For my design of the website that we are going to produce for The Jam, I based the placement of each section off existing band websites that work well. The two main website that I looked at were:
The main feature that I liked about the Sex Pistols webpage is the layout and how the aspects of the website are positioned. It complements the bands image as it is untidy, but still very easy to read and navigate. With an active video playing in the top right hand corner it shows that time has been spent in promoting the band as much as possible.
I like the colour scheme of The Clash's website more than anything else. The White background made the site very easy to read and may be easy to re-create when we make our bands homepage. Something I feel should be incorporated into the design of our website.
Other reseach can be seen in our planning folder and has been scanned in below.
This is a link to the website for The Clash it includes pages for merchandise, pictures and videos. The band keep their image going by their logo:
Although the colour of the writing and background ranges, the logo is still there. For example it's shown on t-shirts people wear, on posters and in CD stores etc. and their CD covers range from pop art to black and white with coloured writing. It covers a range of different art forms, being portrayed through their CD covers. These are being shown on TV - on music channels, adverts once every so often and people wearing them in shows etc.
The artist uses Synergy to promote and sell through creating posters and still making CDs to go out into the world. Also the use of one of their most well known songs 'London Calling' being in the best selling film Billy Elliot.
New media products such as iTunes are used to encourage audience participation, through having your downloads on a portable iPod so that you can pick and choose when to listen to it.
An app for iTouch's can also have The Clash's songs downloaded which is called 'Tap Tap' that you play the beat to which will also really promote the band as songs get recommended to youwhen you play.
One final part that is used to encourage audience participation is You Tube, for example The Clash's London Calling at 18:18 on 30/10/2011 has 2,297,372 views which shows how many people are watching it. The video was put up 2 years ago and has a lot of views, people can comment on and like/dislike a video and upload their own. This is a really good way to encourage your target audience to participate and must be why You Tube is so popular along with The Clash still being popular years on!
I will be comparing two of The Clash's videos to help me to analyse their visual style and image. The first video I chose to use is 'London Calling' and the second video I have chosen to use is 'The Call Up'.
Both videos are quite dark, The Call Up being filmed in black and white. and London Calling in colour - but at night time. So that the colours still tend to be dark with a bright spotlight flashing around, adding those little bits of bright colour.
The visual image of The Clash is most prominent through their clothing style with black skinny jeans, doc martins and ripped shirts or leather jackets. This is one of the first things I noticed about the band when watching their music videos. So it shows how dominant of their image how they dress actually is.
My artist uses camera and editing style effects to reflect the song through fast and slower shots when the music changes pace. This seems to be a very common feature of their songs, along with having more than one location with more than one thing going on at once. which works well and doesn't seem to be confusing whatsoever.
The song London Calling to me relates to the film Billy Elliot as it was one of the first times I personally heard and recognised it from. Which mean that it relates to at least one media text pretty well!. (Also the song we're actually doing for our music video was also recognisable to me in Billy Elliot as well) The artists do this to assure their song is getting heard through different aspects of the media. Even if it was on adverts or on television people would still here the song therefore publicising it to everyone. This makes the song more familiar to people therefore more well known.
Since the Sex Pistols broke up there has been little coverage of them on the TV. Johnny Rotten is now the face of the country life butter adverts on television which sometimes hints at the band. An example of this is shown in the video below.
The album art of the Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks'represents their attitudes and image that they showcase to their target audience. It is simple and sends a message, whilst being slightly controversial It is mimicked in Never Mind The Buzzcocks showing that their image is still around and used in modern television.
The band still have merchandise on production even though they are no longer recording or playing music. This can be found at http://www.sexpistolsofficial.com/. However, the remaining band members do not run it and it is controlled by Live Nation Merchandise.
The typical visual elements that we see in Sex Pistols video that represent the band are through costume or fashion that the band are wearing. We often see them wearing clothes that show representations of the punk music genre. Seen in the picture below.
Every so often in some video’s such as Anarchy In The UK we see shots of a lively crowd from a live performance that they have recorded. An example of this is in the second screenshot.
The Sex Pistols maintained a rebellious image throughout their career; we see this through a lack of respect for authority. In the video for God Save the Queen we see shots of fire, riots and policemen.
