As you can clearly see, the exact same theme and identity of Jack Johnson is carried all the way through all types of the media, from Album Cover to the Posters. It also includes the key conventions and elements discussed on the previous posts on this blog such as; nature,guitar and so on. And so before we even start thinking about how we are going to produce and create our Media Products, we must carefully analyse and use these key elements and apply them to our final products such as the colour theme etc.
This here is another Album Cover called 'On and On' by Jack Johnson, the conventions used as you can see are very similar to his other album we looked at, such as; the blackout image of the artist himself, holding or this time playing the guitar at a nature scenery, by the ocean with the nature of plants in the shot. This immediately tells us that we must include these components and it is compulsory that we do, otherwise we may not promote or represent him or his song to our target audience as successfully as we intend to. Using these conventions as the base layer of our digi-pack and poster, we must work our way around these elements, either enhancing and adding more to outstand the digi-pack in order to reach a wider and larger number of our intended audiences.
Jack Jackson is an original artist we are using for our Media product, and for our album cover, we want to grab the key elements of his covers that are linked to him these include:
Nature - The large tree at the centre of this album cover represents this very straight forwardly and so in order for our Media Products to be successful, we must include the symbolical tree which represents him (Jack Johnson).
Guitar - Like most artists they know how to play a particular instrument, whereas Jack Johnson is concerned he plays the guitar as seen in the blackout image held by the man, and so we also must include an image of a guitar in our Music Video, as well as our digi-pack and poster.
Colour Theme (Aesthetics) - The colours used in this existing album are; pastel yellow and black, these colours represent his image very boldly and so we must also include these too. The blackout image of the artist, guitar and nature also must be included as we will use these components as the base, working our way around it, altering and adding specific conventions in order to promote him to our intended target audience.
The xx are a band from London, England, UK, originally formed in 2005.The group was originally a four-piece band that met up at Elliot School, notable for alumni including Hot Chip,Burial and Four Ten. The xx became a trio when their second guitarist and keyboardist Baria Qureshi left the group in late 2009. In September 2010 they won the Barclaycard Mercury Price. This video has a very simple concept, yet very clever in the way its portrayed. We are hoping to simplify our treatment and make it very clever.
Hurts are a Britis syntho pop duo from Manchester composed of singer Theo Hutchcraft, (From Richmond, North Yorkshire), and synth player Adam Anderson.In July 2009, the band featured as "Band of the Day" on Guadian.co.uk. They finished in fourth position in BBC's sound of 2010 poll. The band's song " Wonderful Life" was notably remixed by Arthur Baker. The video above is of a low budget music video they did , which we can draw many ideas from as it is very simple but sophisticated because of the colour combinations, angles and close ups. They later on made a better version but as seen on youtube this made far more veiws showing us the power of the simplicity of the video shown through. We are going to use this as inspiration of our work.
As you can see, we have summarised all our ideas and concepts into this image on the left hand side. The large font words such as ROMANTIC and FLIRTY are the most common and so stand out more. This shows that the main genre or theme of our Music Video is going to be on Romance a narrative and random scenarios and shots of beautiful scenery's and locations, couples and the little things they do when in love.
We have decided to go along with the basic concept of romance and the idea of random and many different types of couples, being old to young and how love exists all around us. This is a very simple and straightforward concept to achieve we hope and did not what to create a very complicated and technical concept. But with our simple idea, we shall use modern technology to convert basic shots and images into astonishing Music Video. We shall also be using various instruments which go along with the instruments played at the start and throughout the track, including; drums, guitar and piano etc.
And so we have also uploaded a soundtrack of our treatment, more like the pitch, including myself and Janice Mutema, briefly describing what we wish to include in our Music Video along with a video of images we inspire to include in our Media Product ...
