Tuesday, 26 October 2010

photo shoot for cd cover

yesterday Tom and I met in the Centre at one o clock to take pictures of the three locations we did our filming in. This is for our cd cover which is now going to be a combination of one of my ideas for the image on our cd cover and Toms' image idea which is to have the face of our main character overlapping or in the middle of images of our three shoot locations. Tom is currently working on this idea with on his photoshop program on his home computer. We shall finish the photo shooting once school starts up again. The only places we haven't taken photos of yet for the cd cover are the sixth form, and the factory. The only two places we took photos in were the fountains, and castle park. We did this because Tom's car didn't have any petrol in it and we had done a bit of shooting in castle park. It helped that the weather was sunny yesterday which makes our pictures that much more clear than they would have been if it were rainy or cloudy.

Friday, 22 October 2010

magazine ad/poster analysis

The ad is a sort of non-typical one for a band of the Rock or Pop Punk genre. I say this because one of the colours used on the ad is pink which is typically more of a girl pop band colour meant to symbolise femininity. I also say this because the image on the poster or ad is of nature which is something not often seen in the Rock genre. I think the only typical of the genre thing about the image is the fact that it is mostly in black which connotes darkness, evil, and impurity. A concept which is offset by the image of the sun rising or setting behind it against a pink and orange sky. Though if you used the feminist theory for this ad you could say the band or the publicity designers for this band are trying to project a sense of gender equality for the bands fans by using colours and images typically seen in girls bands ads.

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

finished all the shooting today

Today Tom and I pretty much spent two and a half hours going from the park to the centre to a factory by Tom's house for filming. We got all the shots we needed apart from a few that we forgot. We forgot about a transition shot at the park that would lead to a jump shot to the centre. We also forgot to bring a camera platform for the tripod which led to me having to hold the camera in place during filming in each location.

Some problems we had was a couple of times I forgot about taking the camera off standby when we were shooting. I got somewhat frustrated with this after a while. We also had to do a transition shot in Castle Park for the transition shot from park to centre which we forgot when we were originally in the shot.

shooting today


Today Tom and I are shooting scenes at the park which we were supposed to do Friday but at the time I managed to forget about our meeting, and did homework instead. So today we are going to be doing hide and seek scenes at the park. To the right you see the weather report for today which Tom and I got off of bbc.com for the purposes of knowing whether or not it would be sunny at any point today which it has been somewhat. Tom and I will be shooting during lunch time, and the lesson afterwards which should be more than enough time for the shots we need but you never know what can go wrong with this sort of project.
Tom and I should get some good shots for our music video. I should also be able to scope out good locations for shooting our cd cover or insert. As I have said in earlier entries Tom and I will see which ideas work best and go from there.

Thursday, 14 October 2010

Impressions I want the audience of my music video to get

There are several things I would like the potential target audience of my groups music video to see. The first is the archetype of a "hero" on a quest which is the opposite reading you normally get with the rock genre of music which is that of rebellion or the archetype of "villain". Though this could somewhat be seen in the setting of our music video which is the city or urban area, and the text of our CD cover which Tom and I both agreed would be sort of Gothic medieval calligraphy if we could find it on whatever computer program we use to make the front cover of our cd. Barring this we haven't decided on a backup style of text. This could also be seen in the possible representation of regional identity which is again the city or urban theme which is somewhat common in rock videos. The more oppositional reading stuff Tom and I decided on was the representation of the main male character in our music video as sort of sensitive or into his emotions which is unusual for a rock video in which men are portrayed as more the "alpha-male" than the "philosopher". That is to say men are normally portrayed in rock videos as muscle-bound, leather wearing, romancing, drug, and drink addicts rather than the unconfident, sensitive, emotional type of people. This is also probably why Tom and I thought it best that if this track, music video, cd, or magazine ad were ever used we would use an alternative music label or an independent music label for distribution because apart from anything else our track isn't well known, and the concept we are using is a non-mainstream one for our genre of music. Though I think we chose a rather mainstreamed target audience which is boy and girls 16-19 years old, probably from middle class families with some contact from night clubs or alternative music clubs which would probably help to distribute our cd/music video because of the use of the cultural reference of the hooded sweatshirt which shows up on the video. As for final ideas for the cd cover Tom and I are still seeing what ideas will actually work with the level of computer know how he and I have which in my case is not exactly high.

