Our task was to explore our genre of music further by identifying the typical person who would be interested in our genre of music. Our genre is electronic and below is a mock Facebook profile which includes information such as interests, likes and hobbies. This helped us to identify more with conventional fans of electronic music. The target audience for our music video comprises of young men from 16-24.
Electronic fan’s typical Facebook profile:
Click the image below to view the enlarged version of the mock Facebook profile.
What I have learnt:
After creating this mock Facebook profile I now have a greater knowledge of the type of person who likes electronic music, this will help me to understand what typical electronic fans will want to see in a music video. An important thing that I have noted would be that our key demographic for our video is young men aged 16-24.
We were tasked with looking into our chosen song’s genre in more detail. Our chosen song, ‘Down to Earth’, is categorised in the electronic genre. As a group we did research into the electronic genre and subsequently created a voice-thread of the repertoire of elements inside the genre. 6 aspects of the electronic genre are addressed in the VoiceThread:
Iconography
Camera and Editing
Sound
Narrative
Star values
Performance
VoiceThread:
Below is our VoiceThread
What I have learnt:
Overall I have found the production of the VoiceThread to be very helpful as it gives my group and I a better idea of what is conventional in the electronic genre. We will most certainly apply some of these aspects to our music video to give it a more authentic feel. More specifically aspects such as editing and the use of colour is of the utmost importance to our video.
Before we chose our final music video idea, each member of the group provided their own music video idea and our individual pitches included a mood-board showing our ideas. This provided the other group members with some images to help imagine how each video would look.
Matthew’s Mood-board:
Matthew’s song was ‘Another Song About the Weekend’ by A Day To Remember. Below is the song selected by Matthew:
Matthew’s idea essentially was an individual wandering in an empty field or forest, or an abandoned urban area. The individual is dressed in very damaged and dusty attire, including ripped up trousers and a hooded jacket. The individual experiences flashbacks of his family and of how they split apart/drifted away from each other. The video concludes with the individual walking into a bright light and discovering his family/partner, finally reuniting.
He used Pinterest to present his mood-board. Click the image below to view his mood-board.
Wiktor’s Mood-board:
Wiktor’s song is ‘Warriors’ by Imagine Dragons. Below is the song selected by Wiktor:
Click the image below to view his mood-board. Wiktor’s narrative is focused around a boxer who is defeated at first but then works hard and trains until he becomes strong enough to defeat his opponent. This would include a variety of training shots and match on action shots of the two men boxing.
My Mood-board:
My song was ‘Down to Earth’ by Flight Facilities. Below is my selected song.
Click the image below to view my mood-board. My narrative is a story of a football player who does trails for a football club but is at first rejected because he is not good enough, however he works hard and improves until he is accepted by the club. The narrative will be shot primarily with POV shots with the occasional wide shots and close ups.
Conclusion:
The use of mood-boards was really helpful to us in determining which music video idea to use. As a group we decided to use my music video idea. Although the other ideas were strong, we decided that it would be logistically easier to film my narrative.
Synaesthesia is the term used to describe the mental images and thoughts that are provoked after hearing certain genres of music. We each have our own perception of how certain genres of music should sound. We also some typical visual conventions for separate genres. For this task, we were assigned with finding certain songs and analysing aspects of the songs, such as:
Subject Matter
Vocals (pitch/grain of voice)
Cultural References
Narrative
My group and I also had to think and plan certain important aspects of our song. What will the narrative and the performance be like? Who will perform the video? How long is the song? For instance, I believe that the original song was too long (4:30) so if we use my video idea I will trim the song by about 50 seconds, to 3:40 which is a more reasonable length for our video.
The song I have selected is ‘Down to Earth’ by Flight Facilities. Click play on the tab below to listen to the original song.
I have selected this song because it has a very positive feeling to it and there is no particular theme in the song (which is conventional to the electronic genre). I feel that the lack of a specific theme is beneficial to myself as it allows me to produce a more unique and disjunctive narrative rather than be restricted to certain conventions and narratives.
In order to create a product which will match the predetermined ideas related to a music video from the electronic genre, we will need to make our video very energetic and have a positive feeling. We will do this by implementing a fast editing technique. Colour is also heavily used in the electronic genre, so we will incorporate a variety of bright and light colours in our media texts.
My Initial Ideas:
Narrative:
My idea for a music video is to have a boy who is playing football with his friends. The opening sequence is the subject with his team playing a match. At first he performs poorly and looses the respect of his teammates, this will be shown through shots of him failing to score or giving away the ball. But he works hard and trains, then eventually he has a chance to redeem himself with another game. In the middle of the video he will be doing exercises to improve himself. During the closing sequence of the video, he has improved enough to play well with his team, and is praised by his team after he has finished performing well. This will be shown with shots of the subject scoring goals and using skill to get past players. The overall aim is to create a feel-good and positive video.
Performance:
A young man with an electronic keyboard, laptop and speakers. The idea being that he is creating the song as he’s performing it. For instance, shots of him typing on his laptop and playing the keyboard. As the chorus approaches he begins dancing and enjoying himself. This will be rapidly inter-cut with the narrative to create a fast paced feeling to the video and produce an energetic feeling.
Mood-board:
One of the first steps in planning our music videos was to think of our own individual video ideas. As a way of presenting our ideas, we created a mood-board displaying images that would represent our music video and the narrative. We then had to present our mood-board and explain our idea to each other. The presentation of our mood-boards was helpful as we could see other people’s ideas and identify potential partners who had similar video ideas.
My Mood-board for Down to Earth:
Click the image below to view my mood-board.
What I have learnt:
I feel as if the synaesthesia and mood-board have been very beneficial to furthering my knowledge of music video production and have also inspired several ideas for my video.
