Focus Group

Genre

Definition of genre:

A music genre is a conventional category that identifies pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes interchanged and go into sub genres within a main genre.

History of indie and alternative music:

Indie music is a mix of pop, jazz, rock and blues. Indie music was created in the 1950-60’s but was very underground meaning indie bands played in little venues and in their garages. Indie music did not grow in popularity till the 80’s. Indie artists created music how they wanted. Therefore they usually were not getting signed to a big producer and did not make a lot of money. Indie artists rather create their own music or sound than rather make a lot of money. In fact they prefer to not be as popular as pop music and other genres. To this day Indie music is not as popular as the others. But a lot of well-known Indie bands started as small garage bands. It took a lot of practice and dedication. They played at venues often and started off with small CD’s.

Alternative rock music became popular in the 1990's but the history or alternative rock music goes back farther than that. Before Nirvana brought alternative rock music to the mainstream audience, the music genre had been gaining popularity with the college crowds and music underground. In the 1980's REM was making their start in alternative rock music. Most of their airtime was given by college radio stations. This is where their loyal fan base started. However, their commercial success started at about the time that alternative started to really become popular in the 1990's. The popularity of alternative rock music came about after the grunge period. Grunge was a type of alternative rock music that denounced commercialism. This movement started in Seattle, Washington and soon took the world by storm. This was ironic since it was this type of music that helped to create the commercial success for alternative rock music. Bands such as Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Similar examples of Indie music:

As we can see from this image we can see that indie music contains a large amount of colour within the album covers which you could say is represented with the lyrics of the songs that they produce. With these we do see the idea of them trying to be minimalist which is how the genre started out. People not playing to make lots of money but to have fun and jam with your friends within your garage.

Locations to be used in our music video

Skegness beach: (Reason for use of location) 
The reason for using this location within our music video is because the song is called holiday and we want it to be a play on the fact that we are going on a naff British holiday. However we will be using a lot of hand held shots to resemble the band filming there own music video. This location will also provide us with multiple places that we can add outside performance which is very stereotypical to our genre.

Back garden: (Ryan Fincham’s house)
The reasoning behind this is that we are going to be needing some shots that we will not only need privacy for however we will also need different props that we can not take out or get hold of when we are at our main place of filming.

Fast food outlet:
The reason for using this is because we are going to be using suggestible shots within  our music video. By this I mean within the lyrics there is words about eating food so we would like to have a suggestive shot of the band eating the food of either in a typical fashion by ordering fish and chips when you are at the sea side or by eating it in a disgusting manor  

Cliff side (Used for aeroplane Shot):
This cliff side shot will be used for a shot of the band looking over the cliff and also performing. I believe with different angles used it can be a rather affective shot. we will also use it for our magazine advert as if the lighting is good it will make our band stand out as I believe no one else will get this shot .

Bar:
This again is another suggestive shot as one of the band members will try to get into a bar however "14 or 40 you lie about your age" which is a line in the song so it will be the band member being rejected access to a club.

Job Roles Within the Group

These are the several jobs that have been shared equally between each member of the group. We have spoken in length about the strengths of each group member and decided on which role each member was given. Although each member now has their own role, we will still work as a team and help with what the others are doing. This will ensure that we complete each job before we reach the filming process of our production. By doing so, we know that we will be ready to film our music promo.

Example of a magazine advert Idea

Will and the People Pitch

Vox Pop Analysis

The people that took part in our Vox Pops were, Andy Cartwright, Charlie Haddow, Natasha Hamblin, Charlotte Powell and Ryan Abela.

What is your favourite music video and why: 

From this first question we saw that people have a large variety of ideas this shows that no one person is alike by this I mean that people like them for different reasons however I feel that a slight trend would have to be the fact that a lot of the choices involved pop and rock music videos. So for us we need to make sure that we would include bright colors and also you could use word and object placement. Which is used a lot stereotypically within pop music videos. Secondly with Rock you could say that there is a large amount of performance within those types of music video, so we have to get a good balance of quality performance and narrative.

What is your favourite Genre of Music:

Do you prefer to see narrative or performance: 

The answers that we got back from the different interviewees was a split if anything however i would say it went more towards performance so when creating or doing the performance i would say that it would have to be done so it not only looks professional but however has to be the bit that makes our music video rememberable and what draws our audience back to it so that you can watch it or want to watch it multiple times.

What do you like to see in a music video: 

This was a varied response form the individuals who where questioned this will be down solely because of peoples personal preference when watching a music video. The responses where things from explosion to bright colours and good performance so in review i would say we would have to make sure that we target our performance and make it as professional as possible. 

Cutting to the Beat

Below is an analysed version of the lyrics to Will And The People's song 'Holiday'. Each of the forward slashes below represent the places in which the music video will cut to a different shot.

