Album Research

The album we came up with was Escape, we felt this was similar to Bloc Party's current albums such as Intimacy. Before constructing our cover art we had to research into current albums to look at conventions so that our CD album looked like a real media product. Some of the conventions we found were that the band or artists names are featured on the front of the album and also an image of the artist or band or fancy album works or pictures.

Here is an example of a front cover from the band the Hoosiers who are part of the indie genre. They use the colour scheme of red and white here and you can clearly see the band and album name, the band use this text on all of their albums as it creates a unified house style and a mode of address that makes them easily identifiable by fans and new audiences. For the cover art they continue to use the red colour scheme and have created a cartoon like design. Having listening to the hoosiers and watched various music videos this type of album fits the personality of the band.

This is the inside of their album it again continues to use the red colour scheme which creates the same house style through and each item compliments the other. If these we to be separated you could tell that they belonged together, which is what we would like to achieve in construction our album. They have included an image of the band on the inside page and used similar images from the front page for an image border. The CD has a plain simple design with the band and album name. The image behind the CD is also simple and consists of a red background.

Finally this is the Hoosiers back page of their album. Again they use the red colour scheme as seen in the other elements of the album. The use a similar design to the front of the album cover with the cartton design around the edge. In the middle they have a song list of the songs included in their album, this is a key convention that all music albums will have. Lastly a bar code is also included and so it is important that we also use this same technique.

Here is a layout design of how we want our album covers to look like. For the front page we will feature a close up image of our artist and place the band name and album name in the top right hand corner. For the back page we will place a similar image but with his eyes closed. We feel this compliments the album as he has his eyes open on the front and eyes closed on the back. The CD cover will simply have the band name on it. The inside page will feature some images of the characters seen in the music video. The album will also have the same colour scheme throughout in order to create the same house style.

Editing and Camera Effects

For a music video to stand out you can not always just have straight cuts to change scene or film it and put it straight out onto the music market. It takes months of editing to produce a music video and this will be no different for us.

The use of overlays...

These pictures are taken from Pixie Lott's music video 'All about tonight'. The overlays are used here to show the artist and the location, this is interesting for the audience as they can see two things at once on a screen which is not something that they would usually experence.

Bloc Party

This is the band Bloc Party, it consists of four band members. They are an indie rock band composed of Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Russell Lissack (lead guitar), Gordon Moakes (bass guitar, synths, backing vocals, glockenspiel), and Matt Tong (drums, backing vocals). Their type of music has been to said to have been drawn from bands such as Radiohead and The Cure. Bloc party was formed in 1999 at reading festival (a popular festival consisting of indie music). The band did not set on the name Bloc Party until 2003.
The band first had their break through when Okereke gave the single 'shes hearing voices' to the lead singer of Franz Ferdinand during a concert, from here the
song was played on Radio 1. The song proved popular and this lead to many more releases of songs. There first song was vital in setting the scene for the type of music genre and target auidence they were aiming for. The indie genre has a huge fan base, and proved popular.

ALBUMS

Bloc Party released their debut album 'Silent Alarms' in Feburary 2005. This album was voted 'album of the year' by NME and reached number 3 in the UK album charts. The band turned out to gain a good reputation and it was dicovered they had positivite reviews from those in the US. Bloc party were now not only a UK band but a global band.

This was Bloc Party's first album cover; as you can see it is simple yet effective. Bloc Party have taken the name of the ablum and portrayed it in the picture. It presents a tranquill setting in a field with the use of whites, grey and black colouring. The band have not used their picture in this cover, this is possibly because the band had only just started out and fans and new audiences may not realise who the band are visually just yet. This however does work in the bands favour as they could put the band name in a large type face in order to stand out on the shelves with the hundreds of other albums. Releasing a first album is always difficult and the sales will decide the success or the failure of a new and upcoming band. This album sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide.

The bands next album was called 'A Weekend in the City' which was released in February 2007. (2 years after their first album), however this ablum was leaked in November 2006 and so was put on itunes for download so that the band did not lose out on sales. It debuted at number 12 in the Billboard 200, with 48,000 copies sold. This ablum reached number 2 in the UK album charts.

This is the art work for the second ablum released by Bloc Party, again the band do not use images of themselves. Having an image as the second cover begins to set a house style for the band and audiences will now notice that this is a Bloc Party album. The name of the album reflects the image on the cover. This picture is taken from a high angle where you can see the roads that you would usally find in the 'city'. Additionally lighting is key here, they use ambient lighting for example using the street lamps. The lighting on the roads has been cleverely edited to show the break and head lights of a car without actually showing the cars in the picture. The bands name and ablum name has been placed in the top left of the album. It has been coloured in white in order to stand out from the rest of the ablum.

The bands third album was named 'Intimacy' and was released in August 2008 one month after the band released their popular single 'Mercury'.

This album cover again does not feature the band but does have an image of two people about to kiss. This reflects the ablum name as kissing is an intmate thing. The lighting is used effectively here with the faces in a pale colour with a dark background in the space between them. The shadowing here helps to define the facial features of both faces.

