Storyboarding

Now that the ancillary tasks have been completed, I am now working on the planning and preparation for the filming of my music video. Below are storyboards which I have used to plan out each scene of the video.

Music Magazine - Update 2

Now that I have chosen which magazine my advert would be most suited for, I now need to tackle the issue of creating the advertisement itself. So I looked in 'Q' and found several adverts for artists, some well known, some not, and I now have an idea of what a good magazine advertisement should include. I have since created a magazine advertisment using Pages. Below is the design.

Music Magazine - Update 1

Choosing my music magazine

The music magazine which I have chosen is 'Q'. I came to this decision after looking through and comparing Q to other music magazines on the market. The reason why I chose Q is because it is popular in the UK and also offers an extended review section which can be useful when promoting my artist.

I feel that my artist would advertise in this particular magazine as the magazine itself does not deal with a specific genre, it deals with several. Also the magazine associates itself with more established and well known artists and would not associate itself, for example, with artists aimed at teen/younger audiences.

Below are some images of the current Q magazine - Issue 294.

Music Magazines - Ancillary Task 2

In our last lesson, we were told that we had to create a music magazine advertisement to promote our chosen artists album. So, like the Digipack, I first began research into the different music magazines and also the advertisements which can be found in them. There were three magazines in particular which stood out for me.

- Q

Q is a music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom by Bauer Media group, with a circulation of 130,179 as of June 2007. Q was first published in October 1986, setting itself apart from much of the other music press with monthly production and higher standards of photography and printing.

The magazine has an extensive review section, featuring new releases, reissues, music compiliations, film and live concert reviews, as well as radio and television reviews. Much of the magazine is devoted to interviews with popular musical artsists.The magazine is well known for compiling lists. It has created many, ranging from "The 100 Greatest albums" to the "100 Greatest '100 Greatest' Lists". Every other month, Q and its sister magazine, Mojo (also owned by Bauer) have a special edition. These have been about musical times, genres, or a very important/influential musician.

- Uncut

Uncut is a montly publication based in London. It focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections. A DVD magazine under the Uncut brand was published quarterly from 2005 to 2006.Uncut was launched in May 1997 as "a monthly magazine aimed at 25- to 45-year-old men that focuses on music and movies", edited by Allan Jones.

Uncut's contents include lengthy features on old albums, interviews with film directors, music and film news, and reviews of all major new album, film and DVD releases. Its music features tend to focus on genres such as Americana[3], rock and alternative country.

Each month the magazine includes a free CD, which may include both new and older music. Special Issues have covered Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, The Byrds, David Bowie, Demon Records, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Queen, Martin Scorsese, Motown Records, Morrissey, George Harrison, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin and more.

- Artrocker

Artrocker magazine is an independent monthly publication, concentrating on music and modern culture, that is available across the United Kingdom. Though stocked in larger branches of newsagents, its main availability is in music stores. The magazine started life as a weekly email newsletter before evolving into a printed magazine.

The magazine provides an outlook on modern culture, with information on the UK music scene and the main emphasis firmly being placed on London. There are also sections dedicated to covering art and fashion, and classic bands from the past. Due to the demise of Melody Maker and Sounds, the magazine is one of the very few rivals to the NME.

CD Digipack Update 2

After looking into Garland's previous album covers, seeing the layouts he uses, I have made a prototype digipack using Pages with a template. Also using photoshop, I have altered the pictures so that it is more suited to be one of Garland's album covers. Below are pictures of the template that I used and the prototype digipack.

CD Digipack Update 1

After researching digipacks, I decided to look into my artists history of album covers. These album covers gave me information on what Garland uses to promote his CD's and the 'style' that he uses. Whilst looking through the the album covers, I noticed that nearly all of them had an image of Garland. This means that he uses his appearance to help identify himself from others and he relies on his image to 'lure' in potential buyers of the CD.

Below are images of the album covers for Travis Garland.

CD Digipack - Ancillary Task 1

The Digipack

A digipack is a form of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the centre portion. Usually the portion of the digipack that holds the CD is made out of plastic, like a traditional jewel case CD, the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.

Digipacks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic 'digipack' came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

The Facts

* They look nice, and many bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases.

* Digipacks don't crack like jewel cases do, but they will rip eventually the paper begins to peel apart and seperate.

* The trays in digipacks break much more often than in jewel cases. There's not as much protection since the outer portion is constructed from paper, so the teeth that hold the CD in place crack and fall out easily.

