Feedback

Your response is detailed and through and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of .  You 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. 

You clearly identify your target audience and have profiled them well, this could be developed further by considering VALS.  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 and by posting three more examples.

Digipak covers

 This album is representing a similar star image to our idea of an album cover for our project. This is because we see the whole band in a set of a dodgy street with a dark colouring and serious expresions on their faces. They are all standing in the same possition with the main focus on the lead singer at the front and in the middle. This image tells us that its target audience is aimed towards males and teenagers. This is because the band in the image are bringing out a masculine image and this shows a role model for men or boys. So the star image in this album cover is a rocky look and masculine figures.
 This image of one of the chemical romance's album cover's. This image shows a dark love between the two people, about to kiss while blood is all over their faces. I thought that this image relates to our storyline of our own music video, love mixed with violence. So this image shows a contrast between beauty and violence. The colouring in this image is dark with red wrighting saying "sweet revenge" in it. This word relates to our storyline and our whole idea by showing domestic violence, but with the couple enjoying the violence they are performing on eachother. The star image of this album cover is showing the band as a dark, hard rock band. So the target audience for this would be mainly aimed towards teenagers. Mainly goth's.

 This image is also signifying darkness. They are all in black and have branches growing from behind them. The star image of this album cover is hard rock. signifying that their targeting audience is aimed towards emo's and teenagers.

research and evaluation of the institutional context of our artist

 Record company: The record company we have chosen to base our band on is EMI- Electric and Musical Industries. This company started up in 1931 and during this time EMI appointed its first A&R managers. These included George Martin, who later brought the Beatles into the EMI fold. We decided to base our band on this music company because this compant tend to base themselves to many styles of music, including rock in which our band is set around. So this company is a major company and it has a subsidiary of a major company, such as Gramophone Company. The target audience for this song is aimed towards a range of ages and both genders. Teenagers from the age of 15/16 to adults in their 50's. However the video has a dark storyline behind it. I would say that this storyline is aimed towards adults because some of the scenes can be to disturbing towards the younger generation.

Ideas for music video

We've decided to change our original idea of a song because we thought that it was too slow and not much was going on in the song in the end. We also recognised that the audience may get slightly bored of the music video with this song. So we decided to look at more upbeat songs to create a contrast between the dramatic storyline to a more upbeat feeling in the song. We liked the idea of doing 'Feeling good' by 'Muse' because we liked the fact that it has a lot of instruments in it, this is because we can intercross with the narrative and the storyline. We have stayed with the same idea of our storyline, however we have decided to make the idea even darker then it was. For example, The violence is mixed with pleasure. The couple in our video use the sexual energy by performing violence onto eachother. This idea is disturbing, but we wanted to make our video a bit more different and we wanted to create a contrast between the lyrics of the song to the storyline. So this new narrative relates to the lyrics but in a more sick way.  

We also looked chase and status- time, which was all about domestic violence and this gave us the idea of doing an upbeat song with a sad storyline to show the contrast between the two. Here is an example:

Lyrics to the song

And she takes another step
Slowly she opens the door
Check that he is sleeping
Pick up all the broken glass
And furniture on the floor
Been up half the night screaming
Now it's time to get away
Pack up the kids in the car
Another bruise to try and hide
Another alibi to write
At the very beginning we are putting all focus on the piano to introduce the story and the song. The first verse is when the girl walks into the room and starts to try and clear the messy room up with all the glass around and her husband asleep on a sofa. Then we see different camera angles on the piano and the singer telling the story. The set of the music video is a room full of glass, childrens toys, old pictures scattered on the floor and an old grubby sofa. We will have pictures hung wonkey on the wall to make the scene look even more messy. This messed up home also signifies the messed up situation.

Another ditch in the road You keep moving
Another stop sign
You keep moving on
And the years go by so fast
Wonder how I ever made it through- She's looking through the old pictures of her children, looking into the past. Whilst walking through the mess, she steps onto a photo frame and see's a picture of the whole family. She then picks it up and while she looks at it, it goes into a montage sequence and we see the happy memories of the past. She looking through the memories of how she made it through to this stage of her life.

And there are children to think of
Baby's asleep in the back seat
Wonder how they'll ever make it
Through this living nightmare
But the mind is an amazing thing
Full of candy dreams and new toys
And another cheap hotel
Two beds and a coffee machine
But there are groceries to buy
And she knows she'll have to go home - The montage sequence comes back to reality and back to her possision before she sees the happy memories of the past.

Another ditch in the road
You keep moving
Another stop sign
You keep moving on
And the years go by so fast
Wonder how I ever made it through - At this time we cut back to the piano and focus on the singer for a while. Showing him as the narrater of the story through a song. The theme of this song is domestic violence. It is of a husband being violent with his wife when he gets drunk.

Another bruise to try and hide
You keep moving
Another stop sign
You keep moving on
And the years go by so fast
Silent fortress built to last
Wonder how I ever made it- At this point she drops the picture and falls to the floor crying, this shows the sad mood to the video. At the very end we focus back on the piano and when he ends the song, he closes the piano top and the camera fades him out.

