Presentation (Handout + Powerpoint)

For this project, we had to put together a treatment, which included a handout and a presentation to convey our ideas for our band, music video, and ancillary texts. Here is what we made:

Hair & Make Up Test 1

As bands all have a specific style for each member, we thought we would straighten Sam's hair to try out a new look for the video.

In the end we decided to keep it how it was naturally and spray it a different colour.

Feedback from Group Meeting & Changes

This is our feedback from our changes to our project since our last meeting.

• Good scenes, must be planned out extremely well. Add another transition scene, as to not go from one opposite to another - now have a scene of her coming home to an empty house.
• Band name is now officially We Fall Apart.
• Because we are in 2 different classes, we will present at lunch rather than in a lesson.

We will use this feedback and make changes to our project accordingly.

Original Artist of Song Choice (VersaEmerge)

Our song is by this band VersaEmerge, so I researched their band history to know what influenced their type of music and videos, to see if we could learn from their band identity and apply it to our project.

VersaEmerge are a rock band from Florida, formed in 2005. Since then, they have released an album and 5 EPs, have 42,000 followers on Twitter and 226,800 likes on Facebook.

VersaEmerge originally consisted of 5 members, and eventually only consisted of 2 members: Sierra Kusterbeck and Blake Harnage. VersaEmerge were originally a rock band, but have recently had more electronic influences in their music.

Fixed At Zero was their first single from their LP, also titled Fixed At Zero. Here, there music is a lot more post-hardcore than their newer songs.

Now that the band consists of just 2 people, and they have left their record label Fueled By Ramen, their music has become more electronic, and arguably more mainstream. Because this is sort of a reboot of VersaEmerge's image, we thought that their new music would be good for debuting a new artist.

VersaEmerge have a clear band identity and are very unique with their niche style of music (electro rock and female fronted) and there are no other bands out there like them. This will help us give our own band an identity that draws on the originality of VersaEmerge.

Group Meeting 17/09/2013

Here is our group meeting from the 17th of September, to discuss our ideas and get feedback from our teacher to develop our ideas.

Music Video Websites

Evanescence 

The Evanescence website features a colour scheme synergistic to their newest Album's artwork. It has social networking links at the top, followed by a revolving photo gallery, which has adverts for various Evanesence products (apps, videos, albums, fan clubs etc). Bellow this are navigation links followed by a feed of recent Evanesence news. The Navigation bar features links to Home, news, biography, videos, photos, music shows, store, fan club and contact.

Summary:

• Colour scheme synergistic with latest album artwork
• Social networks
• Photo gallery
• Evanescence merchandise advertised
• Navigation bar at the top
• Feed of latest news

Imagine Dragons

Similarly Imagine Dragons' website features a colour scheme synergistic with their album artwork, with clouds in the background which resemble that at the top of their newest album. The website features a feed from various social networks on their home page, with links to these social networks, audio files, and tour dates to the right of the feed. The navigation bar is at the top, featuring links to Home, News, Bio, tour, music, videos and store

Summary:

• Colour scheme synergistic with latest album artwork
• Feed from social networks on home page
• Navigation bar at the top
• Links to social networks

Tonight Alive

Tonight Alive's website features their newest Album Art as a background, continuing with a similar colour scheme when you scroll past where the artwork would normally finish. The navigation bar is at the top and features links to Home, News, Bio, Blog, Tour, Gallery, Videos, Music, Shop, and contact. Below that there is a gallery of various tonight alive products, tour adverts, albums and promo shots. Beneath that is a news feed consisting of various pieces of information. Also on the front page are tour dates and an audio player as well as social media links.

Summary:

• Album cover used as background
• Navigation bar at the top
• Tonight Alive merchandise advertised
• News feed
• Tour dates

Enter Shikari

Enter Shikari's website features a background of their latest album artwork. At the top of the sight there are social media links. Bellow this is the band's logo followed by a navigation bar with links to shows, videos, photos, Forum, Downloads, Links, UK&Rest of the world merch store, USA/Canada Merch Store. Below the navigation bar there is a news feed, a featured video, a tour dates list and an opportunity to sign up for mail. 

Summary:

• Album cover used as background
• Social Media links
• Navigation bar relatively at the top
• News feed
• Featured video
• Tour dates
• Mailing list application

Female Fronted Bands

I researched into the popularity of female fronted bands, as they are in themselves a subgenre. I looked at where they were from, how many Twitter followers they have, when they were formed and how many likes they had on Facebook, to see what kind of fanbase we think our band would have.

