Examples of promotional posters

Examples of digipaks

Forms of a music video

Narrative - A video that features a visual story that is easy to follow. Narrative music videos can also use diegetic sound, particularly if there is dialog between a few characters.

Concept - Concept videos are usually based around a single idea or concept and are often unusual or even surreal for the audience. This unusual content often draws the audience in and is attractive to them. They often have no storyline and sometimes no relation to the lyrics of the music itself.

Performance - A performance based video shows the artist/ band/ group performance throughout the song and sometimes can play throughout the whole video. This type of video is good to use on a low budget.

Deconstruction of music video

Kodaline: High Hopes - deconstruction of music video

Kodaline

Kodaline are an Irish rock band. Originally known as 21 Demands, in 2012 the band changed its name to Kodaline. Steve Garrigan and Mark Prendergast grew up in Swords, Dublin, and have known each other since childhood. They both attended secondary school at Colaiste Choilm in Swords, where they would take part in many battles of the bands. They began to share a love for music and at that stage Vinny May, who also lived in Swords, joined the group. The group was not fully complete until January 2012, when their friend, bass player Jason Boland, from Celbridge,County Kildare, was recruited.

Current Record Label 

RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment (SME). It one of is SME's flagship record labels alongside sister labels Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, and through RCA Nashville, country. The company's name is derived from the initials of the label's former parent company, Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It is the second oldest recording company in U.S. history, after sister label Columbia Records. RCA's Canadian unit (formerly Berliner Gramophone Canada) is Sony's oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression.

'High Hopes'

'High Hopes'

Broken bottles in the hotel lobby

Seems to me like I'm just scared of never feeling it again

I know it's crazy to believe in silly things

But it's not that easy

I remember it now, it takes me back to when it all first started

But I've only got myself to blame for it, and I accept it now

It's time to let it go, go out and start again

But it's not that easy

But I've got high hopes, it takes me back to when we started

High hopes, when you let it go, go out and start again

High hopes, oh, when it all comes to an end

But the world keeps spinning around

And in my dreams, I meet the ghosts of all the people who have come and gone

Memories, they seem to show up so quick but they leave you far too soon

Now evil is just staring at the barrel of a gun

And I…

Synopsis

The video is about taking a chance in life. Sometimes you need to end a relationship to be able to start it over clean, crazy and silly as it sounds, sometimes letting go is the only hope for a relationship to workout again.The video portrays a perfect story to fit this idea of mine. The music video is about a girl having a secret relationship behind the abusive one she is currently in. We gather from the footage that she decided to pick her abusive fiancee to marry instead of being with the person she loves. However, last minute she decides to ditch the groom at the alter. 
Towards the end we start to see how abusive he was to her with close up shots of the bruising and scaring on her body in bed. Sometimes love isn't  about pleasing others, its about making yourself happy and being who you are. love can be found in the strangest of places and comes in all different shapes and forms, hence why the girl in the video was afraid to pick the older man as it would look wrong to other people. Further on in the video we meet her jealous ex to be husband again who decides to shoot them both dead. From the injuries it seems the older man is weaker which reflects his age. The overall message is about how love comes in all shapes and forms.

Deconstruction of music video

Even though i'm unsure whether to look into rock as my chosen genre I decided to deconstruct Cold night by You Mr At Six to improve my knowledge and understanding of music videos.

You Me At Six: Cold Night - Promotional video deconstruction

You Me At Six

You Me At Six are an English rock band from Weybridge, Surrey. Formed in 2004. The band's line-up consisted of vocalist Josh Franceschi, guitarists Max Helyer and Chris Miller, bassist Matt Barnes and drummer Joe Phillips. The group released an EP "We Know What It Means To Be Alone" in 2006 after which, Phillip left the band who was then replaced by Dan Flint who the band had gone to college with.

