Festivals

This is a poster of the 2012 lineup for Reading Festival.
In contrast to the Latitude Festival poster, of which the background is the environment the Festival takes place in, this poster only shows the lineup, putting emphasis on the music and artists that will be performing rather than the surroundings.
This might be of great appeal to the target audience of the alternative genre, as these individuals tend to be very much caring about the quality and the message of the music mainly. Another thing which would be of appeal to this audience would be the three main colours on the poster: Yellow, Black and Red. The yellow background and the layout of the logo (with red spikes surrounding the festival's name) reflects the loudness of the genre and its music and how it will not come unnoticed (this also fits very well into the genre's past and origins: punk music). Red reflects the violence (in the sound of the loud electric guitars and heavy drums rather than physical violence). And black is a very genre-specific colour of rock and alternative music anyway. The energy coming from these vibrant colours on this poster definitely grabs the eyes' attention and this would certainly be a main factor in the appeal to its target audience.

Alternative target audience
After having grabbed the attention of the audiences' eye, the individual is going look more closely at the lineup. In this case of the Reading Festival 2012, the three names emphasised the most are the headliners: the Foo Fighters, The Cure and Kasabian.
While the Cure's name has, through the decades, reached a high status in the history of the alternative genre, the Foo Fighters' lead singer Dave Grohl was the drummer in one of grunge's most influential bands Nirvana up until its lead Kurt Cobain died in 1994. Seeing as both the Cure and Dave Grohl are part of the top and most authentic artists of the alternative genre, seeing their names on the lineup right at first glance would be extremely appealing to most individuals of the target audience.

Target Audience Moodboard for Miss Witting

Shooting Schedule

When	Where	What
Tuesday October 9th	City centre	Shots of cars moving, shots of abandoned dirty areas in the city (without the band)
Wednesday October 10th	Anglia Square/ Playhouse/ St.Stephen’s underpass	Shots of the band walking, dancing, singing in the city
Monday October 22nd	CNS Arc	Shots of the band playing the songs live

Performers

Solay Elibol

Lead singer and lead guitarist, 18 years old

Sam Sleight

Bassist, 18 years old

Nick Upton

Drummer, 17 years old

Inspiration from Movies (ex. kitchen sink dramas from 50s, black and white)

This is England - Opening Credits

The Full Monty

The Commitments

Control

Look Back in Anger

The Third Man

Metropolis (1927)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

A Kind of Loving 1962

A Taste Of Honey

Shotlist

Before music	Solay walking out of shop – closes door
Riff starts	Solay walking in street – lights a cigarette
Other instruments kick in	S nods to Sam and Nick, who are standing at corner of street
Verse one	S singing to camera (walking towards it, both other boys behind him)/ cut to shots of warehouses, closed offices (reflecting angry unemployed youth)
Verse two	Cut to studio, close ups of intruments being played, close up on S’s mouth singing into microphone, but no eyes
CHORUS	Long shot of band in studio playing
Drum	Bird’s eye view (possibly) of just Nick playing the drums
‘Mister USA!’	All three bandmembers shout it at camera
Verse three	Studio/cut between boys running around messing about in Anglia Square,
Verse four	In underpass etc –boys write or spray lyrics (eg ‘Life’s a bitch!’)on walls (accelerate in edit)
Chorus	Cut between closed warehouses/offices/ boys standing in bandstand at chapelfield/ in studio/ in Anglia Square/ empty car parks
Drums/Mister USA	Same as first chorus
End solo – end guitar	Solay looks into camera, Camera pans back.

Location shots (Anglia Square)

We took these still shots in Anglia Square. We chose this location because it has a grim. dirty atmostphere. It hasnt been taken care of and seems quite forgotten by the city council. As you can tell a lot of the walls in that area have been defaced/enriched by graffitti. This suggests that it is a hang out point for youths, maybe even the forgotten youths who do not go to school and are unemployed or trouble makers.

The stacks of wooden fences just left careless outsode the empty building emphasize how nobody owns or looks to maintain the area, it is abandoned. The town government do not seem to care about this placea at all or want to invest money in its maintaining. Much like many of the young generation the punk/rock/metal genres represent feel like (unemployment, poverty, unsolved crime daily on the streets) which triggered their anger and inspired them to stand tall against the government, mainly the conservative governments (like for example Thatcher in the 70/80s and David Cameron nowadays).

This building looks like it used to be a block full of offices. The fact that it is now abandoned suggesting the people that used to work have now lost their jobs reflects the increase in the unemployment rate which leads to poverty and anger and does not inspire young adults to even both to try and get a job.



Smashed in windows reflect the anger from the unemployed misunderstood generation targeted by the metal/punk genres.



Car parks like these are seen as dodgy, dirty areas where at night one might come across these angry teenagers who find shelter in it.



The dirt once again shows how little the area is cared for.

