' tab.

Also, we were able to promote our band's digipak on our website and making it available to buy for the consumer. This is encouraging people to spend more money on the merchandise as we have also promoted the band's image and name by selling wristbands, bennies and jumpers. This is a marketing strategy in order to promote the band through word of mouth as when friends who have similar tastes see it they may want to watch the music video themselves. This helps us market the band as we have a lower budget than other established bands in the market.

Furthermore, in our music video when uploading it onto YouTube, in the video description we used it as a chance to promote the band by including links to the store in the website and also having links to buying the digipak. On the front cover of the digipak I used images of the band members in order to match the historically typical way for marketing a music video.

CD digipak covers are crucial artwork which markets the image of the artist before the music is purchased. Music Artist Websites are a common part of any marketing strategy, particularly in the online age.

The visual 'star image' according to Dyer, communicates important messages to the audience. Audiences often associate the look of an artist to a style of music or its genre. We promoted our band and represented them as being rebellious, teenage angst who have formed a subculture by diverting against the norms of mainstream society. We portrayed this by including close ups of the lead singer, Bennie, shout into the microphone and used close ups of Rodrigo screaming looking direct to camera; which helped engage the band with the audience.

Websites contain information which publicises and promotes the artists image and a range of information to an audience. Often, this is organised into what Boyd has termed co-option.The website includes a number of images of the band which we thought was essential for an up and coming band so the audience could identify the image of the band to their name. We also used a number of photos of the band in order to reiterate that they are in the Post Hardcore genre who are seen as Emo's who rebel against social norms. Therefore the pictures of the band were of them showing their anger whilst being aggressive which is also shown on the music video.

Our website was typical in the sense that we prioritised promoting our band and providing the latest news from the band. They fall into 3 main categories:

1. promotion of single or album released
2. promotion of a tour or live appearance
3. merchandising

My Digipak was carefully constructed so we could focus on communicating the message of rebelliousness and angry to the Emo/Goth genre. The brand image is one of anti authoritarian attitude selling them as a symbol of rebellion.

The brick is emblematic of fighting against the system. The wall in Pink Floyd album is a metaphor for going against the system. I therefore used the wall as my background on my website as it is symbolic of urban decay. The VALS in our audience are that of being a subculture diverting against mainstream norms who were under the category of rebellion. We also marketed the band on magazines that appeal to our audience getting articles in magazines such as Kerrang and Rock Sound.

We would be selling our music on ITunes, make it available on Spotify and by promoting our band on Kerrang we decided that we would give readers a code that they could enter in order to make it available for Kerrang Readers for free. This could help us build our fanbase and get our name heard in the post hardcore community.

Evaluation question 1- in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Keith Negus states that there are many features needed in a music video in order to match the generic conventions. These include:

• The explicit promotion of the artist's image as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption 
• The featuring of the artist
• A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement
• Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography
• A possible narrative structure
• A possible performance element
• The flexibility to disregard realism
• Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track
• Use of special effects for example lighting animation
• Having a mise-en-scene that appropriately matches the genre of the song
• Instant high impact on audience

Keith Negus states that there are two types of ideology in music videos; organic and synthetic. Organic ideology is when the record label let the artist grow their artist in a way that sells their music in a nurtured way. Examples include Passenger, Ben Howard.

The second type of ideology is being synthetic artist and converting this into a music video. This approach focuses more on the artists image and they are usually in the music industry in the short term. Examples of synthetic artists include Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber.

Negus explains that the profits from these record labels gain high amounts from their synthetic artists in the short term but use these short term profits to invest into the organic artists as they are seen as more of a long term asset to the record label.