Evaluation - Joe

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To get the highest grade possible, we had to use and develop ideas from real music videos in order to make ours look like its been done to a professional standard. This took a lot of research in to the indie/rock genre as we needed to get everything right from storyline to performance. This meant looking at costume, lighting, camera movements and other forms of mise en scene. Our main inspiration was the video by 'We the Kings' called 'Skyway Avenue'. After researching heavily into the story lines of the indie genre, we found out that most had the concept of boy and girl out on the town, boy hits on girl, they start flirting, fall in love and go home together all following Todorov's theory. Obviously there are a lot of different variations of this but this seemed to be the main style of plot. After finding this out we all agreed to keep to the traditional pick up story line. In the Skyway Avenue video, the video starts the morning after they had been to town or in a club (we presume) but we wanted to change that so we adapted the story line so that we showed the night that the two people met. This was an example of us using something and developing it to fit within our song however you could argue that we didn't fully meet todorov's theory as there wasn't enough footage there to meet all aspects of it. I do however feel that this was due to limited amount of filming time we had due to unseen events taking place with our actors. The performance aspect was also heavily influenced by the skyway avenue video however we also got some shot ideas from the 'bowling for soup' video, '1985'. In this video there a quite a few shots of the camera looking in at the band in a garage, from the outside. We liked this shot so we took it and developed it some more to fit with what we were trying to do. In their video they have it to look like the house is owned by well off American citizen with the mise en scene that they have used i.e. basketball  hoop and electric garage. Well we liked the shot but realised we had to change the mise en scene to make ours look like an urban, underground garage to fit within the indie genre. We did this by changing the layout of Patrick's garage by moving all expensive looking things out of sight and moving ladders, stools, old filing cabinets around so that we could continue our image as a band who hasn't made it yet. It wasn't only the mise en scene that we developed, it was actual shots as well. In the skyway avenue video there was this fantastic shot where the camera zooms in to the drummer clapping the high hat. Well we tried filming this a couple of times but the drum kit was layed out so we couldn't get everything in. So instead we filmed this shot but from a low angle and zooming out instead. This allowed us to get all of the drummer in and half of the drum kit which ultimately looked better when we came to edit it. During our editing we looked closely at challenging the regular indie storyline. Normally in an indie music video the lighting is very low key (kooks - naive/she moves in her own way), especially in the narrative and pretty much the same with the performance. Well we wanted to challenge this and have some light scenes. For example the lighting in the narrative (pub) is pretty light and the same with the performance. In the performance aspect we had 2 lights directly facing me to create this image of a light shining on us. This to give off the feeling that our big break as a band is coming soon but there are still some dark struggles to come before you get there. The lighting was so important to get right as we wanted that binary opposition of light vs dark.


How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I feel that the combination of our digipack worked really well with our main products. Whilst filming our main product we wanted to go with the rough, urban, underground indie look and we didn't want to lose that whilst making the ancillary. this is why i think each image done was successful as we didn't lose our image and pulled off a professional looking digipak. The front cover was taken and adapted from the blurr CD. We wanted something simple, something indie and this was perfect. Indie (recently) is all about fitting in with everyone else but having a little bit of Independence so what better way to have a front cover with all band members pretty much doing the same thing but with our own twist on it. Indie is all about simplicity as well with simple colours, this is why we cleverly chose the black and white imagery (all fitting in) but with different colour tshirts and funny faces (Little bit of Independence). This I feel was a successful image as we stuck to what we set out to do. Our next image was the one of the lead singer, in the style of a mug shot holding up an anti political message. This shot uses humour to appeal to our audience, attracting them to our band. We have used binary oppositions heavily in this image but still sticking to the indie style. The use of the tshirt gives that indie casual look, nothing too strange or different to show that we're following by everyone Else's rules (especially with the tie). However the message on the board is a funny anti political message that is showing the little independence that indie allows you to have, especially with the use of the anarchy 'A'. This again keeping to our indie, urban, simple and safe image. The Spin image is perfect for linking to our main product. Its a brick wall with the title of our band written down it. This directly relates to the urban, under ground image that we set out to achieve in our main task by using the garage. The back cover was perfect. We didn't want something directly related to the performance as after research we found out not many bands do that, but we wanted something that related to the genre. Converse has recently become a symbol of the indie scene and that's why is was perfect to use. We didn't have a converse with fancy colours on and we didn't use a fancy background. This because we wanted it to be simple, fit in with anything else, this directly relating to how we all dressed in the performance aspect and the inside CD slot. This image was the picture of our band in the setting where we filmed. This worked best as it shows we don't have the money to go out and do photo shoots because we are just a band practising in an urban garage (exactly what we were filming in, in the performance). The final image is one we would stick in the back page of the book, the festival image. Now this image is only there to show our love for music. We thought this could work well as we also tried to show our love for music in the music video. We tried to do this by the lead singer dancing and moving as well as the guitarists. This image then relates to the performance aspect of our video.


