Researching Conventions of Album Covers

There are many different conventions of album covers. There are many different aspects that go into making an album cover successful. We have been looking at different punk inspired covers, to help inspire us with our own ideas, this which would be suitable for our pop-punk genre.

This is an album cover from the punk-reggae band Skindred. I found this album particularly intresting as it has lots of different things going on within the product. The colours work well together as they are bright and have a 'fun' sense to them. Here these colours are known to be used as rebellious colours. For example, the colour red would normally represent anarchy and danger. Yellow is normally shown as happy, or in this case hazardous. And the green symbolizes nature. The band are stood in an intimidating way, this is to help get their band image across. The name of the band is written in a graffiti style font. This is also to show rebellious attitudes amongst the public. Whilst on the other side, the album name is written in a slightly more 'easy to read' writing, as if it was almost hand written.

The background is a blurred sky, which gives moody properties, and in the foreground placement of the band against the speakers, in front of the background gives a feel of a collage to the cover. The band is almost places within a higher-achy of who is most important within the band.

Another great punk album cover is by Rancid.

This album cover showa 'anarchy' colours. Red and Black represent danger here, The white helps contrast against the darker colours. The fact that the song title is 'let the dominoes fall'. And the main colours of the album cover are black and white help link in with the white and black dots of the dominoes. We can clearly see that one of the band members have tattoos. This deffinitly links in with the punk genre of the music that we are researching. The style of the writing of the band name is in a graffiti style. This shows the rebelious impressions of the music. i think the album gives the impression that it was intentionally made to look like the whole image had been spray painted on by a graffiti artist.

Researching Conventions of album covers

Location Shots

We all went out and took location shots and these are some possible location shots for our music video. We need to shoot in a location that matches our brand image and music/song and the genre. We have chosen places such as abandoned buildings, alleys and skate parks because they portray the right image. 

We have also selected a band practice room which is quite dilapidated therefore suiting the brand image and giving the image we want. The image we want to send out is reflected in these locations due to the rebellious attitude portrayed through our brand image. These locations would typically seem 'rebellious' because it is seen as unsafe or inappropriate to be in back alleys and abandoned buildings. The skate park reflects the obvious teen hangout, especially for those interested in this genre, and as our target age range is that of mainly teens it seems a sensible option for our video. We have also looked at the band practice room as this suggests typical pop punk image and would also allow us to do a performance based video and include a separate narrative in location if we wished to. 

The final decision was to use the band practice room as shown above. 

 

Call Sheet

1st Shoot:
Date - 21st December
Time - 12.00 PM
Crew - Steph, Beth, Aimee, Danny
Cast - Calum Sutton, Jonny Marriner, Adam Marsden, Danny Wearing.
Equipment: Camera, Tripod, Tape, Lighting
Costumes and Props: Face Paints, Clown Costumes, Balloons, Instruments.

Casting Shots

These are a few casting shots for possible band members and extras. We have tried to select people that portray our brand image and will be able to relate to our target audience.

Props List

PROPS:
Guitars
Drums
Amps


Microphones
General instruments


EQUIPMENT:
Camera
Tripod
Tape
Various lighting - lamps, strobes ETC
Storyboards


Shooting Schedule:
We are planing to film on the 21st of December

Feedback - 6/12/09

Excellent progress group! The best blog in the group! Keep up your hard work - excellent charts , graphs and research.

Now you need to be planning with a vengeance!

Planning:

- storyboards scanned and an animatic made

- location/casting/costume shots

- props lists

- call sheets and shooting schedule

etc... (See the Before you Blog sheets.)

Miss McNulty

Possible Locations

Possible locations for shooting

We decided to brain storm possible locations for where we would film our music video.

the ideas that we came up with were.

• Jackson's Farm (in the barn). This is where the bad actually practices their music. This would also be a great location as it wouldn't mean moving all the band's equipment about, and it would already be set up. This would mean we could work on our cinematography, and get the close ups, of all the instruments, and the members of the band. This would obviously be for the performance side of the music video. below are two examples of videos that i have found to illustrate my point.

The slip knot video shows us how we can change the focuses of the camera. I feel this would be a great addition to our video. I also like how the background is plain, which makes the members of the band stand out more. Another video that i have found which would strongly link into what we would be trying to aim for in our music video.

