Audience Research

Quantitative & Qualitative

Quantitative:

Research Via surveyMonkey.com - Building an audience profile of their tastes, activities etc.

Link to Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/37SWQCY

(White bar to hide offensive comments.)

 

Qualitative:

Interviews with 2 target audience members. 4-5 questions, with main focus on what they enjoy in a music video, what appeals to them in album art and what they like particularly about a genre.

Questions:
-How would you describe your style of clothing?
-What type of music Genre do you like, and did this influence your style?
-What appeals to you most about your favourite genre? (the look, sound, etc)
-Are there any activities you enjoy doing?
-What kind of imagery do you imagine when listening to your favourite music?
-What do you expect to see in a music video from your favourite band? (Besides the band playing)

<Videos of interviews and transcript will be placed here>

Magazine Advert Analysis

For my part of the magazine analysis, I will be taking a look at this advert for a Pendulum Album.

The colour layout of the poster has a nice neon yellow onto black. If the ad simply had just a black background with a symbolm, they would assume that this looks more like a heavy metal band, due to the conventions of having a dull black background. However, with added use of neon, and the picture of an alien planet in the back of the symbol, we now know that this band is more in the drum and bass scene. The reason why neon sparks this idea goes back to the use of neon colours in clubs and raves. Because of this, we asociate that neon colours are a convention of drum and bass/techno songs. But since Pendulum falls under the Cateagory of "Drum&Bass/Metal" it also has elements of a metal look to it. An example of this would be what I said near the beginning; the dark colours and black give this a metal feel, but the added use of neon lighting shows the element of drum and bass. The look of the symbol and colours is also similar to the Pendulum albums themselves, so long fans of the band will be instantly farmiliar with the poster and band.

Other than this, the advert contains basic information, such as: Band Name, Release date, tour date, tour information and aditional info, such as sponsors etc. Below the band name, there is also a sub-title describing just what it is advertising in a breif sentence. 


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The next advert is one for the artist "Bat For Lashes"

She is treated more of an inde/folk genre, and this is shown well in the page. When we think of folk, we associate it with older music that is native to us, and so in this picture she is depicted as a native American, wearing things such as handmade clothes, a bandanna with a charm on it and has two horizontal lines, parallel to each other on her cheeks. The poster its self is also has a handmade feel, mainly to complement the folk feeling of how everything they created, including the clothes on their backs were made by hand. Even the font looks like it has been made of different materials. The colours however are not that bright, and have a washed out feeling to it, but this is due to the genre again, and mostly her song topics. Half of her songs aren't about the happy things in life, but more about dealing with the hard times. Other than this, the poster does not give much information, such as a release date and such, so it's missing a crucial part of what makes it an advertisement.


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The last magazine advert I will be looking at is one I remember from my childhood. This is for the Green Day Album, American Idiot.

Green Day is highly known as one of the most popular punk/inde bands in the world. They usually deal with topics such as rebellion and rising up to the man, but this was an album where they also dealt with more sensitive topics. For example, it contrasts from one song "Holiday", which is basically sings about outlaws fighting a war against their own country- to "Wake me up when September ends." This song does keep up with the war topic, but more about how it effects other people. The song focuses on how a family loses their son to the war. That combination or emotion and war is summed up well in this advertisement. An image of a first rising up, portrayed a lot similar to many propaganda posters . The arm is also holding a hand grenade. This shows that the album will hold the aspect of war; but because of the grenade being in the shape of a heart , it shows that other topics will be about the darker side of fighting and going to war, and the impact that it has on other people's families, lovers and friends. The text also has a worn down war-like feel to it, complementing what the whole album is set out to be. Again, my only criticism is the fact that it has no showing of a date of the album's release.   

Digipak Analysis:

For my analysis of digipak, I have chosen to take a look at a digipak from the famous metal band: Iron Maiden. The picture can be found below:

This is a 6 faced digipak, containing A booklet of the creaters of the album, song list, lyric sheet and CD with a live DVD of the band preforming live in Sweeden. This digipak is aimed at the long-term fans of Iron Maiden and follows the original style that the previous albums had. The albums before, had the similar gritty art-style of the character "Eddie" (Iron maiden's 'mascot') drawn by such artists like Melvin Grant, Huge Syme, Mark Wilkinson, David Patchett and Tim Bradstreet. The farmiliar font of Iron maiden is also on the cover, again, to appease the long-term fans of the band.

