Band Image and Ancillary tasks

The digipak has helped create our band image as we have had to decide what we wanted them to wear in our pictures, so black skinny jeans, trainers and t -shirts but no bright colours. The look we are going for is one that is also accesible to teenagers today, so the clothes they wear are vitally important. We dont want them to be comercial like bands such as One Direction but more edgy but still have that connection with the audience and i think what their wear is a big part of this.

Also, the spanning three borders helps to make our song and therefore our band much more accessible world wide, that we are not just focusing on a certain country. The fact that it is called Spanning THREE borders infers that their music is for people all over the world, which says something about our band image that they are not just simply ignoring the majority of the population but including everyone in their album title.

The ancillary tasks, such as the poster and they digipak design have helped to promote our band as they tell the audience far more what they are about, espeically as our song has quite a dark narative they need to be relatable to an even wider audience, which again is done through the design we have chosen for our digipak, and that an audience can see what our band look like through pictures. This again makes an audience feel as if they know them better if they can see what they look like, how they dress and their morals in a way that they want to effect the whole world and not just single out spefific countries that they think would sell the majority of their albums.

digipack ideas

We want quite a simple digipak desgin, just simply having a picture of the band and then our idea of 'Spanning Three Borders' this is similer to other artists such as Muse whose song we are covering.


this cover of having someone satnding their with shadows with their arms outstretched was how we orginally got our idea for having shot of our lead singer Patch having his arms out with the rest of the band behind it, which again links back to the idea of spanning borders, as Patch's outstretched arms are the borders.



Again the Artic Monkey's album cover has their lead singer standing ifront in a different colour of clothing with the rest of the band behind, we have taken this idea and added it to the one we got from Muse to have the rest of the band behind Patch, to bring him to the forefront.

poster planning ideas

We looked at some promotional poster's of existing bands to get some ideas for ours. Some posters were just purely writing and no picture, for example the Sex Pistols:

Others are just simply the album cover with the date of the release. For example, the Arctic Monkeys:

We decided that we did not want to just simply have our album cover as the front cover as that will not attract interest if people have seen it before. However, we thought we needed something on the poster that would enable people to recognise our band and link the poster to the album so that it is actually promoting the album. Therefore, we decided to have a picture of our band standing in a triangular form and having our lead singer at the front with his arms out to represent the symbol on the front of our album - to remind you I have inserted the front cover below:

We have included the release date at the bottom of the poster. It will be the 31st of October 2012, this is because we feel that our video might come across quite scary and therefore we want to release it Halloween time. In the top left corner we have a sticker saying 'Includes the exclusive release of Feeling Good'. This is to promote the our song further, and also so that people who have heard that song would want to buy the whole album. In the top right corner we have the facebook, myspace and twitter sign to show that the band can be followed on all three of these networking sites. Here is a rough draft of our promotional poster:

 

recent set planning

Next Friday we have to plan our set ready for shooting on Monday the 21st.
We have decided that our set is going to be the same both for the performance and the narrative so that it seems that they are in the same room, whether the performance is imagined by the narrative characters or visa versa. This set will be a plain cheap hotel room, with typical wall paper and a bed and bedside table.

digipak ideas

There will be 6 panels in our digipak and this is a draft of what they will look like:

FRONT COVER - our album cover which has been previously blogged about. An overlap of three images with the band name and alubm name 'Spanning Three Borders'. In addition, a special edition sticker in the top right corner.

 

IMAGE 1 - An image of the lead singer side on with a microphone. He will be in a dark room with a spotlight on his face to have a mysterious look.

 

 

 

INLAY - Where the CD lies. Behind the CD there will be a photo of all band members against a brick wall, they will be expressionless to give that sort of indie-rock look.

IMAGE 2 & 3 - these panels of the digipak blend into each other. There is a backdrop of city lights at night. Infront of this the band members will be with the lead singer at the front, arms out to mimik the position of the man on the front cover.

BACK COVER - this will include the song names, the copyright and production company as well as a barcode. This will all be with a photo of the girl hanging on the left hand side, and a dark room with a light coming from the top right.

Photoshoot ideas

We have organised a photoshoot for our band and actors for the wednesday 16th. To use in our digipack and in our advertising poster. For this we need an abled photographer to take pictures int he studio of our band.

