Self evaluation

So far, I think we've done very well in terms of planning. We've been connecting ourselves with a lot of the key elements of a rock video and doing our best to try and recreate it.

Personally I think that my strengths have been more to the creative side of the project. I've been coming up with a lot of ideas for when we film the live performance part of our piece and I'm actually pretty excited to get on with it! Over the course I've been learning about what really makes a rock video, as well as how to organise a team into an efficient, media-passing machine!

Extra footage

Will Here.
My band is playing a gig on sunday for halloween. Depending on how appropriate the crowd is we may film it for a while for some crowd footage which may prove useful during our final piece.

No luck with the live performance so far

Due to reasons out of our control we were unable to film in the drama studio during the school term and as such weren't able to film there or in the hall during half term either.

We tried contacting various village halls (Ugley, Newport, Clavering) and were met with similar disappointment, as all three claim to be fully booked during the half term.

Obviously this isn't good. And so we might end up having to get our filming done very quickly as soon as term starts, as we feel we are prepared to do this.

Modern rock videos

Over the course of the half term I've been looking at a lot of bands of similar genre (IE in the rock/alternative section)
So I've been looking at their videos too.  Here are a few I pulled up.

NOTE: For some reason, Embedding the videos didn't want to work, so I've had to put links on instead :(

Miss May I - Relentless Chaos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3m3pM3Z-8Q&feature=grec_index

So the song is mainly the band's performance, mixed with the vocalist's performance in the jail cell.
When considering the lyrics, the narrative doesn't appear to be directly related to the song at all, but of course the band must have some good reason for doing it how they did.


The next video is:
Bring me the horizon - The Sadness will never end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TNckXgfYhA&ob=av2e

This video is much more narrative-based, with the boy going into the woods.
The main theme of the video seems to be the phrase "I won't give up on you".  Which could be related to the boy's mysterious relationship with the girl.  Overall the narrative seems to work quite well, mixing the innocence of children with the harsh reality of the song's lyrics.


The final song is:
36 Crazyfists - Bloodwork

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLVsdIE832c

This is a much more light hearted video, the cartoony, comic book style of the video contrasts with the more serious sounding music.  Only very late into the video do we see some kind of connection between the video and the song when the singer says "And I'll swallow these capsules" as some magice capsules appear in his hand.

Audience feedback about the song

a while ago i asked a group of people aged between roughly 15 to 30 years old that fitted what would be our target audience aswell as a few that didnt via facebook if they could listen to our song on myspace an give some feedback.
as we had our mind pretty set from the beginning which song we were going to use this was a good way to see what people thought of it.
from the people that responded most of them liked the song an thought it had a good layout but the bass and vocals seemed a little drowned however andy has said he has a better quality version of this.
a few people also said that they felt the band seemed to be more for a specific fanbase and if they were to be signed and make it big they would need to make it a bit more mainstream and commercialise themselves more.
this was very helpful as its always good to know what people think and what needs improving.
i will do the same for the storyboard when its uploaded ill send it to a few people to see what they think.

Filming

We may have to film when we go back to school on monday.
we will co-ordinate our frees lunch and afterschools to get the live performance filmed asap as we will be playing catch up if we havent got all our footage by the end of half term.
we need to ask if its possible to use the drama studio or the school hall to film.
this is the one major problem we have and should have sorted out weeks ago.
we werent very organised at the end of term an didnt set definate dates times and location and trying to organise now is proving difficult. however if we all agree to give up as much free time a possible i think we can get back on track very quickly.

Weather forecast

ive added a side bar that shows the weather forecast for the next few days if its worked (Y)
i created it by going on design and clicking on html/javascript an pasting the embed code.
this can also help us as its a quick link to bbc weather so we can see what the weathers doing and can co-ordinate filming.