 

Will and the People - Holiday

This is the opening instrumental section in which there will be one shot

A long year and we don't like rainy days/
Time to go on a holiday/
We pay our taxes/ and the man lets us go away/
So we should go, we should go/

In this small instrumental section there will be around about three shots

Jump on a plane/ and as we are flying low/
Many many heads looking out the window/
The sun is shining below me is my lilo/
So we should go, we should go/

14 or 40, you lie about your age/
A funny foamy party/ is followed by a rave/

Fly, fly away,/ 'cause you might find a better place to play/
Where there is a man with a union jack on his back/... you know stereo/, the stereotypes/... we all dance together/

Dance together,/ dance together/, dance together, oh

Super cubre libre we love the soiree.../
Beer goggles on/ and I'm sick in the buffet./
Who was that girl?/ And what was her name?/
I couldn't find her man she went back on a plane/

14 or 40, you lie about your age,/
A funny foamy party/ is followed by a rave.

Fly, fly away,/ 'cause you might find a better place to play/
Where there's a man with a union jack on his back,/
You know stereo/, the stereotypes.../ we all dance together/

You can fly, fly away,/ 'cause you might find a better place to play/
Where there's a man with a union jack on his back,/
You know stereo,/ the stereotypes.../ we all dance together/

Dance together/, dance together/, dance together, oh/
Dance together/, dance together/, dance together

After this there is about 5-8 seconds of instrumental in which there will remain the same shot

Vox Pops

Magazine Adverts Conventions

 

 

This is a magazine advert by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in 2006 for their new album ‘Stadium Arcadium’. I believe that this is an effective magazine advert because it is attractive to the eye and also the main text which is the name of the new album is bold and large which could make people want to find out what it is. At the top of the poster it clearly has the name of the band ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ so that people that haven’t seen this new album know who it is by.

The magazine advert also includes information on when the album is released which is very important, as it says the album comes out on the 8^th May 2006, this gives people the opportunity to go to a store on this day knowing it will have been released if they want to buy it.

Other information on the magazine advert includes a small piece of text below the release date of the album saying that it includes their hit single ‘Dani California’, this gives them a chance to increase their sales of their album as if people that do not know much of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers but they know of this hit song as they’ve heard it and really like it, then they may buy the album to see if they like their other songs in the album, giving them a better promotion of themselves and better marketing.

As well as all of that information the magazine advert also includes some advertising for the company O2 as at the bottom right corner their is their logo and on the left of it in the middle is some text that says 'Text CHILLIS to 2020 for exclusive downloads, ringtones and competitions on O2'. This could give the Red Hot Chilli Peppers a wider range of target audience in the people who are with O2 as it gives them access to these extras meaning that more people may want the album or other Red Hot Chilli Peppers merchandise.



The genres target audience: Indie Rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Indie rock is an extremely diverse genre, with sub-genres that include those of indie pop, jangle pop, C86, and lo-fi, among others.

The name of Indie/Rock, takes its name from the word Independent, meaning not influenced or controlled by others in matter of opinion. The bands which are labelled Indie/Rock will usually show their own uniqueness by having their own different styles and portraying a certain look in order for them to be and look different from the norm, this comes in terms of fashion, fan base and their characteristics in the way they portray themselves.

Seeing as each indie band aims at its own different fan bases this gives a wide range as to who the audience could be, seeing as the audience are not only attracted to the style of music, but the how a band portrays themselves to the public or even down to what they wear, examples of different fan bases within indie rock are those of Oasis, Red Hot Chilli Peppers etc.

CD digipack ideas

Example of a similar bands website

Above is an example of a website produced by a similar band, Oasis. You can see that they advertise all of their previous music videos so that they are seen by the public, as well as thaty they have different tabs in which you can see various information about the band, and of course have their bands logo in the top left corner so they are recognised.

Questions from the focus group

Thumbs up thumbs down: do you like the song  

-what sort of Target Audience would you expect the song to have

·        Age:

·        Gender:

·        Type of person who would listen to this song please tick:

 

We will now present our idea:

 

·        What changes would you make?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

·        Have you seen an idea like this before? Scale of uniqueness, 1 being unique 5 not:

 

·         1       2       3       4       5

 

What genre you think it is – multiple choice

________________________________________________________________

 Your name: __________________________________________________________________________________

Your Age:

__________________________________________________________________________________

You’re Gender:

__________________________________________________________________________________

CD / DVD digipack

what is a digipack?

• Card packaging
• Gate fold effect
• 4-8 panels
• more info than traditional case
• Special editions / limited edition / collectors edition, this is a marketing tool
• often additional material, extra disc, poster, lyrics, booklet

The above image is that of the front cover of the Kings Of Leon new album 'Mechanical Bull'.  It is packaged in the card material as digipacks would be expected to be and also has the gate fold effect as expected. On the front cover it is a very simple design that has been carried out and used in other merchandising and advertising for their new album to help people to recognise the album when they see it.

However there is also another design that you could have which is below, they may have done this so that the audience has a choice as to what one they would want to buy, but the similarity between both of the covers is that they both contain the same sign image that is the title of the album.

 

 

 

 

The back cover of the album is the same for both of the albums, and has exactly what you would expect of a CD digipacks.