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Excellent.  Your response is detailed and through and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of images and text to convey your points. ou have a secure knowledge and understanding of who you want your artist to be signed to; perhaps you could link this further by stressing the advantages that your artist has signed to the particular record label.  excellent research into CD covers and you have a wide range of examples, and this would be developed further if you can link the real product to how it will influence your own designs.  Please do identify and profile who your target audience is.

Our planned target audience

Our target audience is planned to be mod fans, boy band fans and we can therefore possibly reach out to both female and male audience. The sexual magnetism aspect of the video will be targeted to girls that we were planning on having in terms of the band and their looks but the age segment for the pop video will be ranging mostly from 16-30.

We therefore was planning to use young age people in our band and also good looking. Overall our audience is right now quite wide though we have a more focus group of mood fans, but during the process i think that a more specific audience will appear as our concept may change in small ways.

Typical mod bike

I'm not like everybody else lyrics

I won't take all that they hand me down,
And make out a smile, though I wear a frown,
And I won't take it all lying down,
'Cause once I get started I go to town.

'Cause I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

And I don't want to ball about like everybody else,
And I don't want to live my life like everybody else,
And I won't say that I feel fine like everybody else,
'Cause I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

But darling, you know that I love you true,
Do anything that you want me to,
Confess all my sins like you want me to,
There's one thing that I will say to you,
I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else
And I don't want to ball about like everybody else,
And I don't want to live my life like everybody else,
And I won't say that I feel fine like everybody else,
'Cause I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else.

If you all want me to settle down,
Slow up and stop all my running 'round,
Do everything like you want me to,
There's one thing that I will say to you,
I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.
And I don't want to ball about like everybody else,
And I don't want to live my life like everybody else,
And I won't say that I feel fine like everybody else,
'Cause I'm not like everybody else,
I'm not like everybody else.

Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else.

My brief idea for our digipak

To give an idea of what influences and what my ideas are for our final CD-cover I did a flat plan of how the front and back might look like. But since we right now don't know what people we are going to use for our music video and how they look like the idea I did is more of a brief idea that could influences our final CD-cover.

My biggest influence was to use the colours representing the mod culture but also the the UK in a way, but the sketched people on the front cover are there to represent they actual people that we are going to use in our music video.

Digipak covers used by similar artists

To make a fair and helpful research into digipak's I looked at some similar artist before starting to plan our own cd-cover for "infernal". So I looked at similar artist such as the kinks, the who and the clash which all are from the UK and have that special mod style about them.

The Cd-cover on the right is on made by the kinks to show their image and what they stand for they use the colours used for mod's and their symbols, blue, red and white. But also happens to be the colours that represent UK therefore also showing the band is from the UK.
The second CD-cover is also of the kinks were they are also using the same influences by using specific colours but also always showing all the band members to make it clear to the consumers who they actually are and what they look like. This can help to target a bigger female audience which might be attracted by their looks or so on.

(The picture on the left are showing two CD-covers from both The who and also two from The clash)

They method of showing the whole band and clearly showing that the band or the artist are from UK is seen almost throughout all of the CD-covers from the similar artist I have research and also using the colours representing the mod culture.

What institution that would sign our band "Infernal"

I would classified our band “Infernal” as a band trying to show a more creative side of their music and would be more about the quality and the content of the music and albums. Therefore I would say that “Infernal” would be signed to a subsidiary which would be seen as an independent institution but would work together with one of the bigger majors such as BMG, Warner etc. An example of an institution like this would be “Broken English”.


The problem with not using a major is that the chance of reaching success is often seen as more difficult since the major is often involved in the decision making in how much money that should be used to invest in the band or singer. But by still using a subsidiary the music can be seen as more original and can also be valued higher as it’s not targeted to a mass audience, which I would say the music made by “Infernal” wouldn’t be. But instead to a more specific audience that is more interested in the quality of the product. Then we have also focused on the idea that “infernal” has a focus on “out with the old in with the new” and is also what the sub-genre MOD represented during their time. So the audience of Infernal would be people also interested in recycling and the renewing of products and the world.

The Pitch

This is the idea we pitched to our teachers to get the "green light". After the presentation we agreed that some changes needed to be made so this is more of a brief idea of what we are doing and not the end result.

Planning our final idea

Since we now know what song we want to have for our final piece we have started to analyze the lyrics and what kind of narrative story we could fit into the music video.  We all contributed with different ideas and looked through some videos on YouTube.

This is a clip from a film called clockwork orange and at 0.45 it gives a good example of how we want to start out our music video showing that the person is not “like everybody else” which is a sentence that is constantly repeated in the song.


This was also a video that inspired us, we are planning on using the same kind of concept by having the main person in the video walking down the street doing weird and unexpected things which again is referred to the song “I’m not like everybody else”.

