FINAL STATEMENT OF INTENT

Brief 4 – Music Video and Online

How do you intend to use the four areas of the media theoretical framework to communicate meaning  and meet the requirements of your chosen brief? (approx. 400 words) 

Product 1

For my music video, I intend to create a video showing the anthemic nature of the song "Mr. Blue Sky" implementing forms of narrative- a mix of performance montage and a narrative element, following the story of a young artist exploring the day around him. My artist will be presented as down-to-earth and relatable (no designer clothing, or makeup, and a natural mise-en-scene) to reach my 16–25-year-old aspirational audience. Sony has signed many up-and-coming artists with a small fanbase, so my video will include elements briefly presenting naturalistic, real-world scenarios my audience would understand and can relate to: e.g. a messy bedroom, rather than glamorous sets. The animations, as well as the range of different shot types and visual effects, will adhere to many of Andrew Goodwin's aspects of a music video. There will be reoccurring themes to anchor the video's meaning such as reappearing characters – like the main rabbit, Muffin - and other parallels, with a cyclical structure from beginning to end. My graphics and iconography will maintain the uplifting style seen in my visuals and animations to maintain a cohesive brand identity. Intertextual references will be made to the TV show Adventure Time, which uses a similar artistic style to my video, and was aired in 2010, the age in which my target audience would be watching. As well as this I will pay homage to several classic Disney films such as Bambi and Lady and the Tramp, paying tribute to Disney’s ground-breaking cel animation. Older Disney films are aimed towards a broad target audience and will play on feelings of nostalgia and flatter the audience with an exciting easter egg for them to discover.  

Product 2

Creating my artist’s star persona will be achieved in the creation of the accompanying website, which will include “exclusive” photographs of my band and “meet the team”, with working links to exclusive interviews and additional content for fans. Hyperlinks and social media buttons will encourage audiences to engage with my artist as my target demographic is accustomed to engaging with their favourite artists online, being digitally native. My website will be easy to navigate, with clear feature tabs such as “About”, “Home”, “Tour”, and “Merch”. Information will be provided on the history of the artist in the “About” section, briefly highlighting the issues that he faced in his past, illustrating his aspirational nature of striving for happiness and overcoming struggles in life. Using the same shooting locations for photography as seen in the video will create synergy. I will go above and beyond to create a house style that engages audiences and encourages them to see more. If possible, I will include a dedicated merchandise section where I will superimpose some of the art used in the music video onto t-shirts, mugs and more. The Sony logo will be visible at the bottom of my pages, and I will maintain a constant colour palette reflecting the visuals seen in the video to reinforce a clear house style. Returning fans of my artist will be catered for as I will include several teasers for more albums to come, accompanied with the teaser of a ‘brand overhaul’ “All of My friends R Animals”- like many artists change their website aesthetic from one album to the next, the audience is teased with a release date and juxtaposing imagery to the rest of the website – the artist is still the same, but in a different setting to mark the changing of seasons from summer to autumn. 

How do you intend to link your media products to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the digitally convergent nature of your media production? (approx. 100 words) 

I will demonstrate my understanding of digital convergence by including a call to action, encouraging fans to tweet with a set hashtag shown on my website, relating to the content of the music video. The website will be linked in the description of my music video and the video will be featured on the homepage of my website- both are accessible from one another. Characters and animations from my video will be shown throughout the website, in order to maintain a visually appealing, cohesive house style. The website includes an easter egg that is only fully understood if the video is watched (which is purely visual, but provides entertainment for loyal fans), as well as other easter eggs with secret rewards for observant viewers. Furthermore, there will be extensive links from one media product to the other – links to the website at the end of the video, links to the video in the website, etc. I will also use assets of my animation on my website - gifs and easter eggs will be littered throughout the website in a fun and interesting way.

FINAL VIDEO - EXTENDED VERSION

https://youtu.be/qEpFaWVRqeU

FINAL WEBSITE LINK

https://kkatereeson.wixsite.com/cdboy

Website 1st Working Page - Update

 Website Update:

1st working page looking to be finished. I will try to include some more details at a later stage if I have time (maybe a short teaser for a tour, some more merchandise items, etc)

• All social buttons work (you are directed to the appropriate webpage for whatever button you click)
• Most elements are animated/moving (the images do not effectively show this)
• The Mr. Blue Sky single is interactive (hover over image to see vinyl)
• Included merchandise page with both Mr Blue Sky related merchandise and other CDBoy related items (e.g. pre-order for the next album)
• Interactions with fans through twitter, featured some fake twitter handles with fake tweets for audience engagement
• Teaser for next "era" of artist - went for an autumnal mise-en-scene with dark greens and browns, serif fonts etc.
• A footer with appropriate social buttons and disclaimers, as well as an invitation for an newsletter
• A secret easter egg (the user can click on the bunny at the footer to find a secret poster, with a call to action to enter a raffle)

Other elements to note:

• Created a font for the website (most of the text is written in this font)
• The Mr Blue Sky album cover is a homage/reference to Tyler the Creator's Flower Boy album

1. Writing and easter egg for the second page complete. 30 second audio/visual element completed, but needs to be uploaded to website.
2. Shooting for video done (might redo bits if they don't look as good as I want) but still underway with animating.

