Pitch

My group and I did a ten minute presentation to pitch our ideas for our artist, video and print artefacts.

Firstly, we played a clip of the song we have chosen in order to give an idea of the music genre we are focusing on.

The function of this slide was to pitch our idea for our artist. We explained that we chose to name the band Something Else due to its simplicity and connotations of orginality, and explained our choice of conventional pop rock instruments to match audience's expectations and anchor the genre we are working in. We also explained how we found our target audience through research, and thus why the band members must be young, so that the audience can personally identify with the band members so a deeper connection is established with the audience. We then explained the choice of two female musicians and one male lead singer; we want to target both genders within our target demographic, so we felt that by challenging the conventions of female pop artists and ideas about feminity, we are appealing to a young, modern female audience by providing them with more relatable female role models.

We then gave a brief synopsis of our music video.

In this slide we went into detail about why we chose this idea for our music video. We explained that we were conforming to the codes and conventions of the pop rock videos we had analysed:

• We use conventional settings such as a school corridor, house party and skate park. These settings are relatable to our teenage target audience so they can identify with the characters in the video. Settings such as the skate park and party have connotations of freedom, relating to a young, carefree audience. Examples of this in other videos are the park used in New Found Glory's 'Kiss Me', the house party used in Green Day's 'Jesus of Suburbia'. The school setting is used in blink-182's 'Josie' and Wheatus' 'Teenage Dirtbag'.
• We use props that are conventional to music videos and relatable to youth, such as mobile phones, alcohol bottles and cigarettes. Props such as mobile phones are iconic to the younger generation, and so audience members, especially those with the same mobile phone, will identify with and relate to the story and characters. Not only do props like the mobile phone help create verisimilitude for the audience, but are also vital to the storyline, as the mobile phone is used to carry the narrative along and establish relationships between characters. Examples of this in other pop rock videos are in Paramore's 'That's What You Get'. Alcohol bottles and cigarettes connote rebellion which is a stereotypical representation of youth in music videos, such as in Green Day's 'Jesus of Suburbia'.
• The storyline we have chosen includes stereotypical 'teen' issues such as relationships in order to target our audience. An example of this from our textual analysis is New Found Glory's 'Kiss Me'. We also use Proppian character types that are conventional to pop rock music videos: the teenage male Hero, the teenage female Princess, and her boyfriend, the Villain. Using these character types helps establish relatable characters for the audience.
• Shots of the band playing are conventional to pop rock music videos such as in McFly's '5 Colours in Her Hair'. From audience research we know that the audience expect to see shots of the band playing and a clear storyline, so we have included both of these in our video.

Audience feedback was helpful, as we discussed the idea of taking a postmodern approach to the music video, as seen in blink-182's 'Josie' video, by parodying the stock settings, characters and storyline of a teen comedy film. However, we felt our chosen song, although still light-hearted and catchy, was not humorous enough to accompany such a parodic video. Overall the audience felt that the synopsis for our video fit with the genre well and would appeal to a teenage audience.

Accompanying the above two slides was a large piece of sugar paper, in which we included a sample of our music video storyboard so far, some ideas for fonts, images and some hand drawn designs for our print artefacts, which will be uploaded under the blog post 'CD Cover Desgin Ideas'. We gave a brief description of what we wanted to include on our album cover, which is summarised in the above slide, based on the conventions of the pop rock album covers we had looked at (again, given in the above slide). We explained ideas for fonts, which can be seen above, and summarised what would be included on our magazine poster from our research. I also named some of the magazines I had researched and how our ideas would be suitable for such magazines; for example, for NME magazine we would perhaps include reviews from other credible music magazines, but for Kerrang! magazine we would stick to simple dark colours, eye-catching images and a bold band name. We received feedback from the audience and teacher that our ideas for our products worked well for our chosen genre, and that the cartoon style images would grab the audience's attention.

In this slide we summarised some of our institutional findings. We explained that our choice of record company would be either Interscope or Island records and named some of the other pop rock bands they had signed. We also explained some of the music channels, such as Kerrang and 4Music, that we would choose to broadcast our video. I pointed out that the Uses and Gratifications theory of audience's social interaction can be applied, due to the chart countdown programmes on 4Music. Our teenage target audience would follow and discuss chart music, so if our video was broadcast on such programmes we would target audience members.
From audience feedback, it was decided that the most suitable record label would be Island Records as they had signed more British pop rock acts and so would be more suited to our band.