Unsigned Artist - Gabrielle Aplin

Having done some research into different genres and choosing to focus on the indie folk genre, I decided to look into artists within that genre. An artist that I've looked into is Gabrielle Aplin, as she's unsigned, belongs to the folk indie genre and I often enjoy listening to her music.

I emailed Gabrielle's management asking for permission to use her songs, and having gained permission I'm going to look further into which of the songs I wish to use, along with style of music video, digipak, magazine adverts and video ideas.

Digipak Artwork

I researched different artists album artwork & digipaks to give me an insight into what type of designs are used and how they have used images, colours, shot distance, framing etc. 

Mumford & Sons Album Cover
This album cover shows an ELS of a building/shop with the band members in the window, whilst the long shot detracts attention away from the image of the band, the use of colour allows the members to be seen more clearly. The use of pale greens, creams etc. create a quite natural atmosphere, connoting the style of the music, as it's fairly calm. The image of the band is slightly off centre, meaning that the audiences attention is diverted to the doorway and flat. The text of 'Mumford & Sons' is quite plain and traditional, displaying the bands name is a larger and italic font, with the album name in a smaller and non-italic style; this denotes the importance of the bands name over the album name, suggesting the audience may be drawn to the album as a result of the clear font style.

Bon Iver Album Cover
This album cover is more simplistic than the Mumford & Sons album cover, as there is only one image, which is almost fully covered up. The image of a tree connotes a quite dark and depressing feel to the album, whilst the covering up further connotes this atmosphere. The use of dark colours reiterates the differences between this album cover and the Mumford & Sons album, whilst also highlighting the difference in their style of music, as Bon Iver aren't as upbeat and cheerful. By positioning the image of the tree to the right of the album cover, the audience is attracted to the text on the top left. Similar to Mumford & Sons, the bands name is written in a larger and quite traditional font. The text album name is written in a hand-written and italic style, connoting that the album is quite personal.

Digipak Research

To aid my understanding of the reasons for creating digipaks & album artwork in certain ways, I read through the OCR AS media studies textbook. As I didn't do GCSE media, I was unsure of how to approach analysing media texts, so the textbook provided me with information on analysing print texts

Target Audience Feedback

Written answers:

Question 4

• Some artists often produce interesting videos (3 people)
• The story of the lyrics is moving (5 people)

Question 7

• Song - I listen to music while I'm doing something or if I'm out so I don't have time to watch the videos
• Videos - Some music videos are really interesting and engaging
• Videos - I enjoy watching videos from my favourite artists
• Song - Sometimes I feel that the video can ruin the music 

Question 8

Performance

• Enjoy watching the artist perform
• It seems more natural

Narrative

• It makes the lyrics of the song more meaningful
• The narrative videos are often moving
• Narrative videos make the artist seem more individual and emotional
• The lyrics are the most importance part of a song, so with a video as an audience we can see the importance visually 

Concept

• Always different to other videos, something new each time
• Much more interesting than performance and narrative based videos
• The artist seems more interesting so they make me want to watch more of their videos

Great Lake Swimmers - Pulling On A Line

• Establishing ELS of setting - nature 
• Dark lighting - shadows connote theme of darkness
• Lighting - lamps, artificial lighting connotes a more modern take and connotes peacefulness
• Smokey effect
• CU of males face - interrupts action, connotes the lack of structure throughout the video
• Characters - iconically connote the fairytale-like theme and a more traditional style of clothing connotes the bands individuality
• Branches, trees, sky - aspect of nature 
• Female dancing - connotes freedom
• MS of older male - facial expression connotes sadness
• Shots of artist playing guitar from various distances, allows bands image to be seen 
• Turning off of lamps - connotes ending & the control/effect lighting has 
• Ends with males face pixellated - connotes fairytale/non-realistic style of the video

Indie Folk Music

What is Indie Folk? :
Indie folk (also occasionally called lo-fi indie) is characterized by a slew of up-and-coming bands who pull influence from traditional and contemporary folk music, classic country, and indie rock. Many of them cite influences from Bob Dylan to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Radiohead. Many indie folk bands are quite large and their songs tend to be thick on complicated instrumentation, lyricism, and multi-voiced harmonies. They're basically the bands who make a new direction of contemporary folk music palatable to indie rock audiences.
Indie Folk Artists:

Probably the most well-known indie folk band on the scene these days is the Decemberists, who started on an indie label but are now signed with Capitol Records. They pull largely from the story-song tradition, marrying it with sonic attributes that could be considered both folk and indie rock. Other great indie folk artists include the Fleet Foxes, Cave Singers, Great Lake Swimmers, Blind Pilot, Loch Lomond, Bon Iver, and Or, the Whale.
Indie Folk Instruments of Choice:

Indie folk bands have no standard setup. They're mostly inclined to play whatever instrument makes sense in a song, whether it's trumpet or clarinet, African hand drums, accordion, banjo, or electric guitar and computerized drum tracks. Most of the bands, however, are built around a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar.

http://folkmusic.about.com/od/folkmusic101/p/IndieFolk.htm

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

I chose to analyse this video as it's animated, unlike the others videos which I've looked at meaning that I could gain more knowledge of the different styles used for indie folk music.

