Our Steal-O-Matic

This is our steal-o-matic. It is made from other music videos that have inspired us while planning ours. Some clips are visually very similar to what we are trying to achieve and need no explanation. Others contain things that we don't want and we have explained what we like about these clips with the text at the bottom. For example, in the clip in the thumbnail, we liked the overall playfulness of the clip and the use of props. However, the overall look is quite different to what we want. We have explained this with the text. 

To make this, we created a list of videos that we liked. In the end we came up with 13 media texts that inspired us or contained visual elements that we liked. We put them all in a Youtube playlist and then downloaded each one in HD using keepvid.com. After using youtube-mp3.org to download the song, we put everything together using Adobe Premiere Pro. 

The steal-o-matic doesn't perfectly reflect how our video will look but we feel we have achieved the overall playful mood that we want in our video.

Below is a playlist of all the videos that we used in our steal-o-matic.

Meetings Summary: September 22-26

We decided on four main thing during our meetings this week. We met twice on Tuesday (lunchtime and after school) and then again on Thursday at lunch. We used these meetings to decide the basic things that needed to be finalised so that we could move forward with our project. We used our Facebook group to organise meetings and to make further progress from home.

Audience

We looked at different genres and audience groups in the music industry. We were looking for gaps in the market and thinking about which would suit us best. We agreed that our track would be an indie track and that our audience would be primarily indie fans and secondarily 16-24 year old males and females in the UK.

Record Label

Our record label is called 'Alma Gavon  Records' and is an offshoot of Beggars Group. We are based in East London and specialise in new, undiscovered indie and alternative bands and artists. We are continuing the 'Alma Gavon' name from our film opening project last year when we had the same group and will be keeping the simple logo but adapting it for the project to have a musical element.

Track

After much discussion, we finally decided on our track. 'Talk Through The Night' by 'Dog is Dead' is the song that we will be using. I have made another post that goes into the details of why we chose this track.

Artist

We didn't decide much about our artist but we do know that we want a 3-piece band that will consist of Kayvon as the singer and guitarist, Alice as the bassist and me as the drummer.

Our notes from this week



Our Track

This is the song that we decided to use for our music video for the following reasons:

• It is a very typical indie song. It's upbeat and light-hearted and we feel that we can make a video that suits the mood of it.
• The instruments in the song are very typical. There are guitars, a bass guitar, a drum kit and, obviously, a singer. These are all things that we have access to so this will be very useful for making the video believable and successful.
• The lyrics are about youth and nostalgia. We are all young so we suit the lyrics well. There is also a strong theme of friendship and fun. We all get along well in our group so we feel that we can get this across well when shooting the video because we will all be having a good time and enjoying it, making it believable in the video.
• The song has a good progression from the opening to the verses, the choruses, the bridge and the final outro section. We can use this to aid the progression of our video.
• Personally, I have known this song for a long time already and enjoy it. This means I won't get tired of it and the fact that I enjoy the song should make me more enthusiastic about the whole process. 

We decided that we wanted an indie song and so we brainstormed individually and each came up with a few suggestions. We then met up and narrowed it down to four songs. These are the other three that didn't get chosen:

It was very difficult to choose between these songs because they all suited the mood that we are going for and they're all good songs. However, in the end, we felt that the Dog Is Dead song would work best. We also liked the strong themes of friendship and felt that we could use it to our advantage. The other three songs were more focussed on the lead singer than on the band as a whole.

The Band - Dog Is Dead

The band that wrote our track are called Dog Is Dead. They are a 5-piece band from Nottingham that have released 1 album and 3 EPs since their formation in 2009. They have played at many UK festivals such as Reading and Glastonbury and have been played on Radio 1 and Radio 6 Music.

Record Label

Our logo from last year's film opening project

Our record label is called 'Alma Gavon Records'. We are part of the Beggars Group and we work with  upcoming indie rock and alternative artists and bands. We focus on helping these bands and artists gain popularity and we like to work with young bands and artists that have potential for growth in popularity.

This image is the logo that we used last year for our film project. We would like to recreate this but with a mixing deck instead of a sword and shield because we feel its simplicity reflects our record company's ethos of working with small unknown bands and artists.

We would work with bands like Peace, The XX or Vampire Weekend but we would scout them out and work with them before they become as popular as these bands have become in recent years.

