Breezeblocks is a narrative-concept music video because the concept is used to subvert the otherwise linear narrative, it does this by predominantly playing in reverse. This then does not give explicit connotations to the audience, but leaves the message of the video subject to different audience interpretations. It is successful as a narrative video because it is possible to reorder events in order to tell a story that captures audience attention successfully for the duration of the video. The concept element is also successful as it subverts the narrative, and is incredibly visually and mentally stimulating - a consistent mise-en-scene with striking visuals that create an incredible spectacle, and action sequences which keep audiences concentrating and struggling to morally decide who their empathy is with at all stages of the video.
This has influenced our planning because it demonstrates how a simplistic idea can be extremely effective and have a long lasting effect on an audience. From doing this research, we also established that our video will be more concept and not a narrative video, because it will be non linear and this will leave the message of the video up to individual audience interpretation.
These images found through research online demonstrate the sort of location we will shoot at. We will further this research by having a group location reccie in Brick Lane to investigate the locations depicted above but also to identify any other locations we may which to shoot at. We have chosen these locations and areas because they fit with the psychedelic concept nature of our music video, add could add further layers of interpreted meaning for the audience.
We feel that our artist has the potential to appeal to a wide range of audiences, in terms of gender, age, ethnicities etc. For this reason we want to market our artist in a way that reaches a large audience, and have decided to use guerilla marketing as one of our main marketing strategies. This is also appropriate to the genre of indie rock and record label. As the marketing becomes more successful and the artist more well received we could ask the record company to invest more into the marketing and expect adverts on platforms such as Spotify and then YouTube.
An example of fly-posting
Guerilla marketing is inexpensive and would help create a buzz and consequently the music video could go viral. Firstly, we would use fly posters all over London with iconic film stills and quotes on them. We feel that this would be successful if they were in high density spread of location but also with memorable and catchy designs. As a buzz is created, we would increase how much information we release about the band. This would create intrigue and enigma for our audiences, and introduce an element of mystery and involvement for audiences. Hopefully this would encourage many people to watch the music video when it is finally released on YouTube. Originally "Chaos Killed The Dinosaurs" would perform at pop-up venues around London; this would also raise awareness, and due to the originality of it hopefully encourage fan-dom among younger audiences, who are the primary users of social media, and so this could help our music video to go viral, and our artist could grow in terms of songs released and venues and cities performed at.
This is an handout we gave to our class when presenting our ideas for artist, identity and debut music video. It accompanied the Prezi as well as us describing our ideas. They gave us feedback and told us how feasible our ideas would be. We got the go ahead - green light!
Gender: Females (Being a girl band, it is likely that our core audience will be female, who will be attracted to the video because they find it aspirational musically and stylistically, and will be able to relate to it more than male viewers) Age: 15 - 30 years old (Our band members are all evidently in early adulthood/teenagers, and so audiences around this age are going to be able to relate to the artist more. Whilst we may attract some fans under this age, the artist name connotes more adult content and concepts, which if it doesn't put off younger fans who find it cool, may put off some parents. For this reason "Bitch and the Band" will be marketed at over 15s) Ethnicity: All (There are an range of artist ethnicities within our band, making the artist more relatable, and there is no ethnic exclusivity connoted at any point with either the lyrics or the visuals in the music video) Nationality: British and English-Speaking
Secondary Audience Gender: Males Age: 15-35 Ethnicity: All Nationality: British and English-Speaking
Tertiary Audience Gender: All Age: 15-35 Ethnicity: All Nationality: Foreign, non English speaking audiences
VOICE: Arianna DRUMS: Alice GUITAR: Ella BASS: Rakhi
SOUND: Indie-Pop Influenced by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A., Siouxsie and the Banshees, Amanda Blank, Neon Neon
STYLE: "Grunge and Glitter"
This mood-board is a visual representation of our band's style, particularly for the music video we will create. The left side of the page contains one look consisting of short black dresses, chunky jewellery and heavy black boots. The right side of the page presents the second look. This is much more free and grungy compared to the first, with baggy shirts, ripped tights, denim, studs and dark patterns. The centre displays an example of what our hair and glittery make-up may look like. We thought these two slightly different appearances would represent our rock-pop genre and glitter-grunge style perfectly.
