Thursday 9 May 2013

Evaluation: In what way does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout my initial research I thoroughly looked into music videos within the indie/alternative genre in which I wanted to focus my product around. From this, I found that videos inside the genre are so vast with many not sticking to a particular pattern unlike pop or R&B. In ways this was good for me as it allowed me to do what I wanted without challenging the typical forms and conventions so much that it had an effect on whether the audience liked it or not. Despite not following any specific guidelines I still tried to give the video an indie/vintage look to it and I believe I did this well. For example, including props like the guitar and Beatles-esque clothes/hair are similar to what fans of the artist wear meaning people could relate to and potentially enjoy the video more than they normally would.

As I mentioned previously, I wanted the video to be completely narrative based with the artist featuring in the throughout it. However, I didn't want it to be performance based with the artist singing or lip syncing to the lyrics either. I looked at a video for Arctic Monkey's single 'Suck It and See' before coming up with my own idea. The video met the forms and conventions that I knew I wanted to include in my own product with the artist featuring as the main character of a narrative based music video yet no lip syncing or major performance included. Although this video is completely different to my own it influenced me quite significantly and helped me create my final finished product.


This video as well as my own in regards to Todorov's theory both start off in a state of equilibrium of the narrative. This changes as the main character/artist is given the task of funding himself some money for beer. As the video finishes, the narrative meets a new equilibrium as he walks into the distance with his beer and no longer has any problems to solve. 


As well as Todorov, I also believe my music video follows some of the forms and conventions of Andrew Goodwin's theory and meets some of the 8 codes that he proposed. One for example is 'Links between lyrics and visuals'. As my music video as a whole is continuously narrative throughout without any interruptions there are no direct links between the visuals and the lyrics at the same time. However, the general mood that the lyrics of the song give off such as 'stuck in speed bump city where the only thing is pretty is the thought of getting out' and 'in this trouble town, troubles are found' heavily influenced the music video and it's overall idea. By just making it purely narrative and giving it a black and white effect, I tried to make it look as if the main character had quite a bleak life with no job and flike Miles Kane for example feature in their videos and decided not to challenge this idea and took it forward myself. Because I obviously couldn't get the actual artist to feature in the video I asked my friend Nathan to act as 'Jake Bugg' which I believe he did a good job of. Including the artist in the music video was particularly important for me in my opinion as I made the decision to use a 'logo' for the album art of the digipak and poster rather than a picture of the singer. This is so members of the target audience can get an idea of what the artist looks like and who is he before perhaps going on to purchase the album or vinyl. 

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of the main product and ancillary texts?

Before I even began to create the ancillary texts I knew it was important for me to combine them with the main product in a different ways and I believe I did this quite effectively. By doing this, it means the audience can hopefully recognise the artist much and the similar theme between the ancillaries in particular. As I made the decision to not include the artist in the video I knew this could be quite difficult so considering the different methods and ways in which I could combine the main product and ancillaries well was important.

The first ancillary text I made was a website for the artist. I made a number of links from the music video on the website. For example, on the home page I included a screenshot of the artist from the video so people who may have seen the video previously can automatically relate and realise they've come to the right place as soon as they enter. I also made a gallery page which included screenshots from the video as well as official photos of the artist. Finally, on the Music Videos page, I added the actual final product so people who may not have already seen the music video but have come across the website can check the artist out.


As the front cover of my digipak obviously didn't include an image of the artist or one taken from the music video I had to consider how I could implement a link between them. I came up with the idea to include a picture of the artist taken from the video on the booklet inside with the lyrics of that particular song displayed over it too. The vibrant red colour of the text (the same colour as the limited edition vinyl) looked great on the black and white background image in my opinion and again people would be see it and immediately be able to relate to the music video. Alternatively, if they had not already seen the video they may then go out to look for one online. 


Regarding the poster, I didn't make a link between it and the main product as I knew it was essential that the artwork of the album cover featured on it for marketing purposes. Also, I wanted to keep it quite simple and minimalistic so adding any unnecessary information could have defected the purpose of the poster.  

If I came to create another music video I'd like to try to include the actual 'logo' of the artist as seen on the digipak in the video itself so people who watch it could see it and then relate to the album they see in the shops or poster they find in a magazine perhaps resulting in them purchasing the record or CD. However, as the image was taken by my friend who was on holiday in the Netherlands this would be quite difficult on a small budget. Despite not being able to do this, I believe the combination of my main product ancillary texts was very effective and come together to help increase the overall sales of the record should it be sold in the shops. 