This video links into our ideas. As it also 'messes' with the focus of the camera, leading to some interesting shots.

• Clitheroe skate park, This is a great location, and would be interesting for our video. The idea of the skate park links in with the idea of anarchy, where as this is more teenage anarchy than adult. The skate park includes the idea of teenagers skating, and possible amounts of graffiti and street art. Skate parks have been associated with the idea of anarchy since it began in the early 1990's, and into the 2000's. The only worry is, is where we would set up the bands equipment. 

Questionnaire - Research.

This is the questionnaire that we asked several people to complete.

The results were interesting:

From this we can see that our target audience is a small percentage of the full market for music. We asked 10 people to fill out the questionaire, and from the results we found this out. We asked questions that we thought would refer to out research, like 'what genre of music is your favourite?' We tended to ask questions which would get straight to the point, so then we would be able to concentrate on the answers which mattered most to our research.

Target Audience

Audience profiling is essentially two basic categories:

1. Demographic Profiling

2. Pyschographic Profiling 

Profiling allows the media to select the 'type' of person to buy their product.
Demographic profiling groups people on their age, religion, gender or the economic status as shown below:

Group	Description
A	Upper class; -business, professionals
B	Middle Class; -middle management
C1	Lower Middle Class; -trades Supervisory jobs
C2	Skilled working Class; -blue collar workers
D	Lower Working Class; -Manual workers
E	Subsidence; -pensioners -unemployed

However, there are obvious flaws in this way of profiling. You cannot presume people are the same just because of certain factors. For example all white, 34 year old teachers are not interested in the same type of music. This lead to the finding of Psychographic profiling. 


Psychographic profiling is aware the consumer are complex and can have many different needs. Therefore the media aim to please all the needs a consumer may have. The media may then look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and incorporate this into their advertisement to incite the consumer into buying their product as they believe by buying such they will fulfill all their needs. 

In order to market our product and attract the best audience we can we will need to think about these factors.


Our target audience will be based in the age range of 16-25 as the younger generation are more interested in the pop-punk genre (although there is a good range of older people also interested in this genre). We will aim to target the rebellious teen and portray this in our brand image. As this is a niche market we have a very loyal fan base and should be able to portray the correct image and target the right people to enable our music video to succeed. 

