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. 

Ally,hannah, jim, sophie media2

View more presentations from JamesTroughton.

song Lyrics, Shot ideas

Image of whole band in intro

You've got a lot to say – shot of whole band, establishing them andlocation
for the one that walked away. – close up of lead singer 
I give you take, - shot of couple looking into each others eyes
its the way it's always been

Oh how do I know - Shot of lead singer
if I should stay or just go - Shot of guitar
the bottom line is this way that I'll never know –Shot of drummer
Stay with me – run and jump passionately 
stay with me – running fingers through hair aggressively 
- walking away from each other

You got a lot to say 
I give you take – him begging and shouting

some things they never change –shot of whole band
just change –lead singer close up

Stay with me – leap into arms again
stay with me –fighting grabbing her

Never know I could be this way – girl running from boy- he grabs her 
never know that I could walk away – kiss aggressively and passionately
Him smashing a mirror
These things take time to grow – her crying, makeup down face
it's been said that time heals wounds – cut back to smashing mirror
but no – Him pulling her towards him aggressively, I won't be controlled – shot of singer
and so, this story goes – whole band shot
Boy and girl gentle walking away turn around
Stay with me – Possibly mirror smash 
stay with me – slow motion smash 

Never know I could be this way – mid shot of band
never know that I could walk away – boys walks leaves girl crying in the distance – close up of lead singer
for the one that pushed me away –shot of girl packing bags leaving him

Shot of whole band finishing playing

Feedback

You have produced proficient work with your blog.  There is a good understanding of what the  task demanded.  I feel you could develop your points further by using more links to real media examples and being more creative with the blog.   You make use of different blog tools and are able to link ideas to real media concepts - which is good.  You need to re-edit the brief - it cannot be read because of text colour.

Well done! Your group does need to come up with a name and treatment for your concept artist/ band

Research similar artists and videos 15/09/11

You Me At Six
http://www.youmeatsix.co.uk/

This another song by our chosen artist it is a slightly better known song than out chosen song, You Me At Six are an English rock band from Surrey. Formed in 2004, the group rose to fame in 2008 with the success of their debut album, Take Off Your Colours, which included the singles "Save It for the Bedroom", "Finders Keepers" and "Kiss and Tell", with the latter two peaking at #33 ,#42 respectively in the official UK Singles Chart.^[1] The band's main influences include American rock bands Blink 182, Incubus & thrice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Me_at_Six


The Blackout
http://www.theblackout.co.uk/

This is probably slightly heavier than the song we have chosen by you me at six, but it is fairly similar and also the band in general are similar.
The Blackout is a post-hardcore band from Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, formed in 2003. After some time backing Lostprophets on their Liberation Transmission Tour, along with Dopamine, Covergirl, Kids In Glass House, The Guns and Men, Women and Children, they released their first mini-album The Blackout! The Blackout! The Blackout!. In October 2007 the band released their debut album, We Are the Dynamite!. Their second record, The Best In Town was released on 25 May 2009 in Europe and 23 June 2009 in the US, both via Epitaph Records. The band recently finished recording their third album - titled "Hope", which was released on 4 April 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blackout_(band)


Blink 182
http://www.blink182.com/#!news



These are similar artist and bands to what we want our band to be like with a similar star image. Perhaps not as punk as blink 182 in there image and style, but a more up to date look.

Blink-182 is an American pop punk band consisting of vocalist and bass guitarist Mark Hoppus, vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. They have sold over 27 million albums worldwide since forming in Poway, California in 1992. With original drummerScott Raynor they released their debut album Cheshire Cat in 1994 and achieved moderate success with its follow-up, 1997's Dude Ranch, which went on to sell over one million copies. Raynor was replaced by Barker midway through a 1998 tour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink-182

LostProphets
http://www.lostprophets.com/

This is also song from the same alternative rocky punky genre.


Lostprophets  are a Welsh rock band from Pontypridd, formed in 1997. Founded by vocalist Ian Watkins, bassist (later guitarist) Mike Lewis, drummer Mike Chiplin and guitarist Lee Gaze, they were originally a side-project to hardcore punk band Public Disturbance. To date, Lostprophets have released four studio albums, most recent released The Betrayed on 13 January 2010. They are also part of theCardiff music scene.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lostprophets

Proposal for a new popular music artist.

