Statement of Intent

Music video:

I intend to create a music video to the song Drunk Walk Home by Mitski. This will conform to both the genre expectations of a protest video and the context of being produced by the Warner Music Group, while entertaining a "mid to upmarket 16-25" demographic. The video will explore topical issues surrounding the LGBTQ community and gender expectations, in particular masculinity and the effects of toxic masculinity. The narrative will follow a young, male lead, who dresses in drag, on a night out when he comes face to face with how society views him and, subsequently, his own inner turmoil whilst under the influence of alcohol. We will follow our protagonist on a journey through his home-town and throughout the night following a similar structure to the music video for "Space and Time" by Wolf Alice. It will utilise a dark, unsaturated aesthetic (possibly monochrome) in order to meet the tone of the song and narrative, whilst providing a enticing imagery for the audience, by juxtaposing the modern use of bright, pastel colours. A repertoire of camera techniques will be used to create scenes, utilising a plethora of shot types and layering of effects, creating darker imagery (but still not dark enough that it be cut by the Warner Music Group or alienate my target audience) in order to raise awareness and challenge societal norms. Intertextuality will be used to borrow meaning from texts such as "Braveheart" and "Fight Club" and the social context surrounding them in order to create more developed ideas within a three minute music video.

Website:

I intend to create a companion website in order to act as promotion for the artist. Along with this I will build a brand image around the aforementioned imagery and aesthetic of the music video in order to create digital cohesion. The audience will be treated as an active audience and will promote interaction through social media, easter eggs (probably contain more references to the music video's intertextuality source material) and other gimmicks such as lyrics pages. In addition to this I will create short videos interview with the artist, explaining meaning behind the song, whilst homaging the immensely popular genius interviews. The page will appeal to a young audience by being accessible using mobile devices and being the place to buy merchandise, whilst also holding giveaway competitions.

Generic Research 3: Websites

Analysis of a band’s website: ‘theregrettes.com’

Layout 

The website consists of a fairly standard layout utilising a navigation bar to aid the audience’s use of the website, making it easier to access key areas. In addition to this The website follows the standard layout of having the logo on the left hand side of the navigation bar acting as a home button, but does not feature any links to any social media. Instead the regrettes website utilises pop-ups as soon as the page is loaded in addition to a couple of other places to both advertise their most recent album and their mailing list. I think the pop-ups are useful and therefore should be effective utilised in my end product in a similar way.

Brand Image 

The Regrettes current brand image is centered around their most recent album titled ‘How Do You Love?” which utilises 80’s genre conventions both within the album cover, themes, music videos and music itself. The album ‘image’ has therefore been built off of with the band in general, this is common with my favourite example being My Chemical Romance doing this for each of their albums heavily. The website therefore mirrors the album cover’s solid, bright colour palette and bold sans serif font, demonstrating cross convergence.

Audience Interaction

As previously stated, The Regrettes website doesn’t include links to any social media, this would have been the easiest way to incorporate cross convergence and audience interaction. Instead, a mailing list is frequently advertised and in homemade music/dance videos are used as a sort of behind the stage insight to the band, in order to create this more personal experience for the band’s audience.

Features

Some of the additional features of the website include a list of the gigs list showing when and where shows are and a link to book them. This is a convention of a band website that I intend to follow. Interestingly it features on the main page, similarly to the music videos, and the link on the navigation bar leads to a section of the main page rather than a new page. This makes the gig list and videos more accessible than the other pages as it is, most likely, the part the audience wants information from.

The about us page is used to explain the deeper and more meaningful side of the album, which I think will be really useful to include in my own project, using it to express the themes of the video and providing an insight into the process. This could be done in a different medium such as an interview to a greater effect.

The final and my favourite feature of the website is the inclusion of a music page, which plays music and displays the lyrics of their songs. I think this is a really nice feature making the audience feel more appreciated and ultimately encouraging people to enjoy their music and not just treating the music as a commercial asset. I would definitely incorporate something similar into my website.