Introduction
We each did posts on the blogs; we also all contributed in the filming. I did a lot of work in the editing. Some of the posts I was involved in were:
• Branding
• The Music Industry and Branding• Genre
• Narrative and Representation
• Audience
• Inspirations
Genre
• Music videos are about selling an artist to audiences. It is a promotion of not only the song and album but the artist involved, about making money solely. Genre is the relationship between a media industry and its audience. The genre to our video is Pop Punk/New Wave/Folk, which is quite a quirky genre, unique and ‘indie’, therefore we had to portray a quirkiness to our video, which I think we achieved, through the mise-en-scene (Joe’s outfit and hair, and Lewis and Pete’s too, locations are working class areas, an association with ‘indie’ acts). Conventions of music videos include relations to the lyrics be that obvious or not or the theme of voyeurism, intertextual references or a reference to the lyrics. It was vital we did this as audiences like typical elements; however we tried to make it different with the two narratives, ‘same but different’ as auditions likes this.
Here is the video feedback...
http://www.youtube.com/user/stmarysmedia#p/u/7/buZXEMTkNPs
Things we wanted to create, were recognised when our questionaire was carried out, comments such as:
• We all contributed and with the ancillary tasks, and we each had a go at a magazine cover, CD cover and advertisement for the band. Pete’s CD covers were really good, I was happy with my album cover too which I posted on the blog to show I had done the ancillary tasks, however if we were to actually create and album cover we’d use Pete’s.
This was my album cover, using Photoshop. As the brand image of Funnel is bohemian and quirky, I kept the cover plain but quite vintage, by changing the colour palette. Rather than be really flashy.
Branding and Brand Image
• As an artist/band’s image is one of the main ways they appeal to audiences and get recognized. As Funnel’s music is quirky and different, we wanted to reflect this in their image. We did this branding promotion in the video through choice of mise-en-scene such as outfits, and location, grim working class areas near and around where we live.
• Like I showed on my post earlier on our blog about ‘Dr.Dre’, brand image is what sells an artist/band. Products needed distinct brands as a result of mass production: ''...competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age-within a context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured along with the product (Naomi Klein, No Log)'' ie consumers had no choice because every product within a category had to be given a different personality to make people want to buy that particular product and not any other, that is why branding is so essential, especially to music artists.
Example:
What is the difference between The Strokes and Linkin Park? In 2001 both bands were promoting their new albums, both very different brand images but both very unique, and both their albums topped the charts ‘Is This It?’ and ‘Hybrid Theory’. The Strokes are very ‘indie’ and have a vintage, quirky image. Linkin Park are ‘gothic’ and dark, have a rebellious, individual image. As they both have strong brand images, which are very appealing to audiences, they had an audience to listen to their music and buy their music.
• There are 8 elements to creating a brand identity, the Brand Slogan, Brand Personality, Emotional Benefits, Brand Appearance, Brand Essence, Brand Heritage, Brand Values and the Hard Benefits. Over an amount of time the idea of a brand is to create loyalty to its customer/audience, the producers of the brand want the audience to continue buying the product. Brands are recognised and bought and liked all over the world:
Other bands such as Kings of Leon and The Strokes who are signed to Sony BMG also have a similar target audience to our target audience, although our product is different in terms of music and image it could catch the audiences’ attention as it is something new and refreshing.
• Like I posted before about audiences and the G.R.A.S.S theory, media texts are a product usually made to make money and generate revenue for the institution that has produced them. All products need audiences to gain what the institution wants. The institution needs an audience to target so they can construct the product to appeal to them.
Gender Race Age Socio-economic Status
Socio-economic Status is essentially what class a person belongs to depending on their job/occupation/family here is a chart to explain the different categories. We ultimately are targeting under the ‘E’ section of the Socio-economic Status, due to the fact our target audiences age between 16-25, therefore many students fall under our target audience. However I think audiences who fall under this age are loyal niche audiences, which helps the artist and label financially. From looking at the Psychographic technique and Haslows Theory:
The aim of our group is to appeal to our target audience, young people who like indie/pop punk music, and we are going to try and achieve to give them their needs in our video and our band 'Funnels' image.