Evaluation: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Media technologies influenced various parts of my coursework a significant amount and in a number of different ways and I wouldn't have been able to achieved what I have done without them. The website I used to publish my research, ancillaries and other aspects of my coursework was 'www.blogger.com'. I knew it was a legitimate and trustworthy website as it had been referred to me through several teachers and I'd also used it in the past for personal use. The blog allowed me to practically everything I needed to and was a great way to display the research I had carried out and discuss the decisions I had to make when creating my final product and ancillaries, etc. The fact that it had a feature that allowed you to upload images and videos too was very helpful and I took advantage of the pleasure to quite an extent. It wasn't just the Blogger website that I used the Internet for however, it was highly beneficial for my research and I used a number of websites relative to my topic/genre in order to collate it all together. Some of these included: 'NME.com' and 'www.rollingstone.com'. At first, video streaming websites such as YouTube and Vimeo were great too as I used them to look at music videos of previous A-Level students in order to try and get an idea of what I wanted to create and perhaps what genre I wanted to focus on. YouTube was also very useful towards to end of my project as I used it to upload my music video after completion. It was a good decision to use YouTube over other similar websites to stream my music video in my opinion as it's without a doubt the most popular and I found that my target audience primarily go to YouTube to look for music videos too. Also, with the advancement of Web 2.0 technologies, YouTube is now accessible on a number of different gadgets making my music video available to people on the go with android mobile phone, iPad's and other similar devices.


Other websites that were very important when completing my coursework were social networking websites Facebook and YouTube as well as emailing service Outlook. I used both Outlook and Twitter to contact the artist the artist to get permission to whether I could use the song for the music video which unfortunately I never got a reply to. As for Facebook, it was imperative for a number of different reasons. Essentially, I used it to get in contact with my target audience by creating an online questionnaire through one of it's Apps and specifically inviting different people to take part in answering the questions. Facebook was used to promote my video too. After I upload it to YouTube I shared it with my friends to watch and give me feedback, this helped increase the views and gave me ideas of where I'd gone right and wrong. A website called 'Prezi' was helpful too. It let me put text and pictures into an animated interactive presentation rather than just a blog post which gave the blog a bit of variety. 

I didn't just use media technologies for research and implementing different features into my blog but during the process of creating the film too. Originally, I planned on using the camera on my iPhone 5 to film my music video after being provided with a special tripod made specifically for smartphones. However, my teacher gave me permission to use one of the Media Studies department's video cameras and I decided to take him up on the offered in order to improve the overall quality of my final product.  The camera I used was a 'Fujifilm finepix', it was a great camera and gave the final product a much more genuine and authentic look to it in my opinion. Before actually going out to film the shots for my video, I tested the camera by filming and taking various different images around the house and garden. I then took these shots to Final Cut Pro X on the Mac computer and practiced editing them to get an idea of how to use the software before edited the final footage. At this point and when it came to the final editing itself, Final Cut Pro allowed me to use it's different features and techniques that aren't available on other editing software's and I generally found it easier to use than Windows Movie Maker after past experiences. 


In my opinion, after completing my coursework and evaluating the different media technologies I used throughout I personally believe the most effective and important was the camera equipment and editing software. It gave me the ability to make the music video look genuine and realistic and I feel that without it my final product wouldn't have looked like it did. 

Evaluation: What have you learned from audience feedback?

Upon completing my music video, in order to make it available to my audience, it was evident that I needed to present it to them through an online streaming website. I felt the most appropriate would be YouTube as it's the most popular and after asking members of my target audience the vast majority tended to use it over similar websites such as Vimeo. Also, I already had an account on YouTube and knew how everything worked after uploading videos in the past so that also played a part in the decision. Despite it being a global website with billions of people using it every day, this didn't mean the views on my video would shoot up. Therefore, in order to get feedback off my peers, I shared it to my friends on Facebook. As I'd previously sent out a questionnaire to a selection of my friends on Facebook regarding music videos I sent out a message to them to ask them to watch my video and perhaps give me some feedback. I was fairly pleased with the feedback I received from the video with four people liking the post and one person commenting.


Although I got a good reception after posting my video on Facebook I decided to post it on Twitter too. As I had over 1000 followers it would've been stupid not to. After sharing it to my Twitter followers, I only managed to receive one comment which wasn't particularly constructive but it helped increase the hits without a doubt. By posting on Twitter it aloud me to tag the artist's personal account too but unfortunately I failed to receive any feedback from him. 



Several people gave me feedback on my actual YouTube video too after sharing. I received over 100 views all together which was great as well as one like too. Being an avid user of YouTube I knew it is essential for a user that their videos get much more likes than dislikes to try and keep the bar as green as possible. By doing this there is more chance people will click on the video to view it in the first place as they know previous viewers have rated it well and dubbed it 'worth watching' in a sense. As you can see I am yet to receive a dislike leaving the bar 100% green which was very important for me. I also managed to get a number of comments on my YouTube video too. 


