A2 Music Video Final Production

Mumford&Sons - Sigh No More

Here I will be analysing the digipak, 'Sigh No More' by the band Mumford & Sons. When looking at the front cover, this is seen to see the composition of the band standing in the window of a shop. This may represent the band as being down-to-earth, as the high street would be associated with the middle class person instead of the rich and famous, of which the band are. The colour scheme of these shots, shows that these were captured in high key lighting,  suggesting that these were taken during the day. Overall, the digipak projects a sense of purity as the majority of the album is white in colour. The other colours such as browns and greens are usually associated with nature, suggesting that the music produced by the band is natural rather than artificial, unlike that of genres such as electronic. The typography on the cover additionally sees this album to appeal to the elder youth to a greater extent. The use of a serif font, gives the album a more formal appearance as this font is more commonly associated with writings in letters. Furthermore, with the font being aligned central and in capital letters this would suggest that the band perceive this information as important, giving both the band and the album an identity. This is so due to band using the same font as a consistency throughout their albums, acting as a symbol or logo to recognise the band by. Having the band within the composition further allows the audience to connect with the genre of the music, associating with and creating links between the fashion of the band, influencing youth subcultures.
The same theme is carried onto the back of the digipack, seeing a window composed central. One would say that this is a close up shot of the original long shot image on the front cover. Likewise, the typography is identical, being aligned central and having vertical lines in between each of the songs, interlinking with the underlining of the text on the front cover. The bar code and mediated logos also follow this formatting.
When looking at the inside of the digipack, the middle face of the pack is seen to hold the image. This sees the composition of four windows, each with a band member sitting within. Again, this allows the audience to get familiar with the artists, placing an image of the bands name and possibly even the indie pop genre. When looking at the dress of the band, this fits into the typical Indie Pop look with the band members wearing shirts, those of the quintessential denim or tartan style. This can therefore interlink with other bands that I have studied such as Scouting For Girls and Bastille.
To the left of this, a plain white background is seen with a small intricate image. This is furthermore seen on the artwork upon the disc, suggesting this image is acting as a logo for the band. Analysing the disc, this compliments the colour scheme using two contrasting colours of black and white. Again, identical typography is presented on the disc, aligned central in the same font and size as that on the front of the album cover. The artwork on the disc is kept minimal, representing the typically slow and calm pasted music of the band. This opposes a busy and colourful piece of artwork, that which I would associate with a more upbeat genre.


Looking at the the magazine ad for the promotion of the Mumford & Sons album, this is seen to mirror the trend and appearance of the digipak. Correspondingly, white is used as the predominant background colour, having constant capitalised typography with the digipak. Having the text composed at the top of the advertisement in a large font further grabs the audiences attention, with the natural instinct to read from top to bottom. The advertisement has limited text upon it, rather choosing to promote the artwork of the album, to familiarise the audience with the appearance of the digipack. Additionally this has been sized to realistic dimensions, enabling the audience to establish themselves with the proportions of the artwork. Looking in the bottom left hand corner, the album was awarded the Mercury Prize for An Album of the Year. This may therefore act as an incentive or influence for audiences to buy the album due to recommendations from within the music industry, a non-bias source. For more information on the Mercury Prize see below:
Mercury Prize Information
Opposite, in the bottom right hand corner the typography displays; 'Gentlemen Of The Road'. This refers to the bands concert, being geographically situated in the US, Europe, Canada and Australia. Hence, this is featured upon the album in hope to advocate their concert, both for their audiences and own benefit.

'This Is England' notes

This Is England is British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows in 2006. The story centres on young skinheads in England in 1983, meaning that the time between the events taking place and the film being made fits into the 13-25 year boundaries.The film illustrates how their subculture, which has its roots in 1960s West Indian culture, especially ska, soul, and reggae music, became adopted by white nationalists, which led to divisions within the skinhead scene. Combo, an older skin head whom has recently returned after a prison sentence, expresses English nationalist and racist views, and attempts to enforce his leadership over the other skinheads. This leads to the splitting of the group, resulting in the gang engaging in racist antagonism.