Album Chart History

The End of Year Album Chart of 2008

1 Rockferry - Duffy * 1,684,944
2 The Circus - Take That * 1,446,135
3 Only by the Night - Kings of Leon * 1,181,641
4 Spirit - Leona Lewis * 1,108,369
5 Viva la Vida or Death and all his Friends - Coldplay 1,089,000
6 Good Girl Gone Bad - Rihanna* 839,524
7 Day & Age - The Killers 693,000
8 Out of Control - Girls Aloud * 591,786
9 Funhouse - Pink * 587,983
10 Scouting for Girls - Scouting for Girls 575,000
11 All the Right Reasons - Nickelback 568,000
12 The Script - The Script 544,028*
13 Decade in the Sun - Best of - Stereophonics 528,000
14 Back to Black (Deluxe Edition) - Amy Winehouse 523,000
15 Dig Out Your Soul - Oasis 500,000
16 19 - Adele 479,328*
17 The Promise - Il Divo 468,000
18 A Hundred Million Suns - Snow Patrol 424,000
19 Gold - Greatest Hits - Abba* 419,806
20 My Love - The Essential Collection - Celine Dion 398,000
21 This is the Life - Amy MacDonald 393,000
22 The Priests - Priests 391,000
23 We Started Nothing - The Ting Tings 378,000
24 Year of the Gentleman - Ne-Yo 371,000
25 Black Ice - AC/DC 370,500
26 Life in Cartoon Motion - Mika 363,000
27 Call me Irresponsible (Special Edition) - Michael Bublé 354,000
28 Home Before Dark - Neil Diamond 349,000
29 Rhydian - Rhydian 347,000
30 Let it Go - Will Young 343,000
31 Greatest Hits - Enrique Iglesias 339,000
32 Exclusive - Chris Brown 335,000
33 Beautiful World - Take That 331,000
34 Raising Sand - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss 328,000
35 The Seldom seen Kid - Elbow 325,000
36 Hard Candy - Madonna 323,113*
37 The Best Bette - Bette Midler 312,000
38 I am Sasha Fierce - Beyoncé * 311,734
39 The Best of - Sash 297,000
40 Soul - Seal 292,500
41 Chinese Democracy - Guns n Roses 293,420*
42 Uncle B - N-Dubz 290,500
43 Jumping all Over the World - Scooter 290,000
44 25 The Greatest Hits - Simply Red 277,000
45 Now You're Gone - The Album - Basshunter 271,000
46 Version - Mark Ronson 265,000
47 One of the Boys - Katy Perry 261,000
48 Dreaming Out Loud - One Republic 259,000
49 Perfect Symmetry - Keane 255,000
50 Hand Built by Robots - Newton Faulkner 250,500
51 Songs for You, Thuths for Me - James Morrison 248,000
52 Never Forget - Take That 246,000
53 Death Magnetic - Metallica 240,000
54 Sacred Arias - Katherine Jenkins 239,000
55 Thriller 25 - Michael Jackson 238,000
56 Konk - The Kooks 235,000
57 Back to Black - Amy Winehouse 234,000
58 Back again .. No Matter What - Boyzone 230,500
59 The Trick to Life - Hoosiers 229,500
60 Frank - Amy Winehouse 228,000
61 Circus - Britney Spears 225,500
62 22 Dreams - Paul Weller 225,300
63 Forth - The Verve 222,500
64 And Winter Came - Enya 222,000
65 Oracular Spectacular - MGMT 221,300
66 Because of the Times - Kings of Leon 221,000
67 The Best of - Neil Diamond 218,000
68 Lessons to be Learned - Gabriella Cilmi 216,500
69 Sleep through the Static - Jack Johnson 215,000
70 The Age of the Understatement - Last Shadow Puppets 208,000
71 (Budget) Tangled Up - Girls Aloud 206,000
72 Pictures - 40 Years of Hits - Status Quo 202,000
73 In Silico - Pendulum 200,000
74 A Guide to Love Loss & Desparation - The Wombats 194,000
75 Join with Us - The Feeling 193,900
76 In Rainbows - Radiohead 192,500
77 Vivere - The Best of - Andrea Bocelli 192,400
78 Safe Trip Home - Dido 192.355*
79 (Budget) Unbreakable - The Greatest Hits - Westlife 191,300
80 Here I Stand - Usher 189,500
81 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend 189,300
82 All the Lost Souls - James Blunt 187,000
83 Shock Value - Timbaland 186,000
84 Made of Bricks - Kate Nash 183,000
85 Mamma Mia - Origional Cast Recording 182,500
86 Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp 177,000
87 Melody - Sharleen Spiteri 175,000
88 Dark Horse - Nickelback 174,500
89 Some Guys Have all the Luck - Rod Stewart 173,000
90 Voices of the Valley - Home - From Male Voice Choir 171,000
91 Breakout - Miley Cyrus 170,000
92 Only Men Aloud - Only Men Aloud 169,500
93 Perfect Day - Cascada 168,000
94 Echos, Silence, Patience & Grace - Foo Fighters 166,000
95 We'll Live & Die in these Towns - The Enemy 164,000
96 Yours Truly Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs 161,500
97 Robyn - Robyn 161,000
98 King of Pop - Michael Jackson 160,500
99 Eyes Open - Snow Patrol 160,000
100 X - Kylie Minogue 159,000

Although our genre isn't the most popular featured in the 2008 charts we can see that there are a lot of albums of our genre and similar in this chart listing which gives us a clear indication that our genre is popular and pop-punk is becoming more mainstream every year.

top 10 singles chart

These are the top 10 UK singles from  15/11/2009 - 21/11/2009  

1.BLACK EYED PEAS: MEET ME HALFWAY

2.LEONA LEWIS:   HAPPY

3.JLS:  EVERYBODY IN LOVE

4.CHERYL COLE:  FIGHT FOR THIS LOVE

5. N-DUBZ: I NEED YOU

6. KESHA: TIK TOK

7.BRITNEY SPEARS:  3

8.SUGABABES: ABOUT A GIRL

9.JAY SEAN FT LIL WAYNE: DOWN

10.ALEXANDRA BURKE FT FLO RIDA:  BAD BOYS

From looking at the recent singles chart i can see that the music inndustry singles sales are mainly domiated by maistream pop songs. This is because the pop genre is very big and appeals to both a young audience and older people. However some of these songs and artists also gain alot of publicity through tv shows such as the xfactor creating a wider audience and therefore get more sales. Seen as pop punk is not as popular as the pop genre it is harder for them to get into the singles chart. this may also be because the audience of the pop punk genre might prefer to buy albums and also prefer to download music. 

steph

Target Audience & Sub Genres of Punk.

