Research and Planning: Genre: Alternative Rock

Popular Alternative Rock bands:
• Nirvana
• Pixies
• Muse
• Queens Of The Stone Age
• Weezer
• At The Drive In
• Foo Fighters
• Audioslave
• Manic Street Preachers

Alternative Rock is an umbrella term used to describe majority of the post-punk guitar bands since the 1980s. Although by definition it is fundamentally anti-mainstream, in the early 90s bands such as Nirvana topped the charts worldwide and since then alternative rock has been assimilated by the mainstream. Alternative rock can be vaguely categorised in two ways – either experimental acts with limited commercial appeal, or simply rock bands deemed to ‘edgy’ to be considered pop. Of course this is not an effective way of categorising as bands such as The Cure and fit have inhabited both categories over the course of their careers.

Although difficult to specify due to the breadth of the genre, general characteristics of alternative rock acts include:
• Dark colours; both clothing and album art etc.
• Lyrics more often covering social, political, or psychological topics.
An alternative rock music video might contain:
• Performance shots
• Heavy use of symbolism.
• Less reliance on special effects; due in part to lack of mainstream-level funding, and also to keep the audience’s attention on the song.

Alternative rock digipacks:
• Are less likely to make use of images of the band on the cover, instead often making use of artwork whether made by he band themselves (in the case of more DIY bands such as Los Campesinos! or Johnny Foreigner), or sometimes by famous designers (such as Storm Thorgeson who has made album art for bands such as Muse, Biffy Clyro, Audioslave, and Pink Floyd)
• Unlike pop artists, alternative rock bands will often be relying on a fanbase instead of attracting casual listeners and so will rely less on the attention grabbing tactics of a pop album cover.

Planning: Song Decision

After much thought I decided to use the track 'Machines' by Biffy Clyro for my music video. This song belongs to the genre of Alternative Rock. I decided to use it as the genre, and especially the band, makes use of rich  imagery which would work really well in a music video, and bring up some interesting ideas for a digi-pack.