Representation of The Jacques

Analysing Existing Album Covers and Posters

This is one of the album covers of our band. It is in black and white, similarly to some of their music videos, which conforms to the indie rock genre. The picture shows two young boys smoking, emphasising the reckless look they want to create about themselves. There is no writing on the album cover other than the band's logo. Overall it is a very simple design, but it conforms greatly to the indie rock genre, as well as giving us hints to what the band's style is like. 

When coming to make our digi pack, we plan to use the same level of simplicity in our design, possibly using black and white, depending on whether or not we chose to put our music video in black and white. As they have used children for their album cover, we thought that it would then work well if we used one of our concept ideas- to use children to represent the band- as they have associated themselves with children before.

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Conclusion

What we found out

After looking at three magazine adverts from three different indie rock bands, we were able to determine a rough 'template' of what we thought we need to put on our advert for The Jacques. 

The most common similarity which we found between the adverts was that they all included the bands' names at the top of the poster in the middle in a different font to that which was used on the rest of the poster. All three magazine adverts also included a small logo of the bands' record label at the bottom of the page. The backgrounds used were either identical or quite similar to the album which the advert was advertising, meaning there would be no confusion with what the poster was advertising. This meant that the band was often not shown on the tour poster. One of the posters gave a name of one of the tracks on the album (presumably one of their more well known tracks) as well as the band's website and the website of their record label. This could be because the band is less well known and they want to promote themselves more. We also noted that all of the magazine ads which we looked at were portrait as they would have been shown in a magazine. 

From this we decided that it would therefore be essential to include The Jacques name at the top in the centre of our poster as well as including relevant information about the band such as their website and their social media pages, as our band is not so well known. This would help the band to promote themselves on as many different platforms as possible. We also plan to include the logo of The Jacques' record label, Rough Trade Records. We decided that it would also be essential for our advert to be portrait so that it would fit with other ads which you would expect to find in a magazine and we also thought it would be good if we could use a similar or identical image for our background of the advert as we did for the front of our album, so that our audience could easily link the two together.  

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Arcade Fire

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Arctic Monkeys

Analysing Magazine Adverts: The Libertines

Analysing Album Covers: Conclusion

What we found out

After analysing album covers from several indie rock bands we saw that the album covers always included some sort of known logo of the band (this included specific fonts which the band always use for their band name. The fonts used varied too much to comment on, however this is because the font depended mostly on the bands personal style and fonts which they had used in their logos. If font was used, it was always clear and easy to read. 

Colour effects were sometimes added to the background. This included black and white (which is also used in many indie rock music videos) and filters which gave the album a more vintage look. The backgrounds themselves always conformed to the indie rock genre with their rough and reckless appearances, hinting to low budget, urban locations. The background also had very simple designs so as not to distract from the text or to look too complicated. In all the examples we looked at the band were not shown on the album covers.

When making our album covers, we plan to include the name of the band on the front in their chosen font. We are also planning to take stills from our footage to use for our covers, as this saves us having to reshoot to get stills. As we are not using the band themselves, we thought that it would be suitable to show some of the kids on the album cover, as the bands which we looked at did not use stills of themselves on their album covers.

Analysing Album Covers: Arcade Fire

Analysing Album Covers: Arctic Monkeys

Analysing Album Covers: The Libertines

Post-Production: Sound and Visuals

Matching the tempo of the music to the visuals

After uploading our footage to final cut pro, renaming the footage and making a separate folder to put it in, we were ready to start editing on Final Cut Pro. However, before doing this we decided to listen to our chosen track again and try to make a rough graph showing the tempo of the music throughout:














This graph made us realise that the music was faster paced during the instrumental sections of the song, so here we would try to include lots of faster cuts so that the fast pace of the music would be reflected in our video. In contrast, the pace of the music slowed slightly during each chorus and verse, which would make it easier to lip sync our shots as we would not need as many fast cuts here. The start of the song has a very slow pace as all you can hear are the strums of a guitar, this is idea, as we would be able to show our narrative here clearly without lots of faster cuts between different shots. 

