Website wish list

Theorists - SVEN E CARLSSON

Sven E. Carlsson took part in research in order to see whether a music video is Audiovisual poetry or a commercial salad of images.
Sven E Carlsson stated that music video has many faces within an extensive phenomenon which is presented through the TV screen and its speakers via different carriers of information - music, lyrics and the moving images. Carlsson believed that music videos mainly fall into two key catergories : performance clips - Where the video mostly shows an artist (or band) singing or/and dancing to their song in order to promote it; and conceptual clips - Where the video shows something else (or someone else) often with artistic ambitions. 
A music videos that more or less contains a filmed singer blended with inserted images. A standard clip is meant to be dynamic and has many variations. The vocalist may actively participate in the story while simultaneously standing outside the video offering self-reflexive commentary; he may have an alter ego e.g. a cartoon character. 

'One of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is perceived as opposites - trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism'. - BINARY OPPOSITES DRIVE THE PROGRESSION OF THE NARRATIVE WITHIN THE VIDEO. When this kind of opposite method is shown throughout a music video then the video slot itself into one the two categories. 

'He or she is a monger of their own image selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle'
- PERFORMERS ARE RESTRICTED, A PRODUCT OF THE INDUSTRY, 
There are three pure forms of visual tradition in music video:


Performance Clip
If a music video clip contains mostly filmed performance e.g. a video that shows the vocalist in more than one setting, then it is a performance clip. The performance can be of three types: song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance. 
In some types of performance music video the artist is made into a materialization of the "commerical exhibitionist" (we want to gaze up this artist in an inappropriate manor & this is being provided for us by the style of 'marketing' used in music video), this is where the performer is made into almost a selling item; someone that fans often aspire to be and these scenes will be extremely high in quality and have a gloss to them, for example most main stream pop artists like for example Rhianna are heavily materialised in their videos, EG: Rhianna S&M - a video which youtube put age restrictive bans upon! The exhibitionist wants success and tries to evoke the charisma of stardom and sexuality & model their character upon that of the artist.
 Another type is the "televised bard" (lyrical poet) the singing storyteller -who uses on screen images instead of inner, personal images - acts the songs emotions.
 The the third and final type is the "elctronic shaman" (A person having access to, and influence in, the world of spirits), sometimes the shaman is invisible and only his/her voice that anchors the visuals and they often shift between multiple shapes.
( A televised bard is basically like a singing storyteller who uses actual on screen images)

Narrative Clip
If a music video clip is understood as a silent movie to a musical background it is a narrative clip - based around acting a story which corresponds to the lyrical message, rather than being incongruous to it or representative of certain themes explored. A narrative contains a story which is generally extremely easy to follow and may not contain any lip-synchronisation at all, for example Ed Sheeren's 'A team' is mainly a narrative based song in which a female impoverished prostitute evokes the audiences sympathy as she displays her life of sorrow - using a monochromatic effect to amplify her actions. 

Art Clip / Conceptual
If a music video contains no interpretable visual in the narrative and contains no lip-synchronisation singing then it is a pure art clip. These are normally associated with more modern, experimental music, EG: Radio head no surprises - where the lead singer is lip syncing but the style of the video illuminates the illusion is actually performing willingly. Conceptual videos force the audience to watch something other than the artist throughout the video. They contains no visual narrative and no lip-synchronisation, this means that it is pure art. 

Website Designing

Currently one of my biggest dilemma's is working out how to structure my text on my website. As Wix has an extremely limited font range, I have had to scour the internet for text types which fit my demographic, then edit them online, print screen, crop & remove the background on each individual image. Therefore when importing them into six aligning them exactly has proven extremely difficult, there are no structural guidelines in which to aid arrangement. Thus for on my 'GIGS' page for example I was unable to make the text (despite extensive time trying) all in line vertically & all the same size - as when you go to change the length v. width percentage even if I make them all exactly the same size, because of the variety of text lengths & alterations made when cropping (after print screening) It wasn't possible to make them perfectly straight!

I am of course aware of this issue, and know that there are many elements of my website 

which I cannot improve on simply because of website limitations & technical difficulties. Furthermore obviously some of the iconography on my site is merely aesthetic with no actual possibility of completing the action they propose, for example when one clicks onto the 'BOOK NOW' button on the 'GIGS' page, the link takes the viewer through to ticket master but they cannot actually 'book' to see 'SuburbanTypo' as they are a constructed band. 

Current Progress on Ancillary Tasks

I am currently working on my website & Digipak. I have decided to use my original idea of having young boys posing as the band when they were younger (in line with the bands ethos / music video 'blast from the past' theme), for the website & inner compartments of my digi-pak, yet for my front & back cover create a more controversial array of imagery to encase the indie-rock lifestyle & musical outlook. My postmodernist approach aimed to play around with meaning of music & the contemporary hedonistic 'rock' scene, by using intertextual imagery, in order to entice a wider audience towards out product. By creating a bricolage of images I wanted to combine a diverse range of contrasting photographs & graphology in order to create a new overall image which could connote 'indie'. 

By placing flowers next to skeletons i aimed to blur the conventions of this genre, I didn't want my audience to be posed with one set idea about 'Suburban Typo's' music & attitudes and wished them to engage with the band & want to read into their story, by creating their own meanings from what those pictures denote to them. I merged high culture - a head of the queen, with popular culture - an edited graphic image of John Lennons eyes, in order to create an incongruous collage which would sell a band which i could make as extreme / famous / alternative as i wished to - being fictional. I aimed for my work to be stylistic & though it draws upon postmodern values & reflects the irony of our music video, at the same time relies upon encasing the indie subculture through the use of semiotics. 

As for my web design i have been experimenting with different typography for most of my working sessions recently, I have found that this feature is the catalyst for success with an adequate band website (as well as all of the conventional features). The site 'Wix' which i have been using to create my website is quite limited in its font choices, which has made the creative elements of this part of the course much harder. I have had to source particular text types i found aesthetically pleasing & cut and paste them, then strip them of a back drop, and upload them separately as images in order to conform to the conventions of indie band sites. For example on the 'Two Door Cinema Club' & 'The Vaccines' websites, they both use emboldened, upper case fonts to create an edgy, hard-hitting, bold image for their bands. Thus i copied this text style onto my site to hope to achieve a similar effect for 'Suburban Typo'. I used this style of font on all on my merchandising products & pages of my website in order to create coherence & use this simple design as a sort of "logo" which can be easily connected to this specific musical genre.

  

Having somebody try out my website a week or so ago has made the navigational choices so much easier, in that when creating the site I have relied upon my own abilities to journey through my personal work & hadn't previously taken into account the difficulties my structure could pose for external users. Thus I have aimed throughout to be aware of spacial features & make my articles as spread out as possible in order to create an easy, effortless website experience. 'The Vaccines' band site uses an all white back drop & Red / black fonts. Their merge of monochromatic imagery & the powerful red really encases the feel of their music & thus i felt it was vital to follow through with similar colour choices. However I did decide not to make all of my images black & white as they did, as I felt it would be a bit predictable and i aimed for my site to be filtered with vibrance & create a festival like, indie feel, which i felt would be very difficult to create with bleak colouring. 

 http://efrase2314.wix.com/suburbantypo = WEBSITE.

Website feedback

I am currently in the process of designing my website & though i am positive on the vibe i want to create through my artwork, graphics & images, i am not 100% certain that my audience will pick up on my motives when looking on the site. Therefore i wanted to test my current work by getting some 15 year old girl's who are really into indie rock music to test out my website and give me audience feedback. All i told them was that it was a site for a fictional band i had created, and from this they noted any likes & dislikes or improvements i could make in terms of navigation & design elements. I of course as the initiator of this site knew how to work my way around it with ease & yet i was unsure if others would be able to use it so effortlessly - though from my feedback they suggested little changes & were extremely positive about the clarity of my work.

Digi-pak planning

I am currently in the process of designing my digi-pak and have been researching into albums of similar genres in order to gage a better understanding of the affiliated features. Most of the 'indie' or 'indie rock' albums i came across reflected the same attitudes - mainly featuring photographs of the people looking ruggedly hedonistic - casual clothing,messy hair, urban setting, indoor party location, and so on. The images reflect a snippet of their snapshotted everyday existence, thrusting them into the ordinary (yet sensational) world of 'the average teenager', making them seem accessibly relatable for the typical lower middle class audience type. Often the photographs are of the band/artists advertising this unconventional lifestyle. 

                            

                                   

Though mostly they abstain from using the artists themselves in an attempt to propose that their music & passionate originality of their work, comes above their call for commercial success and fame; strongly contrasting to the glossy airbrushed covers of the macro pop market for example : Rhianna and One direction. Often dressed in clothes which suggest a rejection of society & structural routine - as though they have chosen this urban look rather than a stylist created something unreachable - ( as well as the gritty working class / household location).  

 

The imagery used advocates the rejection of the mainstream, conservative society and promoting - 'teenage rebelling' and 'breaking the rules' - often featuring party scenes, fisheye / disposable / Diana / polaroid camera shots,  people (models) hanging about informally advertising their spontaneous boundless lifestyle & ethos over their star image. The imagery often reflects a continual appearance rather than concentrating on a set album name & style and decorating that cover to follow suit (another key pop feature for example Katy Perry's Teenage Dream album)    

Many of the Indie album covers i studied reflected extremely post modern values for example the 'Two Door cinema club' album with a poodle on the front - seemingly irrelevant, yet equally interesting & enigmatic as the plastic poses of chart topping stars albums which commonly advertise them as an object of sexual desire rather than musical success. As such i have began creating a collage of miscellaneous images to create my album cover. I would have loved to take photos of a house party on a polaroid / disposable camera, or a gang of boys hanging around on empty mattresses smoking, or on the South bank in London, or dressed up in different historical or intertextual costume. However i knew from the start with my slim resource availabilities & contact limitations
i wouldn't be able to build upon these thoughts & expand them properly. I have photographed a group of young boys to pose as the young band & hope to get simple shots of four 17/18/19 year old boys as well to encapsulate a sense of realism in 'Suburban typo'. However i felt that by perhaps exploring a genre renowned for difference and down-to-earth, alluring creations, i felt that by creating a succession of images which reflected the indie culture, were symbolic, or had 0 meaning at all, i could encase a cover which presented the diversity of contemporary popular culture.
                                 

          

I Searched through tumbler & instagram accounts as well as blogs & band websites, i listed objects / people / activities which were reflected on the sites of indie artists / people, in order to expand my understanding of this culture. Many of the covers i looked at incorporated graphic artwork & collage thus using the combination of seemingly unconnected images i also sought to explore the meaning of the word 'indie' in the modern age - a genre which used to be extremely discrete & has now become unwillingly mainstream. Through this i also came up with the idea of using festival photos on my website in order to reflect this obscure, 'yolo' rocky / hipster / unconventional genre & life style. Reflecting the spontaneity of teenage rebellion &  anti system songwriters. 

Performance filming 2

Today' filming went relatively well, apart from once again being lumped with the worst ever weather conditions! Though we battled through the cold & had a productive, enjoyable filming session. We made sure that on this shoot more than any other we got a diverse array of angels, styles and movements on film, in order to avoid any time consuming re-shoots. After the shock & hold back of the robbery we are trying to plan our actions meticulously & today after brainstorming & planning in our previous meeting ran much more smoothly than our previous performance shoot. Our key protagonist (Bing) entered todays shoot with a lot more confidence (not as much as we would have hoped for, but being an 'amateur production' we were still extremely grateful for all of his unpaid efforts & constant enthusiasm / participation). He had learned the words this time which made him & ourselves feel at ease with being more critical on directing him without feeling intimidating or putting him off. We all took turns at filming or photographing him today and as none of us were acting in this scene the cinematographic participation was equally spread & enjoyed.