The comments I received off my peers and target audience online overall was fantastic and I couldn't have asked for any better. One person who commented on my video felt that the video would have been better with 'some shots of the artist singing'. Although I was open to feedback I decided not to take this on board as the majority of my results from the questionnaire said otherwise and I wanted to focus the video solely on the narrative. If I did make the decision to include shots of the artist singing or miming in the future however, I'd like to do something similar to The Verve's hit song and music video 'Bittersweet Symphony' as I feel although it's ever so simply, it's very effective. 


I didn't just get feedback through social networking websites online but from in person through relatives and my teacher. Before showing it to my teacher, I showed the original video to my brother and asked him what he thought of it and whether there were anyway's it could be improved. As he'd studied A-Level media studies before I took his opinion into consideration. He suggested that I should include an extra few shots to indicate the busker in the video had gained money off a number of different people as before it looked like just one had all at once. I went out to film several more final shots and re-edited them together. Taking these remarks into my attention turned out to very successful in my opinion and I think that the video looks much better now than it did before. 


The response I got off my teacher after he watched the video was positive but again similarly to the comment on my YouTube channel, he felt some shots of the artist singing would have improved it so again I decided not to to take his opinion forward. Not only would this have gone against my original idea and the opinions of my target audience but I would have had to remove quite a large amount of footage from the video which consequently could have significantly backfired. 

From all the feedback I acquired I learnt that overall I created quite a good and effective music video which I'm very proud of. Despite not taking on board several comments from my peers I believe I have still achieved the task I was set and hope to attain a good mark for my work. 

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Final Music Video

Here is my final music video. The footage was filmed over a single day and I used the iMovie software on the Macbook to bring it together to create the final product. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome and believe it suits the song and genre well. Thanks to my actor Nathan Hird for taking his time to feature in the music video as well as the Media Studies department at Walton High School for allowing me to use the camera and it's equipment. Uploading it to YouTube over other video streaming websites such as Vimeo seemed the most sensible thing to do as it is without a doubt the most popular and my target audience primarily use it to look for and watch music videos of their specified choice.

Music Video for Jake Bugg - Trouble Town 

Ancillary: Magazine Advertisement/Poster



This is the final design for my poster/magazine advertisement. I didn't have access to Photoshop at home unlike I did at school for my digipak cover therefore I used Microsoft Publisher instead. Despite the limited resources, I felt I managed to achieve my objective of creating an effective advertisement to promote the debut album of Jake Bugg. 

After researching album advertisements previously, I made the final decision to collaborate both the David Bowie and Miles Kane poster together and include some of the main and most important features from both when designing my own. Some of these key features including the release date so the fans are aware when the album is being released, the name of the artist in a large stand out font across the page and a review taken from the NME with their logo placed below so those who may read the magazine on a regular basis could perhaps see the logo and relate, resulting in them perhaps listening to Jake Bugg and then going on to purchase the album. As well as this, I displayed the link to the website at the bottom of the advert. I thought this was necessary as those intrigued by the poster could go there to find out more about the artist and perhaps listen to some of the artist's tunes, again prompting them to buy them album. 

I stuck with my initial decision to use the album cover as a backdrop for the advertisement rather than a photo of the artist them self  In general, I believe this is a much better way to market the product and would benefit the overall sales quite significantly. The final poster design could be placed in various different places including tube and train stations, bus stops, newspapers and magazines. Overall, I am very happy with the outcome and have faith that the minimalistic look of only the vital information being displayed will be effective. 


Friday 3 May 2013

Ancillary: Poster/Magazine Advertisement Research

As well creating a website and digipak as ancillaries to help promote an album I made the decision to also design a poster or magazine advertisement. Although many people consider print based advertisement's to be disregarded after the advancement of online technology and advertising I still felt it was important as the posters could be displayed in magazines and public places where essentially a lot of people would see them.

 In order to get a good idea of what to include on my poster and what was typical of the genre and similar singer-song writers like Jake Bugg I researched some online. I came across two, one for Miles Kane and the other the official poster for David Bowie's new album The Next Day. As you can see from the photographs to the right hand side, each poster has an image of the artist which is also the album cover. Despite the fact that making the artist's face recognisable to the public is important, I felt that having the album cover on advertising would be much more effective. This is as the public would potentially see the advert and then notice the CD or Vinyl cover in the shop or online a few days later after identifying the logo previously from the advertisement. As well as the main image of the poster, the text on it was obviously a significant factor to producing a successful poster. As you can see from both the Miles Kane and Bowie posters, there is only very little but quite large text that just includes important information such as the release date, name of the artist and album, particularly regarding Bowie's. When designing the poster to promote Jake Bugg's album, I would quite like to take David Bowie's approach and perhaps include only a few pieces of important information. However, I must take into consideration that David Bowie is a worldwide superstar where as I'm marketing a product for an upcoming and considerably new singer song-writer, yet, I still believe the poster will look effective.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Ancillary: Final Digipak/Vinyl Design


