Feedback

Excellent response is detailed and through and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of
image and text.
There is incomplete work on your artist and record label and the target audience.Good 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.  Will extend deadline as you was away for two days - can you catch up please?

CD Cover Design for Lanmou

Digipak Covers

In terms of music the Kings of Leon are quite similar to the band we are marketing. I really like this CD cover due to its stylized look and simplicity. Even though it is just a picture of an object in front of a black wall it is very dynamic. This is due to the fact that you see a frozen image of a light bulb exploding which gives you the feeling of being stood still in time in a way. the simplistic writing and minimal use of colours give it some more of that stylized feeling to it, which represents the style which the band is going for. 

This is another band which has a similar style as the band we are promoting. This one is also quite a stylized cd cover in terms of the use of different colours. Same as the 'Kings of Leon' cover this also does not show the band itself but just portrays their style. Unlike normal pop artists they aren't really selling themselves as stars but they are selling their music to their target audience. Here the very big and colourful writing once again matches the style of the rest of the cover. So overall this cover is a lot brighter and more bubbly than the 'Kings of Leon' one.

Although Katy Perry is very different to our band in terms of the style of music she does I thought she would be a good example to use. Her audience is very mainstream, same as ours but she is selling herself as a star persona through a sexualised image. In terms of the design of the cd cover it is very girly, reflecting the themes of the music she makes but also showing the sexualised side she is trying to show. This cover focuses on her name as this is splashed across the front in a very bright pink.  
  

This is another one who isn't very much like our band in terms of her style of music but she has a slightly more individual feel to herself than Katy Perry. Her music is also quite mainstream but it is not as formulaic as Katy Perry, and she is marketing her voice a little more. Her cd cover is still quite sexualized but also quite simple. There is flowery wallpaper in the background, her face and the name of her band and album. Here the cover focuses on her name rather than highlighting the rest of the band as much as her, which shows how as the audience we only know her but we don't know the rest of her band.  

'Empire of the Sun' is very similar to our band in terms of the music they make and in the way they will be marketed. The cd cover is very much focused on oriental animals and buildings, with them stood in the middle dressed in military jackets made colourful and unique. The whole album cover is very colourful linking to the sky and the night, hightlighting the band members. The title is highlighted too but the first thing you look at are the musicians as they are very close to the hotspots. They then lead you down to their name and their album title. 

This is another 'Kings of Leon' cover, this time less simplistic in their style. The image reminds one of a psychology diagram and once you look closer you can see actual shapes emerging from the originally red and black outline. Once again they do not focus on the title very much, but actually they focus on the picture on the front. If you see the picture and you want to know what band it is you actually need to look closer which might be a way to mentally link that image to the 'Kings of Leon'. 

The Pitch

Link to our Pitch:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcuvPz7iPH4JZGZwM3EzanRfMzI2N2hoeHNjcg&hl=en_US

Research Into Real Artists of a Similar Type

After deciding upon the track which we wanted to use, we started researching artists of a similar type and style. One band I came across which sort of reminded me of MGMT was 'Kings of Leon' just because of their style and the kind of music which they make. 


https://www.kingsofleon.com/home

 

In terms of style they are also quite organic and I don't think that they have been manufactured as a band which makes them similar to MGMT. Since both of them are bands with creative concepts rather than synthetic ones, and both have a slightly ndividual style there is a base for similarities there.  

Another band which has certain similarities with MGMT is 'Radiohead'. They also have a very individual style, developing it more and more as their career progresses. The later videos are at times very weird and yet accepted by their solid fan base since they have established that image for themselves and are going more and more into that direction. In terms of music their style of music is sort of similar to MGMT as well just because of the alternative style and because of the texts. Radiohead also quite clearly have a creative concept as they do not represent the taste of a mainstream audience.


www.radiohead.com/

Electric Feel Lyrics

Lyrics | MGMT lyrics - Electric Feel lyrics

Lyrical Music Concept

In our Lesson we printed out the lyrics of 'Electric Feel', in order to be able to annotate it manually and develop our concept. So this is basically a very very basic form of a written story board, since we planned out at which parts during the songs which part of the narrative is going to happen, not really taking into account all of the musical solos. 

