For our media product, we had to take an unsigned band's song and make a music video using the song and also create a CD/DVD digipak and magazine advert. For each of these products, we had to make sure they suited the genre of the band and song, otherwise it wouldn't fit together smoothly, and look unprofessional and confusing. The purpose of the music video in a complete promotional package is to promote the band’s single they have released, and make it known to a select audience that would likely enjoy the song, in turn tempting them into buying the album (the digipak). For this reason, the video has to be effective at conveying the message it is trying to make to the viewer - someone isn't going to be interested in buying a band’s album if they lack direction or focus, as it will likely mean the rest of the album will share the same fate of the song featured in the video. The point of the magazine advert is similar to that of the music video - to get people's attention and inform them that the band is releasing a new album and also possibly touring, and try sell it to the viewer of the advert. The purpose of the digipak in a promotional package is mainly the result of the anticipated success of the music video and advert - it mainly relies on these two in order to do well. However, it still needs to be visually appealing in order to catch the eye of a passer-by in a shop who may or may not have seen either of the two other promotional materials beforehand. The three promotion products all also need to share an overall theme so that when someone sees one of these products, they will instantly be able to relate it to one of the other products, and in turn recall if it they liked it, and hopefully buy the album as a result.
The above video and album cover are from the promotional materials of Common Dreads by British Post-Hardcore band Enter Shikari. The album peaked rather successfully for a non-mainstream band at #16 on the UK Charts. As you can see, the theme of politics is present in the song lyrics in the video and this is echoed by the political images shown through the video and also happens to be the main topic of the lyrics of the whole album. The song also features the line 'the lions are at the door' which is also shown in the video and the album cover also features a royal looking lion. This shows how the band have taken an overall theme of politics and royalty, and used it within their new songs and also the art direction of the album, and also for a teaser for the album. All these elements combined help bring the overall quality and style together, helping sell the album far better than were it just a collection of different styles.
In a music promo, there is a repertoire of elements that is needed to make the video effective, such as narrative/performance, camera work, mise-en-scene and editing techniques. All these elements need to be used appropriately in a music video to help better promote the song.
For example, the narrative in this video is heavily based on the title and chorus of the song - 'Tonight We Feel Alive' as the video features members of the band in what appears to be a civil war. The video relies on editing and syncing at 0:03, 0:11 and 0:20, such as using the flat notes of the guitar to emphasise the cannons being fired in the video. This can also be seen using the band members shouting at 1:29. At 1:56, the video uses CGI to alter the colour of the video. This is effective as the main vocalist is saying 'I won't stand for it' and due to the blood coming out of his mouth and the colour alteration; this small segment feels like a complete cut away from the rest of the video and as a result helps establish a feeling of madness extruding from the vocalist. In a video like this, mise-en-scene also needs to be crucially accurate to make the viewer truly believe that the event is actually happening. In other music videos it also needs to be accurate and fitting with the genre to allow the viewer to make connections and similarities quicker.
Some music videos however can go entirely against their genre on purpose. This forces the viewer to recognise something is wrong and then realise that what they're watching completely juxtaposes what they're hearing, helping to emphasise both more.
Our genre is Brit-Pop, and so it was essential that as a group, we understood what our genre consisted of and how best to recreate that. To do this, we watched a number of Brit-Pop music videos such a Blur's 'Parklife' and analysed them and what they consisted of so we could see how Brit-Pop can be visualised alongside the standard auditory elements of it. Brit-Pop music videos are primarily portrayals of British life, most often in the city, and how people go about living their daily lives. The lyrics are often of British pride, or the complete opposite, and most videos accordingly duplicate these ideas. The editing is usually standard editing, using cuts where necessary and at a reasonable pace, not quick cuts and canted camera angles as would be seen in a Heavy Metal video for example.
The above image is a screen cap of Parklife by Blur. In it you can see a British city's skyline, and the foreground contains Blur's guest vocalist in formal attire and raising a thermal flask lid to the camera. While the formal attire and 'portable coffee' conflict with each other, it still effectively represents British life and so this influenced out final idea; we wanted to portray British life and at the same time make it as realistic as possible. We were also inspired to wear formal attire for the main performance because of this video.
