Research&Planning: RavenFace's style.

RavenFace describe themselves as Heavy Metal in genre and because of this their main target audience would be the sub-culture known as metal-heads although other sub cultures such as punks, emos', and rockers may listen to them as well.

As further research into this sub-culture of people I contacted Neil Taylor who is the head of the Uk Tribes website, a website solely dedicated to understanding the cultures and sub-cultures of today's British youth. The information collected on this website is done by actually talking to young people today and asking them questions, thus collecting really relevant and truthful information. There is a quiz that people can take which at the end then gives you a 'tribe' that, based on your and other peoples answers, you seem to belong to (I was a grunger with signs of mosher and skater!)  Through email with Taylor I was allowed further access to the website, which has lots of helpful information on a lot of current sub cultures.

http://uktribes.com/

Information on metalheads from UK Tribes

An enduring tribe consisting of those into metal, heavy rock and a bit of old school punk. Damnation, Download and the Carling (Reading and Leeds) festivals are popular destinations for members of this tribe – as are most opportunities for violent slam dancing in big, sweaty arenas.

About the tribe:

The Metalheads tribe generally sees more people coming and going than other tribes – appeal wanes for many quite quickly. Metalheads feel no need to justify themselves to others, and are generally a friendly badge-wearing bunch but they do have a tendency to hate Chavs and Townies, as well as generally frowning upon the musical tastes of the Emos and Indie Scenesters.

This tribe is keen on mixing up newer and older varieties of metal, punk and rock – so older classic metal bands like Pantera, Metallica and Killswitch Engage have currency as well as more recent, and more experimental, bands such as Cobalt and Converge.

The Internet plays an important part in the scene. Local or obscure bands are big among Metalheads, so an online community plays a vital role for talking and sharing music. As such, forums like ‘UK Metal Underground’ and the ‘Metal Hammer’ forum are popular destinations. As is file-sharing software like Limewire or Vuze.

You’ll mainly see them wearing black, though not exclusively. A black band t-shirt and blue pair of jeans would be the typical look of a Metalhead.

Tribe Icons:
Metallica, Dita Von Teese, Lemmy, Dani Filth, Five Finger Death Punch

Alternative Names:
Moshers, Grungers, Rockers



This information will be very helpful for me when branding and marketing, especially the Media consumption and brands as this will show me where the best place to market RavenFace so that it reaches the audience.

Research&Planning: RavenFace appearance.

A few promo shots of  Ravenface are:

The appearance of Ravenface is what you would expect from a hard rock or metalcore band. In a lot of photos they wear other bands t-shirts such as Bring me the Horizon. This is done by a lot of more known bands as it gives the band a chance to show off who has influenced them and so that the audience can relate to them. Also, if they have not listened to the band before they can tell they may like them by which bands are on the bands shirts.

As I Lay Dying, wearing band t-shirts.

They are also wearing a lot of black in their photos which is common of most more 'alternative' styles of music as the target audience is likely to wear black as well and therefore  they are recognisable as this type of music.  The clothes that they are wearing are modern and common in cliques like metal-heads, punks, rockers and emos, such as the black skinny jeans and long black jackets. They have also used accessorise like arm bands, bandannas and chains. Overall they look just like their target audience would dress.

A group of 'metal-heads'

 They also all have the current hairstyles associated with these sub-genres of people, such as the heavy full fringes preferred by artists such as Oli Sykes (Bring me the Horizon) and Framing Hanley. Whilst others in the band support the long hair look like Matt Tuck (Bullet for my Valentine) and Children of Bodom.

Matt Tuck



Oli Sykes

Children of Bodom



Framing Hanley

We took all of this into account when choosing the actors we would get to represent ravenFace and I feel that we have done a good job as they all suit this type of genre.

Research&Planning:Music video concept.

Today in class we started to discuss music video concepts and the technical details of what would look better and we decided that if we were to do a fully performance video it might get a bit monotonous and we'd have to find a lot of different shots to keep it looking interesting. So then we started to think about a story narrative that we could slot in between the performance shots to break it up again.

After listening to the song a few times we thought about the idea of making a zombie music video as it goes well with the genre of music and the tone of the song. After discussing the idea of using zombies in our video we took a look at what other music videos have zombies in them.

