Final post

I have finished my blog and the project is over. Now the party!

Our finished myspace

Myspace.com/lockuptheyouth

Final reflections on the project

In terms of my overall aims I think this project was a success in terms of planning, filming and editing. I wanted to be more creative with each of these aspects and think that after deciding on a complex and detailed MES and narrative for the video we were challenged to work hard and put in a lot of effort in production. Watching our video now I feel that we still could have filmed a better framed master shot of the band and a greater variety of whole band shots but we were at the time limited by the enclosed space. I also feel that if we had planned two days with our ‘black-hands’ actors then we could have formed a more comprehensive narrative and conveyed the structure of the narrative better to our audience. I also feel that the introduction of the video looks slightly out of the context of the video because of the complete contrast in MES and lighting and also because the band members faces are not explicitly seen really. We tried to fix this problem by greatly altering the brightness/contrast on Premiere Pro and also zooming in on some shots. For the last shot where the glass is broken we should have filmed it showing the person swinging the pole too as some people were unsure of what was happening in the shot. I am very pleased with my overall effort in production of this music video and the criticism it has received.

I am equally pleased with our Myspace and album cover and the feedback they received too and their effect as an overall promotional package. I have thoroughly enjoyed this product and feel that I put in the necessary time and effort to form a great production.

Final video

Album cover

Front cover:


Inside sleeve:

Back cover:

Proposed marketing campaign

Our marketing campaign is to flood the market focusing on viral marketing and below the line promotions that will directly target an 11-15 year old audience. Our record label ‘Easy Target Records’ will promote the band/single/album on TV through an appearance in series 3 of ‘Skins’ a teen drama that seeks out small bands and has seen the likes of ‘Crystal Castles’ and ‘The Gossip’ become intensely popular with this audience through promotion. TV advertising is not cost effective for us but we would make an appearance on T4 (channel 4’s Saturday and Sunday mornings teen-based show) in which they regularly show small up-and-coming bands and also ‘Frock Me’ a teen music/fashion show shown at 5pm on channel 4 Saturdays. This would be effective as it directly targets our audience and these shows are talked about by teenagers when they return to school the following Monday so we will also benefit from word of mouth advertising. We will target radio by making appearances on Chris Hawkins’ radio 6 new alternative/indie show (Thursdays 00:30) and Mickey Bradley’s Friday midnight punk rock new music show on AbsoluteRadio (formerly Virgin). The Internet will be an invaluable medium to target 11-15 year olds (as they access the Internet daily) if utilized correctly. We will promote the band with a deal with Myspace to mark us as a ‘featured’ band which appears on every user’s homepage and recommends the band to them. We will also enter an ‘Intel’ up-and-coming band competition to promote our band and possibly win allowing us to play a gig at the famous ‘Proud’ in Camden. Bebo, as a social networking site offers great free access to our target audience and promotes music through its different music charts. We would host our single on their site and enter their small band music chart to access our target audience in their leisure time at home.

I have researched webzines such as www.scenemagazine.com and www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk and found that they would be perfect to promote the band and so we could e-mail them our track and see if they want to promote it. Blogs such as ‘Letters have no arms’, ‘Missingtoof’ and ‘Waves at night’ are used by our target audience as a way of finding and broadcasting the newest and coolest underground music. These blogs are also then collated on website www.Hypem.com (The Hype Machine) and can be searched for, added to playlists and played from there. This website is incredibly popular and so is a very good way of promoting a small band cheaply and quickly but successfully.

Lock Up The Youth will play in venues in Shoreditch such as The Old Blue Last, in Brick Lane in 93 Feet East and in Underworld in Camden. Each of these venues are fairly small and play host to indie/alternative music nights were small bands such as Lock Up The Youth play. These gigs would have a promotional purpose and would be promoted themselves through posters around the aforementioned areas, flyers given out at other band’s gigs such as Why Whiskey Why? and The Monday Club and Myspace promotion.

Use of effects in our video

For our video we found that we had to use effects in production to give it a more gritty feel as the footage looked too clean. We used a range of effects such as Noise, Blur, Venetian Blinds, Brightness/Contrast and cutting segments out of one shot to make a jump. The band The Cribs have a similarly gritty band image and so in their video 'Hey Scenesters' they also use a variety of these techniques.

Hey scenesters