We struggled to find actors to play the girl roles in our video as none in our sixthform were willing to volunteered. We didn't want to waste too much of our time searching for actors for these parts so we thought it would be easier if we appeared in our own video instead. This would also help us when filming as we know we would be reliable as we don't want to fall behind. I will be playing the role of the 'new girlfriend' and my group partner Millie will be playing the role of the 'ex-girlfriend'. For the boys role we have chosen to use our friend Sam Wilkinson. We chose this particular actor as again we know he is reliable and we would find it easy to direct and work with him as we are all close friends.
Clothing For these actors we have come up with some outfits for them to wear. As we are planning on basing our video on different days and events it is important that we get the actors wearing a couple of different outfits to show that these are different days. We have also thought about making them wear summery and wintery clothes to show the past and present times. For the past events we want our actors to be wearing summery clothes so we have decided that they will be wearing the following for some of our shots;
Millie- Summery Dress
Sam- Shorts and T-shirt or summery Jumper.
For the wintery (Present) events and shots we require our actors to wear the following;
Millie- Tights and warm clothes, Coat
Lauren-Skirt, Jumper, Coat
Sam- Jeans, Jumper and Coat
We thought this would be an affective way to show the different days and it would emphasise the fact that some shots are from the past and some are present. This will show the boy's memorys of before in the summer with his 'ex girlfriend'.
Now we have decided on the band's clothing we needed to choose the best people for the roles. As we have chosen to make a music promo for the indie genre we thought it would be a good idea to stick to the stereotypical style of an indie band. We want our audience to straight away recognise that our band is an indie band, not only through the music style but also through the way they look. It is also vital that we choose actors that we know we can rely on so that we don't end up being let down by them on occasions. We would need to choose people that we will be able to easily get on with so that we can all work well together to get everything done on time.
For the band actors we have decided to use;
-Jake Horton- Guitarist- We chose this actor to play the guitarist as he already knows how to play this song on guitar so when we film him in our video it should really look like he is actually playing it without us editing it too much.
-Sam Harvey- Base- We chose sam to play base in our band as he is also in our media class and knows how important it is to get everything done on specific dates so we know for sure he will be reliable.
-Haydn McMaster- Drums- We chose this actor for this band member role as he already has experience in playing drums so he would know how to appear to be playing them in our music promo. This would help us be able to make our band performance look more realistic and effective.
-Matt Bailey- Lead singer- We have decided to not have the lead singer playing the guitar also as we felt it would be difficult for him to be doing both as we want to focus more on h8is lip syncing rather than his performing with instruments.
Band Clothing Our previous research gave us an idea on how the band like to dress, however we thought it would be worthwhile to research this further to help us shape and form our own band for our video. It is important that we dress our actors so that they appear appealing to our audience. Below are a few pictures of the band, showing their style of dress in their music videos and out of them.
Here you can see that the band are dressed fairly smartly and similar, this shows that they are close as a band as they are dressing the same. This also created the idea that the are professional. This picture shows the band dressing similarly to how they dress in their music videos. They way this band dress has inspired us to make our actors dress in a smart fashion in our music promo as we feel this will look more appealing to the target audience rather than them wearing casual clothes. We want to make our actors look as appealing as possible to ensure that the viewers enjoy the video and like the look we are trying to portray with out band.
In order to help us plan our outfits we decided on a main look that we wanted to achieve with our band actors. We want them to dress in; Smart shirts Tie (Optional) Blazers and Smart Trousers. We have decided that we aren't going to be specific on colours of outfits. This is because viewers may find this a bit boring and we want our band members to stand out quite a bit so that they look even more appealing to the target audience. We will obviously be dressing our other actors playing the story of our video in a different style of clothing.
