Diary Entry: Monday 31st October

We have returned from half term and are adapting our video. We plan to re-shoot most of the video to improve it as much as possible. We intend to make the performance more intereseting, and link to the lyrics more by adding a sun set video being projected into the background. we also intend to create a faster editing pace through re-taking full scene's from different angles then merging this footage to make one scene seem faster paced. Framing the shots is something that we also inted to focus on through out all of the work we intend to do.

Rough Cut Feedback

In our media class, we all watched each other’s video and gave back feedback on what was liked and what they thought needed to be changed. This has been very beneficial to our group to see what other people like and whether our idea and actual video was liked and enjoyed.

When we got our feedback from the rough cut, people said they liked the narrative involving finding the clothes and the tea party which they thought was unique and interesting. We were very pleased about this as we had spent a while considering what other people would think and whether they’d understand the narrative. The only thing they said would improve the video would be to define who the characters were and what they do as a job; we agreed and thought we needed better footage.

The photographs towards the end of the video were split with our piers liking and disliking it. We took this into consideration and have decided that we would still like to do this to show the madness at the tea party but we would put it into a smaller part.

The location of our tea party and running scenes were thought to be great but our band performance location was dreadful. All members of the group agreed and we knew that we would have to reshoot and film somewhere more adhereing to the conventions of an indie band.

We were told that we had good angles, but perhaps needed a few more to vary to make it more interesting. This also linked with the pace. We were told that we should perhaps make the speed of editing faster to fit in with the pace of the music and adding angles would help this.

We also had a problem with continuity in the tea party. One minute Charlotte, one of the tea party guests, would be wearing a hat and then the next she wasn’t. This was a silly mistake by us, and we agreed to make sure that it would not happen again. Another issue with the tea party was that we didn’t have and tea and just had water, again a silly mistake by us. Also there was an issue with the how tame the tea party, and how it didn’t really fit in with the music. We have decided to remedy this by getting more excitable people to be in the tea party.

We want to completely reshoot the band performance as there were multiple issues. We had a acoustic guitarist and you could see the lyrics on the floor. We hope to improve this a lot by getting organised with musicians and a properly thought out location.

Framing was another thing we were asked to work on. By adding a variety of shots, especially in performance we will be creating a better piece of work. We were also told that we needed more emphasis on the motif of the sunset time-lapse. We are currently considering featuring it in our band performance.

In conclusion, we have all agreed to reshoot everything we have done to get the best out of it and have taken on these criticism and hope to remedy them with the final shoot.

 

Time plan for after Rough cut

Rough cut video

We have gotten extensive feedback from this video, which will hopefully allow us to improve our project from start to finish. These helpful insights came from our peers as well as the teachers, so we will consider each comment, and select the best ones then adapt them so that they can all fit together.

Diary Entry: Monday 17th October

Over the course of today I have edited the Performance and included it within our video, and it has complimented the narrative very well. We have had some trouble securing a band to play for us, as we wanted to use musicians who could actually play the song rather than rely on camera trickery and some miming. The only musicians we could find who would fit the part, and were available turned out to be unreliable. This was our fourth attempt to film the band, and we have finally succeeded. I believe that we have created a very good performance video within the confines we had. Unfortunately I am the only group member who was able to work for the next two weeks, as the rest of my group are away on an English trip, but they left me very little to do, simply finish editing the performance section.

Audience Research: The Questionnaire

Diary Entry: Friday 14th October

for the past week we have been editing the footage of the narrative, and finaly we are done. all scene's leading up to the teaparty, and the teaparty itself are filmed and have been cut down to the appropriate lengths. The performance and sun setting time lapse shot have yet to be filmed, but by monday this footage will be ready for editing.

Diary Entry: Thursday 13th October

The editing is almost finished for our narrative portion of video. Laura, and Katie have begun audiance research into adverts, and posters. We are attempting to gather a band for our performance section, but are haveing trouble working around our performers. In future we shall arrange to film with more reliable people.

