I forced myself to do a vlog because maybe that will help end this fear of filming myself. There's no much introduction, I basically say everything I have to during the video. Only one quick disclaimer: yes, I am using a bed sheet on the background, because the walls of my house are yucky-yellow and I hate them deeply. I needed a white background. Deal with it. (I know it looks unprofessional *cries* please forgive me).
I was between that and 'Website Wun' -like "fun" with a "w". No? Okay.
In my last blog post I discussed social media extensively, since it is an essential part of the work I am doing with the band. What I didn't discuss was websites, because they're not social media outlets. Websites are definitely not as popular with Generation Z as social media, but they're still a big component of every band (and also required by Cambridge). A website is an accessible medium where a lot of information can be compiled for easy viewership, which makes it so wonderful.
I'll be discussing Red Hot Chili Peppers and Cage the Elephant once more and Coldplay as well, but first I'd like to discuss what they all had in common.
Website pages:
- News: a place to keep people posted on upcoming shows, ticket sales, new albums or videos... news on the band
-Tour: even if the band is not on tour, but the three bands I researched are on tour right now. It has the venues, dates and links to buy tickets
-Music: where the albums are posted
-Photos/Videos: could be photos and videos together in one page or split into two pages; the videos are mostly the same ones posted on the band's YouTube page, never content exclusive to the website
-Shop/Store: merchandise and albums! Fun for fans!
The websites follow the theme of the band's latest album. When you think about that it becomes even more clear that the website is very much a marketing tool, a reminder for the people who access it what the band's brand is and also what they're selling at the time.
The last feature I want to make note of is that all websites have VISIBLE icons that link to the social media. Important to keep people connected to the band in every medium possible.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
One really cool thing is that they have a special website for their live content, where people can browse a venue and buy the show or even single songs.
Two things I didn't like were: the pop up tab with all the links to the pages, because I thought it left the social media links rather hidden, and the bees walking around the screen (only because they kinda disgusted me).
I included the picture on the left so you can have a notion of how the home page is (it's not the whole thing, but a good portion). They include a link to their new album, some news, tour dates, and some merchandise products.
They follow the pattern of pages within the website, with a few special features:
In the 'music' page, you can click on each album and the set list will be displayed -till here, nothing new. But then next to each song there is an icon that displays the lyrics to the song. Pretty cool, right?
They have a page called 'media', in which videos and photos are included, but the photos are completely exclusive to the website, and many of the included are submitted by fans.
There's something called the "RHCP Community", which gives the fans tour pre-sale codes, exclusive videos and photos, and a fan message board.
Cage the Elephant
Website homepage. I circled the social media links so you can see how well positioned they are.
The website follows all the conventions with only one thing I'd like to note: in the 'photos' page, you can scroll down and see this
The icon for their Instagram account is centered and then below you see all the posts from the social medium. It's a way to make the website more interactive by connecting it back and forth to the social media accounts which I thought was very interesting.
One slightly annoying detail is that when you click the logo you expect to be taken to the home page, right? Yes. But here, when you click on the logo you are taken to the new music video, not the home page. Once on the site for the video you can go back to the main website, but if you're just going through the pages you can't really go back to the home (or maybe you can, I just haven't found how). BUT, annoying or not, it is smart. How? Why? Well...
You are on the music video website and you click on the little mask at the top and this (picture to the right) shows up. As you can see on the bottom right it says "enter site", which takes you to the main website, but before your eyes can reach that link you see all these other bigger links that relate to the music video. It's a very interactive medium that transforms the video into something larger and lasting. I personally loved the storyboards, and "consult the doctor" is a hashtag people can use on Twitter or Facebook to communicate with band. It's a pretty cool concept.
Coldplay
The Coldplay website was my favorite because of the style -it's super cute.
Soo pretty!!
The big rectangle is a slideshow with links to videos, news, and the album. The psychedelic mix of circles (A Head Full of Dreams album cover) is a link to buy the album on Amazon (interesting). The squares are news.
The rest of the website also follows conventions, and like the RHCP's, they have lyrics to each song in an album's page. The bottom has all the links to their social media and it's there in every page of the website.
The coolest aspect of the website is the 'timeline' page. SO DAMN COOL.
The timeline, in this case, serves as the 'music/videos' tab, even though the website already has a videos page. As you can see, the timeline is composed of squares, each standing for an event. You can click on a square and a page will pop up with information on the event, displaying videos, pictures, or an interview, maybe live shows (it varies depending on the event). You can also FILTER IT ~OMG SO COOL~ by category (release, article, concert, scrapbook, audio, video, images, interview, blog) and by era (each album).
