Caught in the act..

SO yes, here are a few snappy snapshots from the work done this weekend;

Evie setting up some snazzy camera shots

Anna being a good girl and blogging our progress

And me getting the calendar dates shots :)

Props and To Do list -

I forgot to upload this the other day, so some of these we do have and have sorted out, but this is the props and to-do list that we wrote last week:

- A clothes rail
- A LARGE selection of books
- Clocks
- Finalise costume designs – then get costumes
- Location – making the set
- Main characters - CONTACT
- Book Camera's for the week
- Get Sheets/boards for making 'studio' set
- Sort lighting
- Possible heating for pavilion
- Vinyl player + vinyl (will design with our logo)
- More clothes + accessories etc for 'eye for fashion darling' scene
- Face paints/colourful make-up
- Plants/dead leaves/Chicken??
- CDs
- Gold picture frames
- Anything else we have forgotten!

Music-Magpie Advert

Ok, this is a bit random, but I when watching TV recently I saw this advert for MusicMagpie.co.uk



I was amazed that this is the perfect and ONLY example of the stop motion-ish effect we wish to create in our book scene that I've been able to find. I'm not sure what this technique is called and I've tried to find out but it's SO hard to explain nobody I've asked really knew what I was talking about. ANYWAY the newly named 'stop motion-ish thingy' features throughout the advert, with the CD's. The section that is most relevant to us is at 0:15, where 3 piles of CDs are seen moving up and down - this is exactly what we have planned to create with piles of books in our music video. So yes, it's a bit random, but I thought it was great when I saw this, and it's the only example of what I imagined for our scene that I've been able to find ANYWHERE!

24/10/10

DISASTER STRIKES - Today we were supposed to go to Anna's and begin making our set and possibly get in some practise shots of our storyboard - I live a LONG way out from Anna's house, which was fine because I would get a train from Stansted to Saffron Walden, then get picked up and taken to Anna's in Ashdon - HOWEVERRRR public transport is evil and has a grudge against me and the trains weren't running! (I found this out once I had already ran from my house to the station..) and my parents are away and buses don't run on a Sunday! I was literally stranded here! This is reealllyy annoying because I will miss out on part of the process, but I've heard their day went really well and they established some good ideas of what will and won't work for the video. I am also not available this half term because I'm going away (SO ANNOYING) but Anna and Evie will continue to practise some shooting and potentially start getting some actual footage if Charlie (main mannn) is available - and then after half term we will analyse whatever footage we have got by that point, and decide what more we need to do, or maybe what we need to change, and will then go back to complete the filming when I am there.

23/10/10

Today was our first round of test shooting, set designing and general sorting out. We brought together all the props we had each dug out (including a vinyl of 'Nick Nack Paddywack'.. yesss Evie) and decided which ones we were going to use, what scenes they'd be in and which of the lyrics they link to. I also went through the song with a fine tooth comb to note where every change in the music occurs, so we can make our editing and camera shots perfectly in sync with the song.

We didn't have as much time as we hoped but we did get to film a small section of the storyboard - it was the shots of a wooden block calendar. We took a still image of every date between October 1st and November 10th - when editing we will play these shots really fast one after another, at the part of the song that says 'let the days go by..'.

We did a small amount of practising of lip syncing; we will have to get this perfect and smooth for our final video, otherwise it'll look unprofessional and scruffy.

We are planning to meet again tomorrow at Anna's so we can go to the cricket pavilion and begin setting up our 'studio' and maybe even get in some practise filming - we cannot start capturing the real footage this weekend because Charlie (our main guyyy) isn't available. But this is a good thing because we can practise and plan exactly how we want each shot to go and what we want to achieve.

Practise Editing

In our last media lesson we were shown an example music video made by some A level students last year. In their video they used a 4 way split screen with the action in each screen interacting together - this looked really effective and we were set the task of recreating this split screen effect for our preliminary task. Here is a screen shot of the example we were shown:

Me and Anna worked together and filmed each other for the four sections, then uploaded the footage to the mac. In our next lesson we were to start editing, we weren't told how exactly to do the editing so we were supposed to try and work it out ourselves. I hadn't done this exact thing before but I practised something slightly similar last year within my AS project, so I just went in for it and did what I thought was right. It seems to be working so far so we are rather impressed with our work!

Relocation Relocation..

