Digipack Research

I had a look at other bands albums and digipacks respectively, for digipack research.

It very much appears that bands in relation to our band, have album covers of images and artwork rather than pictures of the band. This may be because they don't want act commercial and portray themselves as desirable artists yet they want to be known for the music. Whereas a pop artist may want to glamourise theirselves, and have a photoshoot of them to put on the front cover.

Album front cover

After looking at a few different album covers of a similar genre to ours we discovered alot of the album covers had motifs or designs rather than photos of the band or a fantasy style photo of the band.

We looked at several foofighters covers and all of them had pictures rather than photos and andy analysed the cover.

We designed a few different covers one we took silhouette photos of a guitarist drummer and bassist and then put on a split black and white back ground the top half white bottom half black using a bold outline.

After much discussion we decided that the front cover looked to 'pop' almost we chose a different design going with a back ground of a cobbled road we tinted it green.

We added the name of the band which is essential and the album name again is also essential we used photoshop to edit the text in using a translucent text with an obvious outline.

The use of YouTube and Television to display our music video

YouTube is the 3rd most visited website in the Internet, behind Google and Facebook. It is the most visited video sharing website by a long shot. "Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, VEVO and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program." YouTube is full of opportunity for bands to promote themselves and their music videos. Vevo obtain many bands under them, and so to gain partnership with Vevo would be good as Vevo have a wide area of advertising available. Such as linking to The Croft as a related artist, on a more succesful and famous artists Vevo/YouTube page.

From analysing the picture and statistics above. It is fair to say that YouTube is very suitable for The Croft to use as the demographics show that 60% of the users are aged 2-34, and the majority are male, which coincides with The Croft's target audience.

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Music channels are a very commonly used and effective way of promoting a video. Channels such as Scuzz, Kerrang TV and MTV Two are specific to rock, and so would be the types of channels to show The Croft. However it is harder and more expensive to be shown on television, and the less famous the band/artist, the harder it is to appear on TV.

Official Top 40 UK Singles (& Albums)

I done some research into how well/poor rock and alternative rock perform in the UK charts. Seeing as The Croft is an English band, it would be resourceful to do this to research into the market they will be entering.

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The Official UK Top 40 Singles Chart

Just by glancing over the top 40 singles, it is easy to understand that it is mostly dominated by anything but rock and its subgenres. By scanning the page; pop, r&b and dance seem to fill up the page. The only artists comparable to The Croft in the top 40 singles is Brandon Flowers with Crossfire which is located at position 20, and position 40 that belongs to Manic Street Preachers with Just The End Of Love. This shows that rock/alternative rock doesn't do particularly well in this section of the music market.

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The Official UK Top 40 Albums Chart

Taking a look at the top 40 albums, it's a slightly different scenario.

The albums chart still consists of all genres, however isn't monopolised by pop and r&b. A lot more rock bands/artists have become succesful here with Brandon Flowers, Robert Plant, Linkin Park, and Santana all being in the top 10. Santana, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, 30 Seconds to Mars and Arcade Fire also feature within the top 40. This is a significant difference between the singles chart, and shows rock is much more successful at producing albums rather than singles.

This is something that The Croft would have to take into account, as it seems it would be worthwhile for them to produce a good album that could maybe have 1 song that makes it big as a single like Brandon Flowers has done.

Interview with Andrew from The Croft

Rock album covers and their image

I looked at some album covers of the three different genres our band cover; rock, progressive

Rock

 This is a very typical rock album cover. The lead singer is in the middle of the group, with the guitarists/bassists to his side, and the drummer in the back. It's the setup you would see at a concert or gig, and the picture denotates them playing live. Their hairstyles definitely meet the 'rocker' expectation. Black and long, the typical convention associated with rock. Also their clothing, black jeans, leather jackets, belts and chains, also depict the same message.The artists poses signify quite an old, traditional rock image, that I doubt would be used in this day as an album cover, as times have changed, and rock has modernized.

Progressive Rock

 

Here is an unusal album cover.It clearly shows 4 men, dressed "oddly" sitting round a dining table in an unusual location. It looks like a very hot desert or another planet perhaps, maybe mars considering the red colour. Also the album is called "Black Holes & Revelations" so the extra-terrestrial planet can relate to black holes. Also it seems that the men and the table are the only objects in that area, surrounded by a lot of sky and space, with space again relating to black holes. The 4 men are wearing unusual, eccentric clothing - shiny and wild, colourful suits. This represents Muse's music and how different they are. Muse and their music genre have the ability to be different and not follow orthodox genre conventions.

