Research - My Target Audience

To get a better idea of my target audience I took a look at the target audiences of the bads I looked at such as 'How To Destroy Angels' (HTDA), 'Nine Inch Nails'(NIN), 'Ministry' etc. and have deducted from this an idea of the audience that would enjoy the type of video I'm imagining I'll produce.

 

Trent Reznor's bands HTDA and NIN are aimed at a similar audience despite being music from very different genres (NIN make Industrial Metal music whereas HTDA make Post Industrial/Electronica music). Their audiences' are, particularly for Nine Inch Nails, are older (35-50 year old), Industrial, Alternative/Metal fans however a lot of their (NIN's) target audience was younger (20-25 year old) Industrial, Metal/Alternative fans back in the late 80's- mid 90's meaning most of their fans have aged with them whilst maintaining their like for the band's music.

I feel most of the people within NIN's, HTDA's and Ministry's audiences fall in the demographic range of E-C1 (maybe B also).

 

I feel my song applies well to a similar demographic as these bands; anyone from early 20s - late 40s. My song is  an Industrial Metal track so I feel it is also aimed at Alternative/Metal fans like NIN's music. However the song is quite fast paced, it is for this Reason I am picturing a fast paced, flickery video which applies more to a younger audience as I see thge product I am going to make to be energetic at the same time as looking industrial and alternative

Website Research - How To Destroy Angels

 

How To Destroy Angels' Website

Website Research - KORN (Changes)

Korn update their site the day after I made my last post. Their website is now themed to reflect their ablum newest album 'The Paradigm Shift'. The changes include the obvious background change; the page has now been made blue with what is made to look like dirt marks at the bottom. They have also added the giant, weird, translucent faces at the side which is the main element on the album cover.

 

The page colour scheme as also been changed; the frame around the youtube video player has been changed to fit the new theme and all the navigation links and stuff have been made yellow to contrast the new blue background. The Register/Log in button has been moved to the top of the screen so as to not abstruct the images (of the faces) at the sides, the button still remains in place when you scroll down as it did before.

Website Research - KORN

KORN WEBSITE

The Loop Closes - How To Destroy Angels

 

 

 

This is pretty much the sort of thing I want to have produced by the end of the year. I really like the whole general feeling of the video. I like the way that the video uses the a filter to create this affect of an old, broken television. I'm going to try reflect this in my video except using the shots I have listed earlier on this blog

Survival - Eminem

Being a huge fan of Eminem since childhood I was psyched when I heard he was back (again). On the 8th of October Eminem released the video for his new single 'Survival', which is incredibly different from his other awesome and recent single 'Berzerk'.

Eminem's music is incredible he's constantly producing great music. Just yesterday he released 'Rap God' which I think may be the best rap he's ever released (not the best song he's done but the best rapping). In 'Rap God' he is mainly just boasting like an obnoxious ass about how amazing he is at rapping; which would be annoying, if he weren't right.

Research - 'With Teeth' Digipak

'With Teeth' (stylized as [WITH_TEETH]) is the fourth studio album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.

I think that the Digipak album art for 'With Teeth' by Nine Inch Nails nicely captures the genre of the music on the album and the music that the band normally make. The cover shows the band logo very largely across the top but nowhere on the cover does it say Nine Inch Nails; this has been done because the logo is very well recognised by their fans and people in general. On the cover their is the Parental Advisory tag, this is there to indicate that the album contains explicit content. On the front of this digipak there are two stickers; one stating that there are 15 new songs on the album along with 2 bonus tracks on the digipak vertsion only, and the other sticker simply shows that this is the special edition version of the album.

The front folds away to the left like a book revealing the track list on the inside of the cover and a weird, smeared looking, glitchy image of something on the other cover. 

The picture behind the track list continues on carries on through all three panels when the digipak is fully opened, stood infront of the image, in the middle panel, is Trent Reznor who is like partly faded away in a sort of glitch art effect. On the right panel is the housing for the disk and the background image is carried on behind it.