Name: we haven't decided yet

Genre: rocky and alternative

Type of act: Young rockstars, performance based but take care in the content of the lyrics of their songs, want to go to festivals and perform live.

Star image: Rockstars fairly laid back, skinny jeans, leather jackets, instruments drums, bass, two guitars vocals.

Target audience: 14 to 20 year olds teenagers, into bmx and other urban sports like skate boarding or roller blading. 

Choice of Track: 

Initial ideas 14/09/11

The use of close ups as establishing shots and the use of colour and black and white and the strobes highlighting the band behind the main performer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI&ob=av2e     (embedding was disabled on this video)

I also really like the vintage black and white feel to this video by Madonna.


The song I was personally considering to bring to the group is gold lion by the yeah yeah yeahs

I like the song but I don't particularly like the music video, also my group like the idea of having a mixed band the yeah yeah yeahs are a mixed band and its also not really well known cheesy pop.

This is the song we have chosen for our band, I particularly like the fact that it is an entire band not just one star also the mixture of tempos will make the video more interesting.

We want to film our band performing in an old house that looks quite rundown, but use studio lighting to give it a real old feel, we also want to use contemporary dancers to interpret a rocky relationship this will filmed through black and white or dark hugh this will help to give our video an edgy contemporary feel along with the band performance narrative. This will give us a more interesting video and hopefully the combination of the different elements will make our video seem more individual.

This hurtwood video has used the same location as we want to use.

The Brief 14/09/11

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

                         

a website homepage for the band;

a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);

a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

All material for all tasks to be produced by the candidates with the exception of acknowledged non-original sound or image material used in a limited way in video/radio work. Further guidance will be available in the support materials. For music video, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track.

The centre will be expected to allocate marks according to four levels for each of three categories:

Research and Planning

Construction

Evaluation

In arriving at a level for each category, teachers are advised to look for evidence of ‘best fit’. It is possible both for a candidate to be placed in different levels for each of the three categories and to receive quite different marks from other members of the same group responsible for producing an artefact, according to his/her contribution. Teachers are asked to support marks with written comments under the three categories on the assessment sheet.

12 september

The UK music industry has 5 major labels controlling it, this is called an oligopoly these major companies are Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner, EMI they control 76% of the UK industry leaving the remaining 24% to other independent labels.

"A music video is not primarily a commodity form but a promotional one" (Andrew Goodwin), the music video is a way of advertising a cd to the consumer in order for them to spend money, this gives the initial investment of creating a music video a return to the record labels.

A music video will reflect the stars persona to the audience, and sometimes tell a story. "they now provide pictures for the songs in our heads. Goodbye imagination, all kids have to do is watch and listen, stare straight ahead. No need to think, to embellish, to create, to imagine. The electric fix is in" (Joe Saltzman).

Music videos can also have a large part in synergy for large media conglomerates not just through CD and mp3 downloads, but they can also promote movies, for example Titanic



Channels like MTV specifically target their target audience through the use of certain genres of music videos and other features of the channels will also be genre specific.

In this video by the white stripes I particularly like the movement in the background of this video it never gets boring, even though there is a lack of differnt shots.

extra research for the pop video prelim task

http://www.reverbnation.com/janedoetheundesirables


http://www.facebook.com/JaneDoeandtheUndesirables?sk=info


In the photo of the band they are dressed in colorful clothes and boldly this influenced us with the design of the set, the made us op for a plain background with a boldly painted floor this will help the key members of the band to stand out as the contrast of the bright clothes to the dark red background. The band claim to be  "influenced mainly by motown and girlgroups of the 60s/70s" this helped us decide on the bold floor design.

Notorious B.I.G Analysis of a music video

Evaluation of pop promo prelim

1) We only used basic shots of the band, we used a variety of shots from close ups of the lead singer to wide shots of the entire band, I feel the most effective shots were the close ups of just the instruments and the close up of the lead singer with the backing vocals in the background as it related to the structure of the band. The problems we had in our section of the video was that the band had seven members this meant in order to get shots of each of the members we could only use basic shots due to the short amount of time we were given, we used the wide shots to cut each section together with a wide shot this made the transition between each groups section more smoothly.

