Copyright Allowance

This is an email from the lead singer of the band "Rivera" whom we are using for out music video and coursework. It shows that we have been given access an allowance to use anything associated with the band without infringing on copyright.

Image and Genre - Rivera

 

Rivera is a 5 piece band from Dartford, Kent. The bands logo appears to take a lot of influence from Nirvanas however upon discussion with the band we were told that this was not intended. This means that strongly and clearly imaging the band is important so that people are not under the false impression that Rivera is trying to be a past band. Wether it is intentional or not some aspects of the bands image appear to be influenced by past legends such as Led Zeppelins Robert Plant, and John Lennon of The Beatles. This image is carried off most heavily by the lead singer and bassist of the band. We feel that we should market the band under this image despite their music calling for a possibly more conceptual and modern image as this will appeal to both our 18-24 year old target audience but also an older audience as it will create a nostalgic feel within them and allow them to feel that they are buying into a real, true band dedicated to the music. It is not only their image affected by these past legends however but also their music, powerful rhythmic motifs are mixed with a psychedelic feel within the music to create a new sound that although leaning on classic rock is different in its own way without being computerised and ultra-modern.

Conclusion
For our image and genre study of our band Rivera we firstly looked at the image they were presenting themselves with and then thought if this matches their music and target audience appropriately. We felt that it was a suitable image and learnt that much of their look seemed to be based on and influenced by past icons. It was a key task as it gave us the basic image of the band that we will have to be portraying when we make our video and digipack.

Case Study of Marketing Campaign: Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Why
We have chosen to study the digipack, website and marketing of Arcade Fire. We feel that as a band although the music is different the same type of theme is present between them and our own band Rivera. The bands newest album "Reflektor" which is still to be released also seems highly conceptual so the bands branding and image in the public eye is similar to or a possible inspiration for our own band.

Marketing
Arcade Fire created a sense of anticipation and put their album into the public eye through a unusual international marketing campaign. Stencils were seen around the world from new york to rome suggesting that the bands now official announced fourth LP will be called "Reflektor. At least two street artists have confirmed that Arcade Fire commissioned them to draw the Reflektor logo on walls around their town. A"mysterious"account on instagram began to track the locations in which this symbol was appearing, this instagram account gave fans a website named "thereflektors.com", on this website was a fuzzy video that showed someone drawing the logo in chalk. Arcade Fire didn't comment on the logos but their youtube page wrote "no comment" giving the suggestion that the band was behind the logo and confirmed suspicions that it was the title of their fourth LP and the title track of the record.

Video 1
Two music videos were released for the albums title track "Reflektor" within the same day. The first video released was an interactive experience which has become a theme within some of the bands music videos with them having done it in past videos such as "Neon Bible" and "The Wilderness Downtown". The effects in the video are controlled by the viewer, linking in with the title of the song making the viewer simply a "Reflektor" as the video reflects their actions. This creates a relationship between the band and the audience creating a lot of anticipation for the album and a loyal fanbase. This video can be found at: www.justareflektor.com

Video 2
The second is a traditional non interactive music video, it is filmed in black and white and has been heavily influenced by "Film Noir" style movies and videos. In the video the band members have giant masks over their heads which is again a continuation on from a past video as they did this in the video for Sprawl II, showing that the artist is once again trying to keep up a pre-existing image and relationship through this campaign despite selling a new product. This video is highly conceptual and we feel it can be used as inspiration for shot types and some possible ideas in our own music video.
This video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo

Website

The album cover for Arcade Fires "Reflektor"

The bands website keeps up the simple black and white style theme that has been present throughout the whole campaign for this album, the album cover included in this colour scheme. It uses the same chalk style writing as was used by the street artists around the world and therefore gives a strong link between the different aspects of the campaign. Despite its simplicity the website advertises the band and the album well making it seem that they are not overly commercialised and are therefore something that more "indie" fans will want to buy into and be a part of
The website can be found at: http://www.arcadefire.com/reflektorpreorder/us/



Conclusion
I feel that this task was an important one as although we have analysed digipacks and websites in other tasks studying the whole market campaign as a whole gives you a much wider picture and better idea of how to do it yourself. Through studying the campaign we get to see the kind of ideas that carry across through all areas. In the case of Arcade Fire's Reflektor it was the graffiti style text and grey/silver colour scheme. Also as we did the study on an artist of similar genre of our own releasing a new album it gave us ideas of how to do it ourselves. I feel it was much more effective studying a recent campaign rather than a past one as the recent one will have more of an insight into how to attract attention and create a relationship with the fans in the modern day.

Collection of Images from the case study

Lyric Analysis

Line 1 - Shows unstable mental state of the speaker
           - Knows what is happening isn't real or right
Line 2+3 - Unclear who the lyrics are aimed at, shows whoever is being addressed may be untruthful, shows a certainty in the mind of the speaker of the lyrics
Line 4 - Foreshadows that something negative is going to happen, foreshadows something out of the ordinary
Line 5 - Interest has been lost in speaker, gives impression that the speaker is male, shows characters actions may have lost the woman being addressed
Line 6+7 - Disbelief in what is being said to him, insistence that someone is "kidding" gives a confused sense tot he lyric. creates a feel that the speaker may be addressing himself inside his own head
Line 8+9 - Sense of being trapped, unfulfillment, trapped inside his own head, need to escape
Line 10+11 - Speaker almost begging for target to see him, reason why the speaker needs to be seen
Line 12 - Darker tone in lyrics, sadistic side of speaker
Line 12+14 - Idea that speaker is possibly addressing himself again, telling him to recall past      relationship?
   - Idea that speaker knows he needs to sort out the issues in his relationship

Summary
Through the analysis of the lyrics we were able to get many ideas for our video. the idea of the speaker almost being trapped in his own head made us firstly think of making an escapist video however when the song takes a darker tone we realised that we needed a darker visual experience to match it. This gave us the idea of doing an out of body experience as we could incorporate many of the themes put across in the lyrics as well as some of the direct characters mentioned. for example during his out of body experience our character frequently sees a woman whom he can never obtain, this is the "woman" that he addresses through the lyrics. In conclusion i feel that tis was a key task as it gave us a better understanding of the task and gave us many ideas for the visuals of our music video.