 The disk has a similar stripy effect running across it to the background of the panels. The disk reads 'NINE_INCH_NAILS: [WITH_TEETH]' across the top, with all the 'N's backwards. The disk also says 'HALO_19' on it, this means that it is the 19th CD that Nine Inch Nails have released. On the disk, in the bottom right, are the record labels, distribution details and copyright details etc.

Here is the back/outside of the digipak when it is fully opened out, on the back of the middle panel, in the bottom left corner, we can again see the record label, copyright and distribution details. We can also see the whole of the cover picture extended across the three panels. In the bottom right corner of the back (middle) panel is the Barcode; this is obviously there on the outside (when closed) of the digipak so it can be scanned by shop cashiers when the album is being bought.

Planning - Band Name Logo

After playing around on a few font sites such as Dafont, FontSquirrel and a couple others I have found some cool industrial fonts with which to write Broken chains.

This is a nice simple name logo thing that uses a stencil like design to create a bold, bulky logo

This is a cool creative name logo thing that also uses a stencil like design to create a bold logo however I feel this design looks more industrial as the writing is made to look worn and rusty. This is probably the font I'll be going with as it is may favourite of the 6 that i have found.

Planning/research - Band Name and logo

After listening to my song more and talking a bit with my actor for the video, we decided to take band/artist name into closer consideration and have pretty much concluded the artist's name shall be Broken Chains. This will be a solo artist under the stage name Broken Chains; similar to Pictureplane (Travis Egedy) and Marina and the Diamonds (Marina Diamandez). I have decided to discard the name Binary Future as it sound far too Electronic for the sound of the song and not nearly Industrial enough.

I figured bands and/or artists whom have a logo are more easily recognized. I came to this conclusion because loads of people know of H.I.M's famous heartagram logo, and Misfits' Skull logo. Many other examples such as The Rolling Stones' tongue logo are recognized frequently and it is for this reason why I have came up with this logo. The logo I have designed (in 5 minutes on MS Paint) shows a zero in italics, this represents a chain link. The zero has then been crossed out which shows the chain is broken (top right). Some more examples of widely familiar logos include Nirvana's drunken smiley face logo, Nine Inch Nails' simple NIN logo, Slipknot's aztec tattoo styled 'S', Van Halen's big VH and many more.

Band logos are useful to have if you want you want to get your band noticed because they often use simple ideas to create significant designs. An example of this is the use of backwards letters; NIN have their backwards 'N' as show above this teqnique is also used by Eminem whom has his second 'E' backwards, Korn who have the backwards 'R' and ABBA whom have their secon 'B' backwards this is done to add a feel of symetry to logos and to make the more distinct from other logos.

Many bands such as Van Halen, Anal Cunt, Nine Inch Nails, The Dead Kennedys, Skinny Puppy, Foo Fighters and probably thousands more have a logo simply built up of their band name initials, this is a good idea because the use of initials/acronyms is a great way to remember things this makes the logos simple and memorable.

Bands such as Prince, Aphex Twin, Throbbing Gristle, Bad Religion and  use logos that are just weird designs or well known symbols editied. For example Aphex Twin's logo is apparently just an alienified 'A' and Bad Religion  have simply put the Holy Cross inside a No sign thing . I have used the idea of creating an abstract logo like this rather than using BC (Broken chains) as I found it difficult to make BC look like a broken chain.

A lot of bands have a logo made of just their band name except in a certain font this is good because the font becomes part of the bands identitiy. They become recognised by their name being written in that font. I'm going to also come up with a band name logo like a lot of bands do for example Linkin Park have their LP logo and then they have their name wirtten in their chosen font and they use these 2 logos on different things.

Research - Digipak

We have to, as part of this project, produce a digipak for the single/LP with our tracks on. These are the dimensions of a regular 6 paneled digipak are: 139.5mm x 6mmx 125.5mm.

This will be usefull as i can print this out and produce some little sketches of my ideas.