What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feed back was very helpful. We had lots of good comments and improvements suggested to us. The general view of the good points were all based on performance. People liked how we took to the task of getting the image and setting right. They liked how we found a good setting and really research everything from clothing to lighting. We were complimented on the variety of shots used and the movement of the camera. We've learnt that the camera movement is important as before the second time round filming of the performance, we had many people issue the fact that was hardly any movement. Luckily we learnt that from the feedback mid way through the task otherwise we wouldn't have been able to gone out the second time and get the exact shots we needed. The improvements were something to take note of as it was mainly things to do with the narrative. Mainly the issue was with the lighting in both the pub and the walking home. For some they said the pub was too bright for the Friday night setting we went for and the fact that there weren't many extras in the background. The walk home was mentioned a lot. Most people said the lighting was wrong for a couple of shots as it was too dark. (noted on Ellie's evaluation video). In some of our shots people also said that the camera went blurry from where it was too dark. Some said they liked that as it caused a drunk effect where as others said they would have preferred it if it was a clear shot. Overall i think we learnt that lighting is key when it comes to narrative and we really should have tried to add extra lighting when walking through the high street. I think we learnt that we shouldn't just accept it as the lighting is out of our hands as its a public place and we should have taken more time and effort and maybe thought of more ways to add a bit of light. We've also learnt that camera movement is key. Before we got the feedback mid way through our editing we knew something didn't look right but we couldn't spot it, and when we got told about the movement we could fix it. We've learnt that camera angels are also especially important in the performance aspect as they are essentially what makes it feel like a music video and not just some guys being filmed in a garage. We can take away from the feedback the it's the little things that make a good video, great. If we do this again we will all now look for ways to increase the lighting, or dim the lighting to make sure that everything is 100% clear and not blurry unless we plan it that way.


How did you use new media technologies in the constuction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

 New media technologies have been used in out group from the very begining. We were first assigned the task of analysing music videos on the mac books in preperation for a seding task. This meant using MacBooks and youtube to repeatedly review any music video of our choice. these techologies allowed us to play and pause videos at any time giving us a chance to analyse every shot for its mise en scene making sure that we don't miss anything. After this task we were asked to set up a blog on blogger to keep a track record of everything that we've done this year. This new techonology allowed us to store information and post videos/links to give viewers a better idea of what we were talking about. After much research on music videos we had to take digital cameras and film our chosen music video. Fortunately we only had to film 30 seconds and it didn't have to be perfect, we just had to get used to all the equipment again and all the new software we would be using. The digital camera allowed us to record our filming with a good quality picture, This gave us a more professional looking video and we would be using this media technology for a while to come. Once filming was completewe would upload it to the MacBooks and import it in to final cut. Final cut is what we used to edit both our main product and our sweding product. We spent hours on this programme cutting down clips, trying to get the timing right and placing them all in order. This allowed us to get a professional looking video with clean cuts and if needed, different transitions. This also allowed us to make our long clips in to sub clips giving us an oportunity to see each shot individually and give it a name, ultimately making our lives a lot easier and the process a lot quicker. Bluetooth was another technology used in the process. We used this to transfer files from our phones to the MacBooks for example, Ellie and I recorded a video blog and uploaded it to the MacBooks via Blue tooth. This is also how we got most of our DigiPack photos on the blog as well, via bluetooth. We used microsoft word to edit and add some titles to the Front cover of our CD and we did the same for the information/credits page as well. Photoshop was used to create the frontcover and get the colours and the black and white tones in the same image. We needed a good editing programme to do this as we wanted it to look professional. Microsoft excell was by Ellie to create charts for the blog. This was also done by a high quality programme as we wanted a professional finish. Prezi and smile box was used by the group to get extra bits of media on our blog. These are two presentation websites that you can use for free to give you a funky finish on your blog. To create some of the digipak i had to use southpark editor to get the avatar looking image. Although we didn't use the image it was still a new techonology that was used in our media. Finally the tri-pod (if it counts as new technology). The tri-pod was used in nearly every section of filming. This allowed us to get steady shots when needed and allowed us to pan the camera easier.

Overall i feel this project was a success. I feel that we created a professional looking music video that met the criteria that we set. Our digipak was well made with professional programmes to ensure that we had a high quality finish to our photos. I think the blogging went well for the most part although i would have liked to do more if i could. I feel if i had been consistantly doing blogs then i would achieve a higher grade rather than all my blogs coming at once. In the end i feel that we managed the task well and recovered what we did well as a few weeks before, our whole project could have ended in an untter fail. If we could do one thing again it would be the narrative. I feel if we had changed the lighting a little then our project would have gained more marks and the final outcome would have been better. The user feedback helped us change out project for the better but with a little more time i feel that we could have vastley improved our project. In conclusion i feel this project was a success and we met the criteria that was set for us to a high standard.

Final Digipack

 This is the front cover of our digipack. after much discussion, we have decided that this is the strongest image suitable for the front cover for our band. Tom came up with the concept after researching the Blurr CD cover, and added a quirky twist to the standard shot. this resulted with our cover shot being in Black and white but with the t-shirts in colour, to be aesthetically pleasing and different. 

 This is a shot of the main singer, this will be used for the front cover of the booklet. We felt, in order to the continue with our 'indie' theme and concept, it fitted perfectly. The message, clearly written in a 'scribbled' handwriting style, uses irony and comedy to evoke the how the band are playing on the seriousness. The binary opposition used in this shot - the tie representing the establishment but the t-shirt presenting the antiestablishment. However its not quite anarchy, to come across as playful from an ouside view in contrast, but the use of the anarchy symbol portrays the message that we want to tear down the establishment on the inside.

 this shot started off as a cover shot, but after careful evaluation, we decided this would be the back page of the booklet with the credits on. We thought this would be a suitable image to show their passion for music, and their playful nature. 

