3 Album cover analysis

OkGo

The name of this particular band is OkGo. The band name comes from their art teacher, saying "Ok Go!" while they were drawing.

They are a very unusual creative group; this is seen when looking at their album cover by the use of vibrant bold colours in the flowers. Red; is a strong colour that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. White; is purity, cleanliness and innocence. Like black, white goes well with almost any colour. Another colour that they have used is yellow; It is a warm colour, like red, has conflicting symbolism, On the one hand it denotes happiness and joy.

The use of different colours and how they have been arranged within the image make you feel happy, jolly and excited.

Also the use of bold lettering in the title draws your eye to the name of the band, making it stand out. The style of the cover is that of the re-occurring flowery and colourful error which was in the 60s.

I like how they have used a sketched image; this creates a 3D dimensional look. The genre is indie rock. The target audience of this group ‘Ok Go’ would be for a female audience 17-29.

Pulp

Pulp, were an English alternative rock band formed in Sheffield in 1978. Like ‘OkGo’ they were a very different, creative group who liked to experiment using different techniques. The album cover (This is hardcore) was their sixth album which was first released in March 1998. Looking at this album cover, the colour red is used to express different emotions and feeling to ‘Ok Go’. Here it’s used to emphasize on power, sexual ways, blood, depression and maybe some elements of death. When looking at this cover its makes you feel frightened. The girl is the main focus in the image she is protrude as a sex symbol. The position that she is placed shows elements of anger and power. The black background makes the red the more dominate colour as it stands out. The target audience to this group would be much older 25-40s.

Vampire Weekend

Vampire weekend is an American indie rock band from New York City, they are very similar to ‘OkGo’ and ‘Pulp’ as they are very unique and individual, they like to be different and stand out from the crowd. Contra was their second album and was released in January 2010. Compared to the other two bands Vampire weekend are a very recent group, which formed in 2006.

The album cover is similar in ways to ‘pulp’ as they have both used a female as the central main focus. The secondary colours shown are very girly but have elements of a darker side because the use shadows. Candy floss coloured Pink is a softer, less violent red. Whereas purple is elegant. The girl’s facial expression is serious, as she is looking directly at you. Which is allowing you to make eye contact with her and also drawing you in. The CD cover is very funky, the layout looks like their music is coming alive. The genre of this band is indie rock. The audience that would best be fit this band would be 15-50 year old's.

Music Video Analysis

The music Video that we have chosen to analyze is Vampire Weekend - Holiday. The genre of this song is similar to OkGo (alternative). Here is the video:

Vampire Weekend - Holiday on MUZU.

Technical Aspects

Use of Camera

In the video there are many Medium close ups on the band members, long shots of the full band, high angle shots, tracking shots from when they are driving in their car. The camera tends to be still for most of the video unless they are in the car. The aspects of the camera use that is particularly effective are the high angle shot when the singer is looking into the camera and when they band are in the car driving round in the city. Another effective use of the camera is when they are on the beach and are fighting with the surfers as the camera goes from extreme long shots to medium and when they go to hit the surfer on the ground, the camera shot is a point of view shot and you see the band members fist swing into the camera. I believe this is effective because it shows the band are in your face and they are serious about becoming musical artists.

Editing

The cut rate in this video is very fast so that it can show everything in the video that they wanted to be in it. Effects in the editing consist of slow motion on some of the scenes, e.g. Playing golf on the beach and when they are doing cartwheels. The lip synching is in time with when the actual song lyrics are singing and is performed very will in this. There isnt much cutting to the beat in this song, one of the only times it does it is when the diver jumps into the swimming pool and it shows him being in different places when jumping into the pool by putting 4 squares onto the screen and each square appears on each hit of the snare every two hits.

Mise En Scene

The costumes that the band are wearing are Tudor cloths where as all the other people in the video are wearing modern day clothing. The location of the Video is in a big city, possibly LA, at a swimming pool, at a hotel room, on the road in a car and at a beach. These location show what the song is about and expresses how the song is suppose to make you feel. The performance in the video is ok, but not very impressive. This may be possibly because they are a new band and not had much experience with making music videos. The lighting changes throughout the video from a very bright sunny day throughout until the end were the sun is setting with a red sky stating that the end of the video is near.

Narrative/ Genre Aspects

The narrative of the video is the band members are on holiday and are trying to make the most of it by having a good time, therefore making it a illustrated narrative. Throughout the video the is much performance involved; like when they at sat in the hotel room, driving around in the car and when they are fighting with the surfers.

OK Go – Background Information.

OK Go is a Grammy Award winning rock band from Chicago, Illinois, who formed in 1998. The band is made up of Damian Kulash (lead vocals and guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar and vocals), Dan Konopka (drums and percussion) and Andy Ross (guitar, keyboards and vocals), who joined them in 2005, replacing Andy Duncan.

A picture of the band:

The bands name ‘OK Go’ originated from when Damian and Tim were at a art’s camp when they were 11 and their art teacher, saying "OK...Go!" while they were drawing.

Since the band started in 1998 they have released 11 singles and 3 albums. However the main success of the

band has come from their music videos, which have had their success from YouTube and become viral videos.

The video "Here It Goes Again", where the band performed a complex a strange and unique dance routine with the aid of motorized treadmills, has received over 52 million YouTube hits.

The music video can be seen in a previous blog post.

Since then they have released several different music videos each of them being unique and bringing something new to music video industry.

Their latest single and music video 'White Knuckles' has once again been a huge hit and has had over 5 million YouTube hits within 10 days. This time the video features the band members performing choreographed actions with minimal props alongside a number of trained dogs and one goat, with the actions set in time to the song.

Here are some shots of the music video:

Chosen Music Video

The song that we have decided to use for our music video is the band OkGo and their song End Love. We have chosen to do this song because we believe that it will be a fun choice of song to do and will be an interesting song choice to make into our own music video. Here is OkGo's music video for End Love.

Ok Go - End Love on MUZU.

Ideas for songs

We all have choose 5 songs each that we feel would be suitable for our music video. After choosing our songs we discussed as a group which artist and genre we were going to use to create our music video.

At first we agreed on OkGo's song end love, however in the next lesson we changed our ideas about the music video which made us change our minds about doing the song we had first selected. But after a further group discussion we all decided that by doing End Love by OK GO we could do something more unique and creative.

Below shows the five songs which each of the group members felt would be suitable for our music video:

Nick

Vampire weekend- A Punk

The Ting Tings - That's not my name

The Kooks - Naive

Mumford and sons - Roll away your stone

Brandon Flowers - Crosswire

Matthew

Oasis- importance of being idle

A day to remember- down fall of us all

Escape the fate- situations

Billy Idol - White Wedding

Pink floyd- the wall

Bethan

Ok go- end love

Eric pride- call on me

Eliza Doolittle- pack up

Ok go- here it goes again

Natasha Bedingfield- unwritten

Mind Map

A Mind Map showing the different music genres and sub genres.

Research Into Different Music Genres

A Music Genre is the process of music being categorized and identified into different musical categories, this is usually done through the instruments, vocals and the lyrics.

In today's modern society there are 100's of different musical genres, for example Rock, Indie, G-funk, pop, classical, rap etc…

Here are a few examples of different genres and what distinguishes them from the other genres. Throughout each genre there are many different sub genres e.g. When rock n' roll first started it was its own genre but then different sub genres came out from it and has expanded the whole genre in to many different styles. For example Metal, Heavy Metal, Pop Punk, Punk Rock etc...

Pop Music:

Pop Music is perhaps the most well known music genre with most of the popular music starts of today being categorized with them such as Beyonce, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. It is the music know most by the public as it is played on many different music video channels and different radio stations.

Dance Music -

Dance Music is also in a way, smart to Pop Music as the a large range of people who like pop music also like dance music. Dance Music is interments that have been put in mainly by a computer music editing software ti create the songs e.g. fruity loops. Some examples of Dance Music artists are Casacada, Scooter and Basshunter

RnB -

RnB is similar to Pop Music as it is a very well known musical genre. It uses a strong vocal line over a strong musical beat with rhythm, repetition of them and many different range of notes in the voice. Some examples of RnB artsists are Justin Timberlake, Destiny's Child and Neyo

Rock Music -

Rock music is very different from other styles of music. The musicians play their instruments fast and heavier. A very common element of rock music is distorted guitar which specifically identifies a song as a rock song and places it into that specific genre. Such artists who are part of the rock music genre are Elvis Presley, Metallica, Green Day and Blink 182.

Notes and Ideas for the Music Video.

Initials Ideas

Are initial ideas are to have a comedy styled music video, involving various different 'funny' scene's. Some ideas are to be within a gym with fast food items as the equipment, also we thought we then have a serious side to it involving men in suits.

Roles in the group

Within the group all of us have different skills and we wish to use all ours skills to create a successful video. At the moment we our discussing who is going to be in the video and who is going to be doing the filming. When we come to the editing of the magazine and the CD pack design, each of us may have specific things we want to do and we will discuss this nearer the time.

Editing

For editing we think the music video would be quite fast paste, with various different camera shots and the use of different effects within the video. We will use quick cuts to make the video seem faster and keep the editing between different shots in time with the music.

Blogs

For our blog we will try and show every step into the creation of our music video, from analyzing real life video's to the shooting of the various locations and the final edits to show the ways that we created and put together our music video.

Specific Ideas for the video

At this moment in time we just have initial ideas, and in the process of expanding them further. We are aiming for the style of the video to be comedy with silly things happening to the cast of the music video. We would like to do something related to exercise and eating and blending the two things together in a funny way. We also have an idea of linking the exercise idea with relationships.

Ideas for magazine and CD pack design

At the moment we feel the magazine and CD pack design should have a 'professional' feel towards it through the images, colors and text which we will use.