Paramore

• American rock band, formed in 2004
• Main fanbase is 13-24 year old girls
• Hugely successful internationally (albums charted all over the world)
• 27 million likes on Facebook
• 2.5 million followers on Twitter

Evanescence

 

• American rock band, formed in 1995
• Main fanbase is 15-24 year old boys and girls but they have a lot of appeal to many age groups.
• Extremely successful worldwide with a huge fan base
• 21.5 million likes on Facebook
• 800,000 followers on Twitter

We Are The In Crowd

• American pop-punk band, formed in 2009
• Main fanbase is 13-21 year old girls
• 250,000 likes on Facebook
• 250,000 followers on Twitter

Halestorm

• American rock/metal band, formed in 1998
• Main fanbase is 15-24 year old males and females
• 600,000 likes on Facebook
• 117,600 followers on Twitter

We think our band would have similar fanbases to these bands, and therefore hopefully would be as successful if we market them as well as these bands are marketed.

Album Artwork

As our band is releasing their debut album, I decided to look only at debut cover art from successful bands of similar genre for inspiration as that's where I feel the most relevant conventions would be used.

Enter Shikari - Take To The Skies

This is the cover of Enter Shikari's first full length LP, "Take To The Skies". It is graphic design rather than a picture from a band photoshoot. 

Evanescence - Fallen

This album cover focuses entirely on Amy Lee, the lead singer from the band. I like the blue tint incorporated into the black and white layout, which could come in handy as we want to have a defining colour that represents our band. 

Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory

This is yet again graphic design rather than an actual picture of the band. 


Paramore - All We Know

This album cover is not graphic design or a picture of the band/lead singer. This is a concept album cover, which is another path we could take. The sofa seems to be important iconography as it stands out from the rest of the mise-en-scene on the album cover. We would have to think about this sort of mise-en-scene if this is the path we take.

Within Temptation - Enter

Like Evanescence, this album cover features the lead singer from the band.


In conclusion, bands tend to push forward the lead singer's image to portray the band itself on album covers or the use of graphic design to create atmospheric imagery that will entice the target audience as well as branch out. Out of the three female fronted bands, two of them show the lead singer. We will have to think about this when deciding on our own, as we want to use conventions but still be able to be unique.

Similar Bands

In order to gain ideas of how our band should present ourselves, I looked at how bands of similar genre presented themselves.

Enter Shikari

Enter Shikari are a British, Electronicore band. Their music is generally significantly heavier and more distorted than our chosen song is.

As can be seen from this montage, Enter Shikari present themselves as straight white guys, mostly dressing in fairly generic clothing. Their target audience is 15-24 year old men.

Linkin Park

Linkin Park are have always had electronic elements to their music however the most recent album is much closer in style to No Consequences than their earlier work

Similarly to Enter Shikari, Linkin Park do no present themselves as anything extra-ordinary, dressing mostly in casual atire such as shirts and jeans. They target audience is 15-25 year old Women and Men

AWOLNATION
AWOLNATION are an electro-rock band who have a slower vibe than VersaEmerge, Enter Shikari and Linkin Park

As can be seen their presentation does not differ massively from Linkin Park or Enter Shikari and they present themselves mostly in casual clothes.  Their target audience is 15-24 year old men and women

Innerpartysystem

Innerpartysystem use a lot more electro in their music then any of the previously mentioned bands.

As can be seen this band hold a very similar presentation to the other mentioned bands. Their target audience is 15-24 year old men and women.

Marketing Campaign Influences

As our project was to create a new artist, we had to research existing bands, and how their marketing strategies worked.

We decided to look at The 1975 to see how they promoted their new album that was recently released.

After following The 1975 on Twitter, I got a direct message from them. This was very effective because it was more personal and direct than a tweet, and it made me click on the link and pre-order the album, and makes you feel like you have connected more with the band.

A few days before the album was released, they would post lyrics to each song on the album on Facebook and Twitter, which built up anticipation for fans of the band, and made them eager to buy the album.

They also had a countdown on Facebook for about a week before the album was released, again to create anticipation and remind their fans to pre-order the album. They also had adverts on TV, for potential fans who maybe don't use social networking as much.

Overall I think this is an extremely effective campaign, and we will use this as inspiration when we promote our band.

Fashion Influences

We wanted our styling to be very distinctive for our band, so we took a lot of inspiration from Hayley Williams. Here is a moodboard of what we found:

This helped us create a specific style typical of the genre we picked, which we will base our clothes on for our music video.

