ABSENCE: 31/09/13 - 4/10/12

During the week commencing on the 31st of September, I will be away on a Geography field trip in Swanage, Dorset. This unfortunately will lead to me missing several lessons which means on my return I will be behind on the coursework schedule. Luckily, Sam will be able to finish off the final quarter of the storyboard, photograph each page and upload them onto the blog in the form of an Anamatic which is our main concern at the moment as the storyboard is definitive to the success of the final video as it ensures each shot is considered carefully so the video flows. Sam will also be able to finalise the Risk Assessment we have been carrying out and also upload this to the blog. Furthermore, the lesson structure of the week I will be away means that I will miss five lessons and therefore five hours of work time. I plan to make this time up by increasingly working from home on my return from Swanage and to also attend after school sessions. The work I will need to be complete when I return is:

• Initial Digipak Front Cover Designs 
• Analysis of three digipaks
• Location for the final music video
• Entire Digipak Draft 

THE EVERYTHING Twitter Feed

(click picture to view the Twitter feed)

A Twitter profile has been created (by myself and my partner throughout this A2 project, Sam) which will be used to promote and publicise THE EVERYTHING and give information about the band across to an audience of followers who choose to follow the band if they are interested to see what is to come. We followed similar artists to THE EVERYTHING and also followed those who followed us so that we could interact with the fans to achieve a wider audience. We will be using this Twitter profile to give updates of pre-production progress to the music video, digipaks and album covers.

THE EVERYTHING: FINAL LOGO

This is the logo I created for the band, The Everything. We have followed the conventions we found in our research of band logos but adapted them to incorporate a two colour colour scheme of cyan and black which is simple yet effective and will stand out compared to all the black and white band logos. these colours will be rememberable and the audience will relate these colours to the band. Although the logo is not complex, it flows and works well with the "THE" incorporated within the "EVERYTHING".

Band Logo Moodboard

This is a mood board we have created for inspiration to aid us in creating our final band logo for THE EVERYTHING. We have noticed the conventions throughout these logos of bands in our genre of having a very simple design with a font that stands out but is also clear. With the logos we have found, they are mostly black and white with the exception of The Vaccines. We liked the two colours of The Vaccines logo and we would like to adapt the concept for our logo.

Black Keys: Live Performances

These are a few videos of The Black Keys performing live. The main instruments that we are exposed to are the drums and bass guitar. These are the instruments we will be using when filming our music video, putting them in a lot of focus. Another idea we are considering is getting 'THE EVERYTHING' wrote in big letters over the sheet of the drum. The Black Keys have done this in basically all of their performance videos, a lot of bands within this genre also seem to follow this, making it a convention for the genre, we believe this gives of a professional look and it keeps popping up to the audience, allowing them to be constantly reminded of our bands name. We want to keep the look and font of the writing simplistic, potentially following our band logo, and bald. This is so it instantly gets the attention of the audience and doesn't give off a hard-to-read unprofessional look. An example of this is shown below.

Potential Equipment

CAMERA
The camera that we use will a very important factor in determining the success of the video as if a poor quality camera is used, it will alter the whole look of the video and as we are not producing a video where the camera is purposely of poor quality, the camera must be good to ensure that the final product looks professional and realistic compared to pre-existing music videos from our chosen genre.

The camera we are looking at using for the video is the Nikon D5100 which is a relatively expensive digital SLR which shoots in full HD (up to 1080p) and up to 30 frames per second. After some research into the camera, we have discovered that the camera produces good quality video which would be perfect for our music video. This good quality will ensure that the video we produce will look similar to those made by real bands from our chosen genre. An example of the video quality from the Nikon D5100 is shown below.

During the research into the Nikon D5100, we realised that to optimise the video quality results from the camera we would have to use the correct settings and set up the camera correctly in different lighting situations. We then searched the internet on how to optimise the video quality and have found many hints and tips from websites that will help us to get the best results out of the camera we use.

TRIPOD
To film the final music video will shall be using a tripod for the vast majority of the shots to ensure that the shots remain consistent and have a stable look for a professional effect throughout. The only instance where this could change would be if we chose to add handheld shots for an effect. We will be using the tripods provided by the college as they are of the standard that we require and will be easily accessible.

