Friday 28 October 2016

Podcast 4



BV

KO: INDUSTRY Merchandise

In this post I will talk about different merchandise for different bands.
Bands sell merchandise to create some extra income. Now a days bands dont earn as much from concert tickets or CD sales as people can easily stream or pirate music. So to earn more most bands sell merchandise. Most bands sell the normal merch such as T-SHirts, Hoodies, caps, and other clothes. I will be listing some more unusual merch.

AC/DC sells dog tags with the AC/DC logo on them. Dog Tags are necklaces that soldiers use in the army but have become very popular as a form of jewelry.
The music producer Deadmau5 has headphones created for cats. There was only made 10 functioning cat headphones and the price was set at $1000. The headphones are a smaller version of the Deadmou5 Sol Republic headphones and where created for Deadmou5s cat.
The band Fall Out Boy also has a bunch of different merch on being wall flags. There are almost like posters such made from fabric and if you look in the corner they have holes in them so you could use it as a flag.

Five Finger Death Punch sells finger-less gloves with their logo on which is of knuckle busters with spikes on them with 5 F D P in each circle.
This is most likely the most bizarre merch of the ones I found. Kiss sells a lot of special merch, one which is a coffin. There are a few Kiss Coffins 2 of which are Deluxe edition. On the description it says it can also be used as a drink chiller while you are still alive. Kiss also sells a Limited Edition Pinball Machine for $12000. But for those who arent willing to buy for such a high price there is also the Pinball Machine -Profor $6500


The band The Rolling Stones also has a lot of merch. It has merch for all ages even baby's this might be because people who who grew up listening to the rolling stones might have baby's now at will then buy a baby rolling stones romper. The rolling stone also have a book which you can buy on their website. They have two Exibitionism books Hard and Soft Cover. They also sell cufflinks with the the logo on them.

The band Twenty One Pilots sells a bunch of merch the most special one being the TOP Ukulele. Its priced at $125 which is more than double what a normal ukulele costs.

Wednesday 26 October 2016

KO: VODCAST 3: Target Audience



To find out more information about our target audience I asked a few different people if they new the song and band for 4 different songs.

Tuesday 25 October 2016

INDUSTRY: Merchandise

For our website we also need to come up with ideas for merchandising. Therefore we looked through different bands such as the ones we blogged on for social media and ofcourse also Bring Me The Horizon themselves.

Nowadays, bands sell merchandise to get an extra income. They dont earn as much from concert tickets or CD sales anymore since it is easier for people to stream or pirate music. 

On Bring Me The Horizon's official website, there are quite a lot of merchandise that are available to purchase. These include:

When Bring Me The Horizon performed at the Rock A Field music festival here in Luxembourg, they couldn't include all of their merchandise, because there are loads of bands that are trying to sell their merchandise at a festival. Therefore, they include the most important merchandise that people are guaranteed to buy at a festival such as T-Shirts, Jumpers, Caps and with time, bands have started to sell phones cases on festivals as well, since a lot of people have smartphones nowadays.
The merchandise on their website are not just the typical T-Shirt or Hoodie, but include backpacks, phone cases, watches and many other things, which you can view on their  website.


Fall out Boy, had quite different merchandise from Bring Me The Horizon. Their merchandise included these bobbleheads with the names of the band members on the small platform the bobbleheads are standing on. This can be purchased for 50$. However, the band is being portrayed as quite "Hipster" with the look that they have such as the hat on Patrick's head. They could have included the band members holding guitars or having Joe sit by the drumkit on the platform. On the website you can also buy as well as other T-Shirts, jumpers and wall flags.


Rise Against merchandise is more focused on different types of T-Shirts, such as for example this one with the cover from Rise Against newest digipack on there. They were however also the first of the three bands where I saw the CD in the store. The two other bands had quite a lot of merchandise, but their CD's weren't included. Whereas Rise Against included both CD but also Vinyl of their newest album The Black Market.



Production Schedule UPDATE 1

This is the 1st update of the production schedule I created, which included the dates we will be filming on and which cast needs to be there for the different dates. It also shows, which parts of the music video we will film and for how many hours we will be filming on.



Carol Vernallis Music Editing

Carol Vernallis is well known for her theory based on music editing. Her areas of specialization are music videos and recent films. Her research deals more broadly with questions of sound and image in moving media.
She is also known for her book Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, which was published in 2004. The book provides a theoretical account of a genre. It is the first to articulate a theory of how music, lyrics and image can be placed in relation, and also the first to provide detailed analyses of individual videos that show the parameters of sound and image at work in a temporal flow.


