T4 - brainwashing the music scene?

Shooting Schedule

During our lesson time at school Ms Barton our teacher for the Production part of the course allowed us to film which was extremely useful considering we have two, two hour slots with her which meant that we had the potential to film for four hours a fortnight. As a group we grabbed this opportunity by the horns and went out for two hours just to find the locations in the city. We also went out twice to film during these lessons. However this was not enough because we have several different locations so we decided to go out after school on random dates to film. So we ended up filming.

• 11.20am - 1.20pm on Mondays during our lessons.
• 4.00pm - as long as it takes monday, tuesday and occasionally wednesday evenings

By filming at the beginning of the week this enables us to edit our existing footage and identify early on whether their are any shots that could be improved or if some footage is just not good enough.

Before half term (26th October - 2nd November) we filmed a lot of footage on Friday 25th October, it was because of this that as a group we decided to push on with the editing and shooting throughout the holiday, so I inivited them both round on Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th October. We had previously decided to edit our video using software that Tamas had () on his laptop instead of using the less advanced programme on the school computers, this enabled us to edit at my house over the holidays. We also shot a lot more footage in the village where I live on the 27th, to create an interesting mise-en-scene of the vibrant city life next to the river juxtaposed with the bleak, silence of Mulbarton graveyard.

The initial raw footage that we have filmed down Elm Hill has not turned out very well as we didnt film enough close-ups and extreme close ups which is hard to achieve when filming someone walking across cobbles. It is for these reasons that we have decided to refilm and not use much of this first shoots footage.

We have also had to film some extra dream/memory footage which we are going to film at Cringleford park on 9th November. this footage shouldnt take too long as we intend to just use the swings to get closeups and high angle shots etc.
Update: Unfortunately when we got to the park the swings had been removed a few days before hand and we had to improvise using the Carousel. However this footage has turned out really nice and is better than it would have been if we had used swings.

Parka - 'Disco Dancer'

I recently bought a Creative Zen music player and on it came this music video by Parka. They are an 'indie' band as it says on their MySpace page, and I am putting this on my blog merely for the fact that their video has amazing utilisation of balloons.

The video although a little long and tedious has shown me that narrative is not neccessarily needed within a music video however an added dynamic is needed like here the balloons are used. On the other hand this video would benefit from more dynamics instead of just the balloons which by the end the novelty has gone. So in music videos without a narrative, like this one, more than one interesting dynamic perhaps different coloured lighting or more special effects and a larger variety of shots is definitely warranted to grab and keep the audiences attention.

New York Fund 'The Guns of Camden Town'

Whilst looking up some live footage of The New York Fund I ran across this video for their song The Guns of Camden Town. Previously I had not realised that they had any music videos to their songs and suddenly thought that they might be signed however after watching it you can tell that it is an amateur video. It is extremely long with no narrative but random short references to musical instruments and old looking lamps. The editing is really good; fitting in with the beat of the music especially at the start where the lights are switched on and dimmed and the foot is stamping.

This is of stark contrast to our proposed music video because we have a large narrative that runs throughout with no shots of the band playing. However our song has greater potential for visual images because of the lyrics whereas this one doesn't.

Audience Research

Before we started actually researching our target audience, we decided to make an estimate as a group based on stereotypes and the genre of our music video. Here is the result:


This was a little bit of fun really: we decided that due to the fashions at this time which are popular our target audience would be predominantly 16-25 years old 'indie kids' which the Find Your Tribe website defines as:

"There's nothing like the twang of a guitar to get your converse tapping. Indie Kids are part of a mass - whether that means swaying with their friends at a gig, commenting on Drowned in Sound's message board or trawling through band profiles on My Space for the next exciting sound. It's amazing what can still be done with a guitar, you know."

Although obviously this is only a hypothesis and will only be proved until after our questionnaires have been handed out.

Audience Research

View more presentations from hblyth.

Here is another target audience profile just as the one before but created after the research was carried out:

Similar Bands and their Digipak Covers

I have had a look at several different digipak covers for different bands and have decided that the majority of the time for genres like ours of indie/rock the digipak covers will not relate to anything on the album or will use shots from one of the tracks music video or imagery from one lyric or will use/create a band identity so that they are easily recognisable.

A great example of a digipak not relating to anything is this one by the rumble strips. However the images presented are how the band want to be viewed; with the stained vest showing his chest coupled with the scary sharp toothed dog creates a 'tough guy' image. Which fits in with their video 'Not the Only Person' (shown below)


In this video the main protagonist defeats a large amount of thugs with a magical woman who emerges from his chest so the tough image fits in thus creating an identity for the band as young tough and experimental.

This Razorlight cover from what I can tell has little or nothing to do with any of their music videos, but instead is a collage of random everyday items like keys and memories. This could fit in with the title 'Up All Night' as this could be the memories or it could represent the chaos caused by being up all night. The title of the album tend to be the debut song/video and in this case it is. The picture of the lead singer in the television screen is a good way to advertise the band through the primary figure who everyone will recognise.