• Dim lighting - connotes tranquility and eeriness of song
• MS of characters - allows animation of characters to be iconically connoted
• Turning of wheel - fairytale-like, connotes that the video revolves around a theme of time
• Speeding up of time - day to night, again the theme of time is connoted
• Natural scenery - connotes the fairytale style
• Lighting changes with time of day
• Season changes
• Often MS & LS throughout - variation of characters clearly visible
• Shots centralised - characters are always the centre of the action
• Fairly slow paced editing - slow pace of the song 
• Mainly same setting - repetition throughout
• Speeding up of time - theme of ageing
• Lighting dims with death of flowers etc. - connotes death, ending of time
• Fade at the end - tranquility
• Little character interaction - connoting calmness & individuality 

Bon Iver - Calgary

• Dark lighting connoting the darkness of the song
• Opens with ELS of bed in water, connotes fairytale style and calmness
• Fade - connotes tranquility 
• Dim lighting- connotes both darkness and peacefulness 
• Close up of females limbs - connotes romance and power of human body
• Petals - natural object, connoting the style of the band and song
• Change of setting with smoke effect - fairytale style
• Fairytale theme created - mud & ladder
• Characters wearing same clothes, both covered in mud - narrative style, similarities of characters &  theme of love
• Two shot/mid shot of characters - intensity between characters
• Change to black and white connotes eeriness & romance 
• Trees & colour red connote love and romance
• Onlookers - other characters used to further connote the importance of love
• Natural lighting - use of fire
• Fades & dims - calm and tranquility of the song/video
• Ends on fade to white - contrasts other videos which end of black, connoting the a difference in artist style

Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man

A genre which I am very fond of is indie folk, and Mumford and Sons are a very popular band belonging to that genre, thus I felt that doing some simplistic analysis of their music videos would allow me to gain a better understanding of what's expected for that particular genre.

• Very simplistic lighting used -  fairy lights/dim lights - a lot of focus is on lighting
• Shadows connoting darkness/evil
• Setting remains the same throughout - repetition 
• Various shots of band - facial expressions connote emotions of anger, theme of the song
• Various shots of instruments - connoting aggressiveness of the song & introducing the bands style
• Switches between shots which have been used previously - repetition again
• Pace of editing varies upon the pace of the song - connoting the emotions created by the song/lyrics
• Lots of CU's - emotions are clearly connoted
• Alternate shots of front/backs of the band allows audience to feel more involved
• Zoom ins/outs - pace of the song
• Panning shots of the setting 
• Dim lighting at the end connoting peacefulness and denoting the end of the song

Target Audience

My target audience is both males and females, between 14 - 30. I believe my target audience allows me to have a fair amount of freedom, as the connotations and denotations I want to present through my music video don't have to relate to a very specific age or gender.
I have created this questionnaire to help me gain an understanding of what the target audience expects in a music video. However, I'm going to further research different genres to allow me to gain a clearer understanding of which genre I would like to focus on before handing out the questionnaires.

What is a digipak?

Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Since Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel cases to be used by major record companies, and because there is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies, the term digipak or Digi-Pak is often used generically, even when the media holder is a hub or "Soft Spot" rather than a full plastic tray.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digipak

What is a music video?

- Perspective on Music Video Analysis

By Sven E Carlsson

i) music videos communicate through TV-screen and TV-speakers 

ii) music videos are a form of low-brow popular culture 

iii) the reception of music videos depends on the beholder (music video may be beautiful or ugly, art or trash, etc.).

Michael Shore (1984: 98–99) concludes that Music video is

recycled styles … surface without substance … simulated

experience … information overload … image and style scavengers … ambivalence … decadence … immediate gratification … vanity and the moment … image assaults and outré folks … the death of content … anesthetizationof violence thorough chic … adolescent male fantasies … speed, power, girls and wealth … album art come to turgid life … classical storytelling’s motifs … soft-core pornography … clichéd imagery …

Many disparate approaches are possible when music videos are being dissected. One of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is then perceived as opposites – trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism, etc.

When this method is used on music videos in general, videos fall into two rough groups: performance clips and conceptual clips. When a music video mostly shows an artist (or artists) singing or dancing, it is a performance clip. When the clip shows something else during its duration, often with artistic ambitions, it is a conceptual clip.

Audiovisual Analysis of Music Video

Clearly, production of meaning in music videos is complex, compromised of several flows of audio-visual information. These flows interact and the resultant meaning is perceived as one complete whole, created by both the ears and eyes. To illustrate these information flows in a particular moment I use a model of audio-visual analysis that I have developed. The model is a "crude map" which points out how three aspects of the audio-visual flow – music, image, and text – interact producing meaning for "literate" audio-viewers (cf. Chion 1994) of music video. Sound effects are not as common in music video as in ordinary TV-programming, yet when they do appear, they are often are used at the video's beginning or end.