IDENTITY
We have decided that our artist is a lead singer with a support band rather than equally important members. This is reflected by the name "Bitch and the Band" which is similar to Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Florence and the Machine, with Arianna as the "bitch" - the flashy front woman overshadowing the rest of the band. Arianna's role as lead will be synergetic throughout our campaign, shown in our music video with her starring in the narrative strands and wearing the same style as the rest of the band in the performance but over the top and highly accessorised. The CD cover will feature Arianna in the foreground being unsuccessfully restrained by the rest of the band members. The website will feature promo shots of the band in a performance setting and also some close-ups of Arianna as well as the band biography being more about her than the rest of the band. Our artist is not preaching a specific message, but image and attitude connote unrestrained confidence and individual freedom and pursuit of what you want.
This is a post researching the different types of record label. This was researched so that we could start planning what kind of record label our band would be under and how the record label and the artist would work together.
Record labels may be small, localized, and "independent", or they may be part of a large international media group, or somewhere in between. As of 2012 there are only three labels that can be referred to as "major labels". A "sublabel" is a label that is part of a larger record company but trades under a different name.
Major Labels
Major labels since 2012 (Big Three)
Universal Music Group
Sony Music Entertainment
Warner Music Group
Record labels are often under the control of a corporate umbrella organization called a "music group", which is usually owned by an international conglomerate, which often has non-music divisions as well. A music group controls and consists of music publishing companies, record (sound recording) manufacturers, record distributors, and record labels. Record companies (manufacturers, distributors, and labels) may also comprise a "record group" which is, in turn, controlled by a music group. The constituent companies in a music group or record group are sometimes marketed as being divisions of the group.
Independent Record companies and music publishers that are not under the control of the big three are generally considered to be independent, even if they are large corporations with complex structures. The term indie label is sometimes used to refer to only those independent labels that follow an independent criteria of corporate structure and size, and some consider an indie label to be almost any label that releases non-mainstream music, regardless of its corporate structure.
Vanity Labels
Vanity labels are labels that bear an imprint that gives the impression of an artist's ownership or control, but in fact represent a standard artist/label relationship. In such an arrangement, the artist will control nothing more than the usage of the name on the label, but may enjoy a greater say in the packaging of his or her work. However, not all labels dedicated to particular artists are completely superficial in origin. Many artists, early in their careers, create their own labels which are later bought out by a bigger company. If this is the case it can sometimes give the artist greater freedom than if they were signed directly to the big label. There are many examples of this kind of label, such as Nothing Records, owned by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails; and Morning Records, owned by The Cooper Temple Clause, who were releasing EPs for years before the company was bought by RCA.
This blog post is about the music videos and films that have had an influence over the idea to our music video. We have looked at music videos in a similar genre to ours, the indie pop genre but also at successful female pop artists since this is similar to our band identity. As well as this post we've conducted individual genre and influence research.
We based our initial idea in the lyrics in the song, and themes that relate to the lyrics in the song, but following our initial idea we started to look at other music videos, films and artists related to our vision for our music video.
After we had thought through and come up with our main idea, our friend Anjana showed us a video we could use for influence called This is Gospel, by Panic! at the Disco an indie band. The video for this song is also based around the idea of someone in the band going crazy and needing to be strapped to a hospital bed, whilst he is singing, and resisting being controlled.
Another big influence to our music video idea, was the music video for Rihanna's song, We found love. The theme of this song is about a relationship based heavily on the reckless lives of a young couple, and their association with drugs. Our initial idea was going to based around the downfall of a girl due to drugs, so this video had a heavy influence on the development of our idea, and affected our decision to incorporate a boy and girl in our video and how it can be a relationship that causes a person to go mad.
As our idea developed, our group agreed on the idea of a straight jacket or being strapped to a hospital bed in order to represent that the girl needs to be controlled and not let her passion and feelings make her crazy. This idea came from watching Lady Gaga's, Bad Romance music video in which there are shots of coffins, and people climbing out of coffins. We imagined our shots of the girl in the hospital bed or straight jacket being very hospital like; in very white, clinical colours to represent where she is and create a contrast between her in her scenes of madness and the flashbacks of her as she watches the busker in areas around Brick Lane. The ideas for the contrast in colour and the use of clinical white came was inspiration from the Bad Romance music video.
