The image above shows the logos of successful music companies. Most logos are just black and white and have the name of the company in large letters. From these examples, I will use the idea of the black and white as well as the company name in bold so that it catches the audiences eye. The use of these dull colours will suit the mood of my music video due to it being a story based on a broken hearted man looking back on memories of a loved one who has passed away.
Below, I have made a few sketches of ideas for our company 'Light Beams Productions'. I have used the capital L as the main part of the logo as it stands out and will catch the audiences eye. On the second logo, I have made it look like a lighthouse with a light beam coming out of it, which acts as a shelf to put the company title on. Also, the uses of shading on the logos connote a light beam, which links well with the name itself "Light Beams Productions".
In addition, the colours used in two of my designs are mainly black and grey due to many company logos being plain, as the audience do not tend to look at it as they're more interested in the music video itself. However, these colours help the logo look plain and simple as the design is basic.
In contrast, on the first logo, I have used the colour purple as it looks like the royal purple after a sunset, as well as it helping the white light beam stand out and look realistic.
Logo 1
Logo 2
Logo 3
In conclusion, we as a group have chosen logo 2 due to it being plain and simple, as well as it looking creative due to using the L as a lighthouse with the title resting on the light beam. We believe that this logo looks professional due to the simplicity.
The image above shows the title ideas for our music video, which is influenced from Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'. With the help of our target audience, we chose the title 'Retrospect' due to it having the most votes by the audience as well as linking to our music video narrative well. For example, our narrative is about an elderly man looking back on old memories of a loved one who he has lost, therefore left heartbroken. 'Retrospect' is also a simple and catchy name, which will be easily remembered by the audience.
For our primary research we are going to be making a focus group with 6-8 people from the target audience that we would like our final music video to appeal to. In our focus group we will ask a questions on a variety of topics regarding audience and the style of music video that they would like to see.
However we did face some difficulties as our focus group was slightly larger than expected and only a select few members of those involved actually participated in the discussion, therefore we did not receive the broadest range of answers since as expected some participants were more actively involved in the answering of questions than others.
Upon viewing the resultant footage of our focus group video we are able to find that our audience would prefer if our final music video was to be ambiguous and have an open ended narrative as those who we interviewed said that they would like to explore their own different interpretations of the video as they would feel like they could engage with the video and its narrative more as it feels more personal if they can apply their own perspective to it.
Those who we interviewed in our focus group also agreed that the use of black and white will add ambience to the video as they feel that it would make the video clearer as they will be able to distinguish which scenes are set in the past or present depending on whether they are in black and white or colour. This then relates to Barthes semantic code as the audience would have associated black and white with the past as music videos, when they first started to become popular would have been in black and white.
The audience also felt that it would be important for the lyrics of the song to relate to the narrative of the music video as they feel the lyrics relating to the narrative would add to the meaning of the song and is more likely to have a lasting impact on the audience as they will have both the visual and aural meanings from the video that are cohesive. The focus group also stated that they would prefer a romance music video to be slow paced as it would reflect the relationship blossoming and the connection between the two people growing, which they would prefer the music video to focus on over the breakup of the relationship.
Those who participated in our focus group listed some examples of props that they felt would symbolise romance these included
Love Letters
Photos of the couple together
Roses
Teddy Bears
Places the couple have been together
Text messages between the couple
This then relates to Barthes semantic code as the audience associate these items with romance and therefore we will include these props within our final music video so that it will conform to what the target audience considers to be genre conventions of a romantic music video.
Most of our audience expect to see lots of emotion within a romantic music video. Others mentioned the lyrics of the song being linked to emotion. Also, a storyline and happy ending was mentioned. Stereotypically, a romantic video would include two people falling in love and have a 'happily ever after'. However, in my groups video, we will include a storyline which shows a mixture of ups and downs within a relations and the emotions the characters are feeling shown, However we do would wish to subvert the stereotype of a happy ending as the central theme of the song we have chosen for our music video is heartbreak.
Finally, the members of our focus group felt that the features of a music video that would render it to be good are a focus on emotion and the relationship growing between two people and if it was to be about a breakup to be about the happy times the couple had instead of it being about heartbreak. We also found that our audience are mainly female. This is very stereotypical as females tend to prefer romantic genres. In our music video, we will include young female characters within our video, which will help to sell our music video easier to the target audience.
Logo 2
