Indie Tracks Research

Now we have researched and decided on a genre of music and we have a clear idea of who our target audience is and what they expect and want from our video we can start to research different tracks to help us decide which one to choose. From our questionnaire we have an idea on which artists to research as these are the bands that the audience said are their favourites. 

The artists we decided to research were;

The Maccabees
You Me At Six
General Fiasco
Foster The People

The first track we looked at was;

The Maccabees - Love you better

The whole of this video contains shots and close ups of the artists in the band and their instruments. There is no relationship between the lyrics and the video so therefore it is not narrative. However if we were to make a video for this we would ensure the lyrics create a story with our video. The many close ups allow the audience to familiarise with the band members and their dress sense. The track is fairly fast paced and speeds up as it hits the chorus. Some of the edits have also been done to match the pace of the song. However as there is already a video for this song we felt that if we were to take ideas from it the two videos may look too similar. 

You Me At Six - Crash

This track does not already have a video for it so this would be a good song for us to choose as we would not be tempted to copy parts of it too much. This song is a fairly slow paced song that speeds up on the chorus. The lyrics in this song talk of a love story. We researched the meaning behind this song and the information we got was that it is about how someone can have such a big impact on your life. The information said that each verse was a different stage of love. 

General Fiasco - Ever so shy

This song is fast paced and the video focuses on the band members. It uses a lot of close ups of each band member. The shots have been matched up to the pace of the song. However we felt this song did not create a love story as well as the previous tracks could. 

Foster the people - I would do anything for you

This song is moderately paced and does not already have a music video created for it. We also felt the lyrics to this song could also create a good love story for our video. 

After researching these tracks we felt that the best one for us to create a music video for would be You me at six - Crash. We came to this conclusion firstly because it was one of the tracks that did not already have a video for. So this would mean we would not be at risk of copying too many ideas from it. We also liked the pace of this song as we felt all of the others were too fast and a lot of our edits and shots are going to be quite long whereas the shots on the other videos were very quick edits. 

As we also wanted to create a video that was going to be narrative and would tell a love story we felt that this song was most suitable for this as the lyrics and meaning behind the song are based on this idea. This is also a song that me and my group member really like and we are also fans of the band so we felt that this would help us understand how to dress the characters in our video and we would also therefore enjoy making a video to this particular song. 

Questionnaire

For part of our research we decided to undertake a questionnaire to help us understand exactly what our target audience wants and expects from our indie music video. Firstly we want to know if the audience actually enjoys this genre of music so this will be the first question on the survey. Our questionnaire will hopefully help give us more ideas on how to make our music video more appealing to the audience. To make our questionnaire more effective we decided to incorporate the points in Goodwin's theory into our questions. This will help us to identify whether or not they prefer a video that is narrative or one that involves live footage of the artists performing etc.

 

The questions we included were;

1. Do you enjoy listening to the indie style of music?
2. What do you expect to see in music videos of this genre?
3. Do you like these videos to be narrative? (To tell a story)
4. What kinds of stories do you like to see in an indie music video?
5. Do you like to see a lot of close ups of the artists?
6. Do you enjoy indie music videos that contain live footage of the artists performing, e.g. in concerts?
7. Does the idea of intertextual reference interest you? (Do you like videos that are based around T.V shows or films)
8. What kinds of films would you expect an indie video to be set around?
9. List two of your favourite indie artists. 

Below is a picture of the questionnaire that we handed out to people within the age range of our target audience.

Below is a picture of our questionnaire that has been filled out and answered.

We collected all of the results in and all of the answers to the first question were 'yes'. This information is useful to us as it shows that our target audience are interested in indie music and do enjoy listening to it. This shows us again that we have chosen the right genre to base our video around.

A lot of the answers to the second questions were things such as couples and love stories. This helps us understand what type of theme the audience expects to see in our music video. It is important that we include this kind of idea in our indie video so that it appeals to the audience.

The results from the third question also showed us that the audience like the videos to be narrative and tell a story. We have decided we are going to include this in our video so it is important that the song we decide to choose has lyrics that are not too difficult to make a story out of. We will need to make sure that there is a clear relationship with the lyrics and our video.

We asked them what kinds of stories they like indie music videos to tell and the majority of the answers were 'love stories'. This again links back to the results in our second question. When researching the indie genre we did find that a lot of these videos told this particular type of story. As the audience have said they would expect to see couples in the video it will definitely be a good idea for us to create a love story for our track. Someone said the would like to see a scary story told however we felt this was not suitable to this genre and felt it fit more into the rock category.