As you can see from this screen cap of our video, we are wearing suits and ties, which we thought fitted the mise-en-scene of Brit-Pop. The location was Matt's garage but blacked out using black sheets, as we thought a performance for Brit-Pop would be hard to recognise, so literally having no mise-en-scene for the location makes the viewer focus more on the band members and performance.
In this second screen cap, which shows Kieran singing outside of Downing Street, you can clearly see how we've taken the idea of British pride and British life and used it entirely for the narrative in the video, which is mainly Kieran singing in front of recognisable British landmarks and also general pans, time lapses and shots of London. In this screen cap, he is singing the lines 'right from the time when I was born in '89, I lived in a terraced house, 10th down the line' in front of the gates to 10 Downing Street, which directly relates to the lyrics previously quoted (albeit the lyrics aren't directly referring to Downing Street, we just felt it made viewers recognise the link more clearly and easily than were it a normal terraced house at no.10).
We filmed multiple other shots of London using angles that best represented them in all their glory, in order to truly reflect the lyrics. The editing was fairly standard, changing at appropriate times in the song and also on cue with the words at some points, and for the time lapses we duplicated the video layer, cropped one layer down to just Kieran and then merged him on top of the other layer, which was then sped up. This allows for Kieran to be singled out from the rest of the video, a technique used in many music videos, allowing the viewer to focus more on him.
We also felt this helped establish the genre, as it shows British life, and how people go about their daily routine so similarly, such as the lapses of the subway, Trafalgar Square and Oxford Street. We didn't use too many different locations to sing from, as it would progress too fast for the viewer to keep track of, reducing the immersion of the video. We also used video layering to lay the flag on Kieran as he sings 'I'm made in England' once again directly reflecting the lyrics and ongoing theme of British pride.
We chose London to film most of our promo as it is easily the most instantly recognisable British city, and allows viewers all over the world to instantly relate the song to the video and reinforce the genre. It also has a wide variety of locations and landmarks we were able to film and choose from when editing.
Our video heavily supports Steve Archer's theory of music videos, in that we have a strong relationship between the narrative and performance within our promo, linking both together seamlessly - e.g. Kieran is wearing the same clothes in London and in the performance. It also goes slightly against John Stewart's theory, as our music video isn't intended to promote an aspirational lifestyle, it’s meant to portray a life that most people lead, and convey that they are proud of this standard, non-glamorous lifestyle.
*warning: strong language*
Above is a music video for Immortal Technique's 'Bush Knocked Down The Towers'. This video was a large inspiration for our video and ancillary tasks mainly for the typography shown within it. We used the idea of typography within our video twice, and also used the style and colour scheme on our digipak. This helps bring our entire promotional package together and create a sense of consistency throughout the package. We felt the colour scheme fits with British pride as it is the colours of the English flag (white and red). The main influence for the whole theme of the digipak was pop art which can be closely related to Brit-Pop, which is why all the band members have been posterized and placed among a cut-out city. The digipak is also slightly influenced by the front cover of blur's seventh studio album 'Think Tank' which is done by British stencil graffiti artist Banksy (mainly the colour scheme and simplicity of the album cover). Below you can see how we were influenced by the colour scheme of the album, and the lack of any distinct ‘real’ visuals (i.e. actual people, real buildings etc.).