Notes from 'This Is England'

• The main character Shaun, is initially not in mainstream society due to the young boy being bullied. He then decides to join the 'Skinheads' however, neither is this group in mainstream society unknown to his acknowledgement.
• At different stages, Shaun saw both Woody and Combo as a father figure - Shaun's dad died in Falklands War hence, why Shaun agreed with Combo's racist viewpoint. 
• This Is England sees a similar ending to that of the youth culture film Quadrophenia with the ending of both subculture groups - Shaun throwing away the British flag parallels jimmy driving his scooter off the cliff.
• The Skinhead subculture group revolves around fashion, music and beliefs. Like that of the Mods and Rockers in Quadrophenia.
• This Is England was made exactly 25 years after the event.

Film Re-edit

After finishing our initial final editing for our music video for the song 'Love Diamonds' by You Are The Empire, we had a class screening. This involved inviting people in from around the college, both students and teachers to view are music video and give as feedback. For this we designed a survey asking both qualitative and quantitative questions.

When analysing our results, certain things appeared dominant for us to change. We asked the question; 'If you could make one suggestion for improvement on our editing, what would it be?' To this question our main response was to shorten the editing on our drug dealing sequence. This was an opinion given by multiple people hence, in acknowledgement we did just this, cutting out the repetitive clips and instead having fewer clips which were longer in length so that our editing continued to match the length of our recorded song. Furthermore, most of our questionnaires suggested changes or additions of colour filters. Due to the vast amount of suggestions, we could only change our music video to suit some of these, using a trial experiment to see which of these were most effective. As a result to the questions, 'Do you feel any other colour filter should be used?' and 'Can you make any suggestions to improve the video?' we took the response to add more of the black and white filter, and applied this our video. Having a black and white colour filter already on a single chorus of our song, we agreed to repeat this on every chorus so that our music shows consistency with our effect choices. In addition, this also countered our feedback to make our music video less colourful at the end by placing this filter over our end sequence. To other replies such as to use a blue or red colour filter, having experimented we found these options to be less effective, in some cases distorting our footage hence, we decided to not alter our final editing in these ways.

Font experiments

Here I have been experimenting with fonts for our album artwork. When analysing other 'Indie Pop' artwork, the majority of the typography has been presented in a sans-serif typeface. However, here I decided to experiment with both typefaces against one another to see which projected itself as most effective. For this, I feel that the sans-serif font appears more modern hence, fitting with our adolescant audience to a greater extent. Having decided this, I went onto looking at more artistic sans-serif fonts.

 

The first font I decided to look at places the name of the band in captial letters. This initially promotes the name of the band as being important. Further, this could present connotations of the band being loud and therefore, proud of their music suggesting strong characteristics. The modernity of this font also immediately stands out, fitting the audience for our band, 'You Are The Empire'

 

 

The next font I chose to look at differs quite greatly from the appearance of the first. Using individual square blocks to made up each letter, suggests that the letters are breakable. This therefore indicates the delicate nature of our female character in our music video, 'Love Diamonds' . This could additionally depict our 'Broken' society, with a widening gap between the behaviour of youths today and the morals and beliefs of the elder generation.

 

 

The next font shows a patterned sans-serif typeface. Having compared this to the above, I feel that this would not be the best typeface to represent our band as I feel this font would appeal better to a younger audience.

 

 

This font appears to be more simplistic than the others I have looked at however, connotations give that the band is natural. By this I refer to the solo production by the band, singing, producing their own backing music and writing their own songs. This font additonally matches that of the album; 'Greatest Hits' by Scouting For Girls, creating links between to bands of the Indie Pop genre.

Album artwork ideas

After analysing the album cover for Bat For Lashes, 'Two Suns' and their extended play, 'Daniel', it is conspicuous that their are interrelationships between songs and their artwork. Having realised this, I have applied this to our own song, 'Love Diamonds', finding images off the internet as an initial influence.