We also asked the audience if they would like to see a lot of close ups of the artists as this would be helping us meet the demands of the record label. The results showed that everyone answered 'yes'. This shows that the audience do enjoy these types of shots of the artists so this is something will will definitely be including in our video. As we will be providing close ups of the artists we want to make sure that we choose people to make up our band that are going to be fairly good at lip syncing so that our video looks professional.

A lot of the audience said they don't enjoy live footage of the artist being included in the music videos so this is something we will not be including in ours. We also decided not to do this as we would find it difficult to find a location that would create the live footage image. The audience also said they didn't want to see any intertextual reference in the video so this again is something that we will not be incorporating into our video. To follow this question we also asked what kinds of films they would like to see in the video if they were to say yes to the previous questions. The majority answered 'love story'. A lot of the questions link together on the idea of involving couples and a love theme so this is definitely what we are going to do with our video. We will be creating a love story that fits the lyrics of the track we decided to choose.

Finally we asked them to list two of their favourite indie artists to help us know who to research when deciding on what track to choose. The artists that were listed were ones such as,

The Maccabees

You me at six

Foster the people

General Fiasco

and others. We will be researching tracks made by these artists to help us decided on which one will help us create our love story the best. 

Genre Research

Before we could start planning our music video we needed to decide on a song to base it around. This song needed to be either 10 years old or not already have a video created for it. We also needed to decide which genre of music we were going to use. To help us decide on a genre and song for our video we researched a few different genres each with their own target audience. It is vital that when we do decide on a genre we learn about this type of target audience and work to make a video appealing to them. We decided to research three different genres, these being;
Indie
Rock
Pop
We felt these would be useful genres to research as myself and my group enjoy each of these genres so if we were to choose one of them we would definitely enjoy making the video for this style of music. This would also make it easier for us when finding a song we want to use. We also felt that researching these would help us as we could take ideas from these to help us understand what is required of ours. We decided it would be most useful to research a song from each genre to help us get a clear idea of how the filming and editing is used in each.

Indie
The music video decided to research for this particular genre was: The Libertines - Don't look back into the sun. I chose to look at this video as I feel it clearly demonstrates a point in Goodwin's theory as it uses shots of its live set in its music video. This is something that me and my other group member found a lot of indie bands did. This video also uses a lot of close ups of the band members which is usually done to meet the demands of the record label. Again this idea is used in a lot of indie songs music videos so if we do decide to choose this particular genre this is something we should also consider doing. This video also uses a lot of quick paced shots to make up the video. This is to emphasize the fast tempo of the song.

The characters in parts of this video are also dressed the same which adds a professional feel to the band. Myself and my group partner thought if we did choose this genre it would be a good idea to dress our characters that we choose for our band in the same types of clothing. This idea can also help the target audiences identify the arrtists dress sense which will then help them to familiarise with them even more and get to know them better.

If my group was to decide to choose indie as the type of genre for our video I feel it would benefit us as we are both really into this kind of music so this would make it a lot easier for us to decide on a particular track that we would base our video on. This would save us a lot of time. We also found a lot of ideas that are used in many indie music videos that we would like to incorporate into ours.

The link for this video can be found below;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLYsIESNtUc

Rock
The video decided to research for this particular genre of music was: Foo Fighters - All my life. This video focuses its filming on the band performing with their instruments. Again it is meeting the demands of the record label as it is providing you with lots of close up shots of the artists. This video provides you with fairly long shots of the artists playing their instruments and singing which myself and my group feel is a good idea that we may consider using in our video. This particular style of genre is usually set in a dark setting with the artists wearing dark clothes to emphasize the idea of rock. 
For this particular video there is also a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. The video provides you with shots that flow with the tempo of the song. When the track begins to speed up the shots get quicker. This is also something that my group thinks would be a good idea to incorporate into our video. 
This video also uses the idea of footage from a concert. They have set their video up to be like them performing in one of their concerts. However this footage foes not seem to be live. They begin the video with a shot of the sign saying "Foo Fighters, in concert tonight". This again is following the points of Goodwin's theory by using the location of their concert. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ04WbgI9rg

Pop
The video that I have analysed for the pop genre is Katy Perry - Last Friday Night. I decided to research this particular song as I felt it clearly represented Goodwin's theory as their is a relationship between the lyrics and the video. This song is very narrative. The song talks about having a crazy party last friday night and that is exactly what is going on in the video. This video is typically pop as it creates the common theme of a party involving lots of bright colours, young people dancing around and love. This pop video is also over the top which seems to be the case with many songs of this particular genre. Pop songs commonly use the idea of iconography by each having the same style theme and setting.