The Sex Pistols use basic editing skills; this may be because of the time in which it was produced in where technology wasn’t as advanced as todays editing techniques. Instead I feel they get their messages across through what is in frame and on the camera.
I feel that the music made by the band related to the political climate of the time and that is shown through their videos through rebellion against authority, similar to the point above. They also use the queen in a lot of their logo’s and videos, portraying the bands beliefs.
I have chosen to research the Sex Pistols as they were around in the 1970's, the same decade as early music by The Jam who we are researching for our A2 media music video. The also conform to many of the same conventions as The Jam in terms of dress sense and image.
'Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK'
Johnny Rotten, the vocalist of the Sex Pistols is portrayed as a product of the 'rock n' roll' lifestyle in this video. His body language is informal and enthusiastic throughout and compliments the sound of the music. At times he is seen on the floor singing, possibly trying to portray the effects of being under the influence, which is also a big part of the bands image and representation.
The Sex Pistols are well known as punk band, however they are influenced by the rock genre frequently. They differ from other bands of the genre and time as they were seen as more rebellious then bands such as The Jam and Adam and The Ants. Their dress code is conventional to the genre as it can be seen as extreme from the time period in which they recorded and performed in.
Over the ten years that the band were recording their image didn’t change, only developed along with trends and time. The image to thew right shows how the band looked before they spilt up, compared to the video above from their first there isn’t all that much change.
Aspects that are prominent in all the sex pistol videos that I have seen include enthusiasm and lots of shots that portray the bands image to the audience. We see a lot of performance-based videos that have no narrative or story line. Rotten is often seen jolting around while the rest of the band seem to stay relatively calm. These conventions can also be seen in videos such as:
‘Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant’
I don’t think the film style has changed over time. We see a performance based video because it is practical and showcases the band well enough without having to use a narrative to convey meaning.
The artist I'll be researching into is the band 'The Clash', The Clash are a punk rock band that were around in the 80s. they were together for 10 years as a whole from '76 - '86. Here are some examples of The Clash's videos:
The Clash stick to their punk-looking clothes throughout all music videos. Sometimes in the videos they will be wearing black and in others, ripped sleeved t-shirts and leather jackets. All members of the band have short punk hairstyles which help the band to relate to the target audience. The band didn't really change over the time they were together, their music videos didn't really change over time, other than the band's clothing etc. which suggests that they were happy with the style of their videos - dim lighting and the band playing in most (if not all) videos I found.
In comparaison with other bands in the genre such as The Jam and The Stooges, The Clash have similar conventions in the image department but also don't just stick to wearing the same things as the other bands in the genre which makes them stand out from them. Which could be why the band were so successful and still listened to now.
When The jam were around there wasn't any computers so they don't have an offical website but the still could promote them selfs. they did this buy the use of merchandise. Some of their merchandise was tee shits vinyl records posters and mainly tours.
The Jam also use to album signings as well.
Here are some of the album covers from The Jam. From their first album In the city they are dressed the same they would be on stage and also give the hard looking image. In the later albums they look more relaxed and they don't dress as smart as In the city but still in the mod theme. All of the album covers are very simple for example the album All the mod cons is a shot of them in an empty room not very intresting but stating their genre.
The Jam don't use any new media to encourage audinences to participate as they split up in 1982 and the main singer Paul Weller is a solo artist now.
Here are some typical elements that signify The Jam, the guitars, Lambrette/Vespa's, parka jackets and the bullseye. On the screens The jam uses guitars and drums and in ther perfomances they have the mod bullseye or a union jack.
As you maybe able to see from this screen shot, paul weller (main singer in The Jam) has a mod hair cut which shows there style and genre they are trying to get across.
The second screen shot is showing the The Jam in going underground video. Like this one most of their videos are performance ones and as you maybe able to see they always have a guitar drums and speaks in them. This shows they are a punk rock band.
As you can see the jam are a punk rock band with a mod style. This is shown in there visual style and continues through to there music video. the jam identity themselves buy wearing smart suits mainly black, they also have mod hair cuts.
The Jam's style is the same with some other bands within the genre like The Clash and The Specials but on the other hand other bands like The Buzzcocks dress in casual every day clothing.