 This shot will be used for the placement of the CD. It them in the band they are together in, showing their working class/school indie look. It shows how they are trying to make it big in the music industry, however as they are not recognized yet they are still stuck to their urban/alternative garage setting.

 This will be used for the spine. This is the first thing that could be seen on a shelf in a shop, and displays their roots of the garage. it also shows how as a group they are cemented. This basically relates back to urban image, that we set out to create.

 what could be more indie than converses? nothing. This is why we chose this for the back cover of our CD.  Originally, we came up with images associated with our band's metanarrative. After further research we wanted the image to be relatable to the genre of music. We tried to add features of a real CD. including web addresses, bar codes, price and other conventions of the digipack. 

Ellie, Joe and Tom

Filming - Pub

Filming in the pub was a tricky task to do. Not only was it hard to book it on a date we were all free but once we got it, they had put up their christmas decorations. When we finally got the pub booked out, Patrick, Tom and I went down to film. As we had previously done some filming in the pub, we knew roughly what we had to get. The day before we filmed we thought we weren't going to have any extras, but on the day we managed to get 4 extras including Patrick. We all met down there and realised that we only had 45 minutes to get all filming done before the pub had to open. One thing that worked in our favour, as it was so near to christmas, it was really dark outside meaning that we could include shots which had the window in, where as before it was light outside meaning we had to avoid shots with the windows in. As we had such a limited amount of time, we had to get straight in to filming. First of all we did a continuous shot of me walking towards the bar, talking to one of the extras, looking over at Nikki, the other extra come and ask me to move, then i move over towards Nikki. We had to do this as the extras we were using weren't the most helpful so we didn't know if they wer going to be there one shot and not the other. Luckily for us we managed to get two takes of this so we had something to compare. We then went to shots of Matt (the barman) pouring me a pint in a close up, and then him giving me the pint in an over the shoulder shot. Remembering back to what our teacher had advised us, we had to get some reaction shots in there in the form of close ups. So next, Tom filmed Nikki and I talking/flirting with each other whilst doing flirtatious actions, i.e. me winking and Nikki flicking her hair back. We then went on to film the film where we got the darks from Matt and then walked towards the Dart Board. This was split up in to two sections, Nikki and I walking round the corner to the bar, and then from a different agnle, Nikki and I walking towards the dart board. All of the shots we did were mid shots as we wanted to get across that we were actually in a pub. The next shot wa sme walking up to the dart board and throwing a single dart, I would then walk back and give the darts to Nikki and she would through a single dart as well. This then leads me on to the next bit of filming. We then got Matt to come and through 3 darts at the board whilst we filmed the dart board in a close up shot from front and side on. We did this because we had an idea of speading up the darts as if they were hitting one after another straight away. We thought this would make the night seem as if it's going on for some time as a lot is getting done due to the speed up.  This would also give us a variety of shots and something to blog about when we're explaing the speed up shot. The next shots we did were the ones where Nikki and I were sitting down at a table and she moved her hand on to mine. We did this to show in the story that as the night was going on, we were growing closer and getting more attracted to each other. After this we wanted to emphasise the fact we were drunk so we filmed us two walking over to the bar and getting shots of 'vodka'. We then filmed a close up (high angle) of the bar table. Nikki and I would then pick up the shots and slam both glasses down on the table simultaneously. Whilst in the same bit of recording, slammed down 4 more glasses. We didn't show us drinking the shots as we thought it would add effect if we sped up the shot taking, to make it look like we're drinking a lot in a short space of time without taking any breaks. Once we figured that we had got across that Nikki and I were drunk, we filmed us leaving the pub through the front door. When filming i opened the door for Nikki and let her go out first to seem like i was a gentleman to get across the feeling i was being nice to ultimately get with her. After we had done this we needed to film some extra shots, just film anything and everything that happens in pubs. We filmed a couple of our extras talking at a table from a high angle, we filmed a barmaid sorting out the fireplace, an extra smoking outside and another extra passed out on a table.  We also filmed Tom going in to the Gents toilet. These were just extra shots that would litereally just be flashes in our music video to truely show that it was a pub environment. On our way out we thought that we needed to get a shot of some alcohol of somedort, so we quickly got out the camera and filmed from a low angle, the spirit line at the top of the bar. We did this make the alcohol seem most important, adn that's why we're all there. For the limited amount of time we had i'd say this day of filming was a great success like the others. If we had more time we could have made more than 1 take of each shot we did and maybe plan out better extras but fortunately for us all the shots looked good and we didn't need a lot of footage of the extras.

