Goodwin's 'Conventions Theory' & Halls 'Reception Theory'

Goodwin's theory is about genre conventions and their stereotypical characteristics. It looks at 7 different principles:

- Links between lyrics and visuals
- Genre characteristics
- Intertextual references
- Notions of looking; similar to the Male Gaze theory
- Voyeurism; the enjoyment of watching/ looking at the artist
- Demands of the record label
- Performance, narrative or concept based music videos.

When looking at the house music genre of music videos and the music video for our song, 'Finale' by Madeon, we noticed differing styles that the music video uses in comparison to other music videos. In 'Finale', there is a focus on the artist and there is a narrative of him performing at a live show. While there are shots of the artist, very few are clear; ruling out the belief that the audience watches the music video to look at the artist. The lyrics and visuals don't often match, but the use of 'go out young' with the audience appearing to be of that age group shows that is it not out of the question.

Other music videos of the genre also tend to use the performance/narrative with some intertexual references for their niche audience. There may be some links with visuals but will often depend on the lyrics and if it possible to make any graphic matches.

Hall's reception theory is how the audience view the music video and it's messages. There are three readings that the audience may have to a music video:

- Dominant - the viewer accepts the points made in the video.
- Negotiated - the viewer partly accepts the points but may question elements of the video.
- Oppositional - the viewer totally rejects the points made in the video.

The music video for Madeon's 'Finale' has very few controversial points, and is mainly about how the artist feels during a performance. Therefore, it is most likely people will have the dominant view of the video.

Few music videos of this genre raise controversial points due to already appealing to a niche audience. If so, the fan-base of the artist may possibly agree with the controversial points.

Brand Development

We created this Glogster to illustrate how we improved on the designs of our products in order to make them stand out with a clear house style and layout. We also did this to promote the brand identity and the image of the artist which we want the audience to view.

Brand Development

Textual Analysis: Varien's 'The Ancient & Arcane' Album Artwork

Filming Days 1 & 2 (09-10/01/16)

We began filming this weekend on the Saturday and the Sunday. We have the shooting schedule for Saturday here and the schedule for Sunday here. We did have some technical issues which led us to cut filming early on the Saturday, however we caught up with our schedule by shooting more footage on the Sunday.

In the recording we did do, we decided to focus on the introduction and ending of our music video so we could create a foothold on recording the music video as a whole. We have been using our storyboard to aid us in which shots to record and for how many bars in the song it will be recorded for.

We booked our equipment from the schools booking site and we hired the camera and the tripod for the weekend.

Consuming Habits of the Dance Music Industry

The consuming habits of the dance music scene are different to that of the mainstream scene. The dance scene is often seen as the most digitalised scene with artists releasing singles of extended plays (EP) through digital marketplaces only. Some artists will release long plays (LP), these albums are normally sold physically on the record labels website as well as through the digital marketplaces.

The dance music scene is record label orientated and releases are hyped up before the release of the song in order to gain a wider audience. They often do this by posting previews on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, the song will be previewed on Soundcloud; a website designed for music sharing and is most prominent for the dance music scene.

Most people consume dance music through the releases and purchasing on digital marketplaces. Beatport is the most prominent marketplace where record labels such as Spinnin’ Records and Bourne Recordings will release on Beatport exclusively before a release on another digital marketplace like iTunes and Amazon. In addition to this, the consuming habits of some dance music audiences has shifted to music piracy as people now begin to download the music illegally.

From this research we gathered, we have discovered that in order to reach a wider audience, it will be useful to sign the song onto a record label. In addition to this, we would release previews and hype the release up on our social media pages, website and on our Soundcloud page. In addition, we should offer a physical copy for purchase on our website.

Storyboard of Madeon's "Finale" Music Video

This is the storyboard for our production and with this, it will aid us in what order we will be shooting in. In addition, the storyboard will help us in knowing which shots we need to film and the transition between shots in post production.

Textual Analysis: Mashd N Kutcher Website

Album Artwork Practice: The Prodigy

We decided to practice making more covers for our ancillary CD cover for the main task. We decided to pick The Prodigy's 'The Day Is My Enemy' was a good choice and we decided to recreate it using a badger instead of a fox and using diffrerent colours and backgrounds. This was the result of our works, we used a variety of different effects in Photoshop such as bevelling, embossing, colour and gradient overlays, background removing, blurring, reducing hue and saturation and also playing with levels of colour and light. This will be useful for our main CD cover task as we have learnt these effects which we can use in the main task. In addition, we will use the effects we learnt with the recreation of the Madeon logo and to utilise the placements of text and objects in the image to give it an authentic style to the album. In addition to this, we learnt that most digital covers are normally made with a size of 1200x1200 pixels which satisfies most sizes for digital retailers such as Beatport, iTunes, Bandcamp and Amazon which is another place we aim to utilise when targeting the song and video to our target audience.