This video as well as many other pop music videos seems to use many extras to dance around in the background to make up the crowds in the parties. However this is something that my group may not be able to do as we will find it difficult to find this many people to participate in our video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A

After researching each type of genre we have come to a decision. We have decided that it would be most suitable for us to choose to make a video for the indie genre. We have decided firstly not to choose the pop genre for our coursework because we felt these types of videos were too over the top and typical. Pop videos also have too many extras and this is something that is not possible for us to do. However we will be taking the idea of making our video narrative as we feel this will help us to create a good story for our video and it will be less difficult.

We also decided not to choose the rock theme as we thought this was too heavy and dark for us. A lot of rock artists also use live footage in their videos and this is something that we decided we didn't want to do with ours.

We thought the indie genre was the best one for us as myself and my other group member enjoy this style of music the most. A lot of indie videos also use a lot of close up shots of the artists which is something we thought worked really well. We will be finding people to play the band in our music video to lip sync the songs well so our video looks more professional. We will need to do this as most indie songs are sung my males and myself and my group are both females so we will need to find someone to fit the part.

We also found that this particular genre has the target audience of 15-30. We have also decided to use this as our target audience as our age range is included in this so we feel it will be easier as we will understand better what this audience wants and expects from our video. A way in which we could get a better insight into what this target audience want from our video is by using a questionnaire to identify what they like to see in an indie song music video. This will help us to make our video appealing to them.

Brief chosen to follow

For our media coursework myself and my group are required to choose which brief we would like to make. We could decide between either a music video or a movie trailer. We have decided we would like to create a music video as we feel we would work better with this style brief. This is because we have already had experience with filming a music video in our practice task which we feel will now help us with our final brief. We also felt that the research had influenced our decision towards this brief as we now have sufficient knowledge on what is expected from a music video. 

Another reason for us choosing this brief is because we felt that it would be too difficult to come up with a script for a movie trailer and we felt that creating one would have taken up a lot of our time. We felt it was easier to just stick to lip syncing in a music video. Myself and my group also love every kind of music and know we will enjoy getting to make our own video for a song that we both enjoy. 

For my portfolio I will be blogging each step taken in the process of making our video and completing the two auxillary tasks that are required of us. These two tasks are;

A creation of the cover of the CD track

A creation of an advertisement in a magazine for this CD

Movie Trailer Analysis

The Hunger Games

Movie Trailer

Now we have looked at music videos we are going to analyse a movie trailer to help us decided on which brief to focus our own work on. We thought this would be beneficial to us as it will give us a clearer idea of the types of things that need to be included in both a music video and a film tailer, which will then help influence our decision towards a particular one. 

This video has been created in a way that increases the intensity and excitement as it goes on. At first the shots are slow and long lasting but as the trailer goes on the shots and clips get faster and shorter that creates a pace that builds your excitement up and quickly makes the whole thing more intense. If myself ad my other group member were to choose to create a movie trailer this may be something that we should consider to help create interest quickly.

This film trailer gives you a good overview of the film. Straight away you are introduced to the main character and the other actors that are filmed a lot also. This shows the audience who they can expect to see throughout the rest of the film. This particular movie trailer does not use a voice over to explain the story but instead character dialogue. This in a way could give you the idea that you are hearing the story through the characters point of views. Even though you are introduced to what the 'Hunger Games' actually are, the video builds up to this event however to not give to much away it cuts off when you see the games start. This builds suspense helping influence the audience to watch the real movie.

To create a movie trailer like this you would have to have a rather high budget as you can tell this from the professional actors/actresses and the locations and pieces of equipment used. If we were to choose this brief we would have to think about our location very carefully to make it look more professional. 

Practice Filming Task

During one of our media lessons we were given a practice filming task. This was given to us to help us prepare for when we start filming our coursework. We were all put into groups and then given a song to which we would make a music video for. The song myself and my group were given was Dolly Parton 9-5. This was a song that me and my group were fairly familiar with which we felt would be of an advantage to us. The main point of this task was to help us practice with filming shots and editing them into a full video. This task would also help influence our decisions on which brief we would choose; either a music video or a film trailer. 

Firstly before we started filming it was important for us to plan exactly what we were going to film, where and when. As a group we listened to the song a few times over to get even more familiar with it and to help us learn the lyrics better so that if we were required to use lip syncing in our video we would find it easier to do so. We decided to search youtube to see if the artist already had a video for this song to see if we could take a few ideas from this to help us with ours. However the only videos we found were live ones in which she was performing on a stage for a large crowd. Although we noticed that she used props such as desks which fit in well with the theme of the song. This idea helped us to come up with the location for our video. We decided the best place to record was in the school itself as this was convenient for us and as it is in a work environment this would also help set the scene and link to the lyrics in the song. By using the school as a setting this would also help us keep this video fairly simple as this was something we wanted to do as we had not filmed this kind of footage before. 