We have decided to use Jack Johnson's "Rodeo Clowns" because it is:
Short
Genre Matches Theme
Acoustic
Mellow
Above is a screen shot of us emailing Jack Johnson through his website. Below is the orignal song, but as seen does not have an 'Official' video released for this track, and therefore this will be our job role to achieve in this project, this is the Song we are hoping to use for our Music Video and also have a copy of the MP3 version. Below are the lyrics to this soundtrack;
Sweepin the floors, open up the doors
Yeah turn on the lights, getting ready for the night
Nobody's romancing, 'cause its too early for dancing
But here comes the music ...
Bright lights flashing
They cover up your lack of so many people
So many problems
So many reason to buy another round
Drink it down
Just another night on the town
With the big man, money man, better then the other man
He got the plan, with the million dollar give a damn
What nobody understands
Become a smaller man, the bright lights keep flashin,
Women keep on dancing with the clowns,
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
They pick me up when I'm down,
Yeah, yeah,
The rodeo clowns
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they pick me up when I'm down
The disco ball's spinnin', all the music and the women
And the shots of tequila,
Man they say that they need ya
What they really need, is just a little room to breath
Teeny bopping disco queen
She barely understands her dreams of belly button rings
And other kinds of things
Symbolic of change, but the thing that is strange
Is that the changes occur
And now she's just a part of the herd, yeah, yeah, yeah
Man i thought that you heard
Yeah, yeah
The changes occurred
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a part of the herd
Lights out, shut down, late night, wet ground
You walk by look at him, but he can't look at you
Yeah, you might feel pity, but he only feels the ground
You understand moves, but he only knows let down
By the corner, there's another one
Reaching out a hand, coming from a broken man
Well he tried to live, but he's done trying
Not dead, but definitely dying
With the rest of the clowns
Yeah, yeah
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm
With the rest of the clowns
Sweepin the floors, open up the doors,
Yeah turn on the lights, getting ready for the night
Nobody's romancing, 'cause its too early for dancing
But here comes the music ...
As yet we have not really specifically decided on a target audience for our Media product, however we have thought about many ideas in which relate to an audience for instance; the theme of our Music video shall be based on Romance.This theme will tell a narrative story about couples who are in love and the little things they end up doing for love through the camera and video shots, in which all combined effectively will produce a successful end product, being the Music Video itself.
From looking at our research into existing Music Videos which are currently most popular, most watched and the most track listened to worldwide, the song in which we found out to be most famous are the intense love songs such as; 'Just The Way You Are' By Bruno Mars and 'Love The Way You Lie' By Rhianna.
These instantly show and tell us that most audience including the young, teenage and adults listen to these types of soft, mellow and romantic songs, supported by an immense and strong Music Video, telling a story to its audience keeping them entertained as that is its main purpose. As an 'record company' our main role is to achieve a successful end product in which appeals to the correct target audience, entertain them and fulfil their emotional needs through Music + Imagery, combined in creating a Music Video that can be screened by many viewers, accessed everywhere.
So we have decided to aim at a large audience group, aged 15-20years of age for both men and women nationwide. This will attract more audience whom are in love and therefore can easily relate to the song as well as the Music Video itself, as this is what most Music and Videos aim to achieve when combined.
After waiting for 4 days for a email response from Airto's Manager, we realised that we have to move on as time is not on our side. If we wait any longer this we will be wasting valuable time, in which we could spend on our treatment and pitch.
Therefore we have decide to search for another similar artist in the category of Acoustic preferably the audio being about 2 minutes long via My space, You tube or any other social networking sites which can enable us to proceed further. We had to make sure that could the artist is preferably unsigned with a song that matches our current romance idea.
We have also thought of various other ideas, more like back up plans, just in case things do not work out this time round, these include; One of our group members Janice Mutema has a passion for singing, she knows many friends whom make their own rap songs and she featured in one of her friends song. However we can easily get permission of the songwriter and simply get hold of the local artist very easily, but the song itself is not what we originally had thought of and agreed that it certainly does not match our romantic theme as we originally proffered a slow, mellow acoustic audio.
The other back up plan being, that we could use the rap song owned and written by Andre McKenzie (Janice's friend) and the music video does not necessary have to match the audio for instance the beats of the track versus the face paste shots of imagery, but can include narrative shots mainly throughout the video and include short snippets of the Male rapper during the chorus. So far that is what we have planned ahead, just in case things may go wrong in which we are hoping not.