Filming - Ellie's hosue

We had decided long ago that that we would use Ellie's house for the scenes when the girl in our story takes the guy home. The shots we had to get were the ones of Nikki and I walking up the road and in to the house, us going through the front door (view from inside the house),  us two walking up the stairs and then Nikki taking me in to 'her bedroom'. This would be the last scene in the narrative section of the video. We were going to film this in day light when we arrived, but after taking a couple of shots we decided to come back later as you could clearly see day light through the blinds and had no way to blacking it out. Once we came back later when it was dark, we started to film. We filmed the shot of Nikki and I walking in to the house. We did a few takes of this. One where Tom would pann the camera and follow us as we walked up the street, on to the drive and up to the door. The next was each bit individually without any movement. After finishing that shot we had a close up of Nikki unlocking and opening the door as if she were drunk. We only took one shot of this as we were running out of space on the camera and didn't think we would use this shot in the final production anyway. The next shot was coming from inside the house. We had Tom and Ellie at the end of room opposite the front door filming Nikki and I walking in. After doing a shot or two of this we realised, due to the light and the reflection in the window, you could see Tom and Ellie with the camera. To get around this we had to move the camera back a bit so that Ellie and Tom could start recording and then hide in another room adjacent to the camera so they wouldn't be seen. During this shot we knew we had to act drunk so as we walked in. Nikki threw her shoes to the ground and i 'tripped' over the door whilst entering the house. Nikki then did the clasic drunk 'shh' action where she slammed her index finger to her lips in an over exaggerated fashion. The next scene we filmed was Nikki and I walking up the stairs. We did 4 shots of this to see which would be the best angle/view. We had one coming from the bottom of the stairs looking up at Nikki and I staggering up the stairs. We did one from the top of the stairs looking down at Nikki and I from a high angle. The third was handheld and looking through the bars of the stairs panning upwards to give some movement, and last but not least we rested the camera on the stairs whilst Nikki and I individually placed our feet in front of the camera in an extreme close up as we walked up the stairs. The last shot we then had to film was the one where Nikki would take me in to Ellie's room and as i followed, i would close the door behind us. We did a couple of takes of this from a low angle perspective which only focused on our feet which then tilted upwards to see me turn around and shut the door behind us. We also did a couple of which the camera was level just to get a couple of different views for us review afterwards. During this we then came up with the idea of somehow making it more clear and the guy and girl were going to have a one night stand. At this point i came up with the idea of Nikki taking off her coat as she's entering the room, and then once she's in and out of sight, she then chuck an item of clothing at me to which at this point, i would turn around, wink at the camera and close the door. This meant changing our camera angle which wasn't an issue as it also gave us another/different shot to film. This day was successful as we accomplished what we had set out to do, film all of Ellie's house. We came up with good ideas along the way and got a lot of different shots and angles which we could then review and see which fits best in the final video.

Filming - Performance 2/2

The second time round of filming the performance went really well. After reviewing the shots we had done last time we knew exactly what we were doing with the lighting, actions and setting. This meant we could go straight in to filming which is what we did. After reviewing the shots, Tom and I saw that we needed more camera movement in our shots so we planned out shots to fix this. The first shot we did was another shot from outside the garage but making sure the garage was semitrical and obvious it was actually a garage. Also we added all the lighting this time as we learnt that we needed all the lighting possible. This wasn't a problem as as the band was setting up, Patrick, Tom and I were setting up the camera angles. After this shot we went on tho the movement shots. For this we had Patrick walking across the front of his garage following a semi circle we had marked out. By doing this we got the movement in and lots of angels our our band. After a couple of takes of this, we decided to move on to getting lost of high angles of the band. We first did a take of Patrick climbing on a ladder and filming at a high angle in the corner of his garage. We did this to block out some of the shadows as we were having some problems with that the last filming. Also by using the high angle, it makes our band look smaller and less significant which is the image that we were trying to get across. After last filming session, we learnt we needed as much time as possible so we arrived early this time. This then allowed Patrick Tom and I to look threw the shots mid way threw the filming session and see if we had missed anything significant. By looking threw them we had realised that we didnt have enough shots of Tom and Rob together, or Gareth and Rob together. We then went about ways of trying to find a way to get them together in a shot without moving anything around. The only way we figured we could do this was if we used partricks step ladder to get a high angle shot of them as when we tried a standing shot, you could only see the guitarist and not the drummer. To get this looking good we had to move some of the lighting around so that Rob (drummer) wasn't completely black and you could actually see his face. Once we had done all the bad shots, we knew that we had to move on to solo shots and filler shots. We first got shots of the guitarists close up on the strings and then from down the neck of the guitar. This allowed us to get both of the guitarists hands in the shot playing the actual notes of the song and it looked really good when we adjusted the lighting to make it look low key. After the close ups we got mid shots of the guitarists from high angles and low angles to give us a bit of variaty in our final production. When we moved on to the drummer we had research drum solo's on youtube and looked at the camera angles that were used whilst they were playing. The most common one was a high angle from the corner of room. Doing this was tricky due to the limited amount of space we had in the corner of the room. Despite the limited space we actually got good shots of Rob drumming, however on those shots you can't see the full drum kit but fortunately for us he doesn't need that part of the kit during the solo he performs. Tom then came up with a great shot which he had seen been used in the 'Skyway Avenue' video by 'We the kings'. This was the one where tom zooms in and out of Rob playing the drums but mainly clapping the hi hat. This was another low angle shot that we got with great movement. We realised that we would be using the 'We the kings' video for a lot of inspiration for our performance so we researched it and analysised it heavily before going out to film the second time round, and it payed off. The final bits we had to film was the filler shots. Of this we basically got people tapping their feet, band members looking around, jumping and playing their instuments. One of the shots we got which looked really good was the one of Rob tapping his bass drum with the camera side on. Although we didn't film for long we knew this was going to be a great shot to add somewhere in our final production.

