Plan B - Analysis of Magazine Advertisement

This magazine advert is fairly simple and using bold colours in order to be eye-catching. Using the white and red on black make certain text stand out to the audience. The use of review scores also show how successful the music is and encourage people to buy it.

Throughout the magazine advert size of text changes and the use of the different colours makes the poster more interesting and bold. The words “Plan B” are the biggest, this is due to the fact this is the name of the album and due to the red colour of the text this is the most eye-catching element. The colour red also has connotations of danger, violence or love, this gives the audience an idea of what the songs within the album may be about.

The white silhouette of the artist is one of the primary element of this advert and takes up the majority of the page. This is a silhouette of the artist and is very iconic for the album. The stylised look of the character and how he is featured in a white silhouette shows the audience that he takes a key role in the narrative of the songs and additionally has connotations of flashbacks or the past since he has a ghost like figure. Additionally the black backgrounds may have connotations of death or evil as some of the songs are based around negative subjects that may be considered "Evil".

The subtitled of the album is also featured in the magazine advert. “The Defamation of Strickland Banks”. This is a fairly key element and is the second largest text on the page. It is written in white which contrasts the black page and is stands out. The title gives the audience an idea of the narrative in the song and also gives something the audience can reference the album with.

I think for our project we can take some aspects of this into our own magazine advert. These may include elements such as review scores and the stylised black and white colour scheme. I think this is a good magazine advert and the use of colour helps it become eye-catching and bold.

Initial Genre and Audiences for Our Music Video

For our music video we plan to try and have a fairly wide audience, but as the target audience for the electronica genre normally consists of males we plan to try and target them specifically. The audience for our music video will consist of males at the age of around 15-35 as this tends to be the age of the target audience for electronica. This age groups means that the target audience for our music video can span from children to adults and therefore we have a big age range for our music video, because of this our story can be more developed and complicated as our music video will be aimed at a older audience and not children.

Example of artists within this genre include...

• Aphex Twin
• Daft Punk
• The Chemical Brothers
• Skrillex

Our music video has a heavy focus on narrative. The narrative is fairly convoluted and has multiple storylines within it, I find it is also very dark since it deals with the themes of crime. Due to this I feel it will be targeted mostly at males, but it this doesn't mean that females will not want to watch it as well.

Initial Ideas for Music Video - Mindmap

 

This is a mindmap of our groups initial ideas for our music video. We have planned to base our music video around the name of the song "Insomnia" so most of the visuals will complement the lyrics. We already have a clear ideas of what we want, this mindmap has helped us further develop our ideas and we now know a basic narrative for our music video.

 

 

 

Film Inspiration

As our song is by a small artist we have taken minimal inspiration from film and therefore there are only a few films that relate to our music video. One of the films that have to do with sleep is Inception. This is due to the fact that the storyline relates to sleeping and our music video has these same themes.

In our music video we have multiple shots of our artist sleeping since the song title is "Insomnia". In the movie the characters are in a alternate reality while they sleep due to a device they are plugged in to. When creating the idea for our music video we did not take direct inspiration from the movie but we found after comparing the two they have some clear similarities and similar themes.

Lip Syncing Practice

The video bellow is a quick practice we did to help us prepare for our music video. In this video we have taken multiple shots and synced the audio perfectly with the visuals to make it look like our actor is singing when in actuality they are only mouthing the words. This is a effect that will make our proper music video look more professional and the practice will help us get it right when it comes to doing it. I think this has helped our group as now we have a clear idea of how to match visuals up with sound during post-production in Final Cut Pro. Additionally since we have practiced it we will now be able to save time editing our proper music video and therefore spend extra time filming or re-shooting if we get a shot wrong.

Research into Chosen Artist

We have decided to use Insomnia by Ben Hesketh for our music video. This is because we can have direct information about the song from the artist himself. Additionally it will be much easier for him to lip sync the music as he knows the words and the rhythm of the song off by heart. This will allow us to film quickly and he won't need to spend time learning the song and as a result giving us more time to focus on editing since this is a key part of how to make our project look like a professional music video.

Ben Hesketh is a 22 year-old graduate from De Montfort University in Leicester. He graduated with a first class degree in Music Technology and Innovation. He used the skills he learnt to record his own music in his flat in Leicester with one microphone.

By using Ben's song we also have the advantage of not having to send any legal documents to a record label or artist as he has already allowed us to use his song. This means we have the rights to make a video on it and therefore we will not get any copyright infringements when it is uploaded to Blogger or YouTube.

Research of Chosen Genre

Electronica is a mix of multiple genres that includes techno, house, ambient, drum and bass and jungle. This means that it has a wide target audience and appeals to a lot of people due to the large spectrum of different genres it includes. Artists that perform Electronica music are mainstream and niche, examples of this include Daft Punk (Mainstream) and The Prodigy (niche).

Electronica has a wide target audience due to the variety of genres it has within it. It tends to span from teenagers to adults at around the 14-36 years old. While the audience of this genre is mostly male, females also listen to electronica, but this is a small percentage of the target audience (the target audience is made up of around 72% males and 28% female).