Initial Ideas for our Music Video: Potential Costumes

We pitched our treatment for our music video for the song Stripper by the Soho Dolls, and after discussing with our teachers and peers, we decided that our 'glam rock' styling seemed like a good idea for our performance aspect of our video. We decided that we didn't want to include too much leather or tight clothing, as we don't want to look too sexy. We wanted to look more edgy and high fashion than anything, still keeping with the predominant colour of black.
Below I've added a picture of some clothes I have at home, and two potential outfits I could wear:

Both outfits include the same belt, skirt and jewellery, but the tops differ. I have decided to wear my black netted skirt and thick studded belt to keep in the 'high end fashion glam rock' theme, and accessorised with multi-chained necklaces, chunky rings, dangly earrings and platform stiletto heels.
The first outfit includes a printed vest top with black and white photographs with red and blue highlights, still keeping in with the rocky theme. This look is more casual and young.
The second outfit though contains a slouchy long sleeve glittery jumper, with horizontal detail. It is quite hard to see that the material is glittery in the image, but the jumper is slightly sparkly, adding to the 'glamour' part of 'glam rock'. The fact that it is quite baggy and the sleeves have been rolled up also reflects the outfit I will be wearing in the paint scene (see below) giving me a slouchy, slightly messy but girly look.

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For the narrative half of our video we will be painting, so as a group we decided that we should wear jumpsuits or dungarees, as painters usually wear full length jumpsuits. However we still wanted to add that high fashion to our outfits, as shown by my outfit choices below:

So for my paint outfit I have chosen to wear denim dungarees, with an oversized pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The first outfit shows when I just wear the clothes normally, with both dungaree straps on my shoulders, and my shirt buttoned up. The second outfit however shows that slouchy messy side (as mentioned above with the second performance outfit) with a loose grey tshirt underneath, the pink shirt open and tied in a knot on the side, and one of the dungaree straps fallen on the side.

Initial Ideas for our Group Proposal: Styling

As a group we have had many discussions about the styling of our band, with the song Stripper - Soho Dolls in mind. This is the song which we think we will be doing, and are going to pitch it to our class and the teachers next week.

After listening to the song we thought that it sounded quite rocky but with aspects of pop, goth and synthesisers. Therefore we have thought to style our band in this 'glam rock' or 'goth glam' way: with the main colour being black, but with sparkly glamourous jewellery, making us look more upmarket, girly and approachable. By mixing high street fashion with rocky or goth clothing, we can create a look which suits us best. We have looked at a few outfits/sets on lookbook.nu and polyvore, and I have made a mood board of all the ones i like, shown below. (click to enlarge)

Early Planning & Research: Audience Research

As we have decided on our song: Stripper - Soho Dolls, we can now figure out our target audience.

As an overview, our target audience would be aged 16-24, leaning towards females, as we will be an all female band. They would all be keen listeners of music; listening to music on the go, at home, or watching their favourite music channels. The core audience would prefer genres such as pop/rock and glam rock as this is the genre that the song Stripper would fit under.

On the whole, the majority of teenagers - female and male - are keen users of the internet and social networking, using sites such as Facebook and Twitter daily. This would tie in well with our project and target audience as we will be making a website and also a Facebook and Twitter page, meaning that we will easily be able to target and communicate with our audience.

The majority of teenagers are also big fans on TV, watching many soaps, tv dramas, sci-fi/fantasy shows, comedies.. etc. As our music video will be for the song Stripper and it was featured on Gossip Girl (as shown here), our core target audience will also enjoy watching teenage American TV dramas like that.

Group Proposal: Stripper - Soho Dolls

As a group, Jess W, Charley and I have all decided on a song for our project; Stripper by Soho Dolls. After having a few discussions about different tracks we found that this was a song that we all knew and liked, and thought could make a great music video for.