Props, Costumes & Actors List

Performance:

Props:

• Electric guitar
• Drum kit
• Microphone
• Microphone stand
• Keyboard
• Laptop/MacBook

Costumes:

• Lead singer: black top, navy leggings, black boots
• Synth player: blue shirt, black trousers (?)
• Guitarist: black shirt, black trousers (?)
• Drummer: purple top, black leggings

Actors:

• Lead singer: Anjana Stephens
• Synth player: Alex Ekonomou
• Guitarist: Sam Durdy
• Drummer: Emily Lawson

Narrative scene - red carpet:

Props:

• Film logo backdrop
• Red carpet
• Cameras

Costumes:

• Dress for the actress
• Dresses & suits for paparazzi
• Suit for boyfriend

Actors: 

• Actress: Anjana Stephens
• Boyfriend: (? Ben Santimano?)

Narrative Scene - Accepting Award

Props:

• Podium
• Award

Costumes:

• Dress for actress 
• Dress for Awards Presenter

Actors:

• Actress Anjana Stephens
• Awards Presenter: Vivien Stenczel

Narrative Scene- Photoshoot

Props:

• Lighting Equipment
• White Backdrop
• Camera (+Equipment)
• Make Up

Costumes:

• Actress: Dress
• Photographer: Tight Jeans, Shirt,
• Make up artist: Casual Clothes

Actors:

• Actress: Anjana Stephens
• Photographer: Sam Palk
• Make up artist: Emily Lawson

Narrative Scene - Fan signing

Props:

Desk

Backdrop

Piecies of paper

Books

Pen

Costumes:

• Actress: Casual shirt
• Actor: Casual Shirt
• Security Guard: Shirt, Tie
• Fan: Casual clothes

Actors:

• Acterss: Anjana Stephens
• Actor: Sam Durdy
• Security Guard :Alexandres Ekonomou

Narative Scene -Swimming Pool

Props: 

• Champagne Bottle 
• Wine Glasses
• Swimming Pool

Costumes:

• Actress: Flowing dress

Actors:

• Actress: Anjana Stephens

Crying and screaming against wall

Props:

• Wall

Costumes:

Actors:

• Actress: Anjana Stephens

Arguing with boyfriend:

Props:

• N/A

Costumes:

• Actress: Jogging Bottoms, Tshirt
• Actor:  Jeans, plaid shirt

Actors:

• Actress: Anjana Stephens
• Actor: (Ben Santimano?)

 

Music Video Set Ups

We have come up with 9 set ups for our music video:

1) Performance in the Seward Studio:

2) Narrative red carpet:

3) Narrative awards ceremony:

4) (Narrative) photoshoot:

5) (Narrative) Fan signing: 

6) (Narrative) Swimming pool:

7) (Narrative) taking off make up:

8) (Narrative) crying against wall:

9) (Narrative) arguing with boyfriend: 

Target Audience Profile

Here is a profile of our target audience, to show that we know specifically what our audience is, so we can tailor our band's identity & video to appeal to them.

The primary audience is mainstream, targeting 16-24 year old males and females interested in pop culture as well as modern rock with alternative fashion, mainly western.

We want to, however, also appeal to a more knowledgeable audience that consists of audiences that interact and are up to date on cultural news, be that online or in real life. The secondary audience consists of the same age range with a wider appeal in music genres such as top 40 radio, that could even be avid twitter and tumblr users. 

Copyright Request

For this project, we wanted to use a song that was copyrighted, so we had to contact the record label in order to be able to use the song.

The artist's record label did not have an e-mail address for general enquires, but I found the e-mail address for their general manager on their Facebook fan page, so I sent him an e-mail.

I am also friends with Blake Harnage on Facebook, who is in VersaEmerge, so I also sent him a Facebook message asking him if we could use the song.

Rough Ideas for narrative scenes.

For our narrative scenes in our video, we want to initially show the good side of a celebrity's life (or what is shown to an audience). By the end, we also want to show the bad side (the real side) of our fictional celebrity. These are some rough ideas we noted while having a Skype session about different scenes we could potentially have in our music video.

Scene ideas:

Good:

Red Carpet/Interview (with paparazzi) - glamorous and happy
Accepting Award - happy and successful
Photoshoot - successful and beautiful
Fan-signing - loved by many etc

Bad:

Swimming pool/Liquor - all alone in wealthy house
Make-up - rubbing it off while crying
Crying and screaming against wall - angry
Arguing with boyfriend - her life is falling apart

We think these would create a good juxtaposition in our video if we have time for all of them, and would successfully connote what we want it to.

