Research into chosen artist

My chosen artist is Rita Ora, our group decided to choose her as we feel like she current, up and coming and has a lot of new and experimental tracks on her debut album 'Ora'. She's generally categorized as being from the mainstream Pop/R&B genre which appeals to me as the majority of the music I listen to and the music that dominates mainstream charts comes from these two genres with examples of artists such as; Beyonce, Rihanna, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo who create a lot of R&B stuff, while Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber who produce a lot of Pop. Since these two genres influence and appeal to me a lot, I thought Rita Ora would be a good artist to choose as she's a fusion between the two and offers various directions to take the meanings and narratives in her songs.

BIOGRAPHY: RITA ORA 

BasicsFull Name: Rita Sahatciu Ora
Age: 22
D.O.B: 26th November 1990
Birth Country: Pristina, Kosovo
Current Residence: London, United Kingdom
Genres: Pop, Dance-Rock, Dance-Pop, R&B
Occupation: Singer, Song-writer, Actress
Years Active: 2007-Present
Label: Roc Nation
Website: ritaora.com

Early Years 

Rita Ora grew up around Portobello Road in West London and attended St Matthia's CE Primary School, then graduated Sylvia Young Theatre School and then from St Charles Sixth Form College. She now lives in Kensington, London. Rita Ora's been singing from an early age and in the year 2000 she appeared in the British film "Spivs", she also auditioned for the Eurovision in 2009 but withdrew because she didn't feel as though she was ready. 

Career & Commercial Breakthrough 
Throughout 2011 Rita Ora began releasing videos of herself onto YouTube of her working on her debut album now released and titled 'ORA'. While this was happening she also released her hit single which could be considered her break through song titled "Hot Right Now" in which she collaborated with DJ Fresh.
On February 24th 2012 both Rita Ora and her record labels boss Jay-Z went to New York to release her first single in which she didn't have someone featuring on titled "How We Do", prior to this she had released her number one single "R.I.P" in which she worked with British rapper Tinie Tempah on.
During her time in the music industry, Rita has picked up various credits and awards such as: Best UK/Ireland Act, Best New Artist and Push Artist at the 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards (or EMA's for short). 

Influences & Friends in the industry Rita has a wide range of influences when it comes to her music from the industry in the current day and from musicians that are no longer active, some of the people she has credited are as followed: 

• Gwen Stefani 
• Beyonce 
• Rihanna 
• India Arie 
• Madonna 
• Tina Turner 
• Aretha Franklin 
• Celine Dion
• Bruce Springsteen 

Close friends in the music industry and in other elements of the entertainment industry include Harry Styles from One Direction, Burberry and Victoria Secrets Model Cara Delevingne, Radio DJ Nick Grimshaw, Pixie Geldof, Chris Brown, Drake, Bruno Mars and Azealia Banks.

Discography 

STUDIO ALBUMS: 1
SINGLES: 5 

MUSIC VIDEOS: 5
PROMOTIONAL SINGLES: 1 

Here are the current chart positions, sales and statistics for Rita Ora's first self-titled album "ORA": 

 

  The track list for "Ora" is as followed:

1. Face Melt 
2. Roc The Life 
3. How We Do (Party) 
4. R.I.P (featuring Tinie Tempah) 
5. Radioactive 
6. Shine Ya Light 
7. Love and War (featuring J.Cole)
8. Uneasy 
9. Fall in Love (featuring Will.I.Am) 
10. Been Lying 
11. Hello, Hi, Goodbye 
12. Hot Right Now (DJ Fresh featuring Rita Ora) 

Analysis of "Hot Right Now" - DJ Fresh and Rita Ora 

'Hot Right Now' is the first music videos of Rita Ora's to be released and she's presented with almost platinum blonde hair which is rare to find on someone of her heritage, automatically making her appear more intriguing. She also has red lipstick which is very eye-catching and makes her lips one of her more dominant features which could be considered being sexualized conveying to the generics R&B and the genres representation of women.

Now, throughout the rest of her career since this video Rita Ora has still kept the red lips and blonde hair as one of her trademarks along with her unique urban style which supports Dyer Stars Theory of how starts are constructed to have recognizable and obvious personality and image traits which their fans and audience can see and relate to every time they see something by the star - creating a matter of relatable consistency.

 Following this, in the video the bright colors, up-tempo beat and dancing all form to give the impression that Rita Ora's character is out-going, bold as well as fun. While Rita is toned and in shape, showing the usual image of how stars are portrayed looking glamorous and at their best creating the "perfect women", she also shows a sense of individuality and confidence which gives the message to her audience of young adult fans from around the ages of 17-23 that it's okay to stand out from the crowd and not always convey to what's expected by society.