We actually all first heard this song originally a few years ago as it was featured on the American TV show Gossip Girl, in a scene where they are in a strip club. Below is a video showing the scene where the song was featured (0:55-3:25). As you can see, the song has just been in the background of a scene situated in a burlesque strip club: very obvious and something you would expect.



The song in fact already has a music video, and is actually quite similar to the scene in Gossip Girl. Although this song already has a music video, it is fine to do it for our project as not many people have heard of this song previously or seen the video for it.
Embedded below is the real video, which as said before seems very obvious, as the band are just in a burlesque strip club. We are still currently deciding on our final music video idea and will pitch next week, but at the moment we are thinking of completely changing the music video; playing on the word 'stripper' and creating something unexpected.

Gender Representations: Innocent Female Artists

As a general stereotype for music videos, it is seen that a large majority of music videos show females as sexual objects or objects of desire. Many music videos, especially Pop, R&B and Rap videos include a lot of women in very little clothing, looking sexy and dancing in a sexy, provocative way.
When the artists are male, there is a very large tendancy to have hot women in very little clothing to star opposite them, showing that he is really manly and can almost get any women in the world. This occurs in almost every R&B or Rap video, for example Smack That - Akon ft. Eminem and Gold Digger - Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx.

And sometimes when the artists are female, they themselves also wear little clothing and dance sexily to target the male audience, especially those in girlbands, for example The Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious. An artist which Jess Rich and I looked at in detail was The Pretty Reckless, with their frontwoman Taylor Momsen. Taylor is only 18 years old, but dresses really provocatively to target the male audience, sexualising her body. It may just be our biased view as girls about the same age, but we thought that this was really bad and derogative, especially in the media, as she is a role model for teenage girls around the world, especially those of which who watch Gossip Girl (where she played a main character for many seasons).

However, some female artists do this more subtly, taking the powerful-but-sexy-woman route. For example, Beyonce is a powerful female icon, and in songs which are all about women being on top such as Run The World (Girls), she still dances in a sexy way and wears clothes that reveal her legs.

So as you can see from above, women are generally viewed as sexual objects or icons. So for our theme, Jess Rich & I wanted to challenge this stereotype and look into the female artists that don't use their body and female attributes to make money, but concentrate more on their music.

We found that there were a few artists in the Pop genre that were in fact innocent anddidn't flaunt their body, for example Leona Lewis, Adele and Kelly Clarkson. And it's not even the fact that they aren't sexy and shouldn't be proud of their bodies, as they are all completely capable of looking beautiful; it's just that they care more about the music being good than looking good.

We looked at Leona's US video for Bleeding Love, A Moment Like This and Footprints In The Sand, all of which where she where's clothes that do not reveal a lot of skin. In the US video for Bleeding Love Leona actually wears a coat for most of the video, and in the other shots of her wearing dresses, they are mostly floor length. This was also shown in A Moment Like This where Leona just stands still on a stage wearing a floor length dress, showing that it's all about the music, not her, and not the performance. And as Footprints In The Sand was actually used for a charity single, Leona's innocence is highlighted, with her wearing minimal makeup and just wearing a simple white tshirt.

Another female artist we looked at was Kelly Clarkson, and her videos for Since U Been Gone and My Life Would Suck Without You. In both videos we see Kelly wearing very simple, basic clothes, ones that which every ordinary girl would wear. This also reflects where she came from; she became an artist due to the TV show American Idol, showing that she is just an ordinary American girl. We looked closely at the video for My Life Would Suck Without You, as it not only shows her innocence, but highlights her power too. In the video we see the story of her relationship with her boyfriend, and see how she throws all his clothes out of the window. Although it doesn't show complete female power over males such as videos like Rihanna's Man Down and S&M, it shows how she has the say and control in the relationship.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, is Adele. She is almost the epitome of not selling your body but selling your music, being a larger and curvier artist in the industry. She was in fact quoted saying 'I like having my hair and face done, but I'm not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.' showing her innocence and female power. This has also been shown through all of her music videos, especially Rolling In The Deep, where she just sits in a chair and sings, not caring about her appearance or performance.