Considering that this band falls under the cateagory "Metal", the colours have been chosen to have a dark gritty tone to them. Even the colours on the CD's keep up with the colours on the digipak itself. The reason for these gritty colours is, of course, it is a very gritty and dark style of music; and this album cover reinforces their genre as a metal band. If this digipak were to have, let's say, Colours of green blue and red on a black background, the audience would not think that this was an Iron maiden band, considering in every album they have a certain icon with gritty colours. They would instead think that this was a drum and Bass band, or a techno album.

Another way it reinforces it's genre is the imagry. We see on the left side of the digipak there is a scene from the stage that is blacked out with an acception of a giant modle of "Eddie" with a dark purple glow. To the center, we have gothic imagry of skulls and gouls, again with the purplish glow. The gothic feel to it is also a good design choice, since the majority of the audience will be gothic people.

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This next band is more relective on my chosen band's genre- inde/punk/rock/garage. Considering I could not find any digipaks for "The King Blues" I thought it would be wise to inspect their normal album art instead, to give me a rough idea on how the digipak will be designed.

The genre of punk/inde has been known to be more of a rebelious type of music. This is shown in the album art as soon as you look at it. The band has been placed infront of a bilboard with grafitii on it. Now, grafitii is already the sign of expression on the true world and going agaisnt the rules, but this is a different kind of grafitii. Since the band is more focused on the rebelling agasint the government, it is exicuted in the form of a letter to Gordan Brown. Agruing with the choices that he has made when he was in 'control'. Not only this, but the song this album is based on, has some of the words that have been written on the bill-board. The font of the words "The King Blues" also appear to look like an old army font, but slightly modified, maybe to symbolize that this group works for us like an army. More on that soon.

The colour choice for the album isn't bright, but it is also not very dark and gloomy with gothic imagry like the pervious digipak had, because of the band's genre. But it is also not brightly coloured because the colours must reflect of the subject of which the band is singing about. In this case, it is about a Broken England where the Middle to lower class of people live harder lives filled with tax and sons going out to war. Where as the higher class don't need to worry about such things. "The Rich get richer and the Poor get poorer." Because of this, the album cover is shot on location of a London street. The colours are dark and bland, reflecting on the situation the band's country is in. They are also wearing every-day clothes you see many people wear around busy streets such as York, so it also shows us that these people represent the every-man. But in this case, they are speaking up for those who are too afraid to. The album art is a voice of opinion.

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Finally, I will take a look at the album art of the Band that me and my group will be making a music video of. Jamie T (which again, I could not find any digipak images of):

This is the album "Kings and Queens" which contains the song which we are going to be making a video of "Sticks and Stones." Like The King Blues, Jamie T is also located in England, and the genre is the exact same, but both their subject matters are completely different, and this shows in the album. The King Blues deal more with rebelling agasint "the man" but Jamie T is more about having a good time and living life as it comes. The album has much more colour and is a lot brighter than The King Blue's album, maybe made to show the better part of living in a place like England. TKB targets the more run-down part of society, but Jamie T goes for a picture of the blue sky near nice clean buildings.

This is because good times are usually asociated with bright happy colours, and this is what Jamie T does with this album work. Because of the pace of the song and energy, you also have Jamie T jumping in the picture, just to show that this band is full of entertaining, none-stop energy. It also reflects on what other kind of songs that will be found in this album. No one would pick up a bright coloured CD with images off people jumping around and expect to hear them singing about things like how his dog ran away and he's all sad about it.

However, that would only be exceptable if he sang about how his dog ran away and then gave chase, trying to catch it in a numerous amount of ways.

The use of font is also very basic and doesn't seem to have any meaning behind it, unlike what the King Blues did, but it does however back-up the idea that this band is a lot more 'colourful' than TKB.

Shared analysis

SOURCE: ALICE WYBRANT

THE KING BLUES -SAVE THE WORLD GET THE GIRL VIDEO ANALYSIS

Band: The King Blues
Song: Save the world get the girl
Genre: Indie/Punk

Costumes: The band have rough/indie style music. This is reflected in their clothing with worn out hats, vintage T-shirts and skinny fit jeans/trousers. Their clothes are casual and worn. Again their fan base would relate to this as the band aren’t trying to be something their not.

Storyline: The video starts with the band loading their van to presumably go to their next venue. This is shown though snippets of stop motion throughout the video. It shows a toy van on its path across a map. The band get to their venue, unload, setup and play. There are lots of shots from previous performances at festivals and inside gigs. This type of story line containing clips from gigs works well as the initial narrative is easy to follow and doesn’t take or away from the music or get lost in it. It compliments the music genre well.