* When the teeth of the tray do break in a digipack, the CD falls out of the bottom of the digipack, because unlike jewel cases, there is nothing to hold it in.

* Digipacks can be more enviromentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper - however, they arent always made this way.

Overall digipacks look great, but if you're just starting out and money is tight, looking for ways to cut your manufacturing costs is important. Stretching your budget to because you like digipacks aesthetically is not a good investment.

Textual Analysis - Airplanes

Please click on the images below to enlarge them for easier viewing.

Expectations Of A Music Video

Travis Garland

Genre

Travis Garland's genre is R&B/Pop music. This makes me immediately think of videos which are story based and have high budgets. However with Travis Garland, it is different because at the moment, he has yet to release a video accompanied by a song which he has written by himself. Garland is a cover artist to famous songs in a particular time period whether it be present day or different.

Promotional Videos Already Made

Like I have stated before, Travis Garland has yet to release a music video. The furthest he has gone when promoting his songs is having song playing with a picture of either himself or a location corresponding with the song in the background.

Target Audience

When fans of Travis Garland hear his songs, they will immediately ,sometimes without even realising they are doing it, compare the song that Garland has covered with its original. This makes it somewhat harder for Garland as he needs to be able to change the song in such a way that is equal if not even better than its original.

Below is the promotional video to Travis Garlands cover song 'Airplanes', originally performed B.o.B. This the song which I have chosen to use in my music video.

Artist Research

Travis Garland was born on the 26 July 1989 and is an American singer-songwriter. He is best known as a former member of boy band NLT which consisted of Kevin McHale, Justin Joseph Thorne and V Sevani.

Garland was exposed to the arts at a very young age. He started off singing and acting in plays at his local church and went on to attend the School for Performing Arts where he received extensive training in music and theatre. After winning a nationwide acting competition at the age of 14, Garland relocated to Los Angeles where he signed with a manager and agent. He then began going on auditions during the day but spent his nights developing his songwriting, and after a meeting with a friend from Dallas he was asked to join the pop/R&B group, Not Like Them (NLT).

Further down the line, NLT was signed to a major label deal working under the direction of Geffren Records Chairman Ron Fair. With Garland as the front man and one of the lead singers, NLT was put in the studio to collaborate with top producers and songwriters including Pharell,Ne-Yo and Ryan Tedder. The group opened on tour for The Pussycat Dolls and gained a small, but loyal, fan following. In 2007 NLT released their Timbaland produced single 'She Said, I Said' and scored their first Top 40 Hit.

They continued to tour, and caused a female fan girl frenzy headlining a national House of Blues tour. When the group eventually parted and went their separate ways to pursue individual opportunities. Garland shifted his focus back to songwriting, only this time for a solo album.

Currently, Garland is back in the studio recording his first original untitled debut album for Interscope Records. To give him a unique urban pop sound producer Nate Hills, who has worked with Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, Britney Spears and more, has singed on to produce the record. Garland will be writing and co-writing the majority of the album's tracks himself. Garland's debut album is scheduled for release later this year with 'Believe' as the first single.

Below is a list of all the songs that Travis Garland has covered.

- Airplanes
- Let Me Know
- When You Learn How To Love
- Glow Stick
- Believe
- I Want It All
- Broken

Making Decisions

In our lesson today, we were told to decide on whether we would be working in groups or individually. I have chosen to work on my own because I feel I can achieve more as it will be easier when making certain decisions i.e. song choice etc.

The song that I have chosen is 'Airplanes' by Travis Garland from the album 'Travis Garland - Cover Collection'.

Textual Analysis

Artist - The Goo Goo Dolls
Song - Iris



Genre Characteristics?

For the Goo Goo Dolls, their style of genre is Punk. When associating music videos to Punk music, I usually picture the video featuring lavish sets and the artists wearing costumes similar to those of Lady Gaga. However with this music video ,performed by The Goo Goo Dolls who are a punk band, they have kept the costumes simple but effective and have used what seems to be an old tower and a tunnel for the video.

What is the relationship between music and visuals?

The music does correspond with the visuals in several ways, but first you have to understand what the song is about. The song is about someone who has an invisible identity who no one understands who then finds their true love. They want their true love to know that they exist and that the person is the only one in the world who can understand and love them. This can be seen clearly in the video as it shows a young man watching a girl (his true love) and feeling as though she thinks he is invisible but really she understands him. So there is a definite relationship between the music (lyrics) and the visuals presented in the video.

