Directing Year 10 Music Video

Today we helped to film a music video for a year 10 band with Mr. Lawes directing. The class was divided into two groups, one filming while the other watching and then swapping around. I recorded creative shots during my turn and focussed on the guitar and singer the best I could, zooming in on guitars and jumping up on the stage to film the faces easier.

The event was fun to do and refreshed my memory on how I filmed my GCSE music video which I did in a very similar manner. At first the band were quite shy and did not turn in a very good performance. However the more takes we did the more confident they got until the 5th take, which was by far their best.

We had four cameras which each filmed from different areas with different tasks. A stationary camera, one for creative shots, one for filming the drummer and one that moves around the room filming the band from different angles.

Music Industry Fan Site - Alter Bridge

Black and deep red are the primary colours of their webpage.  This is very similar to most webpages of rock bands however in keeping with the hard rock style of music the website does not appear to be gothic and instead appears to be more western based in terms of things like font.

The primary target audience is mid 20s to 30s rock fans as we can see by the bands members and colour scheme. They use darker more mature colours to attract their audience as opposed to more vibrant colours such as Avenged Sevenfolds blue on black colours (during the Nightmare era) which may seem more immature and attempting to attract teenagers than the duller colours of Alter Bridge.

The home page has the hero shot of the band dead center of the web page with the eyes immediately drawn to it.

This shot itself is interesting however because Myles Kennedy, the singer of the band is in the background which is unusual at first glance as bands singers are usually put in the foreground. However it is also interesting to note that despite his unusual position the eye is still drawn to him as he succeeds in being both in the foreground and the background at the same time due to the positioning for his arm.
He is also positioned directly over the thirds of the photograph meaning that despite his position the eye is automatically drawn to his face.

Their web banner is interesting in that it is quite literally a banner. This gives the webpage a lot more of an artistic appearance than something like My Chemical Romance's very basic banner. It makes Alter Bridge seem a lot more artistic which could be seen as a reflection on their music.

In the centre of the banner there is the button which takes the form of Alter Bridge's logo. This gives the audience a clear and obvious way of getting back to the home page without making a button which says "home".

They have a FaceBook link which will direct the audience to their FaceBook page where the audience can read more about current events in the band. It also improves their interactivity with the band and they can offer their own opinions to be posted directly to the band. This is a form of convergence as we can access a different medium via a different webpage.

The band uses a basic arial font so that it is easy to read and mature throughout. This keeps consistency with the kind of image that the web designer has been showcasing on the web page.

Genre Research

We have begun to look at different music videos and have begun to create our survey and lickert for audience research.
Our aim is to find out what exactly people will expect from a hard rock music video.
However we have also been looking at music videos which are intentionally humorous with shout outs to other types of music in an intentionally satirical way.
Some of the pastiche music videos we have looked at have been:
Weezer - Buddy holly
Billy Joel - Uptown Girl
My Chemical Romance - Na Na Na/I'm Not Okay
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Dani California
The Hives - Hate to Say I told You Say

Lip Syncing Practise

I didn't find lip syncing to be too much of a problem when I tried it, I found that I could generally keep in time without much trouble and when it came to editing so long as I lined up all of the videos to be in time with the music the clips would always be in sync with the song.
I think practising this has helped me because I've got a slightly better idea of how to edit the clips together while making the cuts between the clips smooth. This will help me when I come to make the final music video later.

Coldplay

How do their products appeal to a target audience?

They make more use of brighter more childlike colours in their promotional material and imagery such as graffiti to draw in a younger crowd.

What is their ideology?
It would appear that Coldplay want to be taken seriously by their fans and to make profit from their music.

What is the genre and how do you know?

Coldplay’s music is classified as indie, however the problem with this is that indie applies to being created by artists on an independant label, which means it’s hard to classify indie musicians into that genre. Coldplay’s music is very basic in terms of its sound and it is mainly acoustic guitar driven pop music for the most part.

How have they created synergy?

They have created synergy by decorating their album cover, promotional images and website in very similar colours with the same graffiti text.

Song Choice: Vagabond by Wolfmother

We have chosen the song Vagabond by Wolfmother as the song that we are going to be producing the music video for.

 

We have sent an email to Wolfmother asking for permission to use the video of the song: