Artist Name Decisions

By having looked at how existing artists when producing my mood board it was extremely helpful when it came to deciding on a name for our artist. I found that the names appeared through either something meaningful to them, a different way to say something or even something as simple as inspiration from a place or film.

This gave me insight and encouragement in how I should be looking for a unique name.

Here I have produced a image of her name. The idea stemmed from our actors name being 'Izzie Nicole Cummins' and the fact that artist and band names are produced through a different way of saying a name. I also saw that some artists and bands would replace one letter to create a unique identity, for example 'Tove Lo. 

The naming will be pronounce as 'Ink' and relates to the idea of changing a certain letter to create a distinctive name.

I have also produced a visual way so the audience will be able to see her name more graphically. It also creates a more recognisable way for the viewers to remember her name in order to create a fan base and to create synergy using this image.

The colour scheme and design also conform to the codes and conventions of the alternative genre as it conveys an old fashioned vibe and it completely black.

Live Performance Research

To begin with the costume that Lorde is wearing in this live performance is a full black, conserved dress with heavily flared sleeves. The choice of costume rejects Laura Mulvey's theory of the Male Gaze as she suggests that women are represented to passively be an object of male desire. The colour of her costume connotes that she is dark and mysterious. This portrays her as being quite conserved within her and maybe shows the audience that the way she expresses herself is through her music. Furthermore, her costume contrasts with the various beaming lights behind her creating binary opposition of light and dark which corresponds with Levi Straus' theory. Following on from this her makeup shares similar coloring's to her costume as she is wearing a dark purple colour on her lips with dark eye makeup, this continues to add to that mysterious aspect she is conveying to the audience and conforms to the conventions and stereotypes of the alternative genre.









The performance consists of a variety of camera shots and movements, mostly being head and shoulder shots. As an artist she is extremely passionate when performing on stage and using head and shoulder shots and close up it allows up to view the emotion in a detail way in order for her to gain a relationship and closeness with her audience. The camera fades away to other shots such as low angle shots in order to establish her persona and domination of the performance and long shots which makes it easier for us to view her in one frame. Goodwin suggests the artist acts as the storyteller and through the different shots used within this example it adds to the 'story telling' aspect of the performance. By viewing Lorde from all angles in makes it easier for the viewers to identify with her and feel closer to her.

The setting of her live performance in a stage in which does not feature any props (besides stage lights), this means it is easier for people to focus upon her, engage with her more and not be distracted by other things going on in the performance. The fact that the stage is empty also suggests a lot about her character and her as an artist as it portrays her as being individualistic, being all about the music.

The overall lighting is extremely low key, however suggests binary opposition with the lights beaming over her at certain points of the performance, suggested by Straus showing us a fight between light and darkness. As we can convey that she is fighting the light is an all black costume it may be suggested that she is an extremely dark character fighting the good, portraying her in a slightly negative way. However, this means the audience will get to know her in more depth allowing them to relate to her more as an artist.

Practice Shots

Parental Advisory Warning

The Parental Advisory label is a warning label first introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1985. It is placed on audio recordings in credit of excessive profanities or inappropriate references, with the intention of alerting parents of potentially unsuitable material for younger children.

After deciding on our chosen song it meant we had to produce research into parental advisory warnings. I have analysed the lyrics of our song ‘400 lux’ and have found that there is no explicit language featuring in the song so we not have to provide the label in production of the music video and digipak.

Further Audience Research -Focus Group

After producing a 'Survey Monkey' in order to gain some research from our audience, as a group we felt it was necessary to follow this up with a focus group which meant we could speak to our audience face to face and also explain each question to them to create understanding.
I felt it was a good idea to self analyse this focus group in order to explain what we had found from this and also to evaluate what our strengths and weaknesses were so if we were to do this again with follow up question we wouldn't keep making the same mistake and also to collect even more accurate information about our target audience.  

Audience Research

Create your survey with SurveyMonkey

My group and I believe that last year we did not use our target audience research, like focus groups and surveys, to the best ability as we could and did not really take a lot of detail into the insight they were giving us in such ideas. By identifying this it means we can improve this within this year’s research.

This is why we decided to produce a survey monkey in order to receive the feelings of the target audience in a way we could reach all genders and a wider range of ages. Mostly females completed this survey at a range of 13-18 (78%), this is extremely useful as this is our target audience which means the answers will be enormously relevant to my research.

Here are a selection of the most important questions from my survey in which I believe will help me when planning my narrative and storyboard:

What is your opinion on the indie/alternative music genre?

The response to this was mixed between negative and positive comments, mostly positive. We wanted to ask this question in order to see individuals initial opinions of the genre and take into consideration the answers to our question.

In an alternative/indie music video, what sort of thing would you expect to see?

In the majority of the answer it is not only what we wanted to see but also what we expected. These answers will help me to reach and target my audience by utilising the suggests in my production period.

Do you like music videos which have a narrative (a story) or do you prefer to watch the artist/band sing perform the song?

Due to the fact that my group and I were indecisive on whether we should feature a performance part to our video, this was an important question to us in terms of what are audience would prefer. The majority of the responses did not really mind and that they like both, this is reassuring to know that if we decide to do wither performance or narrative that it won't impact the audience too much. However, 42% of responses did choose a more narrative based music video which it helpful to know that a lot of people prefer a narrative rather than performance.

Pick which narrative you'd most expect to see in a indie music video

This question allows us to see what conventions of an alternative genre music video our audience prefer so we can make sure these aspects are included in our own music video. As we can see over half of the respondents expected to see partying/drugs/smoking etc. This also means that a narrative structured video is most likely being preferred which is very helpful as it means we know what the audience expect/want and we can deliver this when deciding our initial ideas.  

Chosen Artist Representation

In order to produce a piece of media text including a song produced by Lorde I felt it would be necessary to research and understand how the media represent her as an artist. I found her CD cover and one of her posters in order to develop knowledge of Lorde's music and the way she comes across in the media so I can mirror some of these ideas when producing my final project.

Her CD cover for ‘pure heroine’ features a plain black background with simple white text creates a dark colour scheme where we would typically expect a picture of the artist as a key image, it is representative of the artist, as it adds to the mystery behind her. As well, it is clear that the artist has already established hr audience before her album has been released allowing her the ability to only feature her name on the cover, setting her apart from other artists. Although Lorde is very young her album cover shows a more mature approach which makes her seem older and doesn’t only appeal to a young audience but older too. Continuity is shown through her font as it is what she uses in her poster and website, this maintains a nice theme between the different types of synergy. Furthermore, the cover represents the genres ideology as the colour scheme is very conventional as it is very simplistic and creates enigma. 

Lorde also advertises herself on posters for upcoming tours, in this poster it features a mid-shot of her which allows the audience to view the choice of costume. The costume is extremely plain as she is wearing a black top with a basic necklace, this fits perfectly with the conventions of the genre. The costume represents her as emotional and rebellious due to the plainness and colourlessness. Her facial expression also suggests this as she is very serious but also edgy in the way she is looking directly at the camera giving us an intense key image. Her dark lipstick again reflects the idea of her being different and even eccentric. Moreover, the necklace in which she is wearing in this high key image seems old fashioned and slightly vintage which could be juxtaposing her style of music which is modern yet electronic.

Copyright Request

Using a song which has not been produced by yourself comes with several rights in terms of using the song. By producing my music video, I have chosen to use a song that already existing, this means I must request permission to use the song.

I have decided to use ‘400 lux’ by Lorde to feature within my video. Professionally, I emailed ‘lava records’ who produce Lorde’s music to receive accurate permission to use one of her songs in my coursework.

Target Audience Focus Group -Song Choice

After choosing our song that we will be producing a music video to, my group and I thought it would be better to get our audiences response to the chosen song.
From our last focus group I realised that a bigger group of people resulted in very short answered questions which made it harder for us to really see the response of our audience. So to improve this I gathered a smaller range of people to answer and couple of questions. I wanted to see their feelings together the song, if they liked it or not and if they would listen to it in their own time.
The response was overall positive, obviously it is hard to generalise the findings of this focus group to the majority of our target audience but I feel this is still helpful to gain some knowledge of our targeted audiences preferences and choices despite it being such a small group of individuals.
The participating individuals are all 17-18 years of age which fits in well with my target audience. They all enjoyed the song in different ways, how unique the song was and think it is a different song that they would listen to in their free time.
This was helpful in clarifying this choice of music as the focus groups responses expressed their feelings of enjoyment of the fact that the song was unlike no other, this was great to hear as we were looking for a song which was distinctive and different so we could be creative with our video and filming choices.