HK: Industrial Metal Examples

Deathstars - Cyanide
Deathstars are a Swedish Industrial/ Gothic Metal band.
The video for this song is a mixture of performance and narrative with the video cross cutting between shots of the band and of a physco hospital.
In the performance footage there isn't shots of the whole band but more focusing on jusot one person, or even less with a close up of just an instrument even without showing any of the face.
The video focuses alot on the vocalist of the band, this is common in metal video's, the way the vocalist stands out here is through mise en scene and his army officer uniform is different to the other band members.



Oomph - Augen Auf

The video for song is quite a bizzare one, taken inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, again cross cuts between 2 locations, where a mixture of concept and performance.
The shots for performance are similiar to Cyanide, with them also putting more attention on the vocalist.
The bands clothing is black, a big signifier of the genre of the music.







Ramnstein - Keine Lust

This video is entirely performance based and again has a large focus on the vocalist of the band, mise on scene here is very different with the band being in white, lighter clothing office wear, this is the sort of clothing we could consider including in our coursework piece to represent a victim of capitalism exploitation,






Another video I looked at from Ramnstein was their song Amerika, which is all about the Americanisation of the world, shows shots from people around the world from different cultures showing there Americanism's such as starving Africans eating takeaway pizza, the video also includes a colour effect changing from colour to a black/white/sepia effect.

Hanzel Und Gretyl - Take Me Too Your Leader.

This video is the first time in the genre where I have seen a video play any key part in the video, with her being one of the band members but what differs to most female artists is how they play with the male gaze to get more people to watch their video's but here Hanzel, is modestly clothed and not bearing much flesh.
The video shows many shots of New York locations and looks to be about the American dream and ultimately capitalism, with lyrics like 'take me to your leader' referring to their boss of the workforce being a leader making it seem like New York is like some sort of alien colony with people working for there leader.







Hanzel und Gretyl -SS Deathstar Supergalatick

A completely performance based video that includes dual layering effects that could be creates on Final Cut when editing.



Rob Zombie, Living Dead Girl

Has a flickery old film effect throughout the whole video making it quite uncomfortable to watch.



Sisters of Mercy, Lucretia.

The opening of this video is very similar to our idea, lots of shots of various everyday objects cutting to the beat.

Research Into Genre ( draft)

Deathstars
KMFDM
Hanzel and Gretyl
Oomph!
Ramnstein
Rob Zombie
Static X

Note KMFDM - Stars and Stripes similar to pitch idea style wise.

Group - Treatment

Untitled 1

HK: Inspiration. G.W.T.D.T

This is the trailer for the film Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher. 2011
The hyper fast edited video trailer keeps you on the edge of your seats for the entire time and makes you not want to even blink at all otherwise you'll miss something.
The music fits perfectly with the editing, the clips cut to the exact beat and the combination of the cuts and the beat gets the adrenaline pumping through your body as you watch it.

0:55 to 1:29 is very similar to what we intend to do with the corridor scene, zooming to the end of the corridor, but cutting to different shots to make sure that we have a good variation of shots to make sure that the video follows conventions of music video and also making sure that the video is exiting.

HK: Production Company

We decided on the name HBK Productions as it a mixture of our initials Harry, Ben and Kyle and also taking inspiration from member of the 'big 4' in the music industry 'EMI'

It is the productions company's job to oversee and manage the production of the video, marketing and the digipak.

I created a logo for HBK Productions so that our company can be recognised and have its own ident, the main image is of a Vinyl record, this straight away shows that we are a music company, also the ransome note font for 'Productions' is similar to the Sex Pistols album ' Never Mind The Bollocks' this is providing a bit of intertextuality and will appeal to our target audience, whilst the HBK font is quite modern and cutting edge this shows that we work with both old bands and new.

 I also created HBK Productions its own Twitter page, this way fans of our music videos can follow us from around the world and have the latest updates on what we are doing, links to our behind the scenes production video's and merchandise.

HK: Target Audience

After researching alot into the industrial metal genre we could see what the target audience was.
Audience is usually divided into age, gender and social class, it is very important when creating a product to get a good understanding of the audience, and what codes and conventions they would be looking for.
 So once you get a better understanding of your audience you know what to include in your product and what will appeal to them.
We found that after research into the genre it was alot more popular amongst males than females, this is largely down to the fact that industrial metal genre is infact just a sub genre of the larger Metal genre which is usually affiliated with a more male audience because of the live performances and gigs being very heavy and full of people jumping around, head banging and moshing and very testosterone fuelled, things can get quite physical with mosh pits and walls of death which most femine women would not like to participate in this is very different to genres like Pop which have a higher female fanbase.

Our primary audience is males in the 15 - 24 age bracket as we are trying to re brand the Nine Inch Nails we wanted to appeal to a younger audience.
For this audience for the magazine advert we would plan to advertise in music magazine 'Kerrang!' This magazine is aimed at our core target audience

Our secondary audience were again males but this time in an older age bracket 25 - 34. This age category would be the ages of existing NIN fans who were fans of the band in the 90's but they have aged since then from being in 15- 24 now to the later age category. We are trying to look to create a product that also appeals to existing fans ( our secondary audience ) as well as the younger audience who arent necessarily existing NIN fans. For the magazine advert we would advertise in the magazine 'Q' as this magazine has the same audience as us.