The group achieved success in 2008 with the release of their debut album, Take Off Your Colours, which included the singles "Save It For The Bedroom", "Finders keepers" and "Kiss And Tell", with the latter two peaking at number 33 and number 42 respectively in the official UK Singles Chart. Their second album Hold Me Down (2010) debuted at number 5 in the UK, while third album Sinners Never Sleep (2011) peaked at number 3, was certified Gold, and spawned the band's fifth top 50 single "Loverboy". You Me At Six won the award for the Best British Band at the Kerrang! Awards in 2011. The band's influences include American rock bands Blink-182, Incubus and Thrice.

Record Labels

Over the years You Me At Six have been under a variety of  record labels for many different reasons, the labels they have been signed up to for each album were:

• Take Off Your Colours (released 6 October 2008) Label- Slam Dunk
• Hold Me Down (released 11 January 2010) Label- Virgin 
• Sinners Never Sleep (released 3 October 2011) Label- Virgin

(Current label)

• Cavalier Youth (27 January 2014) Label- BMG
• Night People (13 January 2017) Label- BMG 

BMG Records

Bertelsmann Music Group (abbreviated as BMG) was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japan's Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008. It was established in 1987 to combine he music label activities of Bertelsmann, which has recently acquired RCA Records and its associated labels. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent publisher. The 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment. Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Sony BMG).

Some other artists to be singed to BMG include Blink-182, Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, West Life and many more.

'Cold Night'

'Cold Night'

It was a cold night, we laid with each other just to stay warm

Up all hours, not for the last time

As it's a cold life, stay with each other one last time

We could always run away some other night 

I knew the moment I met you

I could never loose you

I knew from the moment I met you

Don't you let me go this time

Don't you let me go this time

Don't go baby, it's time for us you know.

Don't go honey, this way we'll never know

Don't go honey, this way we'll never know

It was a cold night, the talk of forever kept us warm

But even forever, doesn't last that long

I say, say you'll never, say you'll never change

Say you'll never, say you'll never change

Say you'll never, say you'll never change

Say you'll never

I knew the moment I met you

I could never loose you

I knew...

The video is based around the city on a cold winters night which has purposely been done to match the song title 'Cold night'. From looking at the lyrics its clear that the song about being scared of loosing the person you love 'I knew the moment I met you, I could never loose you...' In the music video we only see night life or a projection on the band which doesn't hold much meaning. However, the video never reveals where Josh (lead singer) is travelling to creating sense of enigma.

The purpose and conventions of promotional music videos

Music videos were originally made as marketing devices intended to promote the sale of recordings, which are also known as "Promo's".

Nowadays nearly every song which makes it into the charts are accompanied by a music video. It would be abnormal if they didn't as it is now a commonplace in time to have one. music videos are made to promote the song meaning if the video is good it can boost the popularity, sending the song into the top 10! which also tends to promote the artists album too. Sometimes the decision to make a music video can be decided well after the release of the song, which is a well known strategy of self-promotion from the artist/band of making their song popular again.
Artists can be known and referred to purely for their memorable music videos such as Britney Spears- ...Baby One More Time, Spice Girls- Wanna Be and Wheatus- Teenage Dirtbag etc.

The purpose of a music video is to:

- Sell the song, and invoke a reaction so that the audience remembers the song

- To give the audience a better understanding of the song

- To entertain and show off the artists talents

- To sell CD's, DVD's and downloads by creating memorable visuals 

- Marketing for the purposes of exposure and expansion of the artist's profile
However, the overall purpose of any music video is to help generate money for the record company!

When making a music video there are certain guides you need to follow to let the consumers understand the meaning behind it and make them want to watch it on endless repeat. Promotional videos are very structured on the organisation of how to put one together:
Step 1- Strategic Planning:
Identifying purpose and strategic goals to the story.
Creative brief, story outline, goals, genre, budget (decision made between the production company and client), audience, script, storyboard, etc.
Step 2- Pre-Production:
Planning the technical aspects to creating and filming the video
Step 3- Production:
The actual days of the video shoot while on set or on location
Step 4- Post-Production:
Putting the video together through editing and fine-tuning the visuals and sound
Step 5- Distribution and marketing:
Distribution, promotions, media, video search- engine-optimizations and sharing