In 2009 the band did not have a current recording contract and so were under no obligation to produce any more albums. They did release one more single called 'One More Chance' in August 2009 which almost relfects the state were previously in. After this the band decided to go on 'hiatus' and were unsure if they would continue with the band. However in 2011 the band are currently writing their fourth album with 15 new tracks. There has been speculation whether the band are looking for a new lead singer or not.

Looking at these ablums covers has given inspiration and ideas when we come to make our cd cover for the single 'Flux'.

Mood Board

To make our mood board we used two peices of a3 paper to make a large surface area. On this we printed out the lyrics for the song and around it put pictures of our ideas and images we wanted to create for our music video. The kind of images we used were pictures of indie boys, location shots, drug use and graffiti. As well as this we took key lyrics from the song and enlarged them as you can see these were 'state of flux' 'despair' and 'romance' which we want to create in our music video. Below are images or the finished mood board.

Here is a brainstorm of what we are considering to do for our music video...

Flux - Bloc Party on Prezi

Editing

Editing is the post production process of rearranging shots to create a new piece of work.

The three videos below show the use of editing in indie music videos. After looking at several videos I felt that these three had the best editing. Green day's video even got an MTV music video award.



The type of editing in this video mainly focuses on the pace of the editing. The editing has been sped up especially when the band are being puppets. Images are added to the music video for example the ribbon in the screen shot below. They caputre imagery very well in this video and use it to create the appearance of them floating

Green day won an award for this music video, they use editing throughout their video to create an old western effect. As you can see from the screen shots below you would of had to edit these effects in as they would not be captured on camera.

The use of editing is very clever in this music video. Below I have taken screen shots of images where I think editing is used very effectively. This music video is a performance video but has additional extras for example using text to represent a lyric.

Editing Tips

TIP	EXPLANATION
Leave 10 seconds before significant footage is taken	This allows you to identify the shot which you can later voice over. This will speed up the process of editing when it comes to finding certain clips
Always take two shots of scene	This means you have back up if one of the scenes goes wrong. This will save time as you will not need to go and film this scene again. One of the shots may also be better than the other and so you can have a choice to produce the best peice of work
Consider moving shots	The length of a shot needs to be relative to the pace of the music, there is no point having a long shot in face paced music as it will not make sense. The length of shots can also be effective for example when using zooms (short shots will be used e.g when you are showing what someone is looking at).
Avoid jump cuts	This is when the scene cuts from one scene to one that has no relation to the previous scene which can confuse the audience
Shorten the scenes	In order to fit in all the shots you want and to keep the audience interested you can cut out unnecessary scenes for example if you are showing someone walking down the stairs you only need to show the first few steps to establish what the person is doing. You would not need to film all of the stairs as this would waste time.

Indie Genre

Our media group decided that we would aim our music video to the Indie Genre. This genre branches off into two different types of indie; indie pop and indie rock. We will be focusing on indie rock. The main reason for this is that we feel the audience age is much more appropriate for what we are trying to create. Our target audience will be aged between 16 and 25 aiming our video and auxiliary tasks at both male and females. Bloc party is a male band and so is more likely to attract more males than females however we do not want to exclude the female audiences and have a wider target audience means there is a wider scope for profits for the band.

Researching into the Indie Genre I came across a website known as UK tribes . This website shows the interests and types of media consumption that Indies enjoy which has given us indications of what type of clothing to dress our actors in and what to include in aspects of our axillary tasks.

As you can see above the types of shops that Indies go to are topshop, urban outfitters and uniqlo which are all typically asociated with the indie population. From the media consumption part of this diagram we can see that they are heavy on internet use meaning they usally will be looking to communicate with friends, shop online and listen to newly released music on sites such as You Tube.

 

Here is a short cartoon clip I created to represent my target audience. 

Conventions of a Music Video

Conventions of a music video

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Andrew Goodwin

He identifies 5 aspects of music videos that audiences should look out for, these are:

1)Seeing the sound portrayed in the music video

The audience must look at the structure of the song in order to relate it to the visual images. What we hear can create a band identification for the audience, an artists voice is unique and audience can recognise them from this. A music video can be a two communcation device which shows the artists telling a story and allows us to listen.

2)Whether it is a narrative or a performance

Andrew Goodwin says that music videos should ignore common narrative as it is important in their advertising. Music videos will rarely give us a complete narrative and so audiences tend to get a 'gist' of the story and then will make up their own conclusions. Narrative and performances mix together in order to give a coherent repeatability which makes it easier for audiences to watch without getting bored. He says lip syncing is important as it creates realism for the audience, they need to believe this is real.

3)How the star image is shown

When an artist first starts out is important to develop a star image so that they are recognisable to their fans and new audiences. This should be portrayed in their music videos in order to develop a coherent house style.

