Wednesday 25 September 2013

Taget audience

The particular audience I am aiming my music video at will be about mid teens to mid twenties (15-25). This is due to the fact that around this age range most individuals enjoy attending live gigs. I think this age group would be most appropriate as when the band first started out they were in this target market. I would say that Klangkarussell is a particularly mainstream band at the moment, as a lot of people have heard of them and enjoy listening to dance music recently. This is obvious as 'Sonnentanz' is in the top ten of the official charts in six different countries. Therefore I am aiming at a relatively mass market. 

Gender:
Due to the concept in my music video, it targets both genders. 
Furthermore, after looking at Klangkarussell's official website, there are a mixture of fans from both genders, resulting that I shouldn't just aim my music video at one specific gender. Although, some people may stereotype dance music as a more of a male based genre, most of my friends who listen to Klangkarussell are both male and female. So for those reasons I stated above, I believe it is the best option to aim my music video at both male and females. 

Genre:
The genre of music is dance, however, it is not heavy dance it is more easy listening, indie dance.

Lifestyle:
The general lifestyle I would expect my target audience to have would either be a student, study higher education such as university of having a part time job, where they have time to attend gigs. I would also say that they are more interested in mainstream songs and artists, and would prefer artists that have the potential to become popular with the right marketing and advertisement. This would include, radio, social networking, TV advertisement, sites such as 'Twitter', 'Instagram', 'Facebook' etc. Additionally, they may have a close group of friends which they enjoy listening and sharing the same music on 'Spotify' or other music sites as well as attending gigs and festivals every so often. 

Interests:
The main interests that I would imagine my target market doing would them be listening music in their spare time, relaxing with their groups of friends as well as attending local gigs, big festivals and one of the favourite bands concerts on a regular basis. 

Socio-economic group:
My target audience for this particular style of music I believe would fit into class D and E. this would mainly down to the fact that most of individuals aged 15-25 will either be students, unemployed or working on minimum wage. Although, they may have a lack of money they would most probably spend it on gigs and festivals rather than anything else.

Concept:
The concept of my music video doesn't have a specif story line, I have mainly used the music videos that have inspired me when making the video. 

Representations:
The main representations I am going to include is to show the difference between the happy memories vs reality.

Why?
The particular genre of music I have chosen to represent my theme in my music video, will be used to attract the mass
 market that know of the band and will end up becoming more popular due to the process of "word of mouth". This particular song I have chosen is not heavy dance and it may not appeal to people that prefer to that genre of music, however it will appeal to the type of people that listen to a lot of mainstream music.

Saturday 21 September 2013

Research


KlangKarussell - Sonnentanz 


                                         Audio Bully's - We don't care
Adele - Someone like you

For my concept video, KlangKarussell video called 'Sonnentanz (Sun don't shine)' has inspired me to do the opposite that Sonnentanz has done for their music video. Therefore I will be filming in a dull, rough area. To explain further, I have watched Audio Bully's 'We don't care' with KlangKarusell's 'Sonnentanz (Sun don't shine)' playing in the background and it works really well, and looks very effective. The second video is Audio Bully's, this is the kind of setting and video I would like to do. For example, the camera following the talent around the town and to different places. If by any chance the weather is good when I come to film I shall put a dull effect on the video so it achieves how I wanted it to look. 
I want the video to be dull so that it is in contrast with the original KlangKarusell video and also captures the name of the song so therefore it ends up being a literal video in terms of the name of the song. I might also put some parts in slow motion because I think the song is quite slow and mellow. I also think the juxtaposition of having the talent walking fast pasted at times, and then parts slowed down in slow motion would make it look very effective if done well. Adele's 'someones like you' music video is how I want my video to be, the walking in various scenes etc.


Mood Board


I have used these sort of pictures that are quite rough and urban landscaping because this is the mood that I want the music video to reflect. I will use the images to inspire me when filming, I plan on using settings like this within the video. For example, the field alleyways and dimly lighted tunnels.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Researching previous blogs

Catherine Baker was taking AS and A2 media in 2011 and 2012. I explored her A2 blog to look at her posts and get some inspiration when it comes to blogging. I chose to look at Catherine's blog as she had blogged 93 posts and achieved an A. I have chosen to pick five factors that I think are a very good contribution towards the A she achieved. I have decided to do this so I can use the five factors and apply them in my own work as much as possible. These are the following:
  1. I like how she has filmed her audiences feedback. I think this is good because it enables the examiner to see in the audiences own words what they think about the music video. The two questions she asked allowed the audience to go into a lot of detailed on their opinions as they were open question. I think it was effective how Catherine asked the audience if they thought that there was anything she could improve on. 
  2. I think it is good that she has not only asked the audiences feedback, but also feedback from the talent. Again, Catherine asked some good questions to the talent, such as 'Do you think the video fits well with the lyrics of the song?' and 'What did they like doing in making of the video?'. 
  3. I like that throughout the project Catherine has continuously updated and blogged her drafts of the music video and also the ancillary tasks. Along with each draft she has blogged she has filmed feedback so she can improve the videos and ancillary tasks.
4. I like how she has researched other music videos and used the to inspire her when filming her music video. She has wrote the representations that she has found in each of the videos underneath the actual videos she has blogged.

