Research & Planning: Time Management

As I am still planning the details of my music video, this time management plan is a work in progress and I will be changing it before the filming process begins.

13/01/11 = Planning & Organisation completed and blog updated fully ready for production.



14/01/11 = Meet cast to talk about work and show ideas more in depth than previously. Choose clothing and locations.


15/01/11 = Visit locations to double check they are suitable for the video. Last minute changes will be updated here.


17/01/11 = Filming: Opening scenes, bedroom/ in house scenes.


20/01/11 = Walking towards bench in video x 4. Different clothes to represent different days etc.


23/01/11 = Scenes involving girl. 4 different clothes changes to represent different days.


24/01/11 = Start editing. 


3/02/11 = Finish Editing.


4/02/11 = Show to a focus group and get feedback on the video. Make any changes if necessary.


I do have hope that this will be a successful plan and along the timeline I will be referring back to this plan to see whether it has been a realistic plan for myself.

Final Print Work - Digipak & Advert

I am very pleased with the way this Digipak has turned out, I think it is aesthetically pleasing and contains all the relevant information needed to look professional.

To me, this album poster looks quite a lot like an independent movie poster, this isn't a bad thing as I think it creates recognition within the genre I am aiming at. Being similar to other interests of my target audience is useful to the promotion of the CD.

Research & Planning: Album Poster Print Production

When starting to produce my promotional poster for the Digipak I only knew that I wanted it to be very much similar to the actual Digipak, using the same, or similar, fonts, pictures and themes.

So to start with I went for a landscape orientated poster with the main focus being the same photograph of the bench I have used for my front and back cover of the Digipak. This seems a very good way to automatically create relation between the two products and if it were to be a real task to be used in the industry, having the same picture helps people to recognise the CD after seeing the poster, possibly creating more sales.

I then used the same font as previously used in my Digipak and centred the large font so that it is immediately attention grabbing and can be recognised straight away, as recognition is a key part of any advertising campaign. I did think about using the torn paper effect again at this point but after trialling it I decided not to as it blocked the bench and was not necessary as the dark metal of the bench and the brown of the leaves creates a visually appealing background anyway.

However, I knew that I wanted to use the torn paper effect so decided to integrate it into the poster at this point. I have recognised from my previous research that a major feature of album posters are ratings from popular music magazines. Including these ratings seemed to be a good way of proving the quality of the music being sold, so naturally I decided to utilise this feature. I used the torn paper effect to make these ratings stand out more than they would against the natural cloudy sky, this also creates correlation between the Digipak and the poster, exactly what I had been trying to do with the font as well.

The finishing touches to my work were just to include more information about Sony Music Entertainment and the rights involved with distribution of the music, give the address to the bands website as well as MySpace page and add a logo associated with the record label the band are signed to. All these are features that appeared on all the posters I looked at in my research.

Research & Planning: Digipak Print Production

Before starting work on my Digipak I only had a vague idea of how I wanted it to look, most of the work done is spur-of-the-moment thinking.

The main idea from my previous mock-up that I have taken into this piece of work is having a picture of a bench on the front cover. My original idea was to have the front of the bench on the front cover and the rear of the bench on the back cover. I did test this out briefly but it didn't look how I wanted it to, possibly because it wasn't a good idea or because the photographs I had to work with were not of a good enough standard to create the desired effect. Thinking about how to create a theme through the different pages of my Digipak made me think about having one image flowing through the spine of the pack, I think this works very well and could be seen on a professional Digipak.

A very clever skill I have learnt from this process of creation is the ability to create a 'torn paper' effect on Adobe Photoshop, as is seen on the bottom right hand side of this screen shot. Once I had made it and put it in place for the front cover I decided I wanted this to be a common visual within my Digipak and possibly Album Poster that I will be creating in the near future. The look is rustic and natural, which I think will appeal to the festival attending audience I have targeted.

I had decided, previous to starting this task, that I wanted the inside cover of my Digipak to include the lyrics to the song featured on the front cover. Using a dark, busy photograph of tree branches was an ideal background for text to appear upon. From far away I realised that the text was quite hard to read, so to conquer this issue I decided to put a slight shadow on the text, making it stand out more that it originally did. This still was quite hard to read from far away, but after researching lyrics inside CD covers on a few other albums I realised that most of the text is very hard to read as it is so small. Most of the covers I researched had small writing as they are usually pushed for space and are made for close inspection. This seems like something professionals do not consider a 'problem' so neither did I.