Our Brainstorming in lesson time.

In I Hear You Calling by Gob zombies are used in a comedic, parody of the typical zombie-teen movie and it shows the band having a football match with the Zombies whilst zombie cheerleaders dance. As Gob are pop-punk this sort of fun and light take on zombies suits their video well but I feel that ours should be more serious and less jokey.

Another video is Love Like Woe by synthpop artist The Ready Set. Again the genre is very different RavenFace and for this reason the video concept probably wouldn't work especially well however what I like about this video is that the zombies are represented by glowing eyes and you do not really see the faces of them, this adds enigma and makes them seem more creepy. There are also some good shots toward the end of the video where the zombies are trying to get into the shed The Ready Set is performing in and the way they have been shot and edited creates a really good effect and could be something we try to recreate, whilst putting our own spin on it, in our video.

The Devil Wears Parada is more the same sort of genre as RavenFace and they also have a zombie themed music video to their song Escape. It is interesting the way that they slot in the zombie narrative with the performance narrative. It also starts with a news report which is something that we were considering in our lesson. In this video the zombies are quite classic, lumbering feeding on flesh and we see a lot of them, however they would have had a higher budget and a make-up designer to make them look authentic whereas we will not and if we attempt to show them like that it could end up looking very low budget and armature.

I think that this is a good concept to use but that we will have to be very careful with how we film and edit it if we want it to look professional.

Research&Planning:Video deconstruction- RavenFace- Spineless

As we have chosen RavenFace as our band I have decided to look at what videos they already have to get a deeper understanding of their current representation and how we could recreate this for our music video.

The spineless video starts with a shot of the band in the distance and the camera is on ground level, focusing on a rock in the foreground, this is the first time the audience sees the band but as they are so far away and not in focus it creates a sense of enigma around them and makes the audience want to see more.  They have also used a effect right at the beginning of the video where the shot is shown in negative first and then flashes back into positive colour with the sound of static which adds a level of disorientation as it flashes so quick. This idea of disorientation is a common convention in music videos for the metal genre. As this shot is shown there is a low humming sound which gradually gets louder and then cuts out, simultaneously the shot flashes to black, this also adds some confusion to the video and make the footage that follows seem more vicious and bolder in contrast to the flash of black.

The first two shots are of the drummer, which may be considered odd as often the drummer can be overlooked in music videos and other promotional products as they tend to be at the back a lot, however here I think it makes sense as the drums are loud in the part of the song, and as there are no vocals it does not make sense to show the vocalist straight away. There are then various shots of the band members which focus on them head banging, again a common convention in a metal music video and one that we should use in ours.  As well as this there are a lot of close-ups and extreme close-ups coupled with a lot of camera movement, which adds urgency to the video and keeps it in pace with the fast music.

The vocalist is only clearly shown as such when the vocals kick in and from here on a majority of the screen time is allocated to him, something that is common in most music videos regardless of genre. It seems after this to almost be a shot of the vocalist, then another band member and then back to the vocalist. However in the first chorus, where there is a bit more instrumental the time is divided more equally between all band members. Although there are still a lot more close-ups on the vocalist.  

We then get a lot more shots of various band members head banging, when we use this in our piece it is important that we match it to the beat as they have here, otherwise it could end up looking out of sync.

Sometime after this we get our first shot of the whole band playing together head banging in chorus with each other. Personally I don’t think we should use this in our video as it takes away the enigma and it may make it look a bit comical.

There is a good effect used at 1:17 where the screen vibrates in time with the guitar, this drives the impact of the guitar home and makes it seem like it is vibrating the screen because it is so powerful, we should look into using this effect at some time during our video.

Another thing I think we could do is best demonstrated at 1:24 where the vocalists reaches out toward the camera as he sings, this gives the impression that he is singing straight to the audience and highlights the desperateness of the song.

Also throughout the song the video zooms in and out in time with the beat, again creating more disorientation, this is something we could try although we must be sure to cut to the beat with this especially.

Research&Planning: Chosen Actors.

