Holiday time...

Well, I'm in India from tomorrow until the 25th of August. So, there might not be too much posting from me on here or on the group blog. Over the next week I'm doing tourist-y stuff in Delhi, so I won't be posting at all I don't think. Then after that I'll be staying with family... so I should be able to either use the computer at my uncle's house or pop to internet cafes every now and then (since it's going to be relatively dull over there really...), depending on where I'm staying...

If there aren't any new posts from me for a little while, chances are I went back to complete previous incomplete posts. I'll probably post a bit of new stuff while I'm away though :)

Bye bye for now!

Kate Nash's MySpace

http://www.myspace.com/katenashmusic

According to her MySpace, Kate Nash considers her music to be "Alternative/Indie/Other". So I thought it might be useful to analyse her MySpace as her music is of a similar genre to that of Imogen Heap/Frou Frou.

The headline for Kate Nash's MySpace is: "it's all a bit homegrown". This is linked to her identity as an indie artist who writes her own songs (hence the 'homegrown').
On her MySpace, Kate Nash has 6 tracks - Baby Love, Model Behaviour, Foundations, Pumpkin Soup, Merry Happy and We Get On. None of these can be downloaded from MySpace can't be downloaded, which means that Kate is trying to encourage her fans to download or buy her tracks the legal way (although obviously there are less legal ways other than MySpace).

Kate Nash has used the Upcoming shows function to give details on all of herupcoming gigs - with date, location and time details being given. This enables her fans to quickly look up upcoming tour dates and check the details for them.

She also has a blog in which the blog posts are written (or seem to be written) by the artist herself. This gives the impression that Kate Nash is an artist who wants to try and connect with her friends through use of a blog.

In the photos section, Kate Nash only has one photo album: 'My Photos'. This album contains images that appear to be fairly exclusive and they seem more like personal photos rather that promotional photos. This would appeal to Kate Nash's fans, since they would really enjoy the privilege of being able to view these exclusive photos. Also, it may give the impression that there is a more personal connection between Kate Nash and her fans, since she's sharing personal photos with them.

Kate has a YouTube video by the 'Trachtenburg family slideshow players' embedded in her 'About Me' section. this shows her connections other bands.

In the influences section, where most artists put their musical influences, Kate Nash also puts things like "Beans on Toast, Cheese on Toast, Anything really that you can put on toast, Spaghetti bolonese". This adds to her quirky image and the incorrect spelling of 'bolognese' could make the MySpace seem more personal, as if she writes things on her MySpace herself, as opposed to her management writing things.

In the 'About Me' section, there is also details on how to pre-order Merry Happy on CD/7 inch. There are different versions of cover art for the CDs/7 inch. The cover art is hand drawn, which links to the artist's image and the headline's use of the word 'homegrown'.

Kate Nash also provides her fans with links to her Facebook, music videos on YouTube and online interview. She also has a video from the Camden Crawl embedded into her About Me section.

In the About me section she also states "i love harrow and garageband.". This makes her MySpace seem more personal.

NME Cover Research

Brief History

In 1961, New Musical Express (as it was known before the magazine title was abbreviated) was released every Friday and cost 6d (approximately 2.5 pence today). Nowadays NME is very much known for being an ‘indie’/‘alternative’ music magazine often featuring very niche artists, but during the 1990s the bands and artists featured in NME were much more mainstream and of a wider genre range (such as Robbie Williams, Korn and Cypress Hill). One of the main reasons for this change was the progression of the different music genres, and the increasing popularity of genres, like indie, with the magazine’s target audience. In the earlier years of NME’s existence, most of the artists featured were males, it was only in the early ’90s that NME began to feature more female artists. For example Madonna was the main cover image on a 1995 issue of NME, in the same issue Courtney Love and Nicolette were some of the main features.

Conventions

• Masthead
• Gig info - "x Gigs Listed"
• Institutional information - bar code, issue number, price etc
• Banner at top near masthead
• Small images to go with coverlines
• Website name
• Quotes from interviews
• Coverlines about recent news
• Lots of band names mentioned on the cover
• Some competitions
• Central image - often quirky poses, direct address
• Colour scheme - red, white, black and yellow

Differences

• Bands/artists on the front - some indie pop, some more indie rock
• 'Studio reports' on Pete Doherty cover
• Scarlett Johansson cover has a lot more empty spaces

Reflections on the past couple of days

I think that overall, the past couple of days of work that we did as a group, have been quite successful. Emma and I found some good locations on Sunday, so I was quite pleased about that - even though our feet were aching after all that walking! I especially liked the fountain with the London Eye in the background... if we could get permission to shoot there it'd be amazing! I also liked the fountains near City Hall - those have such a great background too.