Eat Raw Meat - Editors

'Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool' is the full song name.

 

The song is not industrial at all really and it's not the happiest song in the world and isn't a fun song you can dance to but the video includes some similar imagery that wouldn't be out of place in an Industrial Rock music video.

 

 

Mise en Scene

The video uses dark, almost propaganda-esque animation that looks like it may well have been animated by Cyriak. Cyriak frequently uses something normal like a sheep going baaa and make it a crazy creepy video of a sheep falling apart into different mechanisms. The Editors' video uses dark animated imagery to make social statements.

Editing

When the song gets faster the scene cuts come quicker and the video clips used are shorter.
 

Goodwin

The video relates to Goodwin's theory of music videos in a very small way as it shows no video of the band themselves like most videos. Infact the only way this can fit to Goodwin's theory is though the few instances where the lyrics relate to the music video for example when the lead singer says 'When I'm a gun in a fist fight.', on screen there is a loaded gun on screen.

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Obviously I wont be producing anything like this in my video because I don't now how to be an awesome animation jedi. There aren't many ways I can use this video to inspire my own because it's all animated. Although I like how the video is greyscale (black and white) throughout, which I was thinking of doing anyway, but this video has probably made this more likely because it gives a cool sinister effect.

Timekiller - Project Pitchfork

I'm not really going to be using this video for research I just came across it when looking around on youtube. Project Pitchfork are an electro-industrial/ darkwave / goth band, I have literally just heard this song by them just now and I quite like them. I'm fond of the video a lot but it isn't exactly the sort of video I am hoping to produce, I just thought I'd post this because I like the use of bugs and stuff I'll probably use this idea a lot as I have seen it in a few other industrial music videos and I feel they could sort of add an essence of creepiness to my video.

(screenshot 0:25)

 

Came Back Haunted - Nine Inch Nails

Planning - Ideas so far

Stigmata - Ministry

The video for Stigmata by Ministry is the video I like most out of all the videos I have chosen to research as I want to make my video similar to this. I especially like the flashing of images that is frequently used in industrial music videos.

 

 

 

Krank - KMFDM

Goodwin

One of the points in Goodwin's theory states music videos present genre characteristics. This video does this by showing the band members playing their instruments, representing the stage performances shown in a lot of other metal and industrial metal videos. Another way that this video fits Goodwin's theory is the fact that the lyrics are directly related to the video; for example after the lyrics say "With another motherfucking Dirty Bomb" an explosion graphic appears as a woman falls into frame. It also relates to the notion of looking a lot showing loads of screens. Finally, this video fits Goodwin's theory as there are frequent close-ups of the band members.

Mise en Scene

The video is mainly quite dark with high contrast, this has been done to show the dark side of Industrial metal however the video uses quite a lot of electric greens, I believe this has been done to make it really obvious that they are more electronic than regular metal music. There has been lots of fire and explosions used to show the destruction and anarchy that their music reflects. The video has a sort of digital feel to it; heavy use of screens, static, glitch art and pixelated images have been used to exaggerate the digital feel to make it obvious that they have a much more electronic sound than most metal artists. The outfits used in this video are like Skinhead style if it were crossbred with Cybergoth, I really like their style but it is not for me and would not suit my song by any means.

Camera

Fast, jolty camera movements reflect the high-speed, crazy, alternative music lifestyle that KMFDM presumably lead. Lots of weird camera movemnts (including a spinning zoom out) make the video feel disjointed and thus more exciting. Low angles of the artist performing make them seem more important. The direct address to the camera makes the video feel aimed at you when you watch it, it isn’t just a video, it’s like a video for you which makes the audience more attached to the artist..

Editing

This video is so heavily edited I don’t know where to start. Quick takes and short cuts and cutaways make the video faster and more extreme and thus more interesting to watch. CGI oh people riding on falling A-Bombs make the video even more violent and extreme. Flashes of the band name help the viewer remember the name and help the band get their name out more. Every sing shot or scene in this video is edited to a ridiculous extent, all to make the video cooler to their target audience.

