Music Adverts

I really like the Chris Brown Graffiti album cover because it is bold and colourful; the masculine figure at the forefront of the cover makes a bold statement. In contrast to this the actual context of the cover is very simple and I believe this is what makes it even more effective.
The Nickelback album cover is interesting because it is looking forward and the cover gives the impression that the object is moving. The contrast of colors from the top to the bottom also make the cover stand out, the orange colour of the sunset compared with the dark sweeping effect of the road.
I don’t like the Destiny’s Child album cover because I think the colour are too similar and so it makes the cover boring and everything fades together. Although the use of all the singers’ faces close together is effect I think it is a boring and too simple album cover.

Music Adverts

All these music advertisements are very colourful and creative and so give great examples of how advertisers can draw buyers into there product by creating appealing advertisements and in music magazines such as NME the advertisers are targeting there ideal audience. These advertisements range from advertising music gigs to advertising individual artists. The design and appearance of the advert is crucial to the success of the product, as it must make the consumer interested in the product, the bright colours and loud fonts draw the attention of the audience making it successful in its purpose.

The Main Uses Of Music Advertisement

Music can fulfill several tasks when it is used in advertisements. David Huron therefore chooses six categories in which “music can serve the overall promotional goals in one or more of several capacities.” Mostly the use of music is not only intended by one of the following attributes but they are interdependent and interrelated to each other. The categories he claims are described as follows.


Entertainment

The entertainment aspect of music helps making an advertisement more appealing to the viewer by simply making it more attractive respectively more aesthetic. By this increase in attractiveness an advertisement is able to engage more attention. From this point of view “music need not necessarily manifest any special affinity with a particular product or service in order to play an effective and useful function.” The music functions more as bridge between viewer and advertisement in this case.

Structure and Continuity
Another basic attribute of music is to support an advertisements structure and continuity. Therefore “music is used to mediate between disjoint images” Also it can emphasize dramatic moments within the advertisement. Accompanying i.e. a TV commercial music structures the told narrative, can tell a narrative itself or function as anchor, which completes the overall meaning. It can i.e. create antagonist and protagonist within this narrative by giving them typical musical figures, harmonies or melodies.


Memorability

It is far more likely to memorize a piece of music than spoken language or images because “music tends to linger in the listeners mind.” “Early advertising music also had different aims. Music then was primarily used as a mnemonic device. Rhyme and reception were enlisted to keep a brand name in mind. ‘Singing commercials’ or jingles made up a self-contained genre.” Huron adds that it is “the most common musical technique for aiding memorability and hence product recall.”[7] Companies use these for example to make the customers remember their phone number, webpage, their company name or at least a catchy slogan linked to the brand. But also non-jingle music can perform this task and stick in the customers mind.

Lyrical Language

In contemporary adverts the advertisers must overcome the viewer’s skepticism, which developed over years through desensitization. This can become a pretty hard task. But since advertisers favor mostly poetic, emotional appeals over logical, informational appeals due to the shift from modern to postmodern advertisement music turned out to be a perfect tool to reach this goal. Music can provide a message without the customer consciously noticing it. For providing rational facts in the same time “mixtures of speech and song provide advertisers with opportunities for both logical, factual appeals [through spoken and written language] and emotive, poetic appeals [through music].”


Targeting and Authority Establishment

Different types of music can be attributed to certain kind of groups or life styles which makes it possible to appeal to these groups over using certain kinds of musical genres. Music can therefore function as a “nonverbal identifier” for certain groups with different musical taste because it is “arguably the greatest tool advertisers have for portraying and distinguishing various styles.”


Looking at these contributions of music towards advertisement it becomes obvious that these attributes work together in inseparable ways. Of course there could be added other categories. There is for example a difference between diegetic (the source of the music is visible) and non-diegetic (the source of the music is not visible) use of music, which can have totally different effects in result depending on the adverts context. The overall task of advertisers nowadays should be to develop a “considerable practical experience in joining images and music to social and psychological motivation” and by this process create meaning, which appeals to the target group and helps the advertisement to succeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_advertising

Green Screen! The Avatar Way of Thinking!