Here is the reply we sent to Arito's manager shown above, we decided to ask if Airto had any of his own songs in which we could possibly use with his permission as this will be alot of an easier option rather than asking his record company and so on.
His manager also asked for more details and information regarding our Media Project and so to make things more simpler we sent him a link to our Blog, so he can browse and read our brief and intial ideas to understand where we are coming from.
If we do not get feedback from all the people we have asked for permission our back up plan is to use a band we find in college or to get me to sing and George's friend Charlie to play the piano. We would record it in our college recording studio using an original song that I wrote. This way, we would have no problems concerning copyright or issues of that matter. We do not want to waste time looking for band or covers as time is not on our side!
This is yet another Youtuber with great covers! We are particularly looking for covers that have good sound quality and this is an example of a good one ! She is also linked to Airto who I mentioned in the post below. I am also going to email her for permission details.
This is a Youtube user who does excellent cover songs that we could use. Of course, this would mean finding a person to mime and execute the part of the singer too but our very own George Mccallum can take that role. His songs do not exacly duplicate the original but has his own twist on them. In addition, they are also short which is a great advantage to minimize time in the editing room! I shall contact him to find out permission and so on.
After a very long period spent on watching and analysing certain music videos, we have to also think about the music track in which will be played in our product, the music video. This is a huge template for the music video itself, without it the structure of the video may not be as successful and the moving images must relate to the beats and rhythms of the track. It is all about the connection and bond between both the music track and the visual aspect in which creates a successful end product, being the music video.
We have found various music tracks in which we are very interested in, however these songs are No.1 in the charts and are owned by a record company, therefore requesting for the tracks permission has been very difficult, as we have attempted to ask permission for Bruno Mars - 'Just the way you are', but cannot find ways to contact the record company. The video was also very appealing, it was simple but very cleverly done, we are hoping to accomplish a similar product to this, but not so professional as we do not have the expensive cameras, and equipment and soft wares to edit with.
So we decided to look up for cover artists, from My Space a website for bands, music and socialising, we searched and listened to many cover artists who were popular and some who were not so famous and emailed them if we could have permission for their cover.We are thinking of a soft, mellow song in which we can match this to a romantic video of a couple meeting each other, and shots and scenery of nature i.e the sunset, sea, birds.
If we do not receive no permission for either a track or a cover, then Janice Mutema and her friend have previously made a song were she sings and he creates the beats of the song, we may go ahead with that idea, or there are many musical bands within our campus and could kindly ask if they can be in our video singing their own song, recorded and played. Then we can just go ahead with the shooting the band itself and will not require no actors or singers. We believe this is the best and most efficient process.
There are three members of this group, including myself (Fhahima Hussain), George McCallum and Janice Mutema. We chose to stick as a group of three as we can help each other as well as participate and work as a team more efficiently and no one gets left behind, all ideas are taken into consideration.
I believe between us we have the appropriate organisation, creativity and practical skills in order we can share and learn from in order for this project to be a success. As one of the member in our group has a very high standard of vocals as well as another in dancing and acting skills can also benefit us in the production of our music video, becoming a bonus for us!
Before starting any project, researching existing products is crucial. Therefore we as a group have constantly been watching various music videos, from the classics, the latests and to the most viewed and famous ones ever existed. We then considered what it was about these music videos that entertained the audiences, such as the conventions used most were typical others were unique and original.
We also discussed many ideas from which we had come up with, within the group itself such as the storyline, setting, the actors and camera/video shots. There were also inspirational ideas which came along as we watched certain videos for instance the storyline about romance and relationships from Rhianna and Eminems - 'Love the way you lie' video, and the creativity from Beyonce's and Lady Gaga 'Telephone' video, which was a bit too extreme, but the sort of unique idea is what we are looking for.
As part of our A2 Media course, we as candidates will be producing a Media Portfolio through a combination of two media; Video & Print. Our Brief being; 'A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following options;
* a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
* a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).