My final digipak prototype came out better than I expected and I am more than pleased with the final product. As well as the digipak, I made the decision to create the packaging for the album to be released on vinyl too and I believe it was a good choice. Photoshop 7.0 paid a significant part in achieving the final product of this ancillary as it allowed me to easily layer text and other images (barcode) over the main original picture. I felt the main graffiti image I used worked great and I believe that it would work effectively as a logo for Jake Bugg as time went on. I made the decision to make the album self titled.

                         Front                              Middle (Booklet)                                   Back

This is the finished template of my digipak. Although the same image is repeated on both the front and the back I believe this look really effective especially after printing and placing in the CD holder itself. The camera that Dan used to take the original image was of high quality as you can tell. I also edited out the background and gave it a blurry effect to ensure that the logo was the main and the central part of the cover. When it came to making the booklet, I used an image from the video I created and added lyrics to the song over it. I chose the red text so it would coincide with the red disk upon opening the CD case. It was essential that the name of the artist on the front sleeve stood out, therefore I made sure it was in capitals and could easily be read over the background.

Here is a physical copy of the Jake Bugg digipak album and what would look like if it was being sold on the shelves in music stores:

As well as the creating the digipak I made the decision to make the album available on vinyl record too. I thought it'd be a great idea especially as Record Store Day was fast approaching. If the album go the go ahead, I had planned to release the album as a limited edition red 12" vinyl with only 1000 copies pressed. I felt this added to the authenticity and would make it much more special for the release and fans of Jake Bugg. I decided to use just Bugg's initials (JB) on the vinyl edition as I felt it looked quite effective against the tiled background.

Here are a few photographs of the physical copy of the vinyl edition:

Ancillary: Digipack Plan

As mentioned in my previous posts I wanted to have an album cover with a logo or stand out image rather than a picture of the artist, despite going against typical codes and conventions of the indie/folk genre. The general idea is to have a hard plastic case with a booklet inside that has images of the artist on and the track list written on the back in the same font as the Artist's name on the front. At first, I was planning to create a logo but my friend Dan had recently gone to Amsterdam for an educational school trip and was showing me the pictures he had taken on his camera. One picture of some graffiti particularly stood out and I thought it'd look great as an album cover. There was also a picture of the graffiti from a different less zoomed in angle which I felt would suit the back cover great too. Dan gave me permission to use both images too which was great.

The concept I was aiming to achieve was actually giving the artist a logo in which people would recognise them by. A good modern example of a band that does something similar is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This logo would be the face of Jake Bugg and people would associate him with it. Looking towards the future, the logo could make an appearance in music videos and perhaps on future album covers but in various different scenarios and places. Although the image itself is quite basic, I believe it will be really effective and stand out on shelves and online. The front cover of the album would include the artists name on also in black capital letters. As well as creating a digipak for the album, I had an idea of making a vinyl record for it too. If I did come to design it, the general sleeve would be the same but tiled across the front in four squares. Similar to The Smith's 'Meat Is Murder' record. To create the cover for my digipak I plan to use Photoshop 7.0.


Before actually creating the digipak, I quickly sketched out on paper a rough plan of what I wanted it to look like and include. 




Ancillary: Digipak Research

Another task to complete for ancillary work was to compose a digipak for an upcoming album of the artist I am focusing on. I had the general idea of what a digipak was and included but in order to get a better idea of what I should and shouldn't incorporate into mine I did some further research. At first I looked into what digipak's generally consisted of and then those inside my genre. The general design of a digipak is the developed version of a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc packaging. Typically, it includes a gatefold card stock outer binding or paperboard, with at least one plastic disc tray attached to it depending on what CD is and what the artist is offering. A complete digipak usually contains a front cover, back cover and booklet inside. The booklet inside usually has pictures of the artist inside and lyrics of the song on the album, perhaps information on the band/artist and it's members too. In my opinion, the most important feature of a digipak/album is the cover. This is as it's the first thing people will see whether shopping online/iTunes or in-store at a music shop. I personally believe it is essential for the cover to be quirky and catch people's eye as people who may not even be a fan of the particular artist could potentially be drawn in and end up buying it.