BH Costume/Casting

Well this is a subject that we've barely touched upon in full detail in our discussions about the video although we have decided upon using a teenage protagonist this means that we can have another connection with our audience. Because of how 'weird' we have planned our video to be, we would use the protagonist to really give our audience a way into the video.
We haven't really decided upon who else would appear in the video although /I think we do plan on including some basic performance shots but really keeping it to a minimum. 
Of course there are still issues to discuss such as should the singer also be the protagonist (something frequently done across all genres in the music video format) and should the band appear in the video, and if so then in what manner? 
Maybe something closer to 'The perfect Drug' where the other three band members appear as gentlemen dressing in top hats playing violins or later standing on the hill with canes in hand looking into the distance. but then the band have never really appearing in other videos (other than March if the pigs) all that clearly (cameo from Richard Patrick and Robin Fink in Down in It) so we are still debating as to whether we stick to the established Nine Inch Nails 'convention' of the focus just being on the singer.

HK: Location Scouting. Corridor

Corridor settings can provide a very great location and where better than a school?

I have 2 corridors in school in mind that would be fit for a corridor zoom scene:
The first I have in mind is a corridor in the new building of school on P floor or M floor, these are both very long floors with class rooms and lockers to the side would make for an epic zoom shot with black gaps in-between like the zoom from the trailer of girl in the dragon tattoo.
With the camera gradually zooming in to the end of the track in time with the music.
And the second on E floor, a similar but smaller and thinner corridor.
An example of a famous corridor scene would be The Shining.

HK: Key Influences On Video Narrative

An influence for which I would like to take inspiration for parts of my music video is a strange one, its a video game I remember playing on the PS2 years back: Mark Ecko's Getting Up.

The game is set in a strict, corrupt government controlled city.Where the population are watched and controlled by armed guards and under constant scrutiny by the law and freedom of expression is suppressed by an Orwellian city government.
The environment its set in is very similar to George Orwell's 1984 where it is similar, the population are oppressed by the government and watched 24 hours a day by 'Big Brother'

I would like to include elements of a dystopian world into our coursework, how teenagers are addicted and somewhat brainwashed by computers, technology and the media.. 

An uprising to this oppression is where the Getting Up influence comes from, amongst the government rule a group of graffiti writers start a movement through doing graffiti and starting a revolution to beating the system.

This is what we want for our video, someone breaking the digitisation and Americanisation of today's society.

KM - "Avenged Sevenfold - Afterlife" Denotation

First performance scene

Second performance scene

This video is mainly performance based, with two separate scenes of performance being used in the video, the first features the band performing in a warehouse, these scenes have heavy use of dark colours (such as in the form of the drum kit and amplifiers, as well as the actual colour of the warehouse) which relates to the music genre, which is hard rock/metal. The band member's clothing in these shots also indicate the genre, as one member is wearing a leather jacket and two members are wearing sleeveless tops, something interesting to point out here is that the rhythm guitarist is wearing a shirt and bow-tie, which relates to the narrative, as will be explained later. The second performance scene features the band performing with a green-screened bright white background, contrasting to the first performance scene, this relates to the lyrics, as it gives a surreal, heavenly feel to the performance, as the vocalist is singing about being in his "afterlife" and the first scene could symbolize life, and the second, death, as (something I learned from last year's media filming) white is often associated with death. This contrast is a theme that has been used with other aspects of mise-en-scene such as the instruments, for example the drum kit is mostly white in the second scene, and the lead guitar and bass have both changed from black to white. These details get even more precise in things such as the vocalist wearing white-rimmed glasses.

This video also contains some narrative as each band member has a separate scenario, such as guitarist Zacky Vengeance ballroom dancing and bassist Johnny Christ holding and then releasing some white doves. These pieces of narrative relate to the lyrics, as in the vocalist's, he is running away from the camera, while repeatedly looking back over his shoulder "move on dear, escape from this afterlife". The white doves relate to the religious aspect of the song "I pray by the grace of god that there's somebody listening" "Oh lord I'll try so hard, but you gotta let go of me". The tarantula on the drummer's face relates to the fear side of the lyrics "So out of place, don't wanna stay, I feel wrong and that's my sign." The lead guitarist Synyster Gates holding a skull relates to the whole of the lyrics in general, as the song is about dying too early. And the narrative scene of the ballroom dancing relates to missing loved ones "Got nothing against you and surely I'll miss you."

Last shot of video

In the performances there are quite a lot of close-ups of the vocalist, which is a common convention of music videos, as it reinforces the idea that it is him telling his story in the video, this focus is also used in the last shot of the video, as it is a long shot of the five band members walking towards the camera all wearing black, apart from the vocalist who is wearing a white top and is in the centre of the group.