Singles and Album Differences

When looking at the differences between single and album covers, there is often some correlation between the two but differs from artist to artist.

The Arctic Monkeys first single was 'I bet you look good on the dancefloor' released on Domino records, the cover of the single depicts a young woman who is a 'trainee' shopkeeper of a connivence store as you can see from the badge on the apron.
You can also see that she is handling some items that you find in a convenience store accompanied by the alcohol shelves behind her and the sign also behind her stating that tobacco products cannot be sold to anyone under the age of 16 which was a law that was abolished in 2007 and changed to 18 years of age.
The video to this single has no relevance to the single cover as it is a live performance shot in a small studio to a small crowd using television cameras from the 1970's to give the video a retro look.
Some would say the photo on the cover correlates between the fact the song is talking about a woman on a night out but that isnt intentional


The album that this single featured on was 'Whatever people say i am, That's what im not'. This album has a photo of Chris Mcure on the front smoking a cigarette that was taken in the early hours of the morning in a Korova bar, Liverpool. This photo was one take in the moment with no planning, its a simple yet effective approach that somehow correlates to the band themselves, connoting an indie type scene/genre using the saturated colour look on the photo. The photo alone has absolutely no relevance to any song on the album in particular and has no intentional relevance to the style of the band.
The house style of the two albums is about as far a the correlation between the two go, the 'Arctic Monkeys' logo at a sort of 15 degree angle that is stamped on the front of both the covers.

On the front cover of Calvin Harris' 'Feel So Close' single there is a picure of a western cowboy with a white horse, that relates directly to the music video for the song where there is a narrative of the same man with his horse. Its an effective approach to the simplistic style of the genre of music, a shot taken from the production of the music video, it also makes the marketing of the video a lot easier as the general public will recognise the photo and relate it back to the video.

This is the album in which 'Feel so Close' was released on, as you can see there is the same sort of house style from the american suburbs but the album bares no relation the video from one of the songs on the album.
It shows the artist sitting on a curb in an american style street with his name and album names pictured on the wall behind him.

This is the single cover for the single Inhaler by Foals, the cover this is related soley to the video for inhaler as you can see the jacket that he is wearing on the cover is the same one that he wears in the video for inhaler, this creates a direct link between the two rendering it a single cover.
The album cover that this single is on is completely different on the other hand its a retro style photo of horses in the sea which bears no relevance to the album title at all and is not related to the songs on the album either, this shows that the main thing behind the album covers is that its down to photography rather than relating the album cover.
This is something that we should look further into to gauge how well albums relate to the album content.










  

Location Shots by Matt

Tunnel walkthrough from Crazydodobird

Field walkthrough from Crazydodobird

Skate park walkthrough from Crazydodobird

Copyright Letter

To make sure that we were not infringing any copyright laws by using the song 'Young Blood' we emailed the manager of the band to ask permission to use the song for our A2 Media music video, in which it would be featured. Below is a copy of this email that i sent them on the behalf of our group.

.GIF Construction

As a group we were thinking of different ways to add some simple touches to our blogs, one of which was the animated .GIF's. These were really simple and easy to make although quite time consuming.
The basic idea is to make a background that is completely blank and place the item that you wish to animate in the center of the set, we then took a photo and then rotated the item around a 1/12 of a turn, the more photos will mean a smoother animation but 12 is enough.
After the photos have been taken we then imported them to a computer and loaded all the 12 images into photoshop layers in the same image as you can see here. This is simple to do, but i personally choose to open them in Bridge and then highlight the photos i need then load them into photoshop layers as i personally think its quicker.




After that is done you then need to go to >Window and choose >Animation and then this window at the bottom will appear with all the photos from the layers.

Then press the play button to check to see if there are any repeated photos, if there are then click on the photo that is repeated and then click the dustbin icon to get rid of it.




From there i then checked the timing of the animation, if the timing was slightly wrong, i changed it using the drop down menu underneath each of the pictures, i chose 0.3 seconds for each photo.

After that, the file then needed to be saved as a .GIF, this can be done by going to >File >Save for Web and Devices, this then brings up another window in which i chose the file type as a .GIF then lastly click save.

Band Research by Danny

The lineup: David Beadle, Thom Powers, Aaron Short, Jesse Wood, Alisa Xayalith. 
  
