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Digipack

Recce shots

I have taken some recce shots to show the places in which I will be filming in as such:

Template

This is a template for designing the digipack I will be using.

Digipack plan

This is a plan for what I intended as the front cover of the digipack. I am currently designing the digipack as I go along with the filming of the music video.

Item listing update

The intended music studio for filming is not available for use so I had to use the school studio to setup. However the equipment used still remains the same.

Item listing

I have composed a list of items to be used which will appear for the video.

Item listing
Music Studio (preferable home)
Logic Pro (DAW Software)
Mixing console
Recording equipment

Guitar (Fender/Squire Stratocaster)
Tuner (Boss-ME50)
6.35 jack cables
Laney amp

Bass (Precision bass)
Laney amp

Drums (Not matter which kind)

Microphone (Shure SM58), XLR cables

CD Digipack/Advert

For the style of the CD cover, based on the other types of covers analysed, this is going to be a relatively simple close up shot of a guitar and school stencil equipment. This is because rather than just attracting the audience with the albums, bands would usually like to use simple art, providing that they would rather have the audience focus on the music than anything else. This is simple but gets the message across very easily. The back cover would be relatively like the advertisement. The advert would consist of band members, with a plan to attract audience by utilizing a little activity of spot the difference. Unlike the album cover, it generally needs to have more of an attraction utilizing many features than album covers since its an advertisment, its designed to attract attention.

Narrative theory

The music video basis is simply the day life of what appears to be a ‘normal’ school life between teenagers.

Based on Labov’s theory, only a sufficient amount is applied to the music video. The crisis is never really solved to dénouement, as the situation it is applied to more like gets dragged on.

This starts off by having an unknown figure, close up of the instruments and equipment, setting up in the recoding studio, tuning up the guitar and soon as he hits to record, alarm clocks set off in various places. Facial expressions are close up, providing that each shots are set to the rhythm to the music. This is the equilibrium of the storyline. Each shot in relation set to the music would show the build up to the crisis, utilizing many effects such as fast jump cuts, sometimes with the use of speed up effect. As the sloppy travel to the school is set, inside the school is then the start of crisis. The first development would be when the students first go in the classroom with an explosive opening, at the same time on the upbeat of the music. All sorts of lunatic activity happen, developing the crisis cycle of Labov’s theory. In the end, there was never really a dénouement to the cycle, it is merely just a build up of crisis, as the video ends with just another day to be expected just like this one.

Planning - Storyboard

These are the storyboard I designed for a basic idea of how the music video should roughly look:

Planning - Mise-en-scene

One of the more dominant features of the music video is the guitar, not just the performance but the style and make of the guitar. This link is a website of the guitars used by the lead player of Van Halen.

As you can see, the large variety of the guitars used has a specific shape and colour to show the style during back then. Then, going in to more modern styles is a new shape as Eddie Van Halen started endorsing new guitars.

I am using the mise-en-scene style in a more modern way, including the clothing styles, equipment and scene of shooting.

Planning - Outline

I chose to do Van Halen song Hot for Teacher.
This song has a relatively fast tempo, which will enable me to utilize fast jump cuts lasting at most 4 seconds. To enhance the fast paced nature of the song, there will be effects utilized on the shots, depending on the situation. The lyrics are suggesting about having an attraction to a teacher, although I am not utilizing the lyrics for use on the music video, the only relation from the lyrics is that this will be school themed.

Oh yeah!

T-T-teacher stop that screamin'
Teacher don't you see?
Don't wanna be no uptown fool
Maybe I should go to hell
But I am doing well
Teacher needs to see me after school

I think of all the education that I've missed
But then my homework was never quite like this!

Ow! Got it bad,
Got it bad,
Got it bad,
I'm hot for teacher!
I've got it bad, so bad
I'm hot for teacher!

Uh!

Ooo-oo-ooo

I heard about your lessons
but lessons are so cold
I didn't know about this school
Little girl from Cherry Lawn
How can you be so bold?
How did you know that golden rule?

I think of all the education that I've missed
But then my homework was never quite like this!

Whoa! Got it bad,
Got it bad,
Got it bad,
I'm hot for teacher!
I've got it bad, so bad
I'm hot for teacher!

Whoa!
(Guitar Solo)

Ooh-yeah!

I've got it bad,
Got it bad,
Got it bad,
I'm hot for teacher!

Whoa!
Oh! Ooh, yes I'm hot
Wow!

Whoa!
Oh! Ooh, yes I'm hot
Wow!

Oh my God!
Woo!

