[MP] Filming Progress

Over the half term period, we went on two filming trips to Dunorlan Park.


Day 1: Unfortunately, one of the band memebers was unavailable for the first outing, meaning that the shots we took had to be more individual, with only one or two band members in the shot. We still got some good footage, including some that will be reversed.


Day 2: All the band members were available for the second filming trip, meaning that most of the group shots could be filmed. A few shots from the previous day were filmed again which looked much better with all four band members. However, filming was cut short due to an unfortunate incident involving a fountain that turned out to be waist deep.


Overall, I think that what we filmed was of good quality, but we will need at least one more filming trip to get enough footage for our music video.

[MP] Deconstruction of digipak/advertisement

The Kooks - 'Junk of the Heart'

Genre
The indie rock genre of the artist is evident mainly in the image of the girl on this advertisement. She has raised arms, a jacket that appears too small and very messy hair, spread all over her face perhaps by the wind. The messy hair especially has strong connotations of going against the grain and of being a rebellious youth. 


Furthermore, although the advert has obviously been created in photoshop (or similar) it has been done in an imperfect way. There seems to be over-exposure on the image of the girl, giving the effect that her colour bleeds onto the canvas which is the base effect of this advert. Also, the painted area to the right is quite scruffy, with rough brush strokes and unmixed colours. This all contributes to the DIY attitude that has been taken on by many indie rock bands.


Media Language
The rule of thirds is followed by this advert, which makes sense as the rule of thirds makes the audience feel comfortable with what they are consuming, therefore encouraging them to make a purchase. The title of the album and the exclamation of it being new sit on the junction of the line of the upper third and of the left side. This starts off the dominant reading path, which also plays its part in constructing an advert which is comfortable to read. The girl is centred on the diagonally opposite junction of lines, leaving a slight gap for the eye to jump across and follow the reading path. Only the words 'click here to buy' do not follow the rule of thirds, perhaps keeping the commercial aspect of the advert out of the way of the audience to keep them in their comfort zone. 


On another point, the text is presented in white, creating a strong contrast to the deep blue background. Also, the album name 'Junk of the Heart' is much bigger in size and is on top of all the other text, revealing maybe that the album is more important to the band than the commercial sales of it.


The album title 'Junk of the Heart' could connote that the new album is much more personal to the individual band members than the previous two albums. 
There are no obvious references to popular culture in this advert, emphasising the desire of the band to be completely different from anyone else, which has been present since they became a band at college in Brighton.  


Representation
The band are here represented as young, do-anything musicians. This is shown by the messy hair and arms in the air of the girl in the advertisment. In Dyer's terms, the band is absent from the advert entirely. This ensures the incoherence of the bands' image to their audience, meaning that the audience will strive to complete the image by means of consumption of the star and their products. The band are also constructed to be quite extraordinary, with the eretheral glow around the girl on the advert giving a heavenly feel to the banner. 


Institution and Audience
This advert would be consumed via Web 2.0. It is obvious that this is a website banner as the text in the bottom left of the advert reads 'click here to buy'. However, the background image is a cropped portion of the album cover, meaning that the image would also be consumed in high street shops such as HMV. The image would also become familiar to the audience in this way, reinforcing the association of the image with the band.  

[MP] Digipak/Advertisement Ideas

Album Artworks


Beat Circus - 'Boy From Black Mountain'

How is the band/artist represented?
The band is represented in a seemingly traditional early 20th century way, as is shown by the steam locomotive and the simple wood cabins that reach back to when the mining industry took off due to the introduction of steam power. This creates a metanarrative of the band that fits in with the subject of the album of family and fatherhood in the tradition of Southern Gospel songwriters. In Dyer's terms, the band is absent from the artwork, giving a sense of mystery, yet also present in the way that the artwork represents their decision on the concept of the album.


What visual techniques are used?
The dominant reading path is followed in this artwork, with the band and album being introduced with text at the top left. The eye is then directed to bottom right by the direction of the train, and by the mountain pointing down to that corner. The rule of thirds is also adhered to, with the album name along the upper horizontal line, and the train along the lower.


The Kooks - 'Konk'

How is the band/artist represented?
The Kooks are here represented as typical young people, hanging outside a club during a night out. The action codes of the band and their costume make them seem ordinary, yet they are made extraordinary by the stark light they are placed in. The group are present in the artwork, but also absent by being alone.
  
What visual techniques are used?
The band are clearly the focus of the image, with the rest of the scene blacked out, and what looks like a spotlight effect over the band. The dominant reading path is again followed, the eye starting with the text that introduces the band, and then the image of the members.