We've had LITERALLY HUNDREDS (three) location changes now due to all sorts of complications. Ideally we would love to use a professional studio to set the video in, but as this was impossible for us, we decided to make our own impression of a studio with painted white wooden boards and white sheets. Originally we were going to try and set it up in either mine or Evie's garage, but they both turned out to be SO full of clutter and general garage-y things that it would have been ridiculous to even try and empty them out. So Anna suggested a room in her house that they were going to paint white anyway so we could use it as our white box, but she is having some building work done so we wouldn't be able to use the space. SO we are now going to construct our D.I.Y studio in a cricket pavilion near Anna's house, as it's not cricket season we won't be disturbed by unruly cricket balls.. Hopefully this will work out and we won't have to relocate again..!

Storyboard

 

 

Get ORGANISED

To ensure our music video stays on track, we made a calender of the space of time allocated to this project. This is so we don't forget to do anything, miss out anything important, run out of time.. or ANYTHING disastrous like that. So far we have stuck religiously to this schedule, let's hope we have NO glitches...



On our schedule, we have pencilled in the big fat ALL TASKS COMPLETED a week earlier than the official deadline. We will be working towards the week of the 29th as our deadline, therefore any last minute hiccups, or alterations will not be panicked and rushed, we'll have a nice casual week to polish and perfect :)

Hot Chip Editing Inspiration

At the point of 00:13 – 00:20 - there are quick cuts between extreme close up, close up, and long shots, with lip syncing still correct – in some scenes of our video, would like to try and incorporate the quick cuts between different levels of close up, appear as if moving closer and further away from actor. Also in this section of the Hot Chip video, with each cut comes a small changes of the characters costume/face. One half of his glasses change colour, his face is painted on one side and he wears half a green wig, also his suit changes colour and style with the cuts – gives the effect they are appearing and disappearing without a pause in filming – very much would like to employ this effect in the opening instrumental of our song. We wish to have an extreme close up of both male and female character faces with small elements changing  e.g. the colour of her lipstick will change, the colour of her eye make-up will change, her hair might change style, and for both characters their eyes will look in different directions each time. Will take a LOT of time to edit, but we think this could look really effective if completed correctly. We also want to use this technique of making props appear and disappear in the later scene ‘..I’ve only read in books.’ Where our main character is surrounded by piles of books which will appear to be moving up and down in height, at the same time as the music beat, and then having a tower of books building up in front of actor, until it covers his face.

Research..

I was trawling YouTube for other music video's of our genre, for possible inspiration for camera angles, editing techniques etc, and I came across the video for 'Please Please Please' by our chosen band The Shout Out Louds, and the video is ridiculously similar to our initial idea! We are planning to have the majority of our video set in a white studio (painted room in Anna's house..) and having the lead vocalist singing into the camera. In this video the band are in a white room for the entire video and they sing into the camera - we have planned to have some scenes of our production set outside in a field, but the Shout Out Louds video will definitely give us some inspiration for the inside shots.

Screen shot from the video:


This video won't allow me to embed it onto my blog but the link below will direct you to YouTube where it can be watched :)

The Ting Tings - Inspiration

The ting tings are band we can take a lot of inspiration from as they consist of a male and female singer, as does our band

Psychographics..

When doing some further research on target audience for our chosen genre, Indie/alternative rock, I came across something called Psychographics:  'In the field of marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables - for Interests, Activities, and Opinions.'


Examples of these groups are:

 - Succeeders: People who are successful and self confident. They tend not to buy aspirational products and follow their own ideas of what is a good product.
 - Reformers: Creative, caring, altruistic, not brand conscious.
 - Aspirers: People who want to "get on".
 - Mainstreamers: The largest segment, conformists who buy "safe", big brand products.
 - Strivers: status oriented people who seek money, approval and social status. Obvious buyers of "aspirational" goods.
 - Explorers: seek novelty and want to try new things. They are likely to be early adopters of completely new products.
 - Constrained: they are the resigned and struggling poor.

(http://moneyterms.co.uk/psychographics/)


In terms of defining an audience for an indie rock music video, groups we would be most likely to appeal and aim towards would be; Reformers - due to the creativity element, this genre of music is one of creative strength, which would be reflected in the videos; likely to contain different, challenging and non cliche ideas. Also not being brand conscious is important, I think, to our video genre as this 'alternative' style of music is not one focussed on recognisable names, faces and conventions all working together to make money, but one that cares more about the artistic success and surprising and entertaining an audience.
The other would be Explorers - Who are defined as wanting to try new things, this is exactly the audience indie and alternative music would appeal to as it is challenging of stereotypes, usually lyrically experimental and moved away from cliche. They are conveniently perfect for our song and idea in general, as it is named 'Show me something new'.


