Britney Spears album promotion: Circus

•Circus is the sixth studio album by American pop singer Britney Spears.
•Jive Records with Zomba Label Group and Sony Music Entertainment, released it on November 28, 2008.
•Sold over 505,000 copies in the United States in its first week, Circus debuted on the Billboard 200 at number one, making it Spears's fifth number-one album.
•The album made Britney the only act in Nielsen SoundScan history to have four albums debut with 500,000 or more copies sold.

Promotion
•To promote the album Jive Records set up a hotline where fans could leave a message for Spears, with some of the callers getting a return phone call from Spears.
•Some tracks off the album were previewed via the website of the New York radio station WKTU and Amazon.com.
•MTV aired a 90-minute documentary titled Britney: For the Record November 30, 2008. The show was about her return to the pop music spotlight. Spears's official website released a series of posters to promote Circus.
•A pre-taped holiday greeting from Spears was shown during the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree on December 3, 2008.

Live performances
•Spears's live comeback began on November 6, 2008 at the Dodger Stadium show of Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour. Midway through "Human Nature", Spears joined Madonna on stage.
•The week before the release of the album she did more performances in several different countries. On November 27, 2008 Spears performed "Womanizer" live at the Bambi Awards in Offenburg, Germany, where she received an award for "Best Pop International Artist". The following day, Spears again performed the song live on French show Star Academy. In addition, she performed "Womanizer" on The X Factor, in the United Kingdom, on November 29, finishing the European pre-release promotional tour. Her performance on The X Factor was watched by 12.8 million UK citizens, becoming the most viewed episode in the show's history.

Tour
Main article: The Circus: Starring Britney Spears
Shortly after the New York radio station Z100 played her new song, "Womanizer", Spears made a surprise appearance on the show and announced she would be going on a worldwide tour in spring of 2009 to support the album, and that rehearsals would begin in January for a March start.Spears signed a deal with live entertainment company AEG Live to produce the tour. Jamie King will serve as tour director and Simon Ellis will be musical director. Spears announced on Good Morning America that her concert tour would begin in New Orleans on March 3, 2009.

Singles
“Womanizer": On September 15, Jive released a statement announcing the title of her sixth studio album, Circus as well as the first single. The single was released to radio stations on September 26, and the release date for the album is December 2, Spears's 27th birthday. On October 15, the song made a record-breaking jump to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, breaking the record set the week before by T.I.'s "Live Your Life". It also garnered first-week download sales of 286,000, the biggest opening-week tally by a female artist since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital downloads in 2003. It marked Spears's first number one single on the Hot 100 since her debut, "...Baby One More Time".
"Circus": On October 31, 2008, it was announced on Spears's official website that "Circus" would be released as the album's second single. The song debuted at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was Spears's highest debuting single on the Billboard Hot 100 to date.
"If U Seek Amy": On January 7, 2009, Spears's official website announced that "If U Seek Amy" would be released as the album's third single. After the album's release and before it was released as a single, the song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 86,The Music Video was released on March 12,2009.

Storyboards

Reflections and amendments from our original plan

As expected our original plan took some changes in the process of creation. Most crucially, we had to change protagonist actress at the last minute after finishing all filming at the terraced house location. This was due to the fact that our original actress was not able to film at the second location before our filming deadline, our only option was to find a second actress and start filming again. This ended up being a positive thing as we were much happier with our second filming at the terraced house and the shots produced were more proffessional.

Our second amendment was that we had to change our soundtrack as originally we wanted to use Safe From Harm by Massive Attack, however, we couldn't due to it being copyrighted. Instead, we decided it would be good to compose our own music and therfore mould it around our plot and ambience.

Finally, we decided against making our actress walk into the sea at the end of our opening as on the day of filming it was about -4 degrees. Alternatively, we decided not use the shot at all as it was not key in the plot.

Titles

We wanted our titles to be fairly simple so as to not distract from the other narrative present, however, we did want our titles to be noticed. We used a white font over the black voice-over at the beginning and over a black background after the dialogue has finished. Our titles included our film production company 'Reel Films Production', 'Directed and Produced by', 'Music by' and finally 'Safe From Harm' at the end of the opening.
Our titles are very minimalistic and are comparable to titles such as Alfed Hitchcock's 'Birds' or 'Pyscho' which also had very simple titles.

Shooting schedule

For our entire opening we only needed to use a total of two settings this made it easy to decided the shooting schedule.
Our settings were at a terraced house in the centre of Norwich and at Haulkham beach on the north-Norfolk coast.

20th December 12.00 noon-5.oopm - terraced house, college road, norwich, norfolk.

4th January 1.00 pm-4.30pm - Haulkham beach, north-norfolk coast.

Verisimilitude in TV Drama

Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real.

Realism or verisimilitude is apparent in all TV dramas from Hollyoaks to Dr Who, however, there are varying levels of it depending on the genre and plot within the series.

Dr Who contains certain levels on verisimilitude as there are elements of reality for example: characters have ‘normal’ conversations, wear typical clothing, show signs of suitable emotions and behave in a socially acceptable way. On the other hand though, there is also frequent appearances from aliens, monsters and the recurrent mode of transport is a time travelling huge-on-the-inside-small-on-the-outside telephone box called the ‘Tardis’ therefore indicating factors of surrealism. There may also be occasions such as someone dying and then coming back to life in a couple of episodes time and there is a lack of synchronicity. Nevertheless, Dr Who is still considered to be realistic but there is a definite divide between realistic and realism.
Realism is palpable in Television dramas such as Eastenders or Coronation Street. Episodes contain a conventional narrative plot like eating breakfast or going to the corner shop. Furthermore there is apparent synchronicity, for example, when the audience is experiencing a festivity like Christmas this is also occurring in Eastenders. This helps to add a further feeling of reality and believability for the audience, furthermore it enables audiences to relate to characters consequently having feelings for them. Conversely, storylines are often exaggerated and sometimes slightly implausible but this is added for entertainment values and is often expected in these types of TV drama.