Analyzation of the lyrics

Myself and the group analyzed our song's lyrics, generating ideas for the video, everything from lighting, imagery, themes, colours, putting our thoughts and opinions together we managed to generate idea's that others hadn't of thought about, like a black and white theme and why there is so much repetition throughout the song.

Target audience research

Identifying our target audience is vitally important to the success of our music video. We have to make the sure the song and the images themselves on the video relate to what our target audience know and love from there typical music video. I think myself and the group have decided that we are definitely going to go down the indie/rock route.

However, we cannot just jump straight into filming what we think is indie and rock in terms of a music video. Therefore i have visited many target audience websites to help me find what the perfect indie is, what they like, what they listen to and most importantly what they don't like!

I have visited UK Tribes - The Home of UK youth research and BBC Switch, which has many videos on indie kids, rock kids and other social groups.

The research below is from the BBC Switch website under "Indie". It is about a girl called Amy, what she enjoys and what to expect from a typical indie. This has thoroughly helped me to get a clearer view for how our video should look, in terms of Mise en' Scene, lighting and a general feel of how our video should look!

The research below is also form the BBC Switch website, however this time it is about "Skaters". I think Skaters definitely fit into the rock/indie theme that we are strong about, they are one of our key audiences for our song and video, i think the opinion's and interests of skater kid's are vital to the success of our video. This information has also helped me, to have a clearer picture in terms of what's going into our video.

The research below is from UKTribes, this website has a huge amount of information on each category of person, form Indie to Chav, Townies to Gamer Kids. So this website was perfect for research in finding out what our true audience were, what they listen to, what they expect and what they love. Below is a large amount of research that i have looked thoroughly over the past three days, it has helped a lot.

What are they wearing?

Foppish, floppy haircut
Waistcoat
Thick rimmed glasses
A lovely coiffeured fringe (on both boys and girls)
Cardigan
Stripy T-shirt
Brightly-coloured socks
Bleached hair for the girls
Tight jeans, maybe white?
Pork-pie hat
Harrington-style jacket
Long on top, short on the sides hair-cuts
Converse or winklepicker shoes
Girls - lumps of hair removed in unexpected places on head

Converse
The classic Indie Scenesters brand. Whether it’s about The Strokes or the Ramones, you decide.

Cheap Monday
Been hanging around for a while now but still the jeans to own if you have money in your pocket and want that 'skinny' look.

Baracuta
The makers of the original Harrington jackets, these appeal to the mod side of Indie Scenesters.

Nike
Still the choice of shoe for the Scenester and those high tops are looking very tidy with a pair of skinny jeans and an angular hair cut.

Conventions of a music video

There are many aspects that a music producer has to follow and understand when producing the video. For example lighting, lyrics to visuals - how they link, target audience, mise en'scene - so for example setting, clothing, props and where everything will be positioned. A useful website to use when researching target audiences is UK Tribes.com.

Lighting - Lighting is an integral part when producing a music video, the producers also have to think about the type of song and genre, for example a rock/indie style song will require a dark background and dark setting. However a more up beat, R'n'B, soulful partying song, would require a light background with a bright setting to balance the mood of the song and the lyrics!

Lyrics to visuals - Putting together the lyrics to visuals on a music video is extremely important, you have to have the two matching and working well together. If it is a totally random picture or a bright colourful clip involving rainbows and sunshine, it clearly won't fit into our chosen genre of indie/rock, and especially our song. Therefore we must make sure this does not happen to us, our lyrics must match, for example in our song "at every occasion i'll be ready for a funeral" we will need a funeral type effect, graveyard, churches and a black white theme in my opinion to fit in with a funeral theme!

Target audience - We must identify our chosen target audience before we do anything, so we know exactly where to start and research into what they want and expect in their type of music videos. We have the base idea of indie/rock, but that it is too broad in my opinion, to help me and my group, i suggest we should look into UK Tribes.com, this will really help us to find out what the perfect indie/rock male and female fan love, then we can relate back to our video and reflect from those ideas.

Mise en'scene - Our chosen song is called the funeral, so instantly the setting has to be church and graveyard related, i think black and white with only little glimpses of colour should be shown in the video, possibly a close up of an emotionless face form a long shot? The black and white theme obviously will work very well with the idea of a funeral. In terms of clothing me and the group were thinking sharp tuxedos for a group of men, possibly, and the women in black suits. However if the video becomes a performance near the end or even randomly in the middle of the narrative, we will dress the band members, stereotypical indie clothing i think we should use, for example, skinny jeans, blazers, formal shoes, military boots etc. There are no females in the band so we will not have to worry about extravagant make up and clothing for them. I think the male band members we will select will have to already have a sense of indie about them, it would be pointless if they didn't. Props will be used a lot through out our video, we like the idea of random objects appearing or our actors holding them, just to get the audience thinking about what it could mean.