These groupings aren't as clear and understandable as the other target audience considerations such as age and gender etc, but I think it had some interesting points and I will definitely keep them in mind during the designing process of our video, for example we must ensure to include - visually interesting, creative shots and scenes, as to challenge stereotypes and avoid imitating existing videos.

• 
  

'Noah and the Whale'

We were doing some general research in the form of watching other music videos on Youtube, and we came across Noah and the Whale's video for '5 Years Times' and we really liked the transitions they use between their shots and their frequent use of split screen - like this:



I tried embedding the video but it has been made so that people are not allowed to do so, so here is the link to YouTube -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4

We had already discussed the idea of using split screen in our video and after seeing this video we now definitely want to incorporate it into our project :)

More target audience..

Whilst researching target audience, I though I would look at music channels that specialise in the indie rock genre. I discovered a music channel called MTV Two, who on their website descirbe themselves as:

“MTV Two

The music channel with attitude for indie, rock and alternative music enthusiasts. An interactive music channel playing diverse and cutting edge music, MTV Two is where the viewer defines the music programming – create your own hour of videos via the web. With a leftfield take on the world, it really is a channel created by and for individuals.

Target Audience: 16-24 male”

Finding this definitely confirms my earlier establishing of audience age range, that I put at 15 - 26, which corresponds almost perfectly with the audience range this indie rock channel specifically strive to aim towards.

I also found it interesting that they said their audience was specifically male, and we will definitely bear this in mind when designing the macro and micro elements of our video, and we will strive to ensure the tone and content of our video will be leaning towards being more masculine than feminine, to make sure the majority of the audience is satisfied. We will obviously want it to appeal to girls as well, as indie rock does also have an enormous female fan base, as we as a group know from personal experience of attending gigs of indie rock bands.

Genre Research

Through researching the 'indie' the genre on the internet many sites were available that discussed the origin and nature of the genre, and the subcultures that have since developed from the original. This website http://www.neardistance.co.uk/ was really interesting and shone a lot of light on the genre, and what is expected of 'indie' products. 

The thing we thought most important that we found on the website was that:

"In popular music, indie music (from independent) is any of a number of genres, scenes, subcultures and stylistic and cultural attributes, characterised by (real or perceived) independence from commercial pop music and mainstream culture and an autonomous, do-it-yourself (DIY) approach."

We thought this was a really helpful definition of the genre as it taught us that some important conventions that we should aim to include in our music video product would be that a 'DIY' style of production and designing, whilst using authentic props, styles and themes such as using vinyl records, authentic vinyl players etc. 

Example - Kickstarts

We came across this video the other day and thought it brilliantly used elements of stop motion and split screen in such a way that we would love to emulate in our video. The use of split screen with the female and male protagonists on either side is an idea we will definitely consider when storyboarding - our concept is that the characters are separated between indoor and outdoor, and there is a boundary between them that he needs to break through to be happy with her.






The use of split screen separating elements of faces and bodies is also really effective and something we may be able to incorporate in our video, splitting the faces of the male and female, for example his eyes and her mouth singing his lyrics.

The successful use of stop motion is something we really loved, for example the shots of feet tapping where the shoe continually changes, as well as the couples in the tent who alternately change. The good thing about these stop motion sections is that they are incredibly well synced with the beat of the music, which is something we will strive to achieve.

Institutions etc..

I began my research into record label institutions that would be appropriate for representing our band and song, and to begin this I visited a popular music social website called Last.fm. On here you are able to search a band that you are interested in, and be given a range of similar artists (i.e same genre, style etc) that the site thinks you would also enjoy.
Several of the 'similar artists' that were listed for our chosen band were swedish artists, because The Shout Out Louds are actually a swedish band, so we have never actually heard of most of them, but after reading their information and listening to their music, we found they are in the same genre of indie rock/pop and are perfect for inspiration for record labels and audiences for us to target with our video.

A record label named V2 Records was popular with swedish artists similar to ours, representing bands such as 'Johnossi' and 'Laakso', both described on last.fm as indie rock/pop, following many similar conventions to our band in terms of style and sound. I believe this record label would be perfectly suited to marketing our band and video, as they have experience with similar artists and know the audience well.