We were also hugely inspired by the mod fashion that was popular during the time the song came out and is also the type of clothes we are planning on using for the music video. This also gave us the idea to use a scooter in the video since this is a known “item” for the people into the lifestyle and fashion of mood.

Proposal for a new popular music artist

Her is our proposal of what we are actually going to do for our music video and how we are planning to represent the artist and the band within it,

Name: Infernal
The name is very important for a band since this is how they are going to be recognised and in a way for what they stand for, a alternative band for example often have weird and different names. Infernal means on the way to hell and also " very intense and uncontrolled fire" which we though was a good name for an indie name and is also easy to remember and can be connected to words you already know.
Genre: Rock/pop band
This is of course depending on the song and will be a big influence on how the music video is going to look but from the song we choose this will be the genre we aiming for and want to create a music video for.
Type of act: Live performance
We wanted to lay the focus on the talent of the singers and the band and especially on the song they are performing in the music video.
Star image: Clean, professional image but with hint of alternative and creative base.
Target audience: Girls,  but also boys and girl that like quality music and people that like indie rock music.
the targeted audience is mostly girls since in the band there are going to be four good-looking guys, but it will also be a band that will fit boys that look for quality and creative music with well thought through ideas. The band is also aiming to perform during festivals and the fans are very important for their success so their audience is going to be over a big geographical area.
Choice of track: I'm Not Like Everybody Else by the kinksafter look into the song we wanted to use we find problems with all the different song like, they were to short, to repetitive etc.. so we found this song and it had everything that we were looking for.

                                                   

Initial ideas with the group

In media today we got our group which we will be working together with doing our coursework. Her are the links to the to girls blog’s that I’m working with: Link:Charlotte Morgan and Link:Teodora Nguyen

We agreed on some initial ideas that we all had and put our ideas together to actually create a finished product or at least on the way of getting there. We first of all wanted to use an old song and therefore an old band; since these often don’t have a music video already we thought this could be a good opportunity to be extra creative. We came to the conclusion of using a live performance as our type of act either with or without audience. We want the video to look kind of creative and we want it to be something different from want is produced now a days. We pitched some ideas like using black and white to make the video look a bit older but have a contrast colour like red that will be shown on different details in the video.

So the different song we were planning on maybe using for our music video were these once which fits good into what we are looking for:

                                                  The kinks – all day and all of the night

Fleetwood Mac – go your own way

The clash – should I stay or should I go

Research into a real artist

To give an example of the three things needed for our advance portfolio (website homepage a cover for its release and a poster for the band) I will research into an artist and give you an example of what you could do for you coursework.

By looking at her different promotion products such as CD, homepage, music video and so on you can see a specific image that she is selling to the consumers and her audience. Her image could be referred to as very “real” and this is emphasised in the music video since it’s not about her but instead it is more artistic and is mostly about her talent, her singing.

The Breif for advanced port folio

The Brief

1. 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 a digipak (CD/DVD package);

a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

All material for all tasks to be produced by the candidates with the exception of acknowledged non-original sound or image material used in a limited way in video/radio work. Further guidance will be available in the support materials. For music video, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track.

The centre will be expected to allocate marks according to four levels for each of three categories:

Research and Planning

Construction

Evaluation

In arriving at a level for each category, teachers are advised to look for evidence of ‘best fit’. It is possible both for a candidate to be placed in different levels for each of the three categories and to receive quite different marks from other members of the same group responsible for producing an artefact, according to his/her contribution. Teachers are asked to support marks with written comments under the three categories on the assessment sheet.

The music industry

The music industry consists of 5 major once called Sony, universal, Warner, BMG and EMI. The four first once mentioned are conglomerates and has a global interest in the media and together they own around 76 percent of the UK music market. These four also have oligopoly which means that they own, control and construct the market/industry. EMI is a bit different from the other major once since it’s a national music company and does only do music and nothing else like movies and so on.

But then there are also Minors also called independent companies which on the first hand are known to use a different distribution line to get their product out to their consumers. These companies are often seen as more creative with their music and so on because the quality is very important if you can’t spend to much money on marketing and distribution. The independents own the rest 24 percent of the market and are some different once like domino records, ghost box, essential direct and so on. Some of these smaller companies are subsidiaries which mean that they are working together with the major companies in example the line of distribution.

Overall the work of the company is very important for the success of the artist, also referred to as their product which they create an image to.

A music video

"Music video is not primarily a commodity form but a promotional one" (Andrew Goodwin 1992)

A music video can be interpreted in different ways by the viewers but overall a music video is interchangeable which means that I can be used for all the different genres that the music industry actually represents. Though a music video often is used for the same specific things
- To promote the artist or band
- It is a way of showing the image of the artist (Dyer)

But what is a music video? According to different theorist it could be either:
- organic which basically means authentic which is what Negus is a believer of
or
- synthetic in other words mass produced.