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

more cd cover ideas

I have just thought up 4 ideas for pictures for the cd cover or inside booklet for my cd cover. I have also thought up two ideas for the text to use for the cd cover. The first of my four picture ideas is one I have mentioned before which is taking a close-up picture of one detail of each of the three hide and seek game locations, and mix them together to make one picture. The one new part to the idea that I think might work is to have a picture of the starting location of the factory super-imposed on top of or underneath the other location shots to possibly symbolise or connote urban superiority. The second of my four picture ideas is to use stills of the last three shots we use for the music video which show the seeker chasing the hider across the three game locations just before catching him which shows synergy between our cd cover and our music video. The third of my four picture ideas is a picture of our main character in the position he is in right before we show the start of the hide and seek game which sitting against the wall of the factory with the hood of his hoodie down, and his knees drawn up to his chest possibly looking scared or blank faced to show having his own freewill, personality, or wishes taken from him possibly by the grayness or uniformity of the city. The last of my four picture ideas is to basically combine the first and third ideas but add the two hider and seeker characters in miniature running around the main characters feet with puppet strings attached to them which could symbolise the main characters ultimate control of his own mind. Though this idea will probably have to be simplified to be any use in this project. These ideas are yet to be confirmed as Tom wasn't in today, and since we are partners in this project I must consult him before I put any ideas into effect myself since he may have some improvements upon these ideas or ideas of his own. The same can be said of my ideas for the text or lettering on the cd cover for which I have two. The first idea is to have the lettering in gray while the picture is in colour with the font as sort of faded typewriter lettering which shows denotations of wanting to catch attention, and symbolises the state of mind of the main character of our video as possibly forgetful or the personality of our videos main character as being overpowered by his environment. The second idea is to have the words in red while the picture is in gray which has possible connotations of the theme of our video of a man on a mission which is fullfilled.

analysis of graphs on previous post

The first graph is a pie chart pertaining to four of the types of music that our selected probable target audience likes. As we can clearly see a majority of our target audience is into the rock genre called metal while a minority of them are into the classical genre of music. Of the remaining two types of music which are on the graph the second most popular genres of music were Rock, and Indie. These two make up 50% of our target audience while metal makes up a further 45% or so of our the remaining 50% of the graph, and classical makes up 10% or so of the remaining 50% of the graph. This means that the same amount of people said on the questionnaire that they liked the rock and indie genres of music, and the least amount of people who answered our questionnaire said that they liked classical. Whereas the most amount of people who answered our questionnaire said that they liked the metal genre of rock

The second graph is a 3-d bar graph with triangular bars. The scale goes as high as four, and represents the elements of music videos which our target audience likes the most. The elements which the graph represents are performance, narrative, and low key lighting. Of the three of them narrative is the most popular with four, whereas performance and low key lighting both got 1's on the scale. This means that most target audience members in the area of the ages 16-19 prefer music videos that tell a story to match the lyrics or something similar rather than a video that follows a concept or shows the band performing the song. This also means that people in the area of the ages of 16-19 would probably prefer naturalistic lighting, and narrative or conceptual music videos rather than performance music videos.

Both of these graphs help Tom and I to know what type of music we should be using for the track in our music video, and what elements we should possibly include in our music video. Though Tom and I have already decided that we are doing a conceptual video with a rock track not a metal one. The reason for this being that by the time we got the results of the target audience questionnaire we had already decided on a conceptual video, and I can't stand metal music because it is too loud, and is nothing but people screaming.

target audience analysis graphs




Tuesday, 12 October 2010

second day of filming

Today Tom and I did more shooting up on the third floor of the sixth form. We did four shots of Tom walking down the hall wearing a grey sweatshirt. There was one shot which Tom and I had to redo because he ran part of the way back towards the camera. It also turned out that I managed to shoot four shots as one which lasted a minute and a half. I don't know how I did that either which means I have to learn how to use a camera. I wonder how Tom and I are going to use two cameras at once when shooting in the park on Friday because there is no way I can be at two places in the same area at once.