I typed into Google 'most influential album sleeves' in order to see what stood out and in general what made a successful album cover. I found this article of 'Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 100 Album Covers' (http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers). After looking down the list I noticed that a large majority didn't include the artist on the cover and instead had a logo, pattern or other image. There were two albums that I was familiar with but I felt particularly stood out which were, Pink Floyd with their album 'Dark Side of the Moon' and The Velvet Underground's Andy Warhol album. The artwork is so simple and effective yet it catches the eye straight away. Between them, the records have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.















Typical of the genre
After researching influential and successful albums I looked more into album covers within the genre I was focusing on. I came across these two - Miles Kane's 'Colour of the Trap' and Jack White's 'Blunderbuss'. Both artist's are singer songwriters and their music is fairly similar to Jake Bugg's. It is evident from both of these album sleeves that typically, solo artists inside the indie/alternative genre tend to feature on their cover. Also, the colour of the artists are edited to black and white whilst quite a bright and vibrant colour features elsewhere on the cover. I quite like this and would definitely considering doing something similar on my own digipak. There are without a doubt a number of advantages to having the artist appear on the front cover of the album. For example: fans like to see their artist on the cover and it makes the record much more easily recognisable for people who know the artist but may not be aware that they're releasing a new album. Despite this, I personally prefer to have a logo or stand-out image to feature on the cover and plan to do so.



I also looked at the general layout of some digipaks within the indie/alternative to get an idea of what to include on the back and inside. From my own CD collection I came across Kasabian's second album 'Empire'.Typical of most digipaks, the case is made of hard plastic and includes an inner booklet, back cover with the tracklist on and front cover. The booklet inside folds out t feature an image of each member of the band, I quite like the idea and would consider doing something similar when creating my own digipak.



Ancillary: Final Website Design

When I came to create my website I had no problems working out how to use the 'weebly' website and from what I remember it was a lot better and easier than the actual web authoring I had used previously. The website took me about 2 hours maximum to make which wasn't really long at all and I quite enjoyed using the website. I appropriately named the website 'www.jakebuggofficial.weebly.com'. Unfortunately though, as I hadn't paid to register the domain myself and was only using a free website the '.weebly' had to included within the domain name. This didn't bother me too much and if I actually came to create an official website to market an album I'd look into purchasing the domain name. I managed to include everything I wanted to and the website itself look very similar to the original plans. The link is -http://jakebuggofficial.weebly.com/.

Home/First page
This is the home page of the website. As you can see I included a picture of the artist as I previously said I wanted to before. I also used a still from my music video that I liked to break up the text in the 'About the Artist' section. I felt it was important to have the artist's biography on the homepage in order to try and drag the audience in and for them to get an idea of who and what Jake Bugg does, especially considering he's a fairly unknown and upcoming artist. It may not be very visible but in the top right corner of the website I included links to both his official Facebook and Twitter accounts. This would allow fans to keep up to date with information without having to visit the website on a regular basis. These links, as well as the banner picture and navigation bar remain on the screen for every page in the website whilst the information in the bottom half changes. 

Other pages on my website included a videos page, gallery, and contacts
Here is a screenshot of the Videos page. I inserted the embed code in so the YouTube videos would be viewable on the page. I included my video for Trouble Town as well as two of the other official music videos.  

This is the Gallery page. I added six images to begin with and would probably add more to the website as time went on for example the poster for the other ancillary piece. Two of the pictures were stills from the Trouble Town music video where as the rest were just from photo shoots with Jake Bugg. 

This is the Contacts page of the website. I inserted a form so fans of the artist could get in touch and send fan-mail or let Jake know what they think of the video. Any forms submitted get sent to an email address where we would then look into sending a reply. There is also a Useful Links page on the website which includes links to Bugg's YouTube, Facebook & Twitter. 

Ancillary: Website Research & Planning

As part of the ancillary tasks in order to try and promote the artist I was focusing on and their upcoming album I had to design and create a website. I had previously made websites in the past which was great as I had a good idea of how to create them and the general things to include on them. However, it was important for me to specifically research band and artist's website in order to try and get an idea of what they look like and what features are available on them as I had only made sport related and educational websites in the past. Some of the websites I researched were quite complex and included features that I wouldn't be able to create with the tools and software I had available. In general though, each website stuck to a similar pattern and the majority of them included a similar set of pages, which were: biography/about the artist, tour, photos, music videos and contact links. In order to find something that was appropriate for me, the websites I tended to focus on were those of singer-song writers and folk artists. These included, the official website for the artist I was focusing on Jake Bugg, Miles Kane & ex-Oasis man Noel Gallagher.