Treatment for 'Electric Feel'

The track which we are planning to shoot our video for is ‘Electric Feel’, originally written by ‘MGMT’. The band we are promoting with this is called ‘Lanmou’ which is a band of five boys with one singer, one bass, one guitarist, one drummer and one synth.

The narrative of our video will be quite basic, and it will be inter cut by the performance aspect in a ratio of about 50:50. We decided to have such a strong representation of the performance aspect since it is the band’s first video and they need to be represented well. The video starts off with the five band member walking onto the party, dressed in a slightly alternative style of clothing and just looking around. All of a sudden they all spot a girl who fascinates them as she seems to have the ‘electric feel’. Since they don’t seem to be able to capture her attention, they leave the party and change into suits, hoping to be able to impress her that way. So they arrive at the party once again, which will be shot as an intertextual reference to reservoir dogs, and try to impress the girl again. She then finally takes pity on them and touches all of them by touching them she gives them the ‘electric feel’ and all of a sudden their clothes change into some sort of ‘indie’ style clothing and they finally get the girls attention.

This would be set on a house party which would either be staged in the studio or staged in someone’s house. The performance aspect would then be filmed in the studio, where the band is set up on stage performing their song, with lots of lights flashing from behind them, in time to the music.

What we are hoping to show with this video is mainly the band’s style and genre. Since this is the first time ‘Lanmou’ are being promoted, the image needs to be shown carefully as they will always be known for that style. So we will have the band perform in their ‘indie’ style outfits the whole way through the video, telling the story of how they got from their alternative selves to what they are now, by using the ‘Electric Feel’.

Overall I think the treatment for ‘Electric Feel’ is going to set up and establish the band’s image quite strongly. This is their first video so it will be important that a large part of the video is also focusing on the band, perhaps mainly on the singer. I also think that the narrative needs to be shown clearly to bring across the point of the video, which is focusing on the girl. The girl will also be dressed in a slightly ‘indie’ style and will be looking as good as possible for this, to fit into the band’s image which is being set up. I think that we need to focus on up keeping the same image and style throughout the video in order for it to look good.

Feedback

Excellent start to the A2 production.  your ideas are well presented and logical.  There is a real command and understanding of what you are doing.  An excellent blog, even better if you start blogging with different tools.  Try to sort the links to video's that are displayed.  Also try to link as many acadnmic idea's to your own as possible.

Image and Audience

Link to Star Image Moodboard:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcuvPz7iPH4JZGZwM3EzanRfMTY4eHJidzVoZA&hl=en_US

The target audience for 'Lanmou' would probably include quite a wide range of different people, but yet it would not be mainstream. Their audience would be made up of people who listen to alternative or rock music, people who like or have an 'indie' style, young adults who are sexually attracted to the group and probably other musicians in that genre. So although their range of target audience is very broad, they would probably have a decent solid fan base but they would not be put on the charts or offered a manufacturing contract with a big label.

What type of Act is It?

The act which we want to do with our band represents them in an 'indie' style and it shows a development of their style throughout the video.

We would start the video off by having the band dressed 'alternatively', then they spot 'the girl' and they all try to change for her. So the next try at convincing her to like them is to dress in suits and walk past her, down the street, which would be an intertextual reference to 'Reservoir Dogs'. Once she sees them she decides to take pity on them and due to the song 'Electric Feel' she touches them and gives them the 'Electric Feel'. Once they have been touched they then instantly change into 'indie' style clothes, which then gives them all a happy ending as they are finally getting the attention from the girl which they wanted. This is the narrative of our video, which would be intercut with the band (the same guys already dressed 'indie') pretty much telling the story of how they got from their 'alternative' style to what they are now.

I think acts which they might be similar to are, as I have already mentioned 'Kings of Leon' and 'Radiohead', just because they would not go down the manufactured route at all, but stick to the creative concepts of their band.    

I think in terms of marketing, that although they aren't being manufactured that I would set on their looks in terms of marketing, combined with their talent. If the music videos are interesting and in a way abstract enough and the band is still good looking, playing the music which they have been playing so far I think they would attract quite a large range of audience. They wouldn't ever be considered as mainstream but still they would probably be able to create quite a solid fanbase if they use these things to sell themselves.     

Our Track

The track we decided to choose is 'Electric Feel' by MGMT. We then renamed it to 'Lanmou' to market a new band, still using the original MGMT track.