Our Artist

Our band is an indie 3-piece group called Pilgrim that consists of Kayvon as the lead singer and guitarist, Alice as the bassist and me as the drummer. The name Pilgrim is a reference to the Scott Pilgrim franchise. The comics and the film are very popular among indie fans so the name will appeal to them. We want to emphasise the fact that we have a female bassist and we want a strong focus on the friendship between the band members to reflect the theme of the song. Kayvon and I both play guitar and I play drums so we can learn the song and play along with it when filming to make it seem more genuine. Alice also plays classical guitar and will have no problem learning the bassline.

Originally this band was going to consist of me, Kayvon and our friend, Josh, as we all get along well and are comfortable in front of a camera. We hoped that this chemistry would be obvious in our video and make it feel genuine. We found two problems with this. Firstly, a 3-piece indie band consisting of 3 white males is extremely generic and would not stand out in any way from all the other white male 3-piece indie bands in the music industry. Also, Josh is not in our group and having him in our video would complicate things. Replacing Josh with Alice is good because it makes us stand out a bit and also keeps everything within our group, simplifying shooting schedules.

Below are some visual references for similar artists and bands to ours.

George Ezra

Dan Croll

Daughter

The Vaccines

 

Lewis Watson

Dog Is Dead

 

Metronomy

Bombay Bicycle Club

Target Audience

Our primary target audience is indie fans. Our secondary target audience is 16-24 year olds. Our tertiary target audience is anyone else not within that age bracket who listens to music.


Typical indie fans

We decided to think about what was actually achievable for our video. We realised that it would be much better if we tried to keep it fairly simple and so we decided to think about what genres have simple videos. We decided that we would have a mostly performance-driven music video set entirely in a studio so that we could have a consistent feel and quality.

We found that music videos for songs by indie bands are often set in a studio. We included many examples of these kinds of videos in our steal-o-matic (see seperate post). This is what made us decide to do an indie song and this decision in turn dictated what our target audience would be.

Typical 16-24 year old music fans

What Is Selling Well In The UK

 

At first glance, this list doesn't show any patterns. There is a large range of genres including rock, pop, soul, dance and singer-songwriter from artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, Avicii, Elbow, Beyonce and Sam Smith.

One thing I did notice was that almost all of the names on the list were already big names before the release of the album on this chart with the excpetion of Bastille and Sam Smith.

This is suggesting that it is difficult for unknown artists to get an album to sell well. From this I can learn that trying to promote an album is perhaps not the best way to make an unknown artist popular.

The number one spot here is taken by Pharrell Williams with his song 'Happy'. This song was hugely popular both because it was very catchy and because it was featured in the film 'Despicable Me 2'. This shows how successful a song can become from being feautured in a popular film.
The rest of the chart is fairly mixed with a variety of artists. Sam Smith made it onto the list twice, perhaps because his soul songs are quite unique and stand out from all the other pop songs that are popular and fill the rest of the chart.
This chart is suggesting that the best way to make an artist popular is to release a pop or dance song.

This chart is similar to the 2014 singles chart. There are fewer pop and dance songs and a slightly better mix of genres but overall pop and dance still dominates and is selling well.

 

Overall I think what I can learn from all of these charts is that if you want to be popular, the safe bet is to release something that's very accessible like a pop song.

However, Sam Smith's success suggests that the huge gaps for rock, indie and alternative music could be taken advantage of. His album sold really well, as did AM by the Arctic Monkeys and Bastille's Bad Blood.

Inspirational Websites

Advertises the album straight away, all in black and white to reflect the band's style, simple design based around images

Simple design but very eye-catching picture, band's name is huge, advertsing future show, very strong rock connotations with the flames and the long hair

Advertising upcoming album, very simple, focal image is the upcoming album cover, date of release at the top

Simple colour scheme that matches his latest album, ability to listen to his songs using icons at the-right

Black and white with large logo in corner, Youtube video of live performance embedded, link to buy their album

Very simple, advertising their latest album with link to multiple websites that sell it, image from album fills half the screen



Minimalist blog design with updates from the band members and an advertisement for their app 'PolyFauna'