Background: The Naked and Famous have  slipped into the market, since they committed commercial hara-kiri earlier this year. The five-piece from New Zealand, began as an electro duo in 2008 after the two members, Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith, met at music school. They have taken the sound indie rock and turned it into a their own style of electric rock. That's have found a gap in the market and are filling it with a commercialised version of a successful, cool American band's most popular tracks.

The New Zealand post-punk revival band from Auckland formed in 2008 when Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith recorded two EPs with engineer Aaron Short, a fellow student at Auckland's MAINZ music college. The EPs were subsequently released on a local independent label and Powers and Xayalith began performing live with Ben Knapp (bass) and Jordan Clark (drums).
In 2009, the group recorded the single "All of This". Aaron Short became a performing member of the group and Jesse Wood (drums) and David Beadle (bass) joined the band as full-time members.

The band were involved in NME's rising stars for 2011 and did an interview. There is a clip from that interview below.

 The group then set about recording the single "Young Blood" and their debut album, recording mostly at home and at Auckland studio, The Lab. "Young Blood" debuted on the New Zealand chart at number one on 14 June 2010 – the first New Zealand artist in three years to do so. The Naked and Famous released their debut studio album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, on 6 September 2010 on their own label, Somewhat Damaged. The album was produced by Thom Powers and Aaron Short and mixed by Billy Bush.

Clothing by Luke

As the song that we have chosen is to of the indie electronica genre, the clothing and styling of the band members is absolutely crucial to how the band will be portrayed to the public.

The main focus for us is to create a typical indie band and to try and keep strictly to indie styled clothing and hair styles etc. This will prove difficult but if done correctly it will give us the star image that we want to give the band. This is seen in our research as most artists have an iconic look which not only attracts a fan base but also reflects their persona. A key example of this is the band 'Kiss' who consistently wear leather with their black and white face paint - giving them their identity.
Recently we have been searching the internet for different sort of outfits for the band members to wear and we decided on the lead singer, as she is a female that she should wear a typical floral type dress for the performance part of the video, here are some ideas;

When researching what makes an indie outfit we looked at a selection of blogs and websites such as googling 'How to dress indie?' - sites such as 'WikiHow' came in very useful as there are lots of tips that we can use to enhance our own knowledge that we have already. The research sort of already confirmed the image we had in our heads of what 'indie' actually is but we could just get a better insight through the experts advice. We could then go away onto websites (below) with our new knowledge. The key thing to remember was that indie literally means 'independant' therefore we have a lot of flexibility and options

Florence Welch is a fashion icon and we can use her example to see what makes a unique female music artist as our lead singer as mentioned is a girl and we want her to stand out in the music video - by creating a qwerky alter-ego we can achieve this look. 
Florence usually performs in flowing dresses which contrast against her hair colour. Because she has such a distinctive hair colour and style, she compliments it and almost highlights it as her identity even further. Even when she is dressed casually as you can see, she dresses with independence and this reflects her personality.




This little slideshow shows some of the ideas that we have had from looking at fashion websites such as; Topshop, Urban Outfitters, ASOS etc. and google images. As a group we may need to purchase a the perfect outfit for the lead singer. We want to portray her as a fashionista, leading the way for other people to follow. In this case, she needs to stand out as being a unique individual who does not neccessarily follow any trends - she sets them herself. This being said, the style needs to be in keeping with the indie feel of the music video otherwise the two elements of music and fashion will not compliment each other. They need to show what direction we are heading in.

The other narrative based part of the video is going to be slightly different, as its going to be lots of different groups of people doing lots of different activities, the clothing will be tailored to who the people are and what they are doing in the scene that they are in for example, in the camping scene, all the actors will be dressed up warm around a camp fire wearing jumpers in sleeping bags etc, in the scene thats in the field it will be the same sort of attire that they were wearing during the performance.

We decided that the males in the performance part of the video will be wearing clothes that represent the indie genre also, for this we also looked into fashion website for the males like; Topman, Urban outfitters etc. Here are some examples of what we are looking for.....although some have hipster/electronica elements fitting into groups such as Scenester kids.

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

Styles that I personally like are the bright and vibrant AZTEC ones. This is actually very in fashion at this present moment in time with the winter season. You can see these styles appearing in a lot of retail stores...it is the idea of patterns and bold colours being put onto a piece of clothing. It makes a big statement and has 'indie connotations'. When looking at websites this was a prominent theme. Also a lot of people at our age of 17/18 have started to settle into this Aztec niche market and if adults in bands are wearing this style they do look much more young and almost appear more creative and exciting.