Another theory that "Hot Right Now" conveys to is Goodwin's Theory. One way the music video does this is through the visuals in the video amplifying the upbeat lyrics which give the vibes of partying and having fun. The video is set in daytime when it's sunny which connotes happiness as well as a lot of different people of different races dancing and hanging around together. This also expresses unity and diversity all at once, which again conveys back to how Rita is presented in this video and the apparent morals it could give to her target audience of young people who're into mainstream Pop, Dance and R&B encouraging them to follow them if they happen to find Rita Ora's initial image appealing.

 "Hot Right Now" is a performance based video where we see a lot of Rita singing straight into the camera via close up, mid-shot and long shot. This helps the target audience of young adults get a feel for Rita Ora's persona and style as these days a lot of people have different ideas when it comes to fashion and it's important that they can relate to a stars style, especially when it's the stars first video. Other shots that were commonly used are low angled long shots and wide shots. Long shots once again let us see a full view of the star while wide shots capture the action that may not involve the star directly but instead help to amplify that vibe of 'feel-good' which is usually found in typical Pop videos and the track "Hot Right Now" crosses over this genre.

Analysis of "Shine Ya Light" - Rita Ora 

Throughout one of Rita's newer music videos "Shine Ya Light" there are a close connection between the lyrics and the visuals in the sense that the visuals are amplifying what's being sung in her song. At the beginning of the music video we see personal footage of Rita Ora arriving in Kosovo, her home country. She's surrounded by people giving her a warm welcome and is clearly known as an important person at home because there a hundreds of people with cameras gathering her as she gets out of the car. The close ups of Rita smiling indicate that even though she's climbed out the car into absolutism chaos, she feels safe and a sense of belonging in her birth town which highlights pretty much the whole concept behind the music video and the lyrics of her song.

Also throughout the chorus of the song, the lyrics that're sung go "Hey ya, Hey ya, Hey ya, Hey you're a shining star. Hey ya, Hey ya, Hey ya, No matter where you are. Oh, Shine your light" these lyrics are amplified by the many frames of Rita performing and interacting with her fellow Kosovo natives. Towards the end of the video she's standing on a huge letter "E" infront of a crowd of people all looking up to her, this could represent how Rita Ora has rose from Kosovo to pursue her dreams and the spotlight on her, making her stand out in the frame also indicates how she's lighting the way for others wanting people to live their dreams just like she has done which places emphasis on the beliefs and messages behind the lyrics.

Since the lyrics to "Shine Ya Light" is directed at glamorizing her home country of Kosovo and a way of showing her respect for the island, the music video contains a lot of shots that don't nessecarily feature Rita in them but feature locals from Pristina going about their daily life which is just as important when wanting to get across the values of the song. It could also be said that because a lot of these shots use natural lighting, Rita wants her fans to see the beauty of Pristina without altering or glamorizing it as a lot of commercial, Hollywood styled projects have a tendency to do when they're visiting a foreign area for a star to shoot their video (i.e. Man Down - Rihanna, Run The World - Beyonce).

The backing track itself is very Eastern European sounding with instruments such as the drums present along with sounds from mix boards that give off ethnic vibes. During the verses, the music is very slow and relaxed reflecting the evidently easy and laid-back lifestyle of Kosovo as shown in the visuals. However, as the bridge and chorus come in the use of some kind of wind instrument can be heard which is also traditionally a very cultured and foreign instrument as oppose to something commercial and westernized music would use. The variation in the pitch of the wind notes come together to create a magical and up lifting sound which could connote Rita's rise to fame. It also gives her audience a taste of her hometowns culture and music differentiation  offering something that's more personal to her as oppose to the manufactured beats in "R.I.P" and "Radioactive".

A sudden breakdown in the track occurs accompanied by the lyrics: "Yeah we don't give up 'til we run out of desire, we steal the finish and we never get tired, we are the winners 'cos we hold the world title, we started slow but we beat you in the final" and in the background police sirens can be heard as Rita walks along the street with police motorbikes closely following behind her. The break down with heavy beats becoming more noticeable along with the lyrics could represent how Rita is staying true to her country and using the pronoun "we" to define her European native and "you" to define the Western world and the commercial industry.
This could connote Rita's beliefs in wanting people from all over the world wanting to achieve their dreams instead of just your average person from the Western world (U.K or America) and rise to fame, giving everybody an equal chance. Also, the alarms could signal a revolution to warn viewers of the talent that she believes lies within Kosovo.

At the beginning of the music video intertextuality is used by the showing of a Nokia touchscreen phone which forms to the conventions of R&B as it is typical for videos of that genre to show off luxury and materialistic items, glamorizing the celebrity life style. However, the glamour is quickly taken away when the close up fans out into what looks like a rooftop in Kosovo, over looking a very basic and very under developed landscape. Although there's nothing wrong with this it goes against the viewers expectations. This could  show Rita's growth of how she started as a child in Kosovo, just like the one shown in the beginning and has now gone onto bigger and more glamorous things which is shown by the symbolism of a luxury phone. Overall, this could push the message of following dreams and embracing talent which is already embedded in the song itself.