Today was also quite successful, we took a lot of pictures. Some of which are going to be used to practice turning Jennifer into Wonder Woman using that Photoshop tutorial I posted on the group blog. Other photos we took were possible storyboard images. It was a pretty funny couple of hours, with Jennifer jumping around and whatnot.... but yeah, overall I think the past couple of days have been really good and I'm really pleased with the work we've done :)

Sophie Muller Research

Biographical Info

Sophie Muller is a British music video director who has worked on over 170 music videos since 1983. Sophie was born in London on January 31st 1962. She gained a Foundation Diploma in Art, a B.A. in Graphic Design and then a Masters in Film and TV. She started as 3rd assistant on 'Company of Wolves' , then went to work for International Film and Video and then Oil Factory, after a chance meeting John Stewart and Billy Poveda.

Sophie Muller's work

Sophie Muller has directed many many music videos over the years, for bands/artists ranging from Mika to Gary Barlow to The Cardigans. She received MTV Video Music Awards for 'Why' by Annie Lennox and 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt. She also won a Grammy for her work on Annie Lennox's 'Diva' video album and was nominated for her work on the Eurythmics 'Savage' video album. Sophie also directed the critically acclaimed 'Not Ready to Make Nice' by the Dixie Chicks. As well as directing them, Sophie Muller also edited Lily Allen's 'Smile', No Doubt's 'Don't Speak' and Nelly Furtado's'Turn off the light'.

Examples of Sophie Muller's work:

No Doubt - Sunday Morning (1996)

Blur - On Your Own (1997)

Sophie Ellis Bextor - Murder on the Dancefloor (2001)

More recently...

• Leona Lewis - Better in time (2008)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrNoDUblAtE
• Beyonce - Deja Vu (2006)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qABg_tKVYsA
• Shakira - Hips Don't Lie (2006)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygctbqBijFk
• Lily Allen - Smile (2006)

...and many, many, many more

Similarities within her work

• Lots of performance
• Sometimes performance within the narrative of the video
• Often look relatively high budget - but this can obviously depend on who the star is
• Often more performance than narrative... rarely more narrative than performance
• Band/artist often acts within the narrative as well as in the performance
• Videos often don't present a voyeuristic view of women, although this varies depending on who the artist is
  

'Don't Speak' Analysis

• 'Don't Speak' by No Doubt... Directed by Sophie Muller again
• 'Third Wave Ska' and 'Ska Punk' illustrated by the performance-based video
• Lyrics sort of contradicted by visuals- lyrics talk about a break up, visuals show problems in a band rather than between a couple
• Sometimes lyrics are illustrated - "our memories, well, they can be inviting" - transition to memory shown by the greyish tone to visuals.
• Cut to the beat
• Instrumental illustrated by narrative
• Long takes for slow verses, shorter takes for chorus
• Close ups of all band members at some point. Lots of CUs of Gwen Stefani with microphone.
• Gwen Stefani presented as sensitive whereas band members seem indifferent
• Both this video and video for 'Just A Girl' are predominantly performance based
• Quite a few shots of Gwen Stefani and bass player Tony Kanal since the song is based around their relationship
• No real sexual display of Gwen in performance. The dress she's wearing doesn't really make her seem sexualised.
• Gwen's wearing less clothing for live show footage, but it's still not really shot in sexualised way
• Some sexual display when Gwen's taking pictures with the orange - pouting etc.
• Notion of looking: camera taking pictures of Gwen, band members looking at her (ECUs on eyes)
• Intertextual references to band's image - media focus on Gwen and not band. Live footage.
• Mostly performance based - in a garage
• Some narrative - Gwen Stefani being focused on by the media, other band members being ignored... some archive footage
• A bit of concept at the beginning and end - orange from tree - garden of Eden-esque

Lee Mead Album Cover

Front:
- MCU of Lee Mead, directly addressing the camera
- Name: Lee Mead
- Self titled album
- No particular artist logo

Back:
- 10 tracks
- Bonus track (Any Dream Will Do)
- Black background - no background image

Institutional information:
- Barcode
- Record label: Polydor
- Year: 2007
- No reference no.
- Lee Mead is the only performer

Spine:
- Artist name: Lee Mead
- Album title: Lee Mead
- Record label : Polydor
- No reference no.