In 1988 a new group emerged the 'individual', this group responds to advertising and marketing that emphasises quirkiness or individualism. This is the group we essentially want to appeal to our target audience.
We created a questionnaire which Pete printed off and gave out, this helped as we knew what our target audience was looking for in a music video, with questions such as “"Do you feel a music video is important in creating a brand image for a band/artist?“, which made us want to fulfil our brand image even more so. We found out what our target audience (as it was people aged 16-25 who filled it out) and from this incorporated it in our music video.
Here it is again:
From doing the music video project I have used many different technologies, an Apple Mac, CS Photoshop, Final Cut Express, IMovie, Sony video camera as well as media texts such as YouTube, Google and blogger.com. As I do an enhancement course at college ‘Film Academy’ I was already use to IMovie and Final Cut Express, therefore I was heavily involved in the editing of the Music Video, and I enjoy that side to filming, however I have never had to edit to lip-syncing which was challenging at parts but I think we have done it pretty well. I also have never been on CS Photoshop before so my skills for photo editing have improved as I created an album cover and magazine article for the ancillary tasks we practiced out. I wanted the cake which Joe holds in her hand to stand out so edited it on IMovie by changing the colour gradient and I think it proved effective. I liked how much you could mix up the editing too, it was good how I could create a jumpy effect at bits and make the jump bits fit to the music, making the video a bit more exciting/entertaining.
Jane Keegan
• Narrative and Representation
• Audience
• Inspirations
We decided on the target audience of around 16-25 years olds as inbetween those ages are the highest music consumers, in terms of buying music, listening to music and going to gigs etc and the fact we fall into that category and we all like non-mainstream music as well as mainstream music, we enjoyed it and it helped us with ideas and inspirations etc. We have used typical conventions of music video but used the ‘same but different’ method, as audiences like this.
• Music videos are about selling an artist to audiences. It is a promotion of not only the song and album but the artist involved, about making money solely. Genre is the relationship between a media industry and its audience. The genre to our video is Pop Punk/New Wave/Folk, which is quite a quirky genre, unique and ‘indie’, therefore we had to portray a quirkiness to our video, which I think we achieved, through the mise-en-scene (Joe’s outfit and hair, and Lewis and Pete’s too, locations are working class areas, an association with ‘indie’ acts). Conventions of music videos include relations to the lyrics be that obvious or not or the theme of voyeurism, intertextual references or a reference to the lyrics. It was vital we did this as audiences like typical elements; however we tried to make it different with the two narratives, ‘same but different’ as auditions likes this.
• Our differences were mainly through Joe’s outfits and her performance, as we obviously didn’t have funds to make things really different, however we didn’t need funds to make our editing different, and in my editing I tried to get it to match her brilliant performance, in the bridges of the song been jumpy and a little quirky like Joe. I think our choices of techniques through editing, cinematography and narratives worked...as we learned in our questionnaire feedback. In class we showed our Music Video to the rest of the class to get feedback for our product. We made a questionnaire to be filled out and our teacher asked the questions for the class to answer.
Here is the video feedback...
http://www.youtube.com/user/stmarysmedia#p/u/7/buZXEMTkNPs
Things we wanted to create, were recognised when our questionaire was carried out, comments such as:
- ''Was experimental and different''
- ''Performance made us happy''
- ''Performance professional''
- ''Fitted a quirky style of music''
- ''Costumes and props were quirky and unique''
- ''Continuous shots worked well''
- ''Random and quirky''
- ''The video matched the song''
- ''Mise-en-scene went perfect with the editing and music''
• We all contributed and with the ancillary tasks, and we each had a go at a magazine cover, CD cover and advertisement for the band. Pete’s CD covers were really good, I was happy with my album cover too which I posted on the blog to show I had done the ancillary tasks, however if we were to actually create and album cover we’d use Pete’s.
This was my album cover, using Photoshop. As the brand image of Funnel is bohemian and quirky, I kept the cover plain but quite vintage, by changing the colour palette. Rather than be really flashy.
Branding and Brand Image
• As an artist/band’s image is one of the main ways they appeal to audiences and get recognized. As Funnel’s music is quirky and different, we wanted to reflect this in their image. We did this branding promotion in the video through choice of mise-en-scene such as outfits, and location, grim working class areas near and around where we live.