Friday, 8 October 2010

editing for first day of shooting

Today Tom and I edited the scenes we shot on Thursday. We looked at the footage we had which was harder than it seemed because Tom forgot to rewind the tape, and we ended up shooting a minute of just looking at the wall. When we finally imported our shots we ended up having to wait five or six minutes while the computer letterboxed our work, then took a minute to go to the computer options and get rid of letterboxing. When we looked at the footage we noticed right away that most of the transition shots we filmed out in the churchyard had a shaky frame, and had to get rid of most of them. We also had to cut 2 seconds of film from the shot of the seeker walking down the hallway because of an unrelated to filming person showing up on film. We also took out some of the walking bits of that one shot to make it look like the seeker was wandering in a zigzag up the hall. Personally I think that particular shot is a little shaky in its foundation because the cut is a little sloppy in between the seeker looking into individual doors. In one of our churchyard shots we have a separate shot of the sunny sky which we could use for some of our transitions. Finally we made copies of each shot just in case of work loss. After all that work we found out that the computer had seemingly rejected our changes, and there was only ten minutes left of class time which really bites in my opinion.

Thursday, 7 October 2010

first day of shooting

Tom and I started shooting during fifth period today. We started off our shooting with the shots we needed inside the centre. We did two shots in the hallway on the third floor starting from the history classroom. Tom shot a test shot of the empty hallway and said we could probably use it for one of the transition or jump shots we had planned for our matches on action which signaled a change of location. Then I shot Tom walking down the hall away from the camera, and peeking into classrooms looking for the hider.

We then decided to go to the churchyard, and get close-ups of some of the trees to replace any shots we lost filming in the actual park. It was sunny when we went out and we got some great shots with the camera angle at a steep upward slope. We plan to use these shots to signal transitions between scenes or changes in locations.

Some problems we had during shooting were that our camera picked up sound from one of the classrooms when we were shooting on the third floor, and it also picked up my voice while we were shooting in the churchyard. We also almost ran out of battery in the camera during shooting in the churchyard which meant we had to rush a little to get our final shot before the camera shut itself down.

Tom and I also discussed the costume we plan to have our actor in two roles is going to wear while we were shooting our scenes. We decided on having our actor wear a red hoodie when playing "the seeker" to symbolize or represent relentlessly looking for oneself, and having him wear a grey hoodie when playing "the hider" to represent seemlessly blending in with their surroundings or being completely lost in oneself.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

gorillaz music video analysis



Gorillaz- Feel good inc.




This music video is a performance video showing the members of the band playing the song while going through an almost fantasy like location in the form of a floating island with a windmill or lighthouse in the middle which has possible connotations of freedom, imagination, and possibly light.

The performance is shown mostly through a montage of closeups of the lead singer and individual band members sort of going through daily life or playing the song which has connotations of being up close and personal with the band members which if we use the male gaze theory of media is exactly what we the audience want to happen when we buy a cd or watch a music video. It is also shown through a few mid-shots of the lead singer walking through the windmill/apartment, dancing, or looking out the window of it at a kid version of himself or someone similar playing a guitar.

what adds more of an eyecatching effect to the video is the fact that all of the band members are dressed in black which is typical of the genre of music they are playing which is the punk rock genre, and are cartoons which seems to be the bands symbol of sorts. Another eye catching effect in this video is the shot of another music video in the background of the scene where the lead singer of the band is dancing.

This can be compared to another cartooned video by a one off band called simon and milo which is called get a clue. Though that video is a narrative instead of a performance, and that band plays an almost pop like version of rock and roll or something similar in a hybrid style. Also the video by Simon and Milo seems less realistic than the cartoon video by the Gorillaz. Which has some representations of probably childishness on the part of the video producers. That or we can take into account that the video by Simon and Milo is from the nineties which means that animation technology was not as advanced as it is now.

