Learning Agreement

Name: Michael Dovey

Course: Level: Foundation Degree Interactive Media Year: 2

Unit: Professional Project

Reference number: IMD513

Credit points: 45

Study hours: 450

Tutor(s): Phil Beards/Liam Birtles

Synopsis of study

As I want to focus on an area I am greatly interested in, so I can keep motivation and enthusiasm whilst submitting a strong body of work, I propose to create a music event called the ‘Partizan Project’, creating the full body of promotional material for it. This shall create a corporate identity, including a logo, flyers, posters, banner, business cards, CD packs, advertising for social networking sites like facebook and myspace, a series of short animations for the logo and decor of the club at the event. The music event itself will aim to promote fresh new talent in drum and bass, dubstep, electro and turntablism from around the United Kingdom, and will be targeted at students and young people in general. The most essential thing in this case is to get the promotional material out there so people see it frequently.

I’ve always been interested in the promotional/advertising aspect of digital media and graphics, and in music in general, so incorporating the both seems like a logical progression for me. I’ve always put in strong bodies of work where music or promotion is involved, and enjoy the work involved with it. Hopefully this will give me something to really dig my teeth into, as well as something I can build on in the future. At the end of the day, there is a whole host of things I can branch off into if I play my cards right, a promotions company, an agency for artists, larger nights across the country, including festivals, magazines promoting Bournemouth nights, even a record label, the possibilities are endless if all promoted in the right way.

The work itself will almost all be presented for real, the posters, flyers, banner, cards, décor and web advertising will all be created and printed and used for their intended purposes as the event is live. The only thing that will be produced in hindsight will be the CD pack cover, as at this moment in time they would not create a profit, the event would need to get to a certain status before it could start expanding into those areas. The motion graphics pieces will be made using After Effects and will be a series of short animations promoting ‘Pogo the logo’. They will be used for web based/video promotion, and should help the event gain an image for itself. As for research, the main body will analyse existing promotional material. There are many events, both Bournemouth based and national, that I can look at for this. Overall, I feel confident I can produce a range of promotional material that will look memorable, catchy and contemporary enough to create a buzz about the event before it happens, one that sticks in peoples minds like a good corporate identity should.

Aims

* A1 To develop my creativity and my knowledge and understanding of professional practice.

* A2 To develop and produce a professional standard of creative work in response to a ‘live’ or simulated brief

* A3 To prepare me for employment, freelance work or further study.

* A4 To develop my understanding of costing and invoicing in preparation for business.

* A5 To encourage myself to see critical reflection as a key element of creative thinking and practice.

Learning outcomes

On completion of this unit I will be able to:

LO1 Demonstrate a professional standard of creativity and practical ability, including:

* Work that is technically comparable to that made within a specified genre.

* Work that shows an awareness of contemporary trends, styles and subject matter, within commercial contexts.

* Work that shows a high degree of creativity and aesthetic judgement.

LO2 Respond appropriately to the demands of a professional/ self initiated brief, including:

* Appropriate creative outcomes to industry/work related briefs.

LO3 Demonstrate readiness for employment, freelance work or further study with confidence in the level of your creative, practical and professional knowledge and skills.

LO4 Demonstrate understanding of relevant costing and invoicing procedures, including:

* The various costing and pricing scales and structures within relevant commercial contexts.

* Timescales for payment.

* Legal requirements, copyright and syndication rights.

* VAT, National Insurance etc.

LO5 Reflect critically upon work and to use this as a springboard for the further development of ideas and creative practice.

