Update (coursework)

For the past month or so, I've been using some of my lesson time and free time to start thinking, planning and preparing my work for the coursework brief that I've chosen: NuTunes Records.

"Brief Three: Nutune Records

Brief three allows students to investigate promotion and marketing in the music industry and they should come up with a fictional band or artist who is signed but yet to break into a broader mainstream market. The band/artist is about to release their debut album so it is crucial that the potential audience is reached and that the band's genre, persona etc. is communicated as effectively as possible. Students should consider the visual presentation of genre and the way audiences are defined, targeted and appealed to. Materials should be focused on extending the reach of the artist. Whichever are chosen, the materials for the two tasks should be connected in some way to create the idea of a coherent campaign."

When I first chose this brief, I had a few ideas of what I could do for the tasks and some other ideas, which added on to this, of how I could make them work; nonetheless, it was unclear at this point exactly what I would choose to do. After choosing the platforms that I would be doing (print and e-media), I started to get some more clues as to what I might like to do next, i.e. posters, flyers, designing a 3 page magazine spread, a website - all of which would be suited to fit the instructions of the brief I chose. After a while, it became clear to me what I could do for these materials which would fit in with the requirements of the brief; I would use a real life band that I know to make this work.

Aramantus are a recently formed metal band of music college students; some of the band members are whom I know outside of Sixth Form. I came up with the idea to use this band for my coursework after I saw that they were starting to do really well with their music and band status, which I spotted on various social networking sites. I spoke to my friend, Lou, recently, who is a member of the band (lead vocals), and she agreed on behalf of the rest of the band that Aramantus would love to participate in the work that I will be doing for the coursework tasks. It was from here that I made the decision to begin my work which would be based around this band, and I would start to plan some of the things I wanted to do with Aramantus i.e. photo-shoots and interviews, right away.

- With thanks to Maureen Connor, Lou Walker, and Andy Bates for the use of these images -

**** Recently, I've been in touch with Lou, and she has asked me to attend an upcoming gig at The Roadhouse, Birmingham, to see Aramantus perform on stage. I thought that this sounded like an amazing opportunity to take some photos of the band which I could potentially use for my coursework, for example taking photos of the band performing on stage which could be used for magazine material. The performance will be on Thursday (30th), so I will be sure to update this post after I have taken the photos of the band, and then hopefully I will have many more ideas of what I can be doing next for the task! After this, I hope to be able to edit the photos, and then arrange with the band a date/time that we can go ahead with the photo-shoot to get a selection of photos which could be used for posters, flyers, etc. ****