Discourse Structure of a Magazine Advert

I have annotated a music article in order to develop an accurate representation when we come to the stage of creating one of our own. I have highlighted the key structure to an article of the music genre, whilst refering back to the artist. A good music article is needed in this industry as marketing strategies are key when making profits.

Music Magazines

Magazine advertising are the adverts you see throughout publicaions, these adverts are important in keeping the magazine in business as the companies that are advertising will pay for their ads to be published.  The main purpose of an advertisement is to persuade readers to buy the product. As there are a variety of different types of magazines companies or record labels would need to be specific as to which magazine they would want to place the advert.

As we are making our own music video I have been looking at a range of music magazines to find one which would be appropriate for our chosen artist and her genre of music.

I have been looking at three specific music magazines including, Vibe, NME and Spin:

Vibe is a music magazine founded by Quincy Jones, the magazine prodominanetly features R&B and hip-hop artists. The magazines target audience are young, urban followers of hip-hop culture. After shutting down in 2009, Vibe magazine was privately purchased by the equity investment fund InterMedia partners. However, Vibe has a larger presense online. This maa#gazine wouldn't be appropriate for our advertisemt as it doesn't inlclude the right genre of music.

      NME magazine was created in the 1980's after starting out as a newspaper, which was the best selling british music newspaper. During the 70's in became closely associated with Punk-rock. The NME focuses mainly on bands of the genre rock. With researching this it is clear that this isn't the magazine which would be appropriate for our advert as again the genre of music doesn't match therefore would be targeting the wrong audience.

However, I have found a music magazine called Spin which seems very appropriate for our artist Natalia Kills' song to be advertised in. Spin magazine was founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr. In it's early years the magazine had a broad coverage of 'college-orientated rock music' and on the verge of hip-hop. Artists such as Duffy, Lily Allen and M.I.A have all featured in this magazine who we feel can be seen as quite similar to our artist therefore placing an advert in this magazine would be targeting the appropriate audience.

Editing diary

When watching and analysing a variety of modern day pop videos I noticed that a variety of editing techniques were used. The use of editing when creating a music video is to make it more interesting and engaging for the target audience to watch. To keep our own target audience entertained we wanted to make sure that we used a range of editing techniques not only to entertain our viewers but to fit in with the codes and conventions of our chosen genre, pop.

What we used mainly when creating our music video was rapid editing, we did this to keep shots at a faster pace in order to keep it eye catching to the audience. By using rapid editing we can ensure that we show our variety of  locations and costumes to make it more interesting,  we hope by doing this that our viewers will want to carry on watching.

Also, to show we used a range of different editing techniques we have used replicate, which shows four of the same image. Although seems quite simple it looks very effective in our music video especially due to the themes that are involved in it e.g. drug use. We used this technique to symbolise how our protagonist feels due to the symptoms of her taking drugs.
We also changed the lighting through quite a few shots throughout our music video, mainly darkening them to give an overall quite a dark and negative feeling and atmosphere in the video itself. By doing this it also shows how our protagonist (Anna) becomes more of a negative character towards the end of the song.

Location Analysis

Forest

We are using a forest because we think this is the perfect setting for the theme of the song. Becuase the song is about a 'wonderland' and a girl who wants freedom, we wanted to film alot of things outside becuase this accounts for that aspect. Also using a woods alowed us to create quite a magical atmosphere and having all the characters dressed up in pretty dresses in this location create the abstract feeling that we wanted.

Butterfly Medows

This location was perfect as the 'wonderland' as it is quite an abnormal place and we were able to get alot of good shots because of all the interesting things that we found there. There is a long dome like structure there made out of sticks which was perfect to use as it isnt something you would normally see and fits into the main characters fantasy perfectly.

Living Room

For the scene of Anna with her family, we wanted to use a very plain and very normal setting to contrast with all the other interesting and abnormal settings, showing the comparison between the real world and Anna's fantasy world that she makes up in order to escape to them. For this scene, we removed all the objects around the room which represented the very close minded family. This also drew attention to the one object in the background which was a picture of a woods. This represents the fact that the 'wonderland' is always in the back of Anna's mind and is always part of her.

