Typical Conventions of Our Music Video Genre

The genre of music video is greatly determined by the sound, style and genre of the song that is being portrayed, which means that to develop good music video, we need to understand and apply the conventions of our genre as fully so that they can become an integral part of our own products.

Amanda Rogers is one of those artists that is hard to pin down to a particular genre, but her style is easily spotted in some other artists videos. Therefore, we chose to stick to Indie videos with influences from Blues, Pop and Piano music as Amanda's main genre.

Conventions 

Mise-en-scene

• Often use of retro/vintage inspired clothing to reflect older influences of music and evoke an aged sound with a modern twist
• Natural Lighting is often favoured over artificially lit or particularly bright areas. 
• Use of instruments in music video 
• Exterior Locations (tends to be- this isn't a strict convention) 
• Sometimes vintage filters used- e.g. black and white, washed out colour etc.
• Not as wide a variety of settings used, generally 1,2 or maximum 3
• Similarly a limited number of costume changes
• Editing 
• Not a very fast editing pace (strictly depends on the song though) 
• When compared to other genres such as R+B for example, this genre doesn't shrink time as much. Of course, being a music video, the general convention is that generally time is shrunk in indie music videos, however not to a great extent as in other music perhaps. 

Camera

• Generally steady shots- when shaky cam used- not to great extent, tend to be of nature
• Slow panning shots, slow motion
• Close ups of artist to create identity
• Low angle shots, empowering artist

Ancillary - Cover Designs and Ideas

After drafting a few different interpretations of what our album artwork could look like, we set about combining the aspects of each that worked best to create the best cover we could. We had to consider the conventions of album artwork whilst making these decisions, along with the representation of our artist and most importantly, her music. Amanda has a very unique, independent style and therefore we had to capture this in the presentation of her music just as we had done in the music video we created for "This Beauty."
Below is a rough sketch of our finished design:

We aim to design this to ahigher standard on Photoshop at a later date, where we should be able to refine the font used for the word "Heartwood" and improve it's overall appearance. We discussed wanting to make the cover look very natural and handmade to reflect Amanda's style, but also to keep it looking professional and of a high standard. Amandas name is written in a unique font meant to emulate the "red string of fate" theme that runs throughout our video. depending on our final designs for the back cover and the inserts, this thread may continue from her name and run throught the album.

We had quite a few different ideas drawn up by seperate members of the group, each of them accuarately representing aspects of Amanda Rogers' artist identity but all focusing on different features that they saw within her style and music.

 

 

For each of these seperate ideas, we focused on bothe the typography of the font's used and the iconograohy. We decided as a group, with input from people who had watched our completed music video, that our most iconic feature in the video is the red heart and string, and the shot at the hand of the heart being held in our Amandas hands. For this reason, we felt that we had to include both of these in the album, if not on the front cover then at least inside or as a motif.

 

Along with this, we felt that even though conventions of album covers show that new, unknown artists tend to feature on the front covers to create conection between the music and artist, the connection of music and ideas was more important for us to focus on. it is for this reason that only one of the designs above shows Amanda, yet still mainly focuses on setting and location. The second idea was ruled out quickly, as whilst we felt it could reflect the artistic nature of Amandas work, it didn't fully represent the concept behind the album and "This Beauty".

 

Hopefully, with this idea in mind, the rest of the album design can now be based around it, along with the poster advertising the album in which the cover must be a prominent feature.



 

 

Marketing in the Music Industry

Today, marketing techniques have changed a great deal since the peak of the music industry in the mid twentieth century. In the digital age, marketing is nearly all done online since there are so many ways to reach the public and spread word quickly. In fact, because of the variety of artists emerging onto the scene, now more than ever is a chance to find new, niche music. 

There are a few types of marketing that are used by nearly all artists in all genres of music...

Posters - Nowadays these tend to be distributed in magazines, on-line newspapers and websites rather than distributed physically round an area- although many still opt for this method.

Promotional Gigs -Previously bands would tour areas, performing various songs from the album to be released and generate a hype up to and sometimes after the release date of their album. Nowadays, because of the large crowds and fan base sizes, these gigs tend to be at other live events. However, other more unusual methods still occur.  

Taylor Swift for example sent out an impromptu tweet advertising an unplanned performance on Hollywood Boulevard, New York to which thousands of fans turned up. The size of her fan base made this possible, but it still drew massive amounts of attention to her and her new music.

Radio - Many artists still get a significant amount of radio play before an album or single will be released to see how well the song plays

Some other methods of marketing include:

Social Networks- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Bandcamp are just a few.
Word of mouth/Viral campaigns
Adverts- TV advertising in particular, along with radio, magazine and online adverts showcased on websites.