The concept of the Band is definitely creative, as it just doesn't represent a mainstream taste of music. This is why it would not be manufactured by a big conglomerate, as they would not make enough money with them. 

Electric Feel Powerpoint Link:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcuvPz7iPH4JZGZwM3EzanRfMTJkc3hzbTZmMg&hl=en_US

Band Name

After choosing the song and deciding upon the style for the band, we started to look into names for the band. Since our idea for the band is to represent them quite 'indie' we tried to come up with a representative band name. What we then decided to do was to look into a translation programme and started typing in phrases like 'Peace and Love' and 'Moon'. Words which we came up with, which we liked the sound of were:

- Lanmou (which is Haitan for 'Love')
- Bulan (which is indonesian for 'Moon')
- Manen (which is Danish for 'Moon')

In the end we decided to go for 'Lanmou' because it had the nicest 'indie' sound to it and we felt that it would be quite easy to remember.

Star Image and Development

As one of our preps we looked at Star Image and Development. The task was to pick a particular 'Star' and look at their development over time. The star at which I looked was Christina Aguileira. I do not want to make my music video in her style but I thought that she would be a good one to look at for these purposes.

In 1999 when she recorded 'What A Girl Wants' she was still more of a youthful girl, appealing to teenagers rather than adults. In terms of her star image she was quite similar to Britney Spears at the time, who was also attractive to older men in her childishness, and otherwise just to people her own age. She constructed quite a sexualized image in a youthful way which changed a lot as she grew older.

When she recorded 'Beautiful' in 2002 she still seemed very young and youthful, but not quite as childlike anymore. Her image was still sexualized but in a more mature way now and she now seems more female, adressing a slightly older audience, attracting people her own age and slightly older people. She is now also focusing the listener a bit more on her talent rather than just her looks combined with the ability to hold the tones.

In 2006 when she brought out her album 'Back to Basics' she established herself as a grown and mature woman, mainly focusing on her ability to sing. Although she did playful and sexualized songs like 'Candyman' she also did mature songs like 'Hurt' which still showed her as a sexual figure but in a grown up way. Now she is attracting people her own age and possibly even ones a bit younger than her as she definitely can't be seen as a child anymore.

In 2010 when she brought out 'Bionic' she had established herself as a fully grown woman. Style wise she was now going more along the lines of Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani. Her image is still very sexualized but now she is also attracting a mature audience of people valuing her talent rather than just her looks. Her image is very manufactured by now to fit the expectations of a mainstream audience but this is done in a very stylized and almost odd way.

So overall Christina Aguileira had a very strong development in her star image since she had started to work in the business, moving from a teenager to a mature and grown up woman.

Initial Ideas

When I started thinking about what sort of thing I wanted to do for my music video, I thought I that I wanted to steer away from the typical music video with a basic narrative and performance aspect. Instead I wanted to do something which was a little bit more abstract and edgy, making the whole video quite dark in a way and stylizing very strongly. To fit the video I would have chosen electric music without a lot of words and focused on the narrative. I really liked the idea of making something along the lines of 'Black Swan'. I would have used the electric music and I would have used dancers a lot, possibly ballet dancers to get in that theme of 'Black Swan'. So to stylize the video I would have used edgy lighting, from behind possibly and in terms of costume for the dancers, I would have used quite classical costumes which were a little less conventional, so probably black and beige costumes. Dependant on the song which I would have used, the band or singer would be dressed quite simple I think, performing the song but focusing on the face rather than their overall performance.

A song which I looked into as a possibility of using for the music video were:

Morta by DJ Muggs

I think that 'Morta' would have worked very well stylewise although it might be a bit slow, and therefore difficult to make a whole music video for it. 

My ideas didn't really work with the ideas of the rest of the group members so my group has now had some other initial ideas which are a very different style but which I still quite like.

So initial group ideas were more alternative than my initial idea. One idea we had was to include an intertextual reference from reservoir dogs and have our main 'actors' dressed in suits throughout the video.



To go with that image, since we weren't going to use the actual reservoir dog soundtrack, we were thinking about using 'Electric Feel' by MGMT which I like very much in terms of style.



One of the problems which we have at the moment is the plot of our narrative. We can have a performance aspect which takes up quite a bit of the video, but we will need a narrative as well which is interesting enough to keep the viewer watching for 3 minutes without getting bored. Since I have a very male orientated group I don't think we will do anything with a slightly more female perspective so we will have to work a nice concept out which actually works with the song which we are going to pick.