Beach

We used a beach for the scene in which Anna is dreaming. We thought this was a good location to use as it fits the abstract qualities and events of the dream. The location is also very atmospheric and fits the eerie and unsettling feel of the dream.



Focus group (Audience Expectations)

Diary of a Day Filming - 5

Today's location is arguably the most important setting in our music video. In today's filming session we filmed at the location 'Butterfly Meadows'. We used this location to film the main protagonist Anna, and the 'evil' princesses that are isolating. This location is used to symbolise the hallucinogenic attribute to Anna's drug taking. This location was also used for our Digipak photoshoot. As it got dark early, we found it difficult in recording enough footage in the time limit allocated to us, but we carried on and recorded enough footage, and took lots of pictures, to make it a successful day.

Diary of a Day Filming - 4

Today's filming schedule was focused around an alternative woods from which we used in the start of  our video. We want to show variation in Anna's character, and one way we have shown this through the use of different locations. In the woods we filmed at today, the autumn colours of the leaves portrayed a sense of ambiance, which we were looking for. We also used Adam in today's filming to show a mixed gender so that our video appeals to more then one audience. We also filmed the scene where Ellie is handing the poisoned apple to Anna. We feel this location was great for this scene as the pleasant/ambient surrounding is a juxtaposition to the danger Anna's character faces. This is effective for the audience, as this is not expected.

We also used this location to record a various of shots which relates to lyrics of the song; such as the shots of Anna throwing money in the air, and holding the fake heart. Again, the contrast of the environment adds interest to the mise-en-scene of the piece.

Diary Of A Day Filming- 3

For our third day of filming we traveled to Southend to shoot some scenes on the beach. The scene on the beach will be used for one of Anna's dreams in the story. We are using a beach because it is a location which allowed us to create quite an abstract atmosphere to represent the vague qualities of the dream Anna is having.
We used our time productively in order to get all our shooting done before it started to get dark.
We decided not to use the bit with glittery lips because we didn't think the lighting looked right and that it didn't fit in with the rest of it as everything else is quite bright, where as the glittery lip bit was quite dull. We were thinking of re-filming it in a brighter setting, however we then decided against using it all together because it is quite cliche.

Diary Of A Day Filming- 2

 

 

This is our second day of filming. We filmed the reality bit of the song which displays how Anna it controlled by her family. We showed this by adding puppet elements into the scene. The picture of the woods behind Anna signifies how there is always part of the wonderland around in Annas mind. We got all of the shots we wanted and everything went really well.

Diary of a Day Filming part 1

Our first day of filming went really well. We filmed in a wood in Blackmore and enhanced the set by adding tinsel and different decorations to make the location look more abstract. This is the first scene in our music video so we wanted it to make an impact in order to grip the audience. I think we did this effectively and we got every shot that we planned. Overall it was a great first day filming.

Props analysis- Mushrooms

We are using a forest as one of our locations in our music video and in order to give it an overall effect of a fairy-tale we wanted to create some props that you would perhaps find in a fairy-tale film. I decided that Toadstools would be appropriate especially as we are filming in a forest.

I started to come up with ideas of how I could begin to make these, I bought some mushrooms from a local shop along with some natural food colouring to make the mushrooms red and I already knew I had some White Acrylic paint at home for the spots.

I used cottons buds to colour the mushrooms as I thought using these would be better than a paintbrush as it wouldn't leave brush strokes. Once I coloured them all I thought the red food colouring looked quite effective as it left the mushrooms quite shiny which would look good for our video. However, the colouring on the mushrooms didn't dry very well and by the time we wanted to use them the next day the coloured had faded and they didn't look as effective.

Therefore, we postponed using the mushrooms for the next day filming and decided to make them again, this time using red Acrylic paint which gave a much better overall effect as the colour was brighter. We then buried them in the forest to create the set