Costumes for day 1:

We had very indie like costumes, which gave us a more rural look to our video:

First image Joel: Joel wore tight black jeans which are typical in the indie genre, he also wore a light blue shirt, which we wasnt sure whether he was to do his top button, as we didnt know if he would look right in the band, we tried to make sure each band member looked indie enough to fit into the band.

Second image Kingston: I wore tight blue chinos, then a white polo, where I did the top button up, to make my character fit into the indie genre more. We wasnt sure on whether to do my top button up either, as we didnt know if it would be too much.

Third image Jamie: Jamie wore tight black jeans, with a red and blue checkered shirt, we did his top button up on his shirt as we felt it would be appropriate to the indie genre. The tight black jeans fit into the genre alot more than the blue chinos I wore, but I didnt have an access to any tight black jeans,

Shot types/camera angles:

• Close-ups
• Extreme close-ups
• Two mid shot
• Pan
• Over the shoulder shot
• low angle shot
• Hand held shots
• Focus shots
• Out of focus with zoom lense
• Eye level shot
• Canted angle shot

This is a list of the shot types and camera angles which we used on the duration of the two days. We tried to include a variety, to give the promo a more professional look/feel to it.

The first image, is a two mid shot of me and hannah performing in our narrative. This scene is where Hannah and I were shooting in her bathroom. Th idea was that I was to appear in the mirror behind her, then she was to rub and close her eyes. then I was meant to dissapear, meaning that i was a ghost etc.

This image is a close up of me with makeup on my eyes, to give me a ghost feel, also a eeary look to my character.This was to make me look like a ghost, meaning that I was to haunt Hannah in our narrative side of our performance.

This last shot is a two extreme close up of me and hannah, once again performing in our narrative. During this scene we are meant to be playing, as we plan to include a clip where we playing, which is to represent a memory Hannah is having.

Day two location: Thurlby

This is where we filmed the narrative of our performance; the location was thurlby, Hannah's house. We as a group thought this would be an appropritate place to film our narrative as it is a normal day to day place where someone would live, as its an average house. As the girl is being haunted by the singer, as he has passed away. As Hannah is involved in the narrative, there was no better place to film than her actual house. The house is modern and has quite a classy finish. We flimed in her bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and her living room as these were all places that could be seen as where it would remind her of her dead boyfriend.

Above is Hannah's house in Thurlby where we filmed our narrative to our music promo. As you can see it very moder, and has a eeary feel to it, as we needed a location that was modern but also had that indie look/feel to it.

Day one location: Bicker

On our first day of filming we did it all at Henrys family warehouse/factory. This was done in Bicker and was a really authenic, rural place to film our performance. It had a really indie feel to the building/area and had really good lighting inside of the bulding, so that we could light up everything. There was two areas to choose from inside of the warehouse - both would have been really good places to set up all the intruments, but I think the choose we made in the end was perfect as we had the breeze blocks in the background, giving it a really rural look to the video.

 

 

 The photo above is the area where we did our performace, we did it in the left hand side of the building as the other side was/is full of boxes, which would have got in the way with the instruments and given the promo a unprofessional look about it

Roles on the day

Monday 12th November: Performance

Henry: Henry took a role in helping wih filming and taking photos of the location and the performers.
The filming was helped by all of us, but it was mainly Hannah and Henry who were sorting out the camera and filming, by deciding what shots will be performed. Henry took all the photos for us to use in our Digi-pak. He also sorted out our location for a performance part of our promo. The location was a warehouse in Bicker, which had excellent lighting and position for certain shots in our performance. Henry also got hold off some flood lights, which made a massive difference in how the shots would look, it wouldnt have looked very good without them, which would have been a shame.

Hannah: Hannah was the main one doing the filming, deciding what shots we needed to do, what part of the song we needed to record, she was the main organiser. She also positioned the lights with Henry to make sure that they lit up the area to a satisfactoral type. Set up the band, putting out the drums, the mic stand, and the guitair amp. Also planned what we was going to do and the order we was going to do it in.

Jessica: Jess helped with filming and deciding what shots was needed, she also took photos of the location and of the band, so we can edit them for our Digi-pak, and to put on our blog, jess also did one of our pans whilst Henry was pulling the pallet mover, as we did not have access to a dolly.

Kingston: I was the lead singer in the band, I also helped with deciding some of the shots, and setting up the intruments. I was on crutches at the time so couldnt be much help with physical lifting, and work. I did provide the track on the iPod for us to use and work with. Henry provided the speakers for the iPod to be plugged into, so that the music can be heard over the intruments.

Tuesday 13th November: Narrative

Henry: On this day Henry helped with filming, being the main user of the camera when Hannah was in the narrative. That is the only role he had for that day, but he also helped with decision making, when it came to lighting and deciding what to do in the shots, with what angles to shoot from.