Brainstorm of Ideas

This is a brainstorm of our final idea that we will be pitching and trying to make into our music video. It is completely different to our other ideas as we tried to come up with as much variety as possible so we had a lot of options when it came down to what idea we would finally choose. This is the idea that we went with as it gives us a lot of freedom both in terms of camera work and lighting but also the content which we put into our video. Through eliminating any performance aspects it relieved us of needing an entire band on shoot and also meant that we did not have to face the hassle of taking a drum-kit to our locations. This idea also fits the tone of the music far better than any of our other ideas as it has the dark feel that the music inspired in us. You can see from the image that at this stage we were just brainstorming and were not sure in what order each of these events would take place however we knew that they would all be significant to making the music video that we desired as a pair. We felt that brainstorming our idea was key as it made it simple to see what parts we wanted in the video and we could then arrange them and go into them in more detail when we were writing our pitch. Through brainstorming we can get across the key concepts of our video, as well as the type of camera shots and effects that we would be using so it is easier to storyboard and then eventually shoot in the future.

Inspirations

Pink Floyd - The Wall Film
Living room layout
Character
TV

This Is England - Bath scene
Drowning in the bath
Use a go-pro camera to film the character drowning

The Maccabees - Feel To Follow music video

Breaking Bad
The character of Jesse Pinkman

Requiem for A Dream 
Drugs
Feeling of being trapped
Nightmarish feel
Dark

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Psychedelic
Trippy
Hallucinations

Alice in Wonderland 
Another world
Very hyper-real

Trainspotting
Baby crawling along the roof
Dark drug induced hallucinations and consequences of drugs

Pulp Fiction
Overdose make up

Conclusion
These are the influences from which we have taken our visual ideas for the music video. These influences affect both the themes but also direct aspects of what is happening. Writing out our influences is very important as it shows our understanding of intertextuality and allows similarities between our video and the ones which we have taken ideas from meaning that fans of our influences will most probably be fans of our video as the majority of our influences fall under the same kind of genre.

A collage of some of our inspirations

Pitch Original

Rough timings for possible idea for music video

This is an image of our final pitch for the music video, it has rough timings that each section will last for. This timings will be made exact on both te storyboard and animatic however for the pitch we felt that it was more important to sell the idea across with a general sense of time rather than going into the very specific details of what exact shots happened when. The shot outlines all areas of the video and makes it clear that it is a mix of both narrative and conceptual. We feel that it is a good idea as it is original and complex however it is not impossible for us to make as some of the ideas that we came up with in the past were. We feel that the lack of reality in the video creates the dark feel that we are aiming for and also allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the experiences that the protagonist of the video is going through.

Character

Main Character 

- Male

- 22 

- Accidental OD on Ketamine

- Loses connection with family through addiction to drugs

- Close with little brother 

- Has a girlfriend

- Unemployed

- Lives in a small apartment with his girlfriend (influenced by Pink Floyd The Wall Film)

Younger Brother

- 11

- Still lives with family

- Looks up to old brother

- Goes to school

Girlfriend

- 20

- Lives with him

- Employed, works in London

- Making something out of her life, feels her boyfriend is bringing her down

- Successful

Price Oliver - Excess

Charlotte Hatherley - Bastardo

Genre Characteristics
Pop girl in bedroom, playing guitar to "show that she can"

Lyrics and Visuals
Visuals directly show what the lyrics speak

Music and Visuals
Pages turn in time with the music

Demands of record label/Close-Up of artist
Sells the artists looks

Reference to the notion of looking
Watching artist, drinking in bar shows her age

Intertexual References
Teen girl magazine presentation

Hyper-Real
Simon Pegg in bar

Voyeurism
Continuos notion of looking/watching the arist

Brickolage
Shows there is a concept behind the video

Conclusion
The artist is being ironic throughout the video through using comic actors David Walliams and Simon Pegg, it shows that she does not take herself too seriously and the video takes the mickey out of itself to sell
Age Range: 16-24

Goodwin Analysis

- Genre Characteristics
- Relationship between lyrics and visuals
- Relationship between music and visuals
- Demands of the Record Label
- Reference to the notion of looking
- Voyeurism
- Intertextual References
- Hyper-real
- Brickolage

Stooshe - Love Me

Audience:

- Girls

-Teenagers

- Football fans 

-Chavs

Football Fans

Chavs (Body Language, Make-Up)

Teenagers (Sexualised women and men)

Evaluation of Results

Grace

Overall: B

Target Minimum Grade: C

Coursework:  82/100

Exam: 66 (C)

Martin

Target Minimum grade: B3

Overall: B1 (159)

Coursework: 80 A3

Exam: 79 B1

Stereotypes Chavs

Chavs

Stereotypes Ravers

Ravers

Stereotypes Hip-Hop

Hip-Hop

Stereotypes Hipster

Hipster

Stereotypes Scene Kids

Scene kids

Stereotypes Punk

Punk