I played about with some logo designs on the website "fontspace.com" and found some good fonts that I thought suited the logo well, however some more than others.
This is a design I do really like.
It has some sort of brick effect which relates to one of their previous singles "Brick by Brick" from the last album.
I think the capitals will catch the viewers eyes.
The black and white is bold and simple, much like the image I want to give out.
This font I am not overly fond of.
It is a bit too like the "ACDC" logo for my taste
I also do not want the logo to be similar to another bands because it would not give them their own image as before.
This is the favourite of the designs, even the ones I drew.
The capitals stick out and catch the eye
It is also far less "blocky" and seems to look quite spooky and mysterious.
This one was a mistake that I actually ended up liking a lot! It would have a mosaic effect after I edit it and recreate it on photo-shop.
This is another idea, I thought it looked 3D and catches the eye. I also thought that if I made it look damaged and cracked it would go well with the music from the band, "The Arctic Monkeys". I think it needs work still but I really think his design has more potential.
This was my last design but I am not very keen in it. It is rough and doesn't match the music from the band.
Today I have been looking into logo design, I think this is important as it is what identifies the band with an image...
for my band image I want it to be "edgey" yet sophisticated. To do this I am going to sketch out some ideas and then alter them on photo-shop to experiment.
I have already looked at old band logos so I already have an idea how they should look.
This is another successful poster, however this is to advertise the artist's tour. It is very bold and not as colourful as the Florence + the Machine poster. However it has some similarities, it again has the artist centered, this is a genre convention as the consumer's should be focused on the artist.
The artist's name like the other poster is also in a larger and clearer font than the rest of the writing, this is so fans spot it quickly.
The information is in the same font however it is much smaller, this reciprocates in the Florence + the Machine poster.
One thing that is really interesting, which I should consider once creating my poster is the "Parental Advisory" notice sticker, as if the album contains any explicit language it will need to be mentioned. It is likely that I will need this.
Narrative music videos are very popular with audiences across all genres. Some follow the song, with a storyline that relates to the lyrics, but it is a common thing throughout the Indie genre to make a quirky music video telling a story that has little relation to the song at all.
Narrative music videos are often more memorable than a simple performance video showing a band on a stage and work really well to promote a new song. The more interesting a band makes their video, the more people are going to talk about it. This helps to generate more interest and hype about the song.
Some common things seen in Narrative music videos are:
Fast paced cuts, as the video is only 2-4 minutes long, these are needed to fit in the full story
Intertextuality- references to existing films/videos/tv show. This creates a humorous feel, making the video more entertaining to an audience
Mimic certain film genres - e.g horror, romance, thriller etc. This again makes it humorous and entertaining
Sometimes band members are featured in the video to play the characters in the narrative
Here are a few examples that I have found of narrative music videos throughout the indie genre
Foster The People - Don't Stop (Colour on the Walls)
This video features American actress Gabourey Sidibe alongside members of the band. In the storyline Sidibe plays a driving student who unknowingly lets a con man (played by Foster) into her car, thinking he is the DMV examiner. The con man and the student fight for control of the wheel as the car moves, and ends up attracting the attention of two police officers (played by Foster the People members Mark Pontius and Cubbie Fink). They end up on a car chase around Hollywood, which ends when the con man gives himself up to the police and the student drives away.
The video title is shown in an interesting way. A close up shot of a sign on the doorway at the beginning of the video. Choosing to present the title of the song in this way, rather than using text put in on video editing software could possibly be seen as the band relating to an "Indie" audience, sticking to old fashioned techniques, rather than using modern software.
Despite the fact that the actual storyline of the video doesn't seem to really relate to the song, there are some references. For example, the paint explosion leaving the car brightly coloured fits in with the "Colour on the Walls" part of the song title. The word "stop" is also featured numerous times throughout the video in time with the lyrics.
The use of mise en scene throughout this video is also very interesting. Old fashioned items are seen throughout, from the tatty old Toyota Tarcel, to the fake moustache and cheesy haircuts. All of this creates a retro feel, appealing to an indie audience.