Music video is a form of audio-visual communication in which the meaning is created via carriers of information such as; (1) the music, (2) the lyrics and (3) the moving images.

The Music

The music video is composed by adding images to music.

The music video director creates moving pictures for an already existing tune. A music video lacking a coherent narrative based on visuals and lyrics uses unifying aspects which are a distinctive trait of music. Images are bound together by the beat and other musical features. 

Sometimes the musical elements shape of the moving pictures. Movements like footsteps are often synchronized with the beat, so that people in the music video seem to walk in synch to the music.

Melodic phrases can also be visualized by tilting the camera verticality to match the musical phrase's up and down travel on the scales. In Cher’s music video Believe there is a synthesized cymbal-rattle sound which is sometimes synchronized with effects of lightning, and which sometimes amplifies body movements.

The Lyrics

Lyrics and images interact creating meaning.

In many music videos a new meaning is added to the banal lyrics through metaphorical language, often with a amusing twist. When presented well, the concurrence of lyrics and text opens a dimension that an create a poetic experience. The greater the leap between the content of the lyrics and the imagery in this metaphorical joining, the more difficult it becomes for viewers to understand and interpret the context. The opposite of the metaphorical joining of lyrics and images occurs when the illustration to the lyrics are simply illustrated by the visual imagery. For instance, if a dog is mentioned in the lyrics, we see a dog on the TV-screen, if a child is mentioned, we are shown a child. Like a salad of images where the visual story is missing, the story is carried by the music and lyrics and not by an independent visual story.

In the first verse of Cher’s Believe to phrases "I can’t break through" and "so sad" there is a kind of visual echo made by special effects. I interpret this feature as a text-image metaphor. A text-illustration appears for example when the girl sits drinking as the lyrics intone "Sit around and wait for you". Some clichés in the video are quite amusing. For example, Cher has military pants when she is in the third verse when she forcefully repeats "I don’t need you anymore". A standard gimmick in film-making wherein the environment is made to mirror the feelings of the leading characters. The same kind of effects also occurs when the unhappy girl climbs to the rooftop and the rain of tears pours from the sky.

The Image

The visual form is close to the musical form. 

To begin the analysis of the image the basic ideas behind the footage must be discerned in order to identify the key concept behind the video. By manipulating color, motive setting, story footage, clothing and so forth, the music video director creates a couple of ideas which are repeated and varied. The concept is to rearrange visual motifs so that the work forms a whole. The concept behind Believe is that Cher is a mystic singer who comments on a girl meeting a boy. The boy rejects the girl, he leaves with another girl.

In the video there are two main visual motifs: one is Cher’s performance track, the other is the narrative track about the unhappy girl. Visual motifs are lightning effects from the discotheque and especially the light that is traveling between the girl and Cher.

Yet the concept does not have to consist of visual motifs: it could be a short silent movie accompanied by background music. A good example of this concept is Bruce Springsteen'sI'm on fire (1986), in which a "grease monkey" falls in love with a female customer. The mechanic drives the customer's car to her house, but he lack the nerve to ring her doorbell and he walks away alone.

http://filmsound.org/what_is_music_video/ 

Genre

http://musicgenreslist.com/

This website contains a list of all the various genres within music and this evidently shows that there is a vast amount of genres available to audiences. 

Hybrid Music Genres

Since the music industry established this genre as a categorical standard, the fuller scope of what an average music consumer defines as "world" music in today's market has grown to include various blends of ethnic music tradition, style and interpretationand derivative world music genres have been coined to represent these hybrids, such as World fusion, Golbal fusion, Ethnic fusion or Worldbeat. Good examples of hybrid, world fusion are the Irish / West African meld of Afro Celt Sound System,the pan-cultural sound of Aomusic and thejazz / Finnish folk music of Värttinä, each of which bare tinges of contemporary, Western influence—an increasingly noticeable element in the expansion genres of world music.World fusion / Worldbeat / Ethnic fusion / Global fusion can also blend specific indigenous sounds with more blatant elements of Western pop. Good examples are Paul Simon'sGraceland album, on which South African Mbaqanga music is heard, Peter Gabriel's work with Sufi singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Deep Forest project, in which vocal loops fromWest Africa are blended with Western, contemporary rhythmic textures and harmony structure.

Depending on style and context, world music can sometimes share the New age music genre, which is also a fast expanding category that often includes Ambient music and textural expressions from indigenous roots sources. Good examples are Tibeten bowls, Tuvian throat singing, Gregorian Chant or Native American flute music. World music blended with New age music is a sound, loosely classified as the hybrid genre, Ethnic fusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_music#Examples