Introduction to Advanced Portfolio

For our A2 Advanced Portfolio we have to make one music video and complete two of the following three options:

- a website homepage for the band/artist

- a cover for its release

- a magazine advertisement

All of the materials used have to be produced by the candidates themselves, except for the sound track of the songs we choose to shoot our videos for. We also need to get the permission from the artists to be allowed to use their songs for our music videos.   

There are three categories for which the marks will be allocated:

- Research and Planning

- Construction

- Evaluation

The markers are supposed to choose the level of marks according to 'best fit'. Candidates should also not rely on other group members in terms of work and the grades they will receive for it as every person will be marked individually. So one member of the group could receive very different marks overall than the other members of the group, according to their amount of work leading up the finished product.  

What Are Music Videos?

'Music Video is not primarily a commodity form but a promotional one' 
(Andrew Goodwin, 1992)
This means that the music videos aren't directly produced to make money, but that they are produced to promote the music and therefore make money through that promotion. 


'They now provide pictures for the songs in our heads. Goodbye imagination. ... All kids have to do is watch and listen, stare straight ahead. No need to think, to embellish, to create, to imagine. The electric fix is in.' 
(Joe Saltzman, USA today)
Here Joe Saltzman is saying that the music videos are destroying our imagination in a way because the pictures are put to the videos for us and there is no need to imagine anything anymore. 


Music Videos are ways of marketing for other Media products- for example Eminem in '8 Miles'. So in other words, music videos are just essential synergetic tools within any form of media and therefore cross convergence.

Music Videos are the only reason that Music Channels exist. Music channels are just another way of promoting these 'products' so you could say that they are just constant advertising channels. The reason that people watch music channels so much is that music videos tend to have a much higher entertainment factor than normal adverts, since we listen to the music itself at other times, where we wouldn't listen to the pure soundtracks of normal adverts. So the music videos are a way of promoting the artist since they also establish the star personas of the performers throughout the videos. 

There is a primary and a secondary market for music videos. Let's take 'One Direction' for example. Their main audience to market these products to are 10-16 year old girls and their secondary audience would therefore be their mothers. So when the mums see the music videos they might think that these are the sort of boyfriends they would want for their daughters or they remember how much their children like this. Since they are the ones in charge of the money and they still buy the things for their children it is important that the products are marketed well to the mothers as well. 

One direction video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJO3ROT-A4E

My section of The Prelim Task

Research into Acres of Life

The band which we had to do our Preliminary Task on were 'Acres of Life' who are as of yet and unsigned band.

What we did before they came to shoot their music video was to research them on the internet. The sites we looked on to were ones such as twitter to see how 'popular' they were and what kind of fans they had, which then again gave us an idea of their image and allowed us to adjust the music video to fit their style. We could also see which videos, songs or links they had uploaded which then showed us their style of music and how they wanted to represent themselves which gave us something to work with for our preliminary task.

Their Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/acresoflife

Then we also looked into bands which had a similar style of music to them in order to look at the way in which their music videos were set up. These were the ones which we found:

Underoath:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOdfV1EjUgg&feature=relmfu

Senses Fail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg4SuzZ6BWk&feature=related
fast cuts during performance aspect, moving Camera

Coheed and Cambria:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6QJJPuw-yg&feature=related
no performance just narrative

Alexisonfire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJcZaS0JthA
only narrative, often detail shots to tell story, difference in time spent on different shots

The Almost:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8x_1xSEsL4
Quick cuts on performance, mainly focusing on singer, some shots of other band members

Rise Against:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-SQGOYOjxs
Band shown within setting, moving shots

The Used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12dBCgAo-RA
Performance- quick cuts, a lot of close ups on the singer, no close ups on other band members

So after looking at other bands in that genre and looking at their twitter page and pictures of them I think we had a pretty good idea of how we were going to shoot them in our prelim task. So we adjusted our shots to fit their image slightly in order to stylize the video in the right way. Our wide shot of the band for instance was shot from slightly below which gave the members of the band the impression of being more powerful.   

A2 Blog Comparison

In our lesson we looked at some of the blogs from last year in order to see how they were done which would make it easier for us to understand what we have to do. The two blogs I looked at were from Tessa Lomas and Lottie Avery.