Idea for one of our DigiPak's

This was one of my ideas for the DigiPak. After looking at the Avenged Sevenfold digipak and seeing that they were animated characters, i thought that it would be worth a shot if i tried to create something like that. I was looking around on different programmes i could use to create this and found a couple online that would allow you to create your own avatars. I got each individual actor we used and dressed them according to what they were wearing the day of filming. After that it tried to include some intertextuality and binary oppositions using the props each character has. The one on the left has a halo representing innocence whilst the beer in his hand represents drugs and the background behind him represents crime. I tried using intertextuality by using the props on the next two guitarists. The middle-left one is wearing a top hat, much like the gutarist Slash from the band Guns N' Roses. The next avatar to the right has devil horns and a tail, this represents the guys from ACDC as they have one of them dressed as a devil on the album cover 'Highway To Hell'. The last avatar on the right has simply his drum sticks in the way most punk bands have their instuments out like on the album covers of Blink 182 'The Mark, Tom and Travis show' and Bowling for soup's album 'Rock On Honorable Ones!!' The background idea came from a conversation Tom and I had about what we could do for our DigiPak and thought of the idea of a mugshot. Unfortunately this seemed to be a tricky task to pull off so i thought that instead of waste that idea that i could include the background on to this picture. We got this idea by looking at CD covers such as Busted's album 'Busted'. After creating each individual charachter and chosing the right background, I had to combine all the pictures together to get the final product. I did this using simple programmes such as 'Paint' and 'Microsoft Word' to layer them on top of each other to create the final product. I did this by cropping each image on paint and copying them over to microsoft word so i could format the picture and make the background transparent enabling me to successfully layer them on top of each other. I then had to resize each individual avatar to make it look more realistic by having us at different hights. Then finally after correctly getting each avatar inline witheach other and resizing each one, i was then able to layer and save my final version of the DigiPak. This DigiPak i created could be used for the inside cover of the booklet. This image could be spread out over the 3 pages of the booklet.

Filming - Performance (1/2)

The first time we actually filmed performance, i thought it went better than expected. Although for most of it we were still figuring out where things should go and the where the lighting should be, we got some really good shots. As we didn't have a lot of time to film that night we couldn't review any of the shots whilst we were there. This meant that we had to count on patricks camera work to make sure the shots looked good. Me, Tom and Patrick then came to a decision that we should do shots with and without all the lighting just so we can compare the two and see which one looks better on the computer. We first did it with all the lighting but there was only one problem with that, the light was too bright on my face. We then tried it without all the light and that made the performers look better individually but the lighting on the setting was too low key. After uploading it on to the mac, we got people's opinions on which they think looked better. Ultimately the shots with all the light used won the vote. Fortunately on the day, we had done most of the filming with all the lights so we didn't have to re-film anything. We had filmed a lot of close ups, high angles and mid shots. We had full band shots, and a lot of individual shots of each person playing their instrument. We knew we had to get some movement in our shots so Patrick started to walk round the garage with the camera getting different styles of shots of each person as we played the song over and over again. He got some good footage which we are using in our final production. When we came to look at the image we all realised that there was too much movement going on from the actors. We realised that in comparrison to other videos, you don't see as much movement as we first thought. We came to the agreement that next time we filmed, I would have to be always facing the front, holding the microphone lower and not as much jumping, and the two guitarists would have to try and face the front rather than go in to the center and face/dance with each other. We didn't get a lot done in this first session of performance in terms of filming and what we could use, but we did get a lot done in the way of preparing for our next session. We were limited in the amount of time we had as Patrick had work, but as we were using his garage we had to end the day early. We only filmed about 15 minutes of performance this day as each one of us had to do other tasks as well. Patrick and the other band members (Gareth and Rob), helped Patrick fix all the equipment and organise the garage to look like this urban, underground location where our band would practice. Whilst they were doing that, Tom and I were collecting all the different lighting that Tom's dad was supplying us and Tom's applifiers for the guitars to make the scenery look more realistic. The only thing i could say that i wish we did differently was go down a bit earlier to have more time to film but even that was out of our hands because we needed the natural lighting to be dark. Overall i think this first day of filming the performance was highly successful as we found out exactly what lighting we needed and where everything and everyone should be. This then gave us an exact idea of what we needed to do when we came here again so that we could plow through without any interuptions.