Pictures tell a lifetime of stories, they give us a view of the past and strengthen the memories we may have lost or forgotten. Many pictures allow us to reach back into our minds and relive those moments. This is exactly what we have tried to illustrate, by showing several shots of moving photos dotted around the room where we filmed. These photos showing our main character with the stories lost love, using several shots we filmed in the summer, they portray how vibrant and full of life his past was. Bathed in the dull glow of his ragged and untidy bedroom, depicting our main character as depressed, showing him remembering his past as a relief from the life he lives. So we aimed to attack the veiwer with subtle and cleverly placed shots of memories, i used this by filming these shots with the piocture frames coated with green card. This created the well known 'Green Screen' effect, where i could edit the film on Final Cut Pro and render a small movie within the confines of the picture frame. I used this many times throughout the film as i tried to fully portray the extent of his mourning for a past love

Initial Shot List

This is a very rough first idea of the ordering of shots. Many of our shots were spontaneous as we came up with a lot of ideas for shots when we were on location, therefore, this list states types of shots and when they will be used. 

The names Dan and Helen represent the male and female characters in the film.

L shot - Long shot

M shot - Medium shot

ECU - Extreme Close Up

CU - Close Up

OSS - Over Shoulder Shot

The shots of the couple together will be colourful and possibly slowed down to show passage of time. The colours represent a happy time, and good, positive memories. 

Shots in Dan's bedroom will have slightly muted colouring to show his depression and gloomy mood.  

We will complete a more detailed shot list once we have all of the filming uploaded and we know exactly which shots are useful and which do not make sense to the plot and theme.

1 L shot Helen walking down a path, into darkness provided by trees, slightly slowed down to create a memory like effect

2 Cuts to a M shot of Dan's bedroom, him asleep, slight pan

3 ECU of Dan's eyes opening, and him waking up

4 Several shots of Dan moving around his bedroom, moping, sad, looking to see if beer cans are empty, green screen photo frame in background, slightly slowed down,

5 CU of can being thrown, lands next to photo frame, image moving inside the frame 

6 M shot of Dan sat on a chair, rubs eyes and sees the moving image in frame, double takes and leans over to frame

7 L shot of Dan picking up frame

8 OSS of frame in Dan's hand, slow zoom into frame and moving image within it

9 Cross fade into the moving image as full screen

10 Shot changes several times to show many different comforting moments of the couple, very much in love

11 Cuts back to OSS of the photo frame, frozen image, not moving

12 Dan puts the frame back on the side and lies down, looking nostalgic and hurt

Production Diary

Date	Location	Scenes	Equipment	Actors	Props	Mise-en-scene
5/09/09	Will’s Garden	Zip line   At the pond   On the grass   Walking through paths	2 cameras   2 tripods   Zip-line invention   Camera Chargers	Dan and Helen	Bench   2 Mobile Phones	Statue   Flowers   Summer Clothes, Sunglasses
6/09/09	Consall Gardens	Old Pyramid   Under Wedding Tree   Walking Down Several Paths   On the Bridge	2 cameras   2 tripods   Bottled Water	Dan and Helen	2 Mobile Phones	Flowers   Summer Clothes, Sunglasses
1/12/09	Shopping for robots and instruments, Festival Park, S-O-T and Leek town centre
19/12/09	Will’s Bedroom	Robot walking around bedroom   Girl in bedroom   Green-screen	1 Stills Camera   Tripod   Green-screen	Kirsty	Robot   High heels   Fishnet tights   lipstick	Typical teenage boys room, modern furniture, tidy with some clutter
5/01/10-8/01/10	Editing and post-production
9/01/10	Dan’s Bedroom	Dan moping around bedroom   Green-screen in photo frame	1 charged camera   Camera Charger   1 Tripod   Green Card	Dan	Empty beer cans   Photo frame   Laptop   Magazines   Pizza Box	Messy teenagers bedroom, bed unmade, rubbish on the floor, magazines scattered   Dark room
11/01/10 onwards	Editing and post-production, research and creation of ancillary tasks, scripting and producing presentation for analysis