Storyboard

unfortunately as you can see i haven't managed to upload the storyboard yet
it will be up asap!

we have tried to arrange filming this week unfortunately we were hoping to have our location sorted by now which we dont however we can still film the narrative.
we were trying to arrange to film tomorrow (wednesday) although we havent been very organised
and i looked up the weather forecast it doesn't look to nice its supposed to be raining most of the day. it isnt essential to have a sunny day we would rather film on a dry day than raining.
as jack has the camera we are going to see if the weather is dry enough to film part of the narrative an do some test shots of the narrative if we cannot film the whole thing.
we havent managed to get hold of andy or will.
but it isnt essential for them to be there tomorow if they cant make it.
if we cannot film tomorow because of weather conditions we will postpone until the weather improves.
we shall keep this updated.

Digipack Group Meeting

22/10/2010 - Group Meeting on Digipack ideas

story board

im not in today guys sorry.
but i will finish drawing out the storyboard an film an upload it by tomorow.
ill take a photo of the a3 sheet we did of the storyboard and upload that today.
if one of you guys can message me whats happening next week with filming where when and what time i need to be there that would be great
i cant film monday or tuesday though.
thanks

Group Meeting - 20/10/2010

Group discussion about Album name

Group Meeting

Today we had a group meeting to talk about the digipack and the album name.
we recorded this conversation on wills blackberry and it will be uploaded asap
in the end after much discussion we have decided on "adherence"
it means 'adhere - stand by: be loyal to;'
which carries the theme of loyalty and such which feature within quite a few of the songs aswell as the song we have chosen for the video.

Digipack Songs and Album name

Songs

Everything's Undone
Darlin'
Apocalypse
Time To Waste
Seek The Truth
To Break A Freak's Heart
Last Goodbye
You Played Us For Blind

Album Name
The black genesis of sabbath lightning nails really sharp.
Sleeping Awake
Power puff boys
Harry Potter and the Croft Of Power
Les temps changent

YouTube player added

I made a video of our song Everything's Undone with scrolling lyrics in Final Cut Express, for easy access to both (lyrics and audio) and posted it on our blog so everyone can see it. I uploaded it to YouTube and then created a gadget and neatly placed it on the right hand side of our blog.

Band Members

after debating and having issues with getting the original band to star in the video we have decided to use our group but we are hoping to keep the lead singer matt.
andy will play drums as he does in the actual band will and jack will play guitar and bass.
we also have a few issues with filming in a pub so i think we decided to film in the drama studio we need to book it out and kit it out but ill keep the blog updated on that and post some location shots an if we find any other possible locations we will take photos an blog.

Fan Pages

On Friday i created the bands 'official' fan page on facebook so people can hear and see our sound an keep updated with our band.
i got quite a good response an the fan page already has quite a few followers
i also created a twitter account that links to the facebook page for the band to get as much acknowledgement as possible.
we need to upload a photo of our 'band' and will eventually upload the video and songs when they are finished this will help get audience feedback about the band and our video which we can use in our evaluation.

Primary Audience Research into a music video

I had a search on google for rock forums and clicked on a few. I then scanned the forums for activity and compared the sites which were most active/ had most users viewing it etc. Incontestably http://www.rock-forums.com came top.

I registered to the website and created a new thread in the 'Rock Music Videos' section asking a potential audience what they liked about music videos to gather details of the kind of music videos & features within them that appeals to the audience.

You can see a screenshot of my thread in this iframe:



I've only just posted it so I will update in a few days time when I (hopefully) receive some useful and constructive views.

We've re-redone the blog now to make it better!

we changed the background to make it seem more contemporary.  It dominates now.

