Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop orchallenge forms and conventions of real media products?

After looking into other Indie artists and their brand identities, we made a list of conventions we aim to retain during the making of our music video and DigiPak. To ensure we had full knowledge about the conventions, we spent a lot of time analyzing different music videos and applying different theories so we had background knowledge of what to put in our music video. It was important to understand conventions, so when it comes to making our own we would be able to choose what elements we want in it. We recognised these conventions by analysing real media products from artists like Calvin Harris’ ‘I need your love’.

Style of Music Video

After first listening to 'Go Lucky' by The Rifles we decided that we wanted to have an upbeat, fun music video that fits into the style of the songs beat and name, however we did change the name of the song to 'One Day' because we felt this fitted with our music video idea. The song sounds very modern so we wanted to incorporate a modern feel to it, this gave us a clear incite to who our target audience would be.

Music video Narrative

After researching into other Indie artists or bands we found out that the artists normally perform in the music video. We decided we wanted both sequences in the video narrative and performance. 

Top left: Jake Bugg 'Taste it' Top Right: Arctic Monkey's 'Arabella'

Bottom Left: Jack White 'Lazeretto'  Bottom Right: The Rifles 'Minute Mile'

Above are some examples of artist during the performance in their music video. We tried to incorporate both performance and narrative into our music video.

Top: Narrative

Bottom: Performance 

As you can see above, we made a visual inspiration of various artists such as Jake Bugg and The Rifles who both have individualistic styles. We wanted to incorporate these styles into Alex Echo's character. 

Digipak

Album covers primary functions are telling the audience what genre the album is, acting as a form of advertisement for the artist and giving information about the music.  

Here are some album covers of male artists in the Indie and Indie-Rock genre. The name and logo are the most noticeable part of the cover, because as an introduction into the music industry, it is possibly more important to form an easily recognisable name rather than a solid visual style.

The colour scheme across the four panels is very consistent. The black and white theme immediately shows the audience that Alex Echo is an Indie artist. This theme is prominent throughout our DigiPack, website and social networking sites. We included the track names including the debut single 'One day' and some legal information such as copyright and any other relevant intuitions who contributed to the production. Photos we used of Alex Echo were used on the front and inside cover, this shows brand establishment as a debut artist. We followed the typical Indie genre and the font over the whole digipak was quite simple and bold. The font for the album name 'Mistaken for Strangers' is quite hard to see and should of been made bolder.

From left to right: Images uses on CD, images used on the website and a photo from the music video shoot. We took aspects of the style mood-board and incorporated in each media product such as the black and white theme.

Website

The website is not only used to promote an artist but also the institutions that are associated with the artist, including the record label and any brands that the artist has collaborated with. The homepage of a website provides multiple opportunities for the viewer to learn more about the artist. After research we found out that indie bands or artist that stick to their genre tend to stick to a black and white theme. The 1975 are a good example of this, however we liked the layout of Ed Sheeran's website so we took inspiration from that. 

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We divided up 1 question each and this is my question. I have to devise a certain way to deliver the evaluation. There are different ways to deliver the evaluation. I will have to evaluate the digipak in my own way.

We created a dark persona for Alex, he is seen as quite moody and distant in the pictures of him on the album and website. Similar to a single artist like Thom Yorke or Justin Vernon. Alex is quite indie and stylistic in his approach to music. He will not appeal to everyone but that is something that an indie artist accepts and has to work around.

As you can see form the pictures of Thom and Justin respectively, there is a very clear similarity between them and Alex. There is still a big fan base for both artists with Thom Yorke, especially experiencing huge success with Radiohead. However, modern music means less appreciation for artist's like Justin and Thom. Alex can adapt as we saw with the video. The video for One day attract a wide range of audience, with the various segments it means almost everyone can relate to a certain section. This means that it is a successful video if a large amount of people can enjoy rather than just a selected few who appreciate indie/alternative music. This brings in a large audience in to Alex initially a large audience means more money which is fundamentally what the industry is about. He can then afford to lead his fans into his more indie music taste. 

