Official Music Video First Draft

Now that we have completed all the filming and shooting that we wanted to do, we have managed to put all the shots we want to do together in order for us to create our official first draft. To get to this point however, due to everyone having different ideas, we started editing individually so that after a week we could join all three versions into one to get a video that we all agreed on and liked. When we combined them to create a single video, we colour corrected the shots, to make it consistent, and changed any shots that we thought could have been better. There are still parts that need adjusting and improving, but to make sure that the improvements we make are efficient and correct we have exported the version we have got so far, as a first draft in order to enable us to receive feedback from our peers and our teachers as to what really does need improving.

Here is our Official First Draft:

Magazine Cover First Draft

To go alongside the magazine article we are also creating a front cover. We have used Photoshop to create this and based the layout on a real Billboard cover which we found in our research for the cover. This way it enabled us to make the cover look as realistic as possible and as if our artist was on the front cover. When creating this, in order to display verisimilitude, we have tried to include everything you would expect to find on a front cover, including the bar-code and quotes as to what is inside.

This is our first draft for the cover and we aim to improve this in the future. To help improve this in the best way possible, we are going to ask other people for feedback, as to what they think is good and bad. From there it will be clear as o what improvements we need to make.

Campaign Research

Many of the teenagers that would be fans of Heidi Holmes have to continuously fight against what the media is telling them they should look like. So this is why we feel it will be great for our artist's 'innocent' and 'good' image if she heads a campaign promoting body image and especially facial image. We have looked deeper into this and then decided through inspiration from celebrities such as Emma Watson that we will complete a video that involves an inspirational speech and examples from our own artist's life.

Website First Draft

Over the last few weeks we have started to create our website. We completed this through the website Wix.com, A key reason we have decided to create a website is because nearly everyone has access to he internet and it will therefore make people more aware of our artist internationally. Also through a website it gives the fans somewhere to go to find out various information about Heidi Homes. This includes when her tour is and what merchandise they can buy.

Below is our first draft of the website, which we will now go and receive feedback for to help us improve it for our target audience and this will mean we can gain more fans and a greater following.

Magazine Cover Research

From the marketing research we clearly identified that one key way to promote our artist to the world would be through a magazine cover, because then even if the magazine is not bought people will still see the cover in shops for example. This will enable us to make our artist more well known and recognized in general, as when passersby see Heidi Holmes on the cover they are more likely to be curious as to who the person on the front is and therefore read the cover at least.

However as our artist comes under quite a specific genre of Folk-Pop it is important to put our artist on the correct type of magazine. This is because otherwise it would not look realistic as if the magazine we we chose to star on was a rock magazine, it would not make sense for Heidi to star on it, and the wrong type of audience (people who probably would not like her music) would be the ones reading and knowing about her.

Magazine Article Layout Template

After completing the Billboard magazine research, we had to look into a similar article that we wanted to take the layout template from. This is in order to make the article look professional and as if it could have actually been in an edition of Billboard.
When looking at the various layouts from our research, we recognised that for the artist to be on the front cover the layout we chose needed to be at least a double page spread, so usually even more. Once we looked into our options of this we finally decided that we would base the layout of our article on the template that was used for Ariana Grande's recent Billboard interview, this is because we agreed it involved the correct ratio of writing and photographs, that would be informing yet aesthetically pleasing for the consumer. This therefore easily helps to portray across what our artist is like as a person, along side her image.
Here is what the layout of Ariana Grande's interview looks like:

To recreate this layout for our article, we will use the Adobe Indesign software, and this will enable to get clear dividers, stand out boxes and quote lines that will make the article look more professional than it would if we completed it on a simple Microsoft document. This is because this is closer to the software that professional magazine editors use.