Jake Bugg

Miles Kane

Noel Gallagher

As you can see there are a number of things that each website have in common. Firstly, they all feature the name of the artist in relatively large writing in the top left. I believe this is quite important and plan to include it on my own. Also, typical of websites in general, there is a  navigation bar with a number of page links relative to the artist as I mentioned previously. Another feature I noticed was that each website includes an image of the artist on the homepage as soon as the website is opened, I feel this is important and shall include it on the Jake Bugg website as it's what the fan's would want to see upon opening the website. The main colours used all tend to be dark too (brown, grey, black), I'm unsure whether this is typical of the indie/alternative genre but I can only assume website's of pop artist's and band's wouldn't look similar. As well as this I noticed the websites included links to their Facebook/Twitter/YouTube pages, I plan to do something similar too. 

Before creating my website, I decided to sketch out a rough plan and idea so I had something to work from rather than making it on the spot:


I plan to use a free website called 'www.weebly.com' to create the Jake Bugg website.  


Wednesday 24 April 2013

Censorship

Media censorship is the action of suppressing any type of speech or public communication that the government, media outlet or other controlling body may deem offensive, harmful or inappropriate to anyone in the public domain. Censorship can be used for a number of different reasons including religious, military, political and moral. When applied to the music industry, media censorship may involve filtering out certain aspects of a song such as inappropriate language or showing a censored version of a music video as it includes violent or sexual images that may not be suitable for people of all ages. An example of an artist who had to filter out his music video as it included inappropriate is Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's with their single 'Jubilee Street'. An uncensored version of the music video is also available on YouTube.


Some artists may go against having their music censored but it means it probably won't get played on mainstream radio especially during peak times or lead to it not being played at all. Radio stations have special methods like 'bleeping' for example to help filter out bad language in songs. The general aim of media censoring is so music can be played at any time, for anyone, on any radio station or television program/advert, etc.

Examples of how pop songs are censored for radio use include:

-Bleeping- when a 'beeping' noise is play over the word or lyric so it cannot be heard.
-Blanking- when the song is completely muted for all or part of the offensive lyric/word in the song.
-Re-sampling- overriding the original lyric with music or a like-sounding portion of vocals.
-Re-singing- replacing the inappropriate lyric with another by singing over. Perhaps a word that sounds similar or fits without changing the context of the original lyric.
-Backmasking- taking the original audio of the bad language and reversing so it can no longer be heard.
-Repeating- repeating the word before the explicit word was used so it isn't as obvious. This can sometimes make the lyric sound strange and hard to understand.
-Skipping- removing the inappropriate word without a time delay.

 Here is an example of a song by Kanye West called '25 to Life' where words that may cause offence are blanked out and can no longer be heard.


Tuesday 23 April 2013

Music Video Plan


Above is an initial brainstorm plan of my music video I made before filming. This helped me come up with a general idea for the narrative of my music video and I used the majority of ideas outlined in the plans.

After what I found from analysing the song lyrics, I was certain I wanted to make a narrative based video with the story taken in the direction of there being the artist/character doing the same thing day after day with no opportunities. As you can see in the brainstorm plans, I came up with the idea of a busker (the artist) waking up and  getting ready to go out busking. The camera would show shots of empty bottles of beer which would later become more relevant towards the end of the video. The busker would then get as much money as they could, people and perhaps dogs or children could possibly walk by to give the place a built up kind of feel to it. After, the artist would then walk off towards a local shop to purchase more beer and then head home. I also came up with the idea for the artist to light up a cigarette as the lyric 'Smoke until our eyes would bleed, sparkle pops up the seeds" sounds but I wasn't entirely sure. The general message I would try and give off from the video is that the artist/main character is living in a 'Trouble Town' and doing the same thing day after day. Living with his parents perhaps off the very little he gets from busking so he can just afford his cans of beer each day.

As the artist of the original song obviously wouldn't be able to perform in the song I planned on asking my friend Nathan to appear as Bugg as he agreed to help me previously. Also, some some extent he looked surprisingly similar to Jake Bugg which was an added bonus! I didn't plan on using an fast editing or cuts in the film to match the music as the song itself stayed at quite a steady and consistent pace and I felt it wouldn't really suit the video and could perhaps disrupt the narrative.