However I thought it necessary to research record labels within the UK, seeing as this is where we would release our video and want to direct it (if were actually going to..). Also through last.fm I found some UK based artists similar to ours. A similar band to ours named 'One night only' which was actually one of our finalist choices for this project, are represented by Mercury Music group, who I discovered also represent 'Noah and the Whale', 'Razorlight' and 'Stereophonics' who can all be well associated with the genre and style of our band, and would definitely have a similar target audience demographic.

Finally, I researched which record label represented The Kooks, as they were also a potential choice for us, and follow very well the genre and direction as our band. Their record label is Virgin Records, who I then found out also represent 'You me at six' and 'Cage the elephant' who I did some further research on and found that their video for 'In one Ear' (seen below) had some really interesting ideas and was the kind of entertaining, really random style of video that we think will go perfectly with our band, as they are alternative, quirky and unconventional.

Through researching appropriate institutions and similar artists this way, we will be able to establish our general target audience, and what appeals to them in terms of styling and video themes and genres.

The Band - Last.fm

This is the description of our band given on Last.fm - a social music site..

Stockholm, Sweden (2001 – present)

Shout Out Louds are an indie rock band from Stockholm, Sweden. The band consists of ‘four boys and one girl’: Adam Olenius (vocals, guitar), Ted Malmros (bass), Carl von Arbin (guitar), Eric Edman (drums) and Bebban Stenborg (keyboards, vocals).

Their original name was Luca Brasi after the infamous muscle guy and personal enforcer of Don Vito Corleone from the Godfather films, until they realized another band shared that name. The band started in 2001. All members had been friends since they were young.

They were featured in the arts section of The New York Times in November 2005. They performed at Bowery Ballroom in New York on Friday, November 4th, 2005.

On april 25th 2007 the band released their second album, 'Our Ill Wills' in Sweden and was released in the US on September 11th 2007 on their new label Merge Records.

General Research..

We thought it would be a good idea to find and watch other music videos by both our band (Shout Out Louds) and other bands in the Indie/rock genre. Of course we don't intend to copy anything from existing videos, but we thought it would be helpful to establish some general concepts/conventions that are usually seen in these videos, so our product doesn't go completely off course and not appeal to the audience that we intend to target.

This is the original video for 'Show me Something New'-



This video, as with many others in this genre of music, is almost entirely in black and white. I feel quite strongly about veering away from this style, and would very much like our video to be in colour. I believe that wash out colour and greyscale don't suit our song, which is very upbeat and positive, and of course we don't want to appear to copy anything from the existing video, we want to create something original and new.

Target Audience..

Before embarking on the process of designing and creating our video, we need to establish and recognise our target audience, so we know what and what not to include and present in our production.

I have researched on the internet the general age demographic of those who enjoy indie music, this wasn't an easy task as a lot of information than was completely irrelevant kept being thrown in my face when researching the target audience, but I managed to find a social music site called 'www.muzicforums.com' where a user had posted the question:

"Wondering what age group most likes indie & alternative rock music. what age are the people going to the shows and buying the cds? what cities in the USA (and the world) are best for emerging indie/alternative rock bands?"

In response to this there were several statistics and age ranges deemed relevant to this genre of music:

*15-21
*14-30
*16-25
*18-28

I worked out the average for these ages provided and got an average target audience age of between 15 and 26 years of age. Seeing as we, and all of our fellow students, friends and siblings fall into this category, we feel we have a good knowledge on what is well received and what isn't by the 'young adult' community - we can use this later on in the planning process by way of asking for honest opinions and thoughts of our ideas and work produced so far, giving us a first hand review of what we will have done, and whether it needs to be improved/changed.

We now need to focus down further onto a smaller demographic of just Indie rock audiences within this age range, and establish what will and won't be successful in our video with the age implications, as well as genre.

Lyrical Inspiration

To stem some initial ideas for the video we thought it would be a good idea to analyse some of the main lyrics in detail. We basically whacked our song on replay and brainstormed whatever came to mind when listening to the lyrics. The brainstorm was scanned into the computer so we could upload it to our blogs and show all of the early planning stages:

Song Lyrics

The Shout Out Louds - Show Me Something New:

You and I
Have a hard thing to describe
You have so much to live for
While I am just dying to stay alive

You and I
Have something you shouldn't try
You have an eye for fashion, darlin'
I'm sitting in my room and letting the days go by

So much to live for

You’ve seen things
I've only read in books
I been stuck here for days
While you get younger and younger

So much to live for

Radio daylight, radio dark
Radio daylight, radio dark
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

Radio day light, radio dark
Radio darkness and radio silent
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

So much to live for

Radio daylight, radio dark
Radio daylight, radio dark
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

Show me something new
Show me something new
Shoe me something new.

