Statement of Aims Plan

Statement of Aims

For my music video, I will use media language to express meaning. After researching other indie-rock music videos, and looking at Goodwin's theory of music videos, I made the decision to involve both narrative and performance into the production. There will be multiple long shots of the band members, each playing their instruments in order to create a sense of representation of who the band are. The setting I’m going to use for these shots are of a garage with string lighting, both conventions of the indie-rock genre. Developing Goodwin’s theory further, I looked at the genre characteristics of indie-rock. One of these characteristics were low-key lighting, used to create mystery. This is evidently found in sections of my music video particularly in my narrative as it was filmed outdoors. Another characteristic was the colour codes of sepia and black in order to create a sense of nostalgia, colours that are predominately shown in the performance section of my production. Furthermore, another convention of an indie-rock music video is a relationship between the music and the visuals, specifically the diegetic sound of the musical instruments played by the band, so I shall do this to help reinforce the idea of performance. I also found that music videos of my chosen genre were commonly illustrative, the lyrics matched the shot on screen. Therefore, I will do this in my music video, for example, the line “If a double decker bus” will match a medium shot of a bus driving past the frame. For the band website, I looked at colour codes, and found that a patterned black background with a sepia and warm-toned font would be most suitable to match the stereotypes of the indie-rock genre. In reference to the typography, I will choose a Serif font to enable a sense of sharpness and clarity, with the text on the webpage, matching that of the album cover. A convention of a band website is a section for social media and industry links, thus meaning that I will include these into my webpage.

In order to represent the band, I decided to make the music video partially performance based, containing multiple close-ups of the members. As a result, the audience are able to get a feel of the identity of the band and who they are as people. Their identity is further represented through the costume, the musicians will conform to the stereotypes of what indie-rock bands would wear, such as: graphic T-shirts and skinny jeans. Moreover, I chose to construct a representation of youth, the same age range of my target audience. This is because the band members are relatively young themselves, and this helps them connect to the audience as they encounter similar lifestyles and experiences. This representation is evident through the repeated use of a streets/outdoor setting as youths are commonly associated with being outside. The final scene of the music video also represents the audience - youths, as the setting is of a house party and this is a place where people of that age group go quite often. For my website, I will represent my band through a variety of ways. To begin with, the band’s name will be emphasised on the homepage, in the top-middle part of the screen. Below that, there will be a large central image of the band’s album cover. Having these enlarged on my homepage highlights to the audience who the band are and what they stand for. To further represent the band, I will contain an audio-visual clip of a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look to how the music video was created. Furthermore, the band’s logo will be portrayed in the corner of both the home and linked web pages, in order to express their identity. Additionally, photos of the band will be found on the linked page also to further represent them as they will be in similar costumes to the ones worn in the music video. The social media links in the corner of the website, will represent youth through the popularity of social media from people of that age. Linking to Bulmer and Katz’s Uses and Gratification theory, I intend to create a sense of personal identity and connection from the audience to the band when they watch the music video and visit the website.

In order to target my intended audience, I carried out primary research in the form of questionnaires and focus groups to obtain an idea of what an audience of 16-35-year olds (sticking to the specification) would want from an indie-rock music video. From this research I found that most participants would prefer stereotypical conventions of the genre which is what I will try to carry out. My projected audience would be classified as youths, so to target them, I have decided to represent youths throughout the entirety of the music video but also including social media into my website. Looking again at the Uses and Gratification theory, I would like my audience to gain a sense of entertainment from my cross-media production so including both narrative and performance sections, will provide variation and subsequently, leave the audience entertained.

My production will conform to its industry context through multiple different ways. The specification states that the cross-media production should be for an independent record label, therefore, I have chosen the independent label “Domino Recording Company”, a British label who have signed artists from the Arctic Monkeys to Franz Ferdinand. These bands represent the same genre that I have chosen for my production, thus reinforcing my decision for this particular record label. In order to conform to the industry context for the website, I will include industry links usually consisting of the record label’s main website and merchandise sites. Also, the website I create will have a sense of simplicity towards it as independent labels have low budgets and cannot afford to have a design/layout that is too complex.  

I will demonstrate digital convergence in my cross-media production through the fact that the audience can watch and listen to the audio-visual contained on my linked page of the website, and purchase merchandise through the tab shown on the homepage. Including the social media links on my webpage also demonstrates digital convergence as the audience are able to share the site and promote the band and their music.