When first receiving this Music Marketing Project, my partners and I had been presented with the Alternative genre folder; being big fans of this style of music brought out a sense of excitement and creativity that helped guide us into thinking about each given song option and what may yield the greatest visual result. We all favored the same song, “Night Running” by Cage The Elephant, as we felt this song would be the best representation of the genre's aesthetic and would allow us to be creative with different techniques. During the research portion of this project, we decided on the two companies SubPop and Warner Records and each of us separately and as a whole picked a band to find information on. The four case studies we decided on were Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, The Shins, and Modest Mouse. We split up the information so we each did an equal amount of research, while also helping each other to learn about all the band’s methods. During our research we discussed what attributes of each of these bands we would want to include for our band, and which we did not. We really liked the idea of a more down-to-Earth band that interacted with their fans, like The Shins, but we also liked the quirky and unique feel of Modest Mouse and Gorillaz, and of course the chill rock aesthetic of Arctic Monkeys. We kept this in mind before starting the brainstorming of our video.
When we began to think of ideas for our music video we tried to verbally communicate what could look visually appealing as well as have a good story that fits under this genre. It took us a few times of just listening to the song, thinking, and writing down our random ideas to figure out our final plan for the video. We discussed filming at night and having someone be chased, but that was just reflective of the title, so we printed out the lyrics and thought about how we could delve deeper into the song and its meaning. We felt that it was best to show someone running or hiding from bad ideas, thoughts, or a person that represents something evil. Eventually we built up from this thought also considering location and decided on a creepy concept with distortion and various use of color. We thought it would be best to talk about our ideas in person, which would also give us the freedom to draw out our scenes and plan out the order; so, we planned to meet safely for a few hours and figure out how we were going to tackle this.
After a few days we spent planning our video, we called up a friend and asked for her to be one of our actors. We communicated where to go and when and we all met up to finally record the video. With all the ideas from brainstorming and a prewritten shot list with timing corresponding to the songs we were able to shoot mostly according to plan. One issue we faced was filming in the dark and the need to have well lighted shots. We had thought of this issue beforehand and addressed it with Mrs. Stoklosa, who allowed us to use a light kit from school. Together we were able to use phone lighting, bright flashlights, and the light kit in order to light our shots. We also paired this with colored binder dividers which worked very well in trying to get the color effect we wanted. Each group member had an important role in the making of this video: Shannon was the videographer, while I was the lighting director, and Sophia was one of our actors. We did not fully stick to our plan and during the process of filming we changed or omitted some shots to get a better flow during the story. We met up twice to film and share our ideas until we felt like we had told the whole story and got great clips to use.
After we were done recording, we spent the rest of the time working together to create our marketing presentation and including what we thought would best represent our band. While I created the social media presence, Shannon built our website, and Sophia worked on putting our video together to our liking. Overall, we each built up our marketing presentation with ideas from the other bands, using techniques like guerilla marketing, and finding unique ways to label ourselves that would fit our brand; this included each of our songs coming together to complete a puzzle or a bigger story. When presenting to the class, we thought about not overdoing the information on each slide, and instead made each slide short and simple with a simple or funny title. This way we were able to catch people’s attention and elaborate more on our plans for marketing. We put on a positive and light-hearted attitude while presenting to keep our listeners intrigued in our presentation up to the video portion that wasn’t till the end.
I believe that our project came out great and this is a result of our hard work and thought put into our brand and aesthetic. This project helped me learn about all of the situations people need to consider when filming and creating a music video including, time, location, lighting, sound, etc. I also learned about the importance of a group effort and working well with others, because it takes a village to make a band. I believe this will benefit me when working on later projects including evaluating how the target audience will have an affect on what media someone releases and the content of that form of media. I feel that I also have a better understanding on the way shots may go together when telling a story and how to use creative techniques in order to create a great final product.