1. We want to have pictures of our whole band together, the with lead singer Patch having his arms out streatche - symbolising spanning three boarders. Plus it is also similar to Da Vinci's man which is a pciture thats on the front cover of our album
2. We also want individiual shots of our band incase we need them
3. And shots of the band with their instruments
4. shots of our actors also - probably of molly hanging, which is a picture we know we want on our digipak
5. also a picture of the band against the brick wall for the inside of our digipack

audience feedback on the concept

• Heather Wilkins tells us that she likes the idea of our whole video because it is very different to the rest of the videos been made. However she thinks that there is to much violence going on towards the girls and not towards the man. So it looks like he is just abusing her rather than S&M. So she thinks that the girl needs to show her violent side. So she says that its really good, but there was just something missing and that was the thing that was missing.
• Holly Finely says that she likes the way it is disturbing and different because this will attract a wider range of audience by attracting their attension to the shocking things happening in this video and the difference of this video will get more people interested in watching it.
• Charly Manton says that he likes the way we have created a contrast between the lyrics and the mood of the song with the storyline. He says he likes the way we have created a different meaning to 'feeling good'. By showing the difference in how people relate their feelings of feeling good in many different ways. So he says that we have conformed to the unobvious by creating a storyline which does not go with the lyrics, however it does at the same time by showing a different way of people enjoying themselves and feeling good. 

persmission for copy right of track

One of the requirements of the Advaned Production unit is that we seek permission for use of any music from the copyright holder. We fount out through google the name of the record company which holds the rights to the song Feeling Good by Muse, which is Warner Bros. We found out a form of contact and sent them this email:

To Whomever it may concern,


We are a group of A Level Students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:


Feeling Good by Muse.


With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.


The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.


Yours sincerely,
Isabel Boddy, William Edgley, Abigail Douetil and Elizabeth Ward-Thomas.
Hurtwood House School.

digipak presentation

Feedback

This is excellent work - there are evident clear accounts of your planning and research for your music video production day after half term.  I like the way in which decision making is evident along with reflection and revisions.  Your cast list has been agreed and you need to be working on the set design and organisation of production.  There are one or two ways to develop the blog.  First to begin using a wider range of blogging tools - there are lots of well presented images, but use of Flickr or powerpoint will increase the creativity that is shown on your blog.  Second the valid, detailed and reflective comments that you make need to be developed further with  key media concepts and theoretical ideas;  for example, link the planning to star image,  or how set design and lighting link to mise en scene and/ or what model's of lighting you are using in relation to your set - key, fill, directional, discuss the untensity and colour and what you are trying to represent about your artist. This will help make a more thorough evaluation of your work.  Well done.

Set and lighting design

• this is the initial lighting where we want a spotlight on the piano player, with smoke coming up it so it looks like a pillar. The piano is the only thing in light at the moment, so we will have to be careful about spill from the spotlight in order for the rest of the band not to be seen.

• when the first time the whole band comes into show i think we should change it slightly and have big bright white flashing lights especially when there is loud beating music as it will look like something is pulsing, also have smoke around their ankles and going up in pillars.
• when it goes to more individual shots of the band the lights will die down slightly, making the light similar to the narrative so they have some type of link

• we want to use Chiaroscuro lighting because it lights up well on the skin and peoples bodies, but casts shadows everywhere else. So, we are going to light them from the side and partially from the back to achieve the shadows and lighting on just one side of the face.

• during the narrative we will also use that lighting to create a shoddy and sketchy effect that things are not quite right.
• we have also decided for our background we are going to have a hotel wallpaper that we will order and then rip and make dirty. To heighten the similarities between the performance and the narrative

Shooting schedule

9:00 Meet with cast members (performance) in studio
9:10 Start shooting performance. Play song on repeat and get all of the shots of the performance.
Start with Wide Shot of band.
Move onto Close Up of singer.
Mid Shot of singer.
Close Up of hands playing the piano.
Wide Shot of piano player.
Over the Shoulder shot of piano player.
Close Up of piano players face.
Shot of drummer from behind.
Mid Shot of drummer from in front.
Mid Shot of drums from the side.
Close Up of drummers foot.
Mid Shot of guitar.
Close Up of guitar.
Mid Shot of bass.
Close Up of bass.
Tracking shot from piano's feet on pedals slowly up towards his hands on the piano and face.
Shot with singer in focus and rest of the band out of focus in the background.