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As mentioned earlier, we made sure to make all three pieces of the promotion package relate to each other in a visible and quickly recognisable way, so a viewer of one of the products will quickly be able to establish a link between that and another upon seeing it (e.g. they may remember the typography in the video, then see the album cover with the same city skyline). When designing the bands logo, we made sure to keep it simple so it was again quickly recognisable and also relative to the bands name/genre, so it is this reason why the first I in Missing is a cut-out of a man, and also why the name is very simple and stripped on the colours - typical of Brit-Pop band logo's (prime examples are Oasis and blur). The promo video is the primary 'weapon' of the package, it is this that will get peoples attention, draw them into the band, and inform them of the bands genre, musical style, what to expect on their album, and lastly, the actual name of the band for use later were the viewer to look them up. It is crucial that the video is effective in capturing the viewers attention and so for this reason it is why we chose to directly relate the video to the song lyrics, we felt we could better replicate a positive and 'postcard' idea of Britain than use the video in disjuncture with the song, as this would have been harder to do, and as a result, we'd end up with a worse video which wouldn't be as effective on the viewer. It is important that the video has a sense of continuity with the album artwork, as this will let the viewer know that the album is likely to contain a similar musical style to the song they've recently heard in conjunction with the video. If the video were to look completely unrelated to the album artwork, this may make the viewer feel that the album doesn't have that sense of continuity and direction, and variate too much song-to-song, and no-one likes to be subject to constant change.
The advertisement either has to juxtapose the album artwork entirely, or compliment it, as anything other than these would not be as visually striking and the reader wouldn't take a second glance at the page when browsing the magazine. We decided to compliment the album artwork by using a similar style to it and making it very simplistic. This is because when browsing a text filled magazine, a very text free page will take someone by surprise, and they will be intrigued look further. This helps promote the digipak as it captures the readers attention, informs them of the album that is being released, where to get it and how much it is and the visual style will help the reader quickly determine what style of music it is. This is a traditional form of media advertisement, whereas the promo video is more 'new media' advertisement, as it would be featured on sites such as Youtube and Facebook.
It is good to promote through both of these ways as each has its pros and cons. For example, Youtube is good as it will relate the promo video to other Brit-Pop videos so it appeals directly to the target audience. A drawback of this is the counter-opposite of its pro - people who don't normally listen to Brit-Pop are unlikely to see and therefore view the video on Youtube. A pro of traditional advertisement is that it can be viewed by a much larger range of people, were it to be featured in a widely read magazine by people of all different musical tastes. A con of this is the undeniable decline of traditional media, as it being swamped by the internet and its primarily free substitutes of more traditional media.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
During the construction of our texts, we undertook some audience research of what people would traditionally expect in a Brit-Pop music video, and we used these results to help decide what we thought the best route to take would be. This is important as it provides a wider view on what people traditionally expect from a Brit-Pop music video. For our research, we created a questionnaire which was then answered by friends and family of various demographics for more variety and as a result better answers. We also presented pitches to our media class based on the results of the questionnaire, took their suggestions into account and then settled as a group on the final video direction. The main problem with these methods is, even though we tried to get a varied and large number of results, more is always better, and we just didn't have the resources to get a questionnaire answered by a very large and varied group of people, hindering our results slightly. The same applies to the class pitches, even though the suggestions were offered by people with clear knowledge in the subject of media, the age gap was only 1 year, restricting the variety needed for accurate audience feedback.
We posted the video on Youtube & Facebook in order to gain feedback and in 20 days received 289 views, 9 likes and 1 dislike on Youtube, and 7 likes on Facebook. So far feedback has been highly positive, with comments such as 'Well done lads - amazing music video' and 'its bloody good'. Youtube and Facebook are good forms of promotion as they allow people to quickly and easily view the video, and express their feeling of it equally quickly and easily. We also received a response from the bassist of the band on Facebook, as seen below:
Which is, to say the least, more than satisfying and of high praise.
In terms of criticism, no one fully disliked the video, although one individual did comment on how he felt the video had some lighting issues, and felt the typography was unnecessary. Some people have picked up on camera angling issues within the garage performance, such as the ceiling being visible in some shots, and also some shaky camerawork in London. This has helped us understand where we can go wrong on minor issues which can ultimately detract from the full immersion and enjoyment originally intended for our music promo, and lower the overall quality and professionalism of the video.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We had to use an unsigned band for the video for copyright reasons when it would be uploaded to Youtube, and so Matt found Missing Andy on Myspace, which is a very well known site for popularising unknown bands and making them famous. This is a huge benefit for budding new artists as it allows them to promote their music for free, yet again enforcing the idea that new media is taking over from traditional forms of advertisement. What I mean by this is that around 10 years ago, it would’ve been a lot harder for a band to become popularised without the aid of record companies noticing them early on. Matt then subsequently contacted the band through Myspace asking for permission to use the song, to which they agreed. Sites like Myspace allow bands to easily exhibit their music and videos, and also list tour dates, helping bring them closer to their fans.