Audience Feedback about the song

i thought id do some audience feedback as thats the one major thing we seemed to have missed during our planning stage
ive posted links to the blog aswell as a link to the bands myspace profile [that has the song we have chosen on] to my personal facebook profile aswell as my twitter account so that our potential audience and friends and family can give me some feedback an thoughts on what they think of the song once we have a storyboard thats pretty much set in stone i will do the same thing and post back with general comments or ideas from people

Twitter Account.
.http://twitter.com/#!/NickieJAM

Narrative ending Idea

Seeing as the main narrative of the piece behind the liver performance will be dealing with the singer's breakup with a girl, at the end of the song, when he opens his eyes and the pub is empty, we see the girl standing there, first from a medium shot to get her entire body centered and then a close up of her face as she looks at Matt from the bottom left, before hearing a member of the pub's audience shout "You suck!" for a little bit of light hearted humour to add to the band's approachable image.

tonight

Nikki will now write up all ideas in the oder that they're going to happen between the narrative and the live performance.  Andy will talk to the band and find out when they are free to film.  Will is going to write up his ideas and see when the drama studio is available.  Jack is going to make our blog look a bit more up to scratch, as well as uploading the song to the blog, along with the lyrics.

Storyboaring

We've begun a storyboard of the narrative part of our production.Two to three storyboards will be written for the whole thing, depending on length of narrative and one for the live performance section.

story line changed slightly

i just realised that the narrative i thought of wouldn't link to the song really but we could still include the theme of the 'high life' but instead maybe have a girl and a guy(lead singer) break up at the begining and then he seems down and frustrated so his band mates take him out to start a 'new chapter' and help him get over his heartbreak this is then where the high life footage comes in we could then maybe have a few shots of him bumping into the girl again maybe shes with another guy this makes our guy(lead singer) frustrated and it could cut then to the live performance and close ups of the singers face and facial expression showing anger and hurt then a few shots of the whole band performing and a few more close ups maybe of the guitar or drums especially during the bridge.

story line

I had the idea for the narrative side of our video we could have the band all talking about the 'high' life and how big they one day hope to be, then it could go into a daydream sort of state were they are imagining what the 'high' life would be like we could have shots of partys and them surrounded by girls then a few shots of performing to a crowd and just a few shots of the band out and about passed out we could film within a town. 

we could over exagerate the high life status by filming what would be a photo shoot for advertisement or an article or something but we could take actual photos for the digipack whilst filming then we will have both footage and photos for the other sections of our coursework.

the story line

i think the pub idea is good but its gonna be really difficult to achieve an as we have less than a week to organise an find a pub thats willing to let us do this i think its a really big challenge.
also as i said before i like the pub idea but we have to be careful not to make it to indie, the idea of the shoes and the half drunk drinks i think i going to far into the indie style of video.
we need to look at a few more videos an compare a few indie videos to a few rock videos to see what the similarities an differences are so we dont stray down the wrong path.

i think we need to think seriously about possible alternative locations?
even if it means changing our narrative a bit.
we also need to include some form of crowd as you cant have a video thats solely performance apart from a few seconds of narrative at the begining and end if we look at any video more specifically rock video which is more the genre we are they all have some form of live performance yes but we need to include our audience more within our video, or atleast link more to our audience.

most videos include some form of narrative that either co-incides with the performance shots or have the performance included within the narrative.

Blog update

The blog was looking very minimal and boring so we decided upon a theme we liked and applied it. It makes the blog easier to look at and navigate with good-looking orange links to click.

Kerrang Magazine

i know there is a previous post about kerrang but i decided to do a little research myself 

Last week i bought kerrang magazine to read reviews an try and get a better understanding of what todays audiences want from a rock music video 

it also helps me get a better understanding of the market we would be entering as kerrang is very popular magazine and music channel aswell as having its own awards system.

Storyline 2

Matt (Lead Singer), is performing acoustically in a british pub to an audience of 4 and completely not interested in matts performance. Matt introduces himself. Matt then closes his eyes and there's an extreme closeup of his eyes as they shut.  When they open the camera zooms out from his eyes and the rest of his band is behind him as the music starts and he begins playing guitar.

Filming pictures

Will and Andy went to the drama studio to take some pictures of the stage, and what could be a potential performance area.

I (Jack) then created a slideshow using final cut express, and uploaded it to YouTube. I then annotated the video with some notes.

