Research into your chosen artist

The Artist my group chose to look at was Empire of the sun. They are an Australian Electro-pop Duo.

About the duo

Empire of the sun is a Australian Electro-pop duo from Sydney, formed in 2007. The band is a collaboration between Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore. Their 2008 debut album 'Walking on a dream' brought the duo international success and they have been certified double platinum in Australia and gold in the UK. The duo's second album 'Ice on the dune' was released in June 2013, preceded by the lead single 'Alive' on 16th April. The Band are signed to EMI Music Australia/Virgin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Sun_(band)

Music videos 

One thing that is clear throughout all of their music videos is that they will both always wear big, colourful and over the top costumes. This seems to get them noticed and because the costumes is almost like a theme running all the way through their work it instantly make them more recognizable.

by understanding more about the artist and the way they work it will help me to make a better music video inspired by them. The most important thing that I think that I want to include within my own music video would be the interesting and brightly coloured costumes that appear in every single music video, as I think that this would make the video more interesting and add to the Mise in the video.     

Research into chosen Genre

The genre that my group has chosen for our music video is Electro-pop. Below is the mindmap that I created about the genre, it contains loads of different artists and groups from the genre and It also contains a few of the album covers from the genre. Having a mindmap about the genre will be very useful because having a load of sources for the genre will make it easier to see if there is any similarities and/or differences between the artists in that one genre. when we make the music video we will have to consider things like what our artists are going to look like, the way they have to dress/ act etc.   

What is Electro-pop? 
Electro pop is a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, electronic sound. The genre has seen a revival of popularity and influences since the 2000's.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electropop
Electro-pop is a pop orientated form of music primarily consisting the use of synthesizers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Electropop/

History 
During the early 1980's, artist such as Gary Numan, The Human League, Soft Cell, John Foxx and Visage helped pioneer a new synth-pop style that drew more heavily on electronic and synthersizer music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electropop

What Is recognizable within the genre?
The one thing that is clear to see is that no two artists or groups from the genre are the same, they all have their different styles. The majority of the artists wear dark clothing with the exception of a few wearing slightly more eccentric costumes, this makes them stand out from the rest of the genre because the bright colours and bright costumes are seen as a theme within the artists/groups work and it is therefore expected of them whenever they produce something new.

Conducting more research into this genre will help me to better understand the genre and the artists that work within it, researching into the history helps me to understand when the genre was established and how it came to be.

Initial Ideas

This post is going to show and explain the thought process that my group used to get to the chosen artists and the chosen genre.


As a group we decided primarily to focus more on looking for artists that weren't very well known but also had creative lyrics that we could use as the basis for our own music video. We decided to start by looking through the new releases from Spotify and we managed to come up with a mind map showing all the artists we looked at. Our chosen artist is featured on this mind map however we did not discover them on Spotify, it was a suggestion from one of the group members.

We also wanted to look at artist that weren't very well know and one of the group members thought it would be interesting to look at a variety of different singers from the Eurovision song contest as we believed that these are generally unknown artists. Below is the list the we made as a group, it contains a couple of songs that we liked, what country it was representing and the year it was in the contest.   

Once we had chosen the artist we decided to look through a couple of different songs by that artist so we could look at the lyrics and see if we could both agree on one song. The tree songs we looked at were, 'We are the people', 'Alive' ,'Walking on a dream'. We started by finding and printing the lyrics of each song, afterwards we decided to make a list of the pros and cons of each song.

The first song that we looked at was Alive by Empire of the sun. we decided to start off by looking at the lyrics again and listening to the song and we commented on the speed and tempo and well as the way it sounds. As you can see from the photo above we found more pros than cons for this song, we liked the tempo and we thought that it was quite nice on the ear.     

The next song we looked into was 'Walking on a dream' also by Empire of the sun. We liked this song the lyrics were very creative but there was only one direction we could take the song, so it didn't offer much diversity. However, the song had a good tempo and a good rhythm.  

The last song we looked at was called 'We are the people' also by Empire of the sun. Again we liked the tempo and the rhythm to the song and the lyrics were very creative however, we were put off by the length of the song. this song was around 5 minutes long whereas the other two were around 3 minutes. 

In the end after considering all of the different pros and cons of the tree different songs we decided to go with the first song that we looked at - Alive. We believe that we could easily come up with a good narrative to this song and it has a good tempo and beat so it would be easier to edit. 

Analysis of magazine advert

This is the magazine advert for Lana Del Ray. It advertises the release of her album 'Born to die'. Analysing different magazine adverts will help when it come to designing and producing my own because i will learn what works together and what affect they have on the audience. They colours in this magazine are all very subtle and compliment each other this makes the advert easier to look at. 

Analysis of a digipak

This is my analysis of Katy Perry's Digipak for her album 'Teenage Dream'. Looking into and analysing different digipaks will help me when it comes to making my own digipak because it will give me an indication of what little details to consider within my digipak. For example I believe that the font style and colour are quite a big contributing factor to the over all appearance of the final product. The writing on the cover is one of the first things that you notice within the overall product so therefor the writing needs to be readable  

The purpose of magazines adverts and digipaks

Artists use magazine adverts to advertise and publicise their latest album, the advert could include a photo of the artist/band, reviews of the album, the record label, the name of the album, songs from the album and of course the release date and where you can purchase it from. Below is an example of a magazine advert for an artist and what it should include.

Digipaks are used for a similar purpose, they also help to promote the artist and they promote the album as well. having a good digipak will encourage people into buying that CD the difference between a person buying and not buying the album will be the way the album looks it has to be interesting and it has to grab the attention of the person in the shop. Below is an example of a Digipak and what it should include.

When it comes to making me own digipak and magazine advert I will need to consider all of the details that are included in the professional examples listed above because all of those different features bring the magazine advert/digipak together to promote the artist or band. 

The Importance of Lyrics

Song lyrics are very important to a song because they make up the main bulk of a song, without the lyrics there would be no song so therefore they are very important, however, they have a pretty big role as well.

• The help to convey the artists emotions/ and views of the world around them. 
• Its a way that the can express there emotions.
• It tells a story and helps to aid the narrative. 
• Helps to convey a message.
• Helps to set the scene.

These are some examples of music videos that are very literal within what happens in the music video in relation to the lyrics. This can be related to one of Goodwin's theories - 'there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visual' suggesting that the lyrics of the song should relate to the content in the music video.

Rebecca Black - Friday

This music video is quite literal, the lyrics on the first line read 'Seven a.m.' and in the music video the alarm clock reads 7:00 a.m. and cuts to an extreme close up of the artist face as she's waking up in bed. Next it cuts to where the artist has mad he way downstairs and she sings the words. However, there is both aspects or performance and narrative within the music video. This carries on throughout the song. Here are some examples from the first stanza.

The first stanza reads;

Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein' everything, the time is goin'
Tickin' on and on, everybody's rushin'
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)

Vance Joy - Riptide 

Compared to the last music video this is a lot more literal in terms of how the lyrics aid the narrative of the video. However this music video compared to Friday by Rebecca Black has a lot less performance, so it begins to become more about the lyrics than the artist. During the first line when the artist sings the word dark the screen gets darker and during the third line when the artist sings the word green the viewer is shown a photo of a green doller bill. There are some more examples below. 

The first stanza reads;

I was scared of dentists and the dark
I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations
Oh, all my friends are turning green
You're the magician's assistant in their dreams

By looking a different literal music videos it will help me to work out the barrier between what works and what's too much visual interpretation to have in a music video.