After completing the inside cover I wanted to add more detail onto the back cover before moving on to the disc tray. I added a track list for the CD, over another piece of torn paper, this followed the theme of one text font in black over the top of torn paper, hopefully keeping the feel natural and rustic. To make it look more professional and convincing I added some information about Sony Music Entertainment, as Passion Pit are signed to a label owned by Sony, showing the copyright sign and including copyright to a symbol I have used on my work. In this screen shot you can also see that I have labelled the spine of the CD case, I did not want anything fancy or dazzling to be on the spine so decided to just go for a clear font which will be easily recognisable within a group of CD's in the future.

The idea for the CD tray in my Digipak was to have an interesting picture for the design on the actual CD, but to have the tray that holds it coloured in a basic colour so the contrast can be seen. I started off by cropping a picture I had taken previously into a square shape and putting it in place.

I chose black as the background colour as I think it would be effective to have lighter colours on the black background, making the picture stand out more. I used the marquee tool to cut out a circle to represent the CD shape, also leaving a smaller circle to represent the hole in the centre of the CD.

To finish my design I added more torn paper with the information on that paper, keeping the theme going, and added more information about Sony Music Entertainment around the outside of the CD. I think this adds to the overall look of the Digipak, making it look more   professional on the whole.

Research & Planning: Audience Research

At the moment I think there is a very large 'Indie' genre in social groups, music and films as well. As this is such a big area I am hoping for my video to be able to integrate into the genre very well. My target audience are people who enjoy obscure media. Art that is very modern, into work such as Banksy, Damien Hirst etc. The film interest of my audience are films such as Eagle vs. Shark, Napoleon Dynamite and other Indie comedy films.

Demographic: I will be aiming and Males and Females, between the age of around 15-26.
My main audience will be Hedonists who like to have fun and regularly attend music/film festivals etc. 
In the socio-economic group I will be aiming at C1 all the way through C2, D and E. I think that professionals and business men/women will not have the time to party and go to festivals so targeting my work at them would be a waste of my time, so aiming mainly at people who do not have children and do have the disposable income to attend festivals regularly will be beneficial. I imagine most of my target audience to still be in full time education, either college or university as students are currently the main consumers of indie music and festivals.

I think the style of clothes they wear will be heavily influenced by Topman and popular indie bands such as 'The Kooks', 'Razorlight' and 'The Arctic Monkeys', also taking fashion tips from magazines such as NME especially. 


Male:

• Barber jackets
• Low cut t-shirts
• Skinny jeans
• Plimsolls
• Vintage clothing e.g. charity shop clothing
• Cardigans
• Ray-Bans
• Headbands

Female:

• Old fashioned skirts and dresses
• Vintage belts w/dresses
• Skinny Jeans
• Ray-Bans
• Large jumpers (Baggy)
• Plimsolls
• Dolly shoes
• Headbands

Below is a basic collection of what I think the female audience would be interested in as well as this style of music, I have included this as my Moodboard was predominantly Male orientated.

Research & Planning: Moodboard

Here is a mood board I created in relation to the target audience for the music and video I will be creating. The audience I have been thinking of are people who watch E4 and like very indie styles of clothing and celebrities who conform to these stereotypes, such as Alexa Chung.

Hopefully this target audience will be the consumers of my video and will enjoy the relation and styles used within. 

The style of clothing I think they will wear could be considered as quirky or eccentric to some, but is very fitting to the social group they fit into, with the correlation between their wardrobe and how I will dress my character in the music video will hopefully create a preferred reading.

This will also help me to create a focused music video as I can always look back at this to keep me in the niche I have chosen.

Research & Planning: Artist and Song choice

When deciding on a song to use in this project I thought about the kind of video I would like to make. I like the idea of having a progressing narrative throughout the video without much, if any, of a performance element. So I was looking at music that didn't need the performers to be there, possibly one which does not have absolute focus on the singer and lyrics, e.g Kings of Leon, Foo Fighters etc.