• Like I showed on my post earlier on our blog about ‘Dr.Dre’, brand image is what sells an artist/band. Products needed distinct brands as a result of mass production: ''...competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age-within a context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured along with the product (Naomi Klein, No Log)'' ie consumers had no choice because every product within a category had to be given a different personality to make people want to buy that particular product and not any other, that is why branding is so essential, especially to music artists.
Example:
What is the difference between The Strokes and Linkin Park? In 2001 both bands were promoting their new albums, both very different brand images but both very unique, and both their albums topped the charts ‘Is This It?’ and ‘Hybrid Theory’. The Strokes are very ‘indie’ and have a vintage, quirky image. Linkin Park are ‘gothic’ and dark, have a rebellious, individual image. As they both have strong brand images, which are very appealing to audiences, they had an audience to listen to their music and buy their music.
• There are 8 elements to creating a brand identity, the Brand Slogan, Brand Personality, Emotional Benefits, Brand Appearance, Brand Essence, Brand Heritage, Brand Values and the Hard Benefits. Over an amount of time the idea of a brand is to create loyalty to its customer/audience, the producers of the brand want the audience to continue buying the product. Brands are recognised and bought and liked all over the world:
• If wanted a Label to fund us; after researching various record labels we came to the conclusion that a label such as EMI or Sony BMG (which are two of the biggest record labels in the world) would be appropriate choices to use and ones which we would love to be signed under. EMI is a record label which were founded in Britain, as Funnel are a British band and quite unique I think it would be a good signing especially since successful artists such as Florence and the machine (our inspiration to the video), who also are quirky and different are storming the charts at the moment, therefore sales for the label, which it really is all about for the labels, selling music and getting profit.
Other bands such as Kings of Leon and The Strokes who are signed to Sony BMG also have a similar target audience to our target audience, although our product is different in terms of music and image it could catch the audiences’ attention as it is something new and refreshing.
• Like I posted before about audiences and the G.R.A.S.S theory, media texts are a product usually made to make money and generate revenue for the institution that has produced them. All products need audiences to gain what the institution wants. The institution needs an audience to target so they can construct the product to appeal to them.
Gender Race Age Socio-economic Status
Socio-economic Status is essentially what class a person belongs to depending on their job/occupation/family here is a chart to explain the different categories. We ultimately are targeting under the ‘E’ section of the Socio-economic Status, due to the fact our target audiences age between 16-25, therefore many students fall under our target audience. However I think audiences who fall under this age are loyal niche audiences, which helps the artist and label financially. From looking at the Psychographic technique and Haslows Theory:
The aim of our group is to appeal to our target audience, young people who like indie/pop punk music, and we are going to try and achieve to give them their needs in our video and our band 'Funnels' image.
In 1988 a new group emerged the 'individual', this group responds to advertising and marketing that emphasises quirkiness or individualism. This is the group we essentially want to appeal to our target audience.
We created a questionnaire which Pete printed off and gave out, this helped as we knew what our target audience was looking for in a music video, with questions such as “"Do you feel a music video is important in creating a brand image for a band/artist?“, which made us want to fulfil our brand image even more so. We found out what our target audience (as it was people aged 16-25 who filled it out) and from this incorporated it in our music video.
Here it is again:
From doing the music video project I have used many different technologies, an Apple Mac, CS Photoshop, Final Cut Express, IMovie, Sony video camera as well as media texts such as YouTube, Google and blogger.com. As I do an enhancement course at college ‘Film Academy’ I was already use to IMovie and Final Cut Express, therefore I was heavily involved in the editing of the Music Video, and I enjoy that side to filming, however I have never had to edit to lip-syncing which was challenging at parts but I think we have done it pretty well. I also have never been on CS Photoshop before so my skills for photo editing have improved as I created an album cover and magazine article for the ancillary tasks we practiced out. I wanted the cake which Joe holds in her hand to stand out so edited it on IMovie by changing the colour gradient and I think it proved effective. I liked how much you could mix up the editing too, it was good how I could create a jumpy effect at bits and make the jump bits fit to the music, making the video a bit more exciting/entertaining.
Jane Keegan