The band Spector are good examples of making bright colours look qwerky and quite trendy. Normally it is common to think you stand out in a bad way but they have their own unique style and star image. Their style I think opitimizes them. Thry are normally seen with tie-dye shirts in yellows, reds, blues and various other colours. It separates them from the crowd and also highlights this fashion revolution.  I think that the clothing item of a shirt looks smart yet can be made casual at the same time - looking rather effortlessly cool.

Bands like Foals have the common look of skinny jeans and short sleeve shirts - shown in the Balloons video. It gives a summery feel despite the fact that we will be shooting our video in the middle of the winter period. They look tailored, especially with button down collars as these give the look a more casual appearance. Foals provide a contrast to Spector as they are more often seen in pastel coloured shirts as opposed to a variety of vivid colours.

Album Art by Matt

In 1938, Columbia records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director. Steinweiss is to this day credited for creating the first album covers and cover art replacing plain covers as before. After this other record companies started to follow his lead, by the late 40's the majority of album covers featured album art and to this day every single album will have artwork on the cover, this is also the case for digital forms of music, it will still have the album artwork in iTunes or other media players on the market.
Some of the most famous album covers art that of;
The Beatles, this cover showed a picture of the band crossing the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, their home recording studio. The album entitles Abbey Road was their 11th album.

 This was the first Beatles album sleeve to show neither name nor band name on the front.
The photographer of the photo Ian Macmillan was given 10 minutes to take the photo ontop of a steplader in the road while a policeman help up the traffic.

Another incredibly iconic peice of album art is that for Nirvanas second album Nevermind.
It featured a young baby floating underwater looking at a dollar bill that is hooked to a fishing line.
There was some concern over the fact that 3 month old Spencer Evan's penis was visible in the photo, Cobain the bands lead singer made it clear that the only compromise would be a sticker covering it that said "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."

The Dark Side of The Moon was the eighth album from Pink Floyd.
The idea of the prism was chosen because it shows three different elements; the bands stage lighting, the albums lyrics and Richard White's request for a simple bold design.

















Album artwork is extremely important for the artist and the single as it can reflect on the genre and style. For example pop and RnB artists are going to have posed highly edited portraits as their album art to show themselves off while indie bands may have a more artistic artwork.

Foo Fighters 

Foo Fighters are an american rock band and "One by one" is their fourth studio album. The final album was released in October 2002 after a year of construction. Singles from the album included "All My Life", "Times Like These", "Low", and "Have It All". The band planned to release it six months earlier but had an argument over the music saying it didn't sound right which ended up in them recording the whole album a second time. The black heart is suits the album and is used to symbolise the love and lust that band members had for each other throughout the creation of it. 

Coldplay

Mylo Xyloto is Coldplays Fifth studio album released in 2011. It was the UK's best-selling rock album of 2011, selling 908,000 copies. To date, it has sold over 8 million copies worldwide. Coldplay wanted it to be an explosion of vivid colors as a counterpoint to the subdued color palette of Viva La Vida. 

Paolo Nutini

Sunny side up is the second album released by Paolo Nutini in 2009. The album was the eighth best selling album in the United Kingdom of 2009 and the sixth of 2010. It sold over 60 000 copies in the Uk alone. The colours and nature of the music ties into the name of the album "Sunny Side up" projecting positivity in music. Everything thing from the way the eggs connote the sun to the slight yellow gradient on the text help establish this tone.

The XX


The xx are an English indie pop band, formed in London in 2008. The group released their debut album, xx in August 2009. The xx recorded their album in a small garage that was part of the XL Recordings studio, often at night, which contributed to the low, whispery nature of the album. The x symbolises the band’s name and connotes the only iconography on the cover. Without a title or name it creates a highly recognisable cover which can be recreated in later albums or concerts etc. 

Mumford and Sons 

Mumford and Sons are an english folk/rock band which released their first album "sigh no more" in October 2009. Much of Mumford & Sons' lyrical content has a strong literary influence, its debut album name deriving from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The band won the ARIA Music Award for Most Popular International Artist in 2010, and the Brit Award in 2011 for Best British Album. Furthermore, in 2011 they received aEuropean Border Breakers Award for their international success.