        I believe that our target audience will be of the ages 10-25 year olds and adults interested within the punk genre of music.

        The band will usually consist of three or four band memebers, two on vocals. The music uses simple but very effective riffs and chord combosm which is some times seen as 'Feel good music'. from a broad prospective it can offend people who like slightly heavier music. this genre was created when punk rock was split into many different and new catagories in the late 90's, creating sub genres of the like.

        People these days have become so over run with choice in the music industry that they are getting confused with the names Punk, and Pop-Punk music. Punk is the genre of the music which was considered the most 'hardcore' and original of the rebelious sound we know today as actual 'punk'. 

       Pop-Punk is a term used to name the music style of bands like Green Day, Blink 182, Good Charlotte, or Simple Plan.

       This bands were influenced by the skatepunk bands like Bad Religion, Nofx, Nirvana and many others. They then took their influences and  made the songs with more of a melodic sound, so that it would become more listenable for its audiences, so it would become projected into a mainstream audience, thus making the music more popular, and more well known. This is where the name of the sub-genre Pop-Punk comes from.
        As Pop-Punk has become more main-stream through out time, it has caused the rejection of it by many of the original hardcore punk-rockers, who are now against corporate, popular, and mainstream music brands. But to be honest, this is rarely ever the case as most punk and pop-punk bands are mainstream.

Nowadays pop-punk is influating other bands to create new styles of music like rock-pop or new hardcore-pop better known to the audience as 'emo music'

      Pop-Punk was always considered as this tyle that was around in the 80's, 90's and early 21st century, thus heavily influencing many of the great bands today. Pop-Punk also influnced fashion through-out the time it has been around. Compleing bands such as The Towers Of London, to dress in the way to make there image appear how their music is taken in.
      Alot of the first Punk music had dirty vocals, which consosted of swear words, and also dirty jokes. Where as Pop-Punk music only contains clean vocals, especially as their audiences range from as early as 10 years old to about 25-8 years of age.

Feedback 23/11/09

Very good research group - good links and references to songs/images etc...

Genre: Try to include the conventions of music video in your own words (e.g. use of close ups etc..) and what media critics have said about conventions of music video - references to Andrew Goodwin and Pete Fraser needed - see packs -  a little more on this required - include quotes etc...

Genre: Also what are the conventions of the punk music video subgenre? What makes them distinctive from general music video conventions?

Target audience - you need an age range, gender bias, race and socio-economic status (demographics)  - you can have secondary audiences that are wider but you need a specific target - dont forget to use Young and Rubicon for your psychographic profiling too. Dont forget to put all your questionnaire results on here also.

Now move on and look quickly at your other key concepts and we should be starting to see some planning - location shots/casting shots/storyboards and animatics etc... 

Remember to outline your artist/band and the brand image you are trying to create/push through your products.

The Conventions of Music Videos

This is a music video for the band Blink 182 they are a successful pop-punk band and they have broke into the mainstream market. In this video we can see clear typical conventions of this
genre.
They had a brand image of anarchy and having fun. I think they definitely follow this in the video. Punk videos are very similar to rock and indie videos as they usually consist of a live band performance and also a narrative that overlap and cut between each other. This is very common of rock and punk genre.



Whilst researching the conventions of music videos we found the work of Andrew Goodwin very useful. He said there were 6 points...

- there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.
- particular music genres may have their own music video style and iconography
-there is a demand on the part of the record company for lots of close ups of the main artist/vocalist.
-the artist may develop their own star iconography
-there is likely to be reference to voyeurism
- there are likely to be intertextual references


We also discovered the work of Pete Fraser he said :

(Pete Fraser Teaching Music Video 2005)

 LYRICS: Tend to establish a general feeling or mood rather than offering a  coherent meaning. Key lines may play a part in visuals associated with the song but very rarely will a video mirror all the lyrics of a song.