My music video would last about 2:30 minutes, as the original song length is 4:00. Usually music videos cut the length of the song shorter so that audience wouldn't want to see it drag on, although there can be long music videos, those are tend to be narrative based.

The concept used for the music video is how school life is not always to be expected, with the video following enthusiastic students to see what activities are happening. Together the type of music video would be abstract, and performance based on the hard rock genre.

A storyboard will be planned out so the basic outline of how the music video goes will provide me with many ideas to bring forward if I decided to change something.

As with many of the music videos listen here I will include some of the shots of performance playing at suitable places to reflect back on the genre of hard rock talent.

Different areas such as the road heading up to school, the main school building and the subject houses will feature into the music video. Other detail such as bedroom and classroom will be featured as well.

The style of the video would suit the modern side of society, without using any means of clothing style from the 80's, just the casual clothes of the students.

Van Halen - Non-album Website analysis

This is a intro of the website that shows up when you view the website, which appears to be some form of advertisent. The image shown had an appearance of an album cover, showing the member names along with their respective instruments. The lighting used on the photographs appear be in a perfoming stage lights and have a sharp, gritty effect. This brings out the detail of the photos clearly of the instruments.

Van Halen - Textual analysis of magazine advertisement product

Guitar hero has a product featuring specifically Van Halen. The artwork features the same artwork of the guitarists signature guitar. It also features a guitar plectrum bearing an Van Halen logo, as the product implies an emphasise on the instrument. The colours used, red, black and white, are colours that can be used to signifiy masculine style which typically is showing that this product may be intending to aim at a male audience.

Questionnaire/Analysis- Market Research

1. What is your age?


2. Your Gender?


3. What is your favourite genre(s) and why?


4. Do you watch music videos?


5. In response to question 3, what is your purpose to watch music videos?


6. Do you pay attention to detail i.e. background, clothing style, performance playing?


7. What are your interests/hobbies?


8. What are your favourite music videos? Performance, Abstract, Narrative


9. Have you ever downloaded music videos for your own viewing time?


10. How do you view the music videos? Music Channels, Internet, CD/DVD


11. What is your reason for doing so?

This questionnaire is intending to find out more about the audience along with their opinions and views on music videos. I view that people with different genre taste will have different views on the type of music videos they watch.

Analysis Table

This is a table showing all of the candidates and their responses to the questionnaire. During the questionnaire, there may be some candidates who chose not to take this seriously at it seems. This sort of response can also determine the type of audience they fall into. Also, there had been responses that they name their favourite genre, but without an explanation why, so this may had been that they can’t think of a reason why it’s their favourite genre or that they forgot to write the reason. A lot of the candidate favourite genres listed have a large quantity on rock, although they had responded to simply just rock, so what type of rock music they like is not justified. There is a mixed result of candidates who had a sense of detail awareness of the music videos, so that what they see in the music videos may be relevant to their demands of the media. Each of their type of music video preference is also mixed, with no real correlation between the 3, regardless to which genre they prefer. My view is that people who like heavy music would have a preference to performance, as a reference to high energertic performance those bands usually do, although some ended up choose abstract and narrative, so my view is wrong.

Because I am doing the hard rock genre, I specifically wanted to find out what are the candidates interests in rock are. It is known that most of these people are very energetic when listening to these music, so I would try and base my video to be just as energetic.

'She is Beautiful' - Music video analysis

She is Beautiful - Andrew W.K. A fairly mainstream video, this video is a more unique style having only one person in the entire video as opposed to having multiple members, which is rare for the hard rock genre. This is more of the alternative than the classic hard rock people would know as. During the start when the music kicks in at around 0:20, high angle shots on the subject shows the isolated space around him giving the impression he is alone in the house. Also, shots getting progressively closer to the clock 12th hour as the second passes by produces the effect of getting the audience ready for what is about to happen. Alot of the transitions keep to the rhythm of the song, keeping the energy of the video along, using a mixture of close-up shots on the instruments, mid shots and wide shots, along the way. The person in the video style is messy, in which people could view this as the messy genre of hard rock.