Aaaand there's also the MAP! It's the same content available in the timeline, just displayed differently. You can still filter the same way you do the timeline, and the same details will still pop up, but you see it by place instead of dates.
Both are really cool, unique means to layout a LOAD of content in an interactive and concise manner.
I now have a clear idea of the conventions of a band's website and some varying ones as well. The research on social media was necessary, as I've already mentioned, and it'll help me set up the accounts, so I can include the links on the website. The band already bought the domain for the website + an account on Wix, so I plan to start working on it this week. I'll probably have the skeleton all set up and fill it up with content as it goes.
P.S. Right after I saw the Coldplay timeline I went ahead and searched how to do that with Google maps. I have already made a selection of 5 articles to read and try to do it on my own... It just look so damn cool.
Just a little side note: I've been researching social media SO MUCH lately, with this and the topic for my Global Perspectives research paper being social media and digital news, that I swear it's engraved in my mind. I have read more articles on social media than I've ever thought possible (I'm sure I could read way more but...it still seems like a lot). I am in abstinence from Twitter and Snapchat because I just can't bring myself to use them for now. Time out. But it's been enlightening in a way, scary in others, and reassuring in other others. It's not a bad thing, just a motif in my life right now.
Sorry for the rant. Let's talk about the hot topic.
I decided to do this post because, as I've said before, I'm going deep into this project. I am being an overachiever. It's okay. Draining, but okay. Therefore, I am engaging with the processes of social media and how it creates image, serves as a marketing tool, interacts with the fans, keeps a band/artist alive, etc. Fascinating stuff. Of course, to fully immerse in it and grasp the concepts I had to do a LOT of research, so I went ahead and chose a few bands to use as my case studies.
The basics of each social media for bands are:
YouTube: used to post music videos, "behind the scene" material, interviews, live performances, and recently "track-by-track" (will discuss it further)
Twitter: news! The news that people will see when they are scrolling down their feeds, such as concert dates, new videos, album release, etc. Makes up for people not checking the website every single day,
Instagram: lots of cool pictures from shows, on the road, during recording sessions -you name it! Even some videos, but short ones -previews or sneak peaks.
Facebook: acts like a website. There's pictures, videos, tour dates, news, everything. When people like a page they will get posts from that page on their feed and they can also choose to receive notifications.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Been talking about them a lot, I know. I swear I was never a huge fan of RHCP, even though I liked their songs, but what can I do? They are really useful for me right now. I think the biggest thing with RHCP is that they are a immensely famous band which has been "alive" for a long time now. I wrote an essay last year on music marketing using them as one of my case studies, and I discussed how they are able to keep the fan base from the origin of the band in the 80s and attract newer generations.
YouTube: 2.42M subscriptions. They did this cool thing on the platform that seems rather popular nowadays, which is the "track-by-track". They are a series of videos interviews with a band member, each exploring how a song of the album was created (they look like the picture to the right). They even had some "extra" ones, with topics ranging from the video I posted above to preshow rituals.
Twitter: 2.17M followers. They had the whole #TheGetaway trend going on previous to the album release up to now, since they're going on tour.
Instagram: 1.5M followers. Post some really random stuff that's also really cool.
Facebook: 26.35M likes
Tumblr: their Tumblr basically serves as a website, only there's no pages separating the content. It's a useful tool to connect with a younger, more alternative audience.
Mobile Roadie: whaaaaat? I know. This is an app that people can download straight on their mobile devices and have all of the RHCP they want. A lot of companies and some other artists like Taylor Swift use Mobile Roadie. It serves as an app for the dedicated fans to keep updated on... whatever it is.
Cage the Elephant
They are an alternative rock band from the U.S., who, for some reason, is now located in England. This really sucks for me, a big fan, who can never get a concert date because THEY ARE SO LIMITED IN THE U.S. Couldn't even get their last album when it was first released. Pure rage. But no hard feelings...
YouTube: 200k subscriptions (but they get 2M-5M views on music videos). They did something similar to RHCP, but instead of calling it "track-by-track" they called it "webisodes". The major difference is that the videos were more "artsy" -and I'm very sorry for using this word-, including recording sessions footage, not simply one interview with one band member. The webisodes started about a month before the release of the album and went on to a day before. Good way to build up to the release and make fans more interested. What I don't like about it is how it focuses so much on the vocalist -no other members ever talk. But they're short videos, something that I could do as well that wouldn't be so time consuming.
