Have you ever made a fictional band and music video? I certainly haven't, but hey, how hard can it be? Planning and coming up with some basic ideas hasn't been all that hard, but filming and editing will more than likely pose a challenge. As for the ideas and research, we've made quite a bit of progress. We managed to study some popular R&B songs/bands, and I gotta say, I didn't really expect Drake to make R&B. Listening to some other songs of the genre have also been an experience.
Our group started looking into R&B by compiling some information about some smaller groups/artists, and then we started looking into the confusing world of record labels. We took the examples of Republic and RCA records, which both had some R&B artists signed to it. Within these larger labels, we took a look at the smaller labels owned by each company, with each focusing on more specific genres. We looked at websites, YouTube, and any other piece of original information we could, just to get a sense of how each label reached its audience. Obviously, social media was among the most popular.
Outside of researching marketing practices, we took the time to figure out what we wanted to do with our own band. We looked at some band names as well as their "aesthetic". We managed to find a good balance between our assigned song lyrics, the R&B aesthetic, and our own ideas. We've also been planning some filming locations as well as shots, but we're pretty far from done.
Some challenges we face right now are maintaining focus, keeping a stable workflow, and overall team chemistry. Seeing how there's a whole pandemic, it's gonna be pretty hard to focus on something else, so yay us. As for a stable workflow, I don't really see us losing time on a specific part of the project, especially considering how each one of us is doing what we like best. Team chemistry shouldn't be an issue, as we all know when to debate aspects of the project and when to get stuff done.
Looking forward, I can't wait to get to the final steps of creating the social media and video. But obviously we have to finish storyboarding our video as well as recording and editing. While we're working on that, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to dedicate some time to making a website and Instagram and YouTube. But that's for the future. In the mean time, I think we should finish up our music video, and after we've started editing we can focus on post-production.