Following the materialistic and bran intertextuality, during the video there are also frames where Rita is wearing 'Sony' headphones and the camera is purposely put at a high angle to capture the label on the headphones. I think once again this is to show the growth of her as a person, coming from Kosovo where you hardly hear of anybody rising to fame and then landing a record deal with "Roc Nation", which is a subsidiary of the oligopoly, Sony ME. It's also a brand that Rita's audience probably have some familiarity with.

Rita is represented as proud throughout the video of "Shine Ya Light" due to shots of her wearing the Kosovo flag as a balaclava around her mouth with her hood up standing on a roof. The way she looks directly into the camera could suggested that she's proud of her roots and isn't afraid to let her audience and fans know where she came from even if it isn't as glamorous as London, where she was discovered or the USA where her record label and a lot of her future projects are from. During these frames she's also wearing gold chains and once again clothing that's fashionable and typical of an R&B scene such as a fur hooded coat which contrasts with the rough landscape of Kosovo when she is standing on the roof.
In addition to this, there are also frames shown where Rita is dressed down, stripped of all the iconography and street styled fashion that we're used to seeing her in and instead is in casual wear, doing every-day things such as walking a dog with natives of Pristina. This also shows how she feels that Pristina is her home and she doesn't feel as though she needs her "star image" when she's there, she can just be the Rita she was prior to the fame.

While I think "Shine Ya Light" is initially a performance based video with a lot of evidence of Rita singing directly to the camera and making that important connection with her audience, I also think that it's conceptual as it forces a lot of ideologies onto the viewers about Rita being proud of where she came from and her culture. It also makes the video more personal and enables the audience an insight to Rita's roots which they maybe wasn't in the know about before, making them feel closer to their idol and fulfilling their aims when watching a video.

Using Rita Ora as an inspiration in my work 
Studying Rita Ora and doing research on her has given me inspiration to not be afraid of going against certain conventions of a genre and instead going deeper and bringing out cultural and moral ideologies of the star throughout the video. Rita's also given me the idea of presenting two different images of the same person. For instance where Rita Ora is presented as the Kosovo Rita and Rita the star, we could look at researching into our artist: 

• Before fame and after fame 
• The real artist and the product artist 
• Society's beliefs and the stars belief's

all to help our target audience feel more connected to the artist and in the know on what their about and what it is that's important and not important to them.

Copyright

 COPYRIGHT 

Before we can use our chosen song which is 'Radioactive' by Rita Ora, we have to ask for Copyright permission to ensure that we're going the right way about creating our video legally and fairly. The reason we have to apply for Copyright and the reason it's in place in the first place is so that nobody can steal a certain track which is owned legally by a record label and make profit off of material that isn't there's. We had to apply for Copyright so that the record label knew that we're only using the track for educational purposes and not for profit driven reasons. This also happens in the real music industry for actual producers to get Copyright permission, for example when a producer wants to use two existing songs to create a new one, they have to pass copyright laws. A good example of this would be DJ Danger Mouse who wanted to blend The Beatles and Jay-Z together to make a mix - there was a lot of controversy and it ended with the owners of The Beatles track appealing for Danger Mouse's music to be taken off of the internet.

To go about asking for Copyright we did the following:

• Identify the record label which we discovered was Roc Nation - a subsidiary of Sony ME 
• We then had to find the E-Mail address and/or phone number of the label in order to contact them and explain our reasons to want to use Rita Ora's track - (i.e. For education reasons and not profit reasons) and that we will give credit to the respectful track holders.

Research into my chosen Genre

Researching into a chosen genre: Pop 

The genre I've decided to research into is the genre of Pop since it is a genre that influences many up-to-date artists who could be considered as cross over artists that I listen to today such as Beyonce, Rihanna, Rita Ora, Taylor Swift, Chris Brown and Justin Bieber. 

Other than this, some of the most influential people have come out of the Pop genre from the 70's, 80's and 90's who have inspired the Pop artists of today to make music. Legendary icons such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, The Beatles, Blondie and Banana Rama have influences on artists like Ne-Yo, Lady Gaga and Beyonce today. 

I think the way that Pop artists have such influence over stars in the industry for 2,4,8 or even 10 years to come is fascinating and always a genre that I've really been in to. 

