The purpose of a Music promo, digipak and magazine advert is to sell the music and band to mass population. Our task was to produce a music promo, digipak and advert for an unsigned band. Our unsigned band was ‘The Nites’ an indie band from London made up of two people.
example of music promo:
The music video must have clear shots of the band to advertise them and allow people to see what the band is about. Shots in a video must be varied and show the band from all angles, this is important in selling the band to masses, if you watch a boring music video you are more likely not to buy any records made by that particular band. this example of audioslave 'Cochise' shows the band well (in different shots) this promo also is very lively and creates a buzz and excitement when you watch it.
example of digipak:
A digipak is essentially where you store the CD. It can either be for an album release with up to 12 songs or single release with 4 songs. We have chosen a single release for our digipak. Digipak’s can vary from small (3panel) like the one to the left or large with 5 panels, these are usually used for album releases. A digipak will consist of a biography of the band, a short piece of information about the band on one panel and the CD in the middle and on another panel pictures of the band will be used. Digipaks can be collectors items as they are rare and less frequently made than normal CD releases.
Example of magazine advert:
Most music promos will use a 50/50 split of narrative and performance to show a story line around the song being played and also the performance side of the promo will show the band and the qualities they have to the audience watching the music promo. Much of the camera work in a promo is up close to the band so you can see clearly who they are. The why the camera work and lighting is done must fit the song itself, for example if the song is fast past and performed by a heavy metal band the music video with lots of dark scenes with fast paced shots to match the song and genre of the band E.g. slipknot, mumford and sons.
Examples of close up/lighting in a music promo:
The close up brings a sense of a personal level in the music promo and also allows you to establish whether you like the band or not as you can see clearly their image and style. this is vital to draw an audience in and keep them hooked on the music and keep them buying records. The lighting from behind highlights the performer well and draws all attention to her.
Slipknot is a heavy metal/scream band consisting of 8 members, as you can see their costumes fit the genre of music they play. Dark costumes and dark odd looking masks each individual to every band member. Their music videos are dark, fast paced with dark lighting and fast paced shots to give the feel of chaos and destruction.
On the other hand Mumford and sons are completely the opposite of Slipknot. They are a modern folk band with four members all dressed again to match their genre of fold, wearing waste coats, shirts and brogues. The lighting is soft and enough to light them so the audience is able to see them. The shots are slow and only quicken when the music quickens but generally the shots are quirky and not of the norm which Mumford and sons do well.
Promos that have influenced our work are Mumford and sons – little lion man. The way they look and the way they act on stage and in their videos really spark most or all of our ideas for our promo. In the shot above we used the fairy lights and stage idea which is simple but looks good with the right genre and song choice. We also used narrative to cut up the performance a bit. We found a stage picture and wanted our own stage to look like this for our promo:
We used the same lighting techniques in our video to create at some points a silhouette. This shot also gave us the idea to use the stool on stage for the guitarist to shit down on. This gives the effect that the performance on stage is to a live audience and the playing of the guitar and singing is all live.
Locations vary from genre to genre. You wouldn’t see a Slipknot video in a indie setting, or Mumford and Sons in a run down house with broken glass and farm animals running havoc. Four our location and on a genre which was indie folk we chose a stage setting like in the photo above. For our location we chose the Stamford arts centre’s ball room we transformed their stage by pulling the red curtain across and used fairy lights to make it look like a Mumford and sons video. Some of the effects we used were the silhouette where we used the stage lighting and a close up shot so our heads would block the light. This created the silhouette and a professional looking shot which looked great on camera.
This is stamford art centre's ballroom, this is were we filmed our promo. we chose this location is it offered a very large room and a stage which we could play around with to achieve our required affect.
We took inspiration from Bittersweet Symphony performed by 'The Verve' were the lead singer is walking down the street, we put our own twist on the action and had the lead singer (Ryan Fleming) and actor (Hannah Phillips) walking down a busy street in stamford.
This a band called 'the King blues' they are an indie band from the southwest. We used them also as inspiration by taking their indie look and using it in our video. The indie look and clothes suit the genre of our music we chose so overall the effectiveness of the clothes worked well in creating a good indie look.
As you can see for our location we had many similarities to the Mumford and son video:
- The fairy lights
- Back of the stage lit to draw emphasis of the performers
- Band members playing instruments
- Clothing as well is very indie and casual like the members from Mumford and sons.
- Also the style of music we chose fits the typical themes you would normally find in a Mumford and son video.
We also chose Stamford because it looks more presentable on screen to a viewer as it looks old and you would normally think of that style of town to play acoustic music in as it fits our genre of music.
Mainly the props we used were the guitar, a stool, fairy lights and the red curtain/drape. We wanted to use simple props as this again fitted more to the style of music we chose for our promo, also the song is a simple song and throwing loads of props in shot will over complicate the shots and ruin the song overall. It would been ruined because the song doesn’t need many props as the lyrics are trying to tell a story so its more important to us to try and keep it as simple as possible.
We also used narrative in our video, this was to break down the performance in the promo so audience dont lose interest when watching. Also most music videos nowadays have some from of narrative in them, it is rare to see any video with all performance focused on the singer. The narrative allows the lyrics to tell the story and brings the song into a new light and gives the song more meaning as you can see the lyrics visually being played out on screen.
Here is an exmple of both narrative on the right and performance on the left.
Here are some deconstructed shots in our music promo:
In this shot we wanted a silhouette to be formed as the light is behind creating an effect of unknown of who this person is. Also silhouettes stray away from the normal shots in a music promo give a different dimension to what would be normally standard/boring shot.
This shot was edited on Final cut express. We imposed Hannah’s face over me (Jacob Ede) to create a dual layer effect. This effect will let you watch both performance and narrative on top of each other. This fits the notion of the lyrics, the lyrics mean a memory so the layered effect makes it look like a memory on screen.
This shot again was edited on final cut express. This shot is like Ryan Fleming (left) is singing to Hannah Phillips (right). We used this again like a memory and the lyrics at this particular point of the song match what’s going on, on screen.
We followed Steve archer’s theory where there is a strong relationship between the narrative and performance. We follow the convention that the band will be in the video as the performance and action between characters as the narrative unfolds in the music promo.
What influenced our digipak we found was when we were shooting the photos for the album saw the wall behind us looked and worked well so we decided to go with that theme throughout our digipak. We think this worked well as it created an urban and indie look. The screen shot is of our front cover for our digipak we chose to keep it simple so people are aware of the band name 'The Nites' and keeps the focus on Me (Jacob Ede) and Ryan Fleming.
Above is my magazone poster, I took inspiration from a 'Florence and the machine' advert i saw in a music magazine (Q) where I used the layout they used to advertise all the major key areas such as:
Website
date of when the song/album can be bought
how and where it can be bought
photo of band
quotes from major players in the music industry like Kerrange and Q magazine
also placed a virgin records label to show that they are signed by a major label showing that they are a very talented band.
the magazine advert will allow more people to see the band and raise awareness of the band further as people will be aware of when the music promo will be released, when the album is out and the website will give them a more personal insight into the band.