But however a music video is in its simplest form: A music promotion video that is a short moving image product that is shot for express purpose of example encourage sales of the music in other formats such as Cd’s.

Her are some screen grabs from the music video Link: Avril Lavinge -Girlfriend

This first picture is a good example of how she is representing her starimage in her music video, still trying to aim for the younger but teenage audience. Using colors pink and black and not wearing to sexy clothes - "she is bad but in a good way".

Ideas for music video

For my music video idea I was planning on using a real band that knows their song and their instrument this will make the quality of the video better and will also make the editing more flowing and easier to match with the song. What I haven’t decided is what genere I want for my music video but I been looking at some different videos to get some different ideas.

Bruno marz – liquor store blues

This is a music video that is quite simple in its own form but I like the fact of the blurring colours and that they are not really using a specific focus for the video. This type of effect could be apply to different genres but will of course depend upon the song.

The ting tings – shut up and let me go

this video is quite old but I like the different effects they are using such as the slow motion/stop pictures in the beginning of the video then later in to the video around 50 seconds I really like the use of triangles going “through” time and space. This could also quite easily be applied to different types of genres.

Maroon 5 – moves like jagger

This video starts out after one minute and I like the concept of having only one person on screen at a time showing the singer, dancers and the instruments one by one. The use of quick cuts is also something that could be applied to a music video that I would make to speed up the action and to follow the beat and rhythm of the song. Around 1.55 there are close-up on eyes with written text on the eyelids which I think is a nice feature that could be used in the making of the music video.

Overall, this decision will depend upon what genres I will choose and what kind of song, also the decision if the video should follow the lyrics of the song.

Creation of CD cover

We were given the task to create a CD cover relating to the band we were shoting for our preliminary task. As mentioned in the planning of our preliminary task the band Acres of life we classified as an emo/punk band so the cover had to have some influences from this type of bands.

When looking through their Myspace page the band has already created a band logo which a then used. The colour turquoise which they used for their logo influenced my chose of colours and didn’t want to make the cover all to dark just because they are an emo/punk band. The singer of the band also has a turquoise highlight in his fringe seen in the video which therefore made me use the colour as the base for the back cover. I didn’t want to use live pictures or on instrument since I wanted a more fictional cover.

front cover

back cover

The star image of Miley Cyrus

A star image is not always the same throughout the artists career bur changes depending on age and if a new group of audience is suppose to be targeted. The artist, actor and singer Miley Cyrus is a good example of how a star image changes through a career.

Miley started her career through acting and was also singing in the series she was in, her targeted audience was then young girls being around 6-13 years old. Miley therefore used a lot of colorful clothes and didn’t wear make-up or anything like that. On the picture above the picture on the left is how she looked during this time.

Mileys’s targeted audience didn’t change much except from targeting a bit older girls but still no boys or teenagers since she herself was only about twelve during this time. As she got older and the series she was in started to focus on teenagers more than young girls Miley’s appearance started to change caring more about her clothes , hair and make-up. Product with her was also produced such as make-up products with her label and face on it. 

Miley now started to focus on her singing carrier more than action though she was still in movies. To widen her audience her star image took a drastic change as she was now a teenager. Her type of clothing, showing more skin, started to change and she was now wearing make-up and going to event involving paparazzi and attention.  Her lack of clothing and bigger caring about her looks was targeted to a new group of audience she never had before boys and men. Her song and lyrics started to change and became more aggressive with attitude and also more sexual. 

On the picture you can clearly see the change of her image and how she’s portrayed. The big change of her star image was the new targeting of males and this had to bring out a new sexual side of her as she was growing up and losing her old audience.

These are two music videos of Miley Curys which the first one is an early video which was made in the beginning of her career. The second one is one of her latest and was released in less than a year ago and taking the lyrics and the appearance into consideration we can see the change in clothing, lyrics, attitude and much more which is a proof of the change in star image.

Editing our part of the preliminary task

This video is the part of the song that me and my group planned, filmed and edited during a very intense time of period.
The editing in the clip we tried to be done very basic following the instrument and the singers in the song. There is therefore a big mix of different shots such as close-ups, mid-shots, group-shots and also seeing some instruments in the background out of focus. By using different kinds of shots it is also easier to make the viewer more interested in what they are being showed and to the product that is trying to be sold.

While the focus is on the lead singer in most of our song we choose to also show at least every instrument and band member once, this will insure that every fan or person that is interested in the band will have the opportunity to see their favourite band member or instrument. Overall the task was also to put the three part planed, filmed and edited by different group to see what ideas that worked and thing that maybe no one else had thought about and was also therefore a reason why we kept to the basic when doing the editing.

Account of media shoot day

When shooting the music video due to the circumstances I filmed with another group then I was doing the planning with on the day. I therefore had to adapt to another but similar band but thanks to the well planned storyboarding/timeline there were no problem to catch up on their idea.

