We discussed as a group all of the individual online technologies that we used in our A2 year. The most important technology that we used in our A2 was the Canon 5D camera which allowed us to film the elements of the models moving in synchronisation to the song 'Don't Stop' and really capture the edgy and bright hypothesis that we set out to create. We edited our music video in stages of offline and online editing on the software, adobe premier pro, which allowed us to match clips to the fast tempo beat of our chosen song. In the A2 year, I have expanded my horizons and started using new and more complex technologies to improve the quality of our chosen campaign. More of these technologies are listed on the 'digital technologies' diagram below. As this task continues I will hopefully hone and develop my skills of using more complex technologies and will continue to present work and chosen elements of my campaign in more visually interesting and complex ways. Honing my skills has helped me create the other two ancillary tasks for this campaign and help combine themes to show that all three elements link in corresponding and effective ways to the artist of our music video.
YouTube has over a billion users–almost a third of all people on the Internet–and every day, people watch hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos and generate billions of views.
YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
YouTube has launched local versions in more than 88 countries.
You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population).
Investing in Creators
The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube has increased by 50% y/y.
The YouTube Spaces team is focused on helping creators make great content through strategic programmes and workshops that are largely administered at the YouTube Space production facilities in Los Angeles, New York, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Berlin.
As of March 2015, creators filming in YouTube Spaces have produced over 10,000 videos which have generated over 1 billion views and 70+ million hours of watch time.
Copyright
As of July 2016, YouTube has paid out $2 billion to rightsholders who have chosen to monetise claims since Content ID first launched in 2007.
As of July 2015, there are 8,000+ partners using Content ID–including many major network broadcasters, film studios and record labels–who have claimed over 400 million videos, helping them to control their content on YouTube and make money on videos containing copyrighted material.
We have more than 50 million active reference files in our Content ID database, making it the most comprehensive in the world. It’s even won a PrimeTime Emmy!
(FYI the giffs change...)
The number of views is constantly creeping up meaning people are accessing our video easy and sharing the content. This also means people are enjoying the product as they have viewed it nearly 2000 times in total. The average duration of watch time in 1.04 which means the are watching the majority of the video. This means they are enjoying the video however maybe getting slightly bored after a while due to the shots being similar however they do get more intense and aesthetically pleasing towards the end. We did this so that people would be hooked the whole way through. Hopefully this isn't the case as the music video is said to be 'visually engaging' throughout from our target audience members.
The ratio between male and females watching it is fairly equal however the femal audience do seem to watch it more. This is probably because they can relate to the dancers and look up to them. Also, the artist is a male and females often like watching male artists doing their thing. Male audiences like to watch the video as they can relate to Fragment and also look up to him however in a different way to what girls do. Moreover, the majority of the views are from people between the ages of 18-24 which is perfect for what we were intending. This is just we wanted as they are the people who would enjoy Fragments concerts, by the CDs and really support his impressive work. Many people found the video from mainly a YouTube channel (Hurtwood Media) and other sources such as social media etc. People have also searched it which is positive as it shows an active initiated following of the artist - they have seen the artists content and decided on their own terms to view the product which, in my eyes, is success and the ultimate aim. The suggested sights are also good as people get to view the product on the basis of what else they enjoy bringing them to the product. This increases the chances that they enjoy the product as Youtube do it in terms of what else they watch on the site, for example Fragments video would come up on suggested if someone had just been watching another similar DJ artist like DJ EZ.
As you can see our focus group liked the campaign and gave us important, helpful feedback on different aspects. A focus group is a group of people assembled to participate in a discussion about a product before it is launched, or to provide feedback on a political campaign, television series, etc. This means we are able to engage with our intended target audience and see whether or not the campaign will be a success. In the long run, focus groups are essential as it is vital we know how the encoding of the product is decoded by intended audience members.
ENCODING is the production of the message. It is a system of coded meanings, and in order to create that, the sender needs to understand how the world is comprehensible to the members of the audience. DECODING ishow an audience member is able to understand, and interpret the message.
Regarding the reception theory our target audience have granted the preferred reading of the product. This is because they have understood his specialities such as being a charity artists and producing music because of his 'passion', and 'not just for the money'. Moreover, things like the genre, they have understood, as they stated they would place in more in the EDM (electronic dance music) range which is what we were going for anyway. Therefore, us as the producers have created the whole campaign and music video with the target audience in mind as we understood how vital they are. Then when the audience received the overall product they understood the hinted messages and interpreted them correctly. However, occasionally I noticed in the video that the messages sent out weren't quite received in the intended light for example how Guy believed Fragment to be a synthetic artist due to the campaign being a lot about the look of him. Although, Saskia did pick him up on this and stated how he would probably be organic due to the way he loves performing the music and does this to inspire others. Perhaps this suggests something about the way in which different genders within our target audience decode the text; the girls seem to decode in a preferred manner rather then an oppositional. However, as evident from the focus group, all the feedback was mostly preferred decoding and if not negotiable decoding which means even if they didn't quite decode the text perfectly they still decoded the text in a way which works and is effective. At the end of the day, all the decoding was positive and ultimately drew the focus group in. That is always a good sign.