Filming - Walking home

The Walking home scene was the first bit of filming that we did for our final project. This was because we were filming close to christmas and the town's lights were being switched on in a matter of days and as we needed the high street, so we had to get it out of the way. For this bit of filming it was Tom and I that went out to film with our other main character (Nikki). Tom drove us up two up to the pub where we started filming. After doing a couple of shots we realised we were goig to have a few problems. We were filming on a Thursday night so we thought it wouldn't be that busy outside the pub, it was. This was a major problem as our Walking Home scene is meant to be set around 1 AM so there wouldn't be many people or cars about. The other problem that we came across was the lighting. We had very limited ways of how we could change the lighting. We had could use torches and lamps but we figured that they wouldn't be powerful enough to make a difference, also we only had Tom from the group meaning that he would of had to do the lighting and camera work. In the end Tom changed a couple of settings around to turn the camera to Night Mode making a massive improvement on what we had before. The only problem with this was in some parts of the High street it was too light or too dark so we had to keep switching the settings back and forth. The next couple of shots were us walking through the high street (turning the corner and kebab shots). We didn't have too much trouble filming this but obviously there were people and cars again meaning we had to wait a while before we could actually do a couple of shots. We wanted to get the iconic kebab shot in as that pretty much sums up a night out on the town (the image we wanted to create). Unfortunatly none of us had any money on us so we couldn't film us buying/eating a kebab so we had another idea. I went in to the kebab shop and explained to them that we were filming for our media A level and we needed their assistance, I then asked if we could have one of them throwing me out of the kebab shop or shutting the door behind me to make it look as if I had been in there causing trouble. One of the employee's seemed to like the idea but unfortunately the boss wasn't going to allow it. This meant we had to get a shot of Nikki and I simply walking past the kebab shop. The next shot that we planned to film was an extreme long shot of me and Nikki gradually walking closer to the camera down a rediculously long lane. On the way we would be skipping, falling over, laughing, hugging and anything else stereotypically drunk people do. This bit of filming was a mjor problem. First of all we had a football team do their fitness training down this path so we had to wait for them to finish, we then had 2 couples walking down the path as we were filming, then cats walking past and generally anything else you can think of came down this path.This meant going back and forth a lot of the time, we then ended up giving up so we went from half way. We are nbow going to do this in a stop motion kind of style as mid way through our walk we heard someone else coming so we had to semi jog to stop them from interfearing with our shot. The last couple of shots we got on this night were in the park. We had me and Nikki holding hands on a swing, hugging on a bench and the classic spin around looking in to each others eyes shot. The main issues with all of these was the lighting. In a park, with only one other person there turned out to be quite a tricky task to sort out the lighting. In the end we just hoped that the camera's night mode would be enough. After looking back on the clips we saw that we could use the swing shots as they were quite clear, and we could use half of the spinning around shots (where the background was light) but unfortunately unless we can edit the bench shot, we may not be able to use it due to the poor lighting. The final shot  we did was the kissing shot. This won't actually be the shot we use as we need to edit it and slow it down for it to actually fit in to our video the way we want it to. From this experience we learnt that you really do need extra lighting to get all shots exactly the way you want, we also learnt that  we needed to time our filming better so, if we messed up, we could go and re-film and a later date. However i thought that apart from the lighting on some shots that most of the recording we have are very successful.

Avenged Sevenfold DigiPak (taking ideas)

The last blog i did was about the 'Avenged sevenfold' DigiPack. After analyising it i thought to look through it and see what our group could take from it. In the booklet i saw that band had animated pictures of themselves which set up one of my first ideas of having pictures of our animated (maybe using the southpark engine). Layout of the inside CD cover also interested me as it's the band logo printed alll across the 3 folded pages. This gave me the idea of having a band member doing something obscure across each of the pages. And last but not least the CD's. The CD's have relevent images to the band name and album name on it.  I'm not entirely sure of what we could print on the CD's but patrick liked the idea of a band photo, So far that's what we're aiming to do untill someone can come up with alternate ideas. With countless bands doing something along this line we would have to make it different somehow, after a couple of discussions we thought we could have an idea of 3 of the members acting seriously but with the final member doing something different. These ideas aren't set in stone but this is what we will be working towards untill maybe one of us comes up with another suggestion.

180° rule

During any filming process, the 180° rule is a guideline that states 2 characters/objects should always be on the same side of the screen. In order to do this, there is an imaginary line that the camera should never cross. If the camera does cross the axis then its called 'crossing the line'. A new shot from the opposite side of the line is called a 'reverse angle'.

Using this picture as an example, I can explain the rule visually. The camera is placed on the green side of the image. This means the orange man is facing right, and the blue guy is facing left. Now for the duration of this shot the camera should never cross the dotted line and enter the red section. If this happened then as you can see on the picture, it would appear to switch the two around making the blue man face right, and the orange man face left. This would be the reverse angle. If this happened it would disorientate the viewer and break the flow of the scene.

An example where the 180° rule has come in to play is the 1925 Drama, 'The Big Parade'. In a few scenes leading up to the big battle, the American troops are shown marching from left to right and the Germans are shown marching from right to left. However, after the battle when all the troops are staggering back home, the Americans are staggering home right to left whilst the Germans are going left to right. As you can imagine, this would cause confusion for the audience as the troops appear to be going home, in the opposite direction from where they first came. This is all because the camera crossed the line and it became a reverse angle.

Our Media group had come across this problem before in the thriller we made. Without realising we accidentally crossed the line by an inch or two. Luckily for us this wasn't a major issue as the shot didn't last long and as it wasn't too far in to the reverse angle, it wasn't all that noticable. We were worried as we were doing a running scene at that point so we didn't want it to appear he was running from right to left, and then in one shot, left to right. As the shot wasn't to far in to the reverse angle and it was a high angle, you really didn't notice it unless it was point out to you. Although we got away with it the first time round, we learnt that we have to take extra care and plan out all shots down to the exact detail as this time we might not get as lucky with our shot.