Performance: The band don’t perform especially for this video as all the shots of the performances are from lots of different previous gigs. This gives the fans a chance to get to see the band perform live. Seeing bands live is a big part of an indie/punk rock following.

Style and Colour: The style of this video overall has a vintage, laid back feel. For example, a sepia tint on screen in certain shots. This reflects the bands laid back attitude towards style. Vintage and washed out colours are a convention of the indie genre and so are frequently used in this music video. The stop motion element of the video gives a fun, childlike quality and reiterates their laid back, fun attitude. The audience can relate to this as it’s not threatening or brash.


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Video Analysis - Faye

Band - Bombay Bicycle Club -  
Song - Dust on the ground
Genre - Indie.

The location of this video to start with is in a woods, they then progress to the grounds of a large house, the final location is inside the house, where many of the rooms are shown.

The costumes for this video are very casual, for the band members, the girls wear white dresses which is a contrast of their personality which is later shown in the video. The dresses are quite old fashioned and plain, which in someways relates to the style of the song, as it is quite slow.

The story line of this video shows the band members watching a group of girls, the girls look sweet and innocent in the beginning, but this look is later changed as you see one of them with a gun behind their back. Another thing which changes their innocent look is the fact one of the girls wipes blood of another girl’s knee, she then proceeds to put this blood on her lips as a lipstick. The band members see this and escape from the house as fast as they can.

There is no live performance from the band, they do appear in the video, the lead singer sings in the video, although, not every time the camera is focused on him.

The style of the video is quite an old fashioned, washed out approach. The washed out colours make the video seem alot older than it is. At random points in the video there are bright lights which give the video a fairty tale "Alice in Wonderland" feel to it.

The colour in the video up until 0:45 the colours are constantly bright and vibrant, as it is the outdoors there is lots of green grass, green tree's and colourful flowers, after 0:45 the colours turn to be very boring, there is a contrast between the girl's white dresses and the boring, cold colours of the inside of the house. 

Video analysis:

In this post I will be analysing 3 music videos with my asigned group. Firstly I will post up what I found in the first video I went over and then the remaining 2 my team mates looked over. We all have agreed that our chosen genre is a rock/inde style of music, so the video I will be looking over is:

 Two Door Cinema Club - I can talk:

Location
It's location is not specific, but in the video it briefly shows hints that the music video is taking place in a (were)house of some sort, with many materials and clothes drapped around the walls and thrown on the floor.

Costumes
The costumes change all the time, but they are very consistantly bright and colourful ( jeans, jackets, t-shirts polo shirts etc) to match the enviroment in which the band is in, and even the music they are playing. For a feel good song like this, the colour needs to reflect on the band's personality as a band, and these colours fit the music and feel well.

StoryLine
As far as the story line of the music video goes, there is non, and do not follow the lyrics of the song. The video is given in an old film like style, starting off the video as a film would start- ie: with credits and the title of the film. In this case, it is the title of the song. Credits are also given in the end, so it is shown as a short experimental film. It seems to be going for a "swinging 60's" style, where film making was more independent experimental and free. The use of some clothes also seem to of been around from that era.

Performance
The perfromance is fast paced and interesting to hold audience attention. Characters never stop moving or walking forward at any point in the video. This was made to keep up the flow of the video and give it more rhythem. Strobe light effects are used during the chorus as well as the bizzare imagry that makes this video. Fabric moves with the beat as the characters play around it. The colours dancing with them as the music does. This is purely for synchronization, linking the colours and music together. Fabrics even become apart of the band at some points, also establishing a link. Other than this, we have images of the band giving us illiusions such as the lead singer having his head removed to reviel another one.

Style and Colour:
The style of the video is a brightly coloured; as I previously said, this was used to asociate the feeling to the band. The vibe is a feel good cheery song, so the use of many colourful clothes all around the house helps to reflect this music and it's genre. It would be unusual to hear this music in a black and white video, because the life that was in the music would of been drained slightly by the imagery.

Extra Notes:
The constant movement and strobe effects in the video is something we plan to use in our music video, which will be based on a Chase scene, so movement will be key. It will give our song more fluidity and the added stobe will give excitment during the chorus. However, we will plan to add more to the video to keep it more interesting.

Ideas & plans: Band, Genre and Package

I'll be noting down what Ideas come into my mind on this part of my journal. These are my own personal ideas and may differ from the finished project, judging by what my entire group decides on what they want to do for the final project. So far I only have 1 idea in my head from 12/09/2011. Updates may come soon and when they do I shall note them down next to the information given under this text.