Twitter: 1.27M followers.
Instagram: 258k followers.
Facebook: 1.6M likes.
One Direction
On our first group meeting it was suggested to me to research a bit on One Direction and their marketing through YouTube. So I went on and did that, which is why I'd only be discussing YouTube for them and no other social media.
Video diaries: in the beginning, One Direction used to record a lot of video diaries with group members by themselves, group members together. Some were just vlogs, where the member would talk about (check the one to the right for a topic). They had a whole 23-minutes video of an "ask:reply", which was first done live through VEVO and later posted on their YouTube page. Those also included interviews with the boys and behind the scenes during their tour.
Bring Me To 1D: fans received golden tickets to go watch One Direction live in an acoustic session. The whole event was recorded and posted on YouTube on various episodes.
The idea of the video diaries is a pretty cool one, and it resembles the techniques used by RHCP and Cage the Elephant I mentioned. The biggest difference is that it doesn't only focus on the music but it also gives a background to the members of the group, a way for the fans to connect to them more. They also seem very honest and personal since they're like vlogs.
That's all I wanted to address in this post. This process of enlightenment on social media has been a long, tiresome one, but I know it's for the best. It's very important that I understand the different uses of each social media, and how I can use them for each of my specific needs. Through the case studies I was also able to get some ideas...
I have something amazing in my mind, but I won't say anything right now *soft evil laugh*. It'll be a surprise
I've decided to post a little bit on my progress this week, so here it comes.
This is Rafael, the lead singer.
I started the project a little bit earlier than everyone else in the course because of my "doc video", which is going to take a while to film. I've already discussed it before in the blog, but here's a little recap: for the video I need to collect footage of the band in different concerts, rehearsals, and I'm still going to have interviews with each member. I've been to four events so far plus one rehearsal, and I think I got some good footage so far. Of course, the more the merrier, but I'm off on a good start, especially because after the group meeting we had this past week I've decided to keep it short. As I was talking to my peers, they mentioned that maybe the video should be some sort of introduction, a "meet the band" type of thing, and that I should keep it shorter and then expand on it with social media (I'll discuss that on a later post).
My vision is to have one song (an original song by them) as the base, playing through the whole video, and have some inserts without sound in some parts. Those inserts would include the interviews, some moments like the first and second videos, interactions with the band, small things like that. The rest would be the different venues they played in, with a variety of shots and movement to keep things cool and fun. The third and fourth videos I filmed thanks to my boyfriend after I said "I want to go earlier to the show so I can get them setting up", and when we got there he went ahead and said "why don't you film it in fast motion?", and I did. I actually liked the result a lot and I want to get more shots like that, but haven't had the opportunity since. I figured this could be some sort of opening and closing to the video, but I'll decide once I start editing.
The last video is a my small "meet the band" for the blog, because I noticed I haven't shown anything of them so far. I thought it would be nice to show their faces, their style, their music (even though this is a cover of The Beatles). This video I actually shot in 4K, which if I told anyone they'd probably say "WOAH, so cool" and honestly me too... before I actually did it. I can't even view the video on my computer -too much. I had to upload it to YouTube so I could watch it. After that, no more filming in 4K, I'm lowering it a notch. (But I gotta say, the quality is BEAUTIFUL).
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, some Surfing on Saturn. I continue to follow them around like a proud mom, until my weeks are over (the weeks for the project, I mean). If you ask me, it is actually really nice: I got in for free at the Lightning Oscars and at the last concert -when I filmed this last video-, the guy organizing the stage said "you walk in and out like you're part of the band". And you know what? I almost feel like that is true.
Do you think that's how this guy felt?
Almost Famous, by the way. If you don't know that... get your life straight.
After this week's meeting with my teacher, she gave me a look when I said I hadn't thought about the music video yet, and I knew in her mind she was saying "why not kid, that's the major task!". When we were done with the meeting, she said "get to work on that music video". I took that more as a command than an advice, but you know what? I appreciated it, because I really do need to.
I told myself that I could postpone the process of the music video until about two weeks after the start of the project, but that's passed. A while ago. I started this in December. I'm pretty sure it's been two weeks. So I am giving myself an ultimatum and requiring some thought on the music video. The only problem? I don't have the music yet. The band wants to do their newest song, called "Heartbeat", but they don't have the lyrics, or melody, completely done yet. I'm trying not to be annoying to them because I don't really know how the creative process of creating a song works, but I also need the song. Without a song, I can't really create a music video.