LIGHTING

As we are not including any indoor shots we may not need any equipment to create lighting for different shots as we will be relying on the weather but if the weather does not compensate then we may use artificial sources of light such as a professional photography studio lighting system. This will make sure the lighting in the shots is how we envisaged it to be to give a consistent video throughout. However, if the weather is as predicted then we will not need to use any artificial lighting which will make the whole process a lot more efficient as moving the lighting around would be a tough job compared to just carrying a small, easily handled camera. 

Potential Equipment

Final Song Choice: The Black Keys- Lonely Boy

LYRICS

Well I'm so above you

and it's plain to see

but I came to love you anyway...

So you pulled my heart out and I don't mind bleedin'

and the whole time you keep me waiting, waiting, waiting

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

I'm a lonely boy, I'm a lonely boy

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

Well your mama kept you

but your daddy left you

and I shoulda' done you just the same

but I came to love you, am I going to bleed?

and the whole time you keep me waiting, waiting, waiting

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

I'm a lonely boy, I'm a lonely boy

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

I'm a lonely boy, I'm a lonely boy

oh oh oh oh, I got a love that keeps me waiting

After a lot of consideration and alteration we have decided to change our song to THE BLACK KEYS – LONELY BOY. We first chose Friendly Fires – Blue Cassette and truly believed this was the correct song to go forward with in order to gain maximum potential marks. However after more consideration we have found that The Black Keys are a better band to go with, this is due to a lot of different factors. Firstly the people we are using in our band will be suitable to the psychical image and vocals of The Black Keys. Along with this we were struggling to find ways we could create narrative elements with Blue Cassette, this is because the lyrics have quite niche targeted ideas, however with Lonely Boy we can emphasise a feeling of isolation easily/creatively for one of the band members. Allowing the visuals to fit with the lyrics in the narrative will make the video more intriguing to watch for the audience, as long as we can keep the shots holding a variety of different angles and sizes so the audience stay involved. 

Band Clothing/Style

These are examples of what the artists in our band could potentially wear throughout the music video. We have chosen these items of clothing as we are attempting to adhere to the Indie/Alternative style in our video so will style our band in the appropriate way. We will try and follow conventions seen in other Indie/Alternative videos with our styling and use quite bland, retro/vintage, clothing that would connote the Indie/Alternative genre. The shirts included in the photo above are of particular importance as this is the main convention we have noticed, through analysing videos of the same and similar genres. The main style would be most likely known as casual with various elements of smart clothing used. Using this style a long with the music will allow the genre of the video to be easily identifiable.

Shots

This is an over-shoulder shot from the video Frank Ocean – Lost where he is walking down the street, we believe this is a unique shot we could consider using, even though it is short the mise en scene shown in front of him can be effective. We can consider different aspects to put in front of him to relate to the genre/ song of the band in our narrative aspects of the video.

This is a classic close up shot, which we are most likely going to use. It follows the conventions of a lot of indie/alternative videos, Friendly Fires use this shot throughout the video ‘Kiss Of Life’. It is an easy way for us to demonstrate lip-syncing which will need to be involved during the video, especially at important parts in the vocals.

Foals video ‘Olympic Airways’ shows classic conventions of a close up focus shot on guitar strips being played. This is a convention that we are both content on using because it is simplistic but still fits well with the style of the video we chose to create.

This is another shot from the same Foals video. We like this shot because it involves the performance element that we out using in our video. We want a similar set up for when we start filming our own video; this includes guitarists and a drummer. We also like the mise en scene in the video; a basic performance video can be quite boring if the mise en scene is carefully thought through, this is why woodlands work well with the props used because it is the complete opposite of the instruments, peaceful. It will be a struggle for us to use this kind of mise en scene because we wont be able to access such woodlands with all the instruments we need, however we will try to create scenery which is similar or can be relevant to our video/lyrics/song.

This is a shot from Bombay Bicycle Club – Shuffle. It is a simplistic mid shot focusing on the vocals of singer. However with the vocals it always allows the audience to have attention drawn to the guitar he is playing and also the clothing he is wearing, in this case a long relatively big shirt with sleeves rolled up about 5 inches. This is a shot we are taking into consideration to using in our performance element of the video.

This shot is from King Krule – Easy Easy. The mise en scene is presumably at a train station, looking similar to one we live by. Therefore we believe we could use something similar to this in our video, the shot is a mid/long shot, showing elements of the mise en scene and also clothing to suit are type of genre(not including the draw string bag).