My group was given the alternative genre (with a couple of alt. rock songs). We decided on the song "Trouble". All of us knew the song already and felt as though we could make a good storytelling video out of it. It took us some time to decide the name and identity of our group, but, since it was the alternative genre, we thought that our band should be more cryptic, "edgy", but one that also connects with the fans. And thus we created:
For our case studies, we named some artists that we already knew from the alternative genre. They included twenty one pilots, Panic!At the Disco, and Kaleo. From there we found two labels: Elektra Records and Fueled By Ramen LLC. Both are owned by Warner Music, though Elektra is more of an independent subsidiary. Elektra also has an interesting history, as it used to be the record label that was a trendsetter, signing rock bands and other alternative artists before the music became popular. Now, that title belongs to Fueled By Ramen, who has signed up-and-coming artists in the alternative genre and helped them become some of the more well-known bands in the genre today. We also found a lot on the marketing and distribution plans of each artist, which would help us decide ours. The most major marketing tactic employed was "word-of-mouth" marketing on social media, so we decided to use that for our band.
Before even working on the presentation, we had to come up with a plan for our music video. I went into greater detail on that brainstorming process in my last blog post, but the basic synopsis is as follows: we thought that the song would be great against a Western theme (some typical Western stings within the song), we also thought the song would go well against a revenge plot. The storyboard was a group effort, with me doing some of the stand-off scenes at the end. I'll discuss the shots and the actual filming process more towards the end, as we had to create the social media sites and work on the actual presentation after we had our storyboard done.
Ryan did the website for our band. She included tour dates and made it look really professional. We also created an Instagram account for our band as well as merchandise (made by Nicole). We even have links to our Instagram account on the website and sell our merchandise there.
Link for the website: https://zeroeffect.godaddysites.com/
Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/zeroeffectbandofficial/
Some of our merchandise:
(We made sure to make vinyls to sell on our website and after concerts to add that "alternative rock" flavor to our band)
We had to choose our target audience, and decided to go with teenagers to people in their late 20s and early 30s because of the popularity of bands such as twenty one pilots among that age group. We also took a lot of their marketing trends and made them ours. Our mail campaign resembles that of Panic!At the Disco and so does our social media presence. We also wanted to distribute music to as many streaming services as possible, so we decided to go with Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, among others. YouTube is also a great tool to distribute and market our music. Since our band started out on YouTube, we make sure to post our music videos for our newly released songs to there first before the streaming services (also works great for marketing).
We also made sure to include how our band will go about performing. Since we are smaller, we would have pop-up concerts at smaller venues. Our plan to expand our audience is to perform at many music festivals such as Bonnaroo. Bonnaroo is especially popular with our target audience, and many smaller alternative artists play there. We also have a plan to play as an opener for a larger band, such as what Kaleo did with The Rolling Stones. Once we listed off our major selling points, we were mostly done with the presentation. All we had left to do was the actual creation of the music video.
The filming was all done in one day. We had to gather some props to make the video look Western, including actual boots, bandanas, and some nerf guns. We had to change some of our shot ideas in order to create smoother transitioning or because of a needed change in location (some spots were a little too bright or shady). The overall filming process was fun, some shots were tedious and needed multiple reshoots, but we finished in time for me to edit. Some of my favorites to film were the classic low angle boot shot, the close-ups of the faces, and the quick change in the depth of field in the over-the-shoulder shot.
The editing process was not challenging, exactly, but required some effort organizing the clips and matching them to spots within the song. I started on the Western shots first during the revenge fantasy, as I was able to put the classic Western color palette onto my editing program. This is the final edit of the music video (sound edited by Ryan):
No comments:
Post a Comment