1A "How do your product use or challenge conventions?"
When it comes to music videos there are many conventions. Some are there by accident such as the Male Gaze theory which was coined by Laura Mulvey, and then there are some which are done on purpose to attract the target audience or secondary audiences such as intertextuality. When deciding on convention in a music video it is important to consider Stuart Halls theory on audience which consists of the theory that what a produce sends out to the audience will be interperated differently by different social groups.
We did a lot of research on other music videos of both genre specific and just music videos in general to see what we needed and wanted to add in our video. Sophie talk more in detail about each theorist that I am discussing. A very important feature to take into consideration when making a music video is Andrew Goodwins theory of the links between lyrics and visuals. When creating the video we decided on having some links between visuals and lyrics. The most obvious one being when the singer says the word "Ocean" we see the singer fall in water.
We also included intertextuality in our video to attract the primary and secondary audience. One of the intertexualitys we have in our video is the color powder scene. The color powder scene was inspired by 30 Seconds to Mars - Up in the air where a group of people through color powder at each other.
Originally we had planed on doing a group shot of people throwing color powder but due to some issues it ended up only being used with the main singer. We also have intertextuality to Alt-Js video "Hunger of the Pine" and "Running by Naughty boy". For more on what intertextualitys we used click here.
In most music videos there is a narrative story which runs parallel to the performance. There are two types of narratives fragmented and linear. We decided to have a linear narrative as this was more conventional for the genre and we felt it fitted more with the songs. However at the end of our music video we created enigma at the end of our video. The end of our video is non-diegetic and it shows the main singer of the band listening to the song while the girl walks past. This creates enigma as the audience dont know if this is the start of the relationship or if he just dream about it. It also creates the enigma which is if the main male protagonist is actually in the band or if he just imagined it as he was listening to the song.
When we started designing the digipak I got most the inspiration from the logo of the THATS THE SPIRIT album by Bring Me The Horizon. You can see the first plan here. The use of only a 2 sided digipak was inspired from many digipaks as its one of the most common but as a reference we used "The Resistance" by Muse as I had a physical copy of it.
We kept looking at other digipaks for ideas and thats when I was inspired by Kaleo A/B. You can read about what else inspired the hand print on our digipak here.
In our website we also did a lot of research to see what conventions where most common in websites, so for example the amount of link lists and what their layout was.
We desided to have 6 link lists including the Home button as the most common where 5 to 7 we also decided to use the word "merch" instead of merchandise or store as merch is shorter and therefor looks better on the site and it was more commonly used on websites with the same target audience such as Bullet for My Valentine. You can read what else we did here.
We focused a lot on creating merchandise for our website as it is one of the things that still create a high revenue for bands and artists unlike CDs. Thats why we decided to create different merch such as T-shirt, Dog tags, Snap back, baby clothes and more.
Overall the evaluation question 1 is: "How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?". However I have decided to split the question into 2 parts, because I thought it would give a better overview. Therefore part 1A will be: "How do your products use or challenge conventions?" and 1B will be: "How do your products represent social groups or issues?" 1B: "How do your products represent social groups or issues?" SR and KO The main social groups in the media are:
Age
Gender
Sexuality
These points we addressed in a Radio Interview, where Kristian is playing the interviewer and I am playing the director of the music video "Throne", Plastic Kid. Below the video you can also find the full script that I created of the radio interview. Radio Interview Script (SR): Interviewer: That was Bring Me The Horizon's new song Throne, check out their new music video on YouTube now. Today in the studio I'd like to welcome the director of the musc video for Throne, Plastic Kid. Welcome to our study! Plastic Kid: Hi Interviewer: So let's talk a bit about your music video, I mean I absolutely loved it and I am also a huge fan of both alternative rock and metal core so this is just my type of music, but still I have several questions about the social groups and issues in this music video that I wanted to ask you about. Plastic Kid: Sure, go ahead.
Interviewer: Well first I wanted to ask where you got your inspiration from?
Plastic Kid: Well, I mean as Kristeva would argue you never really get an idea just like that, you are inspired by other music video's that you have seen before and directed before. So together with Sykes I checked out a lot of music videos and we based our ideas around some of them.
Ofcourse we also wanted to create a link between visuals and lyrics, because that's what a music video is all about according to Goodwin you know?
