Picth Video

http://vimeo.com/50151285

This is the video of our pitch (the power point presentation, images and stills that I uploaded the other day) where we identified the basic conventions of our genre (alternative rock) and what our plans are for the music video. It's pretty straight forward, we've deconstructed the themes from not only the videos but also the music itself, we've found what conventions look generally good in terms of:
-costume
  - often black or other band related to resemble/relate more to the teenage target audience who will also invest other areas of interest into other band, or more typically darker or simpler methods of clothing e.g. blue jeans and a black t-shirt to identify more with their audience

-shot styles
 - one really important one that we didn't get to mention in the video was the use of motion, mostly slow (though Linkin Park also sped up their pieces) is used to example something further e.g. Jimmy Eat World's The Middle used slow motion a lot to pick out typical themes such as party (when the woman was jumping into the pool or the general pan/track shots of the party to bring emphasis to the people/individuals/ style of the party), to example sex further (though a little lower than that, when the couple are in the fridge) or even alchol (which in some cases can be considered as a drug)

-area
 - we did identify this in the pitch but it's kind of important to note out why urban is the big thing in the altenrative rock genre. It's typically urban to highlight the themes of the genre further, though it's also their because it brings out another life to that urban area, like the black sheep in a city really and more so, most of the audience/fan members do typically live in urban areas

-the close ups of instruements / band members
 - this is more expected from the audience that it's become a convention of its own, (close up of band members of singers are a generally conventional thing anyway in music videos) but the close ups of instruments is the larger convention in alternative rock, it's expected and it signifys to their audiences the intensity of the music that they are playing to them, that it's different and you can not only hear that but see it - which is exactly what the audience wants

and others that we explained in the pitch itself. Whilst the blog and power point itself explained some of the conventions, ideas and relation to audiences, it's better to also see the thought process and preperation to pitching the whole idea itself and how we're prepared to do this.

In terms of the music video, at the moment, me, Reece and Sean are sitting comfortably on All The Small Things by Blink 182. We have a basic idea of a storyboard due to the videos that we have deconstructed and the conventional themes of the genre and how we are going to relate to our audience. What we need to do at the moment is decide how we're going to approach it - we should do a treatment (and we probably will) but I think the next important stage is to storyboard / produce a synopsis of the idea. However, it would be better to break all of this down in total. I will also deconstruct a video to see how much the video is narrative compared to live perfomrance.

Sum 41 - Underclass Hero

This is the CD cover / digi pack for Sum 41's Underclass Hero, which is a more recent album (around 2008-2010). Sum 41 are indeed an alternative rock band, but they're (sometimes) also leaning towards a punk sort of style (I guess like Cake, the band can domain within that typical genre but lean towards a ''mini appeal''); nonetheless it's alternative rock. How can we tell? The genre is pretty easy to identify through CD/digi pack, the package uses a stark contrast of white to grey (occasionally black, as ranging through the colours tones) is pretty much the same as the stark alternative contrast of black and white.
The CD cover itself is extreamly dark yet flamboyint - it has splashes of pink (a very fenimin though attractive lust of colour in the dark tones) to create not only that contrast, but that eye catching appeal too. Typically the CD screams alternative rock, if only in a slightly darker tone; the photography on the front is almost abstract which is typically conventional of the genre, more so its of a band member - establishing iconography - to scream to their audience 'we're Sum 41 here!' though it's got the visual conventions of alternative rock (colour contrasts, use of colour, colour tone, illustration, photography, a sense of isolation and even drugs) to draw in those fan membes of the alternative rock audience. In a hypothetical sense (although any person who's into alternative rock would have heard them) that a guy who likes alternative rock has never heard of Sum 41, they walk into a store and see this out of place somewhere away from the normal set up of genre's, they'll know it belongs to alternative rock because of its appealing visuals, its themes of isolation, drug use and stark colour choice / contrast that it has that rock sorta sense about it.

The actual CD itself continues those conventions over, if only a little more eye popping when you open the case - the bright pink with black/white/grey drawings on them, atorns the eye in such away that you're almost instructed to pop the CD out and listen to it; it's like a little piece of art in contrast to everything else.

