Monday 28 December 2009
Digipak Inspiration
Here is a mood board of existing album artwork in the music industry. These chosen images are what we are using as inspiration. This is because all the images on the covers on a CD show us that it does not have to link with the band or make sense. Using this idea of not relating to the album, song or band we shall create our own cover as part of a digipak
Sunday 20 December 2009
Target Audience
We believe that this is the biggest market sector to hit with a music video as this age range is the most likely to watch music channels on television or view on the internet with such sites like youtube. It is also where you find the majority of people downloading music or attending live events. This is highly important due to the volume of music sales falling dramatically over the past 2 years.
With our target audience set with the genre of music we must make sure that all mise en scene, especially costumes, to relate to our target audience to make the setting and narrative of our video realistic to the viewer.
The people in our music video therefore, must also be of the age range 16 to 25. This limits us with a problem of getting people that look the later stage of our age range. Due to this we are going to have to stick to the lower side of 16 to 20. This should not subtract from the effect our video has on our audience and keep it believable.
With our chosen band, Delphic, being highly accepted by NME a huge selling point of our video would be to target the readers of NME. These readers tend to be stereotyped as "Indie".
Here are a couple of definitions of Indie.
"A staple of British culture since post-punk and the early 80s" going on to say That people defined as Indie Kids are "A confident, energetic and enthusiastic tribe, which have become one of Britain’s largest and most influential. Musically, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, The Killers, Klaxons, Friendly Fires, Bloc Party are currently important – and members don’t go off a band just because they have chart success. Indie kids are particularly fond of bands with teenage members so that there’s a small gap between the band and their audience. All Age gigs and festivals are extremely popular and are indicative of the emerging ‘youth pride’ of this group. Instead of having to fake ID to get into gigs, Indie Kids have taken over the party – and if you’re over 18, you’re not coming in. Fashion-wise, the uniform of Converse and skinny jeans, fringes, band T-shirts and lots of jewellery remains unchanged. Clothes are second-hand not vintage." - UKTribes.com
"Mainly teenagers who all share a common love for the arts and music. They listen to many bands most people haven't heard of and tend to dress however they want, usually ruling out the rules of fashion" - Urban Dictionary
With this target audience set we shall have to use the indie clothing and hair cut style carefully to create our cast and video.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Website Inspiration
Saturday 12 December 2009
Sunday 6 December 2009
Mood Board
The mood board above shows our main themes for our music video in a clear simple form. By creating a mood board it was easy for us (each group member) to see how we each envisioned the themes of the video and then got to discuss them. Closet homosexuality and regret are the clear influences taken from our narrative and the other themes shall be used in our video although not directly tied in to our narrative. With these basic images clearly established our group now has a clear path to follow to get to our final completed video.
Friday 4 December 2009
Delphic - Doubt lyrics
As you can see we have picked up on lyrics that have influenced our initial idea. As a group we individually produced a document similar to this with similar themes of each individual coming through. The biggest one being homosexuality and doubt. With these results it will help us develop our idea as we have established we have similar ideas and views for how we want the video to develop and also intertwine deeper meanings to the video.
Thursday 3 December 2009
Location
As you can see above our friend Josh's house is not a particularly modern house and we believe it could work well.
However, the rooms we would like to film in a rather small and would make it hard to fit people in along with a camera and lighting. Due to this we are looking at a different location.
Untitled from Jack Osman on Vimeo.
We are very happy with the two locations we found and our chosen location. This is because we feel this will appeal to our target audience and relate to both ends of our age range (16-25). This is because the low end of our age range will not be able to go to a pub or club and will be more likely seen at a house party. The older range of our target audience will also relate to this as Indie followers tend to prefer home parties rather than clubbing. These parties are often thrown in places not particularly modern.
Copyright Letter
We are a group of A level students and are writing to request for your permission to use one track from the forthcoming album by Delphic entitled Acolyte.
The track we wish to use is Doubt, track 2 on the album.
With your permission, this track would be used in our current A-level Media Studies project which involves creating a music video for a popular music track, as well as producing an album and a magazine advert for the artist.
If we received your permission, this track would ONLY be used in an educational
context and be viewed by my media class, my teacher and the OCR exam board
moderator. It would NOT be released to a large audience or uploaded to any public video websites. We do realise that the requested track is currently unreleased and will be merely used for research purposes until the release date.
The artist and your company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-
production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Jordan Saville, Jack Osman, Sam Avery and Louisa Herbert
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Song Decision
We then sat down to try to create an idea. This was successfully done by Jordan deciding the basis of the idea of which we could build upon as a group. With the upbeat, electro song the idea was based on the title and chorus of the song. With the most significant part of the song being "Doubt, in it all for me I've hit the wall, all that's left for you is Doubt" in the chorus the was the focus Jordan followed to create the idea, which is based on regretting actions you have taken.
