Hello again! Despite not having posted on this blog for a while, I have been actively studying media and marketing in my absence. Recently, my media studies class had assigned me to make a music video based on a song that we were given, along with a few other partners. In this post I plan on describing my process during the production of this music video,
Prior Research:
Before starting work on our own production, first we had compiled a few pages of research on the music industry, and specifically the way that the indie rock genre functioned as a sect within the greater industry. To establish a deeper understanding of this genre, my partners and I had chosen two influential record labels that are famous for their success in marketing indie rock artists. These labels were Domino Recording Company and Interscope Records, and after researching the history and artist lineup of each recording company, we chose a couple of studies to delve even deeper into from each company, in order to better understand how unique artists market themselves in different ways, and how some artists, regardless of genre or company, share tactics in common with other artists.
The first company we researched extensively was Domino Recording Company, where we catalogued the variety of indie rock icons under their label, such as infamous bands like Arctic Monkeys or Dirty Projectors. We touched upon a brief history of each band, and then described the differences in marketing strategies they utilized to achieve fame. Both share the same applications and services where they make their music available through, and each have their own website dedicated to selling their merchandise and promoting their latest projects, however while the most effective form of audience interaction with the Dirty Projectors is through their website and largely inactive social media accounts, the Arctic Monkeys have a much more lively social media presence, and offer exclusive VIP services during their concerts for dedicated fans to meet the band, which propagates a connection with their audience that keeps them relevant and successful.
After Domino Recording Company, we looked into the marketing practices of Interscope Records, one of the most prestigious record labels out there, exhibiting star-studded names such as Eminem, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, U2, and more. We then researched two of their most popular artists, Tame Impala and Lana Del Rey. Similarly, after looking through their history as musicians, we compared their marketing methods. Unlike Tame Impala, Lana Del Rey was much more invested in her outreach strategies, adopting a new stage name to foster fame and also offering her fans an online newsletter so she can keep her biggest fans updated on her latest projects.
As a result of this research, a few things were immediately clear: if we were going to market a new artist successfully, we would have to set up a website to serve as a hub of all information about our artist, allowing us as a marketing team to provide merchandise, promote new songs, and keep fans in the know about their favorite artist's latest news and projects. Additionally, we would need to emphasize an effort on creating a social media presence for our artist on several websites, like Instagram or Twitter, in order to appeal to a younger, more robust fanbase.
Brainstorming:
After electing to use the song Fire by Beth Ditto, i began the process of brainstorming and imagining how to express the feelings of the song while simultaneously making sure that the presentation of the song fits the persona of the imaginary artist we are marketing for the assignment. On first listen, the quiet beginning of the song and the chorus of the guitars created an impression of rebellious anger, likely fitting with the fire in one's own rebellious spirit. Additionally to this, I attributed this rebellious attitude expressed in the song to our own artist, who would likely appeal to older teens and young adults for being relatable through their own rebellious adolescence.
Pictured: The first rough draft I had typed out for the story, illustrating the train of thought I had for the story before it was fully realized and polished.
After going through several iterations of a story to tell, I eventually landed on the story of a girl running away from home, chased by the people who want to return her home. I specifically chose to use a bicycle as the venue for her rebellion, symbolizing her childhood and how it is what is literally driving her away from home, eager to grow out of the tiny childish bike, and ending the music video with the girl driving away in a car, symbolizing how she has moved past the need for the little bike and has matured through her acts of rebellion.
Storyboarding:
Once I had decided on the story we would tell through the music video, I had set out to block each major segment of the music video. Setting a limit of 35 slides to organize my initial vision, I worked through the story I had drafted, picking out particularly important moments of the story or shots that I specifically wanted to be included in the final product. While the draft pictured below was not the definitive method we used to block our shots, it was instrumental in organizing our admittedly messy thoughts into something where we could produce a more cohesive story that looked better.
Pictured above: our first storyboard for the music video.
However, after going through a few different storyboards, I eventually opted to try a different technique to organize the shots in the video in the most detailed way possible: After listening to the song one more time, envisioning how I wanted the video to look, I had separated each segment of the story into ranges of timestamps within the song, so that I could whittle down my shot choices down to the second. While albeit a little too precise, after an hour of meticulous visualizing and jotting down timestamps, I had completed an intensive list of every shot I wanted in the video. Pictured below is the first few segments I planned out.