Ideas of music video

Name: Dermot Williams

Genre:Indie/Acustic.

Type of Act: The type of act we are doing is a single artist on a piano. So we are doing an acustic type of act.

Star image: The star image we are presenting is a good looking musician, however we are not making him the typical sexy man you find in pop music videos. We want him to be simple and attractive. So our music video is not all based on the star image but more on the music and the storyline of the video. The main character of our storyline in the video is going to be a very attractive girl in her late 20's. We imagine her husband to be a rough more ugly looking man. This shows how the family relationship has gone completely downhill. Here is an example of what we want our characters to look like.
  Main character.
The singer/pianoist
 Husband.

Target Audience: The type of audience we are aiming our video towards is mainly women and younger teenage girls. This is because we see the storyline through a womens eyes and some women can relate to what she is feeling. We also have an attractive musician man, which can attract the women. The lyrics in this song are talking about the reality of what a family can become. These lyrics can relate to a lot of other situations in reality and so many people could be interested in seeing a video like this. An example of this is when she is looking at her husband passed out on the sofa, standing in the messy room and looking at all the pictures from the past of her children and getting further and further towards the pressent and realising that her family have broken down. Her feeling of this can relate to a lot of other women in the same situation in reality.

Choice of track: The reason why we chose this song was because we thought that this song gave out a different meaning and is quite different from the rest of the music video projects we have seen in the past. We liked the lyrics and could think of a good storyline for the video. The lyrics of this song tell a story and so it makes it easy for us to put that story into pictures. We also liked the idea of doing an acustic piece to bring a more powerful feeling to the video.

Ideas of music videos

As a group we looked up two possible bands and songs to do for our music videos. The first one we looked up was feeder- 'feeling the moment', we liked this because we saw interest in the lyrics of the song. We also could see us doing a lot in the video with all the instruments used and the tone to the song. Here is an example of the music video they produced to give you a feel of the instruments and the lyrics used in this song and video.

The second song we looked at and have decided to do for our own project was by the Savage garder- 'Two beds and a coffee machine'. We liked this because the lyrics give us a good imagery of what we could create for our video. We have decided to create a image of a girl in a messed up house looking at her husband passed out on the sofa, whilst doing this she is looking at a montage of old pictures of her children looking into the happy past and getting to the most recent photos and remembering the sad reality of her life at the moment. As this is happening we want to have close ups of someone playing the piano to show the musical aspect of the song and the video. So creating this storyline can make the lyrics clearer toward the audience waching it. Here is an example of a video which was made to this song.

Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with a cover for its release as part of a digipack(CD/DVD package)



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

Five points on what a music video is

A music video is a promotional aspect of the music industry. It is also a way to show the meaning of the lyrics to the songs into an image. This also makes it easier for the audience to understand the song.
So a music video is a narrative to the music industry.

A music video can also be artistic/creative and this can make some songs a lot more successful. For example, lady gaga's songs are mostly aimed towards teenagers, however when you see her videos, we see the creative side of her art and this can target a wider range of audience. Here is an example of one of her videos, its called Judas:

A music video can also be an advertisment to another source of media. For example a film. An example of a music video who did this is N-dubz for the film 'Street Dance.

And so a music video includes synergy which creates viral marketing. And the music videos tend to be 3 or 5 minutes long.   

I chose to look at this video because I liked the way the video has been done. For example I like the idea of the close ups on his hands playing the piano and when the camera dissolves another picture into another picture. It gives the video energy and excitment. You can also see a lot of close ups of him singing into the mic, which I thought was a really good camera angle because it emphasised his energy and the lyriks in which he is singing. We get to see a close up and a wide shot of each member of the band, this shows us that not all our attention should be on steve wonder but also on the musicians helping him with his song in the background to show us that they are working as a team. I really like the idea of doing this song for a music video because with all the different musical instruments and the energetic atmosphere, I can see that we can do a lot with this song.

Ideas for style of music video

I liked the idea of an older style of theme. Although both Ella Fitsgerrald and Steve Wonder are both very different styles and genres of music. I looked into both of these artists and songs but was more influenced by the faster tempo of Steve Wonders song 'Superstition'. I like the idea of a more jazzy style of music video and can think of many ideas of putting a storyline to one of his songs, with all the instruments involved and the amount of excitment in a lot of his songs. For example Superstition, which I have a video to show an example of how much is going on in the video.

I haven't yet decided what to do for our video, however I personally like the idea of going the direction of the older classics and more jazzy type of music.
 I decided to show some pictures to show some examples of what mood and theme I was thinking of characterising our music video.

Both these artists focus on jazz as their main genre and style of music. And I like the idea to make a music video go back in time.

shoot day! filming a music video experience

This is the plan we made of our ideas on what type of camera angles and camera shots we would like to use. the diagram explains all of the way we wanted to have equal focus on each member of the band.

prelim video of acres of life