Digipak Drafts

These are my first ideas for our digipak. Both of these designs will have the band featured on the front, however we are more keen to have a photograph for the front of the album which tells a story about the band, and they can be seen inside the album.

I like the idea of both of these fonts for the main font used throughout our digipak and website. The first one is more simple which represents the band more than a fancy font as the band are laidback lads.

Weather Check

We didn't need to do a weather check for Monday when we were filming in the warehouse as we would be inside filming the whole time. 
Below is a weather check for London for Saturday 17th.

Although it will be raining, we think that this is fine as we will use the raincoat for the camera and we will make sure that we wear coats and bring umbrellas for ourselves and the actors!

This is the weather for each hour throughout the day of filming:

Storyboard Animatic

This is our animatic for our storyboard. This shows in still shots which shot will go with what part of the music at which time giving us a small insight into how our final video will look.

Test Shots

These are our test shots of our actors, which also explains why we chose for them to be in our music video.

Overall, all of our actors are organised and reliable people meaning we can guarantee they will turn up to our shoot.

Location Recces

This is a prezi which I created to show some photos of the locations we will be filming in.

Assets List

This is a short video which shows all of the things we need to use on our shoots. Including equipment, props and costumes.

Permissions To Use Location

This is the message I sent to the company director of Darenth Print asking if we could use their warehouse to film our performance shots in. It was important to do this so that we know it is definitely fine for us to shoot here and we know that we are welcome on the location.

We then received a message back granting us the permission to shoot in this location.

Shot List

This is our shot list. It consists of 106 shots. This is because we have a strong narrative over performance and therefore want to most definitely portray this in our final music video. If we didn't have a variety of shots we wouldn't have enough narrative footage. This is why we have quite a lot of shots in our list.

Production Schedule

This is our production schedule for Monday 12th November 2012 when we are filming in Darenth Print Warehouse:

This is our production schedule for Saturday 17th November 2012 when we are filming in London:

By creating these schedules it means that when filming we will know exactly what to shoot at what time and we can get it done without any delays. If we get at all stuck we can refer to this throughout our shoot.

Visual Style and Digipak Ideas Moodboard

The visual style for our music video will not be too colourful, it will be fairly stark with beiges and browns, also some grey at night time, The lighting will be very bright and pictoral and will be out of focus so it looks smudged; with whites, yellows and oranges. There will not be many overlays as the shots will be quite fast paced so they won't be as smooth. There will be blurs especially in the darker night scenes. Close ups will show the background out of focus. The theme shows open empty spaces, so the shots will very spaced out.

This style will stretch across all 3 media platforms - music video, website, digipak.

This moodboard shows our influences of how our digipak will look, including the poses in which they are standing in and how they are positioned on the front. It also shows the costumes which our actors will wearing. Plus, it shows what type of make up our actors will have on such as eye liner and smooth foundation or powder to make them seem and look hyper real.

Digipak Analysis

This is my analysis of 2 different band's albums.

Institutions, Marketing and Campaign Strategy

I have created a video which shows what I have researched about the institutions, marketing and campign strategies bands and artists and thier production companies use to make people aware of them and to make a profit. I have also thought about ways in which we can market our own band.

Target Audience/Fans

The Reservoirs were very popular in the area that they live in, which is Southampton. They would play gigs every weekend in pubs and clubs to raise awareness of their band and also to get more fans. They would also play gigs outside of this area as this way their popularity would increase in not only where they live. A lot of the videos of them playing are on YouTube, and they have many views, likes and comments on their performances. Here are some examples:

This shows that one of their videos on YouTube has 418 views, proving them to be quite popular.

Here they have 935 views, which is a lot more, meaning that people have been watching the videos of their gigs. They also have 8 likes.

Here they have 660 views again proving they have a lot of fans, and also 6 likes.

The band also have a MySpace page, which tells fans what genre of music they are, where they are from, how many profile views they have had, and whether they are unsigned or not; which in this case they are.