Andrew Goodwin's Categorisations and features of music videos
Goodwin's theory states that there are 5 key aspects to a music video that the audience should look out for

- Thought through beat (seeing what the lyrics means in your head)
- Relationship between the song and visuals
- Narrative and performance of the song
- Star image
- Technical aspect of a music video

Thought through beat (seeing what the lyrics mean in your head)

The first step of this process is to analyse the music structure and how we take it into account from the sound of understanding the chorus and verses.
The next step is the main voice of the song. The voice of the song would be extremely unique and can form identification or trademarks that work well with the star image or singer.
Roland Barthes theory of the Grain of voice can be related to this as he sees the singing voice as an expressive instrument and therefore able to make associations of its own.
Thirdly, Goodwin points out the artists mode of address. Songs can be seen as stories, who the artist is the story teller making the music video a two communication device, them telling us a story and us listening.

Relation between the music and visuals 
There are three ways the visuals are used to promote a song:
Illustrate - Music videos can use certain images and shots to illustrate/ explain the meaning of lyrics to their song and genre.
Disjuncture - This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored in the music video.
Amplify - similarly to repeatability this is when the image and camera shots are manipulated and shown repeatedly throughout the music video and is drummed into our vision.

Andrew believed that a music video can promote a song by though the way it analysis the lyrics. This is shown in many music videos when a character does exactly what the song says.

Narrative and performance of the song
Andrew Goodwin believed that it was important for an artist to be involved in the music video by performing or acting out a role as the main character or singer.
It helps to make the song look more realistic and also giving the audience a special connecting and a good understanding of the song which will make the audience be able to watch the video over and over without loosing interest.

Star image 
Goodwin referred to the star image as a vital aspect of the music video. Meta narrative which is a big story that describes the development of the star over time, it has an important part to play in the music video production process.

Technical aspect of a music video
Technical aspects hold the music video together through use of camera work, movement, angle, Mise-en-Scene editing, sound and special effects.
Speed, camera movement, editing, cutting and post production are all forms of use of camera.
Lighting and colour help set moods and emphasise key movements of the song for dramatic effect.
Mise-en-Scene, the setting of the music video is vital, it needs to look authentic to attain professionalism.
Beats, music videos use cuts to go with the beat or rhythm making the video more entertaining.

Digipacks
what are digipaks?
Digipaks are a type of packaging for CD's or DVD's made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one or more discs.
When digipaks were first created they were origianlly seen to be as limited edition or specialist CD products however improvements in CD production, packaging and printing techniques has meant that digipaks are now available at much lower prices.
There are lots of different finishes between each possible digipak such as matte lamination, spot UV, embossing etc. CD digipaks are most popular in the music industry as it gives the product an expensive professional look and feel. The artwork of digipaks ranges between each artist as they tend to make it unique to fit in with their genre of music and the consumers.


The most common digipaks are normally the 4 panel which opens like a book, however 6 panel CD digipaks are also very popular, providing a larger canvas for CD artwork and text information about the CD.
'Green' digipak.
As environmental concerns have become a priority for some consumers, businesses and governments alike only use sustainable material for the cardboard stock, as well as offering a recycled card stock solution too.
'Greener' digipak.
A paperfoam tray for the digipak can also be offered which replaces the plastic flexitrays with 100% biodegradable tray made completed out of natural resources.

Examples of digipak templates:

Magazine advertisement
Although magazine advertisement isn't as popular as it use to be dropping from $23.7 billion to $19.5 billion from 2009-2010 its still a key promotional tool to get an artists music to be advertised.

The benefits of magazine printing allow the consumers to see a clear picture of the product and to be informed of the release date, it also advertisers to people who may not of heard of the artist/band before. With magazine advertisements you are almost guaranteed to reach your intended audience. The time the magazine goes out with the advertisement is vital as you need to put it out before the release to get the audience excited, however you don't want to put it out too much before the release date as the consumer may forget about it. Advertisement normally starts around 1-6 months beforehand.

Overview of coursework tasks

Coursework Brief 
Candidates are to produce a promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with a digipak for the album's release and a magazine advertisement for the digipak