Climbing Up The Walls:

Digipak example ideas.

After looking into the typical digipaks for our type of genre we went on to try to design our own ideas for what we wanted our digipak to look like. We started by thinking of a band name and deicided to go down the line of total or binary oppersites and ended up with 'Darwin in Eden' which is an intresting name as both the ideas or creationisum and evolution are possibly the two biggest conflicting ideas of all time.

We then desided to get the Album name and decided to go with 'ignorance' as if you belive one of these ideas you are often ignorant towords the other. For our Album art we decided to have blurred images of either people or trees once agin mirroring the idea of eden as both trees and people (man) are crutial to these.









These were some of the ideas that we came up using photoshop for examples of what we wanted our digipack front cover to look like.

Digipak codes and conventions

The first step that we took to planning our digipak was to look up the typical codes and conventions of the genre in order to look at examples of how different bands of a similar genere have layed out any of their digipak to give us directions of which way to go.

These are some of the example that we looked at in order to get an idea of how digipaks for this style of video are shot and therefore gave us ideas. One recuring theme that we picked up on while looking at these styles of digipak was that the frount cover was often obscure or unclear images which gave us a clear idea of where we were going.

Account of the Shoot Day; Narrative.

Our Narrative took place in a car park in Guildford. This was very useful as it was a location shot and so very little was needed to dress the set all we needed were 3-4 cars which were provided by myself, a cast member and two members of staff. Upon arriving at the car park we were directed to an appropriatally sized area that had been cleared so that we could use it.

The First thing that we did upon arrival was to remind cast members of their roles and figure out the best way in which the sequance should be shot in the space that we had been provided with. We desided the best way to go about filming this sequance was to shoot them in the order in which they occored so we started with pete callopsing and then went on to Connor noticeing then passers by stopping to help and finally the arrival of the ambulance and paramedic. We filmed each part of the sequance from several angles, so that we had alot of choice when it came to editing.

These are some of the angles that we shot from to get a large choice.

We shot the majority of the shots in this sequance in slow motion this added alot of drama to the peice however it did present us with issues as in order to maintain a high quality of shots we had a six second time limit for any shot in slow motion this ment that we had to time all of the actors ques and movements perfectally or we would have to redo the shot.

When we desided to do shots of the paramedic arriving we desided that we wanted shots of the Ambulance diveing throught the car park and to do this we used a 'gopro' action sport camera and attached it to the top of the vehicle as it drove through out the carpark this ensured a clear steady shot without the risk of breaking a camera.

The days shoot ended at 9.30pm.

Account of the Shoot Day; Performance.

The day started at 8.30 in which me and my group did any final checks on the set and props for example, checking that all of our guitars had straps and that none of the strings were broken etc.

The Band then arrived at 8.50 and we allowed them to rehearse and get used to playing with the music smoke and lights. One band member had to leave in order to sit an assessment at 9 so we looked at framing close ups of the drummer and vocalist that he would not be evolved in.

When our missing band member arrived at 10am we were able to shoot mid shots and wide shots of the band as a whole, and did close ups of the bassist. We then decided that we wanted some more active shots of our band and so decided to lay down some tracking and a dolly so that we could do some smooth tracking shots of the band so that the performance element would have some more movement in them.

We did two main types of tracking shot in our video, one which envolved the track arking around the band in a semi-circular motion so that we got close ups of each of them. (this was a slow smooth tracking shot). And another that was a diagonal layout of the track which was a much more rapid movement of the dolly with me pulling the dolly imi operating the camera and laura doing the follow focus as the different band members were different distances from the camera and this was to ensure that they all stayed in focus throughout the shot.

One Factor that we found to be a slight issue with using total silluetteswas that you could not really see that the vocalist was singing. This led us to reconsider our lighting scheme and we knew that we would be unable to redesign so desided to use a reflector which envolved shining a followspot onto a large reflective disk which was angled towards the vocalist face. This gave us the perfect amount of light as his face was still mostly hidden but we were able to make out enough of his facial features to see clearly that he was actually singing rather than just standing there.

