My initial ideas are to produced an indie music video, that follows a band as they go through different scenes - such as a party/festival, outdoors in nice weather with dramatic scenery or in an intimate gig setting.
My inspirations have been Indie bands such as Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys and The Kooks, whose music videos follow similar lines to those which I have mentioned - and they work really well. These type of narratives are quite typical of the Indie genre and so would be quite conventional to use.
Based on the similar artists, I would base my target audience on a young demographic, late teens - early 20's as these seem to be the general fans of the similar artists. They seem to attract a female audience moreover a male audience, probably due to the female gaze perspective given to the bands, with all of them being fairly attractive. To counteract this, the music videos incorporate female characters to be portrayed from a male gaze perspective.
The Kooks - Bad Habit music video
This shows a male gaze perspective, showing the female character who shows off her body in front of a webcam. Her face is rarely shown throughout the video, keeping the attention drawn to her body, suggesting she is only there for the males' pleasure.
Marina and the Diamonds - How to be a Heartbreaker music video
Throughout this video, the artist is surrounded by near naked men, who she interacts with in a provocative way, attracting a female gaze perspective eye towards the men, taking a voyeuristic viewpoint towards the video.
Hall's Reception Theory states that 'people are not passive', and that they interpret a media in their
own way, giving their own twist on how they perceive the messages within. This varies based on a person's individual cultural background and life experiences. This means that it is difficult for a producer to target a single demographic as everyone will interpret the product in a different way, meaning crossovers in demographic groups are likely to occur, bringing in different aspects of an audience - attracting different people - which can even differ between songs.
People take view of a media product in one of three ways:
They either agree with the media text, fully sharing its code and accepts the preferred reading - this is called a hegemonic (dominant) reading.
Or they partly share the text's code and broadly accept the preferred reading - this is called a negotiated reading.
Or they completely oppose the text's codes, disagreeing with the text's dominant code, however they are still understand the preferred reading - this is called a counter-hegemonic (oppositional) reading.
Due to the ease of access to content, audiences can no longer be tracked as easily as they could in the past. TV viewing figures are no longer usable, as there shows can be recorder or watched on demand, so physical viewing figures do not accurately represent the popularity of a show. This is also transferrable to the music industry, with companies such as Spotify and Deezer being available to stream music from, along with YouTube, these make sales figures very hard to accumulate, as streaming does not enable the producers to see how many different times a song has been played by each person, and offline figures are not accounted for to represent premium members who listen offline.
I have had to test a different uploader for my videos as YouTube wasn't working to embed the videos into my blog. For this I have used 'Sendvid' which allows me to easily embed videos with just one line of code.
In this video, I was playing about with new techniques - such as green screening (chroma key) - to enhance the quality of my videos and to become accustomed to the techniques so that I can use these in my production at A2.
Coldplay's album covers show no sign of anchorage or continuity, varying significantly between the different albums, showing little/no resemblance to one another.
A Head Full Of Dreams (2015)
Mylo Xyloto (2011)
Ghost Stories (2014)
Parachutes (2000)
One similarity is that on the majority of their covers, there is no reference to the album name, or indeed the band. This suggests how iconic they are as a band that their fans can identify an album of theirs by subtle identifiers linking it to the band. Their early work (Parachutes - released in 2000) does feature this content, which was before they became as popular as they are now, suggesting how, now they have a huge fanbase, they don't need to be as plain and obvious about their branding as to including their names on the front.
Regularly during performances, the band like to use paint, colours and confetti. This is used by Coldplay to anchor their brand image, making their performances iconic, yet also reference between concerts and music videos.
This paint style is also used in their set design and to decorate their instruments. This further implements the iconic Coldplay brand, being unique and easily identifiable.
Each performance is made iconic through the use of the bright colours used in: lights, graphics, paint, confetti and their clothing. These are all used effectively by Coldplay to create a brand for the band which can be easily identified and is quite unique to them.
The video begins with a continuous shot of Luke walking out of his apartment and flashes back on multiple occasions to his relationship with what is assumed to be his ex-girlfriend and memories they had together.