Inspiration from Music Videos

Gallows- Misery

London Calling - The Clash

These videos and most punk videos all inspire us in terms of the saturation. We would like to use this as an example for an effect we would add to our video to add a sort of old-school look like videos in the 70s as an homage to where the punk genre started which evolved into music and bands like The Upgrade.

                                           

God Save The Queen - Sex Pistols

Anarchy in the UK - Sex Pistols

Two Tribes- Frankie Goes to Hollywood

          This Godley&Crème directed video is an obvious critique to the United States’ government (it portrays a heated boxing fight between then American President Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, resulting in the world exploding) and what the nation stands for (‘’No firm diplomacy..no peace for America and the world’’ as Richard Nixon says), very similar to the Upgrade’s song USA, which criticizes the US’ current state towards terrorism and foreigners entering the country. Whereas we are not allowed to use clips from speeches by American leaders like Frankie Goes To Hollywood are doing, this is still rather inspirational as it directly attacks the American image.

Not The Only Person - The Rumble Strips

 We would like to incorporate the scenes and tracking shots when the Rumble Strips’ front man walks and is followed by random people (or even band members) in our video by having the band following Solay through Norwich. We also like the urban locations used in this videos.

http://vimeo.com/4766044

Locations and mood

We have now established the mood and atmosphere of our music video. The track's genre ranges a mix from alternative and metal. Words that pop into mind that could help the representation of this iconic rock 'n roll lifestyle audiences of these genres tend to identify with include leather jackets, cigarettes, black and white/low colour saturation, heavy electric guitars, loud sounds, rough angry boys, hate.

Here are a few pictures to set the possible mood of our music video:

We thought the location for our shoot should be urban and quite run down, possibly with graffiti on the walls, as you can see on these pictures.

This low saturated or even black and white dark atmosphere reminds me of the mood in the thriller I made last year for Media AS.

One particular clip from a film called 'Control' about the band Joy Division inspired our ideas.
The clip is shot in black and white and depicts Sam Riley, who plays Ian Curtis, walking down the street wearing a leather jacket with 'HATE' written on its back.

Representation and commercialism of sexuality in the music industry

In our Media lesson today, we discussed a topic that to me is very interesting. We looked at and compared the difference in representation of women and their sexuality in music videos.
In Sinead O'Connor's video for "Nothing Compares 2U'' released in 1990, the emphasis of her appearance is her androgynous figure and natural, neutral beauty - she has shaved hair, is wearing barely any make-up and her entire body is covered by a long black loose-fitting cape/coat. She is not at all dressed to impress men or target the girly, glamourous audience. Her song is rather dramatic and slow and the video is quite toned down and plain, which, with the music, has a rather powerful effect.
Other female artists with similar representation not fixed on selling a woman's music through her sexuality/ body would be Annie Lenox, Patti Smith or k.d.lang.

A more recent and modern band with a female lead singer Romy Madley Croft who does NOT sell her band with her sexuality in any way, are The XX.

Her boyish looks (short hair, neutral/no make-up) could even make someone think at first glance that she is male, until her soft female voice is heard after which it is immediately clear that she is a woman.

In contrast, Beyonce's 2008 ''Single Ladies'' video is trying to sell her music to the main stream target audience of teenagers/young adults. Girls want to be like her and men are attracted to her tight fitting leotard, showing off her curves, her glamourous puffed up hair and makeup emphasising her big eyes and big lips. It is quite sad to see how many talented women in the music industry nowadays are reduced to plastic beauty and sexy dances, giving the audience no choice but to objectify them for their bodies. It is hard to take artists like Beyonce, Rihanna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera seriously because all they are known for is dancing around wearing tight-fitting short clothes and singing shallow songs, whereas most of them may actually have more to them than just their sexiness.

Lyrics "USA- The Upgrade"

USA

With the people so nice
Security gives me a fright
They striped me down to my skin
America please let me in
I tell ya!

My name is Jevain
They say that ain’t no common name
They told me get lost
They say you folk are all the same


I'm tired an lonesome try to rest my head
I switch on the radio coz the TV's dead
They say happiness is at a new grand high
When way over there ten thousand people have died!
Oh what have you leaders what have you to say?
Mr USA!

Well the senate they lie 
Make their choices with fries
Fight through rock and through oil
Yet spreading death on the soil

The land of opportunity 
Where every man is rich
They'll slaughter all your earnings
Then they'll tell ya life’s a bitch 


I'm tired an lonesome try to rest my head
I switch on the radio coz the TV's dead
They say happiness is at a new grand high
When ten thousand people have died 
Oh what have you leaders what have you to say?
Mr USA!

Our track - USA by The Upgrade

After having chosen The Upgrade as our artist, we discussed with them which song they would like us to use to make a music video to and together we chose USA, their newest song.

On this link you can access a recorded version of the track.

http://soundcloud.com/the-upgrade-1

And here is a live version of our track:

Hello

This is my new blog. This post is rather boring, given that all the ways I would like to greet you all would probably be innapropriate for the exam board to read.....I promise the next posts will be more relevant and certainly more interesting.