Being females ourselves, after looking at all these strong, innocent female artists, Jess Rich and I both agree that it's still really effective to just sell your music, and not the music and the body. It's okay to be innocent in the industry, in fact, it's actually really successful! All of these female artists have sold millions of records worldwide, showing that you don't have be sexy and dance provocatively to be successful. Of course, it's nice to get a little male attention here and there, but it is just as well to target the same gender and be a positive role model.

Early Planning & Research: Inspirational/influential album covers

Above are a few album covers of inspirational bands, including The Veronicas, The Pierces, Soho Dolls and The Like. As you can see from the album covers, the album covers are either photos of the band or just artwork. For our album cover we will do one with a photo of the band as we want to create an artist identity as a debut artist, something similar to the covers on the first row. All the covers are actually very long shots, which you may not expect for album covers. You may expect album covers to be close ups of the artists as you want to be able to see their faces, but all of these albums are actually long shots/very long shots, showing the artists' whole body. I think this is done to emphasise their legs: close ups are always of the face so cut them out, but in these covers their legs are really important and help to sell the girlier sexier aspects of the artists. In fact the wardrobe in all the covers help to highlight the artists' legs, with either short dresses, skirts or hold ups.

And here are a few album covers from more mainstream pop albums. Although Gilrs Aloud, The Saturdays and The Pussycat Dolls aren't exactly the genre or look we are specifically going for, this can help us in our research too as these are all girlband debut albums. All of them are similar in the fact that they are all long shots too, similar to the album covers mentioned above. The wardrobe for these also help to unite the band and convey a connection between the girls: either by wearing matching outfits such as with Girls Aloud, or wearing similar outfits with different colours such as with The Saturdays, not only showing a unity, but also individual identities.

So when taking our photos for our albums, we can take a few things from this research: we can take very long shots showing our whole bodies emphasising our legs to go with the genre conventions, or do the complete opposite to break conventions and go for close ups on our face to show our artist indentity.

An Initial Idea: Trouble In Paradise - The Like

The Like - Trouble In Paradisefound onRock

After listening to various songs on Spotify, I found a song that could be quite good for our project. The song is just over 3 minutes so works on the time limit, and is not a well known song so works under that criteria too.
The song is called Trouble In Paradise by The Like, an American Indie/Rock band. After listening to the songs and reading the lyrics, I have come up with an idea for our music video. Well when you hear the phrase 'trouble in paradise', it refers to the lows and the problems in a relationship, so for our music video I think we should have a narrative as well as a performance.
I picture our band standing on a stage/elevated area at someone's house, at a houseparty. This will show us to be a young, fun, outgoing band, one which our audience will be able to relate to. This is also good as all we would need is a house for our setting, so if we just got someone's house, and filled it up with many of our friends, we would create a great atmosphere. (And we could probably get quite a few extras to be in it: who wouldn't want an excuse party?)

I imagine all three of us standing there with microphones and guitars, and maybe another person behind on the drums. We will play the band for the whole of the video, and there will be another actress to play the role of 'Ruby', as the lyrics suggest.
At the beginning of the video we will see an argument between Ruby and her boyfriend at the party (cut in between our performance all the time), reflecting the title of the song. We will see her push him away and reach for some shots, and basically drink till she forgets all her troubles. [For the video we would obviously use water or soft drinks and just get the actress to act drunk!]
The video will basically see the destruction of this girl in this one night where she's just broken up/had an argument with her boyfriend, reflecting with the lyrics such as 'be careful, you've one life to live, it's still slipping and it's almost too gone, I need you to keep live and kicking' and 'pupils lie like blurred bruise, your lips are cracked and dry'.
During the part of the video where the lyrics say 'hey i hear the grave is a lonely place, just remember that hearts will break', we can see close ups of her face and then static point of view shots which can then be blurred and edited in post production to look like she's drunk.
Finally at the end of the video, our band will run off stage as we see the girl collapsing, with the rest of the crowd around and circling her. This will match with the last lyric of the song 'Ruby don't die'.

