RESEARCH: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN 2012

TouchTunes 2012 Charts infographic by touchtunes.

CODES AND CONVENTIONS

Analysis-Album Art- Codes and Conventions

Here are the typical codes and conventions you would see within a album art, most albums will have these on the front:

• The album art will typically represent the album or the band themselves.
• It will try to draw their specific target audience by employing techniques using colours or text that will attract the attention form the specific target audience.
• It will establish the album and the artists name, along with the style or genre of music they produce.
• It will have persuasive elements in it to persuade the audience to buy it for example it may have a promotional offer.
• The album art will try to be creative through text and imagery it may employ.  It will try to be original, individual and also have an artistic element to it.
• Codes within these album covers are used to them communicate to the audience whatever message or ideology that they may want to get across.
• Conventions are all things such as the band name, picture in the typical style of the artist or continuing on form previous album artwork, album name, imagery/art, price, explicit sign if the lyrics are extreme, and then a list of the songs on the back.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY 'SCOOP IT'

CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF ALBUM COVERS- COLDPLAY

IMAGE CHEF

I discovered a free online program called 'image chef', on this program you are able to create diffferent images and shapes using words and colours. I felt that this may be quite appealing when constructing my Album cover. Below are a few of my experiments:

 

I chose to experiment with flowers and shapes associated with a good life, for example, music, flowers, smiley faces and heart shapes. I also chose to use colours that connote nature, love and happiness as I hope to use positive shapes and objects in my own album and digipack.

PRODUCTION: STABILISATION OF FOOTAGE

 This lesson I used After Effects to stabilise some of my footage. This involved finding two contrasting two tracking points on the image. By stabilising the footage we were able to remove the hand held effect and replace it with a steadier tripod appearance.

 

RESEARCH: Visual.ly.com

How to have a Successful Career in Music infographic

PRODUCTION: CLAREMONT LANDSCAPE FILMING

RESEARCH: CONSUMPTION

 

 

Youtube has become the place to g not just for music videos but for listening to music. A survery by Nielsen in August 2012 found that more American teens listen to YouTube than any other platform.

YouTube, together with specialist music portals such as Vevo and Noisey, allow companies to monetise music content, which until recently they have not really done.

Previously, they would license their videos to MTV, then watch in the sidelines as the channel made millions in advertising. Now labels recieve royalties every time a video is clicked on.

RESEARCH: SOUNDCLOUD

 

Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you’ve already created. Everyone has sounds to share.

Upload or Record

Whether it's a quick sketch or a polished symphony, upload or record your originally-created sounds effortlessly to SoundCloud in a few clicks. They'll deal with pretty much any audio format so you don't have to worry about that.

The Waveform

See the shape of your sounds with the unique SoundCloud waveform player that visualizes your sounds and makes them good looking and playable too. Now your sounds are ready to get truly social.

Timed comments

Timed comments let your friends and fans give you valuable feedback at specific moments throughout the waveform. Pinpoint exactly what's working well and start a conversation around it.

Through Soundcloud I will platform some of my work.

RESEARCH: BUG

 
The phenomenen, BUG is a music video showcase to give big-screen exposure to the most awe-inspiring new work in music videos. It has evolved music video experience. Jointly put together by David Knight and Adam Buxton; it has spawned its own spin-off TV series.

For Knight, the digital era is 'a widening of horizons in which a conventional form is turned into something brilliant.'
 

 

http://www.bugvideos.co.uk/about.go

BUG: The Evolution Of Music Video was launched in April 2007 as an ongoing series of bi-monthly events at the BFI Southbank in London – the home of British cinema – celebrating global creativity in music video. Since then BUG has become a phenomenon.

BUG's objective is to give big-screen exposure to the most awe-inspiring new work in music videos. That means everything from work by well-known masters of the medium to young newcomers working on zero budgets. The sub-heading of BUG – The Evolution of Music Video – refers to the new democracy in videomaking created by the digital revolution – both in creating and distributing work. BUG is all about brilliant visual ideas, and as such BUG consistently unearths amazing new filmmaking talent.  It's described by Knight as 'going round to a friend's house and having him open his laptop to show you the interesting and amusing things he's found or made.'

PLANNING: CALL SHEET-CLAREMONT LANDSCAPE GARDENS (BAND PERFORMANCE)

PLANNING: TEST SHOTS

PLANNING: FIRST DAY OF FILMING (Surbiton Train Station) TEST SHOOT

Today Karen and I along with our extras travelled to Surbiton to test film the scenes we wanted in the train station. After filming for just over 2hrs we were able to have caught all the footage and scenes we wanted to film.

After looking at our steady hand footage, we noticed that the footage was rather jolty and unstable, this could be cured through implementing a stabilisation effect but we felt that it would be best to use a tripod next time we film.

PLANNING: ANALYSIS OF LYRICS

Karen and I decided that it would be helpful for us to analyse the meanings of the lyrics of the song itself so that we gain gain a deeper understanding of the narrative.






The song starts with a really relaxed and up-beat background music, which creates a happy and chilled mood.