So what I am doing for now is searching for inspiration. I'm watching many music videos on bands with similar styles to SOS (and even some different ones), and trying to find a light. Maybe if I find some characteristics I like then it'll be easier for me, when the time comes, to come up with a good idea for the video.
I've been doing some research, and now I wanna talk about some specific ones that caught my eyes.
SIDE NOTE: I will showcase many music videos, so don't feel obligated to watch all of them until the end. But the first one -watch the first one.
'Breezeblocks', by Alt-J. They are an alternative (very alternative) rock band, and I personally like their music a lot. When I asked the boys in SOS about their inspirations, this was one of the first names they mentioned. This music video is directed by Ellis Bahl, and it is extremely well produced. I love the idea of it (you'll get it when you watch it to the end) and was especially impressed by the editing -AMAZING. I think that if I take any inspiration from this video is the editing, with the going back and forth between shots of the current action and the water dropping, and the pace matches the pace of the music -with the fast action peaks coinciding with the song. Also, the camera movement is AWESOME, perfect to not make it seem repetitive.
'Red Hand' by Walk Off the Earth was also directed by Ellis Bahl. (To be completely honest, after watching Breezeblocks, I looked Bahl up and watched all of his music videos. Ops.) What I most enjoyed about this music video, like Breezeblocks, was the editing. BEAUTIFUL, beautiful. This video showed me that I don't need to be ultra creative with the content of the video, but I can make it super interesting just by having 'creative editing'. 'Creative editing' is a term I just created to describe the type of editing in "Red Hand", which is composed of fast cuts, reversing and repeating shots, and using fast and slow motion. There is only one setting with a limited amount of props and they don't change clothes at any point, yet the video keeps the audience engaged through the editing.
Red Hot Chili Peppers is a band that the SOS guys (I like how this sounds, SOS guys. I know they'll hate it though, sounds like a boy band) said that has a style similar to theirs. I've seen many RHCP music videos before, but I felt 'Dark Necessities' met my necessities (get it?). I like three things about this video:
1. There is no clear story line to the narrative part, it's just girls riding their skateboards -which is still pretty cool. Still, the video is interesting and there is a narrative part to it, so it doesn't get boring with only promo.
2. This is a half promo video, and like many other RHCP videos, it showcases all of the band members. There are shots of the Chad (drums) alone, Flea (bass) alone, so on so forth. Anthony (vocals) does have more "alone" shots than the rest, making him sort of the front man, which brings me to
3. Anthony (I know, I'm on first name basis with all of them) does not star the music video as a character in the narrative; instead, there are actors for this, which makes all the members (almost) equal in the eyes of the public. We still see the lead vocalist more, but it's not an unnecessary more.
I'm not sure number 1 is a route I want to chase, but if I do decide on a narrative/promo, it's a better looking option. Numbers 2 and 3, although, are very much characteristics I want to have in my music video.
I have two videos by Cage the Elephant now, which I like very much. Their style is very much alternative, and their music videos often take... weird routes. The first one, 'Come a Little Closer', I like very much because of how they mix animation with live action. It's very psychedelic and trippy (I'm not advocating the use of drugs, just to make it clear), with multiple different bright colors being used together, fast moving images, and no real reason behind the choice of characters being showcased (a burning lion, the shadow of a woman, undefined creatures?). Of course, realistically speaking, I won't make an animated music video because that's simply TOO MUCH WORK and I'm not that good of an artist, but I like the disjointed shots and the colors utilized in this video. The second video is 'Ain't No Rest for The Wicked', which is probably a more feasible route for me to take. What I like so much about this video is the style. The whole thing is supposed to be a film, which can be seen through the film burns that appear sometimes or how it skips shots sometimes like projectors do. Not only that, but the background is being projected at all times, showing different settings -that's a cheap, easy, and creative way to create different settings when in reality you're only using one. Both videos are also strictly promotional and still very creative and engaging. The only characteristic I don't like is how the singer is obviously the front man,and even though the audience still sees the other members of the band, they are left on the background at all times.
I guess that's enough music videos. I can for sure say that I have a vision now of what general characteristics I want to follow, and which ones I don't, and I even got some cool ideas for my video, to make it different and interesting.
As I've said before, don't feel obligated to watch all the videos to the end, but if you do, I hope you, dear person who's reading this, enjoy them.