Alternative Rock

The album cover is in black and white (apart from the band name text) this makes it seem retro and vintage. Which meets genre expectations. On the right you see 2 of the artists, kneeling, with 1 trying to perform a medical action of pumping the chest. Along with the person laying on the floor clearly looking knocked out, this medical action also proves hes knocked out/ unconscious. The man on the left draws a lot of attention to himself as his face is lit up and holding his hand out as if signalling "stop". This shows he acknowledges the camera which is taking the photo, and my implication of this is that the person taking the photo is a photographer/paparazzi and is taking a photo of the aftermath of the night out these men endured. And because it seems like quite a controversial night out (unconscious man on the pavement) the man on the left is trying to prevent the photo being taken. 

Quite a confusing/ interesting album cover because they're all wearing formal suits, and you don't associate this apparel with folk laying unconscious on the side of the road. You could intepret he has passed out because of an intense night involving copious amounts of alcohol, which can be associated with the heavy, rock lifestyle in which they party and drink a lot. However this is different, thus giving an edge, or difference over the typical rock conventions.

Conventions of a Music Video

Music videos today are a way of expressing the lyrics of the song in a different more visual way.
It can make the singer, artist, band a star of the small screen. some music videos are like mini movies just roughly 3 and a half to 4 minute long, however not all music videos are like this infact music videos range from live performance to hardly seeing the band instead having a narrative the whole way through following a short part of a fictional character life or story.
However there are some basics that every video will have and these include;
Lyrics every music video will go to a song therefore it must have lyrics they set the mood of the video. The artist(s)'s video may give the lyrics meaning through visual links.

Music as before the video will go to a song, the tempo of the music often drives the editing of the video and makes the video more memorable.

Genre will often be shown throughout the video by means of mise en scene and camera and editing style. mise en scene is a very key part of any video as it helps set the scene and helps link to the audience through use of wardrobe/costumes and props and can shows location.

Camerawork can reiterate lyrics using different angles and movement aswell as showing emotion and location. Close ups are mainly used not only to show emotion but to reflect the words of the song. This all links into the representation of the artist or band.

Editing most artist/bands will use quick cut montages to keep the audience interested but also to make the audience question what they saw leading to veiwing the video several times. They commonly use transitions such as dissolve or fade to mix it up abit. Like i said before music videos nowadays are more like short movies and just like in a film you have to keep your audience interested.

Digital effects every video will probably have this to some extent playing with the original footage and images to enhance and offer different posibilities and levels of pleasure to the audience.

Intertextuality this is when not all of an audience may not spot a reference within the video however for those that do it can bring more pleasure through watching it by feeling flattered it can increase the audience engagement to the video aswell getting a better understanding.

Exhibitionism the is where the more powerful and independant female artists of recent years have added complexity to gender and the way its portrayed within videos by being powerful but, sexy and provocative by being incontrol of and inviting sexualised gazes.

Foo Fighters

As the band we are using has listed Foo Fighters as one of their inspiration i thought i would do a little more research on them aswell.
they link into my profile of Nirvana as Foo Fighters drummer Dave Grohl formed the band after his previous band Nirvana split up. the term Foo Fighter comes from WW2 they used this term for unidentified flying objects. Foo fighters formed in 1995 and their music videos tend to be either parody or mainly focused on performance breaking away slightly from the typical conventions of a rock music video.
Their music ranges from more acoustic to hard rock.



Some of their music video ideas have been mimiced by the likes of 30 seconds to mars focusing alot on the performance but having flashes of images or a few seconds of something happening thats not a narrative but are relevant to the song or lyrics, for example in Foo Fighters Video to Best Of You the video is mainly them performing but has images such as a baby to show life when they say the words your giving me life or death and an animal pouncing on its prey to show death.
Throughout their career they have had several band members leave and new members join. in a way this can help them stay on trend, by bringing in new band members it can bring in new ideas.
A few of their videos are parody, its mainly them dressed up as different characters occasionally with a few extras. The narrative to these stories are comedic for instance, learn to fly beggins with the Tenacious D posing as cleaners whilst they try to smuggle drugs into the plane, the captain comes aboard an they rush accidentally putting the drugs into the coffee the rest of the video is how the coffee ends up being served and everyone gets high without realising including the captains and they need a hero to save them from crashing.
The way its done is amusing as the lead singer of the band plays most characters including a young girl.
Videos like this are also very typical of bands like Blink 182 with all the small things and first date both being of similar set ups to this.