I never knew girls existed like you But now that I do I'd really like to get to know you The girl's too young She don't need any better It's all coming back I can feel it The girl's too young She don't know any better It's all coming back I can feel it Chorus: She is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful The girl is beautiful You're giving me moves and hits from all sides And when you're hitting like that, you melt my eyes The girl's too young She don't need any better It's all coming back I can feel it The girl's too young She don't know any better It's all coming back I can feel it You know I never know you I look at your face. To tell you that I love you Don't know what to say You're everything I got you beautiful girl The only thing I live for in the whole wide world Chorus: She is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful The girl is beautiful I ain't got nothing to lose (Nothing to lose) Gonna throw it away And talk to you She looks good She looks good And it's true And it's true The girl is beautiful She is beautiful I ain't got nothing to lose (Nothing to lose) When I'm living one time And I want you She looks good She looks good And it's true And it's true The girl is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful Na na na na na na na na She is beautiful She is beautiful Na na na na na na na na The girl is beautiful She is beautiful She is beautiful Na na na na na na na na She is beautiful She is beautiful Na na na na na na na na I ain't got nothing to lose (Nothing to lose) Gonna throw it away And talk to you She looks good She looks good And it's true And it's true The girl is beautiful She is beautiful I ain't got nothing to lose (Nothing to lose) And I'll never forget When I saw you She looks good She looks good And it's true And it's true The girl is beautiful She is beautiful

The lyrics tells how the person felt when he saw a girl he immediatly falls in love with. The music video overall appears to be a man waking up then gettng ready for what appears to be a date.

'Oh Yeah' - Music video analysis and Style

Due to the music video being unable to embed by request, I had posted the link of the video for evidence.

As opposed to other music videos which are generally in 1980s, this video is of a modern hard rock band in the 2009. Even with the year gap the formula is still the same; this is mainly performance based music video. The main difference is that now with modern technology to alter clips in many ways, the use of effects on parts of the video is more frequent than older music videos. For example, alot of the scenes are in sepia tone effect, and using an effect which appears to give the video an old film clip at 2:05. The camera angle is varied, such as when the members perform on stage with the angle low for a low shot, giving the impression of being in a live performance. Plus along with the use of medium shots at eye level is and looks as they used a hand-held camera for most part. It appears that mostly the mise-en-scene of this video is mostly of inside a recording studio, jamming together in places such as the basketball court or outtakes of a photoshoot. Each shot length would go to the rhythm beat of the song. During the instrumental section at 2:10 the video becomes more abstract, various scenes of the band members doing something unrelated to performance becomes more frequent, usually at the same time.

Lyrically, the video has no relation to the lyrics, which appears to refer to a male who is begging for a female for respect.

Chickenfoot is a hard rock 'supergroup', which usually consists of already famous band members from different bands brought together. Supergroups generally do not tend to be permanent as opposed to bands, as supergroups lasts for an album or two, although with only their debut album and plans for more, its not the case for Chickenfoot. Despite the status, Lead vocalist Sammy Hagar does not agree with the term, claiming they like hanging out together and playing great music, they just happen to be in other groups.

Their self-titled debut album and only one is rather unique; a heat sensitive sleeve which reveals images against heat. When exposed to heat, images of band members appear in a 4 cross section formation with their names. The same applies to the back cover, revealing song track names with heat applied. The front cover style fully uncovered has a sepia tone look, which gives the effect of dark, yet standing out look, and also using the modern technological aspect to produce the effect.

The top band picture is Chickenfoot, formed in modern 2009. The bottom is Van Halen, formed in 1972. As you can see, the style and clothing difference is great. Van Halen's image of clothing appears to be more emphasise on glamour of masculinity, while Chickenfoot's image is more of a casual clothing. The top shows the members having a more relaxed feel which shows their attitude towards the modern society, while the bottom would seem to give a more wild look. This shows that Hard rock image through the years have been changed throughout the years to suit the modern style background that they are performing in. Most noticably, the right-most member, Michael Anthony is a former Van Halen member in both bands of the two pictures interestingly enough, as to show the style change during that time until now. The one next to him, lead vocalist Sammy Hager also a former Van Halen member, although not in bottom picture as they were both in their different eras of the band.

'Love Is Only A Feeling' - Music video analysis

The Darkness - Love is only a feeling

The English hard rock band was more mainstream that the other music videos that have been analysed. Like many of the hard rock music videos, this was performance based, which is considered unusual since this is a power ballad song, as it is generally associated to be using narrative based videos. This was filmed on top of a mesa in the Blue Mountains of Australia so on first glance this seemed to give an impression of exposing the beautiful scenery, along with the steady power ballad to give the mood of freedom. At the beginning, special effects are used to produce floating light 'fairies' and transform into the members. The shots utilized extreme long shots with the members playing in the distance for emphasise of the scenery and also how close they are playing on the edge, along with close up and medium shots and rule of thirds of one of the member; the left empty space used to show the environment at the beginning. What is also intriguing is some of the angle cuts of their instruments and focused on the top half of their body and the surrounding environment. Many angles used in this video are varied, such as using low shots to expose the sky as well as emphasise on the member peformance. Then a slow pan out from the lead member out to reveal other members and the environment out to show them peforming at the bottom of the valley. Again during the chorus the two guitarists stand back to front with the low shot camera rotating around them. During a section of a guitar lick low shots and dark lighting to produce silhouettes brings out the members performance playing to the audience attention. The guitar solo has varied shot types, for example extreme long shots showing how the subject is surrounded by nothing but rock and scenery. This would usually show loneliess and vunderability, but this is not necassarily the case. It also utilizes close shots for an extra effect on the performance.