I like quirky videos that can be funny yet touching, so having an aggressive song choice would not work well so bands such as Slipknot were also out of the picture.

After listening to quite a few bands and researching the type of music video I want to make, I decided to create one for Passion Pit. They are a signed band but the song I have chosen, Smile Upon Me, does not currently have a music video so fits the needs of the project. 

The song is one that I listen to regularly and I think having an interest in the band and the music they make will help me to make something that fits well into the genre of music. I think that this song is quite strange in it's overall impact upon the consumer, so I may think about having my main character as someone who is quite a social misfit, portraying this with old clothes, eccentric appearance etc.

After deciding upon this song choice I needed to ask permission to use it from the band. I could not find a direct email address on their website so decided to use Myspace to contact them, sending the following email.

I have not received any reply as of yet, but I am regularly checking back onto Myspace for any response.

Research & Planning: History of Music Videos

The music video is a very large part of media these days, with a whole section of SkyTV dedicated to 24 hour music video channels, producers and directors are in high regard.
The first ever music video is supposedly the one shown above, it was shot in 1894 at Thomas Edison's laboratory. 
Nowadays, music videos are used as promotional tools to sell a song. In the past they were used to accompany a song to create more enjoyable experience for the consumer.
Many performers and bands have pushed the limits of music videos by creating raunchy and explicit videos etc. Some have created feature length films to accompany their music. e.g. Pink Floyd, Kanye West etc.





For some artists, music videos have been a strong political tool while accompanying a particularly strong minded and lyrically challenging song. In the video below Eminem is challenging the US citizens to stand againt George Bush and his administration. This music video gained huge publicity and favour in the media.



The birth of websites such as Youtube have had a very big effect on music videos and how they are produced. In the past, music videos have had massive budgets and have always strived to be the biggest and the best with the most explosions and special effects as possible, now with Youtube, the more quirky and low budget videos seem to gain the most popularity with viewers. Inventive videos like OK GO have gained incredible media and have created international success for a relatively unknown band previously.

Research & Planning: Analysis of Music Videos and Narrative

There are 2 types of narration within music videos; Restricted narration and Omniscient narration.

Restricted narration is where the audience and the characters of the music video learn story information at the same time. This is mainly used to create suspense, as in horror movies. Some horror directors have consciously used Omniscient rather than Restricted narration to create fear of the protagonist who does not know what the viewer knows.

Omniscient narration is where the viewer is not tied to one character and has a god-like view of the story, usually knowing all the thoughts and movements of characters. E.g in a horror film the viewer will know where the 'good' and 'bad' guys are, creating suspense until their paths meet.

In Busted's music video for 'What I go to school for' the director has followed the path involving restricted narration. Throughout the video we are following the band members and we are supposed to empathise with their feelings and actions along the storyline. There is a brief moment of omniscient narration when we see inside the teachers house and can see what she is doing, this is still slightly restricted as this is a first person view from one the the characters we are with.

Research & Planning: CD Digipak - Back

1.) This space is a list of the companies and recording studios involved in the album recording. It also has the copyright and band information. Researching for the correct information will add the authenticity that makes a good cover


2.) The band name in larger print than the rest of the back cover is quite a good idea as it is easily identifiable and I think it looks good so I will be using this idea in my final Digipak.


3.) Standard track list of the album is presented in a smart way with clear font, I might try to arrange mine in a more interesting fashion but if it doesn't look good I will revert back to the style seen above.


4.) This is information about the album cover creator and credits the people involved.

Research & Planning: Digipak Mock-up

This is what I have come up with after a short amount of time on Photoshop and thinking about how I want my final Digipak to look.
I like the idea of having a bench on the front cover as this will feature heavily in my music video.

Research & Planning: Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin identified key features in music videos:

- relationship between lyrics and visuals

- relationship between music and visuals

- genre-related style

- multiple close-ups of main artist

- voyeurism, especially in terms of females

- intertextual references to other media texts

A good example of this is Kanye West - Gold Digger, this music video includes all of these key features as it includes many close ups of Kanye West, close ups of parts of females bodies (voyeurism) and intertextual references as the women are presented in a magazine theme and shown on the front pages of various magazines.

