Social networking sites and marketing

Social networking sites are being increasingly used to promote music these days.
On Twitter Taylor Swift has over 4 and a half million views, but what does this actually do to help increase sales?


I found one particular interesting transcript of an interview on the internet to about social network sites and Taylor Swift which is of much importance as our group is targeting the same demographic as she.

HOBSON: I was in Nashville recently, and everybody was talking about Taylor Swift had attracted all these new young fans to country music because she's so well versed in social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. What do you make of that?

GONZALES: The reason she has that distinction probably more than many in her generation that are coming up now is that she was already active in Myspace when she became popular. So where a lot of industry executives, to put them in one basket, where they were trying to figure out "How this should be used," "When this should be used," "Should we spend any money on it," She was already there using it intuitively.

Our group would be wise to use social networking sites as from this interview we can tell that Taylor Swift's rise to fame of selling over 20 million albums was partly due to the role of these internet sites. Many artists these days are using them, its more difficult to say who isn't using them.

But why does this increase sales?

Well arguably there are numerous reasons. I think the prime reason is due to the fact that being able to look in on the artists worlds excites and attracts our demographic, and this way they are always informed of what albums, music videos, tour dates, singles are going to come out. Encouragement from the artist is a key way of increasing sales.

Another reason is that these social networking sites create a stronger fanbase, espeacilly the bond between artist and audience. This ensures futures sales as the fan becomes loyal to the artist.

Another use of Social networking sites is for viral distribution. Anyone can share music videos these days and by typical word of mouth, transformed in to the use of the 21st century technology has helped advertise by linking potential audiences to the new music. 

Filming Session Three

This filming session we were able to do a variety of scenes, some of them were random and others were planned.
When we were traveling to our filming sites we decided to take the opportunity to film Emma and Rhys (the love object) together, holding hands, laughing etc typical features of a loved up couple. We did this so we could maybe use the footage in our video to fill in empty spaces or to use as flash backs. We used a hand held tracking shots for these clips so that it gave a sense of the past as it was not planned, not like the revenge she's planning. Hand held shots are also used to give a sense of realism, this we could use to effect because by the realism we can create sympathy for our protagonist when then it switches to shot of the love object with the antagonist.

When it came to editing these bits we increased the saturation to give warmer tones to the footage so that it gave a summer love atmosphere which we want to create when we see shots of the protagonist and the love object together. To fit this in to the video we used jump cuts to show the flashback as we wanted to make the  audience aware there are temporal leaps in the text.

The first planned scenes of the day was a situation where in the narrative Emma is walking down the street, she looks of in to the distance where she spots something, we would then in the editing cut to what she's looking at so the audience know what's caught her attention. In the car was Rhys and Amy (the antagonist). We would then cut back to Emma who would walk in to a lamppost because her attention is on the car with Rhys and Amy in it. I attempted some human dolly tracking shots of Rhys and Amy in the car to use in our video, however this proved to be difficult as i'm trying to keeping the camera steady whilst walking fast enough to keep up with a car. We felt this part of the filming had gone well as we got a variety of of shots.

The next scene we needed to film was at a location called Ray lodge park. For this part we recorded Rhys and Emma together acting out their harmonious relationship so we could use a montage of flashbacks.

When we arrived back at school we carried out even more filming, however this time it was quite spontaneous. We saw an old chair and a pile of rubbish and thought it may be useful to film here as the mise-en-scene could be interpreted to reflect the the mood of the character, confused and anger which is reflected in the mess and destruction of the scene. We used Emma to lipsync a few lines here and act in a particularly crazy/mad way to emphasize the preferred reading.

Second Filming session

For the second filming session we wanted to film outside however the weather on Wednesday was poor and it rained. Therefore we couldn't film that day as we wanted to show a summers day to fit in with the narrative. "The story starts when it was hot and it was summer" 
Instead more filming in the bedrooms took place in the bedrooms.
In this scene we filmed Emma (the protagonist) trying on lots of clothes. This fits in with gender stereotypes that females are always changing there clothes. However the preferred reading of this would be that her changing her clothes is her preparation for the "war" thats about to take place or aka "the revenge". To give a post modern feel to our  video we used the camera in only one position and used it as if it was Emma's mirror.
The next day we uploaded the footage on to final cut express which took most of the lesson but we we're able to do some editing.
During the editing we had a high frequency in cuts, each beat ( cutting on the beat is a convention of music videos) a new change of clothes, though this isn't a jump cut because we kept the camera in the same position but is a jump in narrative, it disrupts the audiences viewing so they recognize the change of clothes.

Final cut express

For out editing we've been learning how to use Final cut express on Mac. Since we've been filming our first few scenes we've already made a start on the editing process so we never waste time waiting to film, we thought that a film edit film edit process would be more efficient than filming then editing it.
This is a clip i found on you tube that turned out to be helpful.

We're all pretty knew to this and had to learn a few things to get us started. First of all converting our files from megaclip so then we can import them in to final cut express.
Another thing we found was difficult was especially cutting the clips where we want them, we learned several things on the timelines to help us do this.
We also learned from another alevel student how to colour correct which is excellent because we need to change the tones in some places.
Its definitely a difficult piece of technology to use however it helps us be precise when matching the clips to the audio for the lipsync, so its great in the aid of trying to create a realistic music video.

Taylor Swift Album designs

Here are three different Taylor Swift Albums designs. For our completed video we will need an albums cover to represent our work, to promote the video. Therefore one of the steps to promoting this is analyzing her previous album art.
One of the main things to notice is that she is the main focus in all of her album art. None of the albums artworks are particularly unrealistic. To make her the main focus there is nothing in the background that particularly draws the audience's eye, for example in the 1st and 4th album cover the background is a plain light colour to keep the attraction on the artist. To draw attention to the Artist she is dressed in an eye catching purple (album cover 4) or in (album cover 1) her golden hair catches the audiences attention from the particular way its displayed and the vibrance of the gold. In album cover 3 this is the only one that varies from the others as its the only one with a bright, different background. This may be because its trying to appeal and attract the target demographic, young girls. Her songs are about natural and realistic experiences, growing up, so the representation of nature, the blue for sea, the dark grassy greens for forests and the little picture of the butterfly that represents metamorphosis in people from girl to women.
In all the album covers to show the importance of the audience the artist is either snapped at a close up ( album cover 2) or a medium shot, again to keep the main focus on the artist.
The demographic is mainly for girls so the graphology is all pretty similar between them she used a classic swirly design for her name, the same style is repeated in all so therefore its become the signature of her name, this is to promote a recognizable signature for her and in turn her fans will be able to recognize her merchandise/work universally which creates a strong fan base as she will become familiar.
All her album artwork are bright and light, the beige and white colours represent her innocence and wisdom, and as her music is aimed at young girls this turns her in to the perfect role model agreeable for both the parents of the listener and agreeable with the young girls. The colour scheme also infers the tone of the majority of her work, light and happy, nothing dark and sinister. She's being represented as Americas sweetheart, the girl next door figure.
In conclusion to create our own album artwork key ideas, which are remarkably easily, the most important being including our artist in our artwork as the main focus, using either a close up or medium shot.
Another is to dress our artist in light colours like white or beige or even bright colours like purple but nothing that could be considered as "edgy" or "dark", however our song is one of Taylor's more edgier songs which shows an aggressive attitude of herself so that may be open to change.
We will most likely decide on a plain,light background to not draw the audiences attention of our artist and off course copying her Taylor swift signature so she is easily recognized.