Social Media Research

 For this blog post, I am going to research social media pages for indie artists.

Media text: The Strokes

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts: They post a variety of content, like photos of band members, photos from live concerts, promotional material for concerts and their merchandise. Their story highlights includes a trailer for the music video of "Bad Decisions", a single from their album "The New Abnormal".

Description of how branding is developed (or not): The brand is being developed with having photos of the band members, and consistently post about their support for politician Kina Collins. This develops their brand by showing their political beliefs, which allows those with similar beliefs to be interested in the band. They also follow some of their band members, their bands, and politicians they agree with, like AOC and Kina Collins.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: I will start posting photos of my musician, and use highlights for the most important things needing promotion, like an upcoming single.

Their bio contains a link that promotes their album "The New Abnormal" and "The Singles" box. The highlights also promote these, as well as their merch

Media text: Radiohead

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts: Radiohead posts weird and sometimes cryptic videos and images, such as a distorted bear head floating around with music from the Amnesiac album playing in the background to promote the Kid A Mnesia compilation box. Outside of this, they post mostly normal content, like digipak for singles released by the band members to promote those singles, and clips from music videos to promote the songs. For the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, they posted images of colorful abstract paintings without any caption. Other promo for AMSP included photos of the band in black and white, and short videos to accompany a song.

Description of how branding is developed (or not): Branding is being developed with each album rollout. Each album has a distinct font and artstyle. The Instagram page follows all members of Radiohead (except Jonny because he doesn't have Instagram) and Thom Yorke's band, The Smile, which allow fans of one artist to easily branch into Radiohead.

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: Play into the "memey" and produce more surreal aspects of promotion, as they cause other people to talk about them more. 

Radiohead's profile has highlights for each member's solo work (except Colin Greenwood). The link redirects to a different band Thom Yorke leads, so that fans of Radiohead will be funneled to The Smile.

Media text: Beabadoobee

Social media tool: Twitter

Description of types of posts: Beabadoobee's posts consist mostly of photos of herself and advertisements for her music, like a tweet announcing an upcoming EP with a link to pre-save it, so that her audience can be one of the first to listen to it. Her twitter also contains promotions for concerts she will be on, and links to her merch she has. She often posts clips from live performances in LA to promote her live album, Live in LA. 

Description of how branding is developed (or not): She mainly develops her brand with photos of herself. Out of the three artists here, she posts the most photos of herself. The "quality" of some photos can be amateurish, which shows how others want to perceive her as being just an indie artist without any support from a major record label. These photos show her as being more "raw" and almost just like the people in her audience compared to her contemporaries, which further pushes her indie aesthetic to her audience. Her posts are often in lowercase and use internet slang a lot, which portrays her as an everyday woman who just so happens to be making music.  

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence: I will try to incorporate more "raw" photos of Jack (the musician) into my posts, so that he can push the indie aesthetic better.

Beabadoobee's banner shows her live at LA, which promotes her Live in LA album. The link directs fans to listen to (previously to pre-save) her new song with Laufey, an up and coming artist.

Visual Nuggets

     I was on YouTube today, and I found a really cool example of "visual nuggets" from my last blog post that I would like to incorporate into my music video. 

    The first example actually comes from a Youtuber that I watch, Posy. In his video about motion extraction, he shows off an interesting post production editing effect. This works only with static shots, so this will be useful for shots with my tripod. To do the effect, use a static clip, duplicate it, and set the transparency of one layer to 50%. Shift one video clip by a small amount to highlight fast motion, or by a larger amount for slower motions. I would like to use this effect in shots that happen in the pre-chorus or chorus, as it will most likely be in stark contrast to other shots.

Here, the clips are shifted more than a second apart. The individual RGB channels have different time shift values, and the colors are changed. If I choose to include more shots like this, then my music video could fall under the artistic subgenre, like Adele's Send My Love (To Your New Lover) video (i checked my notes for that one!).

Music Videos 101

    Usually, I handle post production in video, because I'm not the best with a camera. However for this project, I need to get back with the camera. I need a little refresher on how to make a music video in general, and I found some videos that should help me. I'll tell y'all what I find here.

    The first video is about making a 0 dollar music video. Danny Gevirtz talks about how it's important to capture the essence and theme of the song. For shooting, it's important to get shots that require the most sun first, because it's going to go away faster than expected. The misc-en-scene elements all have to have a specific purpose. In post production, color grading is important. I'll have to do more research on that later, because I haven't color corrected a lot in my past works, and it's not the most essential thing to research this early.

Be resourceful! Gevirtz uses a white shirt (the one that the subject was wearing) to brighten up the subjects face.

    The next video is about filming without a crew. Karl Shakur talks about how important planning is, and how props and wardrobes can push a film to the next level. When filming, moving shots will be hard, so a tripod is best for static shots. I'll probably have to get a better one, since the one I used last year is being held up with duct tape. For lighting, I can use a flashlight, and place it from the shadow for the best lighting. In editing, try to make "visual nuggets", which are shots that look really cool for the audience to keep their attention. Sound design is often overlooked, and can change the tone of the video.