When developing my own ideas of a music video and how I want mine to look when I come to producing one, I will use some of Goodwin's key features such as close ups of the artist/character and the relationship between music and visuals.
The song I am going to be using is a slightly odd song, not very mainstream at all so I want the video to reflect an idea of being out of what we would consider to be normal. Hopefully creating slight comedy and an entertaining video.

Auteur Theory: Focus on Spike Jonze

The Auteur theory was first studied and recognised in the 1950's when French film directors, such as Francois Truffaut, started to focus on the directors or certain films to work out a pattern or trend in their work. Studying the contribution of a director to a piece of film, recognising the creators personal creative visions and their effect on the overall outcome of the film. This theory is different to the 'Genre Theory' that focuses on similarities within films, such as the generic love story going through stages of love and loss, eventually resulting in a happy ending. The 'Auteur Theory' focuses on what is different between texts rather than what is similar.

Spike Jonze, pictured above, is perhaps one of the best examples of the auteur theory in the sense that his work is very recognisable and can be traced back to him simply by the themes and camera work involved.







'Bjork - All is full of love' and 'Kanye West - Flashing Lights' are similar videos directed by Spike Jonze. They are both very much opposite to the genre theory of generic storylines, both being quite abstract and almost random to the music being played. Jonze does not often have the performers performing the music in the video and will use a character singing the lyrics instead in most videos. The videos are also quite dark and have an almost depressing and 'lonely' feel to them.







These two videos, 'Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice' and 'Fatboy Slim - Praise You', have an element of comedy because they are videos of unfamiliar scenes and things that seem quite silly at first. Having a smartly dressed man dancing round an empty building extravagantly seems like something you shouldn't, or wouldn't see so is humorous. Having a group of people start dancing in a shopping centre is again very unexpected and creates humour when watching. The unexpected nature of his comedy follows on through a few more videos.

Audience Theories: Effects Theory and Cultural Studies approach

- Define effects theory:

The effects theory has arisen from psychologists attempting to explore an existing belief that media violence, e.g. television shows, films and computer games, would influence the audience to be violent, having a direct behavioural effect on the passive audience. This could be why pregnant women often play calming, sophisticated classical music to their womb whilst pregnant, believing this will create a smart and polite child.

This has been labelled the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory'. The 'Bobo Doll' experiment is the most famous example of this theory.


The legitimacy of this research can be questioned and maybe should not be taken as the absolute truth.
In recent times, violent lyrics and computer games have been blamed constantly for the rise in crime and bad youth behaviour. The main questions asked by the researchers are whether music has an effect on the listeners and whether or not that is a negative effect.
However, this research was only carried out using aggressive music and was never carried out with genre's such as classical. This does raise many questions and is evidence of a bias study.

- Define Cultural Studies approach:

The cultural studies approach takes the 'effects theory' into account but also encourages researchers to understand the active nature of certain audiences. The tests were to try and understand particular aims and objectives of media texts but to also see media audiences as active and responsive, adopting different standpoints in relation to the values expressed.

These are:

• Preferred Reading - Audience take in the messages from the media text and accept them as correct and natural.
• Negotiated Reading - Audience see the values to be legitimate and accept them, but will adapt the their reading to work with their experiences etc.
• Oppositional Reading - Audience understand values but reject and disagree with them.

Preferred Reading: Target audience would be in favour of people robbing a bank and handing out money to the public to rebel against society and would view it as the right thing to do.


Oppositional Reading: Some people would see this as very 'thuggish' and a ridiculous way of showing your lack of support for the government.


Negotiated Reading: People may not be willing to participate in such an act if it ever occurred, but can see the reason behind it and has no strong feelings towards the act/video.

Music and Effects theory:

- What kinds of questions are the researchers interested in? (why don't they experiment with classical music?
The kinds of questions being asked are those that will create an outcome that they are trying to gain in order to create 'interesting' results to the experiment. They have not carried out a fair test as they are only researching one end of the musical spectrum and have not recorded behaviour changes from the classical and less aggressive end of music.
This is working with the common conception of the 'Hypodermic Needle Theory'.