Vernaliss' theory is based around 4 key concepts that all relate to the way a music video is manufactured. These concepts include: 
  • Narrative
  • Editing
  • Camera movement and framing 
  • Diegesis 
Narrative: 

When describing the narrative aspect, Vernallis suggests that the music video is a visual response to the narrative. She explains that the things that happen on screen reflect the choice of lyrics that the artist is singing. However, Vernallis also says that the narrative might not always be complete and can appear in fragments in the music video (fragmented narrative).

Editing: 

According to Vernallis a clear convention of editing when it comes to music videos included the video breaking the convention of continuity editing. She says that the editing might be more "visible" to the audience and not be hidden such as an invisible style of editing. This means that, the video will have a style of editing that is running throughout the video. These kinds of editing techniques include: 
  • Cutting with the lyrics
  • Jump Cuts
  • Graphic matches 
Camera movement and framing: 

Carol Vernallis states that establishing shots are some of the key features of a music video and that they as well as close-ups are used very frequently throughout the video.

Diegesis: 

The diegesis is the most important thing in a music video according to Vernallis. Diegesis will be revealed slowly and the actions of the video may be disrupted in some way and won't always be completed. There might also be repetitions throughout the video.

Personally I side more with Goodwin and his theory on the features in a music video, since I believe that there is the element of a star image in a music video and also that the music is cutting to the beat rather than cutting to the lyrics. Also, Goodwin argued that there is a link between lyrics and visuals, which is one of the main things I really agree with. 

Monday 24 October 2016

Roland Barthes Narrative Enigma

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist and critic. He suggested that there would be 5 codes of which one or more would describe the meaning of a text.
He also said that texts may be "open", meaning that there are a lot of different ways of interpretation. However, they could also be "closed", meaning that there is only one obvious interpretation.



The 5 codes were named the following:
  1. Enigma code - Refers to mystery in a text, clues are dropped but no clear answers are given. Makes the audience want to know more. Unanswered Enigmas tend to frustrate the audience.
  2. Action code - Contains elements of action in the text and these elements are used to create suspense within the audience.
  3. Semantic code - Refers to parts within a text that suggests or refers to additional meanings. The elements of the semantic code are known as semes. This seme has an extra "layer" of meaning in addition to it's literal meaning.
  4. Symbolic code - This code is about symbolism within the text. It is creating greater meaning, tension, drama and character development.
  5. Referential code - This code refers to anything within the text that gives the audience an external body of knowledge such as scientific, historical or cultural knowledge.
In Bring Me The Horizon's music video for True Friends there is an enigma code, especially with the pictures because it refers to mystery in the text, because the scenery is so depressive but on the photos the family looks really happy. There is also a symbolic code in the video, when there is the sheep, which is hanging of a ceiling. It might have a symbolic meaning such as death. 


Friday 21 October 2016

INDUSTRY - Research

WHAT I LEARNED: THE IMPORTANCE OF A VINYL ON OUR WEBSITE + IMPORTANCE OF OUR MUSIC BEING AVAILABLE ON STREAMING SERVICES 

Streaming: why is the music industry unhappy with YouTube (and others)? What is VEVO?

According to an article from the verge.com YouTube claims that it has paid $3 billion to the music industry.


However there is the constant struggle and battle of whether they should be paying more. The music from the music industry are the ones that helped YouTube become famous in the first place after  it was first founded in February 2005. This is when VEVO comes into the picture. VEVO stands for Video Evolution and consists of the music videos that are owned by Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group. YouTube hosts several VEVO music videos  and VEVO is therefore sharing their advertising revenue, and have been able to find an agreement with YouTube.

Digitisation and web 2.0: how have these caused ‘disruption’ within the industry?

The Internet and digitisation have ruined or disrupted the main role of the big music companies.

Several people do not want to buy CD's anymore, due to the fact that you are now able to download them and stream them directly from YouTube rather than having to go into a shop and pay around 10-15 Euros meaning between roughly 8£ and 13£ for each CD.
The change in technology has also had a huge impact on the music industry. It has developed from vinyl's right on to the discman and the MP3 player, up to the first version of the I-Pod and now several people are listening to their music via their Smartphone, by streaming it from YouTube or using free apps such as SoundCloud and/or Spotify.

These apps are completely free and allow you to listen to every music for free. iTunes, did up until even just a year ago, still charge 0,99 Euros for every piece of music that you wanted to buy. However, their latest invention has ben to introduce Apple Music where you then pay around 15 Euros per month and can then download as much music as you want. Some people still like to pay for their music because they would like to support the artist and the music industry.
However, technology has also has positive aspects, such as the fact that several people that are now
famous have become known through YouTube. A great example of this is the case of Justin Bieber. He was first discovered on Youtube at the age of 13/14 and is today a very big popstar. Another case is the one of Christina Grimmie, who became famous on YouTube and through her many followers and fans decided to enter the Voice competition, where she had her major breakthrough.