Billboard's Top 20 Pop Artists from the last 20 years: 

1. Rihanna 
2. Pink 
3. Britney Spears 
4. Kelly Clarkson 
5. Mariah Carey 
6. Katy Perry 
7. Usher 
8. The Black Eyed Peas 
9. Janet Jackson 
10. Madonna 
11. Lady Gaga 
12. Christina Aguilera 
13. Justin Timberlake 
14. Nickleback 
15. Matchbox Twenty 
16. Beyonce 
17. Backstreet Boys 
18. Jennifer Lopez 
19. Maroon 5
20. Avril Lavigne 

From this list we can see that Pop is dominated highly by female singers with thirteen to just two men and the exception of five bands. What I also noticed is that there's a variety of artists on the list who wouldn't exactly be considered similar (i.e. Avril Lavigne/Janet Jackson or Matchbox Twenty/Katy Perry) but they've all been put under the umbrella term of Pop which is what makes the genre so flexible and versatile. This brings me back to our chosen artist of Rita Ora and the way in which she includes elements of Dance, R&B and Pop all into her tracks on her debut album which could place her having similar sounds to many other artists considered "Pop". 

Two artists that I've identified with having a similar sound to Rita are Rihanna and Amelia Lily. Starting with Rihanna who's more established than Rita Ora, the media and industry have already picked up on crazy similar variables between the two artists including image and sound.
Also, both artists have close relations with the record label "Roc Nation" infamous for producing R&B and R&B crossover artists.



The next artist I've decided to compare to Rita Ora is Amelia-Lily, one of X Factor's finalists of 2011 (a show that is a prime example of Dyer's Theory and star construction).
Although the two don't really appeal to the same artists as Rita Ora is more R&B/Pop and Amelia-Lily is more Pop/Dance, on Rita's album there are songs such as "Radioactive", "Fall in Love" and "Hot Right Now" which have a Dance/Pop sound to them which sound similar to the material of Amelia-Lily. Therefore this would be interesting to revise and get some ideas from to know our chosen artist even further.

Analyzing Rita Ora and Rihanna and looking at the R&B side of her Genre 
                                                                                    Genre Characteristics 
As both of these tracks are R&B they both have similar characteristics that form to the conventions of the genre. For example typical features such as iconography of materialistic items like fashion and jewelry making both of the women appear more sophisticated and glamorizes the idea of wealth placing both Rita and Rihanna in a position of importance and possibly makes them more appealing to their audience of mainstream R&B fans.
Also in "You Da One" there's a black and white effect used which is a typical editing feature of R&B videos especially, while "R.I.P" doesn't have this, there's still certain clouded features blended with high key lighting to create a similar effect and meet their target audiences expectations of the video.
Both artists also represent the "media manipulated" idea of slim, sexy and beautiful females which is also sometimes used to encourage voyeurism within music videos that conform to the R&B genre. "You Da One" like "R.I.P" is completely performance based and doesn't have any elements of narrative present.

Mise-En-Scene/Iconography 
In both "You Da One" and "R.I.P" materialistic features of iconography are used starting with "R.I.P", a car is used in a few of the frames. This highlights the celebrity lifestyle and shows materialistic qualities from their lives in a positive and fashionable light. Likewise, with "You Da One" there's content of substances such as cigarettes that are also shown in a good light suggesting they're a trend or something to do to sexualize and make females look better. Within the video, Rihanna's shown by the use of a close up blowing cigarette smoke up into the air with a black and white filter in slow motion, almost mocking the 60's/70's glamour smoking and manipulating it into modern day mediums. Although there may be ethical arguments for why materialistic iconography isn't good to use as it influences the young audience of stars like this, materialistic features are almost what's expected of R&B music videos, especially in modern music.

Main Camera-Shots 
I noticed whist watching R.I.P and You Da One that although there are close-ups of the artist there are also a lot of long shots used to establish the area that the star is in even though both videos are set in warehouse looking areas that don't have much going on in them. Calm and basic settings such as warehouses, chilled clubs and houses/mansions are typical places for an R&B video to be set as it amplifies the smooth and relaxed beats that R&B traditionally is known for (applying to Goodwins Theory).
I also found that there's a lot of mid-shots used which enable an audiences connection with the star as they're looking straight through the camera lens in the audience direction. Like with artists working to becoming established this allows the audience to become familiar with their face and image or perhaps digest a new image that may not have been used in previous material - this applies to "You Da One".

Editing Techniques 
There are two cuts that are noticed more frequently in both of these videos are jump and straight cuts. The straight cuts enable the music video in the same setting to allow changes in angles and frames giving the overall look of the music video more diverse, however the jump cuts bring the audience to different scenes within the video and sometimes allow the artist to change looks and image. Jump cuts keep the music video interesting offering different settings with different  action and conventions. This technique is often used in R&B, Rap and Dance when the video is performance based.