Trouble Town by Jake Bugg - Song Lyrics Meaning/Analysis

The song lyrics for Jake Bugg - Trouble Town are as follows: 

Stuck in speed bump city
Where the only thing that's pretty
Is the thought of getting out

There's a tower block overhead
All you've got's your benefits
And you're barely scraping by

In this trouble town
Troubles are found
In this trouble town
Words do get 'round

Kick the bottom make troubles flee
Smoke until our eyes would bleed
Sparkle pop the seed

Hear the sirens down the street
The kids get light on their feet
Or they'll be in the back seat

In this trouble town
Troubles are found

Sitting on the pavement
Boy you've missed your payment
And they're gonna find you soon

If there's a beating in the rain
If there's a little bit of pain, man
You're the one it happens to

If I talk of getting out
I only hear the laughter loud
It's got an ugly echo
Somewhere there's a secret road

To take me far away I know
But 'til then I am hollow

In this trouble town
Troubles are found
In this trouble town
Fools are found

Sitting on the pavement
Boy you've missed your payment
And they're gonna find you soon

If there's a beating in the streets
If there's a feeling of defeat
You're the one it happens to

Stuck in speed bump city
Where the only thing that's pretty
Is the thought of getting out


As I initially planned on making a narrative based video it was important for me to analyse the lyrics carefully. However, I knew that I didn't want to make the narrative follow each lyric by lyric so I decided to read through them several times to try and get the idea of what message the song is trying to give off and the general meaning of it. 

The song title itself 'Trouble Town' gives off the idea that the town Jake Bugg maybe living in or used to is quite grim with very little opportunity for the young people growing up in it.This is also backed up by the fact that Bugg was brought up in a council house and failed to gain many grades at school. This is supported through the very first verse, also: 'Stuck in the speed bump city, where the only thing that's pretty is the thought of getting out' and 'If there's a beating in the rain, if there's a little bit of pain, man. You're the one it's happening to'. These lyrics bring forward the idea that the place Jake is talking about, which is probably the place he grew up, has very little to offer. In general, the song appears to be quite negative with practically every lyric talking about there's no positives to living in the 'Trouble Town'. 'For example: 'Sitting on the pavement, boy you've missed your payment and they're gonna' find you soon'. Overall, I quite like the lyrics and it's one of the main reasons I chose to create my music video with this song in the first place.

I plan to take the idea of the music videos towards the direction that Jake Bugg or the person he appears to be talking about in the song, not necessarily relating to every lyric in the song but giving the video the kinda feel that the artist/character has no life ambitions and is stuck doing the same thing day after day without any opportunities to change. 

Initial ideas for the narrative include the artist/main protagonist working in a dead-end job on little pay each day or walking to do the job centre each day to look for a job. 

About the Artist

Jake Bugg
As I chose a song by an artist I was already familiar and a fan of, researching into the artist wasn't too difficult. Jake Bugg is a 19 year old English singer-songwriter from Nottingham. He takes influence from various different bands and artists including Jimi Hendrix, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Donovan and Johnny Cash. After releasing his first and only EP to date 'Taste It', his debut self titled album was released towards the end of October 2012 and includes hit songs Trouble Town and Lightning Bolt. At the age of just 17 years old, he was chosen by the BBC to perform on their BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury where he went on to get a recording contract with Mercury records. Singles from the album include: Country Song, Taste It, Lightning Bolt, Seen It All, Two Fingers and of course Trouble Town.

On several occasions he has been dubbed the 'East Midlands answer to Bob Dylan' and has also made appearances on the hit music television program 'Later with Jools Holland'. As well as this, Bugg has supported the ex-Oasis man's solo project Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds on their American tour and the Stones Roses. After the release of the album, Jake took part on a tour across the UK and Ireland selling out venues from over 10 locations. 

On Wednesday 20th February, Jake was nominated for the 'Best British Breakthrough Act' at the Brit Awards but narrowly missed out to fellow folk/indie-pop singer song-writer Ben Howard. Here is a short clip of the teenager being interviewed shortly after the awards, giving his opinions on the awards themselves and pop boy band One Direction. 



Contacting the Artist

As Jake Bugg's song Trouble Town I wanted to use for my music video was copyrighted it was important for me to try and get in some form of touch with the artist before I used it. In order to try and get permission I used social networking website Twitter and email. I found the email address via Jake Bugg's official website.

                              Here is Part 1) of the message as Twitter only allows you to send 140
                              character messages at a time.
                             Part 2)

I also contacted the artist via email using Microsoft Outlook after finding an email address of Jake Bugg's management on his website in the 'contacts' section. 

   As of yet, I have failed to receive a response from both forms of communication. 



Monday 22 April 2013

Song Choice

At first, I thought choosing a song for my music video would have been an easy task but it turned out to be the complete opposite. I was adamant I wanted to use a song inside that fitted into the indie/alternative genre. Also, after researching my target audience I knew I wanted to create a narrative based music video that featured the artist but without any lip syncing or performance throughout. Also, the song has to be around three to three and a half minutes in length. Personally too, I wanted it to be a song I quite enjoyed as I felt I'd enjoy creating and documenting it much more. I used YouTube, Spotify and Last.fm to search for the right song. Last.fm was probably the most helpful as it allowed me to search by genre meaning I could find a lot more songs I may not have already been aware of. As I'm familiar with music within the genre  I wanted to focus on, initial songs I chose were from solo artists I was personally a big fan of, Miles Kane and Jack White. One of the songs I found were 'I'm Shakin'' (Jack White), originally an early 60's blues song by Little Willie John. The other, an original song called Inhaler (Miles Kane) from his debut album Come Closer. Both of these songs were quite lively and upbeat. I eventually came to an initial decision to use Inhaler as the song for my video. I managed to come up with a few initial ideas and even started to film some footage but I found it quite hard to fit a narrative to the style and speed of the song and realised I needed something much slower.

