Joe Walley

Alt-J Music video

Proposal

Index
Page 1
Page 23

Competitor research
Target Audience
Resources
Cast and Crew
Budget

Content Outline

Market Research

Content Outline
A music video that includes a short intro and outro of
acting. Its set in an amplified format and follows a
linear narrative. It starts with the main character
chained up in a kitchen, hes looking at a photo of his
family and its clear from here on that he is being
held captive. A second character enters who is his
captor. Leave a knife on the edge of the counter this
allows the main character to escape but not without a
sacrifice, his tail.
After taking out his anger on his captor he then leaves
the house. Being held captive for such a long time the
first thing he does is enjoy all of the ting hes
missed. A montage then plays of him doing various
actives before continuing on his journey.

Market Research
The market in music videos is an incredibly large and
complex one. Music videos are a big part of selling
music, its also another platform in which to show and
distribute the product. Music videos can be used to
artist and record companies advantage to increase
sales of a single or album. There are many different
ways they do this, creating music video in a way known
as the full individual and creating a buzz. Using
controversy in the video itself can also create a lot
of buzz and free publicity. For instance smack my bitch
up by the Prodigy was seen as very controversial music
video causing people to talk about it and subsequently
causing more people to buy it.
The good thing about music videos is the market is
always going to need them. Artists are always going to
need away to visually present their music especially if
they want to make more money and get higher up on the
music charts. So in terms of getting my product onto
the market and if the market needs my product to, there
will always be an audience and someone to commission
the work.
Now to talk about my products/music video itself and
what makes it unique and different to existing
products/music videos. I feel music video creators are
becoming boring in the way they create their videos.
Lots of music videos nowadays are following a very
generic storyline or format. Throughout the video you
see shots of the artist or band performing parts of the
songs in a generic location, with a loose plot line
filling in the blanks usually something to do with a
love interest. Its more about the image of the band in
the video itself what irritates me. I believe music
videos should be a way to create a visual piece of art
that can reflect the creativity of the music. If you
create a boring generic music video I automatically by
association will find the music boring and generic.

Very rarely does a music video come a long that breaks

this generic format. The gamble with not following this
format is that it works to certain extent and breaking
it means you are either create a music video that does
incredibly well and stands out amongst the rest, or
your create a music video that isnt viewed by anyone
and isnt very successful . With my music video I want
to take this gamble but also incorporate elements from
music videos have done successfully.
This years Sia released a music video for the song
elastic heart. It caused massive controversy because of
the content and because of its originality and
creativity. The music video basically consists of young
dancer Maddie Ziegler and proclaimed actor Shia LaBeouf
dancing in the big cage. They seem to be fighting each
other the way the dance is choreographed with music on
top it creates a very strange and promotional video.
Like Sias video want to create something unusual to
watch, something that is follow the generic storyline
has characters that are interesting and unusual. I also
want to create a sense of emotion and attachment to
these characters even when you dont necessarily want
to. I want people to feel angry, happy, sad all types
different emotions. In some ways I want them to feel
uncomfortable not necessarily know why. I think this is
an incredibly unique way to create a music video and
there are not many music videos out there that have
done it very successfully. Ive chosen Alt-J as the
music for the music video as I feel their music
reflects all of these things very well. Also their
existing music videos follow the same sort of format as
the one I want to create. Looking at the market at the
moment I believe it could be very successful if done
right I think the market needs it and it will be very
unique to what already exists.

Competitor Research
The first thing I did when looking into my market
competitors is looked at bands with similar style,
genre and image. Now Alt-j are an indie band whose
genre of music has been described as indie rock, art
rock, experimental rock, indie folk, folktronica.
Started looking at bands fitted this genre and the same
popularity as Alt-J. Looking at forums and recommended
choices you can see what bands fans of Al-J are also
listening to. One group that appeared countless of
times was a group called Milky Chance.
Milky Chance is a German folk duo with reggae and
electronic music influences. They are made up of
Clemens Rehbein (vocals and instrumentals) and Philipp
Dausch (production and DJing). Their first single
"Stolen Dance" was released in April 2013, peaking at
No. 1 on charts in countries such as Austria, France,
Belgium (Wallonia), Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic
and Hungary.
The style of their song stolen dance is very very
similar to the style of Alt-Js music. It has an
acoustic folk feel to it and if you watch the music
video you see the main singer play an acoustic guitar.
Layered over the acoustic guitar however is and
electronic beat which keeps the rhythm and makes what
would be a very Folke song Electro. Now although they
are very same genre and style the music video for
stolen dance is not similar to what I want to create.
However the music video for another one of their songs
Flashed Junk Mind is very similar to what I want to
create.
Flashed Junk Mind currently has 10,743,781 views on
YouTube, 61,945 likes and 902 dislikes. By looking at
these stats it shows the music video is clearly doing
its job in attracting an audience. The video gives the
audience something creative to look at while listening

