ResearchFor this project, research was fundamental. It all began with case studies assigned to us by our teacher. We had to find information on multiple bands within our genre (rock) We chose Pierce the Veil, Locket, Muse, and America. For each band we had to find out its history, so background research of the record label they are on, how the band presents themselves within the genre, early performances like festivals and concerts they played in, press conferences, interviews, the time the band began making music and when they started to become well known. For the "case studies" part we had to talk about their marketing and distribution practices obviously, this information isn't given off for free on the internet so extensive research was required to find out this information. I got to find this Information for "Pierce the Veil" and "Muse".When looking I wanted to find information that would not only complete the assignment but teach me how to build some distribution/marketing practices for my own band and campaign that I was creating. Distribution practices are the easiest ones to find you can find out, I went to their Instagram. I found a link to all the digital options to listen to their music and the ways you can buy their music physically like on vinyl and DVD in places like Walmart, target, amazon, urban outfitters. Marketing is where I had to deep dive, I went searching through all their social media to find ways they promote their music, concerts, band, tour, merch, etc. For merch, they have an Instagram highlight with a link to their merch store. For other things, they posted on their social media every time there was exciting news (concerts, meet and greets, song releases, merch release). One thing that stood out to me was that they posted their fan's Tik Toks on their Instagram and that really spoke to me I realized I wanted to make it something our band does aswell.
Brain Storming/ Planning
When brainstorming and planning, my group and I decided we would listen to the music multiple times on our own, build our own ideas, create a story, and then come together as a whole and create a mixture of all of them. We talked in our class and finished discussing the final details over the phone. Once we had decided what we were going to do we decided to build a story board to make sure all our ideas were in order and made sense. We discussed the shots and angles and the storyline of the music video. Our song is "Something from Nothing" by the Foo Fighters and the song contains lyrics of someone building up and going out and creating great things. We also had to make sure our music video attracted the target audience of our band which is teens to young adults. That is how we decided to make a video of a man who got fired from his job and decided to become an internet sensation. With college rates dropping and teens just aspiring to become YouTubers and TikTokers Then we planned our music video filming process we had different places to be at different times of the day so we had to find out transportation, and what scene we were going to film where. Considering we were a rock band we decided the best place to film was the hard rock, we also wanted to make sure we had a house setting, bathroom, and something that made some resemblance of a tattoo and percing workshop.
Production
For our production, we had to gather our actors. We chose to have 5 members in our band and they needed to be musicians because we needed them to bring their instruments. We had to make an exception for our drummer because we couldn't transport their instruments. So gathered them all around in our friend's house and we all left in our cars and we drove to the hard rock where we were going to film the scenes of them playing their instruments. Unfortunately, we got kicked out of the Hard Rock, but had to think smart and we decided to film at a McDonald's that was in front of the Hard Rock, which was perfect because we had a great view of the Hard rock in the background. After we finished with the band we worked with the actors in filming the scenes. We filmed multiple times for each scene trying different shots and angles that we have learned in our media studies class. When filming the scenes of the singer actually singing the song we played the music to make sure we were going to be able to sync up the audio to match the video. For each scene after we filmed we made sure to look back to try and point out any mistakes, we also made sure our story was making sense and coming along smoothly. We had to call different actors to play small roles in our production because we wanted to try and make everything as realistic as possible with the small budget we had. For our tattoo and piercing scene, we had very limited materials and location but we decided the best choice would be a garage and use a needle to try and resemble an actual piercing needle. We tried our best to film in the morning/ afternoon because we knew our video would be bad quality if we filmed in the night. For our filming, we also used a stabilizer to make sure our scenes looked professional.
Post-Production
After production, it was time to edit! We used the app "Vn" and began by adding all of our clips. We made sure they were all able to establish our story correctly. We then followed by going through each video we recorded for each scene, looking for mistakes and choosing the best one. Then began cutting, going through each clip cutting and syncing to the audio to make clever arrangments, we also had to figure out when and where we were going to add the spontaneous clips of the artist playing instruments and the singer singing along to the song. After that, we viewed the results multiple times to point out mistakes and places where we could make things better, add clips, and remove them. Then we began editing things like color, overlay, effects, zoom, focus, and blurs. This gives our video an edge and it allows us to demonstrate what we have learned in the class throughout the year. We decided we wanted the lighting to be special, so we decided to begin the music video with dark colors to resemble unhappiness and depression. So when the song begins the colors change to resemble change and how he is happier now. We also added overlays of the band playing their instruments, we added slow motion because it is something that many music videos use. We added inverts and shortcuts to make sure our video was interesting and able to entertain those who have very short attention spans such as the target audience. After that, we rewatched the music video multiple times and we got it peer reviewed by many other students. We took out any little mistakes and watched it one more time before saving the project to my phone and submitting it to our Google Slides presentation.
Presentation
For the presentation, we decided to use Google Slides. We began by looking at the instructions and everything that was required to be in our presentation. The teacher told us we needed to have an overview of genre marketing/distribution, our brand and target audience, an outline of our campaign, samples of marketing products, a full viewing of music video with an explanation, a distribution plan, and a final statement. Me and my two other partners decided to split these requirements evenly. I took on the music video explanation, samples of market products, and an overview of our campaign. For my music video explanation, I had to explain how our music video was used as a marketing tool to attract our target and broader audience. To do this I rewatched the music video, and I talked about how the theme and story of our music video were targeted to our target audience, I explained how the story of an influencer attracted teenagers because of college dropout rates skyrocketing because people are more inclined to just being lazy and wanting to become a YouTuber or tik toker instead of actually getting an education. For the marketing samples, I went along and made t-shirts, hoodies, caps, and tote bags that I thought our target audience would like, I also explained and talked about how we would market these through our social media and make websites, and how and where we would sell these. Including marketing I also talked about how we were going to promote our band through our social media accounts, posting TikToks, concert information, pictures, flyers, and merch. Finally, I talked about the distribution plan, we made a total of 10 steps, my steps included talking about how we were going to begin by posting on social media about a free concert at a diner where there was going to be free, merch than we were going to begin posting about our music and albums, which then would lead us to build up to the release of our music and posting about it.
Reflection
To reflect on this assignment, I think the greatest thing I learned was about marketing and distribution. When researching and writing, I was able to notice so many things that are going to be valuable when I'm going to take the Aice media studies essay on media context. I also furthered my knowledge of shots, composition, and movement. When making the music video and editing I was able to learn new things so I can better my future projects.
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