Now we have a clear idea of which genre music we are using and we have carried out a bit of artist research we can start planning aspects of our music promo. The research we have looked at so far has shown us the types of techniques that the artists use in their videos and has given us ideas for our own. During this piece of research we also began to identify how the band has been formed. The band is made up of five members;
- Lead Singer
- Rhythm Guitarists and backing vocalist
- Lead guitarist
- Drums and percussion.
For our video we plan to create a band that will be made up of actors from our sixthform that are of similar age to us and our target audience. We have planned to use four actors to make up our band. We will have one playing drums, another singing whilst playing guitar, the third playing rhythm guitar and the last will also be playing guitar.
As well as the band members we will also be using other actors to help create our story for the narrative side to our video. We will be requiring 3 actors. We are planning to create the story of a boy that has recently broken up with a girl and is now in another relationship with another individual. However when he is with this new girl, all he can think about is his ex-partner. This relating to the main chorus of the song 'But when I looked at her I thought of only you'. This idea will help us create our narrative video. By creating a kind of 'love story' this will also help us relate to the whole meaning behind this song (Different stages of love). We will need one boy actor and two girl actors to play the roles of these characters.
We hope to use a variety of different locations to set the scene for our video. However we want to try and make sure these locations link in with one another effectively. We will also be using a variety of different sets of clothing for our actors to show that some events features in the video are in the past and present.
We thought that it would be worthwhile to create a risk assessment so that before we started to film our shots we were aware of all of the possible risks that could occur. This could help us to plan to prevent them so that we can film successfully and safely. Our risk assessment is shown below.
After our research into our target audience we have a good fixed idea on exactly who our target audience is going to be. We will be targeting it at both boys and girls as we have identified that both genders like You Me At Six and both fit into the indie scensters category. We will be targeting people within the age range of 15-20 as again we identified that these were the age ranges of the people that are interested in the bands music. Now we needed to think about how exacty we are going to target them with our work.
Firstly as we are aiming at both genders we need to ensure our story is suited for boys and girls. We need to make sure that both can relate to it. Even though we are planning to create a kind of love story due to our research telling us that this is the kind of thing people expect to see in this kind of video, will will make it so that it is not aimed more at girls. We can do this by ensuring that the story can be something that could happen to both genders. A good way to target the girl audience though is to use Goodwin's theory of using a lot of close up shots of the band as this is something they will want to see.
Also, by identifying what fashion labels the target audience is interested in we can link this to our video by making good choices on what our actors wear. It would be a good idea to have them wearing things from the fashion labels that influence them as they are likely to recognise the styles of clothing we will be showing them and are likely to be influenced by them. For example we could have our girl actors wearing clothes from topshop etc. Also we have identified that one of You Me At Six's band members have their own clothing line known as 'Cheer up' clothing. If we have one of our actors wearing this, the fans of You Me At Six and our target market are likely to recognise this brand which will keep them interested in our video.
We can also aim at our target audience through our websites. As we know some of the other icons and artists that our target audience are interested in, we could maybe try to mention these somewhere on our website in order to again draw in their attention to pages on the web.
Obviously, as You Me At Six's type of music fits into the style of music that indie scensters listen to they are also targeting it at this sub culture tribe. However we thought it would be useful again to research further into the actual band's fans and audiences to help us to identify whether their music is targeted at any other types of audience.
We looked at their Facebook page to see the types of people that had 'liked' it. The image below shows this.
71 of my Facebook friends have liked the band's page. The majority of these people are age ranged between 15- 20 and are mixed genders. This can help give us a more fixed general idea of who exactly these indie scensters are (how old etc)
Because both boys and girls have liked this fan page it shows us that the band are targeting their music at both genders, however some of their videos suggest that they are targeting more to girls such as 'stay with me' as the girls are able to connect to the video more , romantically. Although we want to try and target our video at boys as well as girls so we are open to a much larger audience. We will try to create a story that both girls and boys can relate to.