The 'Use & gratification' theory deals with the effect of people on the media. It describes a mass communication as it is an audience-centred approach and deals with how audience members use media to satisfy their needs. In association to our music video, the theory explains how our audience members would use our campaign as a way to make them happy and occupied due to its fast pace and exciting content. This means the audience are able to exercise control over their media. Through Fragments our music video the audience can integrate and build social attractions through their likes and enjoyment. It is also all about the excitement appeal and feeling on edge throughout. In brief, the theory suggests that media use is motivated by needs and goals that are defined by the audience members and participation in the development and production process may encourage exposure of the product which is the ultimate goal.
Any music video should be visually interesting and should appeal to the correct target audience, already planned for, within the music genre. One of the most important aspects of marketing and producing is figuring out who the target audience is; at the end of the day the whole point of music videos is to sell and attract an audience so that they will then invest money and enjoyment in your project. Therefore, our audience feed back has been extremely important to our group as, along the way, we needed to know how to develop our skills, ideas and plans in order to appeal to the audience we would like to appeal to (18-24 year olds).
To begin with we needed to pitch our group ideas, we had thought about and discussed, to Luke (creative director). He gave us helpful feedback in terms of what ideas we can and cannot do. When Callum told him about his interesting Poker idea he said it was a great idea however can only be done with a super high budget (not for a school media project). We did kind of predict that this would be the outcome but we thought it was worth the try. We then pitched him the rough version of our final product in terms of using colour, paint and a solo singer. Obviously this idea was green lit and manipulated hugely along the process- we ended up with dancers and a DJ. We did however use many aspects from the original pitch that we liked. The pitch with Luke ultimately taught us to think about possibilities within our given facilities and to think about the aftermath of whatever we had planned. We also learned to push the motive of the video and think about why we would want to add everything we did. This helped us think about the target audience we wanted to focus on and how each performance element would help shape the attraction.
When we had discussed the group idea further we thought about asking our peers to give us feedback as these are the audience members we would be targeting our artists work at (they are 18 years old). Obviously this pitch is for our original song choice however we were able to apply it to further development of the music video which was helpful. They mentioned how they loved the idea and therefore we had to figure out how to keep elements of the first song within the 'Don't Stop' song choice even though the music was very different. We were worried that the electronic genre was too much of a niche audience type as we realise it is an acquired taste however ....
...we were able to gather more feed back from more of our peers and they said they loved the music and the way we used to editing to really highlight the aspects of the song (e.g. quick cutting style). It was so helpful gathering our friends feedback as we knew we had targeted the music video to the right audience, giving us confidence in the rest of the age groups enjoyment.
In conclusion, at each stage of the process we were able to gather important and beneficial pieces of audience feedback from our peers and creative directors. Looking back on them, I notice how we took hold of the information given and really tried to implement the ideas into our music video development: Luke suggested looking into different song types, include more themes and conventions to the idea and eliminate unrealistic ideas that cannot be done to a high standard. After these tips from Luke, some of our friends said how they really like the colour idea and how we should push on that and finally other friends considered their opinions on the product and gave us supportive and pleasant feedback in order to make things even better (including what they did enjoy). All in all, the feedback really helped us realise who our target audience were and how to appeal to them on an even larger scale.
Regarding the reception theory our target audience have granted the preferred reading of the product. This is because they have understood his specialities such as being a charity artists and producing music because of his 'passion', and 'not just for the money'. Moreover, things like the genre, they have understood, as they stated they would place in more in the EDM (electronic dance music) range which is what we were going for anyway. Therefore, us as the producers have created the whole campaign and music video with the target audience in mind as we understood how vital they are. Then when the audience received the overall product they understood the hinted messages and interpreted them correctly. However, occasionally I noticed in the video that the messages sent out weren't quite received in the intended light for example how Guy believed Fragment to be a synthetic artist due to the campaign being a lot about the look of him. Although, Saskia did pick him up on this and stated how he would probably be organic due to the way he loves performing the music and does this to inspire others. Perhaps this suggests something about the way in which different genders within our target audience decode the text; the girls seem to decode in a preferred manner rather then an oppositional. However, as evident from the focus group, all the feedback was mostly preferred decoding and if not negotiable decoding which means even if they didn't quite decode the text perfectly they still decoded the text in a way which works and is effective. At the end of the day, all the decoding was positive and ultimately drew the focus group in. That is always a good sign.
