January 21th - Beginning the Website

So today, I've begun work on the website. This task should be easier now because I use conventions and base it around my Digipak.
Most of the conventions are based around advertising yourself so I'm going to plaster the webpage with pictures of Jack and the Digipak.

January 20th - Website Analysis

The websites that are created for musical artists and bands follow forms and conventions.
One convention is that the artist's face is the main image on the screen and it's a picture of them that is easily recognisable.  This is Ellie Goulding's website.

Not only does she have a picture of herself, she actually has the picture that is used on the album cover. This helps to reinforce her album and promote sales.

Another big convention of a musicians website is that it is filled with media and as you open the main page it is the first thing you see and it instant grabs your attention.

Here we can see Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis as well as Ben Howard. With Ben Howards website the watery part is actually a repeated snippet of his music video. It begins to play as you open the page and below that is his latest music video, which is the first thing you see with Mackelmore's website. Because a video can be a big selling point forcing the music video into someones face can be very affective.

Another convention is a biography page or a page with details about the artist and their lives. This convention doesn't normally stretch to a band because you tend not to want to get to know each member of a band, rather you would just want to listen to them. Whereas with a solo artist, you can have a more vested interest in their life because it influences their music more. The bio page is usually just a preview of their biography, bands tend not to make biographies so their would be no point.

A further convention is the selling of merchandise on their page. The reason artists sell merchandise is because it's free advertising when people are seen wearing it and it is a source of revenue.

Here we see Fall Out Boy's Merchandise page. It usually consists of T-shirts because they are cheap to produce, easy to ship and suit most people. On every page, even the merchandise, the band are pumping their latest album and releases.

The final convention is the use of other social media, like social networking sites.

Bastille seems to break all of the home page conventions but it excels with providing extra social media for users to connect with. They hav elinks to Tumblr, News, A sign-up page, Contact, Vevo, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

These mediums can be used to track who the target audience, interact with your audience and advertise on the correct platforms.

December 13th - DigiPak Analysis

Within a DigiPak there are a few conventions the designer follows. The first is more for legal reasons than a design decision, but it can influence design.

 

Within a DigiPak there are a few conventions the designer follows. The first is more for legal reasons than a design decision, but it can influence design. Here on The Kook's album the barcode and legal information almost blends in. So you don't even notice

Track listings Somewhere on all DigiPaks you will find the track listings for the album. This is convention because the consumer needs to be able to identify what they are buying. Also, some people will buy an album based on the songs that are on it, like popular songs or songs they particularly like.

Lyrics

This doesn’t appear on all DigiPaks however, it is a convention. Having lyrics on a digipak is there so the consumer can sing along with the songs that the artist has written. It’s a nice touch because singing along to your favourite song can help you enjoy an album even more.

Link to website

A popular addition is the link to the artists website. This can open up renvue possiblilities from merchandise but it also encourages you to continue researching the artist.

Band/artist images

An artist image is what sells the album. This is why it’s a huge convention that they take up most of, if not all, of the images on the page

Message and thank you from the artist

A thank you message from the artist is a convention, but it doesn’t occur on every album.

It’s basically the last word from the artist, thanking you for buying the album. It helps you connect to the artist.

November 11th - Questionnaire and Focus Group

In order to get a good overview of what our audience wants from a music video and an album cover we asked 107 people aged 15-45 to fill out a questionnaire, including questions like, What music they enjoy, what they look for in an album cover, and their favoured website theme from a who few different ones we chose.
On top of this, we asked them what they imagined the video for the song would look like.

We had a few ideas of tribal drums and a few who shared our vision of insanity.


Here is an example of an answered questionnaire.

Thanks Will.

From these statistics we drew that our target audience will definitely be 15-24 as they enjoyed the song the most. The idea of drug based antics always intrigued us, but due to the age range and how inappropriate it would be, we opted for the madness option. We also liked the idea of running and believe that the SnorriCam will come in handy!

November 4th - CD Cover Analysis

I have picked 3 different album artworks from 3 different bands, representing 3 different genres -pop, alternative and heavy rock/metal.

Each follow different conventions but also share a few.

One Direction

This is One Direction's "Up All Night" album cover. The cover clearly shows the members of the band outside enjoying themselves. This is because this is what the audience wants to see from the band members. They want to see them having fun, being friendly and approachable and they essentially want to see them "up for grabs" as single boys. The colours are bold and bright and make the artwork appealing overall. It suits the target audience well and the other One Direction artworks follow a similar theme.