A couple of films also influenced our idea, and helped us to develop. The film 'Girl, Interrupted'; the story of a girl who is depressed and direction-less and therefore after a suicide attempt, ends up in a mental institution, but under the influence of another patient, ignores the rules of the institution and begins to cause trouble. The second film that influenced our music video idea is 'Candy'; which is about a man, Dan, who falls in love with a girl named Candy, who infatuated with Dan gravitates towards his love of heroin and bohemian lifestyle. Hooked on each other, and the drug, their relationship alternates between self-destruction, love and despair. Both these films have similar themes to the ones we intend to incorporate in our video, such as despair, madness and self-destruction, due to the relationship with another that causes their spiral out of control, so we can reference these films to influence our music video with the representation of characters, relationships and emotions felt by characters.
Santi White (born September 25, 1976), better known by her stage name Santigold (formerly Santogold), is an American singer, songwriter, and producer. Her debut album Santogold was released to positive reviews in 2008. Her second album Master of My Make-Believe was released in April 2012. White was the singer of the Philadelphia-based punk rock band Stiffed, that released the 2003 album Sex Sells and 2005 album Burned Again.While in Stiffed, White was offered a solo contract by Martin Heath of Lizard King Records. White's initial singles "Creator" and "L.E.S. Artistes" received attention from Internet media outlets in 2007 and White's debut album Santogold was issued in April 2008—the album was conceived with fellow Stiffed member John Hill. To promote her debut album, Santigold toured with M.I.A. and Björk. In June 2008, Coldplay invited her to be their opening act in the U.S. Santi's own US tour was called Goldrush Tour.After the tour's completion, she supported Jay-Z and Kanye West on a number of their shows and then The Streets at BBC's Electric Proms.She finished the tour opening for Beastie Boys for a few concerts. In February 2009, White announced that she changed her initial stage name to Santigold for reasons related to a possible lawsuit from director Santo Victor Rigatuso, who produced the movie Santo Gold's Blood Circus.
In 2011, White published the song "Go!" which featured Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Master of My Make-Believe was released in late April:it was critically acclaimed.
Style and influences
White has a mezzo-soprano vocal range.White's style has been compared often to that of M.I.A. In response to the M.I.A. comparison, White stated that they are both "women who have similar influences and have worked with some of the same people," but that her "music is different and she wasn't influenced by what the press was saying", adding "I can't think of anybody who would be a better fit of somebody who I'm like... I think what's accurate about that comparison is that she's an artist who has loads of different influences... and is putting things together in a way that's unexpected and genreless." White has also revealed her appreciation of new wave music, and added that "My Superman" is an interpolation of a Siouxsie and the Banshees' song, "Red Light".Santigold has stated that she is inspired by 1980s pop music. White also grew up listening to a lot of reggae, jazz, Fela Kuti and Nigerian music; her main influences are James Brown and Aretha Franklin.
ATLANTIC RECORDS
AtlanticRecords (AtlanticRecordingCorporation) is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz. Over its first 20 years of operation Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most important American independent recording labels, specializing in jazz, R&B and soul recordings by African-American artists, a position greatly enhanced by its distribution deal with Stax Records. In 1967 Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, now the Warner Music Group, and expanded into rock and pop music. In 2004 Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group. Santigold is signed to Atlantic Records UK.
This is a table of the initial practicalities we could come up with for our idea, it lists the location of each of the three set ups, who is needed, props, costumes and permissions we might require.
Some problems we have thought of are:
Kai, as a dancer has a very busy schedule and some of us work on the weekend so it may be difficult to organise a shoot and potential reshoot with him, to bypass this we have started planning shoot dates now to avoid issues
Using a semi-professional dancer to perform in public might make passers by think we are busking which there are laws against, we will put a sign up to alert the public we are not looking for money
A straight jacket might be difficult to buy so we are coming up with alternative ideas such as strapping her down with belts instead in the hospital set up
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs The Smiths M.I.A Neon Neon Blondie
Ideas:
J.D. from Heathers
Bitch/B*#?! and the Band - This name really reflects our artist as a crazy and out-there front woman with a support band. Her attitude as a confident and unrestrained woman is highlighted with this choice. Chaos Killed the Dinosaurs - An indirect quote from Heathers, from a character who has psychopathic and obsessive tendencies.