Filip Wilén.. ;)

The Shout Out Louds are actually a Swedish band, so I found the contact details of their UK representatives - Weekender Records - and sent them this email:

On 23 Sep 2010, at 11:35, Eleanor BROWN wrote
Dear Weekender Records UK,

My name is Ellie Brown and I am an A level student at Saffron Walden County High Sixth Form. For my Media Studies coursework my group members and I have the task of designing and producing an amateur music video. I am writing to request permission to use a song by the ‘Shout Out Louds’ as the stimulus for the project. The songs we are deciding between are; ‘Show Me Something New’ and ‘Fall Hard’. The ideas and material will be completely our own, but we would love to be able to use either of these songs as the base of our project. The video will not be used for promotional or financial benefit, it is only for our A level coursework and will be shown only to the examiners and possibly other media students within the sixth form.

Thankyou for your time, I look forward to hearing from you.

Ellie Brown

Amazingly I received a reply within about 10 minutes:

Ellie,

Many thanks for your message and good luck with your project. A wise choice of music!

Sadly Weekender Records has closed down in the UK but I have forwarded your request to Shout Out Louds manager Filip in Sweden. Hopefully he will respond directly to you. Otherwise you can e-mail him yourself at: Filip Wilén

Best wishes,
Justin
(former Chairman Weekender Records

SO.. Filip then got back to us with a somewhat reserved response.. which I'm going to blame on the language barrier...

Re: The 'Shout Out Louds'
Filip Wilén [filip@budfox.se]
To: Eleanor BROWN


thats ok


--------------------------------------------------

Filip Wilén | Managing Director
Bud Fox Management
Saturnusgatan 13
224 57 Lund, Sweden
Ph. +46 46 13 81 20 Mob. +46 705 34 35 10
filip@budfox.se

..However brief, it's still a YES so we can now begin planning our video!

Asking for permission...

This year, we have been told that the exam board are cracking down on the use of copyrighted music and for a brief while we thought we were going to have to source music some other way.. basically meaning making it ourselves, which - let's face it -would have been disastrous.

BUT luckily we are still able to continue as originally planned - using music belonging to an existing band/company, as long as we make particular effort to contact the band/company requesting permission to use their song. Obviously if they say no then we will have to compromise on the song choice. I am currently scouring the Shout Out Loud's websites for email addresses of the right people to ask about this..

SONG CHOSEN

We have listened to our favourite songs by the bands about three million times over, waiting for inspiration to strike, and finally decided to use a song by 'The Shout Out Louds' called 'Show me Something New'. The song is hard to label with a specific genre/theme, but the most appropriate I could come up with was 'Happy'.. Not overly creative I know, but the song to us seems extremely cheerful and positive, and we think it is about the beauty in this world, and what amazing things you can enjoy if you open your eyes.. Which turned out to be fairly challenging to sum up in one single word.

We thought the song was really encouraging of ideas for the video; it is named 'Show me something new' which to me threw open loads of doors to interesting, quirky ideas. Essentially it gives us the opportunity to create and show 'something new'.

Potential song choices

Today we began research into which song will be the stimulus for our video. We researched Indie/Alternative rock bands through the process of suggesting bands we each knew to be in this genre, and also searched on the internet for stereotypically 'Indie' bands, to see if we found something we liked that hadn't been heard by any of us before.

Here is our final shortlist of bands;
- One Night Only
- The Shout Out Louds
- The Kooks (MAYBE.. they're more than a little bit annoying)
- Vampire Weekend

Genre Pondering

In regard to choosing our song, there is pretty much an infinite amount on offer we could choose from, therefore we needed to decide on a genre and style of music we wanted to generally focus on, as not to waste endless lessons trawling through all the music ever made in the world, ever.. and to be able to establish a target audience to which we would ensure to keep in mind when making any decisions and developing ideas for the video.
We came to a mutual decision to go with the Indie/Alternative Rock genre, because firstly this is music that we all enjoy listening to, therefore have a fairly strong understanding of what audiences of this music enjoy in terms of music videos and styles, and practically we believe that this genre of music tends to have the best and most interesting lyrical opportunities for ideas to stem from - due to the themes of the songs often being more 'alternative' and interesting, as opposed to cliche narratives seen regularly in genres like Pop.