4 Key Decisions: Record Label

After researching indie record labels, they tend to have simply names, hence the simple and short name Husky Records, similar to Domino Records, the name Husky would have a double meaning of the dog breed as well as the artists' voices. It would also have a plain black and white colour scheme.
We then looked into the record label of the track we had chosen(Shut up+Dance), which is RCA Records. We decided that our record label would be a branch, like RCA is, of Sony Music Entertainment, based in the UK. Wanting similar bands to ours, in the image above, we have referenced artists that we would have in our record label, hypothetically.

4 Key Decision: Audiences

Considering our track is indie pop, we decided to work around that to figure out what our audience.

• We decided to have indie fans as our core audience; it is neither genre specific or age specific, having a wider range of audience as our core.
• For secondary, we chose the old fans that tend to listen to indie music and would want to discover new indie bands like our.
• Our tertiary audience are younger as they would just be starting to discover different types of genres and would be very interested in indie music.

Production Meetings

As a group, we would meet up every Tuesday and Friday during our free periods and lunch of other days. In these production meetings, we would first set an objective we aim to complete during that session, then when the meeting ends, we would set a target to complete by the next session.

Meetings

First Meeting notes

For our first meeting, we decided our audience, record label, track and artist. To work those out, we first went through each of our blogs, listening to our suitable tracks and the ideas we all had for them then decided on which track we all liked the best.

Second Meeting Notes

In our second meeting, since we had decided on a track, we wrote down the type of artist and video style we wanted. For example, one of our most used references was Awkward by San Cisco for music video. As for artist style, we wanted it to be between Everything Everything and Walk The Moon(the original band that made the song)Then we suddenly all had an epiphany, that a couple would be dancing through different times/eras, due to the theme and lyrics of the song. So we started listing eras that would be iconic and easy for the audience to recognise.

Eras

After some more discussion, we decided to make the eras more spread to emphasize the fact that the couples would be going through any time period yet still being together. So we settled on Ancient Greece, Vikings, Victorians, 50s and 80s.



Since we can't always keep in contact with each other face to face, we have a facebook group to easily share our ideas with the interactivity of the world wide web and social media.

Initial Research, Influences and Ideas: Inspirational Styles/Movements/Periods

Looping in and out of memories to photo

Ed Sheeran's Drunk MV

I like the way in Ed Sheeran's music video for Drunk, his transitions from scene to scene is creative and it makes time seem to go by quicker, which i could use in my music video. It makes the audience more involved in the music video especially since it's viewed from the first person's perspective.

Close up of instruments.

As i've said in a previous post, i also like the camera framing like in Ribena by Pegasus Bridge, they have close ups of the instruments.





Troye Sivan is also one of my inspirations. He is a Youtuber but his style of filming is quite minimalistic.

I also quite like the grading that he uses in his videos, it all looks aesthetically pleasing.

I cannot think of another style that would influence my music video other than the two mentioned above.

Initial Research, Influences and Ideas: Inspirational Artists

Akdong Musician 

Akdong Musicians

They're type of music is very calming and innocent yet they are able to convey great emotions just from their music. Above is one of my favourite songs from them. This song's theme is coming-of-age, which i can really relate to. There is a really meaningful message behind this song, it conveys how adults in the world are all trying to make a living but suffer because of it. The world is full of greed and self-interested. But the boy is still looked after by a distant adult.

They are able to convey the feelings through the beautiful composition and warm string sound.

P!nk

P!nk

Although she is pop star, she still targets subjects that are important. For example, her song 'Dear Mr President', targetted at George W Bush. She is disgusted by how he gave such little help to the world. She uses this song as a letter telling him about how people live differently to him. She uses her strong vocals to convey her emotions in such a way that it touches my heart. A powerful message like this is what makes her one of the inspirational artists i have chosen.

Semiotic Analysis

Warriors by Imagine Dragons

Since this song has been written and animated for a game(League of Legends), there are many subtle and obvious references that have been shown in the video. Many of which are fan related, this helps the fans feel like they are more in a community.

This music video follows a narrative of the main character starting out at home playing for fun but we watch him progress through the stages of competitive play and get to tournaments, at the end we see his final goal is to get the cup. This whole song is about how the players of the game are able to defeat it and get to their goal through determination and dedication just like a warrior; how they may even one day become one of the professional gamer. Throughout the whole music video, the face of the main character is never revealed, this allows the audience to relate to this song even more.

In the lyrics they sing 'We are the warriors that built this town', if they are referring to the players as warriors, it's almost as if they are thanking the audience/players for building such a big community just like a town. However, that line is also referring to Dan Reynolds as a front-man in this battle song. Like many of Imagine Dragon songs, it sounds very dramatic, along with the music video emphasizing this.

Initial Research, Influences and Ideas: Inspirational Album Covers and Websites

The type of album cover and website i would like would depend on the genre of music i choose for my single. However i would still like it to be simple yet straight forward. Here are some that influenced my decision:

We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things Album Cover (2008)

Yes! Album cover (2014)

Jason Mraz's website currently promoting Yes! album

As you can see Jason Mraz's album covers and website are both really simple. Since he is currently promoting his newly released album, Yes!, his website has the same colour schemes as the Yes! album to keep a synergistic campaign. The layout if very minimalistic, which i really like and has bold writing that still catches the audiences eye.

PTX album

Pentatonix's album cover and website is also very minimalistic. The album cover reminds of me piano keys as well the volume levels of sound on digital, subtly including that into the album cover. The colour scheme is once again being used in both website and album to keep up a known brand that their audience can relate to. I like the simplistic yet attention drawing website that is created for them.

Top of Pentatonix's website