Iconic Album Covers 

More Album Art Examples in relation to their genre:

Target Audience

 

Our group went away during a lesson on own clothes day recently to interview some students around the school who we thought would be our target audience judging on how they dressed and looked. Two of my group members then came to conclusions on our target market, and who specifically it will be aimed at from our song choice and what sort of video will be most effective.

The song we chose, Young Blood by The Naked and Famous is that of the indie genre but it also has a slight electronic synthesised dance beat to it as well which fits well as every member of our group is interested in indie alternative rock, the song will be primarily aimed at the indie genre market or in that direction at least, but because it is also a dance/electronic type of music as well it means that we don't have to appeal to the niche market of the indie music lovers as it can also interest indie music lovers.

In order to get a good understanding of indie scenesters we looked at the UK Tribes website, this would give us an insight into how they dress, what they are like and how to attract them.
Here shows the type of brands that they are most interested in and tend to wear, their media consumption, so how they get access to media and how much of it they use and what are their most used form of media.
This means that we could target these specific/mostly used type of media for our promotion package to try and target them and attract them.

 Here is a video from the UK tribes website that explains the indie scene and what they wear.
"Indie Scenesters exist thanks to the fashionable status of guitar music (though for them it’s often about mixing it up with more electronic sounds) and are linked to the general rise of instant fashionability – of fashion and music trends having much faster lifecycles thanks to the commodification of cool. Scenesters don't mind bands achieving mainstream success, but prefer them before the masses cotton on – their own version of second album syndrome. There is significant role reversal in the Indie Scenester Tribe, with both boys and girls dressing in tight fitting clothes and often sporting make-up and accessories. The relatively recent return of the Ray-Ban Wayfarer (in all colours) is big with this crowd as they love to be the first to pick up on the rebirth of a once popular fashion item."

The above passage gives us an idea of what the band members should be wearing and what attire they should have, Both boys and girls dress in tight fitting clothes, this is typical of the indie scene also wearing 


The type of clothes that the band will be wearing is solely based on the indie tribe and slightly stereo typical in a way although its typical to the newer indie tribe, some examples of the type of clothes that the band will be wearing;

l very popular within this group and top man can provide them all. Above you can see a image that I have taken from the Topman website it shows a model wearing cloths typical associated with indie  Scenesters. It is also common for them to roll up there sleeves ans short and long sleeved shirts as well and rolling up the bottom of there trousers to show the ankles. common footwear worn would be Van's, boat shoes, desert boots and espadrilles. Commonly associated with the indie is the 'Old Man' look also called 'Vintage' where many people wear striped and patterned jumpers and shirts with colors such as beige being very popular. and knit wear often is worn.  Although baggy jumpers and tops are popular skinny clothes are also extremely popular and very common with skinny jeans a must for all indie 'wannabes'. 

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Star Image

Star Image is all about the way in which a band or an artist develop an icon of themselves, a band that is great example of that is Slipknot, a heavy metal grunge band from Iowa U.S.
They are notouriously known for their attention grabbing image, agressive music and energetic, chaotic live shows.
The band was started in 1995 when drummer Shaun Craham and bassist Paul Gray started a band called 'The Pale Ones', they then enlisted some other members into the band, Gray invited Joey Jordison to a rehearsal session, it was then decided that Jordison would become the main drummer of the band and Craham would be the custom percussion. Since then the band has had many members come and go including the death of Paul Gray in 2010.
Each and every 9 members of Slipknot have a different mask that they will always put on during a performance or show creating a slight mystery about what their faces actually look like, rarely will they be seen without their masks on, even in interviews they will still choose to wear them.

Their first set of masks when they first released them selves to the public looked something like this, very gory, very scary and very controversial to fit right in with the style of music that they play. The idea of the masks first came about when percussionist Crahan would bring his clown mask to rehearsals when the band first started, it was then later decided that each member of the band would have their own unique mask and matching jumpsuit to match. When the lead singer Corey Taylor was questioned about the masks he replied with
"It's our way of becoming more intimate withe the music. It's a way for us to become unconscious of who we are and what we do outside of music. Its a way for us to kind of crawl inside it and be able to use it.
Their image has been subject to a lot of criticism, it was generally thought of as a gimmick to try and sell more albums. The band strongly object to these claims and say its simply a way for them to become a different person and to keep their personal lives private, percussionist Fehn went as far as saying that it was a "blessing" that he can go out without being recognised.
Over the years Slipknot have developed their image; changing their uniforms and each of the masks accordingly with the release of each album, the masks do not differ drastically in appearance between albums but follow a similar style with new elements. Alongside their usual masks, Slipknot have incorporated special masks for specific reasons, for example during the bands performance of "Vermillion" in 2004-2005 the band members wore death mask made from moulds of their own faces.