Diary Entry: Wednesday 12th October

I have attempted to edit today, but I have found it difficult, because of the new editing software that has been installed. The program seems to reject most of our footage, meaning that work is impossible on my computer, but I have managed to find a way around this problem. The main media technician computer is able to interpret the footage, and put it onto the new program, meaning that I can continue working on the video. Iona has uploaded some new narrative footage into our project folder that will be added today, along with the remainder of Sunday footage. Katie has continued to diligently work on the audience research for our Digi-pack and advert designs, which will help us to create the items to the best of our abilities.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 11th October

We have all continued with our work from yesterday. in editing we have decided to load our footage into the animatic production file. Since we have stuck to our plan heavily we can replace the pictures with footage straight into the project.
In the evening Katie and Iona went to Dudley Library after closing to film the Librarian's establishing shots when no customers would be around. This was to avoid conflict with the public but also to keep in the theme of the library after closing time.

My favourite music videos

Here are my top 10 favourite music videos, there are a lot of others that I really like such as Lullaby, Friday I'm In Love, Let's Go To Bed and Close To Me by The Cure, Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix, In Bloom by Nirvana and numerous Pulp, Radiohead and Moby videos but instead of focusing on bands I like, I chose to include a variety of different video styles, here are the selected...

Diary Entry: Monday 10th October

I have begun to edit our narrative, and the buisnesss woman portion of it will be filmed by Iona tonight. Laura and Katie are processing the audiance research into easily understandable paragraphs and graphs that will be included within the blog posts. our main leap forward today has been that our brand image has finally been decided on. This simple yet effective Item will make our project appear more professional, and more thought out.

Tea Party Film Shoot in Photos

Possible Brand logo's

we have sketched out some designs for band logos based on our interviews about text choices. We will choose one of these 6 designs as a final design.

Diary Entry: Monday 7th October

It is the end of the week, and we have progressed considerably. At the moment Katie and Laura are getting the final pieces of raw data for our target market research, and will be making them presentable soon. The animatic is done, so now we move onto filming, we have organised a scene to be shot tonight, and will be shooting over the weekend. The background for this scene is being produced by Iona, as I write.

Final logo image

After an in-depth group discussion we decided on a design, and then edited it slightly to suit our genre. Our original design looked as if it fitted into the metal genre, but with a few colour adaptations we created a more Indie design. We filled in the back ground with black, removed the leaf design, and then put a opaque blue over the top of all layers.

Diary Entry: Thursday 6th October

In today's lesson Laura and Katie spent time composing a questionnaire. This will enable us to back up our audience research with more depth and analysis, ultimately helping to gain inspiration and feedback from some of our target audience. Now that our animatic has been completed, Alfie uploaded it to Youtube and we are all very happy with the way it looks as the drawings are understandable and detailed and the shots fit in time with the lyrics and pace of the song. The animatic helps us to gain initial ideas of how our real video should hopefully look. In the lesson I continued to film people explaining what appealed to them about certain existing album covers of the indie genre. This helps to form ideas of what our target audience appreciate in album artwork for when we begin more work on our digipack. Four people have now been recorded for our digipack research and have provided useful and interesting thoughts, I will continue with this research tomorrow.

animatic

We have adapted our storyboard so that it is now in a video format. Hopefully this animation will help us to organise our times and editing techniques, as well as what the most important shots are, and how they are to be filmed. This animatic does not include camera movement, so we have added a description with each shot to make it more accessible and understandable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SlTs2ehWhI

Questionnaire write up: Digipak

When asked about what they think makes a good Digipak album cover, the main consensus which came back was because it is bright, colourful and interesting. By doing this the mood of the album is introduced in a visually and stimulating way as well as introducing who is the creator of the song. When it comes to making our own Digipak we intent to have a solid if not slightly chaotic colour scheme, but the colours will not be all bright and colourful because in order to represent the sun setting we need to use some darker colours- but there will be bright elements and sections on individual panes.

In relation to linking the Digipak to something the target audience said it should reflect a direct correlation to the music because it makes it more memorable. It makes it even more memorable if it relates to the theme of the first released single off the album as it allows them to link the music video to the Digipak and therefore the band. In our project we will use elements of the theme of ‘double life’ and our ‘sun goes down’ in order to adhere to the links which professional bands make when constructing an album launch. These elements also allow us to get across the quirky vintage twist of the video by allowing us to be overly creative and artistic. 

