Takeaways from Music Marketing Project

 

    Last week, my media group completed my music marketing project. In the project, we created a new artist, modeled a marketing plan for the branding and distribution of the artist/ his work, and created a music video(using an already existing song) that was meant to capture what the artist's work would look like. The artist wecreated was named "The Vanquisher," and the song my group was assigned to use in our music video was "Dangerous" by Busta Rhymes. We planned to make a promotional/storytelling video for our artist, having scenes of The Vanquisher rapping interrupted by a separate narrative every few shots. 

    Following the storyboarding of the music video and the filming of some rapping scenes at school, my group and I moved on to filming the rest of the video. We decided we'd film in a local strip mall-type area because there were plenty of alleyways and a long empty road behind it we could use. Also, we made the choice of filming later in the day because it could simulate/give the viewers(once they eventually saw the fully edited music video) a sense of time passing throughout the work. Out of the four members of our group, three of us acted in the music video, and each of us decided to wear clothes that looked as 90s-esque as possible to match the vibe we were aiming for in the music video. 

    The editing of the music video came next. Since I was the most well-versed in Adobe Premiere out of all of the members in my group, I took on the challenge of editing the music video all by myself. It was a tedious 4-hour process, but I enjoyed doing it. It was fun figuring out what rapping shots or storytelling shots looked the best at what time, and editing to the beat of the music was fairly satisfying. 

    While I did that, the rest of my group worked on the PowerPoint presentation that would include the music video in it, and it turned out great. A theme that was not only aesthetically pleasing but complementary to the vibe we were trying to associate our artist with was put onto the slides, and little text was put on the slides themselves to make them easier to look at. The handful of social media pages we all aided in creating as well as the website we made to promote the single and the artist's merch were all put on the slide alongside pictures of The Vanquisher. 

    After all was done and submitted, we showed up to class to present our entire project in front of our media class. I had rehearsed the information I wanted to say during the presentation multiple times the night before, but once it came to my turn to actually speak in front of the class, I scrapped most of it and went with the flow of my thoughts at the moment. I didn't look back or read off the PowerPoint once in my presentation, and neither did any of my group members. According to some of the critiques given to us by our peers, we did a pretty good job and people were fairly impressed by the music video.

    I feel this project was beneficial in my media production education because, in retrospect, I realize now that I unofficially took on the role of director, writer, and editor while filming the music video. I was given the chance to direct other people and tell them how I envisioned them to act in a scene, and (as aforementioned) I edited the entire music video. As I approach my Portfolio project in the coming week, I feel that the experience I was granted through this music marketing project served as a worthwhile practice for the directing and editing I will need to do in that next project.