(me deciding the angels of the camera)
In the band “Janedoe” that we were using for our video there were seven band members; a singer, two back ground vocals, guitarist, bassist, drummer and keyboard player. Since they were so many it took more time getting all the individual shots but also made it able for us to make the editing more interesting and variable.

We were the second group in our class to shot the band and therefore we learnt some mistake that the first group were doing. We could also plan our shots to a greater extend when we seen the set and also know what to do to save time. We ended up having 30 minutes to film a 59 seconds long music piece and we started doing the wide shots of the whole band and we then did individual shots for all the instruments and band members. In the end of the shooting when we still had a few minutes left, we did some minor things such as extra close-ups and more that wasn’t really necessary but would make the product look better and more professional.

The band was very good in cooperating with us and listened to our ideas, we were four people in our group that changed roles in the shooting of the music video and we all did the different tasks. So in 30 minutes we all took care of the playback, camerawork, director and positioning the band. All of these tasks were very different from each other but it was all about cooperating and understanding each other.

What we could have done better would have been our planning and storyboarding/timeline, especially since we didn’t know exactly how the setup was going to look or exactly how all the band members looked like. We also could have planed in what order we were doing the shots before we actually started to film which could have made us more efficient and therefore more time could have been spent on the editing. The editing of the music video and the thriller was very different in many was because now it was very important to fit the soundtrack and to make the movement match the song and also the lip sync of the singer.

(the set of the video)

Over all this exercise was a good preparation of what is going to happen next year and therefore our finally product could be more thought through and we can also manage to be more time efficient. We also know what we didn’t work and what worked and can now take that experience and learn from it.

          Here is the finished piece of the song all the different parts put together:

The use of narrative in music videos

The audience always expects a beginning middle and an end and by having this: the audience can build meaning by using real life event and memories. So the narrative will help the audience to describe the situation and is the way to understand and relate to the telling of the story. This does not mean that music videos, in our case, have to be complicated but instead simple and straight forward to make the audience able to relate to the story.

This is a very old quote from Aristotle which still applies to the industry:

the most important is the plot, the ordering of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life – and happiness and unhappiness are bound up with action. …it is their characters indeed, that make the men what they are, but it is by reason of their actions that they are happy of the reverse.

So to fins the meaning we have to take the codes and conventions into consideration such as genre, character, form and time.

To show an example I have chosen Madonna’s video “prayer”

This video follows the narrative of the song and emphasizes this by using a well created mise en scene. The song sings about religion and God and is therefore using crosses and other religious elements but is at the same time bringing up political questions about racism which was a big topic during the time of the video. To attract the audience that is not interested or willing to deconstruct the video Madonna uses sexual elements as well such as light clothing. 

So by looking at the video and also knowing that Madonna had a religious upbringing, you will by deconstruction the video understand that she is questioning her religion. She is bringing up the issue about real life being more important than the religion she has been brought up with. But she does therefore also include political and moral issues that were big and important topics during the time the video was released.

Planing of preliminary task

For our preliminary task we are shooting a band called the acres of life when performing their song “I like to make the pretty girls smile”. We put them into the classification of emo and punk band and therefore looked at similar characters and band when researching for the music video. Acres of life had portrayed themselves with particular clothing and colours which then led to the classification of the band. we could then use this and refer it to other similar characters and bands which could be applied in their music video.

Green day – American idiot

This one of the first videos we looked at which we though fitted quite well into the image of “acres of life”. What I liked particularly about the video was the fact that the camera was also focusing on the monitor and the overall mise en scene. This also includes the contrast between the darkness of clothing and the more colourful and brighter background that was seen in this video which created a good overall impression.

The camera work was inspiring as well since there were a lot of different cuts between close-ups and wide shots but also placing the action in unusual places regarding the framing. We also took the usage of low angle shots and high angle shots into consideration especially to give a greater focus on the instruments.

Regarding the editing we liked the fact that they were using a contrast between the cuts giving motion and action in one shot and then cutting to another one were the person where not moving. But we also liked the changing pace in the cuts depending on the narrative and the use of instruments.

My chemical romance – my famous last words

Another video we looked at was “my famous last words” by chemical romance which also seem to have the same characteristics as “acres of life”. We liked the fact of the mise en scene giving this view of misery using low and dim lighting also having dark clothing. The use of fire also brought up the element of the narrative but in our case is of course not possible.

The camera work is in this case particularly good and what I looked at was the cuts that was quick short and consistent but from different and in a way a bit weird angles. In my opinion this made the video more interesting but also gave a better approach towards the feelings in the narrative.

Editing vies we liked the use of focus pulls and the change in the ways the shots where focused. The quick cuts between the actions also gave us a good idea on how to create a more chaos feel towards our video.