Jack White - I'm Shakin'

Miles Kane - Inhaler

Final Decision
Finally I made the decision to use a song by 18 year old folk singer songwriter Jake Bugg. The song was called Trouble Town and I had been aware of it for a while after coming across it earlier in 2012. It suited what I was looking for perfectly, it was the right pace and met the genre requirements. The only problem was that it was a few seconds under 3 minutes but this shouldn't of been too much of a problem and the video ended up being a good 15 seconds over 3 minutes when finished. I also really like the lyrics and I felt I could make quite a good music video that related to them well. The original song and music video can watched here:

Jake Bugg - Trouble Town

Music Video Textual Analyis - The Age of the Understatement by The Last Shadow Puppets


The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of The Understatement 

This is the music video for Alex Turner and Miles Kane's side project The Last Shadow Puppet's single 'The Age of the Understatement'. It's directed by Romain Gavras and is 3 minutes 14 seconds long. I chose to analyse this video as I planned on making my video of similar length and also wanted to use a song within the same genre. The video is quite hybrid, it features a narrative, the artist themselves and it's performance based too.

The music video opens with an establishing shop of an ice rink. This creates an enigma as the audience would want to find out what happens next. When related to Todorov's Theory for example, this shot also sets up a state of equilibrium of the narrative within the video. Next, the audience begins to feel quite tense as the build-up of sound is met with the close-up of a young girl putting on her ice skates. Shots of her worried and concerned facial expressions leave the audience as ease. The young girl then begins to skate on the ice rink to he pace of the music which has quite a strong rhythm whilst the cuts in the video also correspond to the beat of the song. This helps build tension and adds to the enigma created by the opening shot. It is important that this is done fairly early on in the video in order to keep the audience interested and intrigued for the rest of the video. 

Unsuspectingly, the camera then cuts to another long establishing shot of two men standing by soviet army tanks. It is at this point that the two main artists of the band are introduced. Slowly, the camera steadily zooms towards them again in beat of the music. They are framed in the centre of the frame portraying their importance and status. The video shows a medium shot of both them in front of two tanks just as the lyrics in the song begin to start. The band member's clothes are fairly stereotypical of the “indie/alternative” style as they sport long trench coats and Beatle-esque haircuts. Many people watching this video especially fans of music within this genre will be able to relate to the band members through the use of iconography and other elements of mise-en-scene. Again, the camera changes to a medium shot Miles and Alex walking with the rhythm of the music. The mise-en-scene of the soviet tanks in the background can still be seen which makes the audience consider whether something quite serious is to happen next. As well as this, the general setting is quite desolate with snow which perhaps connotes the isolation and loneliness of both characters.

The mise-en-scene in the video also implies connotations of age and create quite a dated kind of feel towards the video. For example, the lighting is quite dark throughout and appears to have a sepia tint.  Many other indie videos tend to be quite similar as many bands inside the genre tend to get their musical influences from older generations including band's from the 60's such as The Beatles, The Kinks and The Animals, so in general this video sums up the type of music they produce.

There is then a setting change when the camera cuts to the band members driving through a brightly lit Russian city, this is quite a contrast in comparison to the previous empty setting. Again, the importance of the two band members is highlighted through a low angle shot which looks up to the characters. This relates to the audience of the band as many of them are young and look up to them as idols. Throughout the music video, Alex Turner and Miles Kane tend to dominate each frame even when stood in front of the large menacing army tanks in the snow. The setting then changes again to a church. Again, this contrasts with the original settings of the tanks and also creates a binary opposition between religion and war. 

As the pace of the music picks up towards the end of the song, the amount of cuts increase too. This helps create a pace between the visuals and which both the eyes and ears can follow. The girl ice skating is also re-introduced towards the end too. Like at the start of the song,  her movement fits the pace and rhythm of the song and she slows down as the beat changes. Finally, the video shows a high angle long shot of the Russian army standing in formation. This shot could be showing the new equilibrium, as towards the beginning they were out in a so called 'wilderness' with the tanks yet now they're back at what appears to be important government buildings after overcoming their problem/task.