30 Second Audio Visual Content

 For my 30 second clip for my webpage, I decided to make an interview with the minor characters appearing in the music video, who will be posing as CDBoy's mum and dad. A big part of my star persona is his positive relationship with his parents - something many young people would aspire to have.

This is my completed video, with editing similar to WIRED's twitter interviews that they host. However, this is much longer than 30 seconds, so I will aim to condense the content of the interview into a short, 30 second TikTok.

Planning - Script for my Audio/Visual

Here is the rough script that I gave to my actors to perform for the interview for my website.

Script

S: Hi everyone I’m Sarah Dulieu

D: I’m David Dulieu, and we’re the parents of CDBoy. 

S: His new single Mr Blue Sky – which you can stream on literally every streaming service and watch the new music video link in the description – was a bit of a tribute to us, from Eric.

D: You asked us questions on twitter and we’re gonna answer them. 

So @cdb0ystan1 asks What was eric like as a child? Omg I bet he was so cute heart emoji heart emoji heart emoji.

S:

• He was such a sweet child

• A bit lonely as an only child so he turned to music ever since he was young

D:

• Since Im a musician too he would always try to copy my guitar playing and would always sing along and I thought music would be a good avenue for him

S:

• We had some financial troubles, so we had to move around quite a bit, and that definitely took a toll on him

• But we saw his music skills progress and him and his father would come up with songs and do covers all the time 

• He was too nervous to be in the choir and didn’t have enough friends to start a band of his own, so he started uploading music to YouTube when he was like 14. Don’t go and look for it because it’s terrible

S:

• But despite all the hardships and the loneliness and the issues at home he was always trying to look at the bright side whenever he could. And we’re so proud of him for that.

What were erics biggest influences?

D:

• Well technically speaking me. I was his biggest influence. For those of you who don’t know mr blue sky was a song that I made up with eric back when he was a kid, it was like our anthem. I showed him how to play and then he just ran with it.

S: 

• But yknow I played a lot of radiohead in the car in the morning, I loved weezer, the arctic monkeys, a LOT of ELO. But Mr Blue Sky isn’t really like any of that, since it was more erics attempt at a new genre of music as a tribute to us. Isnt he nice?

•

• He’s tyler the creators biggest fan – im sure you can tell that pretty easily- he’s a big queen fan and he’s getting into a bit of 10cc at the moment. Oh and when the happiness mcfly music video came out he couldn’t stop watching it, if that counts.

How did you guys react to erics transition? I hope you were accepting …

D:

• Of course we were jesus do people not have faith in us (worse to that effect)

S:

• Eric knew he was different the moment he knew what being different meant. We never pushed him for answers until he was ready and we never pushed him to be something he’s not.

• As soon as he said he wanted to we took him shopping in the boys section, we got his hair cut and all that and it was really good to see him finally come into himself

• He was clearly uncomfortable as a child and it was sad to see him feel like that but we are so happy to be able to support him as he matures now

Give us a funny story from when CD boy was a kid pls!!!

D: 

• Not exactly so funny for Sarah and I but eric had weird eating habits as a kid. Like really weird.

S: 

• We found him one time trying to eat our cabinet. He was about 2 or 3 and we had no idea what possessed him to do it or what about or cabinet looked so delicious but he was giving it his best go. 

19/09/2022 Progress

 Long Weekend Goals:

• Record all musical instrument shots. Piano, guitar and vocals, including a fret-board shot for the guitar riff in the song.
• Record more general footage of my main character for the second half of the song.
• Finish recording / reach a conclusion to my music video.

At the weekend, I accomplished two of my three goals. I now have a complete master track for the guitar, guitar closeups, fret-board closeup and vocal aspect of my music video Each element that I recorded can be swapped in at any time, with all of the audio synced successfully.

As well as this, I continued with more of my editing and filming. My timeline as of this weekend looks like this, with the left section being film I have decided upon and am happy with, with a few tweaks and adjustments. 

My timeline last week looked like this, with a concept I was less happy with.

Alongside editing, I am also sketching out the rough lines for my animation. I have decided against properly animating anything as things may come up or I may have to make adjustments to my clips, so I should not commit to anything until I am sure it is final. While I have not reached the conclusion of my video yet, I feel more confident in the direction it is taking and will continue animating and recording in my spare time. During the week I have found a video I wish to analyse further, and hopefully reference in my video - Happiness by McFly.

I am struggling with finding intertextual references to use in my video, so I aim to speak with my peers soon to see if they have any ideas or references I could include.

I have not started my website yet, but am continually taking images and drawing pictures for when I do. I have a generally good idea of how my website will appear and I will aim to begin planning this next lesson.