Inserts:
- Fold our insert
- Institutional info for 2 tracks per page
- No song lyrics
- One image of Lee over a few pages
- Small 'Thank You' section

Reflections on Sunday's meeting

I'm really pleased with the progress we made during the meeting on Sunday. I'm glad that we managed to sort out any issues with actors that we previously had. Plus, we reached an agreement really quickly, which was great. I think the way we've now casted our actors, was the best way to go really (as I've mentioned in a previous post) - it works with the actresses personalities and it also fits with our target audience.
I think that going out as a group to look for locations is also a really good idea, especially for locations in central London.
At Sunday's meeting we also discussed the possibility of changing our superheroine from Supergirl to Wonder Woman. I think that this could be a good idea, since we'd probably have a lot more material to draw intertextual references from, and Wonder Woman is still a really great representation of women and female empowerment etc.

Here's your group work on Marketing!

BLK feedback

interesting reflections here angelie

Wednesday's Feedback...

Firstly, sorry for the slight delay in doing this! I had planned on doing it yesterday, but then I had some crazy food poisoning type illness so when I got back from the Economics conference I just went to sleep... Anyway...

I was quite pleased that on the whole, people liked our comic book/superhero themed idea. I'm also glad that people brought up some ideas and thoughts that we may not have otherwise thought of.
The points raised about having a black indie artist were very interesting I thought, especially as I'd not really thought about that aspect of things before.
In some ways, I think it could be really interesting and different to have a black indie singer. It plays on the conventions and could be something to make our music video a bit different. However, if we were to do this, other issues could be raised. For example, which actress would play Supergirl... originally, we had proposed to have either a black or asian girl play Supergirl. But I now realise that this wouldn't make sense if we are targeting a predominantly white audience. I feel that essentially, the best way would be to have some sort of equality with the casting of the actors. But if we were to have a white hero helping out a black victim, there would be political correctness implications for that too. In which case, I think it would make the most sense to have Jennifer playing Supergirl (since that character really suits her personality) and Jazmin playing Ava.

Tomorrow we're having a group meeting. There we intend to discuss actors, style, location etc. I'm hoping it'll be a success! :D

New Idea

I thought I should post something about my thoughts on our new possible idea, just like Ms. Blackborow suggested in her feedback post below...

So today, Emma and I had a meeting with Ms. Blackborow and Ms. Thrasher about a potential different take we could have on the superhero idea... as you will soon be able to see on the group blog, we've started to consider the possibility of making a video about a girl being saved by Superman. Basically, she starts off in a complete state because her boyfriend dumped her, and then Superman is sent to save her from her depression... and the video would consist of lots of Superman references, film clips and some comic strip style images to set up the narrative.
... that was terribly explained, but you can read a better explanation on the group blog soooooon!

But yeah, I love this new idea. I think that it should work really well and I love the opportunities we'll get for some intertextuality. We'd sort of realised that intertextuality with female superheroes could be quite difficult, since many of the superheroines don't really have their own identities but are rather just female counterparts... if that makes sense...
My only concern about this new idea would be that it could be a bit too dark and serious. But we'll see I guess!

BLK feedback

I know you're posting mainly to the group blog at the moment Angelie, but make sure you include some running commentary on this blog about the group project, your own thoughts about the idea etc.

analysis of some music videos using the framework we've done in class would be useful too when you get the chance

'Mr Brightside' Analysis

Because it's 'Moulin Rouge' style and I adore that film... :D



[just pretend that the lyrics aren't there... ]

This video is the 2nd music video to be released for 'Mr Brightside' by The Killers. It is the US video and was directed by Sophie Muller. The music belongs to the alternative rock or 'post-punk revival' genre. This is demonstrated in the video through the use of master shots of the whole band performing together.

The lyrics are amplified through the narrative of the music video. The main narrative for the video follows that of the narrative for Baz Luhrmann's 'Moulin Rouge' - prostitute and male character fall in love, but she still has to sleep with other random men (including a slightly older man - who appears to be the main 'client', so to speak) and he gets jealous.
There is also a somewhat illustrative relationship between the visuals-lyrics. This is seen in the main vocalist's gestures when singing. For example, for the line "He's having a smoke, and she's taking a drag", he imitates smoking a cigarette. This sort of illustrative relationship is also shown in the second chorus, during the line "Choking on your alibis" when the main singer puts his hand to his neck as if choking himself.