Nirvana Profile

After doing some research into our genre alternative /progressive rock A name that keeps coming up is Nirvana so I thought i would research them a bit more.
They were one of the first major alternative rock bands to make a name for themselves in the early 90’s. They released their first album in 1989. Although they are sometimes classed more as ‘grunge’ the originated in Washington state America but made a name globally. They worked there way into the mainstream and continued gaining popularity throughout their career. Grunge music is defined by slow tempos heavy guitar strong drumming and simple repetitive phrases or lyrics. The lyrics themselves are always about quite big issues love hate anger and frustration.
Kurt Cobain lead singer often felt the public had misinterpreted their music despite being referred to as the spokesman of a generation kurt cobain didnt like the media attention.
the band fell apart following the death of Kurt but Nirvana inspired a lot of bands and still is a very popular band even today catering for audience everywhere.

Nirvana's videos are similar to the lost prophet video i analysed early most rock videos follow the theme of switching between narrative and performancein nirvana's video they conform to this in some ways by switching between them performing and what looks like a janitor/cleaner an then to a crowd they are playing to. this crowd also switches between being seated like in a school gym linking to the name smells like teen spirit by filimg in a school gym, and a crowd jumping around and pushing like the type of crowd you would find at a normal live performance.
the lighting again was fairly dark using spotlight to illuminate where it was needed.
they use teens in there videos and to show that the also used cheerleaders a typical american teenage activity for girls.
the crowd seem fairly 'normal' but they also have the typical grunge look linking to what is now there genre expectations and links to their audience.

Types of rock

The band we're doing cover three types of rock; rock, progressive rock & alternative rock. So I this post will try and clarify each (sub) genre.

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Rock has been around for years. Its derived from rock and blues, rhythm and blues and country music. The genre often includes the electric bass & guitar, drums and more recently, synthesizers and keyboard instruments.

Some examples:

AC-DC Aerosmith Audislave Bon Jovi Lostprophets My Chemical Romance Nickelback Rage Against The Machine System of a Down Stereophonics The Beatles The Rolling Stones

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Alternative rock submerged from rock in the 80's. It consists of various artists that belong to independent music companys, and have emerged from that scene. This is what The Croft (our chosen band) have done, being a home grown, underground and independent band creating their own form of rock.

Some examples:

Biffy Clyro Bowling for Soup The Constantines Editors Foo Fighters Franz Ferdinand Kings Of Leon The Offspring R.E.M Snow Patrol U2 The Verve

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Progressive rock, again submerged from rock, but in the 70's. "Progressive rock and art rock are two almost interchangeable terms describing a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." This claims that progressive rock is mostly british, so it wouldn't be unsuitable if The Croft were trying to achieve that look. Progressive rock tries to incorporate sounds that rock and alternative rock may not try to do, such as classical, jazz and world music.

Some examples:

Genesis Muse Pink Floyd Rush Alter Ego Dreamtheater The Mars Volta Electric Light Orchestra Oceansize Yes

Escape the fate - Situations. Music video analysis

The video opens with a little bit of narrative involving a child boarding a schoolbus, driven by Ronnie Radke, the band's singer.

As the band walks into the school, the music starts.  Most of the song takes place in a classrooom shifting between two different situations.  The first is a normal class but with the singer singing directly into the camera.  The second is the same classroom but with flashing lights and scantily clad women dancing on tables while the band play their instruments with the song.

This reinforces the band's collective "bad boy" image and also makes it look as though they like to have fun, as most of their videos feature the same sort of party structure.

This would certainly  appeal to the band's young, fun-loving fans and give their image a lot of positive reinforcement.  The camera cuts frequently and sweeps around the classroom at low angles while the singer continues to sing directly into it while playing guitar.