Woke up in London yesterday 
Found myself in the city near Piccadilly 
Don't really know how I got here 
I got some pictures on my phone 

New names and numbers that I don't know 
Address to places like Abbey Road 
Day turns to night, night turns to whatever we want 
We're young enough to say 

[Chorus] 

Oh this has gotta be the good life 
This has gotta be the good life 
This could really be a good life, good life 

Say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight 
Like this city is on fire tonight 
This could really be a good life 
A good, good life 
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh

^The chorus might be about us having the choice to live a good life no matter how hard the situation is, ore even if we are go through hard times in our lives, we can still choose to live a good life.
"Got this feeling that you can't fight" could be a feeling of being young and passionate and unstoppable of doing things that we want to do.

[Verse 2] 

To my friends in New York, I say hello 
My friends in L.A. they don't know 
Where I've been for the past few years or so 
Paris to China to Col-or-ado 

^This part could be about the places that the band have been to as Kutzle, the band’s base guitar and cello player said “The whole song is a memory of touring our first album,”  “It seems like one big whirlwind looking back on that now.”
Sometimes there's airplanes I can' t jump out 
Sometimes there's bullshit that don't work now 
We are god of stories but please tell me-e-e-e 
What there is to complain about 

^This part explains again that sometimes, hurdles and rough patches will come into our way, but we are the one to decide how we live our lives and as long as we are living, we should not complain and find a way to live happily.

When you're happy like a fool 
Let it take you over 
When everything is out 
You gotta take it in 

^This might mean that when people are happy they should let it out and enjoy it instead of hiding their emotions.
[Chorus] 

Oh this has gotta be the good life 
This has gotta be the good life 
This could really be a good life, good life 

Say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight 
Like this city is on fire tonight 
This could really be a good life 
A good, good life 

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh
A good good life Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh


[Bridge 2] 

Hopelessly 
I feel like there might be something that I'll miss 
Hopelessly 
I feel like the window closes oh so quick 
Hopelessly 
I'm taking a mental picture of you now 
'Cuz hopelessly 
The hope is we have so much to feel good about

[Chorus] 

Oh this has gotta be the good life 
This has gotta be the good life 
This could really be a good life, good life 

Say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight 
Like this city is on fire tonight 
This could really be a good life 
A good, good life 

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh

To my friends in New York, I say hello 
My friends in L.A. they don't know 
Where I've been for the past few years or so 
Paris to China to Col-or-ado 

Sometimes there's airplanes I can' t jump out 
Sometimes there's bullshit that don't work now 
We are god of stories but please tell me-e-e-e 
What there is to complain about 

The song is very upbeat and cheery in general and the relaxing drumbeats make us want to get up and keep going and to really enjoy everything that we have. It really suits the lyrics of the song and it encourages people to be optimistic and live a good life. We will try and represent this message through our music video with a joyful and cheerful mood.

PLANNING: MUSIC VIDEO INSPIRATIONS

COME TOGETHER by THE BEATLES

POCESSION by PAUL MINOR

I LOOK TO YOU by MIAMI HORROR FEATURING KIMBRA

VIVA LA VIDA by COLDPLAY

TROUBLE by COLDPLAY

HIT THE LIGHTS by SELENA GOMEZ & THE SCENE

WASTE by FOSTER THE PEOPLE

These music videos collectively have made me re-affirm my desire to use bright colours within my music video. These videos focus on nature and the outside and many of these have a brighter more casual appearance which is traditionally created using a vintage lense. These music vidoes generally focus on one main character rather than a band of characters and often usual body language such as facial expressions to connote feelings, emotions and to emphasise lyrics in the song.

PLANNING: LOCATION REPORTS

In today's lesson Karen and I went and looked for possible locations in our school and its grounds to use in the production of our music video. Since One Republics music video is proportionately set within outside environments which also strongly appeals to us and what we hope to achieve in our own video. We chose to look outside to see where we could base our band performance scenes. When exploring we came across a few locations we felt would be suitable to use in our video.

Possible filming location for some of our band scenes.

Possible location for our band to be positioned.

                Possible locations for our band to be positioned.

Karen and I constructing how our band will be positioned using stick as instruments and microphones.

Possible location for a solo sequence within the music video at the Belvedere Tower,  Claremont Landscape gardens, Esher.

In the music video, the band performance is taken place within an outdoor environment, and we really like this approach as it gives a feeling of freedom and space. Therefore we decided that our band performance scenes will be taken place at the back of the school car park, which is similar to the scenes in the original music video.

PLANNING: SHOT TYPES

To film my music video I will be using my schools 550D Canon camera. Within my music video I am likely to use the following shots:

 

 

 

Shots likely to be shot using tripod:

• Wide shots
• Medium shots
• Medium close up shots
• Close up shots
• Cutaway shots (To scenes without band performance)

Shots likely to be shot using tripod:

Medium shots

Medium close up shots

Close up shots

Wide shots

• Cutaway shots (To scenes without band performance)

Focal Lengths :

• Extreme wide shots
• Multiple wide shots
• Medium close up shots
• Close Up shots

Shots with movement which is likely to be filmed on a handheld tripod:

    

 

• Wide angle pitching shots
• Wide angle panning shots
• Wide angle pitch/pan/tracking shots 
• Medium close up pitching/panning shots 
• Arc Shots
• Shots with lens flares (a convention of music videos which usually goes ignored)