5. Throughout her blogs Catherine has constantly applied them back to her music video, genre and theme. She has not only applied each blog to her own work but she has gone into great detail in making sure the examiner knows exactly what she wants to achieve when filming, editing and blogging through this project. 

Friday 13 September 2013

Health and Safety


 Before filming I need to consider the health and safety of the area for my talent and myself when filming. Therefore I have put together a table that considers all the risks and solutions of the places that I plan to film.



Thursday 12 September 2013

To do list

So far I have been doing a lot of blogging and haven't started filming yet. Therefore I have written myself a to do list so that I can keep on track and up to date with the deadlines and tasks.
  • Find talent
  • Find location
  • Get props 
  • Storyboard
  • Get correct equipment
  • Write health and safety risks
  • Record music video 
  • Edit video
  • Start and finish subsidiary tasks

Friday 6 September 2013

Concept, Narrative and Performance


Concept
Concept videos are based around a single idea or concept and are usually unusual and obscure, even surreal for the audience. This unusual content is an attraction to many consumers, which draws them in. Concept videos usually are combined with one of the other two styles as the market demands for greater accessibly rather than the somewhat niche that is pure concept art. A successful concept video will keep the audience entertained and constantly looking at what or who is on the screen. No particular genre or type of music is more likely to use concept videos, in fact a range of artists covering all genres have used concept/ art based videos.

Performance
A performance video focuses on showing footage of the artist or band either in a casual environment, i.e. socialising with friends, or performing, live performance or staged performance. This style of video uses the band/artist/group throughout the majority of the production and the artist, band members are often miming the words to the song. The genre of music where performance videos are common is indie and rock. The costing on this type of production are also most likely to be the lowest as the producers are in effect giving the audience the most realistic image of the band as it is only the band they are showing. The downside of this is that the band will need to be relatively established to pull off the video, or else interest will become saturated.

Narrative
A song with a narrative based music video the song includes a narrative story of the lyrics/ words being acted out in some way. This style relies on imagery to produce a story for the audience to follow and some narrative videos include clips from films that the song has been featured in. This seems to be used a lot in slower songs, and often tend to be love stories

Wednesday 4 September 2013

History of music videos

Music videos are used for promotional purposes and is a short film that shows the music and imagery. As time has progressed, music videos have been used as a marketing device and are used to help promote and sell records. Music videos became dominate in the 1980s due to MTV. Before this date, they were referred to as 'promo film' or illustrated song. 

Music videos have different styles, and some are just performance based, others have narrative, or literal meaning, or combine the two depending on the genre or song. 

The first music video was in 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B Marks and Joe Sterm hired an electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote the sales of their song 'The Little Lost Child'. Thomas projected a still images onto a screen in conjunction to live performances. This was the first step towards music video and known as the illustrated song. 

It was often seen that videos just contained a performance based content sometimes referring back to video footage of them playing live to make it feel like the audience are involved but as time has gone on, a narrative style has been brought in. However, performance videos do have a slight narrative to them anyway due to the lyrics in the song and they're touching on it, but narrative/performance videos allowed people to visually see the narrative being told and often meant people became more involved lyrically in the song. This is why other genres such as pop/indie benefit from this where as rock tend to stick to performance. This is because they're vocal point is on the music rather than the lyrics. 

MTV

'Music Television' launched on the 1st August, 1981. The purpose was to play music videos guided by hosts. Today, the channel is used for a variety of reality TV shows and scripted television programs targeted at adolescents and young adults.

The first music video that was shown on MTV was 'The Bugles - Video Killed The Radio Star' and the second one was Pat Benatar's - You Better Run. The screen would go black when an employee at MTV would insert a tape. MTV obviously had a big immediate effect in the areas where the music video channel could be picked up. This lead to the advance that in areas where MTV was available, record stores were selling music that local radio stations where not showing.

The original purpose of MTV was to be 'Music Television' and to play music videos 24 hours a day, 7 days. The original tag lines portrayed and highlighted what they aimed to do, change music as they were "you'll never look at music in the same way again". Currently, MTV doesn't play 24/7, however, it has various smaller channels such as MTV hits and MTV Jams.

In 1984, MTV began a top 40 station, and people where hired to host the channel and introduce the songs being played, these were called 'video jockeys. These often became celebrities, the original five in 1981 were Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J Jackson and Martha Quinn.

The 'Video Jockeys' would 'intro' and 'outro' segments to music videos, and include music news, interviews, concert dates and promotions. This helped increased the popularity of the music industry all together. It appeared 'live' though they were pre-taped within a regular week.

During the early days of the channel, stars took over within an hour as 'guests VJs'. These included people such as Billy Idol, Phil Collins, Simon LeBon and Prince. The very first non-white act played on MTV in the U.S was UK band The Specials.  However, MTV rejected other black artists' videos such as Rick James - Super Freak because they didn't fit into the chosen format at the time. Although, this outraged him and vocally battled for the inclusion of black artists videos on the channel. David Bowie questions MTV's lack of black artists during an on-air interview with Mark Goodman in 1983.

In the present day, MTV is more based on reality TV shows such as Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, The Hills, My Super Sweet Sixteen, Jersey Shore and Geordie Shore. People have argued that they should play more music videos, however the president of MTV, Christina Norman argued back that there are plenty of other opportunities to watch music videos on the web and other smaller MTV channels so they are still offering this.