Goodwin’s music video analysis highlights the importance of creating a recurring theme across media products, it is important for artists to create a style in order for the fans to be able to recognise the artist. As a newly formed band, my performers need to create a motif to help create their fan base. Motifs are specific to the artists however they also have a base in genre; each genre has their own conventions which bands follow in creating their motifs. My band is metal, so I researched metal genre conventions to find out which motifs are common. During my research I discovered that metal bands find the use of motifs very important, all bands that have a firm fan base have a recurring theme, in more cases this is a logo that is put on all band merchandise and an accompanying colour scheme. Motorhead is a good example; the band has a specific type font they use, a logo and a colour scheme of mainly dark colours. Their logo is the most well-known; however fans can tell their work from the type font too.
Considering the importance metal genre places on motifs, I decided to create one for my band. I used the anti-war ideology from my music video in my digipak and my magazine advert so they would link and create a motif using the forest and army imagery. I also used a specific type font for the name of the band and a similar colour theme throughout the digipak and magazine advert.
In panel 1, the front cover of the digipak, there is a strong reference to the war theme of my music video, the main aspect of my first panel is the dog tags. The dog tags are used by soldiers in war so it links coherently to my music video. While my music video is in colour, there is an underlying idea that the main performer is dead so to increase the audiences awareness I decided to take the colour out of many of the panels to represent the music video is a memory from a dead soldier. The background is dirt, further linking to the forest scenes from the music video and creating a link to the end of the music video. The last scene which shows the solider walking away and the scene fading, the ground is similar to the ground in the background of my first panel and it implies to the audience that these are connected.
Image from the music video
Panel 1
Panel 2 has an image of the performers with their names and roles within the band. When I drew out my initial designs this design was originally for panel 3, however the disc would be placed above panel three so I decided to move it so the audience will see it as soon as they open the album. I debated having this panel in black and white to carry on the memory dark theme from Panel 1the first panel; however the background is black so the entire image looks quite bland, keeping the colour looked better and made aspects of the performer’s standout such as Julia’s red hair and Ryan’s pale skin. The colour helped show the unique aspects of the band that may have been lost in the music video due to the amount of performers I had in the narrative but the uniqueness of the performers is shown more in the band performance, nevertheless for marketing purposes it was important that I transferred the charismatic, iconic and unique nature of the lead singer and the band into the print productions by shooting the artists against a plain background thus making them easily recognisable by a potential fan base. Panel 2 links with the band performance thus promoting them as creative artists who play at gigs such as Download, Reading festival and Damnation
Image from the music video.
Panel 2
In panel 3 I originally switched the ideas for the panel 2 design, however because most of this panel is hidden by the disc I decided to have a simple idea that looked less cluttered and moved the design of panel 2 to the magazine advert design. To follow the forest motif I have been creating for the band I decided to use one of my original location shots which I later used in the music video. The image is from the beginning of the music video where the two teams are getting instructions from the General; the scene uses the rule of thirds and has a vanishing point in the tunnel of trees in the centre which separates the teams and General. The image I used in the third panel is a version of this location with no performers. I included a cross hair target in the image to reference the anti-war theme, insinuating to the audience that the cadets are the target which is referring again to the underlying theme that the main performer is dead and so would have been targeted by troops on the opposing side.
This is an image from my music video that is the scene that Panel 3 is based on.
Panel 3
The disc cover was an idea I had after finishing panel 3, as the panel would be covered by the disc I decided it would need to go with the rest of my digipak. As it is above the third panel I wanted to have them connected in some way so I used the crosshair idea on the disc. The colour scheme I decided on was green and black, the green because of the forest theme and the black because it is a generic convention of metal. By constantly referring back to the music video the digipak creates consistency and helps form the beginnings of a motif that would be desirable in creating a fan base and showing the audience the bands style. The connotations of cross hair are that everyone is a target in war, both soldiers and civilians.
Disc Cover
The fourth and final panel was exactly as I designed it originally, with the addition of the black and white forest scene in the background and faded into the top and bottom of the panel. The image used in this panel is reminiscent of the performance aspect of the music video, in the scenes where the band are playing the costumes have some similarities such as being darkly coloured, although the costume in the music video is more formal than that of the fourth panel images. The main link between these two is the black curtain in the background; it keeps the colour scheme between the music video and digipak similar without being exactly the same. The completed digipak connects the music video with the digipak eloquently, referring to the ideology of the music video in all four panels and linking to different parts of the music video, including both the narrative and the performance.
Location Image I used in the Panel 4
Panel 4
The magazine advert is a combination of the iconography of the music video and the digipak. The advert is designed to introduce the audience to the band and convince them to buy the album (the digipak) and watch the music video, so it needed to show the band ideology and show its genre to appeal to the audience demographic. I included aspects of the four panels such as the use of the black curtain like in panel 4, as well as the black and white forest faded into the top and bottom. I also put in screen shots from the music video to give the audience an indication of the ideology the band is involved in. The most significant of these screen shots is the close up of the bass guitar played by Julia, while she cannot be seen in the shot her hand specifically her black nails can be. The attention-grabbing bass guitar is conventional for metal genre bands such as ACDC and Metallica which I found during my research into the instruments (see video at the bottom of the essay). A sign of the bands ideology can also be seen within this shot, the band is developing the metal genre with the addition of a female indicating a progressive attitude to gender and moving away from the male dominated bands associated with the genre. A female artist in the band would also encourage a wider but nevertheless niche fan base as young women who are interested in protest movements may take an interest in this new British band. The magazine advert is very succinct in its message, there is very little text needed as the images create a relationship between the advert, music video and digipak by introducing them both on a single advert and strengthening the connection between them.
Image from the music video
Magazine advert
The digipak has a narrative with strong references to the anti-war theme in the music video. In Panel 1 the dog tag lying amongst the leaves suggests the ultimate sacrifice in the pointless pursuit of war, the black curtains in Panel 2 indicate a funeral parlour with the band suggesting mourners, Panel 3 there is an explicit reference to the battle field or a sniper; Panel 4 is a mid-shot of the band in order to promote the band’s distinct identity.
The combination of the ancillary texts to my main product is coherent; both of the ancillary texts link to one another through the shared use of imagery that stems from the music video. The ancillary texts both make use of the bands ideology in the video to further reinforce their developing motif and this in turn makes the main product a very strong piece in terms of creating a niche audience base which is the main goal of constructing the music video and accompanying ancillary texts.
This is the difference between the bass and normal guitar. The bass guitar is the first one seen in the video that has a design on it, while the normal black guitar is seen second. This is why I had a brightly coloured bass, as is it a convention of metal genre bands.
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