Gorillaz

The Gorillaz album artwork for "Demon Days" follows similar conventions, it shows the 4, albeit fictional, members of the band, just like one direction and it shows their personality and reflects their music. the artwork is important to the band because they first developed as a visual project as well as a band. The pictures of each band member are important. They all seem cool, distant and as if they don't care, which is part of their look. This album was aimed at the older generation, where being distant and cool was band of every band members image.

A Day To Remember

This album cover for A Day To Remember's "Homesick" is entirely concept design artwork, created by the band members. It's a visual representation of what the band feels there music is. It ducks conventions, like most metal albums. It doesn't show the bands members or relate much to the album name or songs. With Gorillaz it's distant and dark, One Direction is happy and party like but A Day to Remember's is purely what the band wanted to put. It doesn't advertise the band, it doesn't even have the name of the album, it merely it's more about the music that's inside.

September 25th - Practice Shots and Editing

So Rhys and I went out yesterday to practice doing some shots for our music video. We followed conventional shots of music videos and I edited them together to get some practice.
I thought it went quite well considering we didn't really plan for them to fit together towards the end.

Enjoy!

September 16th - Locations Scouting and Risk Assessment

Rhys and I have been driving around attempting to find a dishevelled, abandoned or rundown building or site to do the main bulk of our filming.
It took a few hunches, tip-offs and a great deal of patience but we finally found a place we loved.
Warley Mental Hospital.
Well it's not a hospital anymore, it's a building site - but more importantly - a half finished building site.

It looks a bit like this!



We popped in a met a lovely gentleman called Ben, who was the site manager and after a quick tour, a safety talk and our own Risk Assessment we arranged to come back in the following weeks to film.
When we get back to school we'll look at each others timetables and figure out a shooting schedule, but for now - Enjoy our Risk assessment!

September 15th - Music Video Storyboard

Rhys and I have put together a little presentation. We've been working on what our music video narrative is going to be and we're really proud of it.

Rhys has put lots of hours into Pixton to make this masterpeice.

Enjoy!

September 14th - Our Treatment

The Concept

The song wehave chosen to use is called Fitzpleasure and the artist name we have created is PARAdox. For our music video we plan to use two of the three key music video styles, narrative and concept. We use a narrative of a man being tormented by himself, going insane and eventually beating it. We use concept in order to exaggerate the madness by making it look like he is crazy and singing to himself. Finally we intend to use special effects to make it look like he is being confronted by himself. And another that sees him rise up out of his own body. There are a few different locations we want to film. One is a run down old building, preferably derelict to represent his mind. Another location needs to be a big dining room so he can be presented to his friends at a tea party, and finally we wish to create a running scene where he travels from a morbid place to a happy place like a field. The pace and tone of the video will hopefully follow the songs feel because we used a visualisation technique to help plan our video. We wrote down what we saw so it should be pretty parallel.

Artist Style and Form

For our artist we decided he would be a solo artist. We wanted to make him, essentially, a slim figured gentleman so he would be appealing to the female audience. In our head we had an idea of Adam Ant meets MGMT meets Empire Of The Sun meets Noel Fielding meets Spector meets Calvin Harris and Pro Green. This is because of the song Fitzpleasure. It is a strange song and the both the lyrics and sound of the singing don't follow conventions. The music speaks for itself so in order to appeal to the largest possible audience we need the artist to essentially take two person as; off stage and on stage.  It's a rather vivid idea but to go along with his strange appearance we wanted a very leveled and mature. We wanted a Cambridge graduate this is again based on the song, the contextual references and the subtly behind the lyrics make him seem very clever and this level of thought the dedication continues through the whole of Alt-J's album.  It's a weird image to try and get your head around but it works in ours. 

Logistics/Issues

There are two special effects which I’m not entirely sure how to edit correctly just yet and they’re quite ambitious. One is the split screen effect where Rhys approaches himself and the other is an eye zoom transition where it looks like it zooms out of his eye and into another scene. But we can always leave it out. As well as this we think we may struggle filling up the time because there is a large portion of the song that is repetitive. Our back up plans would be to edit the song and remove 30 or so seconds of the loop. Also, in the spirit of charity and awareness Rhys will be partaking in Movember, due to this filming for November will be out because of continuity. So we will focus our efforts elsewhere.