Interviewer: Yes, I have read a lot about those two theorists. And what is the song actually about then?
Plastic Kid: Well it's about a guy who is drowning in his sorrows and doesn't know what to do with his life anymore after having lost his girlfriend, so we portrayed that through having Sykes underwater when he is singing "I was an ocean lost in the open" and him running through the woods.
Interviewer: Well seems to me as if you definitely got the preferred reading accross there, cause most of your fans wrote on YouTube that they could relate to this heartbreak. Moving on to the next question, why did you decide on only using male band members in your music video? Because there are other rock bands such as Paramore and Angel At My Table who have a female lead singer, so why not go for that?
Plastic Kid: Well we are really just conforming to the stereotype that rock music is just for men, it has become a norm to society due to the long history of bands such as AC/DC, Rolling Stones and Queen only consisting of males. Therefore we are only conforming to this stereotype, and ofcourse Bring Me The Horizon consists only of males, so some argue it would be odd to have a female lip syncing with a male voice as voiceover such as in the fan made music video for Sail by Awolnation.
Interviewer: Yes that does make sense, but staying focuse on the female side of things, why would you only have one female in your music video and not more like in the video from Fall Out Boy for their song "My songs know what you did in the dark". Then it could also be more appealing to a male audience or not? Plastic Kid: Well yeah it would be more appealing to a male audience, but I mean males already listen quite a lot to our music in general. They are our target audience because they are just generally more interested in rock than women. I mean Bring me the Horizon have featured on the cover of AP (Alternative Press) many times and they have also been on the cover of Rock Sound a few times. Rock Sounds average readers are aged 15-24 and around 72% or so of their audience are males. So males generally already listen to our music and follow us.
Interviewer: Yes, but why would more females then be interested in this video by just having one female instead of two? Plastic Kid: In most music videos where there is more than one female, they are the dancers or just there to make the singer and male protagonist look good. This is the case of the song from Fall Out Boy. It is easy to assume that a feminist would not like to see an objectified female in the music video showing cleavage and being the female that the male breaks up with and being the stereotype of the female cooking. Therefore, we did the exact opposite, we have the female breaking up with the guy, the guy cooking and the female burning the pictures and wearing a bit more appropriate clothing, not showing as much cleavage. And it turns out we were right, we found a bigger female audience being attracted to this video.
Interviewer: I noticed that even though you didn't have the female objectified there were still a few elements of male gaze in the music video, would you like to comment on that? Plastic Kid: Yes, I mean Mulvey would argue that several videos have male gaze. One of the main reasons for this is of course to attract a male audience. Mulvey argues that the woman is objectified through clothing and make-up and of course the editing that is used when showing the woman on screen. So as mentioned, we wanted to try and appeal to a bigger female audience with this video, hence we focused less on having females in our music video. However, our female protagonist is still wearing make-up, has the typical long hair and is skinny and good looking, therefore there still is that little element of male gaze. Interviewer: Are there ways through cinematography that you specifically showed that the female had more power in this video? Plastic Kid: If I have to think about one scene it would be when she slaps him, this is really when she is the more dominating figure, and I decided to emphasise on this by adding a key frame that then zooms in on the moment she slaps him. Also, our female actor played it out really well so the moment after the slap she had a very powerful look on her face, which I had asked her to do so that the audience would be left there thinking "Woah".
Interviewer: Well that was a very detailed answer, thank you for that. In a bunch of music videos you can see that there are the typical stereotypes or counter stereotypes, which ones did you include in Throne? Plastic Kid: Well as mentioned we have the counter stereotype of the male cooking instead of the female, because we wanted to challenge the common stereotype and make our video a bit more interesting and our female audience actually noticed it and liked the fact that the male was cooking, because it was breaking the stereotype so through this we attracted a female audience.
3B "How would your products be distributed as real media products?"
VODCAST
Our products would most likely by distributed the same way BMTH is distributed which is through their record label company RCA. RCA is a subsidiary of Sony Corporations which is one of the big 3. Just like the big 6 in movie distribution music has the big 3 which are the 3 record company's with the largest market share (More here). RCA which is most famous for signing Elvis has a bunch of signings and because its a subsidiary of Sony it means that they can distribute the product easily through Sony's Horizontal and Vertical integration.
