Pendulum Website Home Page

Pendulum

http://www.pendulum.com/

The layout of pendulums website is a lot more organised than chase and status and Sub Focus’s websites. We see a consistent blend of colours that relate to the album cover of Immersion. The use of the sea is a reference in their music videos, such as Witchcraft and watercolours. At the top is a bar containing the page names. They’re in a similar bold font and capital letters, which makes it easy for the audience to find what they want to know. Again the page features gig dates and links at the bottom to social networking sites like myspace, bebo, facebook, flickr and lastfm. We see a boarder at the top, which changes from advertisements of the album Immersion to advertisements of a single on the album, The Island and it also changes to the torso and faces of Pendulum. The band has serious faces and are all wearing black leather jackets, which shows the image they’re trying to present to the public. They are trying to display a ‘cool’ laid back image and attract a target audience of males aged between 16 and 25.

By Chris Wilson

Website research and analysis

Chase and Status Website Homepage

CHASE AND STATUS
http://www.chaseandstatus.co.uk/
(This website design has now been updated)

Chase and status have decided to use a bright pink background, which is unlike other drum and bass artists, such as Sub Focus who has a dark background. The pink background could be signifying the upbeat vibrant feeling of listening to drum and bass. Again their site doesn’t focus on the artist image as on the homepage we only see a small image of their faces in the top right corner. The image of them looks computer generated and the artistic technique of graffiti is incorporated, which represents the urbanized side of their image. The layout of the site is quite simple as the homepage separates everything into 5 boxes, which makes it easy for the viewer to browse. Again we see tour dates and sponsors like facebook, youtube and myspace at the top. The site doesn’t tell us much about the artists, themselves, which tells us that the sites not used to attract new fans but to release dates and new songs for current fans by the lack of detail. This vibrant pink background is not what you expect to see for the target audience of males, so maybe the website designer is trying to challenge ideologies about the genre. The website is influenced by art forms like graffiti and this is incorporated into the spray painted background and the Chase and Status logo at the top of the page.

By Chris Wilson

Website Analysis and Research

Sub Focus Website Homepage

SUB FOCUS

http://www.myspace.com/subfocus

A well known UK drum and bass artist uses a distinct style to portray his image. As drum and bass is a form of rave music played in clubs, you can see this artist has tried to incorporate similar colours and lighting, which you would expect to see. The background of the site is black and you could relate this to the darkness that appears in night clubs. The bright colourful lights could be seen as a representation of UV lights that occur in nightclubs. As well as colour and lighting the logo at the top also includes the artist, Sub Focus hiding behind the CD shaped lights. This helps reinforce audience’s views on drum and bass artists because they usually have introvert personality images and are their presence in music videos, websites and other media forms are quite reserved. Throughout the website we also see a lot of tour dates, which is common for these types of artists as most of their work is more known from performances at events rather than albums. These elements of Sub Focus's website are very effective in displaying the artist’s image and we will use some of them to promote our artist.

By Chris Wilson

Pendulum - The Other Side (video)

Pendulum - The Other Side


This video includes blue tinting for lighting in the video. I think this effect is good for creating atmosphere and allowing the audience to know what mood to be in when viewing the video. As a result we will include this in our video.

By Chris Wilson

Genre:

Pendulum is a drum & bass band that use many sci-fi related things that help represent them as a group, such as a planet in outer space used in the their ‘Watercolour’ video. Their music videos tend to be in dark blue lighting with over-exposed lights throughout to make the video uncomfortable to watch. There tends to be a lot of close ups of the characters in the video and of objects. They like to use unusual weird objects in there videos to continue the supernatural feeling and they are also at a fast pace with lots of cutting, which relates to the genre, drum and bass. In their videos we see the crowds dancing in the audience along with the beat and them performing the music, which is also relevant to the genre. In some of their earlier videos we see people running, such as in the video ‘The Other Side’. In their older videos they tend to use special effects less due to the low budget they had like in the video ‘Propane Nightmares’ where the only effect is colour tinting. They also tend to fade out objects and make things look to difficult to view. Their earlier videos seem to be a bit simpler, whereas nowadays they have incorporated more special effects like in their latest album ‘Immersion’. Pendulum tends to use a familiar story line in all their videos with someone trapped in something and trying to escape. However as they’ve become more popular, their videos have also evolved due to new forms of technology.

Visual style and image:

What signifies Pendulum is mainly down to the use of special effects they use nowadays. The continuous use of dark blues and whites in their videos also help the audience to recognise then like in the ‘Watercolour’ and ‘Other Side’ videos. They like to use fading and cloudy effects to make their videos look difficult to watch. This may be done to reflect on their personalities as they don’t like to give too much away about themselves and are reserved people. They sci-fi element in their videos may also be used to reflect on their interest in science and the world. The artists tend to wear black costumes and seem to be quite laid back and they’re usually just standing singing or performing in their videos. The artist uses a lot of fast cutting in their editing in order to create the sense that they are in a rush to do something or achieve something. This can be reflected on themselves as a group and their intentions. They use all types of shots including a few master shots, repetitive close-ups to show emotions of characters in their videos and mid shots. In their video ‘The Island’ they’ve used a couple of canted angle shots to add the element of confusion in their videos. Pendulums song ‘Slam’ was used as the theme song in the Playstation 3 game Motorstorm, which is a car racing game. This has helped identify the artists image of being identified with pace. Pendulum tend to use the theme of escape in their videos as they usually involve the story line of someone trying to escape but being trapped by some type of darkness.