Plan #1:

Band: Random Hand - Play some ska

Genre: Ska/Rock/Metal

Package:

Video:
The idea I had for the video is quite a simple style. Instead of having a music video being a transition from a band playing to a story line based on the song; there would only be one scene for the band to play in, which would be the entire band's set up in a white room. Considering there is no real story you can put to a song which main line is the repeated phrase "like to play some play some ska yeah I'd like to play some ska."

In the video the band members are freely aloud to be as crazy as they want to infront of the camera during the chourus and calm during the verse, while playing the song, so there will need to be a cast of people who can actually play musical instruments. As well as the cast doing such things as head-banging during the chorus the white back ground will turn black and start flashing as if it were a broken light, so there must be a warning given to those who suffer from epileptic fits. As well as the band, backing people will be needed for the chorus as well. I have to think a little bit more about what they should do while in the background though, but I will update this blog when that idea comes to mind.

Digipak:
From my research, digipaks contain things from posters, to music videos, to 'making of' videos and to posters, so there isn't much variety that can be included in one, but the appearance can differ from other Digipaks. Since the random hand is a lighter heart of metal, colours such as black and white will still be in the mix ( colours usually asociated with punk/metal bands ) but it will also have a little more colour than that. For examlpe, I have an idea to make it so the random hand's digipack is a black, brick styled background with the words "Random Hand" sprayed onto it to give it a grafitii look. Slight red will also be included to boarder the words. As for the contence, the digipak will be a gate fold with the content tucked into a sleave. These include a DVD of the making of music video, a poster of the band signed by each member and a hidden track. So not only does the special/limited addition look nice, but it also has content to actually make it a specail purchase.

Advert:
My idea of the advert is something I think needs touched up on, so I think I will be updating this part of the idea post the most. That rhyme was not intentional. For an advert for the band's new sale on a digipak I had the plan of making the background of the ad the same background of the digipak. The addition being that there will be a group photo of the band on this advert and at the bottom of the poster will be a picture of the digipak with all the content out of it, including it's CD. The advert will display a release date, price and breifly sum up what is in the digipak.

For now, this is my only idea for the project, but whenever I come up with new things to add, I will update this post and include the time of date to note down when I had the sudden spark of genious, if it can be called that.

========EDIT: 16TH SEPTEMBER 2011========

After meeting with my new asigned group, we agreed that for our idea we would use the music from Jamie T to preform a chase video. Unfortunetly, this means that the information above is out-dated, but I decided to keep it up, just to show what my original plans were.

We are currently researching videos to gain ideas for what the video shall include.

Digipak Research:

Digipaks typically consist of a book style (gatefold) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. The Digipak is the exceptional alternative to the standard jewel case packaging. Pictured below is a Digipack to the left, and a Jewel case package to the right.

Digipaks can also be a 4 sided CD case aswell, with the extras tucked into a sleave. This is not the cheapest way of distributing a CD, but it is one of the most atractive methods to the audience. This design also gives the 'special' edition of a CD a more appealing value.

There is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies, the term digipak or Digi-Pak  is often used generically, even when the media holder is a hub or "Soft Spot” rather than a full plastic tray.

Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums.

DVD’s usually include a ‘making of’ video or music videos.

Statement of Intent

Okay, so, let's start off this blog with the Statement of intent. Here we go...

Who I am:
Hello, my name is Conor Geraghty. I study Media aswell as RS, Film and English Lanugage. I am 6 foot 2 inches tall and I like to wear a hat. One of my favourite parts of being in a media studies class is the teamwork in the groups I work with. I'm very happy to work in the team and I am most comfortably asigned with the task of creating story-boards/ideas.

What am I doing:
In this blog, I will be recording plans and updates on the coursework that has been asigned to me this year: Making a music video with a digipak and an advert designed to be placed in a music magazine of sorts.

What did I do for last years coursework:
For last year's coursework, I made a  blog similar to this one to record my progress on a magazine project.
I recorded such things as concpets for the magazine covers and pages etc, Planned and finished pictures I had taken and my evaluation. I hope to do the same this year.

What I hope to achieve through this project:
During this project I hope to improve my video editing skills and camera work, and if in my group that's not what I am asigned to do, then I will try an improve my Photoshop skills and/or written work in the project. Not only that, but I hope to gain more project managment skills and learn much more about media within the music industry. That and finishing the project, of course.