I chose brief 1 which consisted of a promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of three options, I chose:
a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package)
For my promotional package, consisting of the three parts indicated above, to work and be as realistic as possible I had to create an original identity for my package and artist. The song I chose to create my promotional music video for was a song by ‘The Libertines’ called ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ and the genre of this song is Indie-rock. I decided to chose this song because ‘The Libertines’ are one of my favourite bands and I am very familiar with their songs and the style of the music. Thus allowing me to easily identify the conventions required to make my music video and promotional package as a whole be as realistic as possible ad to challenge some of the conventions effectively.
Music videos are videos that accompany songs and are used to promote the song and the artist performing the song. Music videos have gradually become more important with the introduction of music channels on the television which have increased greatly in number since the first channel (MTV) was introduced. Another advance in technology that has prompted the music video to become more important are things like Youtube and iTunes. These advances in technology have given more power to the audience, thus allowing the audience to watch music videos or download music whenever and wherever they want to. Therefore creating a music video is a brilliant way to promote themselves as synergy has become very important through the years. As music videos have progressed they have gradually become more post modern because they are able to reference more media texts in them. For example ‘Blink 182 - All The Small Things’ references many other music videos within it.
I started this assignment by researching the genre of my chosen band and music videos from that genre. Although I am very familiar with the band I chose I felt it necessary to do further research into the conventions of this genre and how I could possibly challenge them.
Then I needed to address which genre my chosen song fitted into. 'The Libertines - Don’t look back into the sun' is widely recognised as an indie rock 'anthem' as it is one of the songs that really defined the genre.
The term 'Indie' is a shortened down word for independent, and is a word used in the music industry to describe a bands independence from major commercial record labels, and also brings with it connotations of a 'do-it-yourself' approach to recording and publishing. This term is often added to the front of other music genres, for example 'Indie dance' or 'Indie pop', in this case it is Indie Rock.One convention that is often used for this genre is an example of the 'do-it-yourself' approach, as it is often apparent that indie music videos have an amateur-ish style to them, a kind of handheld camera, one take, style to them. This creates a more intimate setting between the audience/fans and the band, and the audience feels closer to the band. This also adds to the overall image of the bands that choose to produce their videos in that way. For example the band I have chose, The Libertines, have a reputation for living rough and doing drugs and hosting gigs in their own flat. This ties in with the very loose and rough edged their videos are. It is almost like it hasn’t been edited it has just been thrown together in the space of the song they actually performed in it.Another convention of Indie music videos is the live performance element to them. Most videos of the Indie variety vow for a performance at some point, if not all, of the video. This reinforces the band’s image and identity, it almost represents the band as a brand in a way. I think it is seen as a convention as well because not only is the performance vital to a band but Indie rock music is a genre that in particular is a rapidly changing genre, this is because so many bands nowadays claim they fall into that genre. Thus creating music videos, thus wanting the audience to know who they are and to create band identity therefore their music videos will essentially be based around the band’s live performance.Another feature that is seen as very popular in this genre of music is the use of extreme close ups and long shots. This is to show the contrast and works very well in these types of videos. This contrast is brought out very well in this genre as most music in this genre is very fast paced, this means that there are frequent occasions in most videos were burst of fast sequences in shots take place, this gives the video overall good tempo and rhythm, which is why I believe Indie music videos are watched by many people who have a wide range of music tastes.This is not so much a convention but an aspect of filming that does not appear much at all in Indie music videos, special affects. The main focus point of Indie music is to relate to the audience and this is captured in the videos they produce, they are stripped down to the basics and therefore create a closeness with their fans.
Most music videos can be put into one of three groups, performance, narrative or abstract. However as music videos have progressed a lot of them now can be placed into more than one group or all of the groups. Therefore I had a choice to make, I had to decide which group(s) I would base my music video around. After a lot of thought and looking back at the music videos I had analysed my video was to be performance. This follows the convention of a lot of other bands in the indie-rock genre.
