As mentioned before, my group selected the song, “Aint No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant (click to listen to the song!) which falls under the alternative rock genre. In order to get an idea of what similar, popular, bands of this genre have done to market and distribute their music, my partners and I took a look at some case studies. Namely, Cage the Elephant, Foo Fighters, Franz Ferdinand, and Arctic Monkeys. We discovered that social media is the primary method that successful modern bands utilize in order to create a large profit and fanbase. Especially noting alternative rock band’s target audience ranges from tweens to young adults whose daily life is influenced by social media. So, our band will be promoting themselves heavily via social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and especially TikTok to market towards the same demographic.
The next step was to create a band and a brand for it. After brainstorming and reminding ourselves about an alternative band that blew up due to social media, 100 gecs, we decided to emulate that strange, quirky vibe with our band we dubbed Ozone Layer. Ozone Layer’s brand would be easily distinguishable from other alternative bands due to its use of highly edited photos and darker themes. This pairs well with the song we planned to use for the music video whose lyrics tell about a mugging, prostitution, and a life of crime. To exemplify what the brand looks like, below are some photos displaying Ozone Layer's Instagram page and website.
INSTAGRAM:
WEBSITE:
Now that the brand and band have been established, it was time for Brett and me to work on the music video portion of the project, leaving our other two partners to tackle the marketing and distribution questions. Brett had created a general idea of where we wanted the music video’s story to go (full outline posted in the previous blog post), so I created a loose storyboard depicting what each shot would look like, though the order and specific shots were subject to change as we filmed (refer to below for images of storyboard). Next, we needed to get two other extras for our film. Brett and I had already established that he would play the leading character and I would play one of the featured characters, which left the other featured character and the face of the band. A mutual friend of ours, Ben, and Bretts younger brother ended up filling these two roles as they lived nearby and were willing to help us. All that left us to do was begin filming.
STORYBOARD:
On a Saturday night, the people participating in the filming process (aka. Me, Brett, Ben, and Brett’s brother) got together to begin gathering footage. We first filmed the shot of Brett mugging his brother on a sidewalk nearby his house. It took multiple takes to get the composition and timing of the shot right, after which we began working with Ben to film the promotional shots. To do this, Brett and I filmed two different angles of Ben lipsyncing the song at the same time, one of the shots being a front-facing long shot and the other a close up from the side. We filmed both shots twice to ensure we had enough footage to work with. I also gathered some tighter shots of Ben playing the guitar or having fun pretending to be a musician. After shooting ample footage for the promotional section, Brett and I continued filming the storytelling segment for the video. Rather than change locations so late at night, we filmed Brett's house specifically so that the back part of his house could not be seen. This way, viewers believe that two different locations were used when actuality, there was only one filming location. The last hurdle we had to conquer during filming was the shot where the main character kills the owner of the home he broke into at the end. We saved us the struggle of making a realistic kill scene with a budget of $0.00 and instead had the main character stab the homeowner off-screen. And with that, our filming was complete.
(Seen above, some photos of Ben, the actor used in the promotional scenes, from filming for our music video)
Though we originally planned for Brett to edit together the music video since we filmed from his phone, his editing software was having trouble so he sent all the footage to me. As such, I was challenged with editing together a music video that fit the vibe of the band and was visually appealing. I had never edited a video of this importance before, so I felt a lot of pressure to make it as best as I could. I began with piecing together the story and fixing up the lighting and filters of the shots (many of the shots were way too bright for the tone of the video) to create a cohesive story. Afterward, I began to sort through the wide assortment of shots for the promotional parts of the video to sprinkle throughout the video. These pieces I inserted where cuts were not the cleanest or the story wasn’t as interesting. I also edited the colors and saturation of these clips to match the band’s aesthetic and the video’s tone. Once this was done and I performed some final touches (including an intro and end screen telling the name of the song and the band) and the video was finished.
The time finally came to present our finished project including the finalized music video, a merchandise and website design, a discussion of our case studies, and a step-by-step plan of our marketing and distribution plan. Overall, our group did pretty well considering technical difficulties. I do feel that we would have performed even better if we rehearsed the presentation together and discussed it before we finished it, but time constraints did not allow for this to happen. Looking back, if my group had better communication and deadlines, we could have easily fixed this and made our presentation flow smoother and appear more cohesive.
All in all, I really enjoyed this project. I found it invaluable to learn how to edit together a high-quality video. I also discovered how important it is to properly communicate with group members since my group had some difficulties with this for the duration of the project. If we had better communication, perhaps we would all have had a better idea of where our minds were at regarding the band's identity and what part of the project was being worked on. Good communication skills are something I will need for the future, so it is much better to learn them now rather than later. Another thing that I learned is to have a distinct plan of what shots are being filmed. When Brett and I began filming, we more often than not strayed from the storyboard to captured other shots instead. This made the filming process much longer than anticipated and a firm plan would have made filming much quicker. Planning ahead and communicating clearly are definitely skills I will find beneficial when developing my Cambridge portfolio.
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