This is an example of a visual nugget. In this shot, the subject's face is being distorted with other people's parts of their faces flashing on screen.

    This video is about the basics of music video production. Damien Cooper says that the artist should be singing the song, as it makes it easier to line up shots with the music. Have multiple shots with the same music being played, as it allows for flexibility in post production. In post production, name each shot with "close angle with car". Make a multi cam sequence and have it synced to audio. This way, it's easy to replace one shot with another with the same music happening. I will have to research more on this in the post production phase.

How the multicam sequence looks on Final Cut. All the shots in the preview section have the same moment of music playing, and can be easily swapped with the shot playing on the right.

Conventions of Indie Music Videos

 For this blog, I'm going to find some conventions of indie music videos, as inspiration for my video. These are also songs that I really like.

    The first video I'm gonna analyze is beabadoobee's Glue Song. Throughout the video, the color grading is very saturated and vibrant, with noticeable film grain, and all shots are handheld. The directors, Jake Erland and Bea herself used these to get a nostalgic mood, and to make the film appear more low fidelity (or li-fi) than it is. Low fidelity is an aspect of indie songs, and that is being emphasized here, even if the final song was also mimicking low fidelity. In the video, the artist is also the "protagonist", instead of an actor that represents the themes of Glue Song, which puts emphasis of her and builds her perception. There is a shot that has some slight blur and is overexposed which has a lover leave Bea. Combined, the viewer can imply that this is Bea's fantasy, and something she longs for. At the end of the video, there is a sequence of shots that end with the effect of a film reel being changed. This adds to the low fidelity theme, by increasing its appearance of being homemade. One of the last shots shows Bea and her lover. Only now, the shot doesn't have a dreamy effect, which shows how Bea has achieved her fantasy.

In post production, the editors changed the color grading to appear nostalgic.

    The next video I'm gonna analyze is Dayglow's Can I Call You Tonight? music video. Here, the director decided to embrace indie music video conventions by clearly using a green screen, and not trying to hide it. There is also a heavy noise effect and graphics appear to be dated. The video somewhat counts as a promotional video, as it has Dayglow and other musicians playing instruments. Sometimes, the musicians won't play what is happening in the music, but rather just act goofy. If this video was made in the 80s, when cameras became more accessible to the public, this video would have been seen as too amateur. However, because it was published in 2018, the director had to make the conscious decision to embrace "outdated" technology to fit conventions of indie music videos. The video can turn surreal, with one shot showing CGI people representing Dayglow and the person he talks about in his song, and another shot showing him with a psychedelic repeating effect, with a dancing CGI baby overlayed. This allows his brand of being "quirky" to be expressed to his target audience. At the end, the actors break character, which shows the target audience how "authentic" he is.

This shot definitely shows what is being embraced, with the overblown and oversaturated background, Dayglow holding an "antique" phone, and the text looking like it came from an 80s infomercial for kids. This allows it to appear nostalgic and play into indie tropes.

Awesome News!

 I have good news guys! I reached out to an artist about to make their debut. They're one of my musician friends, Jack Ramirez! Last night I reached out to him, and he said he would want to help! 

Awesome sauce. He makes music that's "Midwest emo", which is basically Indie rock. Don't tell him I said that. But that means that I'll have to base my research around Indie artists, like Dayglow, Clairo, and Beabadoobee. He has two songs that are almost ready to be put out, so I chose the one that was almost finished being mixed. I can help with the mixing, but I don't want it to become my song, becI already have so many ideas for how I want the video to go, but I need to wait and put them down in their respective blog posts.

Project Schedule

 This post is going to be how my project should (hopefully) pan out over the next 9ish weeks.

Week 1: Commit to project type, start reaching out to local musicians, decide music video style and genre

Week 2: Research music videos under music genre, commit to musician

Week 3: Continue research, and start research for social media pages, start planning music video

Week 4: Finnish planning music video with storyboard, shot list, etc

Week 5: Film music video, research digipak designs that fall under genre

Week 6: Finish filming (if needed), start creating the digipak, start editing video

Week 7: Finalize the digipak, work on social media pages

Week 8: Finalize music video editing and social media, research and plan critical response

Week 9: Create and finalize critical response, add final touch ups to all components (if needed)

Return of the Mack

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Wow, a new project! It's been such a while since I finished my project for AS level. I am going to move the focus here from projects like the Documentary project to the A level project. I am fairly certain that I want to do the Music Promotion option. I already have several local artists in mind, like Visions of Venus, who I loved to work with. I also have a lot of experience on social media, so I feel like I can do the social media component well. I'm a bit worried with creating the narrative of the music video, as I haven't fully created one. But that's nothing that can't be fixed with some research in the future! Also, this project will be my biggest of the entire course, and probably the project that I will look back on the most after I graduate high school. After college, I would like to create music videos in my free time and be all fancy in them, so this can be practice and something to compare my future work to this. I will probably do this project alone, because I'm very precise when I film certain shots and (maybe too) methodical in editing, so I can probably do my best by myself. also new year new me new font. Cairo was getting boring. Space Grotesk is my new bestie.