Breaking Benjamin - 'Dear Agony'

How is the band/artist represented?
The band are represented as quite abstract and abnormal, as the image of a brain scan is not something that is considered familiar to the majority of people. The band are absent, not featuring on the album cover at all, other than in name. The band are shown to be ordinary, as the brain is something common to all people, yet extraordinary in their mystery.
What visual techniques are used?
A brain scan has been used as the image for this album cover. The rule of thirds has been deliberately broken, with the image in the centre of the cover. This, coupled with the unfamiliar image is likely to make the audience feel ill at ease, following with the album name 'Dear Agony'. 

[MP] Performance Ideas

Helicopter Parents - 'Scams'



This video was shown as one that has very interesting performance in a simple studio, with dark lighting including UV lights, and UV ink drawn onto the performers.

[GROUP] Progress 20/10/11

Today we have continued storyboarding with an aim to finish by the half-term break in time for filming.

We have also organised our footage from a mise-en-scene discussion that we did as well as our recent Dunorlan reccie to post on the blog shortly.

We also looked at Maritime's only other video - 'Paraphernalia'. This is from a later album and so we have good scope to essentially do what we want with the band image.

[DF] Digipak/Advertisment Ideas

Album Artworks

Lower Than Atlantis - 'World Record'

How is the band/artist represented?

The band is represented as ordinary, working class and plain. This gives them a relatable band image which continues their metanarrative, as they were similarly represented in their previous album, and the lead singer talks a lot about his working class upbringing and job before he became a musician. In terms of Dyer's paradoxes, they are present in name and in symbolised band image, but are simultaneously absent in that no band member is actually seen, and it is in black and white. This black and white effect also serves to make the image 'extraordinary', but at the same time the plain, realistic hands bring the artwork into a more ordinary light.

What visual techniques are used?

Black and white colour is used to give a more bleak image, fitting in with the album's content. Rule of thirds is also used, with each hand a third away from their respective edges.

Emancipator - 'Soon It Will Be Cold Enough'

How is the band/artist represented?

The artist is represented as an ambient artist, with the album intending to sound like winter. The black and white with a snowy picture gives this impression. The artist is absent from the picture in all but name and style (ambient) and similarly the black and white creates an extraordinary look, while the picture itself shows a few trees with nothing special about them, creating a simultaneously ordinary image.

What visual techniques are used?

Black and white is the main technique used. This is done to empahsise the white of the snow, thereby enhancing the cold feeling.

Bowling For Soup - 'Drunk Enough To Dance'

How is the band/artist represented?

The band is represented as young, fun-loving, non-serious and jokingly self-deprecating. Their quirky facial expressions and non-verbal language display this view, and they are shown as self-deprecating in that the bassist is shown to be too big to fit in one box - joking about his weight. These traits make the band seem ordinary in terms of Dyer's paradoxes, however the suits and boxes make them extraordinary in a sense. Similarly, the suits make them seem absent, despite being present in person.

What visual techniques are used?

The black and white background with the red boxes on top makes the band members stand out as the focus of the album cover. 

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Paramore - 'Brand New Eyes'

How is the band/artist represented?
The band is represented as young, average people. Their clothes are ordinary, fitting with Dyer's paradox, and yet the background makes it seem more extraordinary. Similarly, the background makes the band feel abesent by putting them in a surreal location, however the band is still there and so are simultaneously present. The lead singer is given brighter clothes than the rest of the band, making her stand out. This fits with their metanarrative in that most people know the band for Hayley Williams - she is a key part of their band image.


What visual techniques are used?
Part of the album cover is imposed over the top of the image, relating the advertisment to it. Similarly, the use of colour associates the poster with the album, as orange is prominant on its artwork. Costume is used to differentiate the band members from the lead singer, who is wearing white while the others wear dark reds and blacks.

[DF] Concept Development (Storyboarding)

What is the purpose of storyboarding?

Storyboarding is a good way of establishing the direction you want to take with your concept. It details exactly what happens within the video in terms of narrative as well as performance. Furthermore, it allows you to see whether you will have enough shots to fill the entire time of the video, or whether you need to extend your narrative or add some filler shots or perhaps rethink your concept.

What can we learn from making an animatic?

From making an animatic you get a feel for how your film will look once finished. You already have your planned shots, and creating an animatic adds the dimension of time, allowing you to see whether you need to lengthen or shorten some shots in order to fit better, and thus if you need to plan more shots and cut some out.