The video is cut to the beat. The instrumental part after the second chorus is accompanied by a part of the narrative in which the main vocalist (the prostitute's secret lover) and the older client man are playing against each other at draughts. It creates a sense of anticipation which goes with the build-up (crescendo? sort of...) in the music.

There are quite a lot of close-ups of the main singer while he's performing, and also in the narrative. The main singer is presented as quite sensitive and somewhat frustrated, which is seen through the concept of the song and also some of his acting in the video.
This video is very different to the UK video for this song and also the video for 'Somebody Told Me'. Both of those videos were completely performance based and didn't have any narrative to them at all. The video is somewhat similar to those for 'When You Were Young' and 'Smile Like You Mean It', since both videos were performance and narrative/concept (respectively) based.

The main singer, and the rest of the band, aren't really on sexual display. The prostitutes/dancers are though. This is shown through the dances they do, with all the skirt lifting and such. The camerawork however, often doesn't imply sexual display as much as you might expect, since the dance sequences are often shot in long shot. There are some not-so subtle references to looking, for example when the older male character is watching the main singer and the prostitute from behind a curtain. Such references to looking were probably chosen since they illustrate the narrative very well and also link in with the themes of jealousy.

This music video has very clear Moulin Rouge references and influences. The whole narrative for the video is very similar to that of Moulin Rouge (except the way it ends is quite different). When the main singer and the prostitute are standing on a rooftop, with a very blue-y back drop, it is very reminiscent of the scene in Moulin Rouge in which Ewan McGregor's character is singing 'Your Song' to Nicole Kidman's character (as shown in the screencap on the left). The dancing prostitutes are also very similar to those in Moulin Rouge. Also, when the prostitute character is dancing with man-with-waistcoat and the main singer, some of the dance moves are in a very similar style to that in the 'El Tango de Roxanne' number from Moulin Rouge. When the prostitute character appears to pass out and fall into the main singer's arms on the roof, it could also be a reference to Nicole Kidman's character's illness in Moulin Rouge, which causes her to faint a fair bit.

The video is both performance and narrative based, and there is a lot of crossover between the two. For example, when the performance is taking place, the narrative seems to be doing so too, since the main singer seems to be glancing at his prostitute lover and her clients in the audience. The video is roughly half performance and half narrative.

'Goodnight and Go' Analysis

Since our group has decided to use a Frou Frou song for our music video, I thought it might be useful to analyse the video for an Imogen Heap song (since she's the lead singer of Frou Frou and her solo songs are the same style as her Frou Frou songs)

'Goodnight and Go', along with Imogen Heap/Frou Frou's other works, is an indie pop/ambient song. This is shown through the quirky nature of the video, which is very much linked to the 'indie' genre.

The music video somewhat contradicts the message being put across in the lyrics. The lyrics are about a girl who likes a guy and her daydreams about him. She also sort of stalks him a bit by following him home and watching him through the window. The video is more or less unrelated to these themes, since Imogen Heap is a wind-up toy who is being watched on TV. Since the visuals are more or less unrelated to the lyrics, the song seems a lot more innocent and quirky. Whereas, if the video were to illustrate the lyrics (e.g. show her watching the guy through a window), then the song wouldn't seem as light-hearted and what would once appear to be quirky, could instead seem a bit scary.

The video is cut to the beat. There isn't really an instrumental section in the song, but there are some visual representations on some of the sound effects on the track. For example, at about 2:50, there is a kind of 'boing' type noise, and this is accompanied by a jack in the box popping out of it's box, which acts to amplify that sound.

There are quite a few close-ups and some medium close-ups of Imogen Heap in this video. Her image seems to be quite quirky and different to that of some mainstream artists. This is reflected in the concept of the video. Since the main setting is a room with lots of children's toys and a dolls house, she seems to be quite innocent. However, when you look at some of those dolls and figures, they're actually quite scary looking. This suggests that maybe she's not as innocent as it would first appear. This idea is reflected in the style of the song. It's quite upbeat and has a relatively catchy tune, but when you listen to the lyrics in the verses, it's actually not as innocent as it seems. Like some of Heap's other videos (for example, 'Hide and Seek'), this video is almost all performance based.