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This video is sort of exempt from Archer's music video analysis as it shows no narrative whatsoever. I really like this video as it includes fast placed flashes between images and text like a lot of industrial videos do. I plan to use this technique in my video as my song is industrial sounding too, however my track (track 4) is far from industrial metal and is much more industrial rock/goth/darkwave.

In the lyrics they say “Krank it to 11!” this is a intersexual reference to the American Rock-Mockumentary ‘This is Spinal Tap’.

Research - Steve Archer

All the information I could find about Steve Archer's theory is that he says that all music videos have some sort of narrative.He also says that all music videos switch between a performance of the music by the band/musician and the narrative. A great example of this is the video for Stan by Eminem (ft Dido). The Narrative shows a guy, Stan(ley) as he makes poor choices causing his, his wife's and their unborn childs' deaths.

This narrative is constantly being switched between narrative and performance as the characters in the narrative are singing the song.

Research - Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer created a theory known as star theory. This theory states that stars are constructed, artificial images, even if they are represented as being "real people", experiencing real emotions etc. It helps if their image contains a USP — they can be copied and/or parodied because of it. Their representation may be metonymic — Madonna's conical bra in the early 1990s, Bono's 'Fly' sunglasses, etc. Pop stars have an advantage over film stars in that their constructed image may be much more consistent over a period of time, and is not dependent on the creative input of others (e.g. screenwriters writing their lines).

 

Dyer proposes that:

A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (such as advertising, magazines etc as well as films and music).

Research - Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

Laura Mulvey coined the term 'The Male Gaze' in 1975. The theory suggests that the audience are forced to view the text from the perspective a heterosexual male as the films constantly focus on womens' bodies and because for some reason everyone thinks that's all any heterosexual male can ever think about.

The camera sexualises women by lingering on their breasts, curves and booties much like hetero men do all the time supposedly. To an extent I agree with Mulvey's theory as it is what is done in the media the male gaze is used an awful lot to sexualise and objectify women. However I find it generalises far too much about men saying the camera focusses on womens' curves and bodies because that is what all men do. I will admit that a lot of hetero men do do this but I think it is quite harsh and a little bit offensive to state outright that this is all that we think about.

Baby One More Time - Applying Goodwin

Goodwin's theory applied to the 'Baby One More Time' Video

Goodwin's first point states music genres demonstrate genre characteristics. This is evident in the video for 'Baby One More Time'  as the ridiculous-looking, intricate dance routine reflects the pop genre as dance routines are often present in the videos of other pop songs.

Goodwin also points out that there is often a relationship between the lyrics and visuals however there are not many relations of visuals to the song, only in dance moves really, for example when there are lyrics to do with a broken heart they dance move will have them touching their hearts.

As Goodwin's theory states; the record label will require there to be lots of shots of the main artist. There are many shots of Britney throughout the video and whole time she is shown to be a school girl, with the matching uniform, but she stands out by wearing slightly different clothing, to make her stand out. For example she wears a grey cardigan over her shirt, but the other dancers and extras do not.

One of Goodwin's main points is the use of voyeurism and the notion of looking, both are very broad themes that almost every single music video contains. Voyeurism can be used to sell the artist's music through sex appeal. This has been done in the Britney video as she is wearing a deliciously revealing outfit. The notion of looking has also been used here as, although people in the video aren't looking at her that much, we are. We are drawn to her as she is the obvious star and because she is centred and at the front during the dance routine scenes.

Finally the intertextual reference point. Goodwin says video are often an intertextual reference to another piece of media such as a film or TV programme etc. however I feel this is not the case as it only seems to reference general school life rather than referencing another media text. The video, at the end turns out to be a day-dream; the editing shows this by using a faded effect, the edges of the screen go fogged. This is a popular effect used in the same context and in the context of TV programmes. This may be considered an intertextual reference however I don't think so.