At 2.30pm we had finished shooting our performance element and went on to planning our narrative element.

We were given a two hour time period from 3 until 5 on the Friday before our music video shoot in which to build our set. Luckily only our performance element required a set as our narrative element took place off campus. What we did was set up a lighting rig and hang fluorescent strips and follow spots off of it in order to give our band the backlit look that we had been aiming for.

These are some photos of the afternoon in which we can see the rig being set up and the lights hung off of them.

We also laid out any instruments or performance tolls such as microphones drum kits and amps so that we could get an idea of the spacing that the band members were going to have and finalise what it was going to look like on the day.

Narrative Practice.

As our narrative element contained alot of emotion and the CPR contained quite close contact between two of the characters we desided to give them a rehearsal in order to give them an idea of what they may have to do on the day. This allowed them to get over any sort of embarassment that they may have had over what they were going to have to so so that on the day of the shoot we could get the most out of their performance and ensured that the shoot day went as smoothly as possible.

Band Practice.

4 days before our music video shoot we grouped our band members together in order to see where they had got to in terms of learning lyrics and instrumental parts to the song and got them to play along to a playback both seperatly and as a group in order to give them an idea of how it is going to feel to play with the playback and how it will feel to play as part of a band rather than just seperatly.

Shooting Schedule.

Shooting Schedule

8 30      Meet in studio to set up and to check lighting and make final adjustments to setting

8 50      Costume check (band should be wearing costumes already)

            Give short brief to band to explain the plan for the day

9 00      Rehearse song through with lighting and playback of track

            Throughout band’s rehearsal – get camera set it right place for first wide shot

9 25      Give feedback on band’s performance – make any adjustments

           

9 30      Begin shooting

Shot list

• Wide shot of whole band
• Mid shot of whole band
• Side shot of drummer and guitarist
• Mid shot of singer
• Side shot of singer
• Side shot of bassist

11 00    Break

11 30    Continue shooting

12 45    Lunch

14 00    Finish off any shots that need to be re-done or think of other possible shots

17 00    Collect camera equipment and bring to Mini Bus in Lower Car Park

17 20    All cast members to meet at Mini Bus in Lower Car Park

17 30    Leave to go to Guildford

18 00    Arrive at Car Park in Guildford

18 10    Dinner – Collect something from Guildford (McDonalds?)

18 30    Set up camera equipment and any lighting equipment if necessary

18 50    Everyone ready to shoot – make up and costume

19 00    Begin shooting

22 00    Finish shooting and travel back to Hurtwood

Final Cast list.

We had a slight issue with our cast as one of our original band members dropped out of the video and so we decided to put Charlie (singer) as the guitarist as well in order to fill the spot that was missing. We also had to finalise who we would be taking off campus for out narrative shoot.

Cast List

A2’s	AS’s
Charlie Lindsay – Lead Vocalist/Guitarist. Oscar Jackson – Drummer Connor Vickery – Performing CPR Rose Salvage – Passer by Charlie Manton – Passer by	Freddie Dixon – Bassist Peter Bergin – Collapsed guy Henry Hammond – Passer by

Final Props List

We produced a final props list in order to enable us to see how close we were to having all of the needed props for our video and showed us what we still needed to obtain.

Props List

School will provide:	We will provide:
Fake Blood Blue flashing light (ambulance) Paramedic Outfit: fluorescent jacket, green trousers and green shirt Mic Mic stand Electric Guitar Bass Guitar Business Suit - Phil	Bag of shopping (things that can roll and be visually interesting) – can of baked beans, oranges etc. Drum kit – Oscar Jackson

Sending Off For Copyright.

We sent a letter to the record lable that released RadioHeads song climbing up the walls in order to ask their permition to use their song in our video. And to confirm that we can go ahead with our video.

