Digital Storyboard of an EPK

Target Audience

Who is your specific target audience?
The target audience for our piece is around 15-30. Grime music is generally made by the younger generation, writing about their real life experiences.The artist we are looking at, Young Kay, is 16 but has been doing it since he was very young, around the age of 13. We mention in the brief that we are targeting younger audience, market and choosing the theme grime/dupstep opens doors for our brief because it varies to a big age group. The gender is generally more male, but the audience for it is both gender male and female.

What other products have you researched with similar target audiences?
I have watched youtube channels to try and get a good idea of what we should be ainimg at. I listen to radio 1xtra and they are big promoters for younger of underground artists. The K. Sparks EPK is what I focused our storyboard on because he was similar artist to what we are doing and has similar target audiences and style.

Why do you think your product will appeal to your target audience?
I think that it will appeal to our target audience because our artist is something new and young. He also works with dupstep, another genre of music which is hitting mainstream nowadays. With artist Young Kay he can get the crowd jumping and can freestyle over many tracks. One way to appeal to the target audience is to get dj's to play their music at gigs and this is what Young Kay already has since he is a part of a dupstep crew called sub-slags.

What type of people will you be featuring?

Young Kay will be mainly the only person featuring in our EPK because although he's part of a well known bristol group 'Sub-Slags' but we want to promote him as a solo artist. We can also introduce some of the artists from sub slags to show other artists like himself.

What decisions will you be making which attract your target audience?
The decisions we will make will be to do with the style of the EPK, including the music, the clothing, and the scene. From previous research I have a rough idea of what attracts the audiences into this music. If we got a Dj talking about Young Kay in his EPK it would get the Dj fans to consider Young Kay's music. Another decision that we could make is to get the EPK to pirate radio stations because those are one of the main places where people find out about this music.

Pre-planning

 We chose our particular brief because we thought it was the most interesting to do with music instead of the other tasks. Starting out we didn’t know much about EPKS and prints, but we looked into it and became more knowledgeable over these things. The most important issues are target audiences and how to present the artist.

     

      We have chosen broadcasting and printing for our 2 tasks within the brief because we are already confident with filming and editing. As a group we haven’t done much printing before but as a creative group that read music magazines, we knew what sells. We didn’t choose to do the E-media website task because we don’t have much confidence in that area and we all agreed that the print would fit our group better. We will design the look of the print and film the whole video, so we will use our imagination and skills to create the best we can. 

 

     I enjoy doing creative things, so the prints will be a good task for me, and I will enjoy doing them. With the EPK task I would want to learn more and get some more confidence with it and achieve a good result. We will capture the audience’s attention by doing big pictures that stand out and dark colors for the background to match the genre of music style – grime. To draw audience’s attention towards the EPK we will need to put interesting footage at the start of it. We will choose a sequence of the rapper doing their best lyrical rapping. By researching EPK’s on youtube I have learnt that they film them in studio, at home and in a location that suits the music genre. With the magazine research I looked at NME spreads and noticed that the picture of them is the strongest impact because its eye catching with colors, style and the interview layout.     

    The subject genre is ‘grime’, in this generation grime music is a big impact on the underground music scene. A lot of my friends dj and create grime music and lyrics. I have researched a lot of videos of the certain artist that we are doing, which gives me a good understanding of the artist himself. I have also looked at some music magazine to give myself a good idea of a layout i should use for my own.

 

      I will need to find out about what type of audience looks at and listens to grime music, and who and where advertises them. 

      

      The artist we are going to advertise is an artist called Young Kay. He is an uderground artist who makes grime music. He has many music videos on youtube, which helps us get a good idea of what to put in the EPK and advertising him as an artist. We want our EPK to include all the footage that a normal EPK usually would. The print task will be looking at the artist in a more detailed view not about selling the music more about selling the artist and getting to know more about him.

This is a double page spread from NME magazine with an interview with Lily Allen. The style of the spread is very punky and gothic. The font of the quote epmasises the quote even more than just being bigger than the rest of the writing, and really enhances the "but i'm just honest". The picture of Lily takes up a lot of the spread, and her styling also goes with the punk and gothic look of the spread. For my print I think the most effective thing would be to have a large picture of the artist and a spread in their theme of music.

In this double page spread for the Black Eyed Peas, the image of the band is again the main part of the spread. The focus is all on Will.I.Am, by enhancing his colours and fading the others. The colour scheme of the spread is all light and pastely colours. The main title of the page is again focused on him as they use parts of his name to ask questions about himself, "Will he". The text that has been brought out by having a black background and white writing draws your attention and makes you read that first before anthing else.

