Music Video

Feedback

Very good feedback on the shoot day especially in consideration of the shoot day and the set design.  There is good reflection supported by images in the slideshow, although there is some improvement needed here in terms of how it is presented.  You show very good knowledge and understanding of the production process.

Evaluation of shoot day

We started the day by letting the band rehearse a few times whilst we set the lights and worked out where they would stand we then got the band members in to position them and make any adjustments to the set if we had to as we had hot bulbs and sharp bits of perspex hanging from the ceiling so we had to make sure everyone was safe. The first shot we did was an establishing wide shot to get all of the band members in also it helped us to see what the lights looked like on the monitor as it will look different on the monitor to what we could see with the naked eye.
The mirrors were only hung by a piece of string so they kept spinning round this meant we had to constantly adjust them and try to hide as much of the camera behind curtains as we didn't want it to be seen in the reflections, the spinning mirrors really were what we wanted as we wanted to create a distorted effect and use different reflections of the band. For some of the shots we held the mirrors out of shot for example we did a box of mirrors round the lead singers head we used a laser pen to make sure all the mirrors were positioned properly but it created a really good effect. One down side of the mirrors is we had to constantly watch out of reflections and the mirrors were only one sided so in order to keep good continuity we were constantly twisting them and repositioning them to their original place, the band members had to constantly keep playing also otherwise we may catch a glimpse of them just standing in in one of the spinning mirrors.

In pre production we decided we wanted to shoot each of the shoots individually but on the day it became apparent that this would take to long and be hard to replicate the effect we wanted in after effects, so we decided to shoot the band by panning the camera and focus pulling to different parts of the band and doing close ups of instruments and singers all one take, this created a really rock music effect as the jumpy camera work and quick movements almost makes it look like it was filmed live at a festival, the use of dry Ice in terms of mise en scene also added to the dark rock feel of the video as it associated with grave yards Michael Jackson thriller video.

The second part of the shoot consisted of the dancers for this we had to slightly re-arrange our set moving some of the mirrors back and putting them higher as we didn't want the dancers to get injured in the filming process. We gave the dancers time to rehearse and familiarize them selves with the track, we then got them to perform it and we tried to work out the best position for the first shoots for the camera as the used the entire studio space , we then began to do close up shots of their faces and body parts we decided to shoot this in a similar way to how we shot the band with moving the camera around and focusing on different points when we were filming, we also tried to reflect of the mirrors in the same way we did with the band, we then went onto use the Ginni lift for some high angle shots of the dancers, we then had a costume change and they then did the dance again. We then filmed specific bits of the dance we liked like the kiss and the lifts. Also we used a tissue to smudge Sophie's make up in order to make it look as if she was crying.

Our shoot overall went smoothly and better than expected with other groups saying how stressful theirs were I think the pre-production planning really helped us to have a smooth and well structured shoot.  It also helped that our band members could play the song on their instruments and they new the lyrics, especially the drums as it held the song together as the playback of the track wasn't as loud as we had hoped, the heavy black curtains muffled the sound which we had not anticipated.

Photos from shoot day

View more presentations from JamesTroughton.

Set build for our video

We started the build of our set by smashing the perspex mirrors we originally wanted to use glass but it was ton dangerous and expensive to do. We then started to hang the pieces from the ceiling at about head height we also hung light bulbs from the ceiling and connected them to the light controls in the studio she would program a sequence for the video we used different colored bulbs to make it more interesting these were also hung at different heights.

After setting up the set we then started to move the instruments into position for the band for the shoot the next day. 

Feedback

This is a good account of the process, but your evaluation needs more detail.  I would like to see a more academic reflection on the design, in terms of conventions, institutional practice and audience recognition feedback.  You could have for example explained how you were marketing a star image and why this is branded in your group design.  Also need a clearer account of what you achieved in this production process.

Poster Evaluation

As well as creating a digipack for the band, I also created posters the one above, I wanted it to be included as an extra in the CD cover, it has the song lyrics on in a similar text style to the bands name on the CD cover. This use of synergy will help to promote the band as it will be more recognisable. I used photoshop to create the poster above.

These are designs for a magazine advert for the band once again we used the bands name "synergy" in the red font in order to strengthen the bands branding through the use of synergy. In Our magazine advert we need to include a copyright logo and information on the record label.


The CD digipack, the magazine poster and the extra pull out poster are all tools to help the selling of our bands music to the consumer, also brandded items will help create a stronger fan base as people will start to collect them. The pull out poster has been used by artist before e.g. Madonna by Andy Warhol.