To Parlophone Records

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Radiohead, Climbing Up The Walls (Ok Computor)

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely


Fergus Brown, Imogen Holmes, Laura Cheese
Hurtwood House School

Digipak And Advertisement.

A Digipak is a modern way to approach CD packaging. It is all about adding value and convincing your audience to part with their money for something special and ‘extra’. Plays off our love of music.

On the outside of a Digipak there should be the artists name clearly in the foreground in an easy to read font. It should be the same font used throughout the Digipak. Should have product information such as copyright; the year of production, the web address the record label logo. And of course the name of the album clearly set out so that it can be easily read however should not be as large as the artist’s name.

There may be an image of the artist(s) which echoes the visual style and colour scheme of the front cover. The overall style of the Digipak should only involve up to a maximum of 3 colours. No more than two different fonts however using one is best. Most involve an element of graphic design that helps to bring all of the different elements of the Digipak together. Should also be of a similar style to the advertisement in order to become recognisable.

The inside of the Digipak should once again be a similar style as the outside of the Digipak in order to fit in with the artist’s image. There may be a set of acknowledgements in a small font or a short list.  You may get a detailed track list which may include the timings of the songs and possibly who played instruments in them.

The Advertisement is also a key idea of the album release. One of the most important things that this must include is the release date of the album and usually features an element of the Digipak. It will also have a prominent display of the artist’s name and album title. It may also include other elements such as tour dates and quotes and review from magazines and newspapers. And all must link together in order to produce a single well executed package.  

This is an example of a digipak and the elements that come into play when creating it in order to make a successful package that is going to sell well.

Refined cast list.

We desided to use people who would match the steriotypical image for a band of this type of genre as they would normally have longer hair and look less main stream than say a pop band. And we felt that these people as well as playing their own instruments  fit in with this type of image.


We desided to use these two individuals as main characters for our narrative element as they look fairly similar and we therefore desided that this could add an extra feel of depth to our narrative as they could be brothers and this would add a deeper feel and more emotion to the idea that one of them is helpless as the other is criticitly ill/dying.

Anamatic

In order ti further our knowledge of storyboards and shot types we shot an anamatic in order to show how the shots are going to fit in to the song and how to cut successfully on the beat of the song in order to show how best to edit seemlessly to give a smooth natural effect.

It also allowed us to see the best shots for the video and which type of shots fitted in with the music, this caused us to remove certain shot types and introduce several new shots.

Practice Shots

After drawing out our storyboards and editing our anamatic we looked at the most successful shots and looked into how we could further our knowlage of the shots and the way in which we did this was to take photos of the shot types that we thought that would be most effecctive in order to obtain a better understanding of how to best frame the shots and therefore shot them.

Storyboard.

This is a storyboard that we drew out in order to give ourselfs a clearer idea of how our video is going to be shot and how it is going to look when edited with the music and therefore show us what type of shots worked and what type didnt and helped to show us how many differnet shots would be needed in order to make the video effective.

A Typical Member Of Our Target Audience.

A typical member of our target audience would be someone whom does not tend to enjoy typical main stream pop videos or 'rock bands'. They would pefer a slighty alternative type of music style, which is an alternative indie style of music.
They would most likely dress in a manner which would match the style of our music video for example they would dress in skinny jeans, converses perhaps have long possibly dyed hair and may wear tight clothes and would not be the type that would sit inside and do nothing on a Friday night they would most likely be the sort to go out but possibly not to mainstream areas.

This is an example of a type or group of people who would be a typical member of our target audience and would be most likely to watch our video.

Lighting and set design.

We looked at specific shot examples from Muze's video Neutron Star in order to get a set design for how to effectively shoot a performance involving shadows and silhoettes. The reason behind why we want the performance element to be shot in this way is to complement the narrative element in which someone callopses and you do not see why and are therefore kept 'in the dark' so to speak and so by shooting the band in this way we keep the illusion or feel that you still don't clearly see what is going on and are still in a more literal sence being kept in the dark due to the shadows and silhoettes.