Interview Article Research

As from looking at ways of marketing, we saw that a key way of marketing is via a magazine cover and article. So now that we have completed the research for the cover we now need to look into how the article should look, come across and be written. This will help our article to be accurate and true as if it actually could be in Billboard Magazine. Further to this by making the article inside accurate it will aid what is on the cover to also be accurate, as it makes the quotes which are written on the cover more realistic and natural, as if you would actually find them there.

Halfway Evaluation Feedback

While we were completing our halfway evaluation presentation, we got the class to each fill out feedback for us based on what we were showing them, which is what we have completed so far in our promotional package of our artist Heidi Holmes. In this feedback they told us what was good and bad about each section of the promotional package, these sections included Video, Website and DigiPak.

After they completed the feedback, we collected it all in and then once we had looked through it all we summarised it, from this we can clearly see what was good and what we need to improve if we are to move forward and achieve a higher grade in the end.

Below is what we managed to summarised:

Summer Theme Teaser Photos Release

We have now released our second set of teaser photos onto our social media accounts, this will continue to 'hype' the audience up about the upcoming release of the debut single. However to fully ‘hype’ people up about the single, this time, we are announcing the release date of the song by including the date on the teaser images as well as including the single title 'Find My Way'. This set of teasers will therefore reveal more about the upcoming release in comparison to the first teasers which only included the logo and the Autumn concept. Releasing different sets of teasers is important in terms of building excitement and publicity as it lets the public know, little by little, about the details of the new release. This therefore leaves the audience wanting more in terms of information about our artist, each time and this would increase talk about our artist and therefore the popularity of our artist.

Below are the photos we released.

Institution Research

For a music artist to be able to release music successfully they need at least some type of representation. This representation is given through a record label. We have completed research into this, because different labels often represent different types of genre and it is important for our artist, for it to be realistic, that we choose to be represented by the right label. This is because this label will feature on our DigiPak and as an unknown artist, people may look at the label and connote a certain genre of music with our artist. This is why after completing the research which is below, we have decided to go with National Anthem Records.

Interview Research

Interviews are key in unveiling an artist's personality which can help attract the target audience, therefore, we did some research on other artist interviews within the same age range of Heidi Holmes to see how we can successfully create an interview that showcases her bright personality. Additionally, artists are given the chance to discuss their music and the process of creating their songs which is a useful way to promote and sell the music, especially since the audience and consumers will not know much about our artist yet, because she is new.

Halfway Evaluation

Today we presented to the class our Halfway Evaluation. We had to present to them everything we have completed so far and this included sneak peeks of the parts of the music video that we have edited. When presenting to the class we spoke through the presentation below and answered any questions they had about our ideas.
Whilst this was happening our class members were writing feedback on the mark sheets and gave us out of 50. Then we collected in these sheets and from this we will be able to improve our promotional package and therefore through completing this evaluation we can increase our final marks for each section.

Merchandise

One way of marketing the artist to the audience is through merchandise, and in order to appeal to as many people as possible it is important that we have a wide variety of products available and to make sure the artist's logo is out there these products must have the logo on.
As Heidi Holmes is just starting out the products we choose muse be fairly generic and therefore cheap to produce, for example t-shirts, key rings and hoodies. However one way that we have made our merchandise more unique to our artist is through one of the products being a blue winter hat because in her music video this will feature within her outfits. So by producing this hat as merchandise it can allow the audience to achieve a similar look to the artist, which normally lots of younger female fans like to do.

Merchandise Research

Today we looked at how merchandise can be used in further creating an image for our artist and helping to promote or advertise the artist, her music and eventually her tour to the consumers and audiences. To make sure that our merchandise would be effective in advertising to the correct audience, we completed this research which looks at various similar artists, including Gabrielle Aplin and Ellie Goulding, and what they complete for their merchandising and how it works for us. This will influence our final decisions when it comes to the final creation of the merchandise.

We plan to be inspired by all of the artists above in our merchandise, but we will particularly take inspiration from Gabrielle Aplin's merchandise due to the great variety she has which is specific to her expected target audience.