We also thought it would be useful to see what other band's pages our Facebook friends had liked so we searched profiles to find this information out. We came across artists such as;
- The Klaxons
-Vampire Weekend
-30 Seconds to Mars
- Spank Rock
Three of the bands that we have come across here were mentioned in my earlier research into indie scensters. This again shows that some of these 71 friends are likely to fit into this sub-culture tribe.
As we have identified that these are the types of audience that we are going to be trying to target we thought it would be worthwhile for us to look into them further to gain more knowledge of them to help us be able to target them easier with our promo.
It is said that indie scensters exist thanks to the fashionable status of guitar music. In the indie scensters tribes there are significant role reversals with boys and girls both wearing tight fitting clothing such as skinny jeans and sporting over the top make-up with accessories that stand out. Scensters are also known to be festival goers. Indie scensters are affected by the constantly changing fashion and are currently being influenced by high street fashion labels including american apparel, Top shop etc. Some of their main icons include the Klaxons, Vampire Weekend and Spank Rock etc.
This information has helped show that my target audience is of both genders so we are targeting a larger audience with our promo. This information has also helped us understand how they dress and the types of fashion labels they are influenced by. We can use this information to try and target them specifically through the use of clothing etc that can be seen in our video. It is clear that this is the right target audience for our style of music promo and track as it is fashionable guitar music which is something they love.
Below are images from the internet to show the style of an indie scenster.
We also wanted to look into the indie scenster's media consumption. This could potentially help us when creating our websites. The image below shows that their highest media consumption is of the internet.
Because of this it is important that I target the audience effectively through the use of my website auxiliary task as these individuals are likely to use these kinds of websites for the latest news and updates on the artists they like to listen to. As I already know who their icons are I could mention these on this webpage somehow as well as the fashion labels they are interested in.
One of the most important aspects of this production is the target audience. It is vital that we are aware of who our audience is and how we can target them with our music promo and auxillary tasks.We can also use our questionnaire results to give us a clear understanding of what they would want and expect from our music promo to try to determine what type of audience they really are. As we are creating an indie music promo our target audience are obviously going to be interested in this kind of music. This therefore means that they will be able to recognize indie music promos when they watch them due to the style of video, what is displayed in them and the clothing of the artist etc. Later I will discuss how we have planned to target our audience through the use of clothing for one of our actors. Because of the style of music performed in our video, the target audience are likely to be 'indie' also. It is not likely that an individual that is a 'metal head' or a 'chav' is going to listen to or like this kind of music. A metal head is likely to prefer much more intense, darker and louder music, and a chav is more likely to prefer rap etc. Whereas indie music is usually associated with 'indie scensters' which I found out from researching the UK tribes website. This can be seen by the way that these types of individuals dress, they normally dress similarly to the artists that they listen to. I found this out when I asked one of the people that answered my questionnaire saying that the Maccabees were their favourite indie bands. I analysed the way he dressed and then looked at the bands style of dress and both were very similar.
Now we know what track we are going to base our music promo on we can focus on researching the artists. The track 'Crash' was created by a band known as You Me At Six and does not already have a music video. We thought it would be a good idea to look at the band's other tracks to get an insight into how they put their music videos together and the types of techniques used in each.
We also felt this would benefit us as it would help us identify how the band dress and work together. It would also show us how they place themselves in the videos. This would give us ideas on how we should dress our characters in the music video and how we should position our band actors.
The first track looked at was;
You Me At Six- Finders Keepers
This music promo consists mainly of different shots of the band members. It shows many close ups of eash of the artists which gives the audiences a view on the band's dress sense (Smart Casual). When watching this particular video and others also by the band we found that there is a lot of focus on the lead singer in the shots. There are establishing shots of the band however the lighting has been arranged to put most of the focus on the lead singer standing at the front of the location used leaving the rest of the band in shadows almost. We think this is an effective technique to use and will consider using this in our music video. The lighting has been arranged effectively throughout the video, we particularly liked the way the video starts off dark and dull but then brightens up as more of the band are shown in the shot. This again is something we may consider using in our promo. Another technique we also liked in this video was the use of slow motion effects.
