There is a short sound before the guitar comes in, where a light shines towards the camera in a dark room. This adds suspence and I think it was right to not begin the storyline in the video before the song effectively starts. When the music begins, the camera pans of over the band who are standing in a line with a projection shone onto them, they are wearing black so we focus more on the projection and less on the actual band members, which reflects their shy and modest style. The shots are long and do not cut on every beat. No band member looks at the camera, whcih I quite like as it adds a mystery to them. These shots carry on through the intro, with varied shots of the whole band, mid shots of one or two members, and close-ups of the players fingers in action and never their faces. The projection changes to orange, which adds intensity to an already intense building intro. The singer begins to sing, and it is the first close-up shot of a face, yet he still doesn't look at the camera, his face concealed by the projection. Some shots begin out of focus but then pan and zoom into focus, which is quite effective. These shots carry on, some very dark with one light shining onto the side of face, which is very mysterious, and some with light blue or bright orange porjection. The projection throughout changes from fire, to very abstract images, which can make you feel uneasy. The end of the song is marked by the projection being lowered and the band fading to black. In my opinion, quite a boring low budget feel video, however I think there are some interesting aspects to the way the band act. They seem very shy and don't want to give anything away by their expressions or body language. This is very mysterious, but also makes the listener/veiwer focus on the intense lyrics, so quite a clever way to move music away from the attractive controversial egotistic front man, which is so popular in the music video age, and more towards the actaul musical talent, such as the lyrics and focusing on the instruments being played. I like this idea a lot.
This is the album cover. The actual album is a black sleeve with the x symbol cut out. This gives the feel of a higher budget, which contrasts with the video. Although the cover is very simple, I don't think it limits itself to an older market, I also think it looks very stylish and gives the band a complete identity. I personally would buy this cd because it looks very different from anything else on the market, and gives no clue to the kind of music, other than it is different and probably quite dark. Inside the digipack is the same logo, which i think is a shame. I think a person opens the digipack to find out more about the band, and there could have been some photography or artwork there to portray the music further. The back of the digipack is plain black with a white font. The song titles are listed above a barcode and record label logo. I think the back of the digipack is again probably too plain and i think the x logo would look good there also. This band are clearly aiming to sell records to the curious music buyer, possibly older, therefore a smaller market. I think this suits the band as they are clearly not bothered about being liked by everyone, when in actual fact they have become popular anyway. I think the modest yet stylish attitude worked well as their music wasn't pushed in peoples faces, people thought they were "cool" for finding this new band that no-ones heard of, partly becuase they didn't want to be heard by the masses. This shows a very different way of marketing, a kind of reverse psycology where they pretend they don't want everyone to like them, which makes more people interested.
This was the poster for the release of the album. I did actually see this poster quite a lot in music magazines, often on a full page spread. Again this brings the feeling that people would feel cool for knowing what this symbol stands for, like they are in the know or part of something. One side of me thinks this advert is pretty useless from the point of veiw of knowing when the cds out or seeing the band live, but when reading a music magazine and turning over to see this, it just looks very stylish and very cool for a band to being doing this with their first record. I do really like it. It isn't aimed for the mainstream of the teenage market, but i personally like it. I think this is aimed for a more mature audience. It was a risk for the band, and a risk for the record label, but that just makes me like it more.
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