- What are the key concerns that have been raised about the effects of Rap music?
Key concerns about rap music have been that people may try to become 'gangsters' or take on the mentality of rap artists and act as the lyrics implore them to, e.g. 'Fuck the police.'
Many songs from 'thug rap' have spoken of ways to grow up in 'the hood' and can encourage young people growing up in said areas to believe this is the only way to grow up and survive, therefore creating negative behaviour among communities where this style of music is high in profile. 
In a more positive light, songs have empowered young people and have created a lot of confidence within communities to stand up and have a voice. This positive mentality is out shadowed by the more destructive and aggressive music which is more common within society today.


- What does the author of this site consider more problematic than the music?
This site is showing Americas deep routed problems to create a lot more violence than rap music itself, readily available guns, drugs, alcohol and knives are the cause of violence. USA's reluctance to take blame for their own problems and downfalls has created mass media criticism of rap music and artists. Conservative pundits have publicly criticised the rap industry and the effect on the listeners, while also backing education cuts and supporting the National Rifle Association. To suggest rap music is the root cause of all crime is simply outrageous.

Music Video Genre Exploration

Music videos all belong to certain genres made noticeable by the director of that video, each genre has been partnered carefully with the music genre to gain maximum relation and exposure to the intended target audience of the music.

For example:

Parody:

Film parody music videos are often comedic and entertaining in general. This song from Limp Bizkit was made to be the accompanying song to the feature film, Mission Impossible II, the film is about spies and secret agents so the music video has paradied these ideas and created new characters out of the band members with short clips of the Mission Impossible flashing on the screen to re-itterate the partnership. This video has minimal comedic effect although it does have small showings of comedy throughout.

Low Budget/ Quirky:

Low budget music videos have recently become an established genre mainly within the Independent side of the music industry. Independent artists do not have a big budget to create music videos and will often create an interesting routine or performance to create a 'buzz' about their video, gaining free advertising through video sites such as Youtube, a good example of this being 'Ok Go - Here it goes again' creating a dance routine using running machines. Very simple and very effective. Since the explosion of 'Indie' bands from the early 2000's, many signed bands with larger budgets have created videos that seem low budget and have the same characteristics as those made with no resources to stay within the genre and to gain the same advertising and exposure they crave from being 'quirky' and different. These videos are usually very entropic.

Performance/ Spectacle:

Performance/ Spectacle music videos are made to be interesting and enticing to the viewer, keeping attention to the end, making the viewer feel as though the video is definitely worth watching till the end. They will usually be relatively high budget videos.

Sexy/Raunchy:

Sexy music videos are almost all made showing scantily clad women rather than men. They attract a certain area of the market, and are normally made for R'n'B or Rap artists tracks. This is a trend that has arisen since the mainstream inclusion of R'n'B in the UK. R'n'B male performers have been known to be very cocky and arrogant so these videos simply emphasise these 'qualities' and show their ability to have 6 or 7 model like women constantly at their side.

 

Narrative:

Narrative music videos are made to tell a story, the video above is a song about a teenager who likes a girl that doesn't take notice of him, the video simply acts this songs story out to emphasise the plot, this is a very generic and redundant storyline with a very predictable ending. The video is not made to be thought provoking or to have a big 'twist' from the normal sequence, it is telling a story and does just that. This genre of music video is especially in songs about love etc.

Introduction to A2 Task

For the A2 media studies coursework we have been set the task of creating a 'Digipak' along with a music video for a track that has not previously had an official music video made to accompany it.
A digipak is a style of compact disk packaging that is usually a cardboard case consisting of 4 designs, with a theme throughout, containing a CD in a plastic tray.

I have also been asked to create an advert to advertise the newly released digipak, in a similar fashion to the ones shown below:

My chosen partner for the work is Jo-Anne Williams, we will be making the music video as a pair but the digipak, digipak advert and all analysis will be done individually.

Lip Syncing exercise: Post- Production

In the process of post-production and the editing of the footage I learnt different techniques that would be very useful to me in the final task. I learnt how to cut and insert clips and use different layers that can be individually moved about to make to lip syncing accurate and realistic. When doing this we selected the Rolling Edit Tool because it allowed us to edit a point between two shots without changing the rest of the video or the other shots.