This album cover by The Rakes is very interesting it took me 10 minutes to figure out that what appears to be random shapes actually reads as 'Klang' which is the German word for sound. This album does not have any pictures of the artist on it but it has created a band image (as you can see below) that can be repeated effectively using different forms and colours. This does show the fact that parallel lines and block colours are very popular in the fashion of album covers at the moment.

This is why I think that using block colour imagery on my album cover will appeal to the modern consumer market.

I love this album cover as it uses patterns within patterns which also fits in with the title of 'Perfect Symmetry' and follows the fashion of straight lines and block colours. The inventiveness of the design including triangles of facial features made out of what seems to be a collage adds an extra dimesion to the pattern and makes the cover more interesting. The font is also really interesting and has a russian hint with an original shaped E.

Overall looking at these digipak covers has given me some ideas of what to use in me own digipak production:

• Block colour
• Russian text
• Named after the debut song
• A colour pattern/style

Inspirational media for music video

This is an extremely famous piece of art by Edvard Munch called 'The Scream' it is so famous that he actually made several. We have the concept of being haunted by past relationships in our music video, but we have left it ambiguous within the video as we do not clarify whether the male protagonist is dead or is just a memory that is possessing the female through grief. The main message that we get across is that she has lost him in one way or another. We were inspired by this artwork because of the look of despair on the wasted face of the character on the bridge epitomising our female protagonists thoughts and feelings which fits in with the lyrics "I hear my devil start to sing", showing the torment caused by their inner demons. On top of this the dark background meeting the sunset juxtaposes the nightmare with romance which is a predominant theme of our video. Lastly the vanishing point disappears into the side of the picture which signifies the never ending journey of our character's plight to find their lover.

This is another work by the artist Edvard Munch, and is called 'The Madonna'. It has influenced our video with the sensual fantasy element of the picture. The female's alluring and inviting posture also bears a mysterious, dangerous air with the dark swirling background adding to this feeling of intimidation and dream like state. Within our music video we are trying to create a dream like state of fantasy about the female or male to signify their love lost. On top of this we want the characters love to seem pure just like the name Madonna which signifies the Virgin Mary and the narrow dark band around her head furthers this. However there is very little holiness around this image and we believe that is exactly like our video with the innocence of the characters love juxtaposed with their inner demons.



This Scene from American Beauty was also of great inspiration to us as it is another sensual fantasy scene. The protagonist (played by Kevin Spacey) describes his feelings in an internal monologue during this scene and says:

“It’s the weirdest thing. I feel like I have been in a coma for twenty years and
I am just now waking up... Spectacular”

This feeling of a dream like state is what we are trying to convey within our video with our fantasy scenes. The film has lots of dream fantasy scenes but this fantasy scene is particularly clever because the way in which it takes place on the ceiling which shows that it is not quite reality, it also enables the falling of rose petals on to the bed signifying lust and passion. Dream scenes will be great for our video because then we can vary our choices of locations, also it shows the love that still belongs between the couple although they are no longer together. These are examples of the use of the male gaze within media to portray women, in what some audiences would argue is a negative light, however we are not intending to have sexual dream scenes because we understand that they would alienate a proportion of our audience, but we are going to include innocent dream scenes, that mirror memories of the time they spent together as a couple.




The video above also influenced us; it is the first dream scene in American Beauty. We would love to do a dream scene where the background is dark and the female is lit by a spotlight; using this chiaroscuro lighting encompasses the dark side of the fantasy where she is not actually real and the other alluring side.



This is The Rumble Strips video Not The Only Person which influenced our walking scenes because in this video the walking leads us through the journeying narrative to the penultimate scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjPrdTNxQ0

This is a link to Coldplay's video for their song The Scientist which has influenced the beginning of our music video greatly as you can tell by playing the video backwards adds interest and an extra focus point is added to an otherwise bland beginning to this video. However we have decided to not use lip-sinked lyrics during these shots because to learn to sing the song backwards is labour intensive and takes too long, so we do not intend to have Tamas lip sinking to the music whilst walking backward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMHGgnlXfSA

I was trawling through some older music videos the other day to see if there was a great deal of different between then and now and i stumbled across this video by Celine Dion which has the same sort of narrative and has some of the same shots as what we have already used. This Just goes to show that nothing is ever really unique.

Similar bands and their videos.

Razorlight


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wegOJS02znY

'Wire to Wire'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yez3C6EtMOI

'Before I Fall to Pieces'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L44-2sZ1RU

'I Can't Stop This Feeling I've Got'

The Rumble Strips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV5zq0eb1R4

'Alarm Clock'

Kings of Leon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhhcKxflMY

'Sex on Fire'