For example:

• Roses
• Cigarettes
• Burning cigarette
• Top hats
• Gravestones
• Tarot Cards
• Full moon

Band of Horses research

They are an American band formed in 2004 in Seattle. The band currently has five members, they are Ben Bridwell, Ryan Monroe, Tyler Ramsey, Bill Reynolds and Creighton Barrett. The band recorded their first album in 2005, and it was released by Sub Pop, on March 21, 2006, Sub Pop is a major record label.

The band's first single was The Funeral, the song has been used in television series, films, Playstation games, Xbox games and advertisements.

In 2008 Band of Horses played at many well known and popular festivals, including, Glastonbury Festival, T in the park, Bridge School Benefit and Roskilde Festival.

On April 20th, the band appeared on "Later... with Jools Holland" promoting Infinite Arms by playing new songs "Compliments" and "Factory", after this appearance on Jools Holland the bands two earlier albums entered the UK Top 200 for the first time. An outtake from the album, "Life on Earth" has been used on the soundtrack of the Twilight Saga film Eclipse, released on June 7, 2010.

Link to Band of Horses wikipedia page

Moodboard - Generating ideas

This is a moodboard that i put together in Photoshop, it has our ideas laid out on it currently, and i think now and again if i briefly look at it, it will help me to generate my ideas, for the groups video, you will notice that it is all black and white apart from the cigarette, this mood and colour scheme will certainly reflect in our video!

Band of Horses - The Funeral, our chosen song!

I think we have all decided that Band of Horses - The Funeral is our chosen song for the video, it fits in well with our chosen genre of indie/rock, and all of the group enjoy the song. I think with the song we can do wonders with the visuals, in how they link with the lyrics in a narrative format. The group has a lot of ideas, and we are all giving our own perspective towards the video and how to film it, its exciting times for our group and we are enjoying the challenge of putting it together! Of course we will continue to develop ideas as we will need a lot to fill up the video.

Ideas so far:

Funeral

Burning cigarette

Men in smart tuxedos (adds to the funeral theme)

Church

Graveyard

Death

Emotionless faces of the people attending the funeral, make it eary and scary

Coffins

People looking into a coffin

Black and white theme running through out

Extreme close ups of the faces at the funeral, filmed very brightly though, shocks the audience!

Band of Horses - The Funeral lyrics:

I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
And to know you is hard and we wonder
To know you all wrong, we were

Really too late to call, so we wait for
Morning to wake you; it's all we got
To know me as hardly golden
Is to know me all wrong, they were

At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral
At every occasion once more is called a funeral
Every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

I'm coming up only to show you down for
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
To the outside, the dead leaves, they all blow (alive is very poetic)
For (before) they died had trees to hang their hope

At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral
At every occasion once more is called the funeral
At every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

Possible songs (Band of Horses - The funeral)

I think this is the group's favourite so far, we all like the song and enjoy it very much. Even though i would prefer a performance video for our music video, i think this song on the other hand would fit much better into a narrative format, of course it being about funerals and death, etc. I think filming in a dark place, like a graveyard or even a church would fit in very well with the lyrics and the overall feel of thew video, for example "at every occasion i will be ready for a funeral". I also think black and white should be the main colours that run through the video as they are the colours that you associate with a funeral, with maybe flashes of colour with zoom ins to show the true emotion and fear in the faces.

I'm coming up only to hold you under

I'm coming up only to show you wrong

And to know you is hard and we wonder

To know you all wrong, we were

Really too late to call, so we wait for

Morning to wake you; it's all we got

To know me as hardly golden

Is to know me all wrong, they were

At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral

At every occasion once more is called a funeral

Every occasion I'm ready for the funeral

At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

I'm coming up only to show you down for

I'm coming up only to show you wrong

To the outside, the dead leaves, they all blow (alive is very poetic)

For'e (before) they died had trees to hang their hope

At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral

At every occasion once more is called the funeral

At every occasion I'm ready for the funeral

At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

Possible songs (Friendly Fires)

Skeleton boy by Friendly Fires is another possible song choice for me and my group, once again it fits in perfectly well with the indie/rock theme running through out our song choices and in our overall music video. The lyrics i think relate with a lot of people's own personal experience, with the theme of relationships running through out, for example "your love is old but even despite it all, give me your hand let's face this night and see it through". However one possible major problem with using this song is that the Friendly Fires are very well known, our audience would be expecting to see them in the video.

The search for our song!

As the deadline quickly approaches we are all working hard to find out our perfect song, today i have listened to all of my group members possible song choices and they have done the same with mine. All of our groups possible song choices all have the same genre of indie/rock, which is good. It shows we are all the on the same track and there will be no conflict when we decide are final track. I think it would be stupid to decide whether the video will be a narrative or performance at this time, i would prefer to do a performance, with close ups and real passion and emotion on the artists face!

Possible song choices:

I Blame Coco - Selfmachine

I was a cub scout - pink squares

Blue October - Dirt room

Jimmy eat world - My best theory

The scene is dead - Long live the scene