Evaluate your storyboard so far. Consider distance, angle, movement and duration.

Our storyboard so far involves some specific ideas for shots, as well as a more detailed explanation of what happens during the video. Using stickmen and somewhat vague drawings allows us to improvise a little during filming so that we can add any shots we can see fitting better while we're there. This is also the purpose of our upcoming Dunorlan reccie. We have tried to add a variety of different kinds of shots, and a variety of distances. We have included 'meat' shots as well as plenty of close-ups. Many music videos also involve a lot of movement, and so we will be incorportating pans, tracking shots and handi-cam.

[DF] Call Sheet & Risk Assessment

Here is an example of a call sheet and risk assessment we prepared for filming in the drama studio for the performance aspects of our video.

We purposely left much of this blank as it will allow us to use this as a template every time we film in that location, instead of having to create a new one every time.

[GROUP] Concept Development (12/10/11)

We are currently making final decisions on choices as to what will happen in our video.

• The band performance will only be in the drama studio. This will mean that only filming days out of school there will be less people to organise.
• Our concept for the narrative has been changed, our new one is outlined below and has received positive feedback from classmates and teachers:

A group of people (between 5 and 11?) are walking through a location (Dunorlan Park?). The narrative begins with all characters in plain jeans and a white T-shirt. As they go along they just do random things like climbing trees, jumping a lake, etc. They either find colourful and crazy T-shirts as they go and replace their plain shirts. The video ends with all characters in colourful new attire. We may incorporate our old concept in including a love story told through T-shirts - i.e. hearts appearing as they interact, etc.

Our performance concept will, however, remain the same.

[MP] Pitch Feedback

We presented our pitch to the class, another media studies teacher and a temporary technician on 10^th October. We gained the ‘green light’ with a number of issues suggested that will need to be sorted before we start filming our music video production.

Locations

We are planning on filming an amount of our narrative in Dunorlan Park as we feel that this location will give us a lot of opportunity to shoot interesting footage. We already have some footage from Brighton that could be used in our production. The issue that was raised was that we would have to find out how well the footage from Brighton will integrate with footage from Dunorlan Park. To find this out we will do a location reccie to Dunorlan Park and edit a short length of film so that we can assess the result.

Lighting

The performance part of our narrative is to be filmed in the drama studio that has a full lighting rig. We will need to try out the lights to see what different effects can be achieved, and what looks good on screen. We are also thinking about using a green screen, and this is another piece of equipment that will need to be tested to see if it is worth spending the time editing the raw footage that contains the green screen.

Characters

All of the character roles have been assigned apart from our second girl. Having two different girls will be an essential part of our narrative, so casting our second actress is an issue that must be addressed promptly.

[MP] Role of the Producer

The role of the producer is to make sure that all of the elements of the music video come together at the right times. This includes ensuring that a specific timeline is kept to, to ensure that the product stays on schedule. Also, the producer must organise filming days, the roles of other members in the group and push the project onwards.


We have recorded important dates and deadlines to enable us to complete each part of the process on time, which means that the music video will be finished by the deadline date. 


We have weeks 2 until the planning deadline, meaning that there is not a huge amount of time left to tweak bits and alter characters etc. 


Difficulties may lie in making sure that all members of the group complete their set tasks on time. This is a major concern, as being behind in the planning stage will most likely have a detrimental effect on the production side of the project.

[MP] Initial Storyboarding

These are the planned shots that will occupy the first 20 seconds of our music video. They are all set in the drama studio and are all performance based.

[DF] Audience Research (Survey Results)

We decided to use SurveyMonkey to create and host our survey, and to distribute it we posted the link on our Facebook walls and asked our friends to answer it.


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8DMGCZC


In total we had 36 respondents, however some responses were simply not done with any kind of seriousness, and so we deleted them so as not to skew our results, leaving 27 responses. We were careful, however, to not simply delete any negative responses, as some were negative but taken seriously.


Our closed and semantic differential questions give us some numeric data to work from, and allow us to gauge opinions and choices which can only be one of a number of options. Our first question was designed essentially to validate that respondents further answers. While we didn't disregard those who said they would not normally listen to similar music, however we took into account a possible bias they may have throughout the rest of the survey. In total, 30.8% said they would normally listen to similar music, the majority - 57.7% - said 'sometimes', and a minority of 11.5% responded 'no'. Overall, this suggests that our survey has effectively reached the music video's target audience, and thus is very useful in our research and planning.