Target Audience 
In broad terms both Rita Ora and Rihanna have the target audiences of mainstream R&B fans; both being signed to the same record label and having similar sounds causes for major comparisons to be made between the two and causes both audiences to explore the other star.
I think both Rita Ora and Rihanna have neither a male or female biased in their audiences, while they're both conventional of the R&B genre in the fact they both have that slim and sexy image that a lot of women in that genre have, both of them sing a lot of their songs from a female perspective - which makes them relatable to the male and female audience.
However, while it's apparent that both Rita Ora and Rihanna appeal to a mainstream R&B audience, I think it's important to recognize that they appeal to a young R&B audience since the sound of the genre has differentiated and evolved lot more compared to the 70's, 80's or even 90's for instance.

Representation of Artist 
I think conforming to the R&B genre has made both Rita and Rihanna convey to a very powerful, strong and independent image. They both have connotations of an 'alpha-female' in the fact that they'll always look dominant in the majority of their videos whether there are other males/females involved in the material or not and even their music connotes confidence and the freedom of being a women.
However if we're specifically looking at "You Da One" by Rihanna, I think that this music video represents her in another formation as she's an established and well known star and has shown different images that her fans have all brought into and followed in past music videos such as "California King Bed", "Man Down" and "Pon De Replay".
In contrast to this, "R.I.P" is showing Rita Ora in what's more considered her initial star image as she's newer to the music scene that Rihanna, her audience aren't going to know of previous images of hers and they don't have the already established connection with her look or the personality presented through her music video which could possibly mean that Rita Ora relies more on her representation in this video than Rihanna does in hers.

Music Video Style 
Both music videos are Performance based and feature the artists looking directly through the lens of the camera at their viewers - making the connection discussed in "Representation of Artist". This also makes room for materialistic iconography such as clothes, cars and jewelry to be shown in a less discrete way than they would be in a narrative based video.

• The relationship between lyrics/visuals/music: In both videos the visuals amplify the lyrics and music - cuts change on specific beats of the music and both singers are present to mime/lip sync the song to fulfill the audiences demand of wanting to see the artists face. 

How we can apply R&B conventions to our own video 
I think learning about the materialism and iconography that comes with the R&B genre can be considered when we begin to plan our music video. Even if we decide to go with a partially narrative based video as oppose to a fully performance based video I think that we can still consider the dominance and personality that R&B female stars translate through their visuals in order to stay generic to the R&B genre.

 Analyzing Rita Ora and Amelia Lily and looking at the Dance and Pop side of her Genre

Genre Characteristics 
The first big factor I noticed about "You Bring Me Joy" and "Hot Right Now" as oppose to "R.I.P" and "You Da One" is the amount of people that back up and support both Amelia Lily and Rita Ora in their visuals. As oppose to the R&B videos analyzed above where Rihanna and Rita were giving off the more independent women vibe, in these two Dance/Pop videos Rita and Amelia Lily are surrounded with different people (dancers and extras). This is conventional of both the Pop and the Dance genre as these genres convey the "feel-good" and "unity" vibes, making their listeners feel happy and bubbly, therefore reflecting this in the visuals is almost essential to highlight what the lyrics and the artists music is all about.
In addition to this "Hot Right Now" and "You Bring Me Joy" continue to amplify the feel good vibes of their genre as the settings of both videos are outside in the sunshine in lively atmospheres.

Mise-En-Scene/Iconography 
While there's iconography in "You Bring Me Joy" with Amelia Lily riding in a car along with the extras, I feel like this iconography was more to amplify and highlight the rush of the song and the feeling that the artist and extras were feeling at that point in the video rather than trying to glamorize the materialistic things in life.
Both Rita and Amelia-Lily are dressed in bright clothing which still makes them look slightly provocative and shows their toned, slim figures but it fits in more with the outdoor settings - both girls also have long necklaces around their neck which could perhaps connote their "star image" since a lot of other things in the video make them seem very similar to the extras. Even though they aren't playing on the R&B materialism, they still need to stand out as a star from the other people in the video.

Main Camera Shots & Editing Techniques 
While the camera shots in "You Bring Me Joy" and "Hot Right Now" vary all the way from close-ups to long shots, the editing techniques help massively to amplify and highlight the fast and significant beat that is vital in Pop and Dance songs and needs to be simultaneously catchy and memorable. The visuals often cut or change angles on the beats that are most dominant throughout the backing track.

Target Audience 
In obvious terms, the target audience of Amelia-Lily and Rita Ora are Pop/Dance mainstream fans. However, what has to be taken into consideration is that Amelia Lily has consistently produced Pop or Dance tracks with the music that she's released whereas Rita Ora has released and produced songs from her album that are a mixture of one or all of Pop, Dance & R&B. Therefore when looking to reach out to her target audiences through her music she may still need to bare in mind micro-elements of other genres even though the track she's producing is a certain genre. For instance in "Hot Right Now" the genre is mainly Pop and Dance although Rita still has the dominant, provocative and alpha female look that R&B females have a lot of the time to still appeal slightly to her fans that're more into other genres.