We used sites such as Vimeo and Youtube to explore examples of successful promo videos and analysed how these videos were effective at popularising the song they promoted.
For the physical editing and filming of our promo video and ancillary tasks, we used two HD Camera's both in 1080p so when the footage was uploaded to Matt's Macbook Pro, the quality would be identical and consistent. HD is a huge advantage over standard 480p definition as it just makes the whole video so much clearer and thus more enjoyable for the viewer. When editing the video on Matt's Macbook Pro, we used LiveType for the typography segments and Final Cut Express for the main editing. Certain special effects, such as the time lapses were filmed over a 5 minute period, then sped up until they fitted the allotted slot in the video that we had planned them for. When we added Kieran in, we simply used the exact same camera position, used about a 5 second clip of him sitting there, and then cropped the video down to just Kieran. After this, we placed the cropped video of Kieran onto the sped up one in the appropriate position. This gives the effect that Kieran is moving far slower than the world around him, helping the viewer focus on him more. We exported the video in iMovie.
We used Final Cut Express instead of iMovie as we felt it was far more versatile than iMovie, and allowed us to edit with far more precision than iMovie. It is also similar to Sony Vegas, which is what I used last year, and so I was able to quickly grasp the concept of Final Cut Express when editing.
We created the digipak entirely in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended on my laptop, as I already had knowledge of the techniques used in CS3 and was therefore able to make the digipak with more ease than any other image editing software. We took photos of ourselves as the band members against a white backdrop, which I then used to help crop us out. We then posterized each of us, helping us look more ‘simple’ to compliment the simply designed front cover. We used the same skyline font as in the typography of the video, adding to the continuity. The font is from a free font website called Dafont.com. After this, we placed ourselves and ‘Missing Andy’ (a copyright free silhouette which I edited to be a cut-out) into the city skyline which is composed of multiple layers of city text. Below is a screen cap of the editing of the front cover of the digipak:
Looking back at last years coursework, its clear just how significantly all three of us have improved in terms of camera work; our choice of angles, execution of angles and techniques employed in our promo video are of a much higher quality than last years promo video. I personally learnt the benefit of shooting far more shots than necessary, and also developed my skill in steady camera work when not using a tripod (i.e. moving the camera around freely but at the same time keeping it stable). In terms of editing, I had already gained knowledge of some editing techniques and effects from toying with various clips in Sony Vegas in my free time, although I did learn how to layer video's and use these layers to create a variety of effects, such as time lapses. I also developed my skill to precisely cut and sync the video in tempo with a separate audio track.
Thankfully, we had thought of lighting issues and hearing the audio track over the drums during the performance beforehand, so these were not problems at all during filming or playback on the Mac, and we didn't need to adjust the contrast in any scenes. However, we did have ongoing difficulty determining whether the audio was ahead of behind the video when precisely editing, but this was easily resolved with a trial and error method. The lighting was taken care of due to us obtaining some small floodlights, which we placed behind the amps, heavily reinforced by a borrowed spotlight which really improved the contrast of black, white and red in the video.
Lastly, I used Blogger to keep an ongoing and up to date account of my progress throughout the coursework, and frequently used it as a recap of what needed to be done at certain points during the construction of our promotional package.
Exhibiting our video online is a huge benefit over a more traditional method such as DVD distribution as it drastically cuts costs and materials wasted and also has the benefit of being instantly accessible and has the ability for the viewer to comment on the video while viewing it. It also allows the video to be shown to people we may not know, providing an unbiased review of the media.