The set for the performance element was designed to be very simplistic and almost give the idea of the band in an empty studio setting in order to make the silhoettes very clear and effective.

We also felt it would work well with the idea of slow motion shots which we were thinking about using a slow motion effect when it came to adding after effects and editing.  We also decided to use a low colour saturation when it came to shooting our narrative as we desided if their was a large varaity of warm bright colours it would not fit with the desired feel of helplessness that we want the narrative to portray, however a scene which has been drained of colour will help to put across this idea of helplessness and dispare

Band image.

This is a post designed to give a clearer picture as to what the bands image is going to be and what they are going to look/dress like.  We have stayed fairly loyal to Radio Heads exsisting image and have used a picture of them to use as a template for our band.

The reason why we have chosen to keep fairly loyal to the bands exsiting image is in order to maximise our appel to our target audience as the audience remains the same and it would therefore not make sense to change the image to far from the orignal image.

Possible Location Choices. (And incorparating a narrative)

We decided to change our narrative choices and settled on an idea of having a CPR scene. We decided on having a person callopse and then show the struggle of an ordinary person attempting to revive and resusitate them. We came to the conclusion to show the emotions and pressures that the person is going through and focusing on passers by and looking at the way in which they react to the scene if they react at all.

We looked a several possible different locations for our narrative to take place, and we decided that we needed a place in which there would be passers by, the short list of locations that we decided on was;

a busy street,


a car park,


or a tube station.



However we found that the tube station location that we looked into using was going to cost 300 pounds and we did not have this in our budget. So we decided that we need to find a location with little or no cost. We came to the conclusion to look into using a location that was possibly on campus and would therefore have no cost.

Casting Our Music Video.

As our narrative depends on the portyal of emotions and feelings we decided to look at a list of drama studants who would fit the role required for our video. And highlighted their names on a list. We then went on to look at photos of them from the schools list of studants and refined the list as to who would fit the role

How We Incorporated a Performance Element.

We looked at a series of different videos of a similar genre and several live Radiohead performances and looked at the way in which they as a band perform live and how other similar band types shoot their performance elements.

Once video that really caught our attention was Neutron Star by Muze and we really liked the idea of backlighting our artists in order to sitluette them rather than have them clearly or brightly lit. This went along with our narrative idea that not everything is clear and that you never really see the full picture.

 We then looked at a live radiohead performance of climbing up the walls and found that they perfomed it in a very similar way via alot of smoke and larde lights at the back of the stage.

RadioHead Pitch

 

 

 

 

Richard Dyer (Star Image)

Dyer belives that in order to understand the relationship between stars and stardom with the music industary we must first understand the role of music stars.

The star image is created by the record company to appel to their target audience. And they are shaped and molded in order to maximise this appel.

Dyers theories revolve around two main paradoxes or points, the first of these is that a star can be oridinary and extrodinary at the same time. An example of this could be Victoria Beckham ( Posh Spice ) she can seem ordinary as she is married has kids and does other normal everyday tasks. However she is also extrodinary as she has this whole other life of stardom and fame that everyday people can not imagin.
The second of these theories is that stars can be both present and absent at the same time. This means that as the target audience we can feel close to the stars via posters music videos and reading about them, we can find out everything about them and feel like we really know them, yet have never spoke to or even met them showing that we may feel that they are present in our lives when in reality they are absent.

Keith Negus. (Synthetic VS Organic)

Keith Negus' theories revolve around the idea of the difference between synthetic and organic bands or artists.

A synthetic band refers to a band that has been manufactured and molded by the record companies in order to be marketed towords their specific target audience. For example The Spice Girls are a synthetic group which have been specifically taylored to appeal to a young teen audience, this was done by the image that the band portrays (as a group of young trendy friends). They were also tailored to fit the largest target audience possible by presenting each member of the band in a different light for example there was a sport one, a posh one etc..... This allowed the band to appeal to the largest possible audience as there was a spice girl for each type or style of girl.