Representation of Artist
In "You Bring Me Joy" Amelia Lily is represented as fun, popular and free-spirited which very much mirrors the ideologies behind Pop music. She's the typical "Pop Princess" package with conventionally good looks; long hair, make-up, good fashion sense and a toned body and of course she's also represented as talented. Close-Ups throughout the music video are used to get across her personality and help the audience feel relevant emotions, for example while Amelia Lily's smiling, close-ups are used to make this expression clear and keep that feeling of happiness constant throughout the course of the track. Meanwhile, Rita Ora's representations are similar but again she still has her blonde hair and red lips that her fans can recognize from her "R.I.P" video even though "Hot Right Now" isn't R&B, making her look slowly become more familiar.

Music Video Style 
Both "You Bring Me Joy" and "Hot Right Now" are performance based videos, I think this compliments their Dance/Pop style as when the artists make connections through the camera with their audience it's almost like they're producing the feel-good, live in the moment life which allows their audience to also share the ideologies and culture of both Amelia Lily and Rita in also wanting to try out this lifestyle.

How we can apply Dance and Pop conventions to our own video 

I think Dance and Pop music videos most often have relationships between their lyrics, visuals and music. We can bare this in mind for our video when we're editing in order to make our final piece conform to the genres that our chosen track follows. Although our artist is crossover Pop/R&B, the song we're considering doing has more of an R&B beat to it which has conventions of materialistic things and expensive items. Since we're students and do not have the budget to cover costs like this, we want to use some conventions of Pop but still have jewelry and bring in some elements of fashion and London life to appeal to R&B fans who like elite micro-elements in music videos.

Pie charts

We decided to include pie charts of our survey results in our research because it's a more visual and collective way of looking at our results. It's an easier and more simple way of seeing what our surveys have helped us find out about our target audience and which direction we have to move in. For instance, a lot of the people we surveyed liked the song 'Radioactive' which we could then take into consideration that maybe that'd be a good song to produce our video for. The point of pie charts are all about being able to guide decisions we make in a logical and tactical way to make sure we hit the expectations of our target audience.

Judging by our results from the pie charts I think that we're going to go with the song "Roc The Life" since even though it didn't get a high amount of votes from our survey takers, we decided this would give us more freedom in coming up with a music video from our own creativity without having to worry about pre-assumptions or expectations that our target audience may already have of the song. We also decided that since a lot of our survey takers who did like Rita Ora when on to say how their main genres to listen to were usually Dance, Pop and R&B that we'd stick to a music video that is a crossover between performance and narrative based since these are the most common two videos of these genres, which means we will also be conventional to the target audience, ultimately appealing to them more. 

Evaluation

Evaluation

Overall, I found that we're targeting a mainstream audience who show more music interest towards the R&B/Pop crossover genre than anything else. The purpose of a target audience is to narrow down what specific conventions are needed in a music video depending on the genre and familiarity of the audience. It gives guidance to music video directors and artists as to how to appeal to their audience and meet their expectations of what they want to see from an artists music video.
Target audiences may also help make decisions as to whether a video should be performance based (which appears in quite a few Rap videos as well as Rock - the bands of artists in Rock are always present), narrative (which can be seen with the Pop genre, usually the visuals illustrate what is being said in the lyrics. A good example of this are music videos from Taylor Swift such as "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me") and also concept based which again appears with certain Pop artists such as Madonna and Lady Gaga, this base usually happens to include a lot of symbolism and metaphorical visuals. 

Since our artist is Rita Ora we could already establish her genre by listening to her debut album, as it is vital that artists make it clear what their signature 'sound' is when they first arrive in the music industry to help gain a steady following and widen their audience. The track we've selected is titled 'Roc The Life' and is unreleased which means we have the advantage of our own audience not having any presumptions about how the video should carry out and what conventions should be involved in it. However, for an up and coming artist Rita Ora is quite well known and very current which means we still have enough room to do artist research and look at her three very conventional music videos to released  singles of her to stimulate ideas and ways that we can be conventional to the R&B/Pop crossover genre.  
After looking at her two most popular music videos, 'How We Do' and 'R.I.P', we noticed that the conventions in each of them differ but somehow appeal to the same audience. That's how we realized that Rita Ora's target audience is a cross between young adult Pop fans and young adult R&B fans all ranging from around the ages of 18+.  
However, we never would have found this out without researching into our audience which stands as evidence as to why target audiences are so important when setting out to make a music video for a particular stars song to prevent the danger of making quick accusations and not backing them up with any form of independent research, as quite a lot of "generic" artists have tracks on their albums that differ from the rest of their usual sound. 
Examples of this are: 

• 'I Knew You Were Trouble' - Taylor Swift: She usually conforms to the genre of Country/Pop crossover but on her newest album 'Red', this track could be considered more dubstep. 
• 'Don't Judge Me' - Chris Brown: A lot of tracks on Chris Brown's latest album are close to the genre of Dance with some elements of R&B. However, 'Don't Judge Me' strips back a lot and relies on its deep lyrics and the traditional conventions of the R&B culture without any of the catchy hooks and loops that are present on other tracks of his. 