Looking at different marketing strategies: One Direction

As shown by the previous post about One Direction's website, we can see that a lot of marketing strategies have been used to ensure for a large reach, targeting core and secondary audiences. They've used a 360-degree campaign - targeting audiences from all directions - incorporating web 2.0 and using interactivity as it's main way of reaching out. Their website acts as a hub; giving audiences every bit of information they will ever need to know, as well as linking them to their official Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Shop. This type of social networking and merchandising are key features of their website, targeting their audience online via interactivity.

Also mentioned in the previous post was the 'Bring 1D To Me' campaign, involving fans to get creative and online to allow the band to travel to their country. Campaigns like this are incredibly useful and powerful; creating international fanbases, ultimately leading to more fans, tracks bought, and money.

Another competition which I printscreened in the previous post was 'Meet One Direction with Nokia!'. By collaborating with the large phone company Nokia, One Direction are not only getting more exposure by endorsing their product, but Nokia are also getting a lot more attention due to One Direction fans, making this mutually advantageous. The campaign going on at the moment is the Find The Phone interactive quiz, where we watch a video of the boys secretly passing a Nokia phone around, and we have to guess which member of the band is holding it at the end. If you get 2 or more of the answers correct, you get to enter the competition to meet the band. This creates an interactive, fun game for fans, as well as advertising the Nokia C3 and C2-02 and also getting other audiences to get to know more about the band. We get to see the fun, cheeky teenage side of them, and also get to learn their names at the end of each round. Below is a video showing all the rounds of the Find The Phone game:



Another great campaign going on is the One Direction/Nintendo campaign, with the boys endorsing the game Pokemon: Black/White. For this campaign, we saw many TV adverts of them playing the game and talking about why they loved it, and they were showed on many channels such as E4 and ITV1, during shows such as Glee and Britain's Got Talent where they could target the right audience. Below is the first TV advert that was shown, showing the boys playing the game and talking about how much great fun it is to play. From this we get a fun yet laid back vibe - a mood many of us would want to be in. We see the fun and friendly competition the boys are having, targeting the main gaming audience of teenage boys, but also their parents too. Again like the Nokia adverts, we get to know more about the band and how they are behind the scenes, showing them in a likeable view.



This 'behind the scenes' view was also enhanced by the 'Pokemon Diaries' campaign which was online, which involved Nintendo to upload a new video of the boys every week. They included more behind the scenes views of the band that the fans wanted, yet still promoting the game with the boys playing it and hanging out with Pokemon mascots. This campaign was mostly targeted at their (pre)teenage female fans as you had to wath them online, meaning you had to know where you could find the videos to watch them in the first place. Plus, the videos include a lot of behind the scenes footage such as the boys getting their hair and make up done, having fun together and overall looking really good, attracting the female audience into the world of gaming and Nintendo.



Finally, to complete the marketing strategy and campaign, it was most important for the boys to get proper exposure, and not just in adverts and online. One Direction were guests on various talk shows such as The Alan Titchmarsh Show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man and This Morning, and had many CD and book signings around the UK, teaming up with stores such as HMV and WHSmith.
They have also been featured in many different magazines, doing exclusive photoshoots and spreads for magazines such as Sugar and Fabulous (the magazine from The Sun).
As we learnt from our reflective lesson during class, we learnt that a large part of marketing was down to PR, and making sure that all the publicity they were getting was good publicity. We learnt that say if a tabloid (for example, The Sun) got a bad story about them which they did not want to be leaked, their PR company would not just pay them with lots of money, as after all, tabloids need stories. Instead they would give them exclusives and free CDs, attracting customers to buy the paper. (So you never know, when One Direction did that cover for Fabulous magazine, it could've been because The Sun dug something up which wanted to stay buried!)