An organic band such as the Foo Fighters is less manufactured and appeals to a smaller target audience who perfer a less manufactured band that is more 'true to music' and the Foo Fighters are a band which fill this bracket in the way in which they play all of their own instruments rather than having an external band play for them suggesting they are more involved in their music so appeal more to those who are passionate about music and follow a band for their music rather than their image.

Pitch And Audience Feedback.

After discussing all of our ideas as a whole group we then split up and worked on one idea eahc in order to produce a pitch that we could give to the class in order to get an idea of the recpetion that our music videos would recive once they had been produced and edited.

The target audience for the video that I was pitching (99 Problems by Hugo) was an audience of late teens possibly 16+ and this made the audience feedback very effective as the test group that I was pitching my idea to was an audience that fitted my target audience criteria.

(This is an example of the target audience that we used to pitch our idea to as they were our desired target audience.)

Once my idea had been pitched the group was given a chance to give their feedback and ideas into the video in order to futher its progress. The main feedback areas were about the concept of the 'problems' and the main idea was that the problems should be in some way linked for example they could all be related to violence, domestic abuse or poverty for example. The reasons behind this was to make it more clear to the audience as if they were all unrelated and were just random 'problems'  then the video may not be quite as clear to the audience and may lack impact where as if all of the idea were focused towards one point or idea the video may have a more effective impact.

My Pitch.

This is a copy of the slideshow that was used during my pitch. The reasons for uploading the powerpoint in this manner was due to an error in slide share which prevented me from uploading the slide show as a whole and therefore had to save them as a 'jpg.' and then had to upload them as images rather than just a single slide show.

Primary Music Video Ideas.

We started off by being split different planning groups in order to converse over our own idividual ideas once discussed we went on to develop upon and plan our various ideas. The group that I was in came up with 3 different ideas for our music video. These were:

99 Problems by Hugo:

King Charles Love Lust.

And How to bulid a home by the Cinimatic Orchestra:

We went on to develop ideas for concepts and possible narratives and set for each video and then split into 3 in order to focus on one idea each to pitch.

Account Of Prelim Task.

We started the day by splitting into our three differnent groups, (one for each song segment) and finalised our plannig in terms of our shot list. We then went into the studio where we met the band and disscussed what it was that we wanted to do in the video.

My group was second to shoot so we watched the first group shoot and then once they were done we started to shoot whislt they started to edit their clip. There were 3 roles that we rotated around our group, these were; Camera man, Director, and Playback. We rotated around all of these different roles for each different shot type.

As we only had 35 minutes to shoot our sequance we stuck to our pre-determined shot list. Once all of our shots on our list had been shot we left the studio and went to edit our clip once editied our clip we went on to peice together all of the 3 clips inorder to form a single video.

What this taught me about shooting and editing a music video is that the shot types and setting are incredibly important. It also taught me that a timeline and storyboard is incredibly important as when shooting these videos we only have a very limited period of time in which to shoot and in order to achive the best quality of video these need to be done to a high level in order to achive a well shot video.
I also learnt that editing and timeing in editing are incredibly important. And that cutting on the beat are very important to give the video a smooth seemless feel.

So in conclusion I feel that this task of a prelim video was incredibly effective in teaching me how to shoot and successfully edit a music video.

Prelim Music video.

This is the entire video produced by 3 different groups all given 30 minutes to shoot and were then sent to edit and then once each individual section had been edited they were added together in order to produce the entire video.

Planning Our Prelim Task.

Once we had an idea of how this type of music video would be shot from looking at exarmples of similar well known bands we were split into three groups and all given segments of the same song to plan and shoot and edit and then combine them into the full song once they had been done.