In the shot where "Britney" is tapping the pencil, we were able to speed the shot up slightly in order to make it in time with the audio and therefore make it look realistic. We did this by changing the percentage of the speed of the clip which then changed the duration of the clip.

In the final task I expect to pick up and learn more techniques that will benefit me in the making of my music video that will help me in creating a music video that is of a high quality, I will do this by experimenting and doing some research into the uses and tools featured in Adobe Premier Pro.

Lip Syncing exercise: Research and Planning

Creating a time plan helped to assess how long it will take to produce the video which then meant that we could get it done within a reasonable amount of time. We planned what we would get done in each lesson and thought about how long each step of the task would take and divided it out so that we could get it done within the time that we had, this allowed us to prepare and plan what we needed to bring to each lesson and therefore allowed us to keep organised throughout.

We created a time line of the shots that showed the order of the shots and roughly how long they were. We numbered each shot so that when it came to editing we could easily refer to which shot and therefore put to video together without getting the order mixed up, this saved a lot of time and also a lot of confusion. Another way we saved time was by planning the order in which we were going to shoot each shot, this meant that when filming following the order that we had produced was less time consuming than filming the shot in the order of the video.

We also created a health and safety list of things that could create potential hazards and explained how we would deal with them. Health and safety is very important in the industry so we wanted to mimic this idea of ensuring that everyone involved is safe and that all potential hazards are dealt with.

In the final task I expect to be planning in a similar way to this task but with a lot more depth and accuracy. I will need to produce:
- detailed research of what I want the video to look like- plan of where I will be shooting the video
- time line of the order the shots will be featured in the final product
- time line of the order I will film the shots
- time plan showing what I will do and when to ensure I finish the task on time
- health and safety report with what potential hazards there may be and how they will be dealt with
- plan of who will be in the video and what they will be doing
- costume plan (including props) of everyone featuring in the video
- plan of all equipment needed and where I will get it

Lip Syncing exercise: Digital Technology

My knowledge of production technology developed greatly throughout this task because before I had little idea of how it would be done, doing this smaller task before the final task has allowed me to develop skills that would be of great use to me for the final task. This task was done within a group although the final task will be done individually, this allows us to pick up skills and learn from others within the group.

In this task I learnt that in order to ensure we have enough footage for editing and to make the video, it is best to film more shots than needed and have longer takes than needed to prevent not having enough footage and then having to go and do more filming. This is often done in production as it is not expensive and doesn't cost any more to film lots of footage.

For the editing we used Adobe Premier Pro, doing this task allowed me to understand how to use the software and be able to use it fully and take advantage of what it can do. When editing we cut the shots to what we needed and put different shots on different layers and moved them about in order for the lip syncing to be accurate.

Later in the course I hope to develop more skills for using the technology and be able to use it even more to my advantage. For example, I would like to pick up more editing techniques from Adobe Pro Premiere that would help me to create a professional, high quality music video for my final task.

Lip Syncing exercise: Britney Spears - Hit me baby one more time

This music video focuses on presenting a particular image of the band and making them look fun and cool without taking themselves too seriously and trying too hard.




Tells a story that doesn't necessarily relate to the song. In some ways is unpredictable because no ones reacts to her carrying a 'giant heart'

Entropic although does relate to the song in a very literal way

What did I learn about...

Prep and Planning: I learnt that you have to know the lyrics of the song you are miming to thoroughly before being able to start preparation and need to have knowledge of the musical timing within the song. Making a time plan and a schedule and sticking to it is very useful but also hard to work with as unforeseen interruptions can knock you off course.
Filming: When filming the main troubles are keeping the lip syncing in time to the song you are miming to. This was achieved through playing the song whilst filming. Finding a location to film in and checking that location is suitable and available beforehand is something I will be checking before starting the next project.
Working with Performers: I was directing the film we created and found that working with performers was troublesome because there are always slight dips in concentration which can lead to multiple takes and time wasting.
Technology: Working with the Mini DV camera was quite easy as I have prior knowledge and experience so this was not a problem. Using the editing software was more troublesome as I have not used it before and had to learn whilst editing the footage. I think this was ok after help from the teacher to show us how to use the software.