Are the close-ups of the artist and star image motifs?

During the video, there are close-ups of the artist, this occurs when he is performing with his other band members. Close-ups also occur when the 'story' side of the music video is being shown. The close-ups used in this video aim to make the audience pay more attention to one particular person or one particular object and to also help them i.e. knowing what is happening in a particular scene etc.

Is there any reference to the notion of looking?

There is reference to the notion of looking because during the video the band are seen playing their instruments in a tunnel and nearly every time the lead vocalist is in shot, he is looking straight down the camera, making it feel as though he is looking at the audience, which is an effective way to gain the audiences attention. So yes there is reference to the notion of looking.

Are there any intertextual references?

I think that this is the only video i can recall seeing someone based in an abandoned tower spying on his one true love by using telescopes. Yes it may be random but it does work and does correspond with the music being played. Because no one has done something like this before it makes the music video unique. Because of the music video being unique, it resulted in the song growing in popularity as listeners could easily associate the song with this video.

Song Choices

When it came to looking at songs to choose for my music video, there were 3 in particular which I wanted to look at in further detail.

Airplanes - Travis Garland

This song is one of my three choices and is a cover of the famous single by B.o.B. There were a couple of reasons why I did not choose the original and they were that firstly there are several verses where the artist is rapping and that would prove to be to difficult to film. Secondly, the song is well known when performed by B.o.B and had a good music video already, so choosing a cover version of the song without the rapping, a not 'well known' artist and no video was a suitable choice.

Name - The Goo Goo Dolls

This song is my second choice, the main reason being is its just easy listening. I could easily listen to the band all day because their music has messages hidden away rather than it being entirely performance based. Its like listening to mini stories when listening to The Goo Goo Dolls. The song is based around the lead singers childhood and dedicates the song to his two sisters who raised him.

Look Through My Eyes - Everlife

This song is also on my list because I simply love listening to the song, I think the melody with the lyrics work fantastically well together, making it a powerful song. Also with the repeating line of 'Look Through My Eyes', when filming, you could show different peoples prospective and how they interpret certain things. This could prove to be a challenging aspect however it would be fun to do.

The Gadget Show

Today I watched an episode of the Gadget Show which showed two presenters, Suzi and Jason, create music videos for two artists, Fightstar and Har Mar Superstar. This episode had shown how Suzy and Jason went about creating these videos, Suzi went down the route of using professional equipment i.e. lighting, cranes, crew. Whereas Jason used consumer tech and his surroundings like a skate park, ways in which to support the camera and having a few stunt doubles.

Whilst watching the show, This is what I learnt. There are three main categories in music video, Performance, Story and Gimmick. Performance is where you have the Artist performing the song chosen with or without instruments, Suzi chose this category. Jason went for a different approach and chose to have a story based video. Having a story based video basically does what it says on the tin. It tells a story about an event in someones life which may be influential i.e. their past, relationships etc. Gimmick based videos are usually one-shot parodies of certain songs and are made just for entertainment purposes. This type of music video has proved to be extremely popular in the online community, especially video sharing sites such as YouTube, Metacafe etc.

Coming back to The Gadget Show, when it came down to judging who's music video was 'the best', Suzi came out on top because her music video did look professional, mainly because of the equipment she used. However Jason's video was a good attempt, using 'off the shelf' equipment which can be accessed by everyone. It just shows that money may not be everything in a music video, but it sure does help.

My Musical Taste

Explain and illustrate with examples your personal musical preferences.

When listening to music, I try to look out for the meaning/hidden messages in the songs whether it be about personal situations or current affairs. So when narrowing down my musical preferences, I find it hard because there are so many genres to like out there. However I have chosen three songs which I enjoy listening to.

Look Through My Eyes - Phil Collins - Pop

This song is based around other peoples views on topics or even life. Its saying that you should think and also take into account other peoples views and not just your own.

Where Is The Love - Black Eyed Peas - R&B

This particular songs 'hidden message' can be found in the lyrics. Its stating how people are only care for themselves and not to others i.e. referring to poverty. So they are questioning 'Where Is The Love'.

America - Razorlight - Indie rock

I find this song to be interesting as the meaning in the song is about someones feeling of isolation and boredom because of American culture. However, because of the message, I have found whilst listening to the song that it can be referred to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers.

Music Timeline 1950 - 2000

Media music timeline

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A2 Advanced Portfolio Requirements

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

- A website homepage for the band;

- A cover for its as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);

- A magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).