So, the digi pack. In terms of creativity (and what we're thinking of doing on a similar level) is a really good piece. Yes, it screams alternative rock, but it's also a little bit different. Sure, it's got those conventional alternative rock genre colours running through, but it's also the style of font and text orientation that's pretty cool, and in some ways, distorted to represent the music it beholds. If you were to open this up, you'd get an immediate sense that this digi pack belongs to an alterantive rock CD because it's so unique. The font is pretty cool, the scrattcy-kind-of doodles it has to it scream alternative rock and incooperates that theme of 'rebelion' that's found within lyrics, videos etc.
The text orientation is an interesting one; so far, from what I've looked at, in a digi pack the text is pretty much straight forward, you can read it off the page by flipping between them, but when you open this up you have to turn it each and every which way to read the lyrics, which is interesting because I guess it makes the audience interact with the pack more and think of what they're reading / doing more. Again (though going out on a limb here) I'd say that the text orentation is symbolic of the rebellious and isolated themes that are found within this genre of music - something of which can be found in the audience type e.g. teenagers. On that note, I guess it's important to note themes; whilst they're pretty conventional and found easily within the genre of music, in the same sense, I haven't really looked at any album covers / digi packs that quite do this as Sum 41 do - yet they obviously have a link with their audience through lyrics and video as much as any other alternative rock band. In some ways, the conventionaly selling point, the eye catching point to the genre/audience of this genre is the unique and individualism that comes from each band, hardly any are a like, and they please all of their fans in different ways. Sum 41 do it because they really nail down those themes of isolation and often enough drugs, whilst Linkin Park strive towards rebelliation and again isolation, 30 Seconds to Mars look at a range of everything as they tie up little knots of different themes together to produce something positive e.g. rebellion, isolation, freedom and revolution - whilst Cake really look at why the world's wrong through their funky style of isolation and Jimmy Eat World do a little bit of everything because they target the teenage audience of this genre (which is, in reality, most of this genre audience) through the isolation, drugs, parties, revolution, rebelliation, they look at all of them and they seem to hit it off with their audience because they look, they identify with lots of different people. When all of this is incooperated into their videos and albums, there is sense that they can target their audiences as though through personal methods of already contacting them before; all they have to do is put out of the conventions of obvious visuals, for albums and digi packs, photography, art, illustration, colour coordination and the genreal over-all look and appeal of the piece.

On that note, Sum 41 do it really well here - they identify their themes. Isolation is an interesting one because they stractch out peoples faces and block out their eyes (albeit, insanely creepy, though in some respect, relationable) whilst they look at drugs (alchol) and even images of goverment to symbolse that rebelious tone to it. What's more interesting is that they do it through illustrative visuals (or photoshopped/distorted/abstract images) to get their point across or to relate (in some ways, just as the video will do) with the connotations of the actual lyrics of the songs themselves, bringing forth that fantasy element of the whole thing.
That rebelious theme continues though, the pictures of 'mom' and 'dad' in here (in 50-60's style) firstly show cases how teenages of their target audience may have with their perental relationships, it's all about isolation and rebellation, so parents is pretty much where it starts. Though what else is kind of interesting also is the style of the images, like I said, 60's kind of feel which would be the time in which rock'n'roll came into swing and founded a huge sense of rebelation in terms of the music produced, the change in culture and the actual meaning of music sometimes. In some ways, that's what Sum 41 are doing right here, right now.
They're just finding it increadiably easy to sell it to their audiences because of what it is; it does what it says on the label effectively because of the conventions it show cases, it's obvious that it's alternative rock and it is. Again, the visual images, the illustration, the photoraphy, the contrasts in colour and that flare of pink really tie together nicely to pick up on those conventions of the genre.

Linkin Park - Meteora

This is Linkin Park Meteora.

Again, we get that sense of artist integrity, the band's still much black on white, featuring a page at the pack with extreme close up of their faces, you get a sense of the process they took to get the stage, the design of their album - the cants and spray painting are indeed the CD's cover, so it's in cooperated nicely. I love the photography and art because again you feel like you're getting your worth, your not dissapointed, and it continues that sense of photography and art

Linkin Park - Reanimation

This is Linkin Park's Reanimation. Again, this still clases as alternative rock, although it's batting abit out of the genre. It's still a cool/okay album, but I'm more interested in looking at the CD covers / digi packs of Linkin Park, because I think they have a real sense of artist ingegrity in them. Like A Thousand Suns, this CD cover is a 3 part fold out one, though there's only one CD - and that CD is insanely cool. It's bright orange with the solider on it, even with the old 'LINKIN PARK' logo - so over the albums, you get the sense of time that they change. Although this ones a bit bleaker, its cool still as it has that black / white contrast and has the orginal solider from their first album Hybrid Theory.  There's a lot of development work within it, and not much is different, but it has a similiar layout to meteora in terms of presenting sons and information. This is really cool to look at as you get the sense of the phase that they were in from the kinda icon 'spray can' area of their work.

Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

This is Linkin Park's album Minutes to Midnight. Whilst I've already talked about the album cover, the inside is worht a look at for the digi pack. Again, we have that sense of artist integrity, this one is more based on photography, though there's a bit of art in that too, Bleed it Out particularly has a piece of art right next to it. This ones really weird because you get a really disorted sense and you don't know quite what's going on, but there's still that idea of a project going on. This one is slightly more based on the the black and white contrast though their are some insanely colourful, attractive colours - like A Thousand Suns the text is all white again and in the middle page of the digi pack there's a picture (from the CD cover photo shoot) of the band.