In the video there is some reference to looking since Imogen Heap is being watched by some man on a TV. So, some of the shots (e.g. a show of Heap on the TV) have a voyeuristic quality to them. Heap is not really on sexual display at all. She is dressed as a child's wind-up toy which makes her seem more innocent. The little dances that she does during chorus are definitely not presented in a sexualised way. The style of dance is a little bit strange and seems quirky rather than sexy.

The video is mostly performance based, since most of the video takes place in one location where Imogen Heap is singing. The video is also concept based, which is shown through the location and also Imogen Heap's costume.

Elektrobank (Chemical Brothers) Analysis

Editing

• Straight cuts

Lighting

• Ambient lighting – realism

Camera Framing and Movement

• POV shot when Sofia Coppola’s character is watching other gymnast
• Long/extreme long shots – makes stunt double less recognisable
• Tracks as jumping – emphasises distance travelled
• Opponent’s reaction shots
• CU of Sofia Coppola’s character’s face after she falls – see her mouthing ‘Mum!’
• CU of her feet – creates anticipation about whether she’ll manage to continue performing

Costume

• Blue and white gymnastic costume

SFX

• Slow motion on some gymnastic moves – emphasises how impressive they are, also linked to change in pace of the music
  

NARRATIVE

• First minute sets up the narrative
• Narrative and performance based – gymnastics competition. Gymnastic performance as opposed to vocal performance

GENRE

• Techno
• Electronic dance
  
  

No lyrics

• no relationship between lyrics and visuals
• no visual hooks/ ‘money shots’ - therefore, no proper image for the band is created

Relationship between music and visuals

• Cut to the beat
• Visuals amplify the music – fast paced gymnastics during fast tempo parts of track, slow motion during slow parts of the track
  
  
• No scopophilia or sexualised display really… emphasis more on the gymnastics than the girl doing them
• Video not really used to directly promote band since they don't actually appear. The fact that they do not appear in the video suggests that people would already be familiar with their music.

'Stan' (Eminem) Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZgsNvVA4I

Editing

• Straight cuts during introductory sequence
• Fades to and from black as scene goes between Eminem and Stan’s girlfriend – reflects changes in location
• Cross cutting between Stan writing letters and Eminem reading them – shows Eminem’s reactions
• Lots of quick fades to and from black

Lighting

• Ambient - realism
• Low lit – dark lyrics and themes of song

Colour

• Green-ish bathroom - unclean, grimy
• Green-ish tint on shots in apartment – lower class/poorer surroundings

Mise-en-scene

• Bathroom (mould and peeling paint) – grimy
• Thunder, lightning and rain – horror movie-esque, linked to dark nature of the song
• Basement (pictures of Eminem everywhere) – depicts Stan’s obsession, linked to lyrics when he says “I got a room full of your posters and your pictures, man”
• Night – linking to dark themes in the song
• Cheap looking wallpaper in kitchen of apartment – lower class

Camera Framing and Movement

• Lots of MCUs of Stan as he’s writing
• Horizontal tracks (almost in a circular type movement)
• Vertical tracks from bedroom down to basement
• BCU of Stan’s girlfriend’s face – shows concern/worry
• Frame within a frame when Stan’s in the car – voyeuristic appearance
• Shots of Stan in car mirror – emphasises emotion in eyes

Costume

• Stan (trying to look more like Eminem):
  o Bleached blonde hair
  o White vest
  o White T-Shirt
• Stan’s girlfriend:
  o Blue robe
  o Blue vest
  o Shorts/Stan’s boxers?
• Eminem:
  o White T-Shirt – same as the one Stan was wearing earlier

SFX

• Car falling into river
• Rain
• Lightning flash at the end and image of Stan appears in Eminem’s window

REPRESENTATION

• Stan:
  o Obsessive - pictures of Eminem in basement, dyes hair to look like Eminem
  o Aggressive - shouting at girlfriend
  o Mentally unstable - obsessive traits, self harming
  o Bisexual/homosexual – pregnant girlfriend but says that him and Eminem should “Be together”
• Stan’s girlfriend
  o Helpless – can’t stop Stan, gets put in the trunk of a car
  o Worried/scared – looks around Stan’s basement filled with Eminem pictures
• Eminem
  o Concerned – replies to Stan’s letters (even though they’re a bit weird and scary)