Filming idea

The narrative will occur at the beginning and the end of the video. It starts with Matt Blackwell (lead singer) performing alone at a pub, with a few folk in the audience. Matt acknowledges the crowd and says the song he is about to sing is Every thing's Undone while putting no emotion into it (monotonous, deadpan). Extreme close up of his eyes closing then it snaps to the live performance.

Then the live performance is carried out. Then at the end there is an extreme close up of Matt's eyes opening, to a deserted pub, with remaining props such as half empty drinks. Also there will be the shoes of the audience on the ground with smoke coming out to add a humorous side to the video and contradict the lyrics. This will give an ambiuous ending and intrigue the audience by leaving them questioned at the end.

Story Line

On Wednesday we discussed ideas for our video and have decided on doing a narrative and cutting between performance.
we brain stormed a few ideas one was a story about a girl and a boy it will start off with andy and matt walking towards the music suite having a conversation, class beggins and they have to perform a peice of music while matt performs andy sits on the drums but then andy an matt have a better idea and start playing the intro to everythings undone our chosen song. Then the rest of the band join in. the next shot would be a girl and guy sitting on a bench the girl stands up throws her coffee down and storms off at which point there would be a slowmo shot of the coffee as it hit the ground.
we will update this once we have more on the story line.

Footage

As said before i filmed a crowd at a gig i went to on wednesday however the footage didnt come out like i had hoped it may still be usable.
but after talking to the rest of the group i think weve decided to go in a slightly different direction using a narrative and although we most likely will include performance it will be to a crowd formed of the people within the narrative of the video.

Live audience footage

Nikki is going to a gig tonight and we thought it would be a good idea for her to film the crowd as the gig is of the same ilk as our band.  We may or may not use this footage in our final video.

Reel Clever

We've signed ourselves up to the "Reel Clever" online project making website, with features including deadlines, storyboard making and many other useful tools.

Signing up to the website was free, as you can use a free version to make a single project.

Footage Ideas

If we wanted to have footage of a crowd which is a typical theme within rock videos
i would have to check copyright and such but i am attending a gig on wednesday night an could film the crowd as it will be a pretty substantial crowd which could pose as the crowd for our band
as it will be more realistic as its a real crowd rather than getting people to pose as a crowd
a simple suggestion let me know what you think guys?.

Portrayal of the lyrics

(This post will be continuously updated)

"Our love was like a star" - Shot of the band/artist/narrative looking up into the sky, creates a sense of nostalgia

"Unknown in its detail" - low key lighting shot, maybe create a sillhouette of the band/ shadow around them

"Never near, just far"  - Aerial or long shot, showing either the band or narrative in the middle of on open area, with nothing surrounding them

The use of YouTube and Television to display our music video

YouTube is the 3rd most visited website in the Internet, behind Google and Facebook. It is the most visited video sharing website by a long shot. "Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, VEVO and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program." YouTube is full of opportunity for bands to promote themselves and their music videos. Vevo obtain many bands under them, and so to gain partnership with Vevo would be good as Vevo have a wide area of advertising available. Such as linking to The Croft as a related artist, on a more succesful and famous artists Vevo/YouTube page.

From analysing the picture and statistics above. It is fair to say that YouTube is very suitable for The Croft to use as the demographics show that 60% of the users are aged 2-34, and the majority are male, which coincides with The Croft's target audience.

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Music channels are a very commonly used and effective way of promoting a video. Channels such as Scuzz, Kerrang TV and MTV Two are specific to rock, and so would be the types of channels to show The Croft. However it is harder and more expensive to be shown on television, and the less famous the band/artist, the harder it is to appear on TV.

Official Top 40 UK Singles (& Albums)

I done some research into how well/poor rock and alternative rock perform in the UK charts. Seeing as The Croft is an English band, it would be resourceful to do this to research into the market they will be entering.

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The Official UK Top 40 Singles Chart

Just by glancing over the top 40 singles, it is easy to understand that it is mostly dominated by anything but rock and its subgenres. By scanning the page; pop, r&b and dance seem to fill up the page. The only artists comparable to The Croft in the top 40 singles is Brandon Flowers with Crossfire which is located at position 20, and position 40 that belongs to Manic Street Preachers with Just The End Of Love. This shows that rock/alternative rock doesn't do particularly well in this section of the music market.