Our third question was a multiple choice, multiple answer question asking which locations the respondent would most expect to see the video set in. This question is especially useful to us as we are still not entirely sure of our location choice. The two most overwhelmingly popular answers were 'beach or seaside' and 'busy town or city', with 48% each. A beach or seaside location is certainly something we'd consider after our Brighton reccie, however a busy town or city may be more problematic as many more issues arise, such as unwanted people ruining the shots, the space we have to film in and potential thieves, although we have not disregarded the idea completely. We also used an 'other' option to allow respondents to include a location we had not considered. We received three potentially useful responses for this - 'Dancefloor', 'Maybe a studio, but one that isn't perfect. A bit used and grungy.' and 'The Pantiles on a really hot day!' - and these are all locations we would consider.


Similarly to location, we asked a multiple choice, multiple answer question of weather and another of tone. For weather, the vast majority of 58.3% selected 'sunny, with 'overcast' second receiving 29.2% of responses. We feel that both could fit the mood of the song, however one 'other' answer interested us - 'Overcast to start, that way the coloured top will stand out more but then towards the end you want it to be sunny when there are more coloured tops.' This may be something to look into, however since we cannot control the weather it may be difficult to implement. 


For our mood question, three choices stood out as the most popular. 'Light-hearted', with 63.0%, 'meaningful', with 40.7%, and 'humorous', with 29.6%. We were trying to decide essentially how serious we make the narrative feel, and whether to attempt adding humour. We didn't expect 'meaningful' to gain such a high percentage, as our original idea is quite light-hearted. It may be something to consider, however.


In our fourth question we asked a multiple choice, single answer question on whether the respondent most picture the video as performance-based, narrative-based, concept-based, narrative & performance or concept & performance. Many previous suggestions had been to add more narrative fuzz to our concept and turn it into less of a rigid narrative, however the majority of answers were for 'narrative & performance' with 40.7%, and 'narrative' with 25.9%. In spite of this, we are keen to turn the video into less of a rigid narrative, but still essentially a story.


Our key question in the survey was a semantic differential question to gauge how much our target audience liked our concept so far. We included our treatment in the question and asked respondents to rate it from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good). The mean rating overall was 7.19, with one person selecting 10, and our lowest rating being 3, which two people chose. The mode was by far and away 7, with 44.4% of responses. This suggests to us that our audience generally thinks our concept is good.


In order to expand on our key question, the following question was open and simply asked what the respondent might do to improve our idea. From this we received many intriguing ideas as well as useful feedback from the 21 who responded. The majority of those who voted below 5 in the previous question said that our concept was 'cheesy', 'stereotypical', 'basic' and 'cliché' It was partly for these reasons that we want to move away from a rigid narrative. Our positive responses had a huge variety of feedback and suggestions, here are some examples:


'Maybe the one person in bright coloured tops can make everyone else end up with coloured tops. That way it becomes a parade of people, a parade of coloured tops/punk rock T-shirts.'


'Maybe having the band member as the main character so that the audience can follow him through the video so that it doesn't get too confusing and the film has continuity.'


'Maybe have all the colours in the video faded out a bit except the crazy T-shirt.'


'My first thought was that I thought the concept was related too much to the lyrics of the song. Then I realised I didn't understand the lyrics. Something involving time sped up vs time slowed down could be quite cool.'


Our other two open-ended questions were more general. Our first was simply to ask the respondent to write down any images or ideas which immediately came to mind while listening to the song. These often included more general ideas about the video as a whole - tone, style, colour, etc. An example of a couple of responses:


'Pretty much just imagine the sense of a person travelling in a city at night, perhaps with t-shirts lighting up?'


'Smoke, fire, goodbye, running, air, guitar cus, chorus is ambiguous, therefore you could interpret it openly, probably romantic. ambient, chilled atmosphere - outside on a sunny day, performance probably outside, lots of band shots doing lots of fun things.'


Similarly, our final question simply asked for any closing comments, suggestions or advice. This allowed the respondent to add in any thoughts they believed to be useful but weren't asked for at any other part of the survey. These included answers such as:


'Make sure that actual video quality is as high as you can do it, really effects overall video.'


'Take influence from the LMFAO im sexy and i know it music video.'


As well as general wishes of good luck and encouragement like 'I have every faith that you will pull this off with a truly imaginative performance.'

[GROUP] Moodboard

This is our moodboard for our ideas. We aim to use it in conjunction with our other research findings to develop the concept for our video.

Moodboard on Prezi