Music Marketing Project
As described in my last blog, I was assigned a project called "Music Marketing" that has a long process to get to the finish line. If you have not read my first blog, you should go read that before reading this one. Within this post, I will describe and reflect on the full process of this project and what I took from it. So, without further or do, let's get right into it!
Research
Throughout the project, research was a key tool used to give us information for what we were going to do next. The project started off with research on case studies of record labels and bands from the genre that my group received. Since we got the genre rock, we researched on bands such as AC/DC and Metallica and record labels such as Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. This helped us gain immense amounts of knowledge on the rock genre. This also influences our decisions on how we were going to campaign our artist because of the success that these bands/artists have had. Researching played an extremely important role in my music marketing project and set me up to brainstorm and plan.
Shown above is the research charts for the case studies.
Brainstorming/PlanningMoving on to the second part of the project, and maybe the most important, brainstorming or planning. This helps organize the rest of the project and provides a better result. So, we started this by thinking which of the four songs we received could be used best. We decided on picking the song with the most beat, flow, and tone changes, which ended up helping us a lot when creating our music video. As a group, we then decided on how we wanted our artist to be and how we wanted his mise-en-scene to look. We also discussed how we wanted our campaign to be. Since we made a schedule to help us complete the project in a smooth manner, we knew it was time to start the storyboard. This gave us a layout of our music video which helped tremendously. I can't stress enough how important brainstorming/planning is part of the process is in making a successful project.
Shown above is the storyboards done for the music video.
Shown above is the schedule made for working and completing parts of the project.
Production
Making a music video was a huge portion of the project and marketing in our campaign. Now, one may say this is a really hard part of the process, but with the planning my group had, production was like a walk in the park. Having done the storyboard already, we knew what we were going to do when we got to the place we were filming. The first part of the video was filmed when it was light out, while the second part was at night, taking us two separate days to film it. This led to some problems with not all of our group members being there. Fortunately, Lucas, the artist seen in the video, was available to shoot both days of the film in his amazing costume. Unfortunately, filming in a public area was embarrassing because everyone looks at you, wondering what you are doing. In the end, we got all of the shots we needed and got straight to editing.
Shown above is Lucas as the main artist, Dark Night, in the music video.
Post-production
Now, for those of you that think this process is hard, you are right. I volunteered to do the editing for the music video. At first, I started editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, but it was not working well. I later switched to iMovie and it started to work a lot smoother. This app is a simple way to edit videos which has its benefits, but also has disadvantages. Although it was easy to use for me, it had much less features to use compared to Adobe. This was okay to me because I did not have that much time to edit due to the group wanting to move on to rehearsing for the presentation. Fortunately, after editing for a few hours, a final product came and my group members and I loved it. I tried including funny scenes to make the class laugh and connect with the video. An example of a way I tried to achieve this was putting in a scene of Lucas pole-dancing. After attaching the music video to the presentation, it was time to rehearse to present to the class.
Above is the pole-dancing shot shown in the editing process on iMovie.
Shown above is finished music video.
Presentation
Being the most weighted part of the project, my group and I were stressing. First, we had to make the presentation as a PowerPoint which took a very long time to make. This included everything. So, we spent days making sure the slides looked neat and presentable. Next, we needed to rehearse actually presenting the slides. I did this by staring into my mirror and reading note cards I made to myself, trying my best not to look down and read what it says.
During the presentation, it felt heartwarming to see so many people enjoy your creation. When people smiled and laughed at the video, I felt as if I had received an Academy Award. This changed when I had to actually speak.
Before my slide came, I felt confident with what I had to say. This altered immediately when my slide came onto the board. I war nervous that I wasn't going to say the right information, which ended up making me forget to say a lot about my slides. My confidence picked back up for the last slide because I knew that once this slide was over, we were finished with the project. I read the last slide and answered following questions with my group. We all sat down in our seats with a relieved feeling. We then continued critiquing fellow classmates projects.
Shown above is one of the slides I had to speak about in the presentation.
Project ReflectionIn this project, I learned many valuable lessons such as time management and staying organized is extremely important. This doesn't only apply to group projects and schoolwork, but can be used throughout many aspects in life. I also learned not to focus so much on the little parts, and focus more on the whole. My group and I were worried about the music video the whole time, when in reality the presentation was more important. I will use this for my Cambridge portfolio. Meaning, when I do that project, I will not only manage time and stay organized, but I will focus on the whole product, rather than little areas that don't matter as much. Of course, all parts of the project matter, but if I spend too much time on an area that doesn't contribute to the final product immensely, then I won't have time for other important parts.
I loved this project and the values that came with it.
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