Target Audience

Using our questionnaire and Alt-J's own demographic we decided to target an audience between the age of 15-24. Our focus group confirmed this with the great percentage of them enjoying the song and the majority of them visualising video ideas compared to the older group we asked. The fact that Alt-J's songs are played on Radio 1 and XFM as well as being popular on YouTube also confirm 15-24 as the most appropriate range.

Location

For our location we wanted a few different places. The main bulk of the filming we're hoping to find a run down old building or like an old hospital, which shows madness, a feel of broken, abandoned. Something spooky and a little freaky. On top of that we need contrasting, highly friendly and colourful places, and then one in the middle, the idea in our head is very Alice In Wonderland-esk this will represent a "happy place" which also reinforces the madness.

Technology

There is a huge range of technology we are using and going to use in order to complete our project. For starters we need computers to connect and create our blog, do research on websites such as YouTube, Google, Blogger. We also need a camcorder and maybe a still camera. On top of that we are going to need editing software. 

Here's basically all we need. 

September 7th - A Bit of Influence and Inspiration

Okay, so since the start of the project Rhys and I have had some really vivid ideas and we haven't really shifted much from our original plan. We were influenced by what we saw and fell in love with different shots and feels that were portrayed in different pieces.


We instantly knew we loved the Koppaberg TV ad and actually spent a good 20 minutes trying to find it. It's a bit different and we love the graphic match, with the match. ;)

We also loved Mitchell and Webb's sketch "The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar" What we liked the most was the use of a SnorriCam. We felt it gave quite a personal look at the actors face to show emotions and having the face stay in the same position throughout the shot gave a trippy, strange feel to it. 

9th September

As a descent into madness I thought we could use a SnorriCam in different places, each place, cutting to a more grim and darker place, and showing a more distressed and panicky main character.
It may not fit our narrative, but I'm sure we'll find a way of making it work and we also need a SnorriCam.

Inspiration comes from Legendary comedian Eric Idle in his scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

Enjoy!

June 21st - Music Video Textual Analysis

For my textual analysis of music videos I was given The Human League – Don’t You Love Me?

The video was hard to follow because it was about them being in a film or being filmed and then them watching the film and two of the women looked similar but with different coloured hair, and because she was an actor I wasn’t sure if it was her or not.

Anyway, I saw that the video was almost wholly narrative based. This is because it told the story of two people in love and only had about 30-40 seconds of performance based lip-syncing. It’s basically impossible to tell what the genre is directly from the visuals. The man is plainly dressed and offers no insight and there are no performance based instrument shots - but the genre is electro-pop.

There is a slight relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, for instance the man and woman are together at the start when he is singing about them meeting, and as the woman walks away she sings “I still love you” and looks back the plainly dressed gentleman.Between the music and visuals, however, there is no match. The video’s theme is very ambiguous and could be any genre at all.

Looking plays a small part, but less treating woman as sexual objects but being deeply in love and a bit stalker-ish.

The Paramore video was much easier to follow than The Human League’s.
Firstly, it was easy to tell what the genre was based on the bands instruments, what they were wearing, their stances and how they moved around when they were being filmed, this makes it a performance based video but it is a narrative because the lyrics tell the story that the video presents about a girl and her boyfriend but she keeps cheating on her but because she keeps listening to what her heart says over what her brain is telling her to do she keeps going back to him.
The only link to the visuals from the music is the live performance the band makes and the lip-syncing by Hayley, other than that there is nothing.
Although we usually know the lead singer is the star because of how much we hear them on any given track it is made abundantly clear that she is the star of the video as well. On top of the live performance she is in she also gets her own mid-shot where she lip-syncs about 30% of the song.

The main theme of this video is about a man cheating on his girlfriend, and that’s the reason the song was written so objectifying and not caring for women is rife in this song and video.

June 19th - Different types of Music video

So it turns out there is 3 different types of music video.
Performance, Narrative and Concept.

Performance based is where the video focusses on showing footage of the band or artist performing and playing their instruments. Most songs have some performance based in it, but very few are pretty much purely performance based - one that popped to mine was Foo Fighters - The Pretender.

Check it out!

Narrative based is where the music has a narrative and the video follows it.
One video that came to mine for this was R.Kelly's - Trapped in the Closet. Which literally tells the story of what he is singing.