I wanted to give my music video a home-made amateur style from the very beginning, and I also noticed my chosen song had a strong drum beat at the beginning. I therefore decided to use an everyday item to visually show this beat. I used glasses of water on a rusting metal walkway to do this. This is also a reference to ‘Adele - Rolling In The Deep’ I saw this music video and the glasses of water and thought I would use that idea, but change the setting and number of glasses to create a more home made look that fits in better with the indie rock genre and ideology of my target audience.
I believe my promotional music video combines very well with my two ancillary texts as I have tried to bring across the amateur and home made style of the video onto the CD/DVD package cover and the magazine advertisement. One of the ways I have done this is to use certain props and elements from the video on my ancillary texts. For example on the CD/DVD package cover I have used pictures of the guitar used in the video and the reflection of a window from my bedroom (a location in my promotional music video). My CD/DVD package resembles the guitar and jacket used in the promotional music video, the front is the front of the guitar, and the back cover is the back of the guitar. This creates the 3D art of the CD/DVD package when unfolded. So that my magazine advertisement links well with my CD/DVD package cover I have decided to enlarge the front cover so that the CD/DVD cover is instantly recognisable from the advertisement.
My ancillaries compliment my promotional video because I have used the props and one location from my video in the ancillary texts, and I have also tried to make the CD/DVD package and the magazine advertisement as simple as possible, this is because the music video I have created has a simple structure. After research this is what the indie rock genre is all about, and following these conventions means that it will fit in with my chosen audiences’ ideology.
My audience feedback consisted of three questions:
1) How well do you think my video and ancillary texts represent the Indie-Rock genre?
Very well 1
Well 3
Poor 1
Very Poor 0
2) Do you think my video follows most of the conventions of videos of the same genre?
Yes 3
No 2
3) How effective is the combination of my music video with my ancillary texts?
Very effective 3
Effective 2
Not very effective 0
Not at all effective 0
Having collected back my audience feedback from my questionnaire I handed out and also the notes I have taken after speaking to people who have watched my promotional music video and also seen my ancillary texts on my blog I can say I have learnt a lot. Firstly from my questionnaire I can conclude that my music genre came across fairly well, however some people found it harder to associate my video to the genre the music was written for. This suggests to me the small pieces of narrative had to have a stronger link throughout the video, instead people suggested some of the places looked ‘random’ in the context of the music video. I angled my second question to see if other people thought whether my music video follows conventions of other music videos from the same genre, as I believe different people have different views on what breaks conventions. Three people answered question number two with ‘yes’ and two people answered the same question with ‘no’. This shows that my music video not only included some of the conventions but also broke conventions, which is what I aimed to achieve at the start of this project. I also understand that conventions had to be broken in my chosen genre for my promotional music video to achieve the amateur effect I set about creating.
I used many media technologies and computer programmes, in all stages of research, planning, construction and evaluation in this assignment. In all stages of this assignment I have used Blogger. This is a blogging site on the internet which allowed me to order my coursework and publish it somewhere which allows easy access and can be accessed by anyone. In the research stage I used the Google search engine which allowed me to easily find examples of other CD/DVD covers and other magazine advertisements. Youtube was also a useful tool I used that allowed me to find accurate and relevant music videos to analyse to gain experience of other music videos of my genre and to inspire me and help me generate ideas for my own promotional music video. In the construction of my video I used Adobe Premier Pro CS5 to edit my music video together and add any other special effects I wanted to. To shoot my music video I used a handheld Canon video camera, I specifically chose a handheld camera so that even though not all the time intentionally trying to give the shots an amateur style by shaking the camera, it happened naturally and therefore slightly speeding up the shot to my liking made the whole video look more realistic and conventionally accurate to the songs’ genre.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Possible font styles
These are just a few of the fonts I could use. Out of these I have decided to use the third one down, as I believe it has connotations with the genre of music my music video is made for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)