This video clearly follows Goodwin's theory point of meeting the demands of the record label as it provides numberous amounts of shots of the band performing. This video is not as narrative as we are hoping our video will be so we will be taking into consideration using some of the techniques we enjoyed from this video as well as creating a narrative style for our own.
You Me At Six - Underdog
Again this music promo uses the technique of arranging the lighting so that the band are playing in 'shadows' and there is no real focus on them yet. As soon as the lyrics start the band are brought into focus as the lights turn on and you are provided with an establishing shot of the band. Once again after this shot you are provided with a close up of the lead singer, similarly to the previous video we looked at. This again is following Goodwin's theory by meeting the demands of the record label. Once again we are beginning to get a real idea of how the band are dressed in their videos and how they position themselves as a band when they are performing with their instruments. This video is also more narrative as it is telling a short story which is something we will be including in our promo.
Another thing we also noticed from this video was that the age of the actors featured in it. They appear to be in the age group of the band's target audience of around 14-20 years old. This would mean that it allows the audience to be able to relate to the story being told in the promo. Because of this it would also mean that the actors may seem more appealing to the target audience. This is something we want to happen with our music promo so we will be asking people that are a similar age to us to appear in our video. This idea will help us appeal more to our audience and target them better as our audience will also include people of around the same age as us.
You Me At Six- No one does it better
This particular music promo goes for a slightly different approach to the two previous ones we have looked at. It does not include many shots of the band performing with their instruments but rather includes them more in the actual 'story' of the video this time. They may have done this to appeal even more to the audience and to meet the demans of the record label as you are still being provided with even more shots of the band members. This video again uses a lot of close ups of each band member. For this video they are also dressed slightly different. Instead of their usual 'smart casual' look they have gone for just 'casual'. This may be to express to the audience their many different styles of dress. They may not want their audience to get the impression that they dress the same all the time. This could express that they like to change their image now and again to appear 'different'. This could again be to keep the target audience interested in them. For our music promo it is important that we plan out how we want all of our actors to dress in order to look appealing to our own audience.
The pace of this song is fairly slow and mellow. There is a relationship between the visuals and the music. During the slow pace of the song there are slow edits and the motions used for the story of the video are also slow. For example the birds that fly across the screen are moving slowly and the actor in the shot with the bath is also doing the same. However when the song hits the chorus the shots speed up slightly to match the pace of the song. We think it would be a good idea for us to give ourselves the challenge of including a narrative style, meeting the record label demands and trying to create this music and visuals relationship for our own video. This will help us to gain more skill in filming and editing.
You Me At Six- Stay with me
We noticed that for the first two videos we looked at the band had used similar locations and lighting. However in this video the band has gone for a completely different kind of location. The band appear to be performing in a small field like location. This setting uses bright colours instead of the dull dark colours used in many of the band's other promos. As always the video uses lots (and lots and lots) of shots of the band members; meeting the demands of the record label and its audience. There is also a clear relationship between the music and the visuals. The pace of the song is fast which matches the quick paced shots that are used when the song hits the chorus.
This video seems to show many shots of the bands and their instruments which is something myself and my other group member really liked about this video. We want to consider using close up shots of our band actors and their instruments for our video. We thought this was an effective way to show them performing.
After viewing these tracks by our chosen artists, we have decided on the sorts of techniques we want to try to include in our music promo. The videos have helped us to come to the conclusion that we want to provide our audience with many shots of our band performing, this will make our video more appealing to them as we have realised that it is a good idea to use actors that are of similar age to ourselves and our target audience. These videos have also helped us identify that it is also an effective idea to ensure there is a good clear relationship between the visuals and music so that everything runs smoothly together at similar pace. The videos have also started to give us an idea on how the band shape themselves and the ways in which they dress. We will carry out some further research to get a clearer understanding of the band and how we should create our own.
