Whilst creating our music video we were vastly inspired by
numerous different Auteur film directors as well as various music videos that
related our genre. In the initial stages of planning we were inspired by the
1989 gothic thriller ‘The Crow’ which helped us conclude that we wanted to make
a music video with dark and gothic elements in order to keep in fitting with
the lyrics and tone of our song ‘Call and Gone.’ Following this we looked at
different gothic directors, specifically at auteur Tim Burton and his film
‘Alice in Wonderland’ which helped us with the concept of our lead protagonist
‘Eve.’ We were also inspired by Alice in Wonderland’s cinematography and how
powerful the contrast of black and red can be. In terms of direction style we
were also heavily inspired by that of auteur Lars Von Trier who likes to
utilise long close-ups in order to create surreal character development, in
terms of setting Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ was also especially inspiring to us
as it showed how eerie the woods can be made to look. We were also heavily
inspired by the music videos of other bands within the same genre. To exemplify
Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Tree’ was an inspiration in terms of deciding to film
the performance portion of our video in black and white, however we felt that
we developed many of the ideas in this video through the use of close up shots
on the instruments in order to illustrate the importance of the guitar in
particular for creating the dark tone of the song. We believe that through the
editing of our video we were able to challenge the conventions of real music
videos. We did through stepping away one of the main conventions present in
mainstream and alternative rock music videos, which is to have a lot of cuts
and never stay on the same image for a long time. Within our video a lot of our
shots last over six or seven seconds which we believed would be effective in
creating a more compelling narrative for the audience as well as helping keep
with the dark and slow tone present within our song ‘Call and Gone.’
Website:
Used and Developed: We also used conventions of real media
products from gothic/ alt-rock genre in the process of making our band’s
website as we thoroughly researched a variety of newer and older artist’s
websites such as The Cure, Nick Cave TBS and Toy. This was to ensure that the
website we created for our band ‘The Great Northern’ was a conglomeration
product which would appeal to both our primary audience (specifically 17-25
year olds) and secondary audience, fans of the genre of rock / alt-rock and
gothic rock as they might recognise aspects from artists from the
gothic/alt-rock genre. To exemplify the way in which we used conventions of
real media products in the making of our website is through the style we
employed on the website. This included the fonts that we used for different
articles and headings in website that were inspired by the different styles of
other bands websites, most specifically The Horrors and Toy. Another way in
which we used the conventions of other real media products was through the use
of a Splash page, which is present in the website of Alternative Rock Band
heavyweights ‘Alt J’. A splash page is a simple homepage in which the different
headings are given and the social media the band is involved with is shown. We
believed that by using a Splash page with the eerie image of a hanging apple,
we could draw the viewer in through this simple but effective technique. We
were able to develop the inspiration we took from the websites of these various
bands to develop the style of our website so we could distinguish our product
from that of other alternative rock bands. For an example we noticed that a
recurring theme present within the websites of other bands in our genre (imagery
from album covers. We also attempted to challenge the conventions of real media
products in our website through the use of symbolism and by using imagery from
a specific music video. We decided to heavily involve images from our music
video in our website layout as we believed the images contained within the
music video were more intriguing and visually stimulating to an audience than
simple images of the band members or the band performing, which we discovered
was a recurring theme in the websites of others. We also believed that the use
of our music video for the website layout would be an effective way to market
our actual music video to its potential audience. Another way in which we were
able to challenge the conventions of other real media products was through the
use of religious symbolism within our websites, such as the ‘tree of life’
apple. We believed by doing this we could create controversy and intrigue
concerning our music video and band.
Digipack:
Whilst creating the digipack for our product we were also
able to effectively use, develop and challenge conventions of real media
products in order to achieve the best result. In terms of using real media
products we were heavily inspired by two pieces of artwork, the album cover for
Pearl Jam’s album ‘Ten’ as well as the poster for Australian horror film ‘The
Babadook.’ Whilst looking at the album cover for ‘Ten’ we were specifically
inspired by the idea of hands reaching towards something and we decided to
develop this concept by relating the digipack artwork with that of our music
video. Within our music video, a recurring theme is that of a woman trapped in
purgatory who is reaching the afterlife and a better world this inspired us to
make the hands reach out towards a cross. Similarly to the website we believe
that our use of religious iconography within the Digipack challenges the
conventions of real media products. This is because in modern day music it is
considered taboo to reference religion to music if it isn’t in support and or
in keeping with the religious beliefs being portrayed, such as Madonna did with
her ‘like a prayer’ music video. We believe that by doing this we could draw
intrigue to our product as it could be controversial and as Cinema theorist
Mark Kermode states ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity.’ We also decided
to use imagery from our music video as we believe that the video will be the
focal point of advertising our band and promoting them due to the vast audience
range it could attract, therefore the images from the music video in the
digipack with attract audience to watch the video.
