2. Our task
At the start of my course, my task was to produce a music video which would
promote a new band. For this, my group and I arranged to create a music video
and did the additional tasks that were to create an album, a digipak, a poster
for the album and we even looked for record labels which would suit our
upcoming band. In short, having the main product and the ancillary texts helped
reinforcing the promotion of our band.
3. Our Texts: The Music Video.
A music video plays a big part in how a new
band is perceived, as it can either grab the
audience’s attention straightaway or push
them to not wanting to ever come back to
the content that that certain artist makes.
Our music video was arranged to fit the
conventions of alternative rock music videos
in that there was a narrative which created
a mysterious atmosphere as it illustrated the
theme of insomnia and there was a
performance from the main singer (lip-
synching).
4. Our Texts: The Digipak.
The digipak was made to look minimalistic as
opposed to the music video which had various
methods of editing, color grading and even the
location. Through the use of a minimalistic digipak,
we hoped to convey that our band was worth
looking at, which would hopefully build curiosity and
interest to our band in the real world, if this was to
be real. The digipak therefore didn’t link to our
music video as we wanted to challenge the
convention wherein music videos from a certain
album would follow the theme of the album art.
5. The Arctic Monkeys: AM.
The Arctic Monkeys’ album
‘AM’, for example, featured
a minimalistic design of
waves which read ‘AM’ in
the middle, and later
released a music video for
their song ‘Do I Wanna
Know?’ which had black
and white animations similar
to their album art.
6. Origins of Ideas.
We took this example from the albums ‘White’
and ‘Suck it and See’ from The Beatles and the
Arctic Monkeys, respectively, not because we
wanted to follow their well-established footsteps
but rather to establish a sense of authenticity and
dissimilarity. Furthermore, through the use of a
minimalistic digipak, we hoped to convey that our
band was merely just talented rather than good-
looking and that it was rather about the music
than their physical appearances.
7. Why we did what we did.
Because our main aim was to impress our target audience, our video featured
diegetic sound, fast cuts and shaky camera work to keep it interesting. For our
digipak, however, we used two CDs in a digipak that would look ordinary to
show that there was more to show. According to Richard Dyer, ‘a star image is
an image constructed from a range of materials’ and ‘music videos will act as a
showcase for their talents’, which is also why we chose to make the ancillary
texts minimalistic so that they would juxtapose with our band’s talents and
wouldn’t necessarily foreshadow the content of our music videos which would
possibly raise the interests of our audience and those of others.
8. Branding.
In terms of branding, when bands are promoted or
new albums are to be released, there is often
continuity in the font used in an album’s design, for
example, or even their logo which is immediately
recognizable. Using this convention, we followed the
minimalistic ways of our digipak for our poster as a
way to be recognized and easily distinguished,
especially with the brain and the band’s name
written in a distinguishable font: my handwriting.
10. Continuing on Branding.
The brain in both ancillary texts was the only item which directly illustrated the
name of the album, but still didn’t really hint at the name of the song. It is a
conventional aspect of rock music, especially the sub-cultures of rock such as
hard-rock as they usually explore the theme of death and danger and anything
similar, such as our demonstration of the theme of insomnia which is a miserable
state for its victims.
11. Intertextuality.
Developing John Stewart’s theory of intertextuality that ‘using something with
which the audience may be familiar to generate both potentially nostalgic
associations and new meanings’ helped us make the sensible choice that
perhaps a minimalistic design which featured a mind and a mindless skull would
be relevant to the promotion of our band and would help in the advertising,
especially in our target audiences but also audiences of other bands such as the
Arctic Monkeys and The Beatles.
12. Conclusion.
Lastly, our decisions related to our potential target audience through the use of
the font and logo, in other words, distinguishable ancillary texts because we
looked at other artists and saw that they gained a lot of recognition for being
authentic and using minimalism as a means for sophistication but also
dissimilarity.