The first thing that we did was to listen to the section of the song that we had been given and then went on to use a timeline to map when instruments came in and out of the song and when vocals were a dominant part.


(example of a music video timeline)

Once we had finished our time line we went on to storyboard our section of the video but sketching out the types of shots that we would be using in the video and this gave us an idea of what the video may look like and made the filming process much more efficient and fasted on the day as we onnly had a limited time in which to shoot our section of the video (about 30 minutes) and then we went on to editing it.


(example of a storyboard.)

Futher Research Of Prelim Video. (example videos)

One  of the videos that we looked at was 'In One Ear' by Cage The Elephant and it gave us the basic idea of how this genre of music video would be shot, and the types of shots that we should be using. We then looked at several other videos in order to futher our knowlage on the subject.

All of these are music videos of similar genre and helped to give us an idea of how this type of video would be shot and therfore the way in which to go about filming ours.

Research For Prelim Task.

For our Preliminary task we were given the task of shooting part of a music video for a band called 'Acres Of Life'.
We started off our planning by looking at the band that we had been given in order to obtain what genre of band they would be and therefore what tyhpe of music they would be playing,

 We found out that Acres of life are an alternative rock/punk band, via looking at there own webpages on mtspace and facebook etc. once we had established what type of band they were we went on to look at well knoiwn bands of a similar genre such as:

Cage The Elephant,



My Chemical Romance,



and The Artic Monkeys.




We then went on to look at several of their music videos to get an idea of the way in which these genre of music video would be shot and the shot types that would be used when shooting this type of music video, and came to the conclusion that we would be doing several close up shots and mid shots of instruments and of the vocalist so that we could easily cut between vocal and instrumental sections.

Music Video Analysis (Narrative) -Tenacious D Tribute

We can see that 'Tribute' by Tenacious D has a very strong narrative element as the vocal artist (Jack Black) is singing about an experience that he has had and we see this story unfolding as he is singing it and cut between the two diffrent scenes, this creates a video that is both objective and subjective as he is singing about what he has done as well as actually doing it.

The style in which this songh is sung sounds very simillar to a ballad or folk song (for the majority) and this helps once again to reniforce theis idea of a strong narrative as this style of singing or song writing has been used for many years in order to tell a story and so the audiencee will or may be aware that this is what this song is going to do.

Music Video Analysis (Star Image)-Foo Fighters - The Pretender

Star image was looked at in detail by Richard Dyer who said that the way in which a band presents itself is very important to the type of audience it attracts and theway in which a band acts, performs, and represents itself is very important in constructing this idea of a 'Star image'.

The band The Foo Fighters portrays a very clear example of a desired 'Star Image'. The Foo Fighters are an alternative American rock band famous for live performaces and an antiathoritarian nature. They play all of their own instruments and therefore appeal to an audience who do not like 'manufactured' record company built bands but perfer a band that is more 'organic' or 'true to music'.

The music video 'The Pretender' greatly enforces the prestablished Star Image of the Foo Fighters as the number one focus of the video is the band playing their own instruments and singing very little narrative occors. Throughout the vdeo there are many close ups of band members playing their various instruments and this helps to enforce this idea of the band being an organic non manufactured product.

There is also reference to the bands antiauthoritarian nature throughout the video as we can from the very start they are playing infrount of a large red background and red is often a colour assosiated with antiauthoritarian of anachistic behavior. We then get this idea renforced later on in the video when a line of riot police line up oppersite to the band which gives us the idea that the band are almost playing in a riot like manner. And even when the police charge at the band they keep playing and the red background explodes outward towards the police in a mist of red paint which once again reinforces the antiauthoriatian nature of the band.

A2-Media Studies Introduction

This year I will be Creating a Promation package for the releace of an album, this is to include:

1. A Promotional Video form the album.

2. An album cover or 'Digipack' CD/DVD package.

3. A magasine advertisement CD/DVD package.


This is example of an album digipack cover which we will be producing.