Construction of an indie artist script:

• We have decided to use a male artist called Charlie Jennings, who is aged 16, from Leeds, and in terms of his background he grew up on a council estate, playing his guitar and busking in hope of a better life. He created a youtube channel at age 14, and gained quite a lot of hits within a few years. At age 16, independent company 'Imaginary records' based in Greater Manchester who focus on indie-rock and post-punk genres, found his material on youtube and asked him to be signed with them.
• In terms of target audience we have decided to focus on the teenage working class from the UK, particularly the northern region, because then they can associate themselves with our artist and the issues that his songs will be about, which creates a better more personal connection, which is a typical convention of indie music. This applies a lot to the male teenage audience, and with the female teenage audience they can also create a connection through attraction to our artist.
• In terms of his image, we want to keep our artist away from the mainstream culture in order to be classed as indie, but not be too individual to the point where the audience cant relate to him, or that his image becomes the focal point of his performance. In terms of being indie, he needs to look fresh but natural, like he hasn't purposely been constructed, and so would typically wear things like dark skinny jeans, hipster-style high street shirts and t-shirts, vans or converse shoes, and natural brown straight hair in a floppy fringe.
• In terms of props, we want Charlie Jennings to be typically indie where he cares most about his music and his message, so we are giving him a guitar that his audience can associate him with, that he can typically use for his acoustic work and to show how music is his focal point. To set him aside from other indie artists to make him unique and independent we have decided to give him a particular beanie hat that people could also associate him with, and fit the rest of his image.
• For a break-out music video concept, we have been inspired by another indie artist's music video - Ed Sheeran's A Team, where the focus is on a girl and he barely appears in the video, because his message in the song is more impoartant than the representation of himself. We have also been inspired by other artists like the Vaccines, The Libertines and the Arctic Monkeys who have a big performance aspect of their videos, which is simple and again shows how important music is as opposed to the mainstream culture of music artists. Therefore we have decided to do a combination of the two, where the video follows a girl who is being bullied, an important concept for the target audience, and she gets her money stolen, therefore not being able to afford the shopping, or the bus home, or to give money to a busker (who happens to be our artist Charlie Jennings, to which this part relates to his own life), and then the girl has to walk home in the rain. When she gets home, it is revealed that her mother is bedridden with an illness, where the girl has to look after her. All of this sequence is put together with clips of our artist singing with his acoustic guitar alone – his performance aspect. The whole video is supposed to make the audience sympathetic, or able to relate to it, which is what a lot of indie bands consider to be important, whereas mainstream bands prefer to give off concepts that an audience might envy or inspire to be like.
• The music video will be for our artist's song that made him famous on youtube, an acoustic cover of Kings of Leon's – Radioactive, another indie band, because this will create a likeness towards Charlie for his audience if it is a song they already know, especially with Charlie's own twist to the song. The lyrics also fit well with the music video concept to portray a message, which also shows how music is the most important feature here. We have chosen to use a cover of this song by Ryan Clouse on youtube as an example of this for our artist.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In terms of the press, we have only ever chosen to do positive press, because as an indie artist he doesn't need negative press to gain media attention, as this is more of a mainstream idea. To make him get quite well known, most press will start with his music reviews, in music magazines that specialise in this area such as Q or NME, which as first will be positive reviews, but as he begins to sell out, won't be as positive, but not to an exreme effect. His own facebook page and official website, which we have created (which won't be as fancy as mainstream ones), which will be run by himself, and not a team of professionals, will also gain him popularity and press publicity. This is also another indie trait, because it shows how he runs everything himself and wishes not to be constructed by the industry.
• Press photos which we have taken ourselevs include simple things like Charlie Jennings with his new girlfriend, which makes his small audience feel like they are finding more out about his life personally, and also photos from his live performances which will be used on social networking and in the indie music magazines.
• Press release stories will include mostly positive things, because as for negative things, not many people would care, because he isn't as well known or shown as perfect construction, like mainstream artists are. But to gain him popularity and make it look like Charlie is a nice caring person who is in the industry for what he is passionate about, and not for the fame, money and image. Taking all this into consideration, we have decided that a press release story about him that will involve his charity work, such as putting on a concert in favour of the British Heart Foundation and singing in a children's hopsice to entertain them. These types of things could also be ideas for home-made style future music videos which have a personal memory feel, inspired by Lana Del Rey's.
• People that have inspired us to create an artist like this, are other single male indie artists like Jake Bugg and Ben Howard, who have similar image and similar props, who have gained a lot of popularity recently. Another artist is Ed Sheeran, who we liked because he also has a guitar but it was the idea that he has so much meaning and messages to portray in his songs, and has low budgets for his videos, showing how he cares more about his music than money. The View, The Vaccines and The Mexannines are examples of male indie bands that have inspired us due to their growing fanbase despite being indie, and also the performance aspect of their music, there isn't much editing and front stage/back stage personality – what you see is what you get.