In 2012, this video won the award for Best Television Short 2012 at the 3D Creative Arts Awards in Hollywood.
The Shins - Simple Song
This video is a perfect example of a narrative music video that follows Tzvetan Todorov's narrative structure.
The Equilibrium
The beginning equilibrium of this video has a very dull feel, the fanily look sad and appear to be mourning the death of their father, watching a video of him telling them his will from a television screen (Print screens right). The video begins with diagetic sound, and then the non diagetic music of the track overlaps.
Disruption
It is then announced in the will that the finder of the Deed to the house will be the one who gets it. This causes a violent race between the family featuring flashbacks of their childhood throughout the video. This also raises the enigma of who is going to win the race. This keeps the audience interested and watching for more. It is then revealed when the deed is found that none of the children will get the house, and it is due to be demolished within a matter of seconds.
New Equilibrium
After the destruction of the house, a new equilibrium is presented, where the family are happy. This is a great contrast to the sad expressions seen in at the beginning of the music video. (Print screens above)
Alike the Foster the People video, old fashioned mise en scene is used to create a retro feel. You can see this immediately in the opening shot, featuring an old fashioned television with a tape player, The wallpaper also gives an old fashioned feeling. This video has the title edited in, in a retro style font, this is very different to the title seen in the Foster the People video.
This narrative also has little relation to the song lyrics, but the video features the band members playing the part of the family, this becomes apparent in the last scene when they are shown together playing their instruments as a band as the house crumbles down around them.
At the beginning, this is also shown when The Shins lead singer mimes along to the words of the song. Some audiences may see this shot to be quite controversial as a close up shot of a dead body singing could be seen as uneasy viewing for certain audiences.
Transitions between scenes from he past and present are really effective with flashes that give the effect of an old video tape. This again restores the retro feel, capturing the attention of an indie audience.
Contrast in lighting is used between shots from the past and present throughout the video. This creates a feel that the past was happier than now
This is an excellent album advertisement for Florence + the Machine, it is very eye catching to its audience and it features the artist. It also contains all relevent information like when the album is released, what formats it is to be released on "CD. DELUXE CD. VINYL. DIGITAL". They have also featured the most popular song releases on the album which people will see, this means that if the consumer recognises the song they will be tempted to buy the complete album.
The colours of the poster are plain and dark and compliment the colours of the album artwork, this symmetry is very successful.
This is the new music video from the Arctic Monkeys.
August 10th 2013
This song is coincidentally quite similar to some of our ideas for our actual production. It may not be in black and white, in reverse or about a teenager. But the main character (Alex Turner) keeps imagining seeing a girl, who is obviously on his mind, which is very similar to our idea.
This is interesting as it shows that the main character is drunk and hallucinating. This would be good to use in our music video to show our audience the state our character is in.
At this point an older song of the band is playing, this is following on from their last single which is good distribution for the band.
This is a close up, side shot of Alex Turner, the lead singer. Here, he is joint by the other band members and they are portrayed to be close friends.
The band members are not playing an instrument and appear in the video as regular people, this is challenging the typical conventions of the band playing in their videos.
This is a clever shot as Alex Turner is looking at himself in a toilet mirror, I would like to use a shot like this in our production.
The mirror then deforms which is a good effect, this would be hard to recreate.
We wanted to use similar shots of our character drinking, as it is shown here.
\Here Alex Turner is walking through a street drunk
We were planning on doing this but with the character walking with multiple friends, instead of on their own.
This is where he keeps imagining the girl, we wanted to have this but we were not going to have the characters having sex like in this shot.
Our group after several hours of discussion have come up the with the idea of having a narrative structure that compliments the lyrics within the song.
We have now decided upon a romance and teen genre for our production, telling the story of a boy who has come out of a destructive relationship and reminiscing about his ex-girlfriend on a drunken night out with his friends, being kicked out of bars to dancing to a band at a house party.
However, despite being pleased with our ideas, we now have to decide a way to subvert our music video, to make it raw and unique and compliment the song at the same time. After all a band tries to be as individual in their music videos as possible.