We brainstormed and made small storyboards to help us lay out how we were going to record the video. The brainstorm included the types of shots we wanted to use, who was going to be in each shot and what role they would be playing in the video. By assigning roles in the video this helped us to stay organised. 

As a group we decided that as mentioned in Goodwin's theory we wanted to make our video narrative so that the video had a clear relationship with the lyrics. We decided we would do this by including shots of people hard at work. On our storyboard we included the lyrics to various parts of the song and drew a small sketch of what would be happening during this time. To make our video as narrative as possible, during the time where Dolly sings "I swear this man is out to get me", we decided to include a shot of a woman at work getting told off by her boss. 

We also decided that we would use the lip syncing idea. We had one of our group members mouth the words while two of us sat beside her and danced to keep up with the fast tempo of this song. 

As this was only a practice task I feel our group worked well together to produce our final video. Each one of us contributed ideas and everyone was happy to take part in the making and editing of the videos . We made sure as a group that everyone participated equally which helped us not waste any time and we managed to produce our video in around a week. It took us a while to get the hang of editing the shots and putting them all in the right order but after a while of experimenting with it we managed to pull it all together nicely. Now I have done this practice task I feel I have more experience in filming and would have less difficulty producing my coursework. 

Below is the final video created by our group for Dolly Parton's 9-5. The video has also been uploaded to youtube. 

Music Video analysis

Goodwin's theory can be used as a good effective way of analysing music videos. The six points can be identified in any music video and I will use the theory to analyse videos of my choice. I have blogged below the videos I have analysed. 

1. Weezer- Buddy Holly

This particular video depicts the theme of the band members singing on a stage within a small america diner. The same diner that was a hit setting in the old well-known television show 'Happy Days'. The sixth point in Goodwin's theory talked about intertextuality being use within a video. I feel this video clearly demonstrates the idea of this as it is creating a parodic view on the old show. The video starts with a reporter talking about the band members performance, so it is giving the impression that they are performing their song on this show. During the video you also hear the phrase "stay tuned for more Happy Days" which again shows that the artists are mocking the show. The video also includes the laughing of audiences which is commonly used for television shows and ends with conversation. This video also meets the demands of the record label as it provides you with many close ups of each member in the band, and the main focus of the video is the band itself which the audience is sure to want to see a lot of in the video.

2. Usher- Love in this club

This particular R&B music video demonstrates the first point I listed in Andrew Goodwin's theory. It shows that the same genres of music do include iconography in their videos as many have very similar themes. Usher's video contains the typical situation of the artist in a club scene surrounded by beautiful women paying attention to them. In this video there is also voyeuristic treatment of the female body. As it is set in a club scene there are many women dancing around in small amounts of clothing that is drawing in a lot of attention. This idea is again used in many other R&B music videos. This video also shows a link between the lyrics and the theme of the video as it says "make love in this club" and the actual video itself is set in a club. There are also a lot of close-ups of the artist which shows it is meeting the demands of the record label. 


3. Michael Jackson- Thriller

I chose to analyse this video as I felt it clearly demonstrated the point in Goodwins theory of the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. You can identify straight away that the theme of this music video is going to be horror due the name of the track. Because of this identification you expect to see thrilling images throughout and that is exactly what this video gives you. The close ups in this video play an important part on representing the thrilling lyrics of this video. The close ups are used to show the change between when the artist is normal and when he turns into the monster. The close ups help show the visual change which has relevance to the lyrics of the track. There is clear relationship throughout the video between the lyrics and the video itself, the lyrics clearly demonstrated by the theme of the video are ones such as ''it's close to midnight, and something evils lurking in the dark" and "Cause this is thriller, thriller night, and no ones gonna save you from the beast about to strike". The video is very narrative as a lot of the terrifying things mentioned in the lyrics are happening in the video. There is also a link between Michael and his dance routines as he makes them very unique in every one of his videos. 

Andrew Goodwins Theory

Andrew Goodwin published the book known as 'Dancing in the Distraction factory' in which he mentions six points on how to analyse music vidoes. I will use this theory to help me analyse two music videos of my choice.

His Theory;

1. The music video demonstrates genre characteristics for example stage performances in rock videos and dance routines.

2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the videos.

3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals. (Amplifies, contradicts, illustrates)

4. Demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artists and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. (A visual style)

5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens with screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6. There is often intertextual reference. (Films and TV programs)