Band Name Ideas

We needed to have a band name to create our band identity, which is very important for this project. We discussed ideas for band ideas over skype.

Listed below are the top 10 band names which we came up with:

1. Little Death
2. Birds With A Worm
3. iDle
4. We Fall Apart
5. Silence Is Enemy
6. Calendar Pages
7. Set You Right
8. Little Bit Of Truth
9. Leeches
10. Misguided Ghosts

We thought these names would be suitable for a rock band, and we all liked We Fall Apart the most.

Style Influences

As we are a rock band, we want to keep certain aspects of a conventional rock band during our performance scenes. We also want to modernize the band's image as the song itself has electro aspects.

This is a moodboard of some of our influences when thinking about our band's image:

The clothing seems simple with few colours, mainly black with another colour.

From the moodboard, it is conventional to have dyed hair, be that fully or just parts. The main colours being extremes like blue and red, although blue has more of an electro feel.

We want a blue-y/purple tint to be a part of our band's image and branding, which we plan on developing further and making clear through both the music video and photoshoot, for example in our clothing and hair colour.

Music Video Influences

For this project, we needed a variety of influences to create our final piece, and we researched a lot into existing music videos for examples of what mood/story we wanted to connote.

Narrative Music Video Influences

For this video, we liked the way they conveyed the polar opposites of the housewife's emotions, and how perfect something can seem, when they're secretly very depressed/disturbed. We wanted to convey the life of our Hollywood actress as effectively as they do in this video.




Although this isn't an official music video, we liked the way that they didn't interpret the lyrics as literally, and instead twisted the song and made it about a stalker. In the same way, we wanted to have the lyrics instead of being about a relationship, about her relationship with her life as an actress. We also really liked the style of the narrative, which we want to emulate for our video.

Our narrative idea is quite similar to this video, and we liked how they portrayed the actress's depression so well, which is what we want to do with our video. However, we want to style it differently, as although our ideas are the same, we don't want our video to look the same, so we would have the narrative with performance, rather than just the narrative on its own.

Performance Music Video Influences

We really liked the cyclical idea of this video, and how the performance throughout is in the place that they run into in the end, and we wanted to have a similar idea to tie our narrative and performance together in our video.





For both of these videos, we liked the style of the performance, and how it was quite dark, but you could still see the band and it was fitting with the genre & style of their music. 

Overall, these videos really helped to solidify our ideas and create an idea of what we want our final product to look like.

First Pitch Feedback & New Idea

For our initial pitch for our music video, this is the feedback we received to improve our idea:

- Too many themes, focus on one main story (either stalking or celebrity lifestyle), so instead focusing on the culture around celebrities & how damaging it can be.

- Good song choice

- Don't do torture; if we want to be on the singer's side, she shouldn't resort to something like that, there should be a different twist. 

- Good artist identity, better to go with a band rather than a singer & DJ.

We took this feedback on board and adjusted our music video idea accordingly.

Music Video First Pitch

For this project, we had to put together a pitch for our teacher to hear the song and our ideas for what we wanted for our music video and artist identity, so this is what we compiled on our initial idea.

Song:


Artist identity: electro rock band consisting of 3/4 members; a singer, a guitarist, a synth player, (and possibly a drummer). Emo style, but more colourful (dark blues & purples rather than all black).

Video idea: performance & narrative; performance is darkly lit, but fairly glamourous, narrative of glamorous model (who could be the lead singer) with a stalker, the model then gets really fed up and decides to capture the stalker & torture them.

Lyrics Analysis

We decided to analyse the lyrics of the song to get ideas as to what scenes we wanted for the narrative portions of our video.

We all interpreted the lyrics differently so in the end we decided to not have the typical relationship style narrative because we thought it had been done a lot of times before and we wanted something different. We decided to twist the lyrics "should I settle for less/you're good but I want the best" to convey celebrity life and decided to deconstruct celebrity culture in that sense.

Shortlist of Song Ideas

For our coursework, we are required to make a music video for a brand new artist that we create, using a song that already exists. Here is a shortlist of all the songs we thought we could make a music video for:















These are all songs that we all enjoy, but we thought that some songs had a more cinematic feel than others (e.g. No Consequences) which we think would add to the feel of our music video.