In our group we decided to use a questionnaire to find out more about our audience so that we could section them down into even more detail and make sure that we really know the types of people who'll be watching our video and the types of people we want to appeal to. 
Rita Ora is considered mainstream and is seen on a lot of music channels such as 4Music and MTV but that doesn't tell us much about our audiences interests because there are a lot of sub-cultures that come underneath just your average mainstream taste. I think that our music video will follow CCC's theory about sub-culture rooting from the mainstream as our track is initially fused from two different mainstream genres 'mainstream R&B' and 'mainstream Pop'. Whilst combining the two may create sub-culture conventions that aren't that familiar to either convention of their own, we've still taken our initial ideas from each of the cultures and fused them together to make something new and unique, steering away from the usual mainstream which I expect to find after researching into Rita Ora further. 

 For example, while Rita is considered mainstream and current, some could argue that she appeals more to an R&B/Pop or R&B/Dance culture rather than an audience who listen to what is classified as 'mainstream' music of just one genre. 
It's important to know which type of sub-cultures in particular are listening to an artists musics and consuming an artists videos because then it makes it easier to apply certain conventions of a genre to a video knowing what you're audience are looking for. This brings us back to the initial reason we carried out surveys and pie charts in order to make in more  clear to us about who we want to target and what we have to do to make sure we achieve that with our own videos. 
Going back to Rita Ora and her music videos, while she's not considered a pure R&B star in her videos R.I.P and Hot Right Now, there are a lot of characteristics that apply to the genre such as materialistic iconography and a setting considered "cool" and "chilled". 
As noted before, if I were to look at an artist who gives a different example of this it could be Taylor Swift; while she is also considered 'mainstream', she is a completely different artist to Rita Ora and that's because she appeals more to the Country/Pop audience rather than R&B/Pop making vast differences between the two stars even though the both have elements of Pop in their music and material. 

In total we surveyed about 40 people, since this is an educational project and not a professional project working for an actual company our sample size was quite small. If we were producing a music video for a big star such as Beyonce or a band like One Direction on an international level and wanted to research into our target audience, we'd probably ask more than one hundred people and use many different methods including tracking what frequent purchasers of the artists musics are listening to on technological music softwares such as YouTube's partner company 'Vevo', 'Spotify' and 'iTunes'. 
However, for the situation of our music video we felt 40 was a good number because it's even and rounded therefore we'll be able to split our research easily and pull out significant results that may affect us in the future (for example if a big percentage of our survey takers disagreed with a statement, we'd avoid whatever it is they said they didn't like to make our video more appealing to our target audience of young adults of both genders from around the age of 17-25). 
I think if we used any number under 40, such as 10 for example - our research wouldn't have been detailed or broad enough to give accurate results. Using an even number also allowed us to get the same amount of males and females so that we were getting a range of different opinions and not being biased. Counter to this, if our survey number was too big then we may have had too much irrelevant information which is time consuming to analyze and could cause us to overlook vital information which may of helped us out significantly when designing and producing our music video. 

 Besides our surveys we also went out during lesson time to do Vox Pops, these are short videos of us asking some of our survey takers questions from the actual survey and getting a visual response. On the whole I think that we were successful in picking a range of people with a range of tastes for our Vox Pops, that way we didn't have to worry about missing out any key information from someone with slightly different tastes which could've happened if everyone we interviewed was into the exact same type of music. 
Saying this I do think that we could've improved our Vox Pops by asking questions more specific to our artist like we did in the survey. This way the information we collected would be a lot more catered to what we want to find out and possibly more effective when it comes to story-boarding exactly how we want the final result to look. 