As we intend our video to be mainly performance based we needed to find actors to portray the band RavenFace as the band themselves are unable to star in the video. This is a big decision as the actors must look like they fit the music they are 'playing' otherwise it will not look real. We also want to represent the band in a way that they would be happy with and this means getting the right actors. We decided to have a full male cast for the band as the actual RavenFace are all male and also Metal is a stereotypically male dominated genre and we wanted to keep in with the conventions.

We chose these actors as they all fit the stereotype of a metal band due to their hair style and clothes although we can always change what they wear for the video we wanted people who the clothing would look natural on and didn't want the actors to feel uncomfortable with it.

We have chosen the following actors.

Dean Cummins- Vocalist

Jake Goodridge- Drums

Stephen Mackie - Guitarist

Perrin Sharp -Guitarist

Research&Planning: Song for video.

After listening to all of RavenFace's songs as a group we discussed which one would work best for us and what we thought we could make a really good music video to. We decided to use their song This is Annihilation as we thought it had the right pace and tone. Whilst all their songs are very good and we just preferred the overall sound of This is Annihilation. We will email the band to try and get the official lyrics from them so that we can start deconstructing them however just from the music and pace we have already come up with a few music video concepts that could work.

 

The album is also called This is Annihilation and so we thought RavenFace themselves must like the song a lot to name the album after it.

Research&Planning: Music Labels.

In earlier discussions we had come to the conclusion that Ed Sheeran has been marketed in a certain way by his record label, The Warner Brothers, however according to The Guardian Online this is not the case and this article insinuates that Sheeran actually has a lot of creative power when it comes to his marketing and branding. Yet this could all be propaganda.

Ed Sheeran marketing article

We discussed what we thought about this in class and thought that if Sheeran really did have control over his videos why would he have chosen to barely be in them at all. Although some music videos do not star the artist this is not common, especially for a singer songwriter like Sheeran and a debut music video.

Research&Planning:Branding and Marketing task.

In class today we were looking at the ways in which music artists are branded and marketed and to do this we first started by looking at a Jaffa cake and discussing ways we would market and rebrand it.

We first started by looking at the aesthetics, texture and taste of the jaffa cake and decided on the name U.F.O (utterly fantastic orange) as we thought this incorporated the shape and taste of it as well as having a fun name that would stand out.
We then tried to work out what our target market would be and decided that it would most probably be in the C-D-E social-economic diamond group as they are quite cheep and not known for being very posh. Age wise we assumed that we would not have a specific target audience as anyone can eat them and everyone eats them. We briefly thought about colours we would use for branding, orange and green because they fit the alien and orange theme, and a slogan that would get people remembering our product.

We then started thinking about marketing and how we would get our product out there. We thought that a huge part would be by using social media such as having a Facebook page and a twitter feed. This is because a lot of people are on these medias and we could reach a lot of people for free. In addition we would put an advert on youtube. Then there are the more traditional ways of marketing products and these would be Billboards, Tv ads, promotions and competitions. Then we thought we could sponsor the TV show My Parents are Aliens as this fit in with the theme and as it is a very popular program we would influence a lot of people.

After doing this task with a Jaffa Cake we then started applying it to how we could brand and market our band. As our band already has a name, image and fanbase, their brand is really already done. We were given the option of rebranding our band however this could have annoyed the band as it is like saying they do not have the right image and so we decided that we would keep the brand they already have as it is a good one anyway.

Marketing would be the same, but a lot more focus on social media as this is a revolutionary way to get music out there and it has the bonus of being completely free. As well as facebook, twitter and myspace we would also market our band on youtube, reverbnation, soundcloud and other music sharing pages on the Internet.

Finally we looked at how a popular new singer/songwriter, Ed Sheeren, had been marketed. As Ed Sheeran doesn't fit the stereotypical singer/songwriter look in this society his record label told the director of the video,  Emil Nava , that he shouldn't be seen in the video as people would judge his music on what he looked like not on the music himself. So in the video there are only flashes of Sheeran and close ups of him such as his feet stepping on a loop pedal or his hands as he plays guitar. This meant that people wouldn't base their first impressions of him on his looks but instead his voice and talent. The video was also filmed in black and white which kept details of him down.