As a group we came to the conclusion the video would work best as a narrative rather than a performance. This is because there is a chance to exploit those few lyrics to a huge scale. With the initial idea laid down we decided to go away and listen to the song to try and develop further making it a more interesting viewing.
The decision to use this song is a great idea i believe as it will leave us with a lot of potential ideas to develop for our video. This is because doubt is a broad subject and once our target audience is set we can focus on the problems that audience tends to doubt and why they doubt decisions.
Thursday 26 November 2009
Video Analysis 1
The video is of a band called Blink 182. They play pop punk music and have become known for they comical videos an stage shows. What's My Age Again follows these previous videos for humor but also has footage representing the lyrics. The majority of the video is footage of the band running naked through a town. The shots are edited slowly to build on the humor of the video. Each clip of the band running naked something mischievous happens. The length of the shots represent the anticipation of the audience of what they are going to do. These shots get slowly quicker the closer to the action happens. The actions represent the lyrics "What's My Age Again" as they do childish things. For example, push things out of peoples hands.
The first time we see that the band is naked is once they run past a young woman. When she is in the background she turns around and points. It is at this point we finally see the band naked. Up until then we just saw naked torsos. With the woman's reaction it reveals how the video will be from then on.
The rest of the video is of a performance of the band. They are again performing naked with their instruments covering their genitalia. The instruments are primary colours and the white room makes it almost seem as if it is a performance in a nursery. This again links with the title of the song, What's My Age Again.
The video helps build upon the image of the band to not be taken seriously and have a good time. I believe this is a successful tool of marketing and the video helps this well. The video encapsulates the mentality of children or teenagers about not caring. This is the reason for the band running naked and causing trouble. With the target audience of the band being 14 - 25 years old it appeals to each member of this age range. This is because the younger audience would find the running around naked funny whilst the older generation would be laughing at the reactions the band gets by the victims in the video and also find it funny imaging what reactions they would receive if they copied the video.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Conventions of a music video
As with films, particular genres of music have their own music video style and iconography, certain things such as setting, clothing and lighting are recognised symbols we expect to see. It is clear that music videos are used promotional material therefore it is often a demand for their to be close ups of these artists to make it clear who they are and promote them. Some artists develop their own star iconography, there is also likely to be a suggestion of voyeurism created in the video.
Lyrics
- As obvious as it might sound it is important to create a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
- They help to establish a general feeling or mood or a sense of subject matter
- Key lines may play a part in the visuals but rarely will you get a literal response
Music
- the video will always make use of the tempo of the track to drive the editing
- also may emphasise particular sounds from the track by foregrounding certain instruments
Genre
- Some pieces of music are difficult to categorise and therefore the video needs to emphasise its distinctive features, being reflected in the mise-en-scene
- certain themes will be appropriate in certain genres which will also be reiterated in camera and editing styles
Camera Work
- How the camera is used, how it is sequenced will impact upon its meaning
- camera angles, movement and distance done well will give it the dynamic feel
Editing
- It is important that you film to edit-the most common editing styles being fast cut montage, which encourages repeated viewings
- slow-pace editing will have gentle transitions which help to establish the mood.
- digital effects such as layering and transparency can often be used to good effect
- narrative is often fragmentary
Video Analysis
Sunday 22 November 2009
Ideas before chosen song
Saturday 21 November 2009
Initial Meetings
We discussed the ideas in depth and shared our opinions. We established there were aspects we liked from all ideas and could try to develop or include in stronger ideas. This is because we believed that the first ideas raised were not strong enough to create a convincing, industry standard, music promotional video.
With promise of creativity in the group we watched existing music videos to come up with ideas from a range of genres. Nirvana, Bloc Party and You Me At Six are examples of the videos we watched. Not only by watching existing videos were we gaining inspiration but we were also listening to the songs trying to develop a narrative or an idea we could interpret.
With a wide search with videos we found our most promising song and idea, Doubt by Delphic.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
First Meeting
With our group created and brief decided we started discussing ideas for our music video. Due to a varied taste in music we decided to list all artists that the individual would like to work with to make an unbias view on the final product. As a group we knew that the music did not have to necessarily be liked by all as long as the idea behind it was strong enough to believe that it will succeed. As a group we created a list of 26 artists and were delegated them as equally as possible to listen and create an idea for as many as possible to discuss when we next met.
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Formal Brief
My A2 coursework portfolio must be:
- a media portfolio, comprising a main and ancillary texts;
- a presentation of your research, planning and evaluation in electronic format(s)
The portfolio will be produced through a combination of two or more of the following media:
- Video
- Web-based
- Audio
- Games software
Chosen Brief
A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
- a website homepage for the band;
- a cover for its release as part of the digipak (CD/DVD package);
- a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).