This is a double page spread of Shakira in Q magazine. Compared to the other magazine spreads of NME, this spread looks a lot less professional and cluttered. The title "Danger, Shakira at work" is supposed to catch the readers eye. The pictures of Shakira contrast eachother, as one she is int he studio laid back in a very male style, whereas the other picture she is posing naked in a very femine way. The spread all together is quite plain and dull.

Eminem EPK

Forms and conventions

The language and the style suggests to a audience who enjoy hip-hop. The inclusion of the rappers and Dr. Dre as a producer makes him more authentic as a rapper. Although he says he doesn't care what people think about him, his style and attitude works for hip-hop fans. The other audience is journalists and marketing people which is why he explains the different between Eminem and Slim Shady.


Institutions

The record label and marketing companies want people to see the real Eminem other than Slim Shady. Dr. Dre is Eminems producer so by making this EPK to promote Eminem and his new song. We are only given a amount of information in this EPK which is a taster for the audiences, by doing this the audiences are curious about this hot new rapper and want to know more so the institution is selling Eminem.


Representation

Eminems EPK is used to promote his song "I Just Don't Give A F***". He wants to represent the two sides of Slim Shady and Eminem and talk about the differences between them. Other than the video clips, the only shots of Eminem are in the studio working so the EPK is representing a fresh hard working rapper with a hard attitude. The really surprising thing about Eminem is that he is a white rapper and by having black rappers talking about him gives him a good image. 

This EPK features interviews with the artist and also other artists talking about him plus clips of his new song there is interview footage from famous hip-hop rappers: Dr Dre, Mos Def, LL Cool J and Missy Elliot. They're all talking about this brand new artist who is different "a hot white mc coming out" which attracts viewers. Eminem parodies celebrities in his music videos and raps, so when they show clips of his music video throughout the EPK it emphasizes that this is Slim Shady and he doesn't care what people think about him. In the interview of Eminem he's sat in a studio because the record label want to show audiences that he's hard working. Eminem's visual style does not follow a standard hip-hop approach with rappers and dancers, instead his videos are fun and use a lot of television, film and cartoon type imaging.

Audience

Beyonce EPK

Forms and conventions

She represents a certain kind of glamor for women which is very typical across the world. The footage of her on tour looking glamorous contrasts with the interview of her wearing a plain checked shirt. She's got her hair straight and simple make up to look normal, it makes her feel more real and therefore you believe what she has to say for herself.

Institutions involved in this EPK is the record label who have a marketing department, this EPK is selling her world tour dvd. It is designed like others EPK to produce accessible information for journalists and fans. The idea is to create a excitement about the dvd and her world tour so more fans can get behind the scenes.


RepresentationBeyonce stands out as a independent female role model to audiences. Her music covers R&B and pop, so target audience are people that are into that genre. In this EPK she talks about her world tour in different countries and how music is such a big part of everyones life even if we don't speak the same language. Beyonce wants to show her appreciation to fans so she gets everyone to send in their 'single ladies' video for the single ladies contest, the way the audience is involved in her contest is also a interesting piece of marketing from the record label.


InstitutionThis short EPK of Beyonce is used to advertise her new album and a preview of her world tour dvd that she is about to release. It uses the convention of formal interview, concert footage, film footage, pop promos and photo shoots. This is all crammed into a short EPK (3.49) and the footage is all very glamorous ,spectacular and eye catching. The EPK starts off with photo shoots of her with her song 'single ladies' playing over as a non diagetic sound. She starts off explaining in the interview how her new album is to do with simplicity which is a black & white convention reflecting purity and style.


Audience

K Sparks EPK

Forms and conventions

The target audience for this is people who listen to underground hip-hop music. K.Sparks music covers Hip-hop, Traditional and Jazz. I think his music would be targeted to 15-25 because his music might involve swearing. Its also targeted at young underground artists which use him as a role model who are trying to get their music out there.

Institutions

Hip NOTT Records is what produces K-Sparks music, they found him on manic monday series. Kevin Nottingham he was one of the first to co-sign what he was doing on a website. Hip NOTT Records has a video promo of all they're artists that they produce. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5bEh_N_jmA

Representation

The representation of this EPK is collective artists. K-Sparks is one of them, he represents a good role model because he speaks the truth in his interview "As long as your a artist and that your alive you should be productive".

Forms and conventions are clear in this EPK, the footage at the beginning gives us a location and plays the artists music while we meet him. He talks about his dreams whilst he's standing in a urban scene. They use a dj set in mise-en-scene to tell us what he is about. He's always to the left of the camera angle and in the middle because he is getting interviewed, they have a lot of close ups when he speaks about his dreams, ambitions whilst he is standing in a urban scene. By giving him a urban setting it gives tells us where he is from, as well as him talking ghetto. In the EPK there is real print screen shots of websites that he is featured on, this is a useful convention because it shows the audience that he is recognized.

Audience