Physical sales have dropped massively over the last few years with the introduction of streaming services such as Spotify now domination the music market. Even with the rising trend of Vinyl lately it is still no match for streaming. This is why we integrated a link to both spotify and iTunes from our website and we also have it so you can test listen to some of the tracks before you buy them on iTunes.
Even though physical sales are falling bands are still creating and selling cd, digipaks and some like BMTH sell Vinyl. For our album we created a digipak as well as a Vinyl. The vinyl design was directly inspired by the "THATS THE SPIRIT" vinyl. Whats impotent when marketing your product is Social media. Social media has changed how marketing is done as web 2.0 has turned the audience into consumers and are now more or less creating the ads for the band. Its important for a band to stay active on social media as it takes only a second to interact with the audience and therefor makes it easy to promote new products as well as tickets for upcoming concerts.
We posted links to our website through social media to where they can buy tickets for concerts as well get a chance to win prices. We also created a music video which will be up on Youtube which is an effective way to distribute media as it is free and reaches people all around the world. With the change in technology it has made it easy for audiences to create stuff of their own and is why you see lyric videos as well as gifs.
Unboxing videos is another way that fans interact with the producer as it is advertising the bands product without the band paying them. Even though most people would stream the music there are people who are collectors or just like the feel of a physical copy that will buy the vinyl or digipak. Thats why its important to make the digipak special which is why we had a nice design and added a sticker saying you get bonus tracks.
Originally we where going to use a prop gun and have the video end just before he pulls the trigger, we decided against this as this would have increased the age rating of our video making it harder to distribute. There is more detail about why we didn't use it here. The BBFC is who rates videos in the UK I did specific BMTH research on their videos and the age rating they got. Even though BMTH target audience is 15 and up we wanted the music video to at least get a 12 so it would be easier to distribute and could be played on TV and YouTube without having to be blocked.
Interview "Le Resevoir"
We interviewed an employee that works at "Le Resevoir" in Luxembourg city. "Le Resevoir" is a shop that started of selling CDs and Vinyl but has expanded to other products such as Comic books, Video Games and Movies. We asked the shop keeper about the effects of Piracy and the increasing sales of Vinyl.
This video shows how the band is engaging with the audience and how our different products such as the website, digipak and music video are engaging with the audience. Since, the video isn't very detailed, we wanted to do a live feed Q&A on our facebook maybe, where we get more specfic questions that fans send us. These will focus on our products and we would be able to show our products. We will also have a radio interview focusing on Web 2.0, explaining how our audience has been the producer throughout this entire year.
Radio Interview :
Interviewer: Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Radio 420. Today in the studio we have the leadsinger of BMTH, Oliver Sykes, who is going to talk to us about his latest music video "Throne" and how big an effect audience feedback has had on the products they created for their new album. Welcome and thank your for coming! Sykes: Thank youfor having me. Interviewer: So tell us about your newest music video! Sykes: Well the video is about a love relationship between two people that break up. The male protagonist, played by myself, is feeling lost without the girl and is drowning in his own sorrows, which is portrayed to me being under water and running around lost in the forest. And then ofcourse we have our band's performance integrated in the video as well. Interviewer: And how does it end? Sykes: Well, you are going to have to go watch it on our website or YouTube Channel. Interviewer: Heard that folks, fo check it out now on bmthehorizon50.com! So Oli could you tell us about how your audience helped in creating your newest products?
Sykes: Well I believe in our products our audience were somehow the producers as well. Dan Gillmor who is a Web 2.0 theorist talks about the former audience and says that the audience has the tools to create media themselves. I believe this is a good explanation, cause throughout our entire post-production we have had a lot of audience feedback and the music video especially wouldn't have looked the same without our audience.
Interviewer: Can you give me some examples of particular audience feedback that helped you produce your music video?
Sykes: Oh yeah loads! Some things they argued included bad lip-syncing from the lead singer having the lip-syncing not achieving versimilitude. This is not something you want to happen as in the music video world lip-syncing is the bread and butter of a music video. It is THE common conventions of a music video and is therefore really important.
Interviewer: I agree, that is always what I notice first as well, when I watch a music video! Anything else?
