Planning & researching: Audiences

Audience research is important to meet our audience demands to incorprate it in our music videos.
we need to understand our listeners
Our chosen band The Jacques works with Indie Rock style genre, whcih means the audience that consume and enjoys to listen to that style of genre would be attract to the band and their song. However, The Jacques were the first to form a band and start at a very young age for Indie Rock genre. This means that their target audience would have started with drawing young teeager's attention to expand and become more rapidly well-known within the community.

I researched audience preferences of theire faviourite genre and the most popluar genre:
From looking at the pie charts the most prefered genre is Pop, Indie, Rock and alternative.

I then researched the most viewed or most top 5 global known music videos and their type of genre on youtube to compare it with the pie chart data. This is also to understand what people like. We as a group decided to look closely at the videos conventions such as, lighting, style of editing, camera set ups, and amount of shots, and perhaps use some of the conventions within our music video. The conventions help enage the demographic audience as what they would be watching is what they expected to see.

In our research the first song was most viewed by most of the global audience is 'Gangnam Style' by PSY. It reached about 2,541,784,147 (2.5 billion) views. It was puplished in 2012 and it is still going on around hearing it where ever you go. On the second chart, comes along 'See You Again' by Wiz Khalifa, and it has roughly about 1,576,249,923 (1.6 billion) viwers. It was puplished in 2015. The third on the top 10 chart comes, 'Blank Space' by tyler swift with reaching roughly 1,529,902,797 (1.5 billion) views. This was puplished in 2014. The next song on the top 10 chart, the fourth in line is 'Uptown Funk' by Mark Ranson with 1,467,279,754 (almost 1.5 billion) views. Final but not least, the top 5th on the chart is by Taylor swift 'Shake It Off' with 1,386,951,297 (around 1.4 billion) views. All these top 5 most viwed song are catogrised as pop genre.

Research & Planning: Initial Thoughts & Ideas

Our general ideas from our starting point towards our final concept of our music video. These idea's enables us to take forwards to contruct a strong music video, then this will enable us to work on it further, creating a high standard video.

Our current thoughts and ideas:

• Having different forms and conventions in our music video, such as performance base and narrative. For example, starting our video with a narrative then cut to the performace base and repeat this process through out the video. To do this we decided that we should use a low budget venue. This will benfit us as we would not have to pay a lot for our venue, as well as follow the bands (The Jaques) foot steps (a venue they often use themselves) like conform to a convention of the indie rock genre.
• Using hand-made instruments that matchs the sound of our music such as, guitars and drum set. This idea supports the imagination of our artist that we decided to have in our music video, which make our production more creative and different to other music video performance. This also allows our audience to engage more with the artist imagination and be part of it.  
• Using Andrew Goodwins theory:
  

1. Which relates to matcing sound to visuals. For example capturing extreme close-up shots of the instrument performance matching the music notes/beat. I personally believe applying/ using extreme close ups making it engaging especially towards our audience.
2. Also adding another of his theory such as, matching lyrics to visuals. For example capturing close ups of the artist singing the lyrics while performing.

• We decided that during our narrtive shots of the artist, we should have our main artist wearing the headphones, which gave us the creative idea of adjusting the volume to make it seem as if its coming out of the headphones. This inspration was used before in a music video that we have once analysed during our media lesson. In the beginnning of 'Duke Dument- I Got U' music video a man bought a virtual reality headset, when he puts it on he is transported to any place or visuliastion he has in mind, where wonderful things happen. The video switches couple of times between the visual world to reality, and when we as an audience see the 'real life' scene, the music is muffled, this gives the impression that the music is coming from the indise of theheadset.

• Moreover, I also liked the idea of having a stage for our performance shots, making the main artist imaginagtion seem more lively and realistic towards our audience.

Research & Planning: Lyric Analysis

After researching into our band, and selecting the song, which we chose as a group called 'Weekends'. It was time to analyse the lyrics of the song to maintain synthesia which is were we piture or visual ideas in the minds eye, or when we hear the sound we immediately create an image of the music/ sound in our minds.

I researched the lyrics on the interent, however i couldnt find it anywhere, perhaps The Jaques have not released their lyrics out yet to their songs to stay as an orginal band. We then decided to write out the lyric to our chosen song. I wrote out the lyrics onto my phone and edited to write around what i visuled.

From analysing the lyrics, there where some repetetion of a verse such as 'sing and dance', from this I visual the band performing on a lighten up and colourful stage dancing whilest singing with the beat in a live show, surrounded with audience waving around with the flow of the beat.

To add to that 'they pour their fractured hearts out', i visuled them singing out load and juming around that is mentaly fractured their hearts out.

This analysis is important, if we are including a narative or concept base into our music video, we need to make sure the viwer is watching is essentially seeing what they are hearing.

Research & Planning: Artist (The Jaques) icnography

Iconography defination: Deals with identification, discription of the content image to represent that specific product/ media style. Also the main sybject depicted, the particualr compositions and details used across the media products. Also mean the number of fiqures used, their placing and gestures. (Meaning, like a brand for a specific institiution)


During our media lesson, we did a small activity to define the term 'Iconography' and look at some example of band or any other brands, and discussed about their iconography. We looked at a band that is more broad in the music industry, they are called 'Years & Years'. We saw some of their magazine and posters, we found out that they use their logo/ band name constently through out their brand to represent who they are, this is one of their iconography.
This allows their audience to recognize them through the their name and genre.