Synergy for an artist is an important aspect of success as it means that an artist can easily relate an image t an artist. Throughout the digipak: website, images, cd cover etcetera. We successfully achieved that with ours. some groups aimed for synergy throughout their digipak to their video. We decided to go for a more soft video, so it is less dark for our audience as said earlier in the text. Referring back to Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) he can make a dark album cover with synergy across all the media formats and yet still make a colourful video. 

This is an example of a cd cover and disc cover. Both are very dark and use cold colours, there is synerygy between them as they are plain, cold and distinguishable. 

An artist tends to use similar art work throughout their carrer, we can see this through a long term carrer like Oasis but we can also see it on a band still on the rise up liek White Lies for example. When Alex dvelops as an artist he will still go for similar album artwork unless his sound changes. Sound tends to match album artwrok, you can genreally tell what the sound is going to be like just from the album artwork. Below is White Lies Album Art cover and Song from the same album.

 

The Album artwork matches the sound of the band, you would predict that the artist do me quite dark and distant, dressed well with quite an indie dress sense. This is interesting as the sound really matches the artists image. This is similar to Alex, listening to his sound you would picture his image yet both the white lies and Alex have a dark digipak style.

Continuity:

There is constant continuity throughout the video, with the GoPro with everyone using it it means that people can see that all the individuals are linked. It also shows that Alex is not a vain artist and uses the same thing as everyone else. The only time where he is not using the GoPro is a few seconds within the final scene this means the audience can relate to him. Alex is not a him and us artist, he wants his fans to be able to relate to him as he is a still up and coming modest artits. This is different to arctis monkeys' alex turner who is know for being arrogant suggesting he is better than the others. Alex Echo can not be the same as Alex Turner who has already built a worldwide fanbase.







Each person takes it out of the bag and then puts it back in. This is really important continuity as without it the video would not make sense. Also the bag always go back into a blag bag so it is instantly dark. In performance videos continuity is not as important and can be much more free will. The continuity restricts us to the shot types that we can do such as panning shots or arc shots. On the plus side we were able to do some extreme shots such as the diving and biking!

As you can see from the frame sizes all our individuals have a similar frame size. This is important as all our artists are of similar distinctions. It also does not matter if it is a child of someone that is 6ft3in. We instructed each person to keep their arm as straight as possible. This then puts the frame into perspective as their arm is likely to match their body size. So as you can see from above the 6 year old (3rd picture) he takes up the same size frame and Alex (1st picture) who is more than twice his size. Obviously it is much harder to explain to a 6 year old exactly what you require from him, the GoPro is really forgiving in both capturing him appropriately and being able to survive and impact that may occur, e.g him dropping the camera. We are really happy with how the footage turned out and it is one of the most iconic parts of the video with some really great shots. The footage lasts 32 seconds which is quite a large part of the video. However, we had over 17 minute of footage to cut down into 32 seconds for the gap. This meant that we could get lots of fast cuts to keep the scene interesting to the viewer, it does not feel like 32 seconds which is important so the viewer is not getting bored. Some of our favourite shots are below and have captured him really well.

I created a screencast to talk the audience through our website section and video breakdown. This gives us the opportunity to show each section of the website in a detailed way. This also allows another way for website to be viewed. It is a lot more interactive and goes into a guided section by section breakdown. The video is kept short so that people can go and watch the full music video and read the artist description at their own pace. Screencast allows you to give a full overview without excessive detail. Looking at the video and teaser trailer I was able to show the audience the full teaser trailer and sections of the full deluxe version. This meant that I could gain audience excitement from the teaser trailer, advertise Alex both socially and financially whilst breaking down the music video into all its sub sections. I also retrieved a picture from each subsection (above) to further imprint how the music video is made up. The audience can see both the screencast and the still images of each section.

 

Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 

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