Costumes for our band and actors

Band Image/costumes:

• we decided to have black skinny jeans as it fits the dark indie look we are going for
• initally we were going to have them in black shirts but we thought it was to dark so we changed it to demin shirts

Actors:

• we decided to put the girl in a large baggy t shirt, as we didnt want her to be dressed in the convential S&M leather that people generally assocaite with it. As our video is more about the idea of people enjoying giving and recieiving pain than making it 'sexy'
• the male will also be in jeans without a top with dark eyes, and she will be pale with red lips

Recording of us editing our storyboard

Storyboard anitmation

• we feel that possibly the opening shot mgith be to long, however it is a tracking shot that is moving slowly upwards, so will take time
• this animation allows our narrative to be easily displayed, and its clear what is happening
• watching the order of shots has reasured us that it all makes sense and is in a cronological order

Artist Image and cast list

After changing our song from 'Two beds and a coffee machine' to 'feeling good' by Muse, we had to change the star image of our artist. Instead of having a good looking solo artist, it is a now a band of much more alternative looking people. Muse are an alternative rock band and we didn't want loose this in our interruption of the song.







This defined on how we cast our band:

The lead singer is Patch Wadsworth and we chose him as we thought he suited the look that we were going for, slightly alternative and not so main stream. Similarly, the guitar, bass and drums were purely chosen based on looks, but also their capability at being able to play the instruments. We wanted all of them to have similar styles that were not to mainstream. As for the keyboard we chose Connor Vickery because he knows how to play feeling good on the keyboard and we only need shots of his hands, not his face.

For the narrative, because of the disturbing side we have to our video we had to choose two people that were firstly very comfortable with each other, as the worst thing would be having the actors not feeling comfortable in front of each other and then this coming across in the filming. We chose Molly Astley because firstly as we are 'hanging' her in our video, she has already done this before meaning that she will not freak out or be nervous about doing it. She also has the image we are going for, which is skinny and blond. Jake Cecil is hopefully going to be our main male actor, he fits the part because he looks a lot older than most people, so it wouldn't look weird. Also both of them together suit each other, and are not phased about what is going to happen during the shoot.

Cast list:

1. Patch Wadsworth - lead singer
2. Freddie Dixon - drums
3. Kyle Foreman - guitar
4. Connor Vickery - keyboard
5. bass ????
6. Molly Astley - lead female actress
7. Jake Cecil ? - lead male actor

Molly Astley main female role A2


Patch Wadsworth lead singer A2



Freddie Dixon AS drums


Connor Vickery A2 keyboard


Jake Cecil A2 lead male role




Kyle Foreman AS guitar


Merlin AS bass

Feedback

Good Work.  Your blogs are sound and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of images and text with reference to media theory. You have a secure knowledge and understanding of who you want your artist to be signed to; perhaps you could link this further by stressing the advantages that your artist has signed to the particular record label.  Your clearly identify your target audience and have profiled them well - perhaps extend this to VALS? .  Good research into CD covers and you have a  range of examples, and this would be developed further if you added three more?  ALso consider the term gothic font - do you mean a gothic style font?

Research in digipak covers for our artist

How does it contribute to the star image?

A digipack contributes to a star image by giving the audience an impression of what they band/artist's image is like in picture form, it also can inform the audience to what type of music will be on the CD. Depending on the front styles can associate different bands, such as  gothic font will associate to a gothic style band.

  I studied the indie-rock genre. Indie rock generally has more arty features to their albums than other genres, this is shown through this indie rock digipack cover:



Other indie rock covers include more old style, vintage, retro styles to the, as shown in this Vampire Weekend digipack cover:

This with the use of the girl standing with her eye line fixed on the camera, almost manikin like, along with the lighting, and the texts, makes a retro feel to the image.











Others like the The Strokes- This Is It digipack cover shows for a different modern style, yet still in an arty way:

 This image, along with the black and red text, shows a different style to indie rock.
















Therefore, it will attract the audience as they will be aware of what music will be on the CD.

Research and Evaluate the institutional context of the artist

Which record company is your artist signed to? what kind of company is it?

Our artist will be signed to XL record companies who have quite a diveresed range of artists to their repertoire. Their main artists opperate within the comercial end of the alternative spectrum. Artists such as 'Vampire Weekend', 'Raidiohead' and 'The White Stripes' who make alternative music that is crossed over to have mainstream success. Furthermore int he words of Keith Negus 'they have achieved an organic growth' through playing live gigs, music reviews and building up and word of mouth following over a few years. Although in the case of Vampire weekend they may have appeared to have an overnight success, but they had been a part of the Brookland music scene for a number of years and formulated their group sound while at Harvard. Radiohead re-released the song three times in order to make it a success, and help create them to be a more comercially viable band.

In the case of all of these bands they have achieved an organic growth whilst at the same time maintaining their artistic integrity.

What are the implications of its resources?

Since Xl have signed Adele and she became world wide they have now far more resources accessible to them. Also our type of artist is very much left of centre which is similer to Radiohead they would not need say a performance which matches that of Lady GaGa as they are far more low key and not trying to be world wide pop performers, so wouldnt need the resorces that an atrist such as her would need.

Who would the target audience be?

The target auidence is primarilyy from yhe ages of 16-25 as the song is indie/rock which will appeal to this age of audience, also this age is mainly students who will most likely be the ones to listen to our artist. however, the secondary audience will be 25 plus because of the sexual context which is present in our music video.

The chaging of our idea

After pitching our idea to Luke, we decided that possibly a more upbeat song would be more appropiate. It wasn't that the song was wrong it was just that there wasnt much of a performance aspect to the song, and either it could be really beautiful and slow moving shots or could just be slightly boring.

We then decided to change our song to 'Feeling Good' by Muse, because it had a similar story line but had a a lot more to do performance wise, as in shots of the the bands intstruments was a far larger range than in the Savage garden song where it was only a piano and violin.



We at this point were still going along with the idea of domestic violence, but decided that again maybe it was slightly to cliche to simply have a wife and husband or boyfriend and girlfriend having relationship problems and the male beating the female. So we decided to take it a step further and create it more into an S&M relationship. Such as in one part of the narative he is hanging her but simulatnously be kissing up her legs and have reaction shots of her face, which is enjoying it.

Feedback

Excellent work through sustained blogging with all homework’s completed in detail.  You make use of different blog tools and are able to link ideas to real media concepts.

Well done! You could add be more careful with capitals in written work, label the blog posts a little more carefully and link your ideas to theory more closely and recognise the theory. 

Research into a similar artist

Foals are an English indie rock band that are signed by Transgressive records in the Uk and Sub Pop in the US. They have a a bass player, a drummer and 2 guitarists, which is diferent to savage garden but their music type and image is very similar. They to are more organic than synthetic and depend more on the quality of their music than their image.

Mood board of our Artist's image