When the jam were a group they had the image of young lads messing around but with smart clothes and a mod style. after they split up paul weller went solo and still is going now. his style and music since The Jam hasn't change, for example he still has a mod hair cut and mod style the olny thing that has changed is the target audience. this is mainly people that listen to The Jam and The Clash back in the day (40+).
I think that the pitch went quite well and the feedback were altogether very helpful. The negative comments we received were always accompanied by improvements which were even better because not only did it tell us what we did wrong but how we could correct ourselves. I think we did well on the presentation part although I feel I could've input more to the actual pitch. But never the less I inputted the parts I knew most about.
Overall, I'm happy that I had the opportunity to do the pitch because I think our idea came across very well and we got the feedback from some of the target audience to find out whether our idea would actually work and appeal to the target audience.
Overall I think the pitch went well, even though we missed some parts out like location which we then explained during our feedback. We had good feedback for example 'You have an original idea' which we found satisfying as we worked hard on our idea.
We also had a few negative comments which were helpful to develop our idea further and hopefully smooth out some cracks in the idea.
Here is one of the video's that influenced our idea, this video is the promotion video for the Bullring in Birmingham in the 1960s. We liked how it was very descriptive of the Bullring and were inspired by this idea and so would like to use an element of it in our video. We are considering lowering the contrast to make it have an old ambience as well as it making it different from other music videos.
Unfortunately the quality is quite poor but you can get the gist of what we're looking at. By Matthew Andrew Parker
The band I have chosen to analyse is Muse as I have listened to them as I’ve grown up. The band uses obscure videos to identify themselves in their videos which almost always features at least one of the members of the band, throughout the years they’ve been together each video has been very strange and different, never a normal storyline to the video for example the video for the song ‘Bliss’ which features lead singer Matt Bellamy. The band has only ever really changed its image; a few different hairstyles have been tested but have always stayed within the same genre of music with a bit of experimentation going on within the genre but not straying too far from its roots.
From watching as few as a couple of videos you can tell that they aren’t a typical mainstream rock band, they have a bit of an edge that a lot of current bands don’t have. This builds up the longer the band have been together that suggests they first had their sound which is commonly classed as alternative rock and then once they had a fan base and were well known they started to experiment with the music they were producing and it worked for them. It shows that with experience artists and bands become more confident in experimenting with their sound. This genre is evident through their videos by the story lines the videos have and the type of characters they have in them. The fact that the band are shown a lot in the videos as main features shows that they are very much about the music they are creating. The film style hasn’t really changed much from the videos I’ve been able to find, it varies with different sparks of inspiration aimed at the target audience with the same filming styles (on the most part) yet very, very different videos on the whole.
The two videos I will be comparing are ‘Invincible’ and ‘Uprising’ as they are quite different due to tempo and pace etc. The mise-en-scene used is the use of the band instruments. In both of the videos the band with their instruments are featured playing the song within the video which shows that this signifies the artist. As you know who the artist of the song is if the band is featured in the video. The visual image of the band seems to be quite laid back and ‘cool’ which comes across well through their image as they are looked up to as ‘cool’ by their fans. In both songs the camera used slow shots to give off different effects. In ‘Invincible’ this is used to get the detail of the background in the video to help it bring the meaning of the video and the band together. The band’s videos relate to other media texts as a lot of different texts such as films have been getting a bit stranger with weird happenings going on and as the videos for Muse are very different and you wouldn’t usually think you’d use that for a rock video , and so they relate well.
Digipak Design Research
CD Cover 1
Muse ‘The Resistance’
Produced by Muse themselves.
The CD cover is very interesting with lots of
different colours in a weird shape which represents
the band well.
CD Cover 2
Green Day ‘Dookie’ Produced by Reprise Records
The CD cover goes well with the sound of the band,
like a big BOOM, and so portrays the band well.
CD Cover 3
Bowling For Soup ‘sorry for partyin’’ Produced by Jive Records
The CD cover exactly represents the band,
they are a fun, comical and well looked up to band.
CD Cover 4
Linkin’ Park ‘Hybrid Theory’ Produced by Warner Bros. Records
The CD artwork is very good but I wouldn’t say it represents the appropriate iconography as it could have done.