Take a ganders. (there are another 21 where that came from, but who has time for that? (Me.))

The final type is Concept. This is where it gets a bit wacky. The video is usually quite obscure or surreal for the audience and uses a lot of special effects.


Here's the famous girl kisser Katy Perry with fellow stage stomper Kanye West in the Concept Narrative of an inter-special, inter-planetary love story.

Fun for the whole family.

June 12th - My Interpretation of Visuals

As a task in our lesson we were asked to give our ideas for a video to a song called No Rest by Dry the River.
I personally found it really sad and had different ideas for shots which were very similar and followed the sad tone of the song.
I had an idea for a shot where he is on a train looking and feeling down. Two of these shots are the same except one included him singing.
Another shot was him being sad in a café and again one includes him singing into the camera.
A further shot was him waking up in a double bed with blue, cold lighting and he sings in slow motion.
the final 3 shots which are partially slow motion and are flashed to throughout the video is him walking and running in the rain.
To conclude I had an idea for a shot where he looks up a hill to the funeral of his old girlfriend and the final shot rises up above the burial.


Sad, meaningful and touching. And I said music didn't mean anything to me.


Here's the real video!

June 11th - What Does Music Mean To Me?

They're coming thick and fast these posts.

I'm here to talk about what music means to me, so without any further ado.

A song from when I was a kid - The House that Jack Built

It's not strictly a song, but the version I used to watch was a song. But I couldn't find it.

I used to listen to and watch the video of this song every time I went to my nan's house when I was young and so did my brother and sister. It's probably the only nursery rhyme I remember learning and singing that wasn't from school. There's not much really to say about it, it's a little nursery rhyme that I used to love and shared with my brother and sister.

A song when I was a early teen - Green Day - American Idiot

Again, this doesn't really mean that much to me. But as an early teen this was my favourite band. I used to sit and listen to this album on my CD player over and over again and it was the first album I learnt pretty much all the way through. I used to play Call Of Duty with it on as well. 

A song now. Canterbury - More Than Know

Anything by Canterbury really. I love this band to pieces because they play such great music but it's a mix of rock and soft alternative. It's all I really listen to in the car. And they're damn catchy!

As you can probably tell I'm not a very deep person. I play and listen to music for enjoyment and have never really been all that good at reading into things. I tend to think people generally lack depth and people who try and see a singers motive for writing lyrics other than they sound cool or they rhyme are trying to hard.
Maybe I'm wrong...


But probably not.

June 7th - Intertextuality

Inter-textual references are also used and are referenceother forms of media, such as music videos, films, TV or books. This is used to help the audience relate and can occasionally provide humour. Spoof videos are normally a big example of this.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication uses a video game theme.

Sabotage by the Beastie Boys follows the theme of 1960's Cop show.

Move your Feet by Junior Senior also uses intertextuality. In their case it was an 8-bit video game.

June 7th - Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin developed a theory about music video visuals. He believes that the visuals can Illustrate, Amplify or Contradict the music style and accompanying lyrics. He says there is a relationship between the music or lyrics and the visuals. In most videos there are close-ups of the band or artist to help represent the genre and aid the publicity of the artist, because they look straight into the camera it gives the effect that the artist is singing and connecting to the audience directly.

Weird Al Yankovic is famous for making comedic music and music videos. His animated music video Trapped in the drive thru, which is a spoof of Trapped in the Closet by R-Kelly are both perfect examples of how music video visuals can illustrate a song.

Fall Out Boy make videos which follow narratives, but do not follow what their songs are about. For instant there song "Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging" is a story about a man with antlers falling in love.

Voyeurism is the act of watching someone who is performing sexual behaviors such as undressing or dancing provocatively, in order to gain pleasure.

In terms of a music video it is usually a man’s “controlling gaze” towards women that are being sexually objectified.

Goodwin’s theory says that through use of camera work and editing, women are objectified with emphasis of body shots as well as sexualized narratives.

Voyeurism is often used to help sell a product and create audience interest. For instance:

Benny Benassi - Satisfaction

Fedde Le Grand - Put your hands up

Most dance tracks have this sort of voyeurism in them. This appeals to both the female and male audience, because the men fantasise and the women aspire.

Voyeurism is also explored it is used to increase the video’s attractiveness to males, however, it can also empower the artist – for instance– when Beyoncé dances in her video “Single Ladies”.