NARRATIVE

• Lyrics telling a story
• Deranged Eminem fan writing letters to Eminem – “Dear Slim”, writing sound effects
• Narrative told through 4 verses:
  1st verse – Stan’s 3rd letter to Eminem, explains how big a fan he is
  2nd verse – Stan’s letter to Eminem, he’s becoming annoyed that Eminem hasn’t replied to his letters (shown through tone of voice when rapping and also the actor in the video’s facial expressions)
  3rd verse – Stan’s voice recorded ‘letter’ to Eminem. Stan appears to have lost his mind by this point, and he’s about to drive off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk of the car.
  4th verse – Eminem’s late reply to Stan. Apologises for taking so long to write, then suggests that Stan gets some counselling etc, realises that Stan is the person he’s just seen a news report about
• Video is narrative and performance based. The narrative is often put across through the performance.
• Pause in lyrics to show Stan’s car falling into the river – emphasises how drastic Stan’s actions are
• Illustrative relationship between lyrics and visuals

Intertextual references: (found with the help of Wikipedia)
Many references within the lyrics to other Eminem tracks. Examples include:

• “underground shit that you did with Skam” – ‘Old World Disorder’
• Stan saying he’s going to name his daughter Bonnie – reference to ‘'97 Bonnie and Clyde’
• “I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?" - quoting ‘My Name Is’

References to Eminem’s life:

• “I never knew my father neither/He used to always cheat on my mom and beat her” [in longer version of the song] – Stan explaining similarities between himself and Eminem
• “I read about your Uncle Ronnie too, I'm sorry”
  

GENRE

• Hip hop
• Rap

AUDIENCE

• Hip hop fans
• Eminem/Dido fans
• Male (most likely)
• Teenagers/early 20s

Street teams

Street teams act as a form of below the line marketing. Street teams are groups of people who go out to promote their favourite band or artist. Street teams are seen to provide a bridge between the record companies and the fans, through the use of word-of-mouth advertising. Street teaming is especially popular for genres with a teenage/younger audience.

For teenage street teamers, promotion is often done in school. There is normally a ‘school chairman’, who is responsible for promoting their favourite band or artist in their school. They do this through the use of flyers, posters and generally talking to people about the band/artist. The school chairman would then send evidential photographs to the band’s record company. If the record company is impressed with the school chairman’s work, they may be sent free merchandise, concert tickets or they may even be given the opportunity to meet the band.

Boy bands Busted, McFly and V all had/have street teams. On their street team websites, there would be leaders who inform other street teamers of different missions. For example, Busted's street team once had the mission of trying to get Busted to the top of the public polls. Obviously, this particular mission was done quite some time ago. But even now, bands like McFly, The Kooks, Razorlight and Dirty Pretty Things have street teams. Street teaming is a good way of building up a fan base and it's also really cheap to do. Lisa Paulon (head of 'Traffic', a company who recruits and co-ordinates street teams) explained how an audience can be built up in the 2nd Guardian article below: "If those four or five people have the best time of their lives and have photos taken with the band, they go and say to their mates, 'This is the best thing that ever happened. Those mates tell more mates, who tell more mates - it's a word-of-mouth pyramid scheme. A month after the Kooks began playing smallish venues, their audience had quadrupled - and they went on to sell 1.1m copies of their debut album in the UK alone."

There has been some controversy about the so called exploitation of street teamers, but most of them claim that it's not really exploitive since they join street teams out of choice and wanting to help out their favourite band.

Resources:
Wikipedia
Guardian Article
Another Guardian article

McFly's MySpace Page

Link: http://www.myspace.com/mcfly


At the top of McFly's Myspace, there is a Video message from the band. In this video they thank their fans for buying their album and they inform their fans of the 'One For The Radio' text offer.

Underneath the video message, there's a set of links:
- Website: a link to McFly's official website
- Sign Up: link to sign up to receive updates on
McFly, their new singles, videos etc.
- Add: add McFly as a friend
- Buy: a link to Amazon.co.uk, with 'McFly' used as a search item
- Merch: a link to McFly's merchandise website (I assume, but the link's broken at the moment :S)
- Street Team: McFly's street team forum

McFly have used the Upcoming shows function to give details on all their upcoming gigs - with date, location and time details being given. This enables their fans to quickly look up upcoming tour dates and check the details for them.