Avenged Sevenfold DigiPak

The 'Avenged Sevenfold' DigiPak mostly contains art work. This is  the front cover to the CD, and then the 3 folded sections layed out.. As you can see, It shows these skeleton characters (each one representing a band member) on an abandoned boat, with a city and boat burning in the background. It makes you think that these skeletons are some sort of pirates that have have caused hell and upset for other people. This artwork representaion relates a lot to the songs that have been put in this album.

This is the inside of the layed out CD, as you can see they have
their band logo in the middle section with the 2 CD's either side. On the left hand side you have the actual album 'Diamonds in the Rough', and on the right you have a live performance of that album. This feature only comes in the digi pack. Behind the center section, there is a book filled with art work and thanks, this is also included with the DigiPak.

 

This is the artwork that comes in the booklet. This artwork shown are drawn pictures of the band, to make them look deceased/mosterous. They show each band member and on a couple of them the have information on the band, or credits on who helped them make the video and album. You can once again see that their look relates to the songs that have been put on the album. The DigiPak creates a feeling that this album is dark and heavy which is exactly what the album is. It's esssentially giving you and idea of what to expect when listening to the songs.

 These are other pictures that have been included in the art work. They are images of live performances, and past album artwork but slightly changed. These kind of images have been used by the band in every album they make. They like to include skeleton character in their work. On this particular picture they have the skeleton looking through a monical, at a diamond. This relates to the title 'Diamonds in the Rough' and has been used as the main image for this album. The live perfomance pictures gives something for the fans to remember. They take iconic moments from one of their Gigs (these from the DVD) and put them in an animated/hand drawn style for the fans to relate to.


This page in the DigiPak includes all credits, special thanks and other information. This tells you all you need to know about the artwork, song wirters, record label etc. This page was put in at the back just to give everyone regognition. This page is at the end of the booklet, the artwork on this page shows an empty room with musical instumentsand litter over the floor. To me it looks like a room at the end of the gig (which is why it's at the end of the book). I think this shows that all the art work has a meaning behind it.

Lilly Allen and the use of Social Networking.

Digital Package - CD Cover Analysis (Kiss)

Kiss

Destroyer

The album ‘Destroyer’ has unique but fitting art work to the style of the band. In this image they have chosen to be animated to get across a marvel comic book super hero theme relating to their characteristic costumes. They have chosen this particular pose on top of a hill in the sky to show that they are on top of the world and in control. This is because their lifestyle consists of having sex, being in a rock band and having everyone love you (the ultimate lifestyle a stereotypical man can get).

Creatures of the Night

‘Creatures of the night’ this album cover shows the band members in 3 colours, blue, black, and white. All the colours are dark relating to the title ‘Creatures of the Night’. They are also made to look like creatures with their eyes. They’ve been given cats eyes in this picture along with their face paint to make them look like mysterious animals. The mysteriousness of the artwork can also be related back to the costumes they wear. The superhero, masked man costumes comes across mysterious to the audience.

Both of these cover art relate directly to the band itself. This isn't what we will be doing for ours. As the idea of our band is based around a couple of friends who aren't big, popular, or have a lot of money so the album art work will probably be a picture of the band or something in the pop art style. We will do this as we can't really relate to the band in the ways 'Kiss' can because no-one knows who our band is as this would be the first album we (the band) have produced.

Narrative Theories

Foo Fighers - Long Road To Ruin

Todorov’s Theory

¨Equilibrium – The normality in this video is when the doctor doesn’t have the girl (the prize) that he’s after. At the beginning when he’s trying to save the boy he’s trying to get the girl but fails when he tries to kiss her.

¨Disequilibrium – Half way through the video the doctor gets the girl and it shows you clips of what they’ve done together stating that they are now a couple.

¨New Equilibrium – The new equilibrium is when the doctor loses the girl and she runs off away from him when he’s preforming at a gig. The doctor tries to chase after her in a car but end up driving himself off a cliff as he knows he won’t get her back.

¨

The normality in this video is the doctor and woman being apart where as the disequilibrium is when they are together. This isn’t a common theme in most music videos but the foo fighters chose to do it despite that.

¨

Propp

Doctor/Singer – (Hero,)tries to save the child and wants the girl. This puts him in the ‘hero’ role.

¨Woman – (princess or prize) This is who all the men are fighting over, but what our hero (the doctor) wants most of all

¨Blonde doctor assistant - (The false hero) I thought he was the false hero as that's the description the character best fit. At the beginning of the video you see him as a womaniser which gives off the impression he’s after most girls and could be after this girl, but in the end it turns out she wants the main doctor.

¨Injured child – (villain) This was the only role I could put for him as during this music video he doesn't like the idea of the doctor and his mum getting together so he then throws darts at the doctors/singers record.

¨Man in red – (villain) Threw out this music video he harasses the woman at the beginning and then proceeds to throw darts at the doctors/singers record. This because he wants the girl but can’t get her.

Levi Strauss & binary oppositions

¨The only binary opposition I see throughout this video is Good vs. Bad. When the doctor is saving the little boys life on a couple of occasions he was wearing white, this is when the woman is interested in him and pays most attention to him. This is his good side, saving lives and getting the woman. However when the doctor/singer is wearing dark colours he is singing at his gig in the mall and driving. This is the bad/evil part of him because he dances and sings with another girl up on stage, his ‘prize’ girl that he likes see’s him and runs away from him not wanting anything to do with him. Also when he drives off the cliff and dies on his pursuit to find the woman he is wearing black. When he dies he is wearing black, relating death with the colour, and when he saves the little boy’s life, he is wearing life. Its all about Good (life) vs. Evil (death)

Star Image.