After choosing and researching our artist and song, we were then asked to make further research into our chosen artist (The Jacques) and create a collage of iconographies in a powerpoint or word document. This will allow us to accurtely represent them as who they are in our music video. I looked at google images, their twitter and facebook profile of the band, as well as research through their previous music videos that they released on youtube.

When i researched their profiles i found out that they constintly use their band name in a unique font style, specific for their band, it is used throughout their whole productions.

From looking at their music videos and profile pictures, their fasionable style of outfits suits the 'indie' genre style. They usually were dark clothing such as, dark trousers/ jumper, baggy shirts/ t-shirts and doc martins foot wear. In terms of their hair style also suits the indie style genre. Most of the band members have long her, for example, the lead singer Fin has long blond hair which is typical convention of indie rock genre.

The Jacques seems to have a particular syle when making/creating their music video. During Post production editing, the editor applied Andrew Goodwins theory (matching visulas to sound), such as when The Jaques performing the instruments are shown constintly throughout the music video. To add to that, the editor perhaps like to represent them more in Black & white effects in majority of their music videos. The effect makes their videos unquie in style and different to other indie rock genre music videos. It will also help the audience remember them that way. As well as that their songs is more the 90's fastion but combined with this generation to attract their traget audience. The black & white effect helps to reveal a vintage and old video fastion look.

Research & Planning: Artists Appearance (The Jacques)

We decided to contact the band to be in the music video to illustrate their orginality. they firstly argreed to be in our production. Though a slight change of plans of the band, they decided to back up and not become part of our production. This lead us to histation and issue to change our whole plan and song selection. However, I came up with the a decent plan to keep our ideas togther and keep it the same but alter our atrists choice, by having young people becoming/ pretending to be the band.

To add to that, now that we couldnt use the band, and came up with a concept which could portray the band without using the artists, we found a past albums through our research. They have frequently used images of childeren with different effects on them, which would support our idea for using children to represend the band.
For example this these two albums

We decided to choose a girl that is in love with this band and especially in love with this particular song we selected (the weekend). We found our artist quicker than we thought, as one of our team members sister was the perfect for this role. She will be presented as our main artist. We as a group think that she fits the role and character of a main vocalist singer really well from her authentic look, in addition to this, she also looks visually similar to the lead singer in The Jacques band (Fin Jacques). She visually has simialr hair style as it is short towards the sholder and same hair/eye colour as main artist in the band.

For the rest of the band members we decided to select friends of of our chosen lead singer. This will enable them to have a strong connection and chemistry, just like the The Jaques band, which means that they will be able to be more energetic during the perforemance due to their confidence therefore stronger relation between them (our chosen band). 

In terms of costume, we revolved around the idea of our artist dressing and style, which compliments the uniqueness of the song itself. We wanted to keep our choosen artists costume relatively simple, which allows the audience to focus more on alternative aspects of the music video.

Research & Planning: Artist approval and permisssion

We as a group our final song choice is called 'Weekends' by The Jacques. In order to use their song we firstly needed to ask permission for a copy right, if we are allowed to use their song for our music video. We had to get permission from either the band or their manager. Which we did. We had to do this so that ourfinal music video will not be taken down due to breached for copy right purpose. One of our group member had a close connection to one of the Jaques band (the lead singer) on Facebook. She contacted him and we got a respond, in this image bellow shows a breif overview of the converstation:

Research & Planning: Chosen music

Main Task:

In this year’s A2 levels, our main production is to:

'create a music video that has not yet have produced a music video for, from our chosen artist'.

From looking at the main task, it is recurred to select a certain song from the artist that they have not yet released a music video. Therefore, in my theory is to research more less well-known artist within our local distribution and not being attracted by global audiences in this stage. This will enable us to research into their songs and create a video for their music as they are in less budget to create a music video. To add to that, having to choose less well-known artist is more likely for us to create a music video as they wouldn’t have created one before for our chosen song.

"The weekends" by The jacques is the final deciousion song we have chosen to do for our music video.

Research & Planning: Artists (The jacques)

The Jacques band 

The Jacques are a band from Bristol area, consisting of 4 artists that are made up of two sets of brothers. Jake Edwards, Oliver Edwards, Fin O'Brien and Elliott O'Brien. They were all friends from their teens, forming a band in the early 2014 and start to make a noise, first performance in Bristol area where they are based, then, rather quickly, elsewhere. They played at the Dot to Dot Festival and GuilFest and were then a support band for The Libertines show at Hyde Park. On the day of Hyde Park the Libertines big show sees them take down the tent metaphorically, later in the day it will be taken down and closed literally. Then Amsterdam, Glastonbury and, as this summer progresses, North, South, East and West of the UK will be added to the list.

At the center of this band of brothers, (again metaphrorically in addition to literally) stands Fin Jacques. Whom was lyricist and songwriter at a young age, music is one string to a bow that conatins fine art and poetry.

Their genre and style of music is classed as indie-rock which revolves around electronic sounds.  Yhounger audience tend to like the distinctive and unique style of music which they make, because it stands out and contrasts against the mainstream music. We finally decided as a group to choose this artist because their music mood generates creative thoughts, which we can embed a wide range of elements that can be assembled into a music video. This challenge can create a risk to pull it togther and to produce a high standard music video. In order to challenge can create a risk, we have to work hard as a group to illustrate the song and somehow illustrate the band by including their inconography.