Tessa: 

Liked:
- She had very clear and detailed explanations which made it enjoyable to read
-  She also used a lot of pictures which broke the chunks of text up and made them nicer to look at and read
- As the blog goes along she progressed and started using more pictures and resources to underline her points

Disliked:
- She had huge chunks of texts which were hard to read at times

Lottie:

Liked:
- Her blog was nice to look at and to read because of the design and the use of colour
- she also used more and more pictures and resources as she went along
- the blog also seems to be very thorough and detailed explaining everything that needs to be explained

Disliked:
- she didn't do a lot of posts throughout the year
- the posts at the beginning were very wordy and she hardly used any images

Overall I think their blogs were very good as far as I can judge it but both of the should have probably used more resources from the start.  

Evaluation of Prelim Video Shoot and Edit

At the beginning of our A2 syllabus we had one morning to do our preliminary task, which was to make a third of the music video for a band called 'Acres of Life'. The song which we had to shoot and edit the video for was 'Doctor vs Cupid' and after our class got split into three groups each group had to do one section of the song.

Before the shoot we did some planning in order to be more organized on the day especially since we had such a little amount of time to get done with it. So we made a band shooting timeline:

0:00 Lead shot with Band in Background (silence)
0:01 Drum Shot (Close up)
0:02 Wide Shot
0:06 Close up of Singer
0:10 Mid Shot (GTR)
0:13 Close up of GTR
0:15 Close up of Drums
0:19 Wide Shot
0:25 Mid Shot of VOX
0:28 Close up of VOX
0:32 Wide Shot
0:36 Close up of Bass
0:39 Mid close up of BV with Drums
0:43 Close up of Bass Drum Pedal
0:46 Mid Shot of VOX
0:51 Mid Shot of GTR
0:54 Mid Shot of Bass
0:58 Close up of VOX
1:01 Wide Shoot

As I noticed on our shoot day we didn't really stick exactly to it, partly because we didn't manage to get all the 11 shots done in our 30 minutes of shooting time which we had and partly because something else just looked better as we were editing the video.

On the shoot day we got into the studio and everything was already set up for the prelim, which is good so we were very quick in shooting what we needed. One problem that we had was that the band didn't arrive on time so we were all slightly behind in our time plan, which was a little annoying.

In the shoot our whole group worked together very well and everyone took a turn at doing everything so we were very constructive and got a majority of the planned shots done. The shots we were planning to do were:

- Wide Shot:            whole song
- Close up of VOX:    whole song
- Mid Shot of VOX:    whole song
- Mid Shot of GTR:    whole song
- Close up of GTR:    whole song
- Close up of Drums: whole song
- Close up of Bass:   whole song
- Mid Shot of Bass:   whole song
- Lead Shot: for 10 seconds
- Close up Bass drum pedal: 0:40 - 0:50
- Mid shot BV with Drums: whole song


We did pretty much everything but one shot which we would have really liked to do was the 'Lead Shot' which is a pan along the leads ending up on the band but we ran out of time.


We did the editing of the video on the same day and it didn't take us long either. The editing of a music video is different than the editing of a normal film sequence. So what you do is that you put all your shots on top of each other on the time line of final cut- as long as this is the performance aspect- and then just keep taking out the parts you don't like until you reach the last layer and then you piece it together to make up the video, keeping your timeline in mind. Another thing you had to do was to synch the sound and as every video had the original sound recorded you just arrange it at the beginning and don't move it again. The way you do it is to look at the sound bars of the videos and line up the places where the bars reach up the highest.


Overall I really liked the shooting and editing of our preliminary task this year because unlike last year it was very organized in my group. I also like the outcome of it and I think for that it was our first performance video it looks pretty good. Of course it doesn't look as professional as proper music videos but we don't have the skill yet to do that. I think my group worked together really well and we got everything done in time without a lot of arguing.    

Preliminary Task - Doctor vs. Cupid

Music Video Analysis- Skinny Genes

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcuvPz7iPH4JZGZwM3EzanRfNTkzZzVkenB2ZG4&hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcuvPz7iPH4JZGZwM3EzanRfNjAxY3Q0Zzk1Z2M&hl=en_US

Analysis to Star Image