Evaluation of CD digipack and music poster

 For our digipack we all came up with initial ideas for the pack and the main front cover design, these were deigned by hand and didn't include any images of the band. 

When we moved onto designing the digipack once we had a final idea template drawn up we had some images of the band but they weren't at the desired quality level as the had been taken on a phone camera in order for our poster and digipack to look more professional we decided we had to use a good quality camera and a white background in order to get the crisp images we needed. We then went on too create the digipack design using Lightroom and Photoshop. 

One of the main tools that were used in creating the front cover was lasso tool to cut the individual photos out and also the main over all effect was created by using light leeks and the blur tool. 

This is the finished product for the Digipack design ^. 

The photo shot was the first time I had seen the band members together, this was good as we could work out who was going to play what instrument and role in the band we originally had ideas but we made a change to the band we swapped the original singer to guitar and the guitarist to singer. 

We took this photo like this in order to create a boy band star persona with the front man the singer at the front of the photo and the rest of the band behind him. 

The text font we used on our digipack is very recognisable and effectively could be a logo for the band it is called bleeding cowboys, also the red text color is very bold and stands out well this will help us to build a brand image for our band. All though we mixed our band up we still kept the boy band stereotype adding to our bands brand and saleability. 

CD pull out poster

Band Photo Shoot

We used the photography suit to take are photos as we wanted a clean white background.

Fold Out CD Poster

Within our Digipack we want to include a fold out poster like the ones above epically the Madonna the design we want to include the song lyrics and a large Iconic photo of the band much like the Madonna by Andy Warhol. The Measurements for the poster is 420 × 594 mm so it will be 3.5x12cm sections wide and 5x12 cm sections long

Where my Group is at

So far we are waiting to film our music video the shoot date is Tuesday the 22nd Of November, we are designing our digi pack for our band and we have started to design the poster.
 

The Design for our digipack so far. We may have to retake some of the photos of the band as the image quality is not good enough.

Letter To Record Label

To Epitaph Records
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:

You Me At Six-Stay With Me

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

Alexandra Blackock, Hannah Patey, Jim James Troughton, Sophie Loughridge

Hurtwood House School 

digi pack production

Digipack Prezi

My Prezi 

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 needs to be posted - the shooting schedule will be developed and redrafted as the production progresses.

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.  Images on the posts are good, but could be better if you started to use presentational tools

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.

Shooting schedule

Shooting Schedule 

Establishing shot of band

The empty room (establishing wide shot)

Close up Of Singers Face

Close up of singers lips

Close up of singers hand holding microphone

Shot of lead guitarist playing

Close up of lead guitarists hands

Shot of Secondary guitarist Playing

Close up of Secondary guitarists face

Close up of secondary guitarists Hands

Shot of bass guitarist playing

Close up of bass guitarists hands

Mid shot of drummer playing

Close up of drummers hands drumming

Close up of drummers foot on pedal

Close up of belt buckle

Close up of dancers faces looking at each other

Mid shot of dancers standing away from each other looking towards each other

Close up of dancers heads touching

Shot of Girl dancer leaping into his arms x3 (different types of lifts)

Shot of Boy running his fingers through girls hair

Shot of dancers kissing aggressively Close up & mid shot

Shot of him lifting her up (against a wall) mid shot

Shot of him pulling her towards him

Shot of them sat back to back On floor (girl crying boy looking down)

Shot of them dancing there routine

Shot of them kissing

Shot of her leaping into his arms

Shot of them looking into each others eyes

Shot of them crying

Evaluation of Animatic

Evaluation of Animatic 

The storyboarding and animatic is an essential part to our music video as we can refer back to it when we need to. It helped us to decide on what shot choices to have where especially when we started to play the music. 


Making the animatic, took quite a long time longer than I initially expected. We started by drawing our storyboards, so we had every shot. Then we cut the storyboard up into the individual shots so it was easier to film them we then stuck them to a big piece of paper in order. We then pinned them up on a wall and shot each piece of the storyboard for 10 seconds, in order to make sure we had enough of each individual shot. 