Piracy: what are the figures and arguments on both sides? Do the industry exaggerate the revenues lost? Do your peers tend to engage in piracy? What are the consequences?

A major issue with the streaming from YouTube is that it belongs under the category of piracy. Music piracy is the copying of copies of pieces of music for which the artist or the copyright-holding company does not receive any money and does not give permission. This is ofcourse also a contributor to the decrease of the money the different artists are earning in the music industry. Streaming services such as Spotify have been a great help to decrease the amount of users pirating music. Spotify is a free music service that allows users to listen to music without paying. However, it doesn't allow users to buy the music. So how does it earn it's money? By getting money from the users who subscribe and get the membership.

How and why is vinyl making a comeback?


Clothing stores such as Urban Outfitters have also begun to sell vinyls of pop singers and bands that are hitting the charts nowadays. During the last couple of years, vinyl have become a fashionable trend to have for young adults. These young adulty who grew up without vinyl's unlike their parents and are now discovering the good sound quality of vinyl's which are better than CD's. The fact that vinyl has become popular again, can be compared to a type of clothes that might have been fashionable in the 80s or 90s and is now coming back as well.




According to an article from the guardian, however, vinyl still only represents 2% of the music industry. According to the article "Vinyl still remains a niche product, accounting for just 2% of the UK's recorded music market."



To what extent have physical media sales dropped? Do streaming revenues make up for this?


According to an article from the guardian the music store HMV (His Master's Voice) renewed and went into the video game market due to a decrease in physical media sales. According to an article from techcrunch streaming services grew to 317 billion song streams in 2015, which was the double from 2014 where 164.5 billion songs were streamed from streaming services.
During the last couple of years physical media sales have dropped significantly, meaning that not many people want to buy CD's anymore.

KO: MVid EG3: Linkin Park - Numb

Artist: Linkin Park
Album: Meteora
Genre: Alternative Metal
Song: Numb



The song "Numb" by "Linkin Park" is in the same genre as "Bring Me The Horizons" "Throne" which is why I will deconstruct it so we get some inspiration for what we might want to do in our video. The video has both narrative and performance which is something we will most likely have. Throughout the video they use a filter to make everything look darker and less colorful which isn't uncommon in the metal genre.

The performance clips take part in a dimly lit church with natural light and some candles. When they film the performance the camera is always moving. Most of the time it is panning so you can see the whole mise-en-scene of the church. The band is placed on a stage at the end of the church aisle.




The costumes the band is wearing are black or dark green, Most of them are wearing army clothes with the DJ wearing a MP (Military Police) jacket and the guitar player wearing a tactical vest. Some of them also have earrings or necklaces and the piano player is wearing a cap backwards. All of this fits with the metal/rock genre. The main singer however doesn't fit with the stereotype of a main singer as he has white/blonde hair and also wears glasses.

The narrative part of the video follows a girl struggling to fit in in high school, This fits with the target audience as some of their audiences are going through the same. The female protagonist is wearing the same type of clothes as some of the band members, a dark green military goat and what looks to be an army backpack. You can also see that she has cuts on the inside of her arm from self abuse.

Throughout the narrative you see the female protagonist not fitting in and there are some uses of special effects such as a time laps where the female protagonist is seen in normal time. At the end of the video the main protagonist runs into the church but no one is there except the instruments.

MVid EG9: Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé - Runnin'

WHAT WE WILL USE: INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCE TO POOL SCENE

This music video isn't linked into our genre, however there was one element, which we really liked, which was the underwater footage. 


Throughout a big part of the music video for Runnin', there is a couple which is being filmed underwater and we believe that this element would look good in our music video. 

UPDATE: In the new song we chose, the leadsinger sings "I was an ocean lost in the open", so we think this would fit even better in now that it has more of a clear link to the video. Andrew Goodwin would suggest that we have included one of the 7 typical features of a music video, which is a clear link between visuals and lyrics. This is what we will create, a clear link between visuals and lyrics.

This particular shot is what we intend to include in our own music video, because we want our audience to have an overview of the entire actors body drifiting in the water, with the water taking up more space than the actual actor. This connotes that the singer feels so small and that there is nothing he can do, because he will just keep drifting and is drowning in his own sorrows, which are signified by the water around him. 

Podcast 3

This is our 3rd weekly podcast, that Kristian and I recorded together.




SR/KO

Script:

Last week we edited the sample scene and also updated our production schedule. We included which particular part we were going to film on each date and which cast should be present for the specific shoots.  


This week we will talk to all the band members and make sure that they each know what to do for the filming on Saturday the 29th . Sophie is also going to finish the call sheet, so that we have shot directions for Saturday and also we intend to do a video that the band singer can watch so that he knows approximately how to perform.