Research

Textual Analysis

1) The Hype Theory – Kid at Heart

In The Hype Theory’s song, Kid at Heart, allows the audience to understand the “characters” (the band members) and how they view their life. In this video they use a lot of slow motion shots to establish the time passing slowly despite the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun”.  They also use time in a sense of night and day, as the video progresses, it turns darker as the song slows down and seems less playful. The use of pulled focus at the beginning of the video sets a playful tone as Katy (the lead singer) is shown smiling through lights. In addition to this, there is a massive use of close up to portray to the audience the closeness of their friendships. In addition to this, close ups are a convention of their genre, the use of these camera shots not only show the band but also show their performance and reactions.

Despite this narrative based video there is also a fair amount of performance but not in the conventional music studio. They have used the “Kid at Heart” title to the extreme in the fact that they are performing in a soft play area such as Kids Kingdom with the plastic ball pool balls falling on and around the band members to portray a sense of fun and child-like qualities.

The star image is interpreted through their laid-back attitude and messing around in Chelmsford. Their attire is displayed throughout their performances, videos and magazine advertisements.  Despite there being no intertextuality in this music video throughout different media platforms, there are shots of well-known theme parks and childhood memories, which the audience can relate to. However, it could be argued that their performance and star image relates to the well know rock band Paramore. With the band being female-fronted and their instrumental based songs do indeed share conventions of Paramore’s music.

2) Fun – Some Nights

In Some Nights, slow motion is used a great deal, this emphasizes the narrative, and the beginning of the video shows the background of the character’s stories, showing the audience what the song is going to be about, where the song originated from and the reasons for the song. Slow motion implies that time goes slowly when the two lovers are together but also slow motion implies that the war seems never ending. The long shot establishes the setting for the video, it is mainly narrative with performance in the background but it still has a story. The establishing shot shows the audience the setting of the war. Although it seems that it is a usual war setting, it seems to be exaggerated with dramatic “fireworks” and flares. This is their diegetic lighting as it lights up the band members’ faces and the narrative as well.  Also there is a use of lense flare which is used to create a realistic feel of the war on the video.

In this music video, there is more than one narrative going on. There is the war, which is coupled with the performance (which is a star image of Fun, in most of their videos such as We Are Young, Carry On and Some Nights they have performance coupled with some sort of destruction or chaos.) Not only is this music video a performance and narrative but the lyrics link to the visuals with “this is it boys, this is war” being the first line whilst they start ‘fighting’.  There is also a huge link between nature vs man and the destruction that they can cause to each other, not necessarily nature of the outside world but the nature of emotions and actions of humans.

In addition, Some Nights also has a title screen with is fairly rare in music videos; it almost makes it seem as if the video is a short film, something with a storyline. The video uses golden hour, which is a convention, used by many videos especially those in the charts. Obviously as the song was created before the video and therefore the success of the song could sway towards conventions of pop or chart songs.

3) McFly, Love is Easy

McFly’s video for Love is Easy is unique as its “for the fans” and therefore at the end they pan around with the camera to show some fans at one of their gigs. It could be argued that the video is a one shot video (such as OK-GO’s videos) although it is difficult to tell. It is mainly performance based with the whole video being shot on a stage and it starting with Tom (the lead singer) playing a ukulele and lip-syncing most of the video. Although it is different there is some intertextuality throughout their video but with their past such as old albums and different TV series they’ve been in such as Dougie winning I’m A Celebrity and Harry winning Strictly Come Dancing. The lyrics link to the visuals and it’s a very clever video as it flows with the band using umbrellas to spell out “If this is love, then love is easy”. In addition there is only one location which is the stage but the use of painted sets and props to make it more interesting.

There is a use of close ups to show certain aspects of the video such as the tiny figures shown whilst some dialogue is taking place “what do you want Mary? Do you want the moon? Because I’ll make a laso around it and bring it down” the close up of this breaks up the video and allows for a change, almost a vehicle in the video to move it along. 

Conventions Spiderdiagram

Showing Permission

Star Image

I used The Hype Theory and Ed Sheeran to contrast each other and to show that our genre can be very different to another genre. The reason I analysed The Hype Theory is because we are using their song and felt it would assist us and our audience into creating an opinion on the video and whether or not we have matched their conventions and star images. As well as this I analysed their digipak and other outside promotion work to further see how they gain an audience and to see their style within their band and genre. I also compared The Hype Theory to McFly and mentioned their previous mention in Kerrang magazine. On the contrary, Ed Sheeran started low key and had a different approach to music and the industry.

Magazine Advert Research

 
DigiPak Research

 

 

Pitch for Treatment

Pitch Questionnaire Questions

1, How well do you feel we covered the main areas? Did we include star image, genre, video style, target audience, product image?

2, In what way could we improve our treatment pitch in any of the areas?

3, Does our treatment match the conventions of the genre of the song? If so, state what features you feel work well?

4, Do you believe our treatment does not match the conventions of the genre of the song?

5, Does the narrative-performance music video suit our song?

6, How could we create a stronger focus on the band’s star image.

Pitch Questionnaire Feedback

Market Research - audience profile
 

This is our guess and analyical view of what our fans would be like. Obviously, The Hype Theory is a unisex band and so not only girls would be the audience but most of the songs in the rest of the album are "girl problem" based such as "He's Your Problem Now" and "We Will Be Singing". However, we anticipate that our audience will be into these type of things, from clothing to hobbies.