Here shows all of the general information shown on their MySpace  page. It also shows the profile views. Many people have viewed their profile!

This is their actual profile, showing one of their album covers.

This shows how many friends they have on MySpace, which is quite a lot!

The band also have 179 comments on their page, proving the fans were constantly writing to and about them.

This is a screen shot of the band's facebook page. They only have 19 likes as they didn't use it much, and their MySpace page shows their true potential.

Lyrics Analysis/Timecode

These are the lyrics of our song Strangers. I have analysed what I think the lyrics mean in relation to our concept. By doing this is it will definitely help us to develop our ideas for the music video.

This is our timecode which represents which shot will at what point in the song. We used seconds to show where the particular shots will be so that we have a clear idea for the anamatic and when we construct our final music video. 

Final Idea Brainstorm

The song we have chosen to use is Strangers Are Harder To See In The Dark.
This is a brainstorm which I created after carefully listening to this song, and interpreting what I think the meaning is behind it, the description of just the music and the key lyrics.

This is another brainstorm whilst I again listened to the song. I researched some films, and used them as intertextual references for me to think of ideas for the setting, costumes and characters, narrative and visual style.

Ideas From Other Students

I asked 3 different people to listen to our chosen track - Strangers Are Harder To See In The Dark, to give us some feedback on what their interpretation of the music was. Also to give any possible ideas which we could use.

These notes were from Joe, I like his idea that the soft vocals contrast against the heavy rock backing.

This was a short basic story line written by Adam, to give us another idea about what he thought the music portrayed.

These notes were from Abbie, she gave us a few words and ideas.

















After receiving this feedback we were able to take others' ideas into account, and possibly incorporate them into our idea. It was definitely a helpful task.

Genre Of Our Band

The genre of our band is Alternative Rock, and this genre has typical expectations:

Alternative: Sensitivity, Artistic Expression, Uniqueness
Rock: Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll

All of these genre conventions fit in with the music, and we can relate our video to them also. We can use these to create an image for the video.

This is a collage which represents the alternative rock/indie genre.

First 3 Initial Ideas

Here are my first 3 ideas for our music video. I have chosen 3 different songs and listened to them very carefully to come up with my first lot of ideas.

1. Strangers Are Harder To See In The Dark
As this song is very upbeat there will be a lot of fast paced shots. There will be a guy in London or somewhere on the street busking, with a guitar or instrument. When the singing first starts it will be a close up shot of his face. He will be selling things to try and get money from the public, he hasn't has a great life and has ended playing and selling things on the streets, but he comes across as quite dodgy and people try to avoid him before they know what a nice person he is.
There is a certain girl who walks past him every day to and from work, who he is very keen on, and a shot which shows this will link in with the lyrics 'he's got his eyes set on you'. Where they say strangers are harder to see in the dark my idea is that this girl never notices him at all, as he is dressed in dark clothing and is always in the corner or on the side of somewhere. He is metaphorically in the dark as he is a stranger to her. One day he tries to follow her home, but feels it a bad idea, so he turns back around to spot another man like himself stealing his guitar and running off with it.
Throughout the instrumental of the song there is a long chase. He doesn't catch up so he slumps on the floor and picks up an old can of beer on the pavement and takes a swig, creating the relationship with the lyrics 'sitting in a bar and minding your own, chilling out sipping your Stella' this is his equivalent.
In the morning he then spots the man with his guitar up against a wall smoking, the girl walks past him and he touches her. The guy then gets up, runs after them, stops and looks at her, looks back at him but he's gone, then is hit around the head with his guitar by the man. The girl then turns around and finally notices him.
Throughout this song there will be elements of performance with shots of the actual band performing, all fresh and clean, the complete opposite of the character in the story.