Assessment Requirements

For assessment I will research and analyse existing nights promotional material, leading to the development of my own promotional material for the Partizan Project, including a range of materials from motion graphics to printed flyers, as well as the final copies of the entire range of promotional material – 100%

Assessment Criteria

*  Evidence of knowledge of concepts and contexts (a) – Project work that shows creative maturity and direction within a commercial context (LO1, LO2)

* Evidence of understanding through research and analysis. (c) – Extensive research, and the application of it, used for the underpinning and final conclusion of project work (LO1, LO2, LO4)

* Evidence of realisation through presentation (f)- Work is placed within a commercial context and appropriate methods of presentation used. (LO3)

* Evidence of understanding through critical evaluation and reflection (e) – The objectives of the research have clearly been identified and used to inform project work. (LO5)

* Evidence of realisation through technical application and skills (g) – A synthesis of creativity and professionalism is demonstrated in the conclusion of the project work (LO1)

References

http://www.ableton.com/suite-8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJ_(video_performance_artist)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1776372122&ref=ts

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9009692682&ref=ts

http://www.myspace.com/enterdnb

http://www.facebook.com/beatredemption?ref=ts

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30635813214&ref=ts

http://www.myspace.com/beatredemption

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6041702169&ref=search&sid=649490225.491807545..1

http://www.myspace.com/drumfunkdnb

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25251393617&ref=ts

http://www.myspace.com/dubniumsoundsystem

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8023026927&ref=ts

http://www.myspace.com/krisisdnb

http://duvstar.wordpress.com/

http://partizandovey.wordpress.com/

Pogo’s Facebook profile – http://www.facebook.com/partizanproject

Facebook Group – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=100093830459&ref=ts

Facebook Event – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=85257722115

Myspace page – http://www.myspace.com/partizanproject

Pogo Scratch 1 – http://mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/dovey/pogo_scratch_1.mov

Pogo Scratch 2 – http://mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/dovey/pogo_scratch_2.mov

Pogo Scratch 3 – http://mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/dovey/pogo_scratch_3.mov

Pogo Drum and Bass – http://mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/dovey/pogo_drum_and_bass.mov

Pogo Dubstep – http://mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/dovey/pogo_dubstep.mov

Action plan/time plan

All learning agreements must be signed by student and tutor

10 Hours – Finalising new idea

25 Hours – Research on existing nights

25 Hours – Researching types of promotion

80 Hours – Logo, Flyers, Posters, Banner, Business Cards, CD cover

50 Hours – Motion Graphics promotion pieces

25 Hours – Social Network advertising and networking

25 Hours – Deciding on materials and decorating club

60 Hours – Promotional time out and about

30 Hours – Business meetings, organising artists and talking to printers/clubs etc

10 Hours – The night itself

10 Hours – Evaluating the night, continuation of ideas for next event

450 Hours Total

£200 – Cost to hire club

£100 – 5000 flyers

£50 – 200 posters

£15 – 100 posters

£40 – 4 A0 posters

£150 – Poster space around Bournemouth

£300 – Headliner ‘JFB’

£50 – Whitey

£50 – Statix

£70 – Travel

£110 – Décor and drinks for artists

£65 – Contingency

£1200 – Total

£350 – Daily rate for me to produce motion graphics, 6 days

£1200 – The event

£2050 Total – add 10% overheads (£205), 5% for contingency (£102.50) and 15% profit (£307.50).

Final budget – £2665

This has been worked on the pure basis of me creating all the promotional material, which I did. Obviously the actual budget for the night was only £1200 and all the work was put in for free as I am essentially my own client. This budget has been made purely as an example. A bigger event would need a much larger budget as it would need more work, time and specialist people to complete it.

To make the project more interesting I decided to use computer software to make the mix, namely using Ableton Live 8. Ableton is a complete music production software, and incorporates functions for creating, mixing and producing music. As Ableton is something I can see myself using regularly, I decided to buy a proper copy, costing £400. And believe me, it’s great value. There’s so much you can do with it, as demonstrated on the Ableton site:

“Ableton Suite is the XL version of Ableton Live. Suite 8 gives you all of the features in Live 8 plus SOUND, with a radically new Library packed with beautiful new sounds and a wealth of useful resources. Suite 8 contains 10 Ableton instruments including synths, a sampler, electric and acoustic drums, mallets, numerous sampled instruments and the new, reworked Operator. Two completely new instruments, Collision and Latin Percussion, round off the set. Ableton Suite 8 is a complete package: the tools AND the sounds.”

http://www.ableton.com/suite-8

The first commercially available VJ software was Motion Dive, though by the late 90’s there was a whole host of other applications available, such as MooNSTER, Aestesis, ArKaos and VJamm. This meant VJ’s could work from their own personal computers wherever they were. Video mixers were later developed, quickly becoming the main component of a VJ’s set-up.