4)Visual relations to the song

He splits this into 3 things: Illustrate - Images can be used to illustrate the meaning of the lyrics and genre which you find is most common. Amplify - This is when meaning and effects in the music video are constantly shown in order to keep them in our mind, this means we will want to watch it more which increases the popularity for the song. Disjuncture - This is opposite of the other two when the meaning of the song is completely ignored.

5)Technical effects of the music video

This is the use of camera, editing, mise-en-scene, sounds and addect effects. These all help to enhance the popularity of a music video.

My Top 5 Music Videos

1) The Scientist- Cold Play

This is my favorite music video. This is one of my favorite songs and I think that this video really adds to an amazing song. Throughout the music video the reverse effect is used creating a sense of the past. We see step through step what has happened and using this effect really helps to enhance some of the actions which have happened in the video for example the lady going through the windscreen and also when Chris Martin the lead vocalist jumps over walls. The movement of the song really fits with the tempo of the music creating a very well made music video. The lyric 'take me back to the start' really fits into this video as at the end we see where they wanted to be again before the car crash. The lead singer had to learn this song backwards in order for the lips to be in sync with the song. On you tube the official video has seen 5,915,614 views. I feel this is quite low for a very good music video and song. However cold play music does not appeal to every audience.

2) Single Ladies - Beyonce

This music uses a dance sequence throughout, It is filmed in black and white and uses harsh lighting to really define the woman and their shadows. The dancing is all the beat of the music and when the lyrics say 'should of put a ring on it' they all point to their fingers. The camera uses a number of close ups on beyonce to show her facial expressions throughout the video and also to define her as the other two woman do look similar. It is a very clever video and there has been numerous attempts to recreate this intense dance video. On you tube this video has seen a massive 125,740,523 views showing the popularity of this music video.

3) Here It Goes Again- OK Go

This is a simplistic video that creates a sense of enjoyment for the audience, when creating the video the cast were very careful in the placements of the treadmills and the types of moves that they did. They managed to utilize the equipment they had and made a very successful music video. Many viewers may watch it more than once to see actually how hard it is to dance on the moving treadmills. There are 6 treadmills and some of the moves they do in the video can confuse the audience as for example we may not know how they got to the other side. We can not (unless looking carefully) see the direction of the treadmill and so this adds to the effect. The movement of the four men matches the tempo of the music and the fact that the song repeats the work 'go' numerous times fits in with the treadmills. On you tube it managed a total of 7,927,514 views.

3) Like Toy Soldiers - Eminem

This video is part narrative part performance. This video is relatively simplistic to emphasize on Eminems powerful lyrics. If the video had lots of things going on then I feel this would take away from the lyrics. This is one of Eminems slower songs and is about violence. The video includes 50 cent and other rap artists we are used to boost the songs popularity. At the end we see a picture graffited on the wall of 4 rap artists who have are all dead due to street crime and violence. This video is almost a tribute to them and it really shows in Eminems lyrics and the lighting used throughout the video. On you tube this video saw a huge 53,573,935 views.

5) The Lazy Song - Bruno Mars

This is a very humerous video that brings will bring joy to the audience watching, its a very basic video which has been shot in a room with 5 people dressed as monkeys, they use silly dance moves and Bruno Mars is in sync with the lyrics. For some of the lyrics the actions do match together creating a sense of unison. I really like this video because I think it is very well put together and I can watch it more than once without getting bored. For such a simple video it has had 101,323,000 views on you tube. This should be the key to any artists success as you do not need to spend millions on a music video to make is successful.

About Music Videos

What is a music video?
A music video is a short film that uses a song and images as a type of promotion for the artist. They are used as a marketing device to promote sales of a artists song.

History of music videos
Music videos were originally known as illustrated songs where a series of images were set to the same time as a live performance; this was introduced in 1894 by sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern. This was a big step towards the music videos we know and love today. In 1926 the arrival of 'talkies' meant many short music films could be produced. Music videos started to get popular due to shows in Australia such as Countdown and Sounds which were launched in 1974. Russel Mulcahy was approached to make music videos in Australia and relocated to the UK in the 1970's where he made the famous music video 'video killed the radio star' by the Buggles which was the first played music video on MTV in 1981. In 2005 the internet was introduced to youtube which allowed a broader audience to listen to new music songs as MTV is exclusive to digital television which not everyone has. Youtube also records the number of hits a song gets and in 2010 it saw Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' as the most viewed music video.

MTV
MTV (music television) was launched on the 1st of August 1981 in the US and was promoted as a 24/7 music channel. They use the slogan 'I want my MTV' to intice their target audiences. It was now easier to record songs on inexpensive equiptment and also made promotion videos which MTV could fulil its 24 hour music channel. MTV became increasingly popular and saw the rise of sister channels such as MTV Dance, MTV Music, MTV Bass, MTV Hits, MTV Rock, MTV Classic and VH1. As well as this MTV is also famous for its award shows such as The MTV music video awards and the EMA's. The different channels that MTV produce meant they could pick up the niche market and make each channel specific to its market segments. This allowed the orignal MTV to now produce television programmes such as The Hills, and Jersey Shore that have proved very popular.

Other Music Channels