The scene then changes to be inside a nightclub, where the lighting of the shot is very dark and enigmatic, just as is the majority of the video, except during the flashbacks. This could be representative of the fact that the memories are still fresh in his head, either because: they happened recently, or he thinks about them/her regularly and so they are strong memories that he remembers clearly.
The dark lighting of the club creates confusion, but allows the audience to make out Luke searching around the club, seeing if every blonde girl there is the one he is looking for, remembering a different memory each time.
The female character then shows up at the party, initially in the toilets having a breakdown, but then appears to enter the club and walk right past Luke. He then seems to turn to his friend and give him permission to go for her if he wants.
The whole narrative of the video is very enigmatic, not portraying the storyline very well making it hard to work out for sure what is actually going on. I do not really like this style, however I do like the idea behind the narrative - following a break up and the couples desperation and naievety in dealing with break ups or troubles within relationships. I think, if done right, this could be a successful plot to follow if accompanied with the right song.
Opening shot: A wide, establishing shot of a sunrise over a desert, with the band's name silhouetted; contrasting and standing out on the orange background. Instantly branding the video as theirs.
Second shot: another wide shot of a sunrise, this time, with buffalo silhouettes on screen, underneath the song title and copyright details. Simple branding, but does the job efficiently, getting all relevant details across whilst only being on screen for 4 seconds.
Third shot: A mid shot of a person wearing an elephant costume stood behind bars, holding on and looking trapped, sad and lost. This shot looks less visually appealing than the other two, yet draws your attention in just as well due to the unusual nature of the signifiers on screen.
The video is obviously meant to be comical, not serious, yet still portray a emotional topic, especially for animal lovers. From here, the identity of the band is unclear and doesn't carry any of Coldplay's house style along with it.
The elephant is then followed across central London and subsequently across the globe, catching an aeroplane and then busking, to buy a bike, which he can't afford so settles for a unicycle.
Whilst in London, the British band used conventionally British iconography to convey the race through the capital, incorporating two British police officers, a 'Boris Bike', a telephone box, a London Underground sign, The Tube itself and a sign for Heathrow Airport. This enables a British audience to be able to identify that the elephant is in London, and maybe be able to see this as a metaphor of London being a zoo, especially during the commute.
Chris Martin requested that the elephant costume was the least serious one they could find, in order to keep the vision of paradise separate to the meaning of the song - a girl realising her life isn't what she expected and wishing for a perfect life, metaphorically represented through the elephants conquest of 'paradise'.
Chris Martin's first (and only) appearance in the video comes at 2:23, and he is only visible for 3 seconds.
The elephant then finds the rest of the band in the plains and performs with them. They are dressed up to hint at a resemblance with the members of the band, with one of them wearing converse trainers.
The band are then on stage in their normal clothes, wearing the elephant heads at their concert.
The band have used British signifiers to portray their nationality, with the abroad shots being very vague as to where in the world they are, yet the London part was obviously in the capital and they weren't low key about it. Other than this, the band do not really show their identity, hiding behind elephant costumes for all but 3 seconds during the video. This is unusual for bands to do as they normally would prefer to shout about a successful song, not hide behind some cartoon costumes.
In my video, I would prefer to show the band members, to promote their music by having a successful video to accompany the song, which also exposes them to the limelight instead of just their voices.
During the session we were shown a 3rd year production - Dormire Bene - and also were shown The Making of Dormire Bene. This was interesting as it gave an insight into what extents the people involved go to create a finished production. The Making Of video also showed how many different roles there are within a single production, which I had not really thought about previously. It also showed how each role was important and not as easy as you would expect, especially with the sound technician role, where Heather Kelland had to crouch down into small corners in order to get the best sound quality possible. It also gave an insight into how each role, such as director and editor worked, both separate and individually.
The speaker also explained how the groups were given complete freedom to create whatever they wanted. In the above production, they travelled to France to shoot on location. It was also apparent how well they all got on, which seems important so that there is no conflicting ideas and so that they can settle on decisions which might not suit every single one of them.
The Media and Film Production course at Sheffield Hallam comes across as being high quality, with industry standard hardware and software.