McFly also have a blog section, with blogs dating as far back as February 2006. The blog posts appear to be written by various band members about a number of different subjects. Whether or not these blog posts have genuinely been written by band members is debatable, but the posts all seem to have a particular style which is unique to the different band members. So whether it's the band's managers or the real McFly writing the posts, they've done a good job to attempt to connect with the fans. Sometimes blog posts appear to be written (by the record company or something) specifically to promote an event - e.g. a HMV album signing.

In the 'About Me' section of McFly's MySpace, there are many, many videos including live at Olympic videos, an exclusive interview, free ringtone offer, The Heart Never Lies video and Umbrella video. All of these videos appear to be relatively exclusive, or at least videos that were posted on the MySpace first.
Also in the 'About Me' section, there is a slideshow of photos taken on the set of the 'Star Girl' video. These pictures also appear to be exclusive. McFly have also written something about themselves and their history in the 'About Me' section.

On the left side of their MySpace, McFly have a selection of advertising banner and flyer images. These advertise various tours and also McFly's MySpace in general. Also, underneath each advertisement is some HTML code for fans to use on their own MySpaces to advertise for the band.

McFly list their influences as Beatles, Green Day, The Killers, My Chemical Romance, The Who, Blink 182, Fall Out Boy, The Beachboys. This is an indication of McFly's genre as well as the bannds who McFly aspire to be similar to.

McFly now have their own record label: Super Records. So McFly are now effectively managing themselves. The fact that McFly actually have their own record label shows just how successful they are to have been able to do this.

Their music player has 5 tracks: 'One For The Radio', 'Umbrella live', 'The Heart Never Lies', '5 Colours in her hair' and 'Star Girl'. None of these can be downloaded through MySpace. This is an attempt to ensure that McFly's fans or other people visiting the MySpace, only download the tracks the legal way.

In the photos section, McFly have a number of photo albums: 'My Photos', 'McFly Live', 'One For the Radio video - Toronto' and 'New McFly shoot - July 2008'. A few of these albums contain images that appear to be fairly exclusive. This would appeal to McFly's fans, since they would really enjoy the privilege of being able to view such exclusive photos.

Previous years' music videos

2007 - Group 1C

I think that this music video was one of the best videos from last year for a number of reasons...

• The performance by all the actors in the video was very convincing. They looked like a real band and generally performed really well. As a result, the music video looked a lot more professional and believable


• The video was also very well shot, especially on all the tracks as the banana/gorilla are running. It was also very well edited.


• The location where the band is performing is really edgy and different, and so it looks amazing!
  
• The whole gorilla chasing a banana concept is so random and entertaining and just brilliant, really.
  

2006 - Group 2

Personally, I feel that this music video was one of the less successful ones from previous years. This is because:

• The actors aren't really that convincing... especially in the performance part in the garage. The main singer lip synchs strangely which makes it look more obvious that he's miming.
  
• The locations aren't all that great. Maybe I'd feel differently if it wasn't our school they'd shot in. But I don't know, it just made the video seem so much more obviously student-made.
  

So based on this, I've learnt that...

• Shooting in Central London can look SO effective and wonderful
• Shooting in school doesn't look so good
• It's essential to have convincing actors
• Sometimes random concepts are the best (and most entertaining) kind... though there can be a lot of room for the idea to fall flat.

BLK feedback

super work so far angelie, great ideas!

love your background too but you seem to have lost some navigational ability - can you sort it??

Marketing Strategies Evaluation

1) What did you miss out?

• Album signings in HMV
• 'Featured Artist' section on MySpace
• Potential event promotion through Facebook events
• Local advertising - e.g. the local newspaper, radio station etc.
• The possibilities for handing out flyers advertising gigs, new CDs etc.

2) What have you learnt?

• Although looking for USPs can be important for some products, with band and artists, this is often not vital.
• When creating a marketing mix, it is important to consider your competition and the timing of a band/artist's first appearance in the music industry
• Appealing to different audiences is important - so if manufacturing a band, it can be a good idea to have members who represent different audiences
• Making and selling merchandise can be a lot simpler than it seems
• Cheaper marketing strategies are also vital when creating the marketing mix - you don't always have to think about strategies that work on a national scale.
• When marketing a band/artist sometimes the conventions can be broken. For example, cover art on albums and singles doesn't necessarily have to be directly related to the content of the CD. But if breaking conventions, it definitely needs to be striking enough to attract interest.