Today, VJ’s have a wide range or products to choose from covering every aspect of visual performance. Looking at equipment readily available in today’s market, two things stand out for me, the Pioneer DVJ range, which acts like a CD deck but with DVD’s, and the new Serato Video SL. The DVJ range acts like a normal turntable or CD deck by making the DVD ‘scratchable’, which means it can be manipulated by the touch of a hand on the platter like a normal deck would do. Essentially you can scratch video over music. The Serato Video SL uses very similar principles, but transmits the video from a computer to a special vinyl, which can then be manipulated like a normal vinyl. This means all your music/video files can be stored on CD or computer cutting out the need for heavy bags of equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJ_(video_performance_artist)

For the original purposes of this project I was only going to use the DJ side of things, as teaching myself music production would have taken months if not years before I was at a satisfactory level. The layout of the software is user friendly as soon as you get used to it, as it uses a very logical interface. The main audio spreads out like a timeline and can be easily manipulated at any point. Controls are all set out as tabs and buttons so it can take a minute to find what your after, but only as there is such a diverse range of choice available. Audio levels and EQ’s can be cut to the nearest millisecond and tracks can be layered in ways 2 turntables could never achieve. I still feel for normal club and DJ mixing turntables have the upper edge (traditional feel, sound and skill can never be outdone by a computer), but for all out mash ups and quick mixing Ableton is a step above. The other great aspect to this is live remixing, as Ableton is a music production software also, remixes can be made on the spot at the touch of a button. Genius…

PARTY’S ON

MISSION STATEMENT

We intend to build a new sustainable and profitable club night in Bournemouth with the intention of spreading to a wider catchment area in the UK.  We are being innovative in our approach by championing new exciting talents as well as established acts from the UK and beyond, hosted in a vibrant exciting atmosphere.  Using this night we will launch a number of inventive initiatives and projects to enhance our customer’s enjoyment as well as our own appeal.

OBJECTIVES

-           To start a sustainable and entertaining new night for the Bournemouth scene.

-           To use the night to promote new talent in and around the UK.

-           To build a company we could then launch new businesses from.

BUSINESS PLAN

With all new nights, the important thing is to stand out from the rest of the nights available.  We are going to use our launch night to set the tone from the outset.  We have pioneered a couple of new variations on an already stale clubbing scene called:

CHOICE

The idea is fairly simplistic but incredibly original.  We give the potential customers to our gig the chance to vote on a selection of main acts that we can afford to book.  They then choose the act they want to see at the night. This offers them an element of interaction with us, which we feel should promote a feeling of personal investment in the night while at the same time creating a buzz around our company.  This model can be applied to various different areas of our night such as drink promotion and entertainment.

LEAD

This simple acronym hopefully sums up the ethos for vibe and atmosphere in the party.  It stands for Leave Egos At the Door.  Hopefully what we want this positive message to promote is a feeling of cooperation and togetherness between the customers whilst at the night, encouraging our partygoers to talk with each other, share their experience and generally get along.  Unlike a lot of music nights which can come with a great deal of attitude from the punters we want the Partizan Project to be remembered for its fun and inventive approach to a night out.

Alongside these initiatives at the party we intend to have some nice features such as free handouts, games, competitions and relaxed activities for the punter to enjoy.

THE INS AND OUTS OF CLUB PROMOTION

Knowing that you’re probably not too familiar with club promotion as a business we thought we would give you a quick rundown on how it all works.  The secret to club promotion is in the name, promotion.  Essentially the rule of thumb is that if you have the right sort of acts people want to see (which we believe we do) and that you promote the night in a fervent manner from a number of angles you should be successful.  With this in mind we have already started spreading the word of our night on the most powerful tool available to us, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.  It’s such a useful tool for promotion as you can gather members and keep them updated of your progress and future plans etc.  For example, we started the group three days ago and we already have over 150 members who we will invite once we have secured everything we need.