Some Like it Hot
Jell-O on Springs - just a phrase we liked from Some Like it Hot, a film with a strong female lead, it also somewhat connotes the crazy eccentricity of our lead singer
A.R.E.A - spelt out with the initials of our names which reflects band identity
This is a post about the development of our idea, from an initial idea to our final idea, and the final idea we settled on after rejecting our initial ideas
We had a meeting on Tuesday after school, with our media teachers and a few other groups, throwing out our ideas and discussing our music video ideas. We chose the song 'You'll find a way', by Santigold. We chose this song because it is quite upbeat and fast paced, but also quite a modern song that would attract our target audience (females, ages 16-35). The songs lyrics can also be interpreted in different ways easily, meaning we had a wider choice of what to put in our music video.
Our first idea for the video was to have 3 layers. The first being the performance, with shots of a band of 4 girls on different instruments; the lead singer, the drummer, the bassist and the guitarist. The second layer was to be our lead singer Arianna going crazy and strapped down in a hospital bed whilst singing, due to drug abuse. Our third layer was going to be 'flashback' shots of Arianna and a boy abusing drugs, and generally having a wild, reckless lifestyle that leads to the demise of Arianna.
We have developed this idea further and now still have the 3 layers to our music video, but have changed our idea so that Arianna no longer needs to be controlled due to drug abuse, but instead because she sees a male dancer, busking around Brick Lane and becomes infatuated with him. This infatuation leads her to become crazy and is eventually taken to a hospital and controlled by being strapped on a bed, or in a straight jacket. Nurses and doctors (the band members) enter and leave the room to give her pills and try and control her.
We chose this as our final idea because we had a good reason for Arianna going crazy, but also were able to use all our band members for the narrative parts of our music video. The performance shots mixed in also create a strong band identity, and work to attract an audience to our debut album.
Looking through a playlist of the entire Gossip Girl soundtrack, we found a song called Guess Who, by Nekta and through research the following Parov Stelar remix which inspired our second big initial idea:
We wanted to create a sort of dark circus atmosphere based around the idea of limbo, i.e. a performance by characters with ambiguous morals and intent with our artist a girl being uneasily dragged into the strange world by performers and slowly becoming part of it until she leads the group. To create the surreal world, almost like a modern, magical Moulin Rouge, we would have dancers doing incredible moves, perhaps some tricks with candles and coloured fire created with Ella's chemistry knowledge and any other tricks we could find amongst people we know including perhaps hula-hooping and a friend who can put both legs behind his head. We decided however that we didn't like this song and looked through some other choices:
Big Beat by Touch and Go
My Superman by Santigold
In the end however we scrapped this idea because it was too tricky to perform and we couldn't find a narrative or a song that had strong enough links with the idea.
This post highlights the main points from our meeting with the teachers. The first thing we discussed was our idea for Christina Aguilera's Candy Man. Along with understanding the positives of our idea, the teachers were able to point out disadvantages which we did not think of. Firstly, although we would have done a completely different style of video, the original was very famous. It also came to our attention as to how difficult and expensive it would be to create the set and shots we envisioned. We also pitched the circus themed idea to the teachers. We were able to discuss them more thoroughly and began to take the idea more loosely as a theme and began to sway more towards a burlesque style.
After going through a few ideas we had, it came to our attention that we were really struggling with song choice. We then decided to brainstorm artists which we could then go away and research around:
Christina aguilera, Beyonce, Jamelia, Alexandra Burke, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Amerie, Shakira, Basement Jaxx, Katy B, Katy Perry, Rogue Traders, Tori Amos, Alicia keys, Lana del Rey, The Veronicas, Kate Bush, The Runaways, Ida Maria, Goldfrapp, Lone Justice, Vanessa Paradis, All saints One of the example of songs we looked at in the meeting was:
NEXT STEPS: We decided that what we needed to do next was to divide up the long list and each individually continue looking for songs. Also, we planned to do a brainstorm of our group strengths the next time we met.