In 2007 Slipknot released the music video to their song "Before I Forget" from their 2004 album Vol: 3 The Subliminal Verses. The video shows the band playing all together in a white sterile looking environment, without their masks on. We don't see their faces at all in this video, we only see fragmented shots of their bodys and out of focus shots of them playing, we also see their masks hung up in focus while they play out of focus in the shot.

In this screen shot form the video, we can see the mask that the lead singer, Corey Taylor wears in focus in front of him while he sings out of focus in the background.
There is also another member of the band in the background of the shot also out of focus form the camera and still playing.

Another shot from the video shows the lead singer again in focus showing nothing but his mouth singing into the microphone, desperately trying not to reveal how they look without their masks on, this is the most revealing shot in the video, it gives us an idea how crucial their image is to them as a band.

History of Music videos

The first step towards the creation of the music video was in 1894 when Edward Marks and Joe Stern hired and various performers to promote the sale of their song "The Little Lost Child". One of the performers George Thomas, took a series of still images and projected them onto a screen in parralel with the live performance, this became a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step towards music videos.
The Phonoscene was the next step in the history of music videos, it combined a chronophone sound recording with chronograph film shot with actors lip-syncing to the sound recording.
Warner Bros. were the first company to produce a musical short film as such, vitaphone shorts featured many bands, dancer and vocalists. "Spoony Melodys"was the first musical video series in 1930. Shorts were typcally six minutes in duration and featured art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with the film of the performer sining.
Shortly after animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing along short cartoons called 'Screen Songs' which invited viewers to sing along to popular songs, this concept is still going today with films like 'High School Musical'.
Early animated films by Walt Disney such as the 'Silly Symphonies' short and especially 'Fantasia', which featured several interpretations of classical music, were built around music. The Warner Bro's early cartoons such as 'Looney Tunes' and 'Merrie Melodys' were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films.


The 60's were the time of visual innovation,
In 1964 the Beatles starred in their very first feature film "A Hard Days Night" originally shot in black and white and presented as a mock documentary, it was a loosely structured musical fantasia. The film consisted of comedy, drama and light musical sequences, the musical sequence created basic templates on which countless subsiquent music videos were created.
A year later in 1965 the Beatles released their second feature called 'Help' it had a different take on things, for a start it was filmed in colour and it was set in london and on international locations, the film put all the important musical sequences into a fantasy adventure with the group. The title track sequence to the film 'Help' was filmed in black and white and is most probably one of the most influential videos on modern performance style videos, it uses rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots, close ups and unusual shots and camera angles, such as the shot near the end of the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the completely out of focus figure of John Lennon sings in the background. 


1974 saw the dawn of music television, Australia launched the first music video show which screened on sydney ATN-7 on saturday mornings, it was aimed at the teenage audience and it promoted both new acts and already established acts.
In the late 70's the well renound "Top of the Pops" a live music show broadcasted through the BBC, started to play music videos, therefore a good music video would increase record sales as viewers hopes to see it again the following week, because of marketing ideas like this one people such as David Bowie managed to get his first UK number one in almost a decade thanks to the director David Mallet and his eye catching promo for 'Ashes to Ashes'.
1981 saw the launch of MTV, a 24 hour channel that streamed music videos non-stop.

2 years later the most inconic video of all time was released, Michael Jackson's "Thriller"
Other Iconic music videos are;













Johnny Cash with Hurt
It consists of a montage of shots of Cash that juxtaposes images of him, he died 7 months after the release of the song which makes it slightly more touching and iconic.










Fatboy Slim with Weapon of Choice
This music video stars the famous actor Christopher Walken, he dances and flys around a deserted Marriot hotel in L.A.













Jamiroquai with Virtual Insanity
The famous video shows the lead singer JK in a room accompanied by furniture while the floor seems to move and rotate around