2. Happy As Can Be
For this track I imagine a girl to have just broken up with her boyfriend, but he is still madly in love with her. There will be shots to fit in time with rhythm of the music, of their memories together, and of him playing his guitar as I think of the character as the artist. There are also shots showing her 'as happy as can be' this would be the connection with the lyrics and visuals. The boy is heartbroken and feels the only way to show his emotion is through his guitar and lyrics.
 
3. Behind My Back
This idea consists of the girl lying to her partner and not actually doing what she said she was going to do. She keeps ignoring him so he gets angry and begins to drink to get rid of his feelings, but the she comes back and doesn't like what he's been up to. Again she constantly lies to him and is seeing someone else but always comes back and blames it on him. There would be fast paced shots as it is upbeat. The louder parts of the song represent arguments and him getting angry and smashing things. Also a performance of him playing the guitar.

Our Band!

Beckie and I spent a small amount of time looking on websites such as MySpace and Unsigned.com trying to find artists or bands to use for our music video. We found a couple of fairly local bands from London and like their music.
But before we emailed them and ask permission to use one of their songs for our video, we decided to use a band that we already knew - The Reservoirs. They are unsigned and have an album with 9 songs on it - giving is plenty of choice when it comes to picking just 1 song to use for our final video. However, as the band are from Southampton, we will be using actors to play the characters.

The Album's songs:

1. Strangers Are Harder To See In The Dark
This song is extremely upbeat and the intro doesn't last long, meaning that the singing kicks in quite quickly. This could be great for creating a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals as it is possible to think of a range of ideas as the lyrics could create different meanings.

2. Happy As Can Be
This song goes at a medium pace, it is not very fast but it is upbeat, meaning it isn't boring and there are a different tones throughout it. Again the lyrics come in quite quickly, so that the the intro doesn't drag on for too long. This song could be considered as soothing and cheerful.

3. Charlie
The intro for this song finishes just over 2 minutes into the song meaning I don't think it would be as effective as the others where the singing starts straight away. It would be harder to think of ideas for a whole half of the song where there is no lyrics. The beat also doesn't start straight away, which wouldn't be great as I want my video to catch the audiences attention straight away. However this song is very upbeat.

4. Scars On My Mind
This song isn't so upbeat and sounds slightly angry and gloomy, which isn't the type of song I would like to use for my music video. There could be a lot of ideas created after listening to these lyrics however the tone is too similar throughout.

5. Wormwood
The beat in this song is quite fast, and the lyrics could be classed as interesting. Throughout the first verse the tone changes and then changes back after, meaning the song isn't all the same throughout. This would also be a great song to show that connection between music and visuals and also lyrics and visuals.

6. Lead's Another Life
This song is very happy and upbeat but the lyrics are quite cliche, and the ideas would be limited as to what we could base our video on. As it is very cheerful it would be a good song to use for our final video but it would be hard to create one based upon the lyrics, it would be a stereotypical love story narrative video, which is what we are trying avoid. We want our idea to be as original as possible.

7. Day 1-3
This song has a very interesting guitar solo at the beginning; a great way to introduce the song and the video, but the tone doesn't change throughout, and the guitar is the only thing to make it stand out. There wouldn't be much we could do to create the relationship between music and visuals.

8. Behind My Back
This song immediately catches my attention with its upbeat tone and extremely catchy lyrics. This song would give us an opportunity to think of a range of ideas of what we could do for our video. The guitar in this song is very effective also, along with the drum beat.

9. Its A Pity You're So Pretty
This song is the slowest out of them all and isn't very upbeat. The lyrics aren't very well thought out, and there wouldn't be many different things we could do for a video for this song. I will not be using this song because it is so slow and we want to use a fast catchy song.

Email To Copyright Holder

Before using a song, we must send an email to the copyright holder of the song and ask for permission to use it. This is the email we sent to Todd, who was a member of The Reservoirs.

This is the reply we received from Todd, giving us permission to use The Reservoirs song which we were most keen to use - Strangers.