For star image I’ll be looking at the band '30 Seconds to Mars' and 'Lordi'. I’ll be comparing the music videos and ‘This is War’ and 'Blood Red Sandman'. I will be comparing the both videos in relation to who gets most screen time in videos and why.

‘This is War’ is a video about Jared Leto as a soldier in war. He is the main actor in the music video, there are others acting as other soldiers but the focus isn’t put on them. Jared Leto is a former actor and model so it’s no surprise the screen time goes in his favour. They take advantage of Jared Leto’s sex appeal by using a lot of close ups of Jared Leto in action. They show him in clips shooting as what we presume are terrorists. By showing the bravery and manhood of Jared they are enticing the younger female audience to purchase/watch the video. During this video Jared gets about 30% of screen time, which is a great amount of time. With the good looks and acting skills Leto posses due to his past careers, they producer of the video felt no need to hire a lot of actors to play the roles that Leto could.

‘Blood Red Sandman’ is done by the band 'Lordi'. The screen time is shared between all the band members but not because of the same reasons '30 Seconds to Mars' had. 'Lordi' are guys dressed up in monstrous suits much like the band 'Slipknot'. In the video 'Blood Red Sandman', the meta narrative is about a girl stuck in this haunted house and there are monsters trying to kill her. In this case the Monsters are the band. The band are shown about 45% of the time due to them in the performance aspect and all members acting as main characters in the video. The time split between the monsters is fairly equal to show all the monsters. They have done this because as each band member is essentially a character, the fans will naturally pick a favorite character (band member). This way by showing all in the music video, it keeps everyone happy. The song 'Blood Red Sandman' is about supposedly the greatest demon/monster that there has been and he's being summoned or is coming back from somewhere once again to murder/haunt earth. By having all the band members in this video it could fit in with the lyrics that these demons (the band/followers of the 'blood red sandman'), are haunting this girl and bringing back the message that the 'blood red sandman' is coming back. Therefore by having all band members it shows the greatness of this demon they're singing about. 

A video in comparison.

We the Kings – Skyway Avenue

I decided to research some music videos that could maybe give us an idea for what to do in ours. After a couple of hours of research we found the song ‘1985’ by the band ‘Bowling for Soup’ helpful to some extent. Through out the majority of the video the camera is focused on the band members playing in the garage. This gave us some ideas for angles to use and where to place the camera, but unfortunately the lighting and costume that they used in this video did not fit the Meta narrative that we wanted to create. The lighting was too bright and they used Intertextuality in the costume area. The band dressed up as lots of different acts like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Manson. In our video we want to go for the Indie look so we won’t be using the costume ideas or the lighting as we need that to be low-key. So despite not getting everything we wanted from this music video we did at least see some good camera shots and angles in this video.

The next video I saw was a song called ‘Skyway Avenue’ by a band called ‘We the Kings’. This video and band were exactly what we were looking for. The basic story line is a boy calls a girl from the previous night (we presume he met her at some sort of club), he then goes on a date with her with her not thinking it going to work out and him really eager to see this girl. Towards the end of the video their points of view switch as he doesn’t want to be a rebound for this girl and she begins to really like him. At the end they walk away happy together. Now although this isn’t the story line that we’re looking to create, it is a long the line of a teenage hook up. The actors are very similar to what we’re looking for as well. Only one main guy and one main girl. Through out the video there are a couple of friends that you briefly see but they don’t play a major role. These are the roles that we are looking to fulfill in our video.

Not only is the story line somewhat similar, but also the performance aspect is exactly what we are trying to recreate. The performance is based in a garage with low-key lighting. The garage has old bits of cars and basic junk surrounding the band members either on the floor, or on the wall. This is what we will be trying to do to make it look as if the band hasn’t made it; they’re not big and are willing to practice anywhere to fulfill their love of music. The camera angles used are what we want to use as well. In the performance aspect the camera is mainly held at a high angle looking down on the band from the front. I like this view because you get the entire band in the shot but obviously the lead singer at the front will be the focus of the shot. This allows him/her to go up closer to the camera or step back a little to show emotion about what he’s singing about. With this camera angle you can also see if the singer is jumping or swaying, these actions will reflect the pace and tempo of the song. The lighting will be low-key in our video, much like the one in the ‘Skyway Avenue’ video. We chose to use this lighting because it represents the fact the band is out of the lime light and are undiscovered in the music world.

The costumes used in the acting part of the video could be used in ours. I like the casual look that is used with just jeans and a t-shirt, but if we are using our lead singer as an actor we may have to go back to the indie look once again. As we want to create the look of the ‘not so popular’ group of people, we would prefer to go back to the indie look as we want to give off the impression that the band are trying to fit in with others by the way they dress (the common indie look).

The plan is to use the indie look throughout the video. This is why the costumes ‘We the Kings’ used in the performance aspect of their video can’t be copied into ours. They went for the casual jeans and tight t-shirt throughout their video where as we want the indie look. The costumes we will want to use will be very similar to what ‘The Kooks’ use in the majority of their videos. Such as ‘Seaside’ and ‘She moves in her own way’.

Plan of music video