When asked directly what they expected to see in an Indie/Alternative Digipak the responses where random and un-concise however more than one person highlighted colourful and unique. Other responses included about the overall look included: cutting edge, simple, edgy and arty. One person highlighted modern and bold as the overall look which is definitely not what we will use for our band because of their heavier sound, however we will try to make the Digipak as a whole look edgy and arty. This will help us built the bands identity but most importantly the public’s perception of the band’s ethos therefore keeping with the codes and conventions of a Indie/Alternative Digipak.

The target audience expect and associate photographic and graphically altered images with a Digipak of a Indie/Alternative band but have also seen drawings and collages associated with the genre to. The drawings and collages link more to the arty and edgy aspect of our band image which will allow the whole concept of the music video tie into the Digipak itself. Therefore in our Digipak we will not use plain panes of colour because it does not reflect the band name ‘the chaosheads’, their music or the overall band image as it makes it bland. Also in my opinion if the majority of the important panes where one colour it wouldn’t make it memorable, therefore making it unsuccessful in the long run.

The majority of our target audience would like to see bright and bold colours used in our colour scheme for our Digipak ‘but not too vibrant’ was a direct response, this is something we will deffinaitly take into consideration. As our original idea of using the sun set as the main theme for the Digipak, because of its direct relation to the first single from the album, will allow us to use a bright and bold selection of colours too convey that colours are being ‘replaced’.  One person said that they would like to see black and white images, which we would like to experiment with in one of our extra picture panes of the Digipak. It will allow us to show a variety of images and styles which adheres directly to the codes and conventions of the genre.

The overriding majority of the target audience like digitally enhanced images when they are used to create an impression, or improve the impact that a photo has the potential has the potential to have. The minority were completely against digitally enhancing images when it used on people because they associate our question with airbrushing, which is something our group is completely against. In our project we will only ‘digitally enhance’ an image by changing the lighting, contrast, hue and saturation; we will not use anything software to digitally change the appearance of any of our models, actors or band members in any way.

According to the target audience the images on the Digipak should relate to the songs and the artist as well as the narrative concept of the singles music video, and the band’s ethos. In our project we intend to reflect as many of the other song on the disc as we can within the album art work but at the same time conveying the alternative but solidly musically devoted band, making the links easier to identify.

For the lighting of the images the overriding majority said use natural light, which we will manage to do for some photos related to the narrative or naturalistic whole band photos because it makes the whole finished photo look more relaxed and realistic. Two people highlighted the low or dim lights should be used which we can use for alternative band photos giving the photography a more of a diverse edge to the finished product.

Questionnaire write up: Poster

All of the target audience we asked said that they expect the poster to link to the album art work on the Digipak allowing it to be easily recognisable. In our project we will manage this by using the whole image from the main pane or using a small section of the art work from a different point of view. This will allow for a variation of artistic input but still keep the same theme and link with the other two aspects of the project.

The colours that the target audience highlighted as appropriate were the same ones that we use on the Digipak to show continuity and links with all major sections of the portfolio. Red came up as a suggested colour however we will not be using this as a main colour because when used in music magazines the poster will not stand out. This is because the majority of music magazines use red as a colour in there colour scheme throughout the magazine, therefore the audience won’t necessarily notice the poster. Then if the target audience weren’t to notice the poster they would be less likely to buy the Digipak, therefore creating a negative nock on effect which will make the artist loose money. For our actual poster we will not be out casting any colour except for red as a main colour because in order to convey the colours being replaced we are going to have to use multiple colours.

When asked to chose between natural and posed images of the band members, the response was:

The response showed that both styles where equally important therefore we will use a mixture of both in order to keep the variation, and in line with what the target audience expects.

The majority would like to see digitally enhanced images so in our poster we will use some but not of people and not just used because we can't think of anything else. We will use it primerilly on the collage on the images that we want to stand out and make a point.

When we asked them what they would stereotypically expect a poster to have the majority responded with an image of the band. The second majority said it should be colourful as well as edgy and striking. For our poster we will subvert the stereotypical image as we will not be using one large image of the band because we will be using smaller ones worked into our collage or abstract image, it will still be colourful and we will strive to make it edgy and stiking. We will also adhere to using our brand image on the page somewhere using the rule of thirds to make it stand out after peple have noticed our art work.

