The website that I am analysing is The Pet Shop Boys:
As soon as you click on the website's URL, you are greeted to the Splash Page to the website. There are three different links from this page. You can go directly to the main site, you can order their newest album or watch the music video to their most recent single. This is a very interactive feature, that gives an insight into the artist's most recent activity and merchandise. The background image is also of the new album cover.
This is the main site. There is lots to highlight here:
As you can see right from the start, we are introduced to the Body Copy and The Hero Shot. These are the most stand-out areas of the webpage. The Hero Shots clearly show the artist's 'image' and is taken from the front cover of their single that is being released today. These images are parallel to the Body Copy. The text gives details to the target audience relating to the newest information about the artists.
From this page, the target audience are given the current/upcoming tour dates for the artist, although there are none at the moment. This Landing Page is like a 'mini hub' for everything about the band.
We have decided as a group to split our different research plans between the 4 of us.
Here are the different areas of planning that we have decided on doing:
Questionnaires
Focus Groups
Interviews
Characteristics of the Electronica genre
Market Research ( Representations etc)
My role in the planning process is to research the main characteristics of the electronica genre. In this, I will be watching various music videos to see the common themes that run through e.g. dancing, performance etc.
I will also be helping out with the organisation of the Focus Groups with Stevie. We have decided to hold 2 Focus Groups, one will have an age range of 17-18 and the other will be teachers ranging from 24-30. We have decided to aim our music video at this specific target audience simply because we feel that any age lower than this will have difficulty buying the song on places like iTunes for example, hence the reasoning behind why we have chosen a higher aged target audience.
All of us have begun our research tasks straight away. I had an input on all aspects to start with, coming up with the questions for the questionnaire with Kirstie, discussing the target audience and how we would go forward with the focus groups with Stevie and looking at the different branding and logos of other electronica artists with Becky. After this, I watched a few different music videos, particularly from the band 'The Prodigy' and 'Fatboy Slim', as secondary research, to get some inspiration for common traits in the ways the music videos are filmed e.g. camera angles, shot types, etc.
Below are the different music videos I watched:
From this video, I have noted and focussed on the use of facial expressions and how they can add to getting across a particular form of emotion, similar to how we are thinking of portraying our actor within our footage once the filming process begins. Also, the use os very minimal colour and the use of black and white can be visually striking, something that we could take into consideration when filming and editing.
This music video was purely used to see the limitations of movement within a suit. This is because we are thinking that our 'artist' should maybe wear a suit, which would be fitting towards our narratives we have composed together. Also, if any comedy elements were to be added into our music video, then this is the ideal example to follow.
The decision to use this video was purely down to the chaotic scenes portrayed. In our planned music video, we are all in agreement that we want our 'artist', within the narrative, to be having some form of breakdown, leading on to crazy, almost intimidating scenes with other extras involved. Also, the lighting in this could be thought provoking as using just ordinary lights from the ceiling doesn't look very original.
We were given the task by our teacher to film ourselves lip-synching to a song of our choice, and then try to edit the footage that we got, in Final Cut, to get it in time with the soundtrack itself.
Here is our finished product:
Firstly, we had to choose our song. For this choice, we had to make sure both of us knew the words otherwise it wouldn't look too good. We had found this song a while back and we both like this song quite a lot, which in this case was quite handy.
From here, we had to decide how we should film the different sections of our lip sync video. We decided on doing a clean run through from start to end to begin with, so that we could pick out certain sections of the footage that were able to fit to the soundtrack. After we did this, we then had to decide on a variety of other shots to include within the video, so that we could keep our audience interested throughout. I decided that we could have sections of myself miming the song and then piece both sections together in order for it to look like there was another artist sing as well as myself and my partner.
Once all of the footage had been recorded, it was time to edit it all together. Firstly, we imported all the footage from iMovie into Final Cut. We then transferred the main section of footage onto the timeline on Final cut. Then came the tricky part. We had to sync the soundtrack and the footage together first before we added any other layer of footage to the timeline. This was the hardest part of the task, simply because we had to 'guess' roughly how much footage we had to cut so that our miming of the song was perfectly in time with the artist's voice on the soundtrack. After this was done, it was then just a simple job of removing sections of the footage that were not needed and replacing them with other footage that we wanted to include. All we had to do after everything was in place was to add any effects that we also wanted to include.
As research before we get into our coursework groups, we were given the task to choose a music video of our own choice and answer the following questions:
How is the artist being represented?
How are the lyrics being represented?
What is the overall effect of the video on the audience?
For this, I chose the song ' Men In Black' by Will Smith:
Here are my findings:
How is the artist being represented?
Well, Will Smith, throughout the whole of the music video, is in his character from the film 'Men In Black', Agent J. Therefore its hard to say how the actual artist is being represented, seeing as we are only seeing how his character is being represented. He wears dark sunglasses throughout the majority of the video, which could connote secrecy, which is a them explored quite often by the Men In Black, linking to the films.
There are also certain points in which Will seems to be escorted around the place by two female 'bodyguards'. This is unusual as it gives off the message that he is in a much weaker position, going against the usual stereotyping of the masculine authority.
there is much direct address from Will as well. From this, we get two feelings. The first, and most obvious, is threatening. This is also reflected in the lyrics (see next question). However, you could also get a friendly vibe from it as well, seeing as the whole video is almost a 'parody' of other videos.
How are the lyrics being represented?
For this question, I took various sections of the lyrics and analysed them:
"..Don't fear us, cheer us, if you ever get near us, don't jeer us, we're fearless.."
- This is demanding/ threatening. Saying don't actually be scared of them, but if you go against them, then they'll retaliate due to their "fearless" nature.
"..we're your first, last and only line of defence against the worse scum of the universe.."
- Again links to the film; signifies organisation's (MIB) importance to the world, raising his status when compared to ordinary people in the world.
"..Do what we say thats the way we kick it, y'na mean?.."
- This has a double meaning. Threatening as its telling you that you HAVE to follow their instructions, but at the same time is slightly more friend-like, particularly shown through .."y'na mean?.."
What is the overall effect of the music video on the audience?
Well, its a very upbeat, "get up and dance" style song, although it is a promotional video for the release of the soundtrack for the film itself. There are also certain sections of the music video that seem to have real-life interactions with the audience, although not actually being real-life, echoed through the use of the 'neautralizer' at the end of the video.
As a group, we have decided to use this song for our music video coursework.
We were then asked to contact the artist to see if we were allowed to use the soundtrack for our coursework. We decided to contact them through Twitter. Below is the evidence of this:
