album cover

Equally as important as a music video for creating an image for a song is an album cover, here are some we took as inspiration.

The Kills' album covers in particular had the sort of look we were going for, the Kills as a band are very good at creating an image for themselves, and thus seemed the ideal band to look at in this respect. Both of the covers shown below ended up influencing our album cover generally however they directly influenced some the shots in the video itself.

Taking into account how heavily this style of image had influenced shots in our video we looked for another image style to focus on. We all liked the more modern and simplistic styles of Friendly Fires and in particular Kings of Leon.

In the end we took parts from all of the album covers we had researched, polaroids, cracked surfaces, a black and white colour scheme and the lightbulb.

the final product

magazine cover

We felt a magazine such as Dazed and Confused was the perfect type of youth culture magazine to draw inspiration for our own cover from.

in particular we drew inspiration from their 'youth' issue cover by photographer Hedi Slimane.

We all liked the black and white theme used on the cover and in the photography of Hedi Slimane. This inspired us to come up with the magazine name Noir. Next we used the image from the Dazed cover and our own logo ideas to experiment with mock ups of covers, maintaining the same aesthetic appeal of the dazed and confused cover as well as its youth inspired imagery.

having decided on what the general layout of the cover would be we used the main character from the music video and band member (Myself) as the cover star. When shooting the photo we tried to employ the same sort of chiaroscuro as in Slimane's photograph. The final image can be seen below.

moodboards

in addition to storyboards we also made moodboards to give us more of an idea of the aesthetic we wanted to create.

storyboarding

planning

what is our intended audience?

We intend our video to be seen on music video channels such as MTV2 and NME TV which specialize in the 'Indie' genre of music. These are predominantly viewed by teenagers and young adults. These young modern people are our intended audience.

what are we trying to show within our music video?

We want to portray a lifestyle which is accentuated by the genre of music that we are using. We want to show the youthful yet essentially wasted activities that are glorified by youth culture. This reflects the song's juxtapose of cheery upbeat instrumentation and pessimistic lyrics.

what else are we doing to support the product?

As we are aiming the video at young people we are utilizing Facebook. We have created a group in order to advertise acting roles as needed and to use as a marketing tool. We are also creating a magazine cover and album cover.

synopsis

Having researched the genre of 'Indie' music in the videos below we have agreed on a general story line that our video will follow. We want to include all the main conventions of the genre whilst maintaining a narrative structure (this may not be a strictly linear narrative pattern) The video will follow a central character's day as he goes about his rock'n'roll lifestyle, waking up in the middle of the day, going to a party, throwing up and passing out and all as if he intends to do the same again the next day. We intend to show the whole video rewinding as the final shot. This in theory would enable the video be looped seemlessly with the beginning shot and thus replay over and over, showing the cyclical nature of his life.

influences and inspiration

here are our initial influences.



Four Tet - smile around the face



the Streets - blinded by the lights



the Drums - let's go surfing

Boys lyrics

Ordinary Boys - Boys Will Be Boys Video - Boys Music Videos

Music Videos by VideoCure

the Ordinary Boys - boys will be boys


The general aesthetic of these videos is something we want to focus on achieving in our own music video. The Ordinary Boys video in particular encompasses all the main features we want to include.