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The Official UK Top 40 Albums Chart

Taking a look at the top 40 albums, it's a slightly different scenario.

The albums chart still consists of all genres, however isn't monopolised by pop and r&b. A lot more rock bands/artists have become succesful here with Brandon Flowers, Robert Plant, Linkin Park, and Santana all being in the top 10. Santana, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, 30 Seconds to Mars and Arcade Fire also feature within the top 40. This is a significant difference between the singles chart, and shows rock is much more successful at producing albums rather than singles.

This is something that The Croft would have to take into account, as it seems it would be worthwhile for them to produce a good album that could maybe have 1 song that makes it big as a single like Brandon Flowers has done.

Mise En Scene

Costume

Here are 2 photoshoots of 2 bands, Muse (top) and The Croft (bottom). You can see they share fashion tastes as both bands are all wearing shirts, with the majority also wearing skinny ties. Both bands are of/ play the same genre and so this clothing can be expected from the typical conventions. Therefore, unless doing parody (which we are not doing), it wouldn't be a bad move for the band to wear this type of apparal in the video to meet the genre expectations.

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Lighting

The song "Every thing's undone" is about break up, distrust, loss of love, and other negative emotions. Also the song is fairly heavy, so dark colours such as black, red, purple would be associated with this.



This song is a good song to compare to the song we are using. They both sound similar, share the same instruments and similar tempo. These clips from the video show the amplification of the dark lighting and colours. In the first picture we see the red is lit up in the background, however this is no normal red, but a "blood-like" red.

And in the second picture, lighting is used very effectively here to create a sillhouette of the band, while exposing their eyes, to create an "alien" effect. Perhaps this is used to help illustrate the lyrics, as suggested using Andrew Goodwin's theory.

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Location

Location is pretty dependent on the lyrics and mood of the song. If the song is about being happy, or madly in love, the locations in the video would likely be bright, light, and natural. Whereas if the song is consists of lyrics about negativity, it is likely the video will show dark, industrial, unpleasant settings. We've previously established the song we're using is about negative things (love break up etc) so the locations used in the video are not likely to be of a field in a hot summers day up to the knees in yellow daffodills. Although saying this, it could be used to contradict the lyrics, which is another concept of Andrew Goodwin's theory.

For the narrative part of the song, locations like this are plausable considering the context of the lyrics.

 

I chose these pictures because they would be suitable; dark lighting, and generally appropriate for the song. These types of location may not be in every single rock/alternative rock video, however I highly doubt they would surprise, shock or disturb the audience and so therefore would not affect the typical genre expectations.

Marketing our band

Kerrang would be a very effective way of publicising an upcoming band that has just released a video, in the rock genre and similar genres within it. Kerrang allows bands to offer exclusivity to fans and viewers of the website. On the homepage you see a banner advertising Attack! Attack!'s new video which will draw users in that could potentially lead them to liking the band, thus leading to increased views of the video, interest of the band, and sales of the bands songs.

This would be good for The Croft to take advantage of as an upcoming rock band using the internet to target its demographic, because the internet is a huge pool of potential consumers that are eager to listen to new music and broaden their music tastes.

The Croft - Every thing's Undone Lyrics

Remember you once told me

Our love was like a star

Unknown in its detail

Never near, just far

Fuck all that its changed

Your minds switched like the wind

Don't moan at me

Cos you're the one thats sinned

Every thing's undone

Two have become one

The seeds have died again

Every thing's undone

You've lost our made up son

It's true this is the end

I climbed up a mountain

Just to find you

You gave upon me

I guess that's nothing new

Chorus

Bridge

Chorus

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After talking to our media teacher about the usage of swear words in the song, we have learnt we need to certify this song.

The song relates to heart break, a new beginning, revenge, anger, distrust so our group needs to think of how we can incorporate these into the video.