12:30: LUNCH TIME

2:00: Meet with cast members (narrative) in studio.
2:10: Start shooting narrative.
Shot of guy grabbing nouse from table.
Shot of guy tugging on nouse.
Shot of guy hanging up nouse and tightening it.
Close Up of girl's head in nouse, smiling (creepy smiling)
Close Up of girl's head in nouse once it is 'tightened', she is pulling on it.
Shot from behind of guy tieing girls hands.
Reaction shot of girl whilst she is getting her hands tied, she has a smirk.
Over the shoulder shot of guy stroking girls hair.
Extreme Close Up of guy kissing girls legs on chair.
Mid shot of guy kissing and stroking girls legs whilst she is on chair hanging.
Shot of girl standing on chair, guy is shaking it a bit 'teasing'.
'Handheld' camera shot of guy kicking chair which girl is standing on, she is left to hang.
Close Up of girl fallen over on the floor holding her neck and breathing deeply.
Close Up of guy rolling out clingfilm from box - focus pull.
Shot of guy ripping clingfilm off in foreground with her in the background (out of focus).
Mid Shot of guy tieing girls arms around chair.
Close Up of girl's face with clingfilm wrapped around.
Mid shot of guy kissing girl whilst she has clingfilm on her mouth.
Mid shot from infront of her sitting down, him slowly beginning to rip off the clingfilm from behind.
Close Up of him ripping clingfilm off her mouth.
Shot of him pushing her off chair which falls to the floor along with her.
180degree tracking shot round the girl with guy standing next to her.
Tracking shot of guy wrapping clingfilm around girl's mouth.
Close Up of guy cutting rope.
Shot of girl falling to the floor from the rope.
Shot with camera placed on the floor (handheld) and girl lying on the floor hurt.
Same shot with camera on the floor but with him lying behind her.
Same shot again but with him rolling on top of her, they are looking into each others eyes holding hands.
Close Up of them looking into each others eyes, him on top of her.
Close Up of him holding her face, stroking her hair.
Shot of them rolling about angry with each other ripping each others hair etc, still from the floor.
Mid shot of her sitting ontop of him looking over him.
Tracking shot from floor (position camera has been in up to now) to them, her sitting on top of him, looking into each others eyes.
Close Up of their hands intertwining.
Close Up of his hand on her leg, caressing her thigh.

Evalutation of storyboard task

The point of a story board is to enable the director to visualise the flow of camera shots and how they will eventually appear on screen. The first rough draw up of a story board allowed us to see what would work, which shots would look good and how much time to give to the performance side and the narrative. Words are broken down into a series of actions and movements that we visualise to be happening at this point of time. Most importantly it showed us how the narrative would come across on screen to an audience. It also showed us how many shots we had and the variety of each, so we could see if we had to many close ups and mid shots.

Key moments that represent are concept is when an action falls right on the beat of the music, so when she is pushed off the chair and is hanging it is to the biggest beat in the song, which helps to emphasise it. It also helps us construct the understanding of our performance as it helps us build up the story and make it into an understandable chronological order, we can see what needs to go where, what shot would be most appropriate and how long each should be.

After completing our animatic i felt confident that it made sense and shots were in time to the music, however it felt that some of the shots were to long and needed to be shortened, so the method of the story board is useful in this respect as it told us what was wrong, if we needed to add more shots or if some were to slow or to quick, because of this story board it means we can address these problems before our actual shoot day which will save time when we are actually shooting if we know exactly what is happening when, where and how long for.

I thought our concept was well constructed and their was plenty of performance time which will connect well with our star image as they are a lot about the music they play, and that they play it, and nothing is fake or mimed.

Overall, i think the animatic process went well and also got us back into the routine and ideas of editing before actually doing our shoot.

Digipack design

This is the second draft of our album cover for our band. Once this had been printed off and we each had a look at it to see if any changes were needed we had a few changes we want to make before the final draft. We want to make the name of the band 'The Vibe' in a bigger font to show that this is the bands name and thus get people to notice it and remember it. The name of the album is 'Spanning Three Borders' but on this draft, the way the words are arranged it could be read as 'Three Spanning Borders' therefore we are going to re-arrange the way the words are to make the actual name more clear. We used the font 'tape loop' for the titles on the album as this font is bold but at the same time not too clear and has a scratchy look to it.

The image was created by overlapping three different images together by layering them in photoshop. The images were an image of a pentagram, a hadrid collider and Lonardo DiVinci. The reasoning for this was so we were literally 'spanning three borders' with the image as well as the album name.

However, this was not the orginal design at first we were thinking of having a picture of a guiatr overlapping over the top of some domestic violence, with 'The Vibe' in a bright sultery red colour. However, we thought after creating this on photo shop it was very cliche and quite stereotypical. Especially as 'Feeling good' could possibly the only song on the album that is slightly violent or abnormal. So, we had to choose an image that would represent soemthing that we thought best described our band as an image, not based on the song.

Prop List

For the perfromance side:

• we decided to go for the plain musical instruments, just very classy and dark colours, as it suits the look of the band. We need a microphone on a stand because for a large amount of the time the lead singer will be standing up singing, in front of the band

Props for the narrative:

• the reason for using dirty sheets heightens that it is dirty and shoddy place
• the harness is for the hanging, and the old wooden chair is more like something homemade that they have decided to use
• the wallpaper is going to be used during both the performance and the narrative, to help link them in, it also gives the appearance of a location such as a hotel which ties everything back in