Overall this lesson was really helpful and I learnt a lot about branding and marketing bands which will help me with my music video and ancillary tasks.

Research&Planning:Background information on Raven-Face

Raven-Face.

• Genre-Metal/Metalcore
• Members-

  James Denton - Vocals Billy Dowdall - Bass/Harsh Vocals Rod Collins - Guitar Dom Rodriguez - Drums Jack Ormond-Prout - Guitar

• Hometown-Blackpool
• Record Label-Unsigned
• Influenced by Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Lamb of God, Devildriver, 36 crazy fists, The Acacia Strain, White Chapel.

Ravenface are a Metal Band from Northern England.
Founded by band front-man, James Denton in 2007 the band was joined by Dom Rodriguez (Drums) and Billy Dowdall (Bass), Ravenface was formed.
After building a loyal following in their region, they expanded to gigs throughout the UK. The summer of 2007 saw the release of the first Ravenface EP ‘Isolation’. This debut EP accumulated over 10,000 downloads in its first year, despite being self released.

In late 2008, the band recruited William Rod Collins on guitar and Jack Ormound-Prout (Guitar) the following year. Thus completing the line up to the present day.

Their debut album ‘This is Annihilation’ was released in October 2010 to a great response by fans. Tracks were featured in UK metal magazines such as MetalHammer and Bizzare.

Kerrang! DJ Alex Baker said : “I think these guys are spot on - tight as hell, soaring guitar lines ! The longer I listened the more I liked them and I'd imagine they'd be great live too!“

Following a ground shaking performance at Hammerfest III in March, The band cannot wait to push forward and to keep building.

                                                                                       - From the Band's biography.

Research&Planning: Ancillary task, Album covers.

As part of our Ancillary tasks we have to create an album cover for our artist. As we are using a heavy metal band I have been doing some research into current bands albums covers and have found that they can be quite different to those by more ‘pop’ artists.

 

System of a Down.

System of a Down is a well know heavy metal band and this is the album cover for their debut album. Instead of featuring a picture of the band, as many album covers do, it instead shows a hand reaching up.
 

‘The cover artwork is from an anti-fascist, World War II-era poster designed by the artist John Heartfield for the Communist Party of Germany, which was contemporary with and directly against the Third Reich. The text on the original poster is: "5 fingers has a hand! With these 5 grab the enemy!" This slogan inspired part of the text contained on the back of the System of a Down album: "The hand has five fingers, capable and powerful, with the ability to destroy as well as create". Later, it is written in bold letters: "Open your eyes, open your mouths, close your hands and make a fist". (used later by Serj Tankian in the song "Uneducated Democracy")’-Wikipedia.
 

This shows that sometimes album covers can have political meanings behind them, these type of album covers are more popular with rock/metal artists. For example in addition to System of a Down’s there is also:

 

Rage against the Machine

They are a punk-rock/metal band known for its political messages in songs and this is shown in the cover art for their debut album. They have used an infamous photo of a monk setting himself on fire as part of a Vietnamese protest against their leader, Diem, who wanted to abolish the Buddhist religion including beliefs and practises.

 

The Murderdolls

 

They have used a picture of a devil doll on a hospital bed for their debut album and this is said to represent the current social obsession with plastic surgery and looking perfect. The doll is about to have surgery performed on it whilst the band watches from behind the glass.

However not all rock/metal bands use political pictures , a lot of bands use their band logo as album covers and this can be seen used by,
 

Avenged Sevenfold

 

Pennywise,

 

Aerosmith

 

In addition many bands also like to use photos or pictures which are often of a slightly disturbing nature to entice an audience, this can be seen on the covers of,

 

Lamb of God

 

 

Black Label Society

 

 

Canibal Corpse.

 

However some metal bands do use  the more common album cover idea of having a band picture, but the are often taken in creepy or abandoned looking locations ad can also include lots of other things as well as a picture of the band such as Black Veil Brides, who mix a picture of themselves with superimposed images of fire and burning buildings.

Lostprophets also do this with lightning.

Seether use a picture of themselves for their album Careless Whisper however through use of mise-en-scene, such as the way they have been positioned in frame, the pose they are pulling and the outfits they are wearing it is clear that they are a rock or metal band.