Once we had shot each individual shoot of our story board we uploaded them onto final cut pro along with the music, we then began the task of putting the shots in order to our timeline and making adjustments to the beat and points in the music. Then once we had gotten the music onto final cut, we started setting the markers on the beats we tried to use the markers as much as possible in the editing process as it makes the cutting and placing shot much quicker also we could put each shot precisely were we wanted it. we tried to follow our timeline closely so we had to be careful how much performance aspect there was compared to the narrative, and whether everything was in proportion to the timeline and initial idea.


we chose to use lots of our shots of the band as it will reflect the star image of the band and they way the are placed in the shots with the rock band layout with lead vocals at the front with the guitarists and bass players behind with the drummer at the back. 


The story board gives us material to refer back to when shooting it also helps to develop ideas and give us a list of shots to write on the shooting schedule. 


Since we have completed our animatic we have made some changes to the set design but it will make the set allot more interesting for the band and dancers. 

Changes to our set

We spoke to the man who's going to build our set and do our lighting we have a few changes to the initial plan .

• we are going to use LED strip lighting instead of the bulbs
• we are having hanging bulbed lighting from the ceiling and shard's of mirror alos hanging to give our set a more three dimential feel.
• dry ice carpet instead of a smoke machine
• and we are having streamers instead of the glitter drop.
• our set will look similar to the video at the bottom.

This music video has similar lighting to what we want our video to have with the led strip lihgts hanging from the of the back of the set and the light bulb hanging from the cieling witha similar level of light been emited from the bulbs.

Prop lists

Prop list 

• 1 Mic Stand 
• Drum Kit
• 2 Electric Guitars
• 1 Bass Guitar 
• Amplifiers and speakers they need to be big to to go along with the bands rock star persona. 
• cables for the bands instruments
• we need the band to play these instruments to make it look realistic in the filming the large imposing amplifiers and cables reinforce what we are trying to create and that the band are really performing live, as this is one of the bands usp as they are musically talented and can play instruments. 
• we need also a large set of bulbed lighting for the back of our bands set.

• For our dancers set we need the broken mirror wall. 

set design

These are the designs for our set for the music video.

we have two studio locations and out side locations, the studio one for the band has a black floor with the instruments and lots of light bulbs behind to give the atmosphere of the location a rock star feel also this reinforces our bands star persona.

The second location has a large smashed mirror we our going to use this to reflect what we are filming the mirror signifies the cracks in the relationship of the two dancers/characters .

The third location we want to use is a outside location with a brick wall the gaps in  the bricks also help to signify the gaps Beginning to show in the relationship of the two dancers. 

The Storyboard

Feedback

Your response is detailed on places and you have been creative with your blogs, I particularly like the use of headings with good layout and design.  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, but could develop this with the use of VALS - this slightly more consideration.

Please complete the research into existing CD covers and how this will influence your CD cover.  Good additional blog posts are evident.

Album cover

All of the albums bellow have a bold and memorable image on the front e.g. Blink 182s logo is well known enough that that is all they have to put it on the front and people know which album is theirs both of the albums from Blink182 have this logo on, also lost Prophets have a large memorable logo on their album that will be used on other lost profit merchandise in this use of synergy will help to increase sales and increase brand awareness.  Foo fighters and Blackout have used a more art bossed album cover, lso panic at the discos album is art based even though without the use of a logo it is still a memorable album cover. All of the covers add to the bands persona or compliment it e.g. the Blink182 album has a spray paint punk feel to it same as the punk elements in the band and style with the drummers hair been stereotypically punk.

Our Artist is signed to Virgin records UK, other bands signed to this label are the Kooks, Cage The Elephant, Deadmau5. This is a fairly mixed ranges of artists and the size of the success of the artist ranges which is  good for our artist as they are less likely to be dropped by the label if they are backing other non mainstream artists. Virgin records is a British record label founded by entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny Kravitz, The Smashing Pumpkins, Mike Oldfield, and more on their list of artists. It was later sold to Thorn EMI in 1992. Its American operations were merged with Capitol Records in 2007 to create the Capitol Music. EMI are in the top 5 labels, Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner, EMI they control 76% of the UK industry leaving the remaining 24% to other smaller labels. 


Being a subsidiary of EMI will mean Virgin records have a lot of resources at there disposal, this will help with releasing the band and distributing there music.

TARGET: AUDIENCE:15-21 year old

•Male and female as boys think the band are cool and girls think that thay are good looking.

•People who are interested in fashion and take care of their appearance.

•people who enjoy concerts and live music. 

•fairly niche audience

In teenage VALS they are drifters as they don't follow the crowd, they just like what they like and aren’t set into particular genres.