By Chris Wilson

Pendulum - Crush

We chose this song as we wanted to do a song in the drum and bass genre, and we had previously come up with a basic idea of the type of video that we wanted to create. As you saw in our pitch, our idea is a narrative with a lot of action, which would relate to a fast paced song.

Danny Rankin & Chris Wilson

CD cover Katy Perry

This is a CD cover from a different genre, pop and although it is still creative, unlike drum and bass it is more based on a photograph whereas pendulum and other drum and bass groups, such as chase and status use more computer generated images rather than photos. It is also an image of the artist as in the pop genre it is important to promote your image to sell more songs where as in drum and bass the emphasis is on computer generated sounds so the computerised design emphasises this, it also goes with the fact that pendulum don't often play a major role in their music video's where as Katy Perry is the main icon in her videos.

Danny Rankin

CD cover Chase and Status- Against All Odds

This is a CD cover from a group in the same genre as our song. As with the immersion CD cover this is an "Arty" image used to express the band. The use of computer design is there although as the cover is from a single which features another artist from a different genre there are visual images of the artists which is used to show the branding of the artist.

Danny Rankin

This is a short sheet that we had to fill out in lesson outlining the genre, representation and audience of our chosen band and song.

Danny Rankin

Example CD cover- pendulum immersion album artwork

This is pendulums album cover from the album immersion, which our song is from.
This is quite a creative piece of artwork and fits in with the genre style, although their albums are different they follow similar conventions.

Danny Rankin

Drum and Bass Videos Research

Pendulum - The Showdown

This video features a crowd of men forcing two women to fight. The video shows the dominance of males, which helps us to see that the target audience will be males. We will try to use this idea having a crowd around the action in our video. This video also uses over-exposed lighting and a colour tinting, which we want to include in our video.


Chase & Status ft. Mali - Let You Go

This video narrative follows the life of a television show host and shows what he gets up to behind closed doors. It has an intertextual reference to the Jeremy Kyle show and includes recessive ideologies as we wouldn't expect a host of one of the shows to have a life like this. We want to include some sort of shock to the audience like is present in this video. We will be able to do this when our characters are playing the board game because the audience will be expecting a fight.


Plan B ft. Chase & Status - Pieces

This video includes the artist playing his guitar and singing in a studio. I don't think this would be appropriate as most of the song we've chosen is at a fast paced. However the video includes fast editing and a large variety of close ups when the song speeds up, so we will be able to use these aspects in the video.

by Chris Wilson

The Pitch Overview

We’re doing a narrative video of the song crush by pendulum. The reason we chose this song is because of its fast pace, which will link to the story in our video. The lyrics also relate to what happens in our narrative. To help promote the artist we will be advertising them on the internet with sites such as, youtube and myspace. As well as this we will be making posters and giving out leaflets to the target group.

We think the age ranges for people who listen to drum & bass would be between 16 and 25 after researching into the genre. Drum and bass is more male-specific; however females do listen to it. We think that Pendulum would appeal to more straight people; however other forms of drum & bass would appeal to people who aren’t. The subculture of the audience would probably be the ‘Party guy’ type person that just wants to have a good time no matter what. The video is going to be active so it suits the liveliness of the song and impresses the audience watching.

Our production is inspired by other drum & bass videos from artists like Pendulum and Chase & Status. The story in the video will reference the film Rocky 4 because the characters will be training for a fight in a similar style. We will also use either a board game or game console, like the nintendo wii or chess as a reference for the video. For the video to be recognized as drum & bass were going to use lighting effects, fast cutting and urban settings. These settings will include a gym for when the characters are training, knocked down building for the artist to perform on, the inside of a characters house, a street for the character to run home and a small park for the conflict to take place.

In a drum & bass video would expect to see a fast paced video with the song building up the action. The average shot length in their videos going to be quick in most parts of the song because it’s a fast tempo song. In some parts the song will be slower, which will allow a longer shot length of around 1 second, however there will be some larger clips within the cutting. In pendulums video called ‘the other side’ the shot length is fairly longer then their other videos but there are more cuts in faster parts of the song. They tend to use over-exposed lighting and have the camera unfocused to make the audience feel uncomfortable. As well as this the videos usually involve someone running or trying to escape - This matches the lyrics in the song.

The audience of this type of video would be expecting to see a simple narrative with some performance. The video would set at either day or night according to the mood of the song Pendulum would make. We will begin the video in the day and have other parts at night. We will use natural light in the day and artificial lighting in the last scene, which is inside.
You would expect to see a couple of urban locations and a range of special effects to make the video more interesting. Pendulum tend to stay out of the press and are more known for their music. Their style is quite reserved as they usually wear dark clothes and are still in videos. To reinforce this image we’re going to use a similar style in our video.

To fill the 3 minutes in the video we’re going to film everything from different angles and use a couple of locations. The narrative begins with two boys arguing. One of them ends up hitting the other and runs away. It then escalates into a big fight and they tell a few people to come and watch. When they meet again it ends up being the two characters playing a board game. We hope this twist in the storyline will help entertain and surprise the audience. To incorporate special effects we will use things, such as lighting on the program iMovie. The themes within the video will include emotion, comedy and violence.


by Chris Wilson

PITCH

Danny Rankin and Chris Wilson