Pre-Production: Test Shots

Test shots on location

Norden Farm:

Pre-Production: Lighting and Colour Research

What colours and lighting would be most suitable for our shoot?

For our shots in the bedroom, we wanted to make sure it was bright but not too bright so that the room looked over exposed. We wanted to create the effect of there being a sort of night light on. This would mean having a small dim light on in shot as well as possibly another light on out of the frame, so that we were still able to see as the light from a small night light would not be enough. The colour scheme in the bedroom which we were going to film in made the room look quite warm. As it would be too difficult to remove a bit of this warmth when filming, we would be able to take some of the red out of the shots in post-production. 

When filming on stage, we know that there will be high quality lighting already available. On the day, we will also have someone there to help us with using the lights. As the stage room is quite dark with black curtains around the stage, we would need quite a lot of bright lighting to make sure we could see all of the performers as well as creating some depth. We also decided to possibly use coloured lighting, to remind the audience that what they are seeing is in a child's imagination.

Pre-Production: Actors Research

Finding actors to represent The Jacques

Finding actors to use to represent The Jacques was luckily fairly easy. We decided to use one of our friend's sister and her friends. Four of our three actors are girls, they would play the parts of the lead singer, the guitarist and the base guitarist and the drummer would be played by a boy. Despite the fact that the entire band is actually male, we didn't feel like using girls would be a problem as had already decided to use children so they we would not be able to easily find lookalikes anyway. Also, as our narrative is based off a child dreaming that they were in the band, using children who do not necessarily look similar to the band would make this day dream perhaps more accurate as we would be representing a fan of the band instead of the band themselves. 

Pre-Production: Costume Research

Planning costumes for our actors 

When planning what kinds of costumes to use, we decided to study what kinds of clothes other indie rock bands wear. Here are some of the outfits which we found particularly useful:



From these images, we decided that most indie rock bands wore clothes which were darker in colour and have more of a 'hipster' look. As we would be using kids for our music video, we decided that we would tell them to wear all dark clothes e.g. black skinny jeans/leggings, black boots and a grey jumper/top. By doing this our band which we would be creating would look more as though they were of the indie rock genre. 

We then looked at the sort of clothes that The Jacques would typically wear and found similar things:


The Jacques also wear a lot of darker and baggier clothing, which confirmed for us what we had planned for our dress code for the children, which we would use in our music video. 

Pre-Production: Props Research

Choosing our Props


After we had decided on both of our locations we needed to make sure that the props we used would fit with our genre but also be linked to how we would use children in our video. 

For the scenes in the child's bedroom, we decided that we would leave all of the props already in the room the same, as we felt that this would provide us with a more accurate representation of a child's room. However we thought that we could add some props to the bedroom which would be a reference to the child's love of music, as they would dream of being in a band. This could include an instrument of some sort, music posters and headphones. 

For the performance scenes on stage, we decided to make our own instruments out of cardboard. Although we could easily borrow instruments from Norden Farm, we thought that, our video would look better if the children had home-made instruments. This meant we would need to make a drum kit and 3 guitars. 

Pre-Production: Location Research

Choosing a Location

The stage at Norden Farm

When we originally brainstormed ideas for our music video, we decided that the most ideal venue would be a pub/bar which looked low budget and as if it was in an urban location. However, one of our group member's mum worked at Norden Farm, which had a few stages which we would be able to use to film on. The stage we would use could be emptied this was ideal as we would probably not be able to record children pretending to play instruments in a bar, in order to do this we would need actual live performers. Using this location would also be extremely convenient, all of our group members know where it is, it is very close to where we all live and it would be free. 

For our second location, we decided to use one on of our group member's little sister's bedroom. As we were using children, we wanted to make sure that the location where the child was shown at home was a place where a child would spend time, particularly when they listened to music, like the child we choose would be doing during our music video.