2) My role in the production was that i did playback and making sure the music was ready for each take, I also operated the camera and chose some angles for some of the shots and i also took the role of the director for a while in our group we shared each of the production roles out, furthermore i also did some of the editing cutting and choosing which shots to use for our section.

3) My group worked well together we had the advantage of going last so we could make a proper plan of which shots we would do in order to try to use our short period of time effectively, we shared the roles in the production equally between the three of us making sure we each had a go.

4) Overall after watching the finished video with all the sections cut together I am pleased with how it turned, I am surprised with the smoothness between the transition between the four sections. How ever I if could do it again i would try and get more time to do our section so we could do more interesting shots.

5) In our editing process we tried to match the pace of the song with the pace of different shots being used, for example the end of the song we used three longer length compared

Task 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression and it to full product?

Our prelim task was much more simple and easy to do both the shot choices and editing, the planing for the prelim was little as we only had a script and we didn't know were we would be shooting the task so there was little mise en scene in comparison to the thriller, our thriller took much longer in terms of pre production planning as we had to think about the fine details of costumes and script in order to create the desired mood and themes in our thriller. the planing for the thriller was set design, costumes, script, casting and locations of where we were going to shoot the thriller needed to be decided, the planning for the prelim task was just finding out where we were going to shoot it and we were given a script and actors the lack of planning and time can really be seen in the prelim tasks.

Since doing the preliminary task, I feel as if I have developed my film making skills significantly as a result of the challenges presented in the making of 'Aftermath'. we used a range of different shot types to create the wanted mood and create an atmosphere, we put together far more complicated sequences of shots, such as the crane shot really helped to create a narrative as we drew the audience into our thriller, were as in the prelim we only used a basic range of shots and told the story through the script. We choose to use the different shot types in the thriller this required a long time spent on planning so we got every shot we needed and didnt waste time. 

In the prelim we only used the basic sound which we left, we didn't change any of the levels, were as in aftermath we had to choose between the boom mic we and the mic on the camera we then had to split the sounds from each mic and turn it into stereo which is relatively easy but takes time and patients in order to pick out the best sound, we then had to level the sounds so it was even through out and raise bits of significant sounds like the click of the tape recorder, we also used music and sound effects to create the atmosphere like gunshots, we didn't do any of this in our prelim tasks. All of the Non-diegetic sound had to be put in at specific places in order for it to match the narrative and the diegetic sound from the speech had to be carefully matched to the movement of the actors mouths. 

Task 6, What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Task 5, How did you attract/ address your audience?

Task 5

View more presentations from hurtwoodhousemedia5.

Task 4, Who would be the audience for your product?

The main themes of the thriller was supposed to be emotion based. 'Aftermath' was written with the intension of exploring issues of emotional instability and struggle against the society which we are living in with privacy issues and government constantly watching people a "big brother" theme. I could imagine an emo, which is short for emotionally unstable, coming to watch the film the target audience is a young age group from around 13-25 years of age. 


How ever I don't think this group of people would be our specific target group, our thriller is not targeted only at the emo group but it is probably only appealing to watch if you are in the age group of 13-25 years of age but its still not going to be a blanket release. The Dialogue in the opening youtube sequence however does reflect on stereotypes of the feelings of "emos".

Task 3, What kind of media institution might distrobute your media product and why?

In 2002, Vertigo Films was created by producers Allan Niblo (producer of Human Traffic and South West 9), James Richardson (producer of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), director Nick Love (screenwriter and, prior to company formation, director of Goodbye Charlie Bright and The Football Factory), distributor Rupert Preston (distributor of Chopper, Chasing Amy and Bride of Chucky, among others), and entrepreneur Rob Morgan. The company was formed for the express purpose of distributing and producing two films, The Football Factory and It's All Gone Pete Tong; its current stated goal is to produce and distribute four films per year.

Our thriller would be good for vertigo as vertigo is a British film company and our film thriller Aftermath is a British film that probably wouldn't appeal to the American market as it has no one American in it. Vertigo also have DVD distribution so our film would have a DVD release. Most of Vertigo's films are low budget films with little special effects and are more "real" than most of the American big budget films. With themes of drama and Violence