If I had to really think about a theory to apply to this video it would have to be the feminist marxism theory which would say that this video shows women as either good for nothing but sex or seducers. As shown by the fact that throughout the video the shots of the guitarist also show him being stroked or tickled by two girls lying by his side while he plays the guitar. Though this is something that is typical of this genre of music in that women serve no important role in the video or are portrayed this way.

weather reports for shoot day on thursday



What you see to the left is the weather report for Thursday which as I said in a previous post is when Tom and I plan to shoot on location in the centre. The sunny weather should make for good natural lighting though we won't see this since we are shooting in the hallways. The addition of the hall lighting might make the lighting on our main character too harsh or something like that.

questionnaire response


To the left you see just one of the responses Tom and I got from putting our target audience questionnaire up on facebook.com. The person in this case who answered our questionnaire is male and just above our target audience age range of 16-19. This is only one of the people who answered our questionnaire. I will upload more answers to our questionnaire soon as well as a graph to show you the percentages or numbers of people who said what about cd covers, magazine ads, and music videos.

Tuesday, 5 October 2010

ideas for the cd cover

Inbetween discussing the shoot schedule and the evaluation questions for our music video we also started discussing ideas for the music video and cd cover. One of my ideas for the cd cover that I came up with that couples with Tom's idea of having a picture of all three of our shoot locations melded together side by side is that we should have a picture of one of the doors in the sixth form centre in the middle of the three pictures or something like that because a door can symbolise opening, barriers, or just be an atmosphere maker. I was inspire for this idea by one of the shots we plan on shooting of our main character at the beginning. In this shot we plan to start with a midshot of our main character sitting hunched up with his knees drawn to his chest and go to an extreme close-up using zoom of the pupil of our characters eyes to symbolise that we are going into their mind. This is when we get to the hide and seek game.

shoot schedule so far

So today apart from anything else Tom and I worked out the shooting schedule for our music video; well part of it anyway. There are three days we thought that we would shoot on.

Thursday the seventh of October because we thought that we should get started shooting our music video this week because we were really supposed to have started this last week. We are planning to shoot after our lessons are finished for the day. Well when Toms' lessons are finished for the day which would be after lunch. I might be in a meeting with my LSA then which I don't know about because she has been sick the last couple of weeks, and I'm not sure when she'll be back. If she isn't at the main site I will join Tom for shooting if she is there I'll ask her if I can skip our meeting to work on a piece of coursework.

Saturday the ninth of October because on weekends the centre of town will be crowded enough that we can get some decent crowd shots for our music video. This is necessary because we may have our main character in the music video hiding in the crowd. We checked the weather for this day using the BBC weather site and found out that it would be cloudy with spots of sunlight that day. Though of course this might change.

The final day that we worked out would probably work was Tuesday the twelfth most likely during lesson time. This is the day when we plan to shoot at the park because at this time the park will most likely have less people in it and will make a more atmospheric place to shoot than the park after school.

These dates are subject to changes when Tom and I start shooting. There may also be problems with scheduling. As such Tom and I will have to add more shoot dates once we find out how much footage you can shoot during a lessons worth of time.

Friday, 1 October 2010

storyboard images and explaination











Finally I have the complete storyboard to show you. All in all it is four pages of pictures and descriptions to go along with the pictures. The concept of the video as I have previously stated in this blog is basically man on a mission which Tom Coleman and myself have interpreted as trying to find oneself in a game of hide and seek and tag combined. We came up with the idea after listening to our track round about two or three times. Our shots can be interpreted as such. An example is the last three shots on the fourth page of our storyboard which show our main character the seeker chasing the hider across the three locations we are using for the game of hide and seek back towards the beginning scene of our music video which can be interpreted as a sort of mission accomplished. Though from the looks of it the computer might have screwed up the image order and put our first and second pages on the bottom and our third and fourth pages on the top.
Another example of our concept of a man on a mission interpreted as a game is the shot where we have our seeker tapping the hider on the shoulder which is obviously I found you. We did our concept this way because we believe it will be more interesting and give our audience less boredom than if we did something conventional like a sort of spy narrative video, or army mission video.