Our Final Idea

Picking the Final Idea for our Music Video

When trying to chose a final idea for our music video we had to chose something which we thought would accurately represent the band, conform to the indie rock genre and be relatively easy to achieve. At first we decided to use our idea of including a narrative where the lead singer is late for their gig. We planned to show some mid shots of the lead singer Fin waking up on a wooden table outside a pub with an empty pint of beer next to him. He would then frantically look at the time, realising he is late for his gig, before picking up his guitar and running to the gig venue. We would switch between shots of Fin running and the band playing without him, showing Fin bursting through the venue doors and making it up onto the stage just in time to start singing. The remainder of the video would include fast cuts of their performance to keep the pace of the music video up. 

However, when trying to organise a day to film with the band so that we could try and chose a venue, we found out that the band would not be available until way after our filming deadline. This meant that we had to start our storyboards and planning again. 

The idea which we then decided on was to use children to represent the band. This meant that we would not need the band for filming at all and we could still go ahead with using a performance. In the end we also decided to keep a narrative but we chose a different one. At the start of the video we planned to show the child representing the lead singer, Fin, in her bedroom putting on her headphones to listen to Weekends by The Jacques. After he/she has put on a pair of headphones, we would transition to shots of the children representing the band in some performance scenes. Throughout the video we would cut back occasionally to the scenes in the bedroom. This should hopefully make it seem like the performance scenes are in the child's imagination as if she dreams of being in the band herself.

Initial Ideas

Brainstorming our initial ideas

Now that we have chosen our track 'Weekends', we decided to start off by brainstorming a few ideas for our music video:

As mentioned in the mind map above, we had an idea to use Polaroid cameras in some way, as there is reference to them in our chosen song. One idea which we particularly liked, was to use the border on Polaroid images around our music video, however we were not sure how we would achieve this when editing our music video together. 


We also decided that we would use a low budget venue. As well as this being a benefit to us as we would not to have to pay as much for our venue, it would also conform to a convention of the indie rock genre, as well as being something which The Jacques often use themselves. We decided that a preferred venue would be a small pub/bar. 

As I found when researching into indie rock bands, a majority of them base their videos mainly on performance so we decided that our video should also conform to this stereotype. Despite this, we did have a few ideas where we could combine a performance with either a narrative of a concept. For example, we had an idea to have the lead singer of the band wake up somewhere and realise that he is late for their gig. We would then show him running to the venue, making it just in time to start singing, cutting between him running and the band playing without him. 

Audience Research

Our Target Audience

We decided that our target audience for our chosen artist The Jacques is teenagers and young adults. To decide our target audience, we looked at the genre indie rock to see with what age group this genre was most popular. Indie rock music is typically found at music festival, which are normally more popular with teens and young adults. The Jacques themselves have also already played at several festivals, confirming their target audience of teenagers and young adults. With this target audience in mind, we wanted to make sure that our music video was both fun and edgy, so that it would appeal to younger people.

The Jacques

Analysing our chosen artist

Our chosen artist, The Jacques, have, in the past, produced music videos which conform to the stereotypes of their genre- indie rock. The band themselves are typically seen wearing dark, baggy clothing with a slightly grungy vibe. Their hair is often messy, giving them a rougher, carefree appearance, conforming to one of the conventions of indie rock bands. As the band only started up fairly recently, they do not yet have many music videos. However, from the few music videos which they do have, it is easy to see that their videos have a certain style. The videos are almost always in urban settings, and lots of shots are used to show this, e.g. shots of road signs and built up areas. 

As well as this, the camera moves around a lot, creating a rough feel to the video, which is a common feature of indie rock music videos that I've seen when researching other indie rock bands. Some of their videos are in black and white and they have used boarders around the screen, which is similar to the techniques used in 'Debaser' by the Pixies, where they overlaid lots of shots, which I looked at earlier. 

Use of a low quality camera and a boarder in The Jacques' music video 'Weekends'.

Use of a low quality camera and overlaid shots in the Pixies' music video 'Debaser'.