to the song. The video is also a good visual

representation of the style and genre of music. The
video follows a group of people travelling through
fields, driving through woods, climbing mountains and
all around having fun.
When watching video of my competitors it gave me really
a good idea of what type of music videos audiences of
this type of genre like and what can grab their
attention and in turn sell more records. Although Milky
chance our main competitor of my product they do not
directly compete with me in the British market as they
are predominantly big in other European countries. A
group who have similar style and genre and music videos
who also very big in the British music industry are
band called imagine Dragons.
Imagine Dragons our an American rock band from Las
Vegas, Nevada. At the beginning of this year their
album Smoke + Mirrors went to number one beating Sam
Smith and Ed Sheeran in the UK charts. In some ways
they are bigger competitors than Milky chance as they
are competing in the same industry, the British UK
charts. There are very similar sound Alt-J in some ways
even similar than Milky chance. Lots of people who
listen to imagine Dragons listen to Alt-J and vice
versa. This makes them my number one competitor inside
the genre.
In terms of music videos, the music video for I Bet My
Life by imagine Dragons is one that I will be
competing with. Is very similar in style and the way it
shot. It use lots of angles and colouring like I want
to use and like mine follows a storyline. The video
starts to guys having a fight by a lake one gets sucked
underwater and is taken on a journey. The video has
37,887,284 views, 328,532 likes and 5,078 dislikes.
This shows band has a large following a large
percentage of them like the video.
Both these bands are massive competitors of my product
and although I want to improve on what they have done
looking at the products they have already created gives

me a good idea of what is needed to be successful when

creating a music video.

Target Audience
Alt-J are an English Indie Rock band who formed in
2007. They make experimental Rock music and try to
appeal to a wide range of audiences. The music video I
am creating is for them, so automatically their target
audience becomes mine as I need to appeal to their
fans. Their main audience tends to be an Alternative
indie audience. Other notable bands that use the same
format are Muse, The Killers, Imagine Dragons and
Radiohead.
For lots of bands their image is a big part of selling
records. It can be the physical image of the band i.e.
clothing and appearance, or the musical image i.e. song
lyrics, genre. This also gives you a great way to
figure out the bands target audience. For instance One
Direction mainly use their physical image to sell. They
feature a very heavily in all their music videos and
merchandise. They do lots of promotion and advertising.
Their image is a massive part of their branding. Being
a boy band that instantly appeal to more females than
males, girls are attracted to them boys want to be
them, they appeal to Aspirers. The style of their music
also appeals to a young audience.
Whereas bands like Muse, Radiohead and coincidently
Alt-J, physical image is not as big of a part of how
they sell records. They dont feature as heavily in
their music videos which tend to follow more of a plot
line and reflect the music itself. The merchandise
usually has a logo or piece of art instead of a photo
of the band and they tend to do less interviews. This
means they appeal to a more select audience. They tend
to be teenagers who are searching for an identity and

adults interested in the genre. Obviously this cannot

be said for all fans but it tends to be the case for
bands of this format.
So using this information we can work out what are
target audience is and also what our music video needs.
Alt-J dont not have a very big public/physical image,
their music is past by word of mouth. In fact, if you
go on to their YouTube channel and watch their music
videos you will see they do not feature in any. If you
went out onto the street and showed a picture of the
band to random passers-by I doubt anyone could identify
them. This lets us know we are looking a specific type
of person, people who arent aspires and more like
Explores. Ina an article by The Guardian it backs this
up by saying,
Thanks to everyone who bought it we wouldn't be
anywhere without you," he says, close to tears. He's
not kidding this genre-defying blend of plainsong,
dubstep rhythms and acoustic folk, played to a rapt
sold-out crowd, testifies to the power of word of
mouth, rather than record-label marketing spend
It also lets us no they age is mostly likely to be
older than 16 because they appeal to young people
trying to find an identity.
Also in The Guardian article they talk about Alt-Js
audience at shows;
Understandably, there's a culty feel to the show.
Though Alt-J have magnanimously claimed the album, An
Awesome Wave, to be "quite accessible for an older
crowd", the audience is uniformly young, and the fans
know every song from its first note. Their enthusiasm
is not misplaced: every piece of music consists of
disparate components seemingly glued together on a
whim, from Newman and Gus Unger-Hamilton's a cappella
harmonies to Thom Green's hip-hop drums, though it
somehow feels right. In another galaxy, the oddly
twinkly murder-ballad Breezeblocks, which has the
singers squeezing their eyes shut as they cough:

"Please don't go, I love you so," would even be a hit

single
So we want our music video to appeal to an audience of
ages of 16+. On the socio-economic scale it is not
really important but mainly between E and C1. In terms
or lifestyle we want to aim at Explores and Reformers
and for Locations the UK and USA.

Resources
Im going to have to acquire a reasonable amount of
resources but they should be reasonable easy to do so.
For outfits I need a monkey onesie they can be bought
from most chains or online stores. I also need a
jumpsuit but they should be easy as I know someone who
has one.
I terms of props I need a knife, a breezeblock, a
chain, fake blood and some bananas. All these items are
pretty easy to acquire the fake blood can be ordered
offline. The chain and breezeblock can be bought from a
hardware store or merchants. The rest of the items I
already have.
For equipment I need a camera, tripod, steady cam and
mic. I already have a high quality camera and mic and
the other equipment can be rented from the college.

Cast and Crew

Budget
To make this music video possible there
are a few products I need to require
before I can start filming:
Outfits ( monkeys suit, circus/banana sales man ) - 50
Steady cam Possibly free/100
Dolly Free
Travel max.10
Cameras Free
Sound free/hire
Props - 20
Actors Free
Studio time Free