Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand

The second video is chose was Barbra Streisand by Duck Sauce. This song belongs to the Dance/Pop category however this isn't portrayed in the video. There are no lyrics to this song apart from 'Barbra Streisand' and a lot of 'woo'ing.

This video really provides pleasure in watching as it has so many famous artists in it such as Kanye West, Pharrell, Ryan Leslie, Armand Van Helden, Chromeo, Clipse, and I'm sure there are many more who I cannot name. This makes the viewer want to watch the video again to try and name all the famous people that are in it and it would make us wonder that if there are this many famous names in this video it must be good. I like this video because it makes me really happy and there's no particular story to the video just a bunch of famous people saying 'Barbra Streisand'.

 This is Armand Van Helden. The stuff that is going on in the video is really random and irrelevant and there is no real story line behind the song.

 This is Kanye West. Again another random scene but it entices the viewer to keep watching as Kanye West is famous worldwide and it would make us wonder why he's in the video. There isn't really a reason why the list of famous people are in this video!

Pharrell just saying 'Barbra Streisand' to add to the list of famous musicians in this music video participating for Duck Sauce.

KiD CuDi - Memories

I like this music video because it's different due to the randomness of the video. The lyrics are not represented in the video however they are shown on the frame at some points in the video. The song belongs to the dance genre and it is portrayed in the video to an extent.

 As you can see from the reflection in the windows we can see the camera crew who seem to be naked ladies with the lyrics covering their bodies. I don't know what the point of this but I feel it works well as I've never seen something like it before.

 From this shot we can infer that this music video belongs to the dance genre as he is spinning DJ decks and we can assume he's a DJ producing the track.

 This also backs it up that the song belongs to a dance genre as it looks as if he's at some sort of party atmosphere dancing.

 We see from the mirror the naked camera crew again with lyrics on them.

This shows the DJ working at the party.

I feel that this video achieves in making us want to watch the video again is because of the quirkiness of it and the mystery of what is actually happening and hopefully a few more watches will help us to understand it fully. The video is performance based as it is generally following KiD CuDi just walking through the street singing his lyrics.

The skills I have developed for during the time we have been spending on our preliminary tasks are that I feel that I have a wider understanding of using some of the effects of Final Cut Express. Also I had more time filming footage and getting familiar with the cameras and I think I am now more confident in filming footage. We learnt how to lip synch and make a dance sequence go to the beat to a song that we were provided with.

We decided to use the mirror effect for this shot as we thought it looked interesting and worked well with the song

 We added the sepia tone effect to this shot to give it a more professional look.

 We gave this shot a sunset glow.

 We also used another effect that gave a white glow to our shot.
  

Animal Costumes – For our Animal Costumes task we were given a few random bits of footage which we had to cut and make a sequence out of according to the beat of the song. Matthew and I were both familiar with Final Cut Express and we both had attempts in cutting some of the footage and rearranging it in order to make it work with the music. After we had cut and rearranged the sequence that worked well with the beat we decided to add a few effects and see what variety of effects that Final Cut Express has to offer. Here are some examples of the effects we decided to add in to our video. 

Lip Synch – We thought that our lip synch task was very successful as we managed to include all of the footage we wanted to and we also felt that we had created a music video that looked like a real music video. We chose the song CD is Dead – JME and Tempa T because we knew the lyrics to an extent, enjoyed the song and thought it would be easy to lip synch with as most lyrics are repeated. We decided to get a lot of people in the video to make it more interesting. Also, the locations we used weren’t limited; we went all around the school to film including the park. I am most happy at the amount of footage and scenes we have in our music video as there isn’t one point which I find boring or too dull. I feel that it works really well and we also tried to add some humour into it. Looking in hindsight I would decide to make myself much more confident with the lyrics as I feel that sometimes the lip synching on me wasn’t great due to my unfamiliarity with the lyrics.

This is one of my favourite shots as Matthew is jumping into the frame which we both found funny and thought it went well as the lyric he comes in and says is said really quickly

I really like this shot because of the background shown. We were very lucky to use this as our background as we were randomly walking around the school looking for places and in the corner of my eye we found this piece of graffiti and we thought it was perfect for our video and we are really glad this shot was used.

This is also another one of my favourite shots as we are meant to be MC artists who are meant to be seen as tough, however we are in a childrens playground singing on a swing.

We decided to make a version with advanced effects. However we were very limited with time and we only added a few effects to our video. We did learn how to put 4 different shots into one main shot which worked out very well.

Radiohead Mashup - I wasn't in during the lesson which the class were doing this task. However Matthew showed me his version and the final cut express version of it and I understood the concepts of the task.

Marketing Strategies

Suck It and See is the fourth studio album by English indie rock band Arctic Monkeys, released 6 June 2011 in the UK and 7 June in the US. The single 'Brick by Brick' from the album released a video on March 7th which is 3 months before the album release. The album details were released on March 10th, 3 days after the video was released.

It was revealed on 30 March that three thousand vinyl copies of "Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair" would be released worldwide by the band as part of Record Store Day on 16 April.

On 30 May, a week before official release Domino Records streamed the entire album on Soundcloud. Within a few hours of being made public the first two tracks had reached over 10,000 listens each and over 100,000 listens each by the end of the week.

On May 13 Arctic Monkeys appeared on Later with Jools Holland and performed four tracks from the album. "Library Pictures", "Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair", "Reckless Serenade" and "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala".

On 5th May 2011, Arctic Monkeys began the Suck It and See Tour by playing their first live show for over a year in Stockholm.

The Album sold over 82,000 units in its first week in the UK going straight to number 1. In its second week the album sold a further 34,910 units in the UK. Overall the album sold 154,000 units in its first week worldwide.

http://www.myspace.com/arcticmonkeys
Arctic Monkeys use myspace to promote new singles and albums with tour dates

http://arcticmonkeys.com/
Official Arctic Monkeys website providing more information on tour dates etc.


Other Marketing Strategies may include such things as making your own record label or you can partner with others who will do the work if you pay them to market your music.
A Record Label is part of the 'Mass Media' section which helps generate airplay, publicity, gigs and record (CD)sales. All of these are part of the deal when signing up to a record label.

A real record company handles four basic areas of music marketing: Radio, public relations, gigs, and music retail.

radio is the most complicated part of the music industry, and the most expensive part of the budget of a major record label. If you hire an independent radio promoter, they can also help a little with PR, gigs and retail, provided the airplay campaign is large enough.

The PR (publicity) portion of the entertainment industry is obtained by hiring a PR firm (or PR person). A large record label has these people on staff, but will still hire out for more push. A smaller independent record label sometimes will just try to do its own publicity, maybe by just focusing on some local music magazines. Big mass media music magazines, however, will be beyond what an independent music label can get.

The gig portion of your music marketing is obtained by partnering with an entertainment agency who book gigs for you. Small music labels will just try to book their own gigs. Note that an entertainment agency for gigs is not the same as an entertainment agent that an actor would have.

For the retail part of the music industry, a record company would hire a retail promoter, whereas a small independent record label would just call stores on their own.

50 Cent for example markets his music very effectively. He has his own blog called www.thisis50.com and on this site it has all the information if he is going to be releasing any new music but he also includes previews of the song itself. He also promotes his friends' music to boost their ratings too. The site is updated daily to satisfy his fans by releasing new videos, singles or interviews. He's also heavily addicted to twitter and is constantly updating with promotion, information and he also answers his fans questions they ask. He also has an official site which is run by his record label which links to his twitter page and 'thisis50'. The official website also links to his myspace, facebook and itunes page and also provides and RSS feed.