Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

ARTWORK

The image is rather bad quality, most probably due to the screen-shotting. But here's the artwork in all its 6-sided glory!


     For the front cover, I decided to stick with a simple image of two band members standing on either side of the tree from the music video we made. The overall tone is sepia, with the intention to make the whole artwork seem old or vintage. However, the deletion of the eyes of every band member on this digi-pack was intended to imply that music isn't a feast for the eyes, but for the ears, emanating from the mouth and the instruments. This is why I shot a photo of the guitar in the tree; to direct the consumer's attention to the instrument's odd positioning to emphasise this message; It's not visual material, it's audio material. It's supposed to generate a feeling of confusion because it looks so eccentric in a normal background.
      I named the band The Project because that's what the whole media coursework is; a project. It's a monosyllabic title, like The Killers, because the band doesn't need a creative name if the music is the creative factor of the coursework as well as the artwork and the rest of the ancillary products.
   I titled it Days Out In Sepia because of the superficial reason; the sepia tone, and also the reason that every image in the digi-pack is outside, and in particular the 'Public Footpath' sign, the Ferris Wheel and the Castle being synonymous with going on a day out. The three squares of artwork that aren't there to serve any purpose other than to present and promote the album have been accompanied with lyrics from certain songs: the castle background is presented with the lyrics from the 9th track Castle; the band member without any eyes leaning against the tree is accompanied with lyrics from track 1, Sound Without Sight; and the footpath sign is shown along with lyrics from track 3 Human
    I named the record label Out of School Records because I had used the same title for a previous short film that I made as an extra-curricular activity, named Out of School Productions. It is intended to be sort of a running trademark with the labelling. The barcode adds a sense of authenticity to the album as well.

   The track names were all thought up on the spot as I inserted text boxes onto the back artwork. I had, the vast majority of the time, since revisiting the image that was took 2 years ago, been heavily considering this photo for the track-list background because of the space that the sky gives beside the ferris wheel. Enough to place the 10 songs of the track list in. I named a few particular songs from certain images in front of me: the song title Sound Without Sight was named that because of every band member being eyeless, with the intention to emphasise sound, not sight. Human was named that because we made the music video to the original song by The Killers, so a connection was prioritised. Lunar Park was named because of the theme park background to the track list, which is also called Lunar Park, so it suggests that this song will be made into a video, because of the visual representation of it, the same with the lyrics to songs accompanying other artwork. I also named track 5 Braggadocio because it was simply the title of the font I was using for almost the entire artwork. And finally, Castle was named that because of the inner square of artwork consisting of a castle in the distance, protruding from a post-modern, yet slightly pastoral setting.
   The vignette style of the artwork for the disc-holder was intended to match the subsequent insertion of the blank disc-holder image, eventually making it more transparent so that the background image can be seen, as well as the circular match between the background and the disc-holder.
     
    

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

10 Indie/Alternative Music Video Choices

Marina & the Diamonds- Shampain




Yael Naïm- New Soul




Of Monsters & Men- Little Talks




Noah & the Whale- Life is Life




Kate Bush- Running Up That Hill




Mika- Grace Kelly




The Asteroids Galaxy Tour- The Golden Age




Bastille- Pompeii




Kyla La Grange- Been Better




Out of these videos, Shampain, New Soul, Life is Life and Little Talks have been chosen to be analysed. You can find them on the titles 'Music Video Analysis 101-104.'


Tuesday, 9 July 2013

My Five Potential Songs for my Music Video

Because I prefer the Indie genre of music, here are the five songs I would like to make into a video:

Florence & the Machine- Cosmic Love

The amazing beat of the drums in Florence's colourful, imaginative and allegorical song is enough to make me want to make a video of it, despite it being already a music video. The song builds up many times to the chorus, which bursts into a set of completely booming and exciting drum rhythms. The song is fantastic and fantastical.

Florence & the Machine- Howl

The perfect oppurtunity to film a video of this dark and haunting song in the woods, as it would perfectly reflect the animalistic symbolism in the song. This would be an amazing song to do a video for, and luckily it's not been made into one. So, hurrah.

Kate Bush- Them Heavy People

'Rolling the ball!' From the weird and the wonderful Kate Bush, this song is absolutely excellent. And making the video would create a strong accessible point for me: express the weirdness. Catchy, weird, symbolic and just plain fun, this song is a classic and should be listened to by everyone. If I made a video for this, then hopefully encouragement would follow.

Noah & The Whale- L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.

An instantly likeable song that raises the spirit if you're feeling down. So making a video surrounding this song would require the implication of a negative atmosphere being overthrown and replaced with a positive atmosphere everytime the chorus plays. A truly remarkable song.


Of Monsters & Men- Mountain Sound

A great, merry indie song. The video for this would require a lot of nature and open spaces to be able to express the song and its harmonic and upbeat tune. This is probably the least depressing video I have considered to make haha.


   A possible, but limited option, could be 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' by Edvard Grieg. The complete lack of lyrics would be what would make the video limited in perspective, but it would certainly have an element of mischief and a sneaky, sly atmosphere.






Common Features of Music Videos from Independent Artists

Most Indie bands/artists seem to follow a certain common feature in their videos from several different aspects, or sub-categories. I created a one-page slide on 'Photovisi', where I included these features. They were:

Subliminal Messages
The hidden meanings, euphemisms and semantics in the video. Can be quite hard to notice.


Costume & Make-up
Alternative costumes, that seem to have a sort of 70's, hippy vibe, but not all Indie videos have this.

Hairstyles
More diverse than normal if presented as a ratio. These normally detach the Indie genre from all the other glamorous, tiring hairstyles of the mainstream music artists. This is what defines Independent music as its own style.

Locations
Regularly fields, forests, villages, locales, or anything that is either outside in the country (or a countryside feel), or in a local place.

Regionality (of the artists)
Instead of being just one nationality, Independent artists are very widespread in terms of their regionality. Wales, Iceland etc.


Imagery
Regularly surreal imagery to help with the allegorical aspects of the music videos.