When asked to chose what they would like to see photographed that wasn't a member of the band, the response was:

 

In our project we will use photos of the actors and actress' which we have in the video possibly in a re created scene taken from the video. The scene can be more stylised and over contrasted bringing out the bright colours in the photo making it the image that stands out rather than text.

 

When asked to chose what type of artwork they would like to see used on the poster, the response was: 

In our poster we will incoperate some drawing elements giving an extra dimention to the artwork and images as if they reach out to you, which is fantastic for a poster because it acts as a persuasive technique. The things we would draw would be most likely multiple clocks growing in scale because clocks were a major motif used in our music video and realte to the Digipak album itself. An abstract image could relate to the double life or the sunset, building the colour and the arty stamp of an Indie/Alternative band. The collage will make up the majority of the page because of it being layed it will build a dimension to the poster allowing it to build more of a piece of art related to the band than poster full of information.

When asked to decide if they would like to see digitally enhanced images , the response was:

Questionnaire write up: Music Video

Music video

When asked about already existing music videos and what makes them memorable the majority said that the video should have a strong and interesting narrative. However keeping it simplistic so it is easily understood by the audience and keeping the originality running through from the video. In our music video we intend to keep the simplicity and the originality elements and making them easy to understand by the audience due to multiple possible interpretations. The simplicity of our narrative will be using the simple ‘double life’ from everyday work to clocking of into a different world which is wacky and colourful. This is where the originality comes into the video because the multiple double life characters will meet at a tea party in the middle of a desolated area where nothing was before the characters turn up.

When components of the video are concerned every single person asked said they thought that a balanced mix of performance of narrative and performance make a good music video so in our music video we shall adhere to this finding. Making sure that the amount of band shots and narrative are split evenly, as close to 50-50 as possible. To show the splits in our video we shall use natural pauses or ends of chapters in the narrative to slot in the performance making it more organised and this will also make sure that the band performance isn’t always on the chorus of the song to show some originality and variation.

For the Indie genre the audience expect to see guitars, shirts buttoned up to the top with no tie and skinny jeans which is more related to the band’s costumes which is something we are definitely going to include in the performance elements of our video. They also expected to see vintage/quirkiness, a unique attitude and colourfulness which will be more inclusive in the narrative of the video and then incorporated into the Digipak and advert photography just because they link the song lyrics, band ethos and video narrative together nicely.  

Whereas for the Alternative genre the audience expect to see more guitars, hear a heavier sound in the music and a lyrical connection to the video which are all aspects which we will use in our music video. We will get use the heavier sound in our video because of our song choice will have a strong indie/punk edge to it. The lyrical connection will be more of an explanation of our interpretation of the ‘double life’ theme in the lyrics themselves.

When asked about colour to be used in the video as an extra theme to tie everything together the theme of dark meets bright/light was the majority’s response. However the suggestion came through to use darker colours like dark blues and reds instead of using the obvious black. However no specific light colours shone through but vibrant ones like green and purple did therefore the colour scheme throughout could be kept to a similar pallet of blue’s, red’s and purple’s to keep consistency throughout the whole project.

For the narrative the audience said that it must explain what the song is about giving it a meaning of the lyrics allowing them to link directly. As a whole it should be emotive however the love theme is overdone and doesn’t link to the lyrics of our song therefore we will not be using that as our narrative. Love theme being overdone would stop us constructing a narrative that was unique, ambiguous and dramatic. Our Idea of the double life characters gives us the chance to make it very different and possibly a little bit odd, but in an arty-ambiguous way, creating a memorable narrative.

The expected style for a music video in general should have an overly used theme, which in our music video will be the evident symbol of double life with the changes that go on throughout the narrative. As well as the double life there will be the subtle changing of light as the sun is setting, along with the actual sunset. The main other consensus which came up was the work vintage. We have decided as a group that the vintage vibe goes with our song choice as the Futureheads are more alternative. We could create this by using extravagant, unique and overly individual costumes and props for the double life aspect, similar to that of the Smirnoff advert and gives the double life theme an extra dimension.