This post is to show evidence of our planning for performers in our music video.
As a group we were discussing if we knew any professional dancers and performers we could use in our music video, and with the style of the dancing they are good at, perhaps choose a song based on their dance styles.
There were two main options for our performers, including a boy from out of school named Kai and Arianna, in our group.
Kai is one of our main options because he is a professional dancer out of school, and does dancing for the Central School of Ballet. He is able to breakdance, ballet dance and would be a great performer in our music video, making it look very professional and if his dancing influences our music video a lot, it may also attract our audience to watch the video. There are a couple of pictures of Kai dancing below.
Arianna is in our group and we have chosen her as another of our main options as a performer because she has completed her dance GCSE and also attends musical theatre school on Saturdays; she is a dancer and actor. Arianna was also one of the main dancers in a remake our Media year did of the song Wings, by Little Mix. Again, having a professional dancer adds to how professional our music video would look and therefore attract a larger audience. There are a couple of shots of Arianna below in the Little Mix shoot.
One of our last main options is a girl named Sophie Hammer in our school who is an amazing actor, and does tap dance out of school so would be great at performing in front of the camera. If we were to choose to have more than 1 or 2 performers in our music video, or background dancers as well, we agreed that our group members could also perform or we could get our friends to help out and have fun taking part in our music video shoot.
This post demonstrates one of our initial ideas for a music video at the beginning of the planning process. We started our research and planning by discussing exactly what we had available to us and what type of video we wanted to do. We were quite open with regards to genre and so we started to look at one hit wonders such as the song below.
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
From this we then realised that we had a preference for Arianna as our lead performer, and decided to narrow down our search to female artists, and female covers of songs. To start with we researched "girly" pop songs. One of the first ideas for a music video we had was for Christina Aguilera's Candyman.
Christina Aguilera - Candyman
The plan for this video was an for performance and narrative to be intercut. The performance would be based in studio (which we have access to in school) and would be very stylised with a very basic motif of "candy" running throughout. After analysing lyrics and brainstorming this is the narrative we decided on:
Bride and groom sugar figurines depicted on a wedding cake, zoom in
Camera zooms out and reveals the two characters in an fantasy candy-esqe world.
It is then established that the groom has lost his ring, and so the pair run around exploring the candy world in an attempt to find it
Throughout this, the characters are very much enjoying themselves and interacting with the world, and at many points they become close to kissing but never quite do
Resolution occurs when the ring is finally found, and as the pair lean into kiss the shot is cut, and audiences assume they have kissed due to a red smear on the groom figurine on the wedding cake.
There were many advantages to this idea:
We had ideal casting from people we knew would be reliable.
We had access to an appropriate studio.
We would enjoy the general props, costumes etc. and this would give us great freedom for creativity.
There was great synergy achievable due to the overall concept.
However, we began to realise that there were various disadvantages too:
The original video, although very dissimilar, is very famous, with nearly 3 million YouTube views.
The artist identity is incredibly strong, and it may prove hard to distance ourself from her, and for audiences not to relate to her during the performance.
It may prove hard to produce given our limited budget and locations, and it was likely that we would be disappointed if the video was not perfect.
In the end we decided against this video idea for all of the reasons stated above but also because we felt the general concept was slightly too basic and the narrative was just not strong enough; there would not be enough to keep the viewer strongly engaged for the duration of the video.
However this initial idea, although time consuming, was a useful experience to have gone through. It taught us new factors to look out for when researching songs, and new factors to consider as well as how doable ideas were, so we were able to go through songs we researched thereafter much faster.
Guerilla marketing is inexpensive and would help create a buzz and consequently the music video could go viral. Firstly, we would use fly posters all over London with iconic film stills and quotes on them. We feel that this would be successful if they were in high density spread of location but also with memorable and catchy designs. As a buzz is created, we would increase how much information we release about the band. This would create intrigue and enigma for our audiences, and introduce an element of mystery and involvement for audiences. Hopefully this would encourage many people to watch the music video when it is finally released on YouTube. 
White was the singer of the Philadelphia-based punk rock band Stiffed, that released the 2003 album Sex Sells and 2005 album Burned Again.While in Stiffed, White was offered a solo contract by Martin Heath of Lizard King Records.
