Bad Religion - True North

I thought I would post a video that is in my genre that shows a similar style to what I want to do, to show that it is done inside my genre. I want to create a video where there is little or no lip-sync, and the action is not focused on an artists performance of the song but on a single event. For this reason I have chosen Bad Religions song 'True North

As you can see, this video has no interaction with the band, instead focusing on a person listening to the song on a record deck while they're getting ready to go out. I think this style is quite good as there is minimal amounts of detail to distract from the song, which is the main reason that a video is made, to sell an artists music

Motion City Soundtrack - L.G. FUAD

Yet another music video post, this time the song 'L.G. FUAD' by Motion City Soundtrack. Motion City Soundtrack (MCS) are a rock band from Minnesota who use a very definitive sounds that is easily recognisable to fans of the genre

This is the video for their song 'L.G. FUAD' which features many different people lip-synching to the song as they go about their daily life, starting with the singer and ending with the band performing the song. The use of multiple people lip-synching the song is an easily replicated video, as long as people have the timing to get it right. The video itself is very straightforward, as I have shown this genre normally is, however this also uses animations as part of the transition from person to person, making it more complex than other videos I've shown While this is a very 'simple' video concept, I am unlikely to use this style throughout the entirety of my video, due to the difficulty of finding several people who know the song well enough to do this.

Specific target audience

The style of acoustic music my artist uses is very difficult to quantify into a single target audience, being very generic and open to differences of opinion. However, some of his songs are a bit more 'rocky' than others, such as 'One Foot Before The Other'

This shows that there are definitely songs that can be put into a genre and had a target audience analysis on them, but overall the artist has a very middle-lane style, and is approachable from all directions of music.

For my analysis of the specific target audience I am going to break it down into 5 sections: Socio-economic group, Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Lifestyle.

Socio-economic group
This term defines the income of an individual household, as well as their professional background. The professional background of people who listen to this music is generally within the C1 group (supervisory/clerical roles) and below. I would say that due to the younger age of most of this audience it would drive the overall group down so I would think that the group associated with this style of music is C2/D.

Age
This style of music is more likely to be listened to people of a younger age, and as such I would expect the age range to be between 16 and 30. This also affects the overall socio-economic group by bringing the overall professional background down, as people of this age are less likely to have more professional careers

Gender
This style of music has been known to be preferred by more males than females, but the more acoustic style in my artists other music would attract a wider audience, so for my artist I would suggest that it is a fairly even split, but for the genre as a whole it is more males who are attracted to it.

Ethnicity
This style of music does not have much representation in minority groups, as the area these groups traditionally live in are more heavily urban, and as such have different music coming from the area. However, this doesn't exclude the entire group from a genre, as there would be a few people who listen to this music from ethnic groups not expected to listen to this style.

Lifestyle
Many fans of this genre are likely to be found with items that show support for their particular favourite band, musician etc. Most do this by wearing T-shirts and official merchandise of the group, but there are quite a few others who get tattoos linked to a artist, and are highly likely to actively seek out a chance to see a musician at a concert

Contacting my artist

As we are supposed to gain permission from the original creator of the song we are using I emailed Frank Turner yesterday to gain this permission. I found his email from his website, http://www.frank-turner.com. On the 'contact' page of the site he posts his email, which is shown here:

 I received a reply today saying:

hey chris
thanks for the mail. sure thing, if it's a non-profit scheme then I'm always fine with this kind of thing. a credit would be nice. good luck with it.
ft

 

This means that I have been given permission by the artist himself, which is pretty cool if you ask me.

Digipaks

For my task I am required to create a digipak of the album. Unfortunately I don't know what this is, so I had to research these to find out about them.

What is a digipak?
A digipak is, as wikipedia puts it, 'a style of Cd, DVD or BD packaging' such as this:

As this shows, they are normally made of card or paperboard and have multiple panels, which are used to display information such as track listings and information. There is always one panel which has a plastic tray capable of holding a CD in it, but sometimes there are multiple panels of this, if there are extra Cd's to the album.

While these cases look better than normal 'jewel cases' they tend to be more fragile, due to the materials they are made of. digipaks tend to be less resistant to abrasion and show signs of wear easily.

Recently there has been a change in the manufacturing process, aiming towards reducing the environmental impact of the digipaks, being made with recycled materials such as plastic bottles or sugarcane.

How I can match it to my artist

As I intend to match the digipak style to the style of Frank Turners albums, I should put some style models on here:



As these show, normally the album art for his albums are drawn or simple graphics, with a single album having a real model. I will probably focus more on making a digipak like the 'Love Ire & Song' album, as I have limited drawing skills and would find it difficult to replicate a style similar to the other albums. I also want to create a physical version of my digipak rather than just have one made of images, as I feel it would look better to have a physical copy photographed rather than a mock-up made on photoshop.

Directors of my Genre

It was very difficult to find people who direct music videos in my chosen genre, but I finally found two, so I can make a post about them

Adam Powell
Adam Powell is the director of the music video for the song 'The Road' that I am using. He started directing films by going skateboarding while in school and filming friends while skating. He went from skate videos to music videos in university when his friends band asked him to film a video for their new song, as they had just been signed to a record label. He used 2 types of film to record this, digital video and super 8mm film. He started working with Ascension, a production company, and started working with bands in my genre such as The King Blues, Architects and Gallows, who he made 5 videos for. After working with Gallows he was approached by Black Dogs RSA, who are a UK hip-hop video company, making him go in a different direction from the genre he was used to, but this has given him recognition as a director of successful music videos and has increased the amount of videos he has made massively

Darren Doane
Darren Doane is a director who was an influence on Adam Powell and many others, creating many music videos over the years and recently moving into film. He has produced videos for many bands, including AFI, Blink-182, Atreyu and Chiodos, who are all bands in my genre. He originally wanted to draw comic books, but after being rejected from comic production companies he moved towards filming and then towards music videos.