Ancillary Task in progress

In the modern day world of music, consumers can usually identify a style of music with the appearance of the product it's on. For example:

First of all, the band name (which may also be their logo) at the bottom of the picture is a sickly green colour, in a spikey font, and is almost unreadable. It gives off a very evil tone to the picture. When deciphered, the name reads "Annotations of an Autopsy."

Secondly; the band themselves are dressed all in black, some of which are wearing band t-shirts with a similar font to their own band name. The colours on the poster are tinted green with a majority of black.

We can safely say that this band is most likely to be a depressing metal band.

Now look at this example:

This is very different to the first example. To start from the same place as before, the band name is very simply read, in a plain font, and easy on the eyes. Obviously, it is read as 'You Me At Six'

Secondly; the band is generally all good looking, muscular young men, dressed very well with styled hair. This gives off that the band are a lot more easier to listen to than the first example 'Annotations of an Autopsy', but it does not fully suggest what the band's genre truly is. This can sometimes be a good thing, meaning the band do not have to stick to any one genre of music.

The point of these examples is that the bands have asignature look to them. A lot of metal bands dress darkly, look like they are in a foul mood, and have their logos look as twisted as they can get it. A lot of poppier bands (such as the above example 'You Me At Six') have things a lot more plain, dress nicely to invite a wide range of audience to listen to them and not to scare them off. The names/logos are not always as plain as the second example but they are at least legible.

My group's genre of music was acoustic, so we needed to design our digipak to the degree that classic modern-day acoustic artists have.

Here is an example of one:

Straight after looking at this advertisement, it is already clear that the man in the picture is an acoustic artist. The fact that it says 'Alan Lynes' at the bottom of the image suggests that it is advertising one person. Only one person is in the picture and he is dominating most of the lens capture. Behind him lies an acoustic guitar. All of this suggests to the viewer that a roughly middle-aged man named Alan Lynes is playing guitar in a musical solo acoustic act.

My group partner Alex Newcombe has begun work on the ancillary task; creating a magazine advert that promotes our product artist's new album. The picture at the moment includes a picture of me with my face darkened. At the side will be the words:

****
Rolling Stones
***
allmusic
Joshua Radin
We Were Here
OUT NOW

Panic! At The Disco - 'But It's Better if you Do' Video Analysis

This video has a very strong and clear narrative, plus it mixes in cleverly with the performance from the band. It relates to the lyrics of the song which is about attending a strip club to forget about a loved one. Here are the lyrics to the first verse:

"Now I'm of consenting age to be forgetting you in a cabaret.

Somewhere downtown where a burlesque queen may even ask my name
As she sheds her skin on stage
I'm seated and sweating to a dance song on the club's P.A.
The strip joint veteran sits two away
Smirking between dignified sips of his dignified peach and lime daiquiri"

The video starts off like an old film: black and white, with a title saying "But it's better if you do!" showing that it's meant to look like a very old film. A couple having an argument, which then leads in to the man leaving the house and starts singing to the song. The camera tracks the singer from the front, with a close up shot of his face and shoulders. This is directly influenced with the songs lyrics ("to be forgetting you in a cabaret,").

The man then walks into a stripper bar. This is where the videos imagery is at its best, showing a bar full of masked people in old upper class clothes and the girls in lingerie. There is an establishing shot when the singer enters the strip club, tracking him but zooming out so the watcher can see the different costumes and setting going on. There are then a few mid-close ups of the masked men and women getting close with each other, or dancing on tables.

The band performing the song are also in the video, dressed in very 30's-50's style suits, all playing old style instruments. The microphone is the most noticeable on this topic as it is very old-looking as seen in the picture below.

Camera shot-wise, the song isn't particularly 'heavy' but it is fast paced in places and there is a lot going on. The chorus has the fastest pace in the whole song so there are some fast cuts during the performance, and a very nice tracking shot at: 1:00 - 1:03 which shows the whole band performing and puts the singer in a clear frontman-light. It then cuts to two more close ups of the singer performing.

The end scene is my favourite scene as it shows a black and white ending to the video which looks much like an old black and white film; with old style cars and policemen. It shows an exceptional diversity in the style of music video compared to generic performance-type ones that are usually seen.

Idea's for my music video coursework.

My current idea for my music video is actually a lot more simplistic but effective compared to my original idea.

Artist: Accidents

Song: Burial

Performance

The music video style I want to do is very inspired by 'Slipknot's video for 'Before I Forget' where the members are not very recognisable due to the extreme closed up camera shots:

As you can see in these pictures, only the instruments of part of the faces of the members are really seen, or silhouettes make up the band entirely if shot from a distance. I want to use this anonymity effect in my video, but I am going to have the singers visible in the shot. I will draw this out and post it, but imagine a microphone standing straight up on a stand, a pop shield either side of it, and both singers essentially facing and singing at each other. Otherwise, the other band members are not going to be too recognisable. The best part of them will look like these:

Narrative

The narrative to the video is fairly simple. It is inspired mostly by the music video to Architects - 'Buried at Sea':

As you can see, the picture is very sinister and eerie. The narrative in the video that this picture was taken from does not clear up on why it's so eerie either so every scene in it is interesting.

For my video, I want to have an actor, dressed similar like the man in the picture above (i.e, used to be smartly dressed but extremely scruffy now) and have him dragging either an old style casket (this is dependent on whether I can find/afford one), or a large sack, either one containing a body up a hill/cliff (also dependent on whether I can find either). Then either as the last chorus or the ending kicks in, the bag/casket will potentially be thrown off the cliff/hill. Of course the body will not be real, I will have one shot of the actor looking inside the casket/bag and someone will be in there but I will then replace them with a large teddy bear or something similar.

I will post up the song and pictures of the band soon enough!

'Periphery - Icarus Lives!' Music video analysis

This is a performance video for the song 'Icarus Lives!' written and performed by: 'Periphery'.

The first 16 seconds of the video has no music playing, just diegetic sounds of water droplets, supported by the visuals of water dripping down glass screens which is seen throughout the whole video. This gives a lack of identity of the band so that the focus is mainly on the music.

Between 0:10 and 0:23, the guitarist adjusts his amp (see below) and gets into position to start playing the opening riff. His pose and style of music fused together gives the viewer a good idea of what the music and its video will be like. In this case, metal with a video of many cuts.

There are various poses and performance techniques that the band uses to be recognised such as this photo (see below) where the singer is the main focus in the shot but the guitarist in the background still performs to enhance the style of music the band represent.

The picture below is my favourite shot of the music video because it shows a very interesting shot of the singer, with some distance away from the camera, but the silhouette-effect along with his movement. plus the promotional logo at the side of the bands name really makes it stand out.

Costume wise; there is no real set theme. All the band members are wearing (what I assume to be) what they would usually wear. I personally have a theory that the lead guitarist wears a turqoise coloured shirt (see below) so that he stands out from the rest of the band who appear to be just wearing dark colours. However there is no evidence that this is true, this is just my theory.

As seen in every single screen shot above, the layout of the video is very simplistic. The room that the band appears to be in has a pure white background but, as I said before, every single shot in the video has a transparent screen in front of the camera, usually with patterns of the bands logo on it or something almost representing it such as the above image.