The first flush of youth was upon you when our eyes first met
And I knew that to you and into your life I had to get
I felt light-headed at the touch of this stranger's hand
An assault my defences systematically failed to withstand

'Cos you came at a time
When the pursuit of one true love in which to fall
Was the be all and end all

Love is only a feeling
(Drifting away)
When I'm in your arms I start believing
(It's here to stay)
But love is only a feeling
Anyway

The state of elation that this unison of hearts achieved
I had seen, I had touched, I had tasted and I truly believed
That the light of my life
Would tear a hole right through each cloud that scudded by
Just to beam on you and I

Love is only a feeling
(Drifting away)
When I'm in your arms I start believing
(It's here to stay)
But love is only a feeling
Anyway, anyway

Love is only a feeling
(Drifting away)
And we've got to stop ourselves believing
(It's here to stay)
'Cos love is only a feeling
Anyway.

The lyrics tell the story of a person falling in love with a girl during the youth and the personal sensation relationship between the couple. As you can see, the music video has no relation to the lyrics.

Record Label - Warner Bros. Record

Warner Bros. Records was originally established in 1958 as the recorded music division of the American movie studio Warner Bros. Pictures. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a convoluted series of corporate mergers and acquisitions from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a struggling minor player in the industry to become one of the top recording labels in the world.
In 2003 these music assets were divested by their then owner Time Warner and purchased by a private equity group. This independent company currently trades as the Warner Music Group (WMG), of which Warner Bros. Records is still an active label. WMG is currently the third-largest of the four major international music conglomerates and the world's only publicly traded major music company. The group's extensive publishing assets, which include over one million song copyrights by more than 65,000 songwriters, currently make it the world's largest music publisher.

'Perfect Strangers' - Music video analysis

This is Deep Purple's song 'Perfect Strangers'

The music video interestingly enough is not a performance based song or few scenes with performance elements in, as opposed to other Hard rock music videos. Since the song is a steady beat with no fast tempo involved, the transitions and editing goes with the song with no flashy shots. There are however, effects utilized during a part where band members with close up shots on their faces have a graphical effect. This is used to emphasise their facial expressions on how they are enjoying what they are doing during their band rehearsal/recording an album.

These are the lyrics to the song:

Can you remember remember my name
As I flow through your life
A thousand oceans I have flown
And cold spirits of ice
All my life
I am the echo of your past

I am returning the echo of a point in time
Distant faces shine
A thousan warriors I have known
And laughing as the spirits appear
All your life
Shadows of another day

And if you hear me talking on the wind
You've got to understand
We must remain
Perfect Strangers

I know I must remain inside this silent
well of sorrow

A strand of silver hanging through the sky
Touching more than you see
The voice of ages in your mind
Is aching with the dead of the night
Precious life (your tears are lost in falling rain)

And if you hear me talking on the wind
You've got to understand
We must remain
Perfect Strangers

This lyrics appears to tells the story of the people whos friends parted ways and they have a reunion. The first moments they had in the situation could be described as meeting up with strangers as though they never met. After some time together they now feel the emotion of being together for a long time, aka 'Perfect Strangers'.

Among their influences as a band, they label bands such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones which in turn are bands that help grew to shape the hard rock genre.The album, 'Perfect Strangers' is very simple;

1) Deep Purple title. Simple white and small font.

2) Perfect Strangers album name. The use of rule of thirds used as audience naturally look to bottom right, although a red colour considered to be dark colour in contrast to colours like blue and white.

3)Symbol of album. Holds the most attention of the cover itself in a bright blue mettalic colour with the shine that stands out against the black background.

4) A black background, keeps the user attention on the symbol as black usually signifies emptiness.

As compared to other albums with more abstract art, this really stands out against albums that are abstract, as the design is simple, which catches the attention of audience since they expect something more of the design compared to other albums.

The back cover is similar;

1)Track listing in white. Nothing fancy to emphasise the simplistic design.

2)Picture of the members with high contrast in blue. Same colour as the logo.

3)Deep Purple on the side.

4)Perfect Strangers both the band title and album name are in their respective colour in relation to the front cover.