Website changes colour to match the links that you hover over which is very aesthetically pleasing, band logo, image from their latest album is the focal image, ability to play their music using buttons in the top-right corner

Patterns and Conventions

• Artist name and logo is always present and is normally very eye-catching
• The websites are all extremely visual with large images, bold text and a striking colour scheme
• The website is trying to sell the artist's music with a particular emphasis on their latest album
• All the websites are consistent with the style and image of the artist
• There are always links to social media as well as the ability to sign up for newsletters
• The websites have different sections for news, gigs, photos, videos, merchandise, etc.
• Each website is very unique and has a strong sense of identity and individuality

The exception to all these rules is Radiohead's 'Dead Air Space' blog which is purposefully very simple and plain. This makes it stand out from other websites and also makes it seems more personal with messages from band members and posts signed 'Thom' or 'Ed'.

Inspirational Album Covers

There are different styles of album covers. Some are very simple and will only have a logo with a plain background or even just the name of the album in the centre. Others are based around a focal image and can be quite simple or more abstract. Some artists have recurring themes in all of their album covers such as vibrant colours or a band logo. The best album covers are unique and recognizable. I also much prefer when album covers are simple and not cluttered.

Bands with recurring themes

Bands use their album covers to create an image for themselves. It is fairly common for bands to have recurring themes in their album covers to create a sense of identity for the fans. It creates the sense that these are all albums by the same artist and not just collections of singles.

Band of Skulls - Symmetrical graphic with a simple colour scheme

Belle and Sebastian - Monochromatic pinctures of people with simple bold text

Muse - Bright colours and a recurring logo

Queens of the Stone Age - Very simple with only one colour, a graphic and some text

Radiohead - Bright, abstract images. Each is distinct but similar in a way (all are done by Stanley Donwood)

The XX - Very simple graphic of a cross filled with an image



Vampire Weekend - Thick white borders, simple colour schemes and bold white text in the same font

The White Stripes - Very distint colour schemes of red, white and black

Plain with just text

Some artists go for a very minimalist look for their album covers. It draws on the idea that less is more as album covers without any artwork will actually stand out from other album covers. Frank Ocean's 'Channel Orange' stands out in particular because it is such a vibrant orange colour.


The Beatles

Frank Ocean





Arctic Monkeys

Four images in a grid

This is an idea that has been used a lot by different artists. It is very simple and creates an instant connection between the fan and the artist because we are seeing them without any graphics or other images that could distract us. Blur's 'Best Of' is also heavily influenced by the pop art movement, attracting fans of that style of artwork and standing out with its bright colours.

Everything Everything

Gorillaz

Blur

The Beatles

Simple graphic

This is possibly the most common style of album cover, especially within the indie and alternative genres. A simple graphic is something that can be instantly recognized and easily advertised. Using bright colours like in Death From Above 1979's or Primal Scream's covers is eye-catching and some albums like Dark Side if the Moon, (Pink Floyd), or Unknown Pleasures, (Joy Division), have become iconic within fans of the genres. This iconic status can't be achieved as easily without a unique graphic.

Arctic Monkeys

Pink Floyd

Death From Above 1979

Franz Ferdinand

Daft Punk

Primal Scream

Swans

The Black Keys

Joy Division

Photographs

These covers are very common for indie music. They are normally quite arty and create an image for the artist. For example, James Blake's album cover is very recognizable and instantly tells us that his music is different and unique. The most important thing is that they instantly create a tone for the album and strongly convey the genre.

The Vaccines

The Strokes

Jake Bugg

The Beatles

LCD Soundsystem

SBTRKT

James Blake

Conclusion

There is a huge variety of album covers. It's hard to find things that every one of the album covers above have in common but there are some patterns that are followed. Each of the album covers are unique in some way. They either have an interesting colour scheme or focal image or are composed in some way that makes them individual. Some album covers purposefully imitate other album covers. For example, 'Demon Days' and 'Best of Blur' both have the same grid format. In this case, Damon Albarn is the main man behind both bands and the similar style of album cover is acknowledging this and giving fans another layer of meaning and interpretation from the artwork.

Overally I think it is important that bands create an image for themselves and one of the most important ways to do this is through their album covers. Bands like 'The XX' and 'Belle and Sebastian' have managed to create a very unique image for themselves and their albums are instantly recognizable.