Normally the rule for promotion is that you should start at least a month before your event is planned; however this being our launch night we have decided to start the promotion early after all the early bird catches the worm as they say!  Alongside the social networking campaigns we are starting our flyer and poster campaign from the early May.  We will target our audience by handing out flyers after other events in the local area and putting up posters around town.  We believe with enough effort on our behalf that the promotion of this event should run smoothly.

LAUNCH PARTY PLAN

THE CLUB

Our first night is on the 20th June at the Empire club in Bournemouth.  It is a well-established club in a prominent position on one of the main strips of town.  It has a maximum capacity of 500 split over three floors and costs £300 to hire, although we will only be taking 2 floors on our first event, capacity 400.  Included in these costs are the security, bar staff, insurance and equipment hire.

PROMOTION

As mentioned before we are running successful promotion on Facebook at the moment, which essentially is free advertising we can update regularly.  Alongside this the most important tool for promotion is handing out flyers and placing posters around the town.  Obviously this is of the biggest cost to us with the printing costs being around £150 and then a further outlay of about £150 on advertising space.  Along with this we have contacted the local media including radio stations and newspapers with press releases with the details of the event.  All In all we are confident in the depth we have gone into in terms of raising awareness for the gig down here and believe we have a wide spreading marketing scheme in place that will attract a wide and varied audience.

THE ACTS

Our unique selling point for the night is to champion groups, talent, acts and music from areas all around the UK.  With this in mind we have set about contacting the freshest most unique groups that we both know to play at the night.  We have sourced DJ’s, performers and live acts from all over the south of England through our extensive list of contacts and friends.  The line up is as follows:

UK DJ CHAMPION JFB

JAC with YOUTUBE SENSATION PALE * LIX (Live Percussion)

STATIX feat Mc’s SHADZ & FRILLA (Screw Loose)

REAPERZ (Cyntax Error)

SOUTHBOUND HANGERS (Dubnium)

FOCAL POINT (Bestival, Destiny)

TOAST (London)

BROCK OUT MAFIA (Brock Out)

MASSI (Beat Redemption)

SWIRLY THE NERD (Real Estate)

MUDDY FUNSTER (Guildford)

MULE (Bournemouth)

Whilst we understand that this will have no real meaning to you, we hope you can appreciate the variation in terms of location we have sourced the acts from.  For us though, our biggest selling point is the UK DJ champion JFB, we have to pay top money for him but he is considered one of the top DJs in the UK.  Normally you have to pay for all of the acts you book; however as this line up consists of acts looking to promote themselves we have secured many of them for low cost.

MONEY

As you may have gathered from this plan the whole event is going to cost a reasonable amount of money.  I have laid out a rough plan for the expenses on the event this is as follows:

The club:

Hire costs – £200

Promotional materials:

•           Flyers – £100

•           Posters – £105

•           Advertising space – £150

Total costs – £355

Acts/entertainment:

£300 – Headliner ‘JFB’

£50 – Whitey

£50 – Statix

£70 – Travel

Miscellaneous

£110 – Décor and drinks

£65 – Contingency

Total predicted – £1200

These figures are just preliminary. However, we feel they are realistic and we have rounded them up rather than down.  We expect the night not to draw its total capacity however, we predict with our determination and drive put in to the promotion of the event we can draw at least half that number.

With this in mind, we intend to charge £5 for entry to the event before 11pm and £6 after. This should bring extra people into the club early as well as representing good value for the money.  If we pull in more than half our supposed capacity we should almost cover our costs, but we are expecting a loss first time.

Thanks for your time

Jake, Mike and Dave

The Partizan Project

A good body of promotional material can be essential in making a new event recognisable. The aim is to produce something that stands out and is memorable to the target audience, whilst being attractive enough for them to notice in the first place. The more and more people see it, the more and more they think about it, thus creating a buzz of excitement about it.

These are the nights I have chosen to analyse:

Enter

Drumfunk

Dubnium

Krisis

Beat Redemption

I shall look at their existing promotional material such as flyers, posters, logo’s, social networking sites, additional promotional ideas and interactive promotional ideas, such as competitions and prizes, figuring out what works and what doesn’t.