Music Marketing Project

 How did we start the project?

Our music marketing project took a while to complete. There were many things we had to do to make sure that we had a good project. There were also multiple steps to the project. The first thing we had to do was research. Then we had to brainstorm/plan what we were going to do. Then we had to actually film or produce the actual music video. After that, we edited the final video. And lastly, we made a presentation about it.

Research

For the project, we received a folder with 4 different songs. We ended up choosing "Coming Home" by Leon Bridges. The first thing we had to do was research the song, artist, marketing brand, genre itself, and many other things. The research would help us later when we had to make our own brand and had to make our own artist. We also learned everything we needed to know about the song's genre, which is soul, since it is the most important piece of information we need, and it is also what the whole project revolved around.

Brainstorming/ Planning

Now that we did the research, brainstorming or planning was a lot easier and went a lot smoother. Since we did not know anything about the genre "soul", we now had a general idea of what our brand should have revolved around. The first thing we needed to do was think of the brand's name. Since our genre was soul, and our brand was going to revolve around that, we decided to name the brand a synonym of the word soul. We ended up choosing the word passion. We also thought that the word passion itself was too bland, so we added the word network to give it a more formal brand name. The final brand name was Passion Network. Then we chose the target audience which was young adults to millennials (around ages 23-45). We then had to brainstorm ideas for ways to distribute and market our music video. After coming up with the whole plan for the brand and artist, we had to make a story. The story was that a woman is sad because she doesn't know what life has to offer, and then she gets letters, gets happy, one day the letter says "I'm coming home", and then the man comes home. After we created the story, we had to make the storyboard. Now that we did all of the research and brainstorming, it was time to plan when we were going to the production. We then decided on two days when we were going to film and two days when we were going to edit.

Film and Production of the Music Video

The film and production of the music video were nice and easy. We chose the two days to film and we filmed exactly what our storyboard said. We did make the mistake at the start where we accidentally filmed in portrait mode and not landscape, but in the end, we re-filmed it. All of the shots went smoothly. We even decided to do some things on set to make the production look smoother and to add symbolism. For example, we made the clips at the start longer to make the never-ending boringness feel present to the viewers.  After, we started picking up the pace when we saw the woman receiving more letters. These were examples of things we decided to do on the spot. 

Editing

The editing process was good. We decided to just put all of the clips together in the order that we made it in the storyboard. As well as adding some little effects to make the music video really come together. For example, in the end, we made sure that the shot of the letter was on the ground saying "Baby, I'm coming home. -Will" matched up with the lyric of the song in the music video where Leon Bridges sang "Baby, I'm coming home".  Another thing we also did was keep that last shot faded with the sky so that you could see both, to show that the video was ending, but also to connect back to the beginning of the story when it panned across the sky. The rest of the clips were fine, we just made them jump cut together since we made sure they flowed when we filmed them. We then finished editing the music video and showed a couple of people to see what we could revise. After getting their feedback, we revised the music video and started the presentation since we had everything necessary for it.

Presentation

The last part of the project was the presentation. For the presentation, we had to sum up all of the research, planning/brainstorming, our production, and our final video all into the PowerPoint. The most important things that we had to make sure were clear on the PowerPoint were the target audience and the marketing and distribution trends that we were gonna use. Then we just had to add the extra information that could be important to the understanding of our brand, artist, and music video.

Overview

The whole project overall was really fun to make but did require a good amount of hard work and dedication. With the research, brainstorming/ planning, filming/production, editing, and final presentation, I definitely learned a lot about time management, brands, artists, marketing and distribution, etc. This will most definitely help me for the next project (the portfolio project) because it taught me how to plan out and manage my time. It also showed me how much time is important to spend in the planning process. This project also helped me learn how to develop my ideas, and how to know when an idea was doable or not. The project was overall good and taught me a lot that I can use in the future with my future projects.