The first image I found was this. This comes from a more abstract perspective, showing the evolution of humans along with their characteristics. Hence, a likewise image could be photographed with our starring female actress in order to show the evolution of the girls addiction, starting from the one off drink to a relationship being formed with both alcohol and drugs. Furthermore, this would establish a relationship with our music video and the album artwork, likewise to that of the extended play, 'Daniel' by Bat For Lashes.

The next image I came across was that of a young girl being tied, and pulled by some rope. I think this would be a good visual description of our young girls addiction. Addiction, promoting words such as; control, weakness and enslavement. This would therefore act as a more subtle approach, visually displaying the consequences of the girls alcohol and drug abuse. Although, this would be effective imagery, I feel trying to photograph something similar may be quite difficult. However, we may take the rope as an active prop in the role of portraying entrapment or jurisdiction.

Here, a doll is seen to be flawed and impaired in a monochromatic colour scheme. A doll could be used as a representation of our young girl, acting as a symbol of a broken society through the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Furthermore, this could depict, the negative changes from our girls childhood through to the present. The monochromatic colour scheme of this, could moreover create channels with our music video, as a black and white filter has been placed onto a number of our shots. Photographing this image I feel would be the most feasible therefore, this may act as a base idea for our album artwork, incorporating elements from other sources to explore the themes present in 'Love Diamonds'

Finally, this image could be used as an interpretation to our song. Having the glass in front of the characters face demonstrates the girl being trapped and corned. Not only this, but this could suggest the character being captured in her own world, this relating to her alcohol and drug addiction which is overwhelming her life. In addition, this could interlink with the key theme of reflections in our music video, an image acting as if the young women is looking at herself. In addition this could be something we could photograph with our main character hence, this may be an idea which we could develop on, possibly incorporating an alcohol bottle or something with likewise connections to our music video.

Bat For Lashes Album Cover

When looking at the Indie Pop group, Bat For Lashes album cover, this is seen to be different in comparison to the artwork which I have already studied.
Once again, the album is composed using the rule of thirds. Splitting the album into three vertically, the alignment of the girl is in the middle third. Likewise, if you were to do this from a horizontal perspective, the head of the girl is also central on the album cover. This therefore structures the girl as the most important image on the cover.
Unlike the other albums already analysed in the Indie Pop genre, the album and artist names are only small in comparison to the visual elements. This is especially so for 'Two Suns', the name of the album, being positioned in the outset of the landscaped background. Although with small typography, the typography of the bands name stays consists across all of their albums, acting as a symbol of recognition for the artist.
Furthermore, the artwork acts as an illustration for the songs on the album.  The song 'Two Suns' is a record of modern-day fables, exploring dualities on a number of levels. Hence, the two planets in which the girl is holding in either palm.  The starred halo around the girls head also delineates the philosophy and metaphysical ideas concerning the connections between all existence explored within the song, interlinking with religious images of Jesus.  Additionally, this would clarify the use of candles, having traditional connotations with churches due to their symbolic meaning of light.
Everything upon the cover is seen to be natural, rather than man-made. This sees connotations with the songs on the album such as; 'Moon and Moon' and 'Siren Song'. This may further explain the pure and native colours being used, that of green, blue and brown.

When looking at the Extended play, 'Daniel', some themes are likewise present in the album artwork. Anew, the album is composed in the rule of thirds having the artist in the central third when dividing the album vertically. As on the album above, the typography for 'Bat For Lashes' is identical when looking at both size, font and the position in which it has been placed, acting as a symbolic logo for the band. Furthermore, the artwork fits into the naturalistic theme, having only a plain, landscaped background. This could additionally add to the philosophical perspective, portraying what was created when the earth was brought into existence.
The single's cover additionally features a young girl with an image of the character Daniel LaRusso painted on her back, from the film Karate Kid. This interlinks with the music video for the song, 'Daniel', having a character much like LaRusso displayed at the end of the music video.

By analysing the artwork for, Bat For Lashes, this may be used to help influence our own artwork. Connections would be consolidated by creating relations between our own music video for the song, 'Love Diamonds' and our album artwork through the establishment of in depth meanings. For us, themes may include; entrapment, fixations and relationships.