Hannah: Hannah was in the narrative, so was acting for most of day, she also helped with shot decisions before she did the acting. She also provided her house as the location for that day, as we need a house to film at, and Hannah was more than happy to oblige.

Jessica: Jess helped Henry mainly with the filming and using the camera, as we had two cameras, she used one camera when Henry used the other one for more of the main shots, as it was the better camera (Canon 550 SLR). She also made decisions when it came to deciding what room we filmed in next and what we did etc.

Kingston: I was still acting this day, by singing in the promo. I also made some decisions when it came to the camera work. The whole of the group made decisions with the camera and what we did next etc.

Pitch ideas

 

lyrics to our chosen song: 4 Kicks - I never get lost except by your side

Lyrics

"Slow Me Down, Change My Ways Tonight or is it all too late. How could you keep those lying eyes, babe when you couldn’t hide away, Hide away oh I’m wide awake, wide awake oh I’m trying to say, Trying to say all the words that are in my mind today

 

Oh won’t you wait for a minute cos my heart isn’t in it today, Well I’ve tried and I’ve tried but there’s nothing left for you To say to me, I’ve been falling at your feet now I’m crawling. Can’t you see you’ve been holding me back for too long now? Whoa I’ve tried for you.Whoa never good enough but nothings for you.

 

Oh you think you're better than oh you think you’re better than me when you cheat and lie on, no I never did oh you no I never could see when you cheat and lie on me.

 

Oh wont you wait for a minute cos my heart isn’t in it today, Well I’ve tried and I’ve tried but there’s nothing left for you To say to me, I’ve been falling at your feet now I’m crawling Can’t you see you’ve been holding me back for too long now

 

Oh think your better than oh you think you’re better than me When you cheat and lie on, No I never did oh you know I never could see When you cheat and lie on. Think your better than oh you think you’re better than me When you cheat and lie on, No I never did oh you know I never could see When you cheat and lie on me.

 

Now my heart beats clear when you cheat and lie on me

 

When you cheat and lie on me"

 

 

The lyrics to the song seem to infer that a woman has left a man, because he has had enough of her cheating/lying to him, and couldnt take it anymore, so has made the decision the leave her for good. Also how he repeats the stanza's, this could infer that she has repeatedly cheated and lied to him.

Audience Research

Questionnaire
When we created our questionnaire, it was important that we left the questions open to people (no, yes/no questions) so that they could give a more detailed answer to give us a wider variety of research, we also didnt ask anything that could be classed as misleading. This would make people answer with the things we wanted to hear, rather than their true answers and what they really want to stay, thus making our results unreliable and dishonest.

Above is the questionnaire that we handed to people giving them the opportunity to give us the open answers they want to

 Out of all the people we interviewed we got 50% of them saying that indie was their preferred (favourite) music genre. This result helped us as we thought the most popular music genre in our peer group/target market would be indie, thus backing us in our preference to look into the indie genre.

Over all this above question gave us very mixed feedback, both good and bad. Each section all have a large percentage saying that would expect to see them above things in an indie genre music promo. This gave us a wide range to work with, as no answer was overly superior to the others. Then as a group we will then decide the best things to go into our music promo.

 As we stuck to the urban conventions of an indie genre video, the use of gritty colours was voted the most likely to be expected to appear with the video, as a group we have decided that using these colours throughout our music promo would not only be conventional, but would also give us the look we were looking for.

Many of the people said that the typical indie promo would take place at a live gig, where the audience would be standing and dancing whilst watching the band. A complication with this, would be that in order to film our music promo, we need to have two days off school, for us to be able to provide the best music promo we could offer. The audience would need to be shown as our target market (ages 16-24), this would cause further complications as it would be hard to get a large amount of students off of school to miss their timetabled sixth form lessons.

The majority of people that answered the questionnaire thought it was very important to clearly show individual instruments in order to allow the audience to make a strong connection with the band and to admire their skills as artists. The instruments shown would also make the music promo look much more appealing and realistic to the audience, as though they are actually performing throughout the promo, rather than having visuals attached to an audio track.

Indie music promos often centre their outfits around the modern/popular fashion. The popular fashion in todays indie music promos are seen for the artist to wear either skinny jeans or chinos. These two types of trousers would allow the audience to identify the genre of the music, and for them to recognise the band as current up to date fashion idols.

Many of the people we asked we more interested in 'The Script'. This indie band beat al the other bands by a considerable amount (at least 20%) showing us that this band is very popular and successful, this would help us to develop a very successful promotional package by using them as inspiration.

Preperation on our chosen genre

Music Prelim

 

 

This is our music prelim that we produced on the song 'We are young - Fun.' We filmed it in the drama studio of our school, giving us the lighting and the professