Pitching Our Ideas

After collecting together our ideas, we pitched them to our teacher. We soon began to realize that although we had a number of good ideas for shots and themes for the video, we did not actually have a story to fit with the ideas. Mrs McLuckie suggested that we could use cyber bullying as a theme, and use it to make a thought provoking video. This way, we can still use most of our original ideas but put them into context within a story, as we came up with the idea that the cyber bullying leads to a girl's suicide, continuing with our theme of death.

Our Target Audience

Band of Horses

Whilst thinking about the band we are using for our music video, we realized they are really hard to pigeonhole into a set group. The band are described by wikipedia as an American rock band, but when listening to them they are not exactly the heavy metal sound you would associate with 'heavy metal'. After searching through uktribes.com, I have chosen 2 social groups which I think our song could fall into. The first are Young Alts:

"Young Alts are after something different, but beyond that, they’re not exactly decided. They’ll read about or listen to a huge variety of bands and try Skater, Emo and even Urban fashions. They also love a lot of mainstream fashion and music. The Young Alts make for a largely safe and non-judgemental Tribe in which to experiment with all of these styles."

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Looking at the media consumption, it is encouraging that there is a high level of Internet, TV and radio consumption among Young Alts, which of course is where music and music videos are most likely to be heard and seen. The associated brands also shows me that this group is exactly who we are aiming our music video at. Band of Horses have played at many festivals in the UK and in the USA, and live music and reviews are featured in magazines such as NME and Kerrang!, as well as being shown on YouTube. As with pretty much every young person in the country, Young Alts are likely to have a social networking account and regularly use the Internet, which can be used to find out new tour dates and check out live performances bands. As they like to experiment with different styles, it is quite likely that they would stumble across this band.

Tribe icons for Young Alts are people such as Kurt Cobain, Hadouken!, Greenday, Bring The Horizon and You Me At Six. This is the typical looking Young Alt:

The second group I discovered are the Metalheads:

"An enduring tribe consisting of those into metal, heavy rock and a bit of old school punk. Damnation, Download and the Carling (Reading and Leeds) festivals are popular destinations for members of this tribe - as are most opportunities for violent slam dancing in big, sweaty arenas."

As with the Young Alts, metalheads have a heavy consumption level of radio, TV and the Internet. The metalheads are more into classic heavy metal, and are keen on mixing older style music

with the new. They are more than likely to be wearing black, or sporting a band t-shirt.

Tribe icons for Metalheads are people such as Metallica, Dita Von Teese, Lemmy, Dani Filth and Five Finger Death Punch. This a typical looking group of Metalheads:

Where would our finished music video be shown?

NME TV is a the music channel counterpart to the main NME magazine, which was launched in November 2007. The station will be used to show exclusive NME footage from gigs and events, as well as content based heavily on chart music and recent offerings from up and coming artists in the indie and alternative scenes. Paul Cheal, the publishing director, said this of the brand: "Our target audience is promiscuous in the way they consume media, so we want to be able to deliver the brand in whatever format they prefer. Ideally, an NME reader can flick through the magazine during the day, visit the site in the afternoon, come home and watch NME TV, before going to an NME club to see an NME gig." I have chosen NME TV as a potential channel that would show our video because according to uktribes description of a 'young alt', NME is one of the brands that they are associated with.

Another channel that could be used would be Scuzz, a brand associated with 'metalheads', which launched in April 2003. It is described as 'total rock', and the station encourages viewers to "rock hard, only with Scuzz." Scuzz tends to play more underground music videos, and it also shows exclusive music videos. This would be perfect for the music video that we are looking to create.

Ideas

The main theme to our video will be the death and the connotations surrounding death. I have created a mood-board of images which I think reflects the mood of the video we have in mind to make.

Ideas our group have had so far:

- Flashes to a candle/cigarette burning down until it finally goes out at the end.

- Filmed all in black and white, apart from fast flash scenes.

- Have people in the woods wearing tuxes (funeral outfits) whilst miming the words.

- Someone running and falling into a hole (grave).

- Maybe film in a graveyard/church.

- Using tarot cards to tell the story.

- We see the main character being violent towards someone who's face we never see, until the end where we find out it is them.

To get more ideas for our video, Char has printed off the lyrics and written some analytical notes about them, and the rest of our group has also added small contributions.

As you can see, we are all agreed about what we interpret from the lyrics, which makes life a lot easier for when we begin to storyboard and plan the video.

Final Song Choice

At the moment our favorite so far is Band Of Horses: The Funeral

I'm coming up only to hold you under

I'm coming up only to show you wrong
And to know you is hard and we wonder
To know you all wrong, we were

Really too late to call, so we wait for
Morning to wake you; it's all we got
To know me as hardly golden
Is to know me all wrong, they were

At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral
At every occasion once more is called a funeral
Every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

I'm coming up only to show you down for
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
To the outside, the dead leaves, they all blow
For'e they died had trees to hang their hope

At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral
At every occasion once more is called the funeral
At every occasion I'm ready for the funeral
At every occasion one brilliant day funeral

When I hear this song I can instantly see the video I would make for it. It would definitely be a narrative video, not a performance. This song is called The Funeral, so immediately I think of death being the main theme. Whilst listening to it we thought that there could be a twist to our video were you think that the main character throughout the video is alive, but it turns out he has been dead all along (in a Sixth Sense kind of idea).