Sykes: Yeah, our audience brought up was that there should be a clearer narrative. At the beginning we had a fragmented narrative, which our audience argued was confusing, so it didn't bring the preferred reading (Stuart Hall) accross. They suggested we should have a linear narrative containing more footage. After having done that, we got the preferred reading from our audience that we wanted. Interviewer: Oh wow! So your audience was what led you to do a re-shoot of your narrative? Sykes: Yeah, and I mean that's what often happens you know? The band members write the song and are helping to argue what they want in their music video and since I was co-director with Plastic Kid on our music video for Throne, the narrative made sense to me. And since I had also written the song together with the other guys, I knew what I wanted and what the lyrics meant to me. However, when someone else than watches it who doesn't really know the true meaning yet, it can be difficult for them to understand it. That's why audience feedback i so important! Interviewer: Well it sounds like it really plays an important role in what the music video ends up looking like. Are there any other points they point out in the audience feedback besides the things that are unclear? Sykes: Ehmm, they also give us feedback in terms of what looks good and what there should be more and less of. Our audience argued that we should have more color powder in our music video. At the beginning we only had 3 takes with color powder and our audience said there should be more of it because it had a very nice effect since everything else was so dark and in black and white. Also, our audience were actually the ones who argued that there should be less of the running sequence in our music video. We had quite a lot of it in our first few cuts and they said it was just too much and it took the focus off of everything else that was actually important such as the performance and the narrative. Interviewer: It is impressive to hear how your audience really shaped your music video to the way it looks now.
Sykes: Yes, I was very impressed by all the feedback they gave. Interviewer: Was it just with your music video or was it also with other things. Sykes: Well it was mainly with the music video but also with our digipack and our website. For our digipack thay all said that they really liked the front cover because the hand seemed quite special and original. They also argued that it was a really nice effect with the splash effect over the hand. And the back cover they also liked but mainly they commented on the front cover, since it was so special and the back cover was inspired by the smoke in our music video and was quite basic yet fitted well with the front cover. Interviewer: Yeah, I have a copy of your digipack, that you brought me so thank you very much for that, I must say it really is quite something for the design of your front cover. Sykes: Thanks Interviewer: And what did your audience say about your website? Sykes: Well the main points included that the website colors and simple design fit well with the genre of our band, so our audience clearly noticed that we had chosen black and white on purpose. They also liked our merch, especially the T-Shirts with the printed heart on it and the T-Shirt with the Wolf-Design which was designed particularly for this music video. Interviewer: Well it seems to me that you have gotten good feedback for everything and that your products will be a success. I am afraid our time has run-up but thank you so much for coming and talking about how your music video and how big an effect audience feedback has had on your products. Sykes: Your welcome. Interviewer: Next up is You Me At Six's song from their new album "Night People".
Q&A with fans through Facebook:
Q: On what platforms will I be able
to listen to your new album?
A: Well you can buy the album on our website as both a
physical and downloadable copy. The album will also be available on Spotify and
if you want to watch the music video then you can check that out on YouTube.
Q: Where can I buy your newest
merchandise?
A: If you go on our website then you can check out all our
merch, and if you subscribe to our website you will get a notification when new
merchandise arrives.
Q: Do you have any other social
media other than Facebook?
A: Ye of course, you can follow us on twitter as well as
Instagram, like I said you can also subscribe on our website to get updates.
Q: Do you have somewhere where
people can post fan art?
A: We don’t have a specific place but if you want to post
fan art then just post it on twitter with the #BMTHFanArt
Q: Where will your next concert be?
A: We have 4 more concerts coming up, our next one will be
in San Francisco, you can find out where the other concerts are on our website.
You will also be able to buy the ticks there.
Q: Do you think you will work with
the same director again?
A: I hope so, working with PlasticKid was great, but we will
see what happens but when we find out you guys will be the first to know.
Q: Ive been a long time collector of
your albums, will this album have a special edition of some kind?
A: I’m happy to hear you’re a long-time fan and yes, for
this album you can buy a digipak as well as a vinyl if you want that.
The questions and answer's where altered a bit when people commented on the post. Here are the sreenshots of the Facebook comments:
Digipak unwrapping
I pretended to be the bass guitarist for BMTH and did a unwrapping of our new digipak.
Sophie also created an unwrapping where she pretended to be a massive fan.