 MUSIC: A music video tends to make use of the tempo of the track to drive the editing.

 GENRE: While some videos transcend genre, others can be easily categorised. These features may be reflected in the types of mise en scene, themes, performance, cinematography and editing style.

 CINEMATOGRAPHY: As with any moving image text, the way the camera is used has a significant impact on meaning. Camera movement, shot and distance all need to be analysed.

Camera movement may accompany the movement of performers (Walking, dancing) but may also be used to create a more dynamic feel to stage performance e.g. consistently circling the band as they perform on stage.

The close up predominates music video, partly due to the size of the screen but also due to the desire to create an intimacy for the viewer. It also emphasises the commodity on sale – the artist and voice.

- EDITING: Although the most common form of editing used is the fast-cut montage- rendering many of the imaged impossible to grasp in the first viewing- ensuring multiple viewings- some videos do use slow pace and gentler shot transitions/cuts to establish mood.

- INTERTEXTUALITY: “ Music video as incorporating , raiding and reconstructing.” (J.Stewart)

Music videos often use something with which the audience will be familiar with to create nostalgia and associations with e.g. Beastie Boys Sabotage and TV Cop shows, Madonna's Material Girl and Marilyn Monroe’s film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It is not unusual that many videos draw on cinema – as this is usually where film school graduates start in music video.

 NARRATIVE AND PERFORMANCE:  Narrative in songs, as in poetry, is rarely complete and fragmented. Music videos tend to suggest storylines and offer fragmented non-linear narratives- leaving the audience with a desire to see them again.

The video allows a more varied access to the performer than a concert can. The mise en scène in particular can be used …

 As a guarantee of ‘authenticity’ of a bands musical virtuosity by showing them in a stage performance or rehearsal room.

 To establish a relationship to familiar film or TV genres in a narrative based video

 As part of voyeuristic context by suggesting a setting associated with sexual allure, such as a sleazy nightclub or boudoir.

 Or, as John Steward suggests, to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle, as in the current emphasis on the latest gadgetry.

beth, steph and danny

Institution

Our media text is a music video, this means it belongs to the music industry. The band that we are using would be signed to an independent  label such as domino music.

Typical traits of independent labels: 
- financially and stylistically independent 
- they sign small unknown artists 
-less clear genre definition 
- a niche audience
- music seen as an art form


Typical traits of major labels:
- the industry is dominated by 4 major companies, which are made up of several labels who own between them between 70-75% of the world market share. These companies are: Warner Music, EMI, Universal and Song BMG.

-  mainstream genres 
-manufactured music
-big artists 
- a wide audience
- usually part of media conglomerates 
- global domination








Beth,Danny and Steph

Research - History of the Music Video.

      Music and moving images have long gone together. Since the beginning of film in the 1920's and 30's films were always accompanied by music. As well as this the development of the musical as a genre for example: Singing in the Rain.

  

1960's Promotions

   

    In the 1960's many Bands created films which included the Beatles. They released a film called HELP (right) which promoted the Beatles and in turn made them even more successful.

1970's Promotions

     Top of the Pops began to use music videos while the bands were away on tour but they were still very experimental.

The Beginning of  MTV.

Artists began to see the need for promotions on each new release and changes in technology created a gap in the market and this led to the boom in music promotions in the 1980's.

     The growth of genre based channels such as MTV BASE, MTV DANCE and several others.

      This led to the music video being a useful way of promoting bands and musicians and is used widely throughout the industry.

Inspirational Videos

Whilst researching into brand image we have watched many videos on Youtube to help us visualise what we want to achieve in our video. For this reason we looked at bands of a similar genre to what we are working with so we could see if there were any specific conventions we would have to put into our final product


teenagers by MCR





Warriors Dance - The Prodigy





Billy Talent


In these videos there are clear conventions portrayed for a punk pop music video for example the use of close ups on the vocalists and live performances. There are also elements of individuality shown which through the videos which emphasises the rebellious attitude and image the punk pop genre implies through the music. There are also elements of narrative inter cut between the live performances, during our research we have discovered that this is very typical of our genre and the brand image they are attempting to create.

beth