Three questions taken from our surveys 

1. What music channels do you watch? We asked this question as knowing the music channels people watch can tell you a lot about the genre of music they're into as found out from previous research on music channels earlier on my blog. For example, if one of our survey takers said that they watched a lot of Scuzz and Kerrang as oppose to 4Music and MTV, we could probably tell straight away that their not the target audience for an artist such as Rita Ora and probably wouldn't be able to tell us much about their opinions on the conventions of her video as oppose to someone who watched them on a regular basis. However, it's still worth surveying people who don't necessarily watch Pop/R&B based music channels because not everybody sticks to one genre and can still have an opinion on the sorts of things we want to find out which could benefit in the future. 
2. Who's your favorite artist from the Pop genre? This is important because as I pointed out earlier in my evaluation, not all Pop artists have the same kind of sound (the point about Taylor Swift and Rita Ora). Since the Pop genre is so broad and a lot of other sounds and genres have a lasting effect on it often manipulating the plain sound of Pop to create a crossover track, it's vital that we know which kind of Pop sound that our survey takers sway towards so we know why they're giving the answers that they have. Also, if it's clear from previous questions in the survey it's evident that the taker likes the Dance or R&B genre, finding out their favorite Pop artist may guide us in the right direction when looking for reoccurring  features in music videos of a similar style to the one that we're hoping to create. But we do have to bare in mind that for doing a music video to go along to one of Rita Ora's songs requires us to do more than just pay attention to Pop as she does take of a lot of other influences from different music and artists. 
3. Would you agree Rita Ora is a fusion of Pop, Dance and R&B? This question helps us clarify whether or not our assumptions of Rita Ora's music are backed up by other people because if the majority of people didn't agree then we could consider going back to our research and finding a more fitting genre to Rita's music so that we could put the correct conventions into our video. 

When we wrote our initial survey, we had a lot of questions such as 'Who is your favorite artist' and 'What is your favorite song?'. When it came to putting these into pie charts we realized that they weren't actually benefitting us for when it come to creating our music video. Due to this we went back to the survey and decided to alter the questions so that they were more suited to what we wanted to know, for example 'What is your favorite song' was changed into 'What is your favorite song from Rita Ora's album 'ORA'?' with a choice of some of the possible options that we were considering making our music video to - not only was this contributing to our music video but it also made our results more qualitative and easier to section into categories for our pie charts. 

Another thing that we've managed to pull from our research is that making our music video mostly performance based will probably appeal more to our target audience as "Roc The Life" is a mainstream track and it's very rare you see concept videos in the mainstream types of music unless it's heavily aimed at a certain sub-culture. 
However, considering the "star image" as well as the genre of the song our music video has potential to contain narrative as Rita Ora is a crossover artist. 

If we were to convey our video to an element of Dick Hebdige's Subculture theory, it'd probably be by breaking out of the way that mainstream music has a certain fashion where girls are always sexualized or in the case of Pop made to look extra-girly and flirty. Like Rita Ora, I think we'd appeal to an audience who're looking for something that goes against the conventions in the light that it unites all different types of styles and people which ultimately guides away from the mainstream but still has the same commercial features.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire

In our group we decided to use a questionnaire to find out more about our audience so that we could section them down into even more detail and make sure that we really know the types of people who'll be watching our video. Rita Ora is considered mainstream and is seen on a lot of music channels such as 4Music and MTV but that doesn't tell us much about our audiences interests because there are a lot of sub-cultures that come underneath just your average mainstream taste. For example, while Rita is considered mainstream and current, some could argue that she appeals more to an R&B/Pop or R&B/Dance Culture rather than everybody who listens to what is classified as 'mainstream' music. It's important to know which sub-cultures in particular are listening to an artists musics and an artists videos because then it makes it easier to apply certain conventions of a genre to a video knowing what you're audience are looking for. Going back to Rita Ora and her music videos, while she's not considered a pure R&B star, in her videos R.I.P and Hot Right Now, there are a lot of characteristics that apply to the convention. If we were to look at an artist who gives a different example of this it could be Taylor Swift, while she is also considered 'mainstream', she is a completely different artist to Rita Ora and that's because she appeals more to the Country, Pop audience rather than R&B.  

We sectioned our questionnaire into three different parts - general questions which divide our audience into broad demographics (i.e. Gender, Age), music video related questions that establish what type of genres the survey-taker is into (i.e. Rock, Pop, R&B, Country) and finally some questions specific to Rita Ora which we felt would help us get a feel of what things are expected of her videos and how to make our own devised videos as realistic and conventional as possible. 

1.    Are you male or female?

___________________________

2.    How old are you?

_________________________

3.    What music channels do you watch?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4.    What do you look for in a music video and which is your favourite?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5.    What is your favourite genre of music?

_______________________________________________________

6.    Who’s your favourite artist from the Pop genre?

__________________________________________________________

7.    What do you think of the artist Rita Ora and her music?

______________________________________________________________

8.    Circle your favourite track from Rita Ora’s ‘ORA’ album

Hot Right Now

R.I.P

Roc The Life

Shine Ya Light

Radioactive

9.    Would you say that the majority of Rita’s music videos are narrative, performance or concept based?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 

10.  Would you agree that Rita Ora’s music is a fusion of R&B, Pop and Dance?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11.  What sort of features would you expect to see in a typical Rita Ora music video?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 12. What do you think of the Dance, R&B and Pop genres?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________