The shots that our audience expect to see in our music video are establishing, close up’s of the band, high angle and head shots. In our music video we will use establishing shots to introduce a new character in the narrative as it will allow us to highlight there boring life and what they do day in day out. We will use close ups of the band, especially the lead singer and the instruments, when their strong lyrics and strong instrumentals come up in the song. The close ups of the lead singer along with the instruments draws the audience into the music and makes them feel the power of what it is trying to get across through the lyrics. The high angle we will be using for the performance as one of the multiple angles we will use to show variety as well as using it for the Tea Party at the end of the narrative because it will show the change to crazy-manic.

The lighting for the performance should be unnatural using stage lights to add colour and professionally to the performance component of the video. Using colours will give the moody atmosphere which links to the alternative genre and heavier sound of the song giving it a stronger ambiguity, or use a dimly lit location to fit with the sunset of the narrative and lyrical connection. One of these ideas we will use for our performance as it gives us a direct link to the bands ethos and way they perform with relation to the alternative genre because it gives it an edge compared to basic stage lighting; Whereas for the narrative elements of the music video the lighting will be all natural light except for that of the indoor parts where the fluorescent light bulbs will take over.

Dairy Entry: Tuesday 4th October

Today, me and Katie went in to great depth in regards to our planning time table and schedule. Our planning timetable consisted of dates and times members of our group would be unable to make it, a detailed outline of when we were able to have a video camera and possible things we could film on each day depending on actors. The schedule that we created consisted of the location we wanted for a particular shoot, a props list for things we may need and who is to bring what, and the costumes we thought appropriate of necessary for each scene. On a separate piece of paper we compiled a list of actors numbers, and people we thought may be able to help us technically (ie lighting) this way we would all be able to contact each member if and when necessary.

Iona mainly continued with the audience research of current digipacks by creating a mood board full of front covers and asked students at our school about which one they preferred for an indie band. Iona also helped with the organisation me and Katie were doing for the next two weeks before the rough cut deadline. Alfie has been working solidly on the animatic to get it finished as fast as possible to begin editing our new rough cut footage.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 4th October

Today, me and Katie went in to great depth in regards to planning, making sure we have actors numbers, locations sorted, props ready, camera's booked at the times needed, and fitting in times we are all available. Iona mainly continued with the audience research of current digipacks, but also helped with the organisation of the next two weeks before the deadline. Alfie was doing the animatic again to try to finish it as soon as possible.

Storyboards

we have finished scanning in our storyboard images, and are progressing with our animatic. These will hopefully help us to progress in our project, and eventually let our filming be organised. We plan to stick heavily to the story board for rough cut, as it has been carefully planned, and then adapt our video where needed for the narrative.

Diary Entry: Monday 3rd October

Again we each took on different tasks to maximise working potential. Me and Katie worked on potential album covers and digipack ideas, including album name, image, album tracks, image ideas, editing techniques and more. Alfie focused on the animatic again, whilst Iona began preparing audience research questions in reference to the digipack. We have all discussed and created a new time table for the next two weeks to manage our time before the rough cut deadline.

Diary Entry: Thursday 29th September

Recently we have been trying to make the best of the time we have in lessons to sort out all of our audience research, storyboard planning, props and animatic before we start our filming. We all took part in discussing and finalising our ideas for the storyboard, incorporating our new ideas and old. Iona took charge of the storyboard, and began colouring it in. Because of her artistic background, and has created a very detailed and eye-catching storyboard. Alfie has been starting to create the animatic for the video which uses the storyboard pictures, but replaces the written text with typed text and puts it to time with our chosen song. I have been gathering our audience research using the video camera to film Whitley Bay High School students commenting on ideas we have had. Katie has been taking the footage I have gathered, edited it, and started to make a short film.

Dairy Entry: Monday 3rd October

Today we each took on different tasks to maximise working potential. Me and Katie worked on potential album covers and digipack ideas to get a head start on the next part of the project. This research included rough ideas for an album name, album tracks, editing techniques and different images for different panes of the digipack. We have decided to wait till our research on digipacks have been collected for the group to start making final ideas. Alfie has focused on putting all the storyboard images in time with the music for the animatic. Iona began prepping for her audience research questions in reference to current digipacks. I believe her work was successful and she should be able to ask our target audience about their preferences tomorrow. We have all discussed and created a new time table for the next two weeks to manage our time before the rough cut deadline.