5) Record label using rule of thirds.

'Paradise City' - Music video analysis

Paradise city is a song by Hard rock band Guns n’ roses.

Half of the music video was filmed at Giants Stadium in New Jersey while Guns N' Roses were on tour with Aerosmith, midway through the video, they are seen boarding the Concorde jet so they could make an appearance in England, and return as quickly as possible back to the USA to continue touring with one of their major influences. The concert in England is the Monsters of Rock event at Donington Park. The reason for this is because of some deaths that took place while Guns N' Roses were performing. As a result, they thought the footage taken at the concert would be good music video footage and a proper show of respect to those who died at the concert.

In the music video, about 4 minutes into the video, Axl Rose is seen sporting a World War II Nazi officer cap and a stage pass which appears to bear the SS eagle. Axl opens the pass, shows off the SS eagle, closes it again and gives a meaningful look to the camera. Most of the video was shot in black-and-white. The video angle is generally shot at eye level, generally the audience perspective, and the beginning of the music video has long shots for emphasise on the stage performance and size of the gig. When the downbeat kicks in and everyone rocks out, shots showing the band members are maintained throughout, typically using jump-cuts with short length between each transition to emphasise the tempo of the rhythm so something alot such as a big performance and the energy of the gig is happening in one go. Most notably, the music video is over 6 minutes, longer than generally around 3 minutes.

Van Halen Discography

This is a collage of the album cover of Van Halen’s discography. Some of them have images of the band members. This is not a display of singles of the band, which is different. Some of the covers show members of their band, each with their respective instruments and others with a more abstract art; the top middle 'Diver down' is just the most simple album cover. This possibly is a reference to the art work done on the guitar, with a similar colour scheme. The bottom right may raise concerns to the content with the image but its one of the better known albums of Van Halen discography. The colour ranges from bright to dark, wiht band shots having black and white along with a contrasting background to go with the picture.

Typically, they label bands especially other hard rock groups, as Deep Purple, AC/DC, and Aerosmith. Other older blues-rock artists, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck influences can be heard through their songs, especially the technically demanding guitar solos. It seems that bands are influenced by other similar artists of the same genre.

Hard Rock

Hard rock is a genre of rock music which is heard as loud and aggressive rock and not to be confused with heavy metal. Guitars are the most dominant instrument in this genre, often with the usage of distortion with big rhythms and usually accompanied a guitar solo.

In the mid 1960s, rock and roll evolved to the point where louder amps, heavy guitar riffs took over the scene. The 1970s era has developed hard rock into one of the most popular music, with bands such as Aerosmith, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC. The music reached its commercial break during the 1980s as Guns n’ roses, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi further increasing its success. Hard rock is usually known for its emphasise on masculinity, as men usually consumed the product in a way that looking at the audience you would usually see white, working class men.

'Jump' - Music video analysis

Van Halen

Hard rock / Glam Metal

‘Jump’ is Van Halen first single from the album 1984. The concept for this music video is just based on a rock concert with no real story behind the video. This song is probably one of the most known songs from the Van Halen discography known for its pop-synth based melody line driving the song along. Interestingly enough, this song also hides the fact that despite the success of this song, Van Halen is better known for producing music in the Hard Rock/Metal genre.

The concept for this music video is just based on a rock concert with no real story behind the video. This music video focuses on the playing style of the genre of the band in which the technical side of the music is emphasised by camera shot close ups onto the band members instrument playing.

These are the lyrics for the song:

I get up, and nothing gets me down.

I like to jump, and then go round and round

And I know, just how it feels.

You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real

Oh can't you see me standing here,

I'm getting ready for a soccer scene I ain't the worst that you've seen.

Oh can't you see what I mean?

Might as well jump. Jump!

Might as well jump.

Go ahead, jump. Jump!

Go ahead, jump.

Hey you! Who said that?

Baby how you been?

You say you don't know, you won't know

until you begin.

Well can't you see me standing here,

I'm getting ready for a soccer scene

I ain't the worst that you've seen.

Oh can't you see what I mean?

Might as well jump. Jump!

Go ahead, jump.

Might as well jump. Jump!

Go ahead, jump. Jump!

Lyric wise actually has no relation to the video whatsoever; the song is based on when a person attempts suicide by jumping of a building. This makes a rather depressing theme but is taken away from the cheesy pop melody of the song, along with the music video having no references to suicide.

Choice Preposal

This project I chose to do a promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video including with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;


• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);


• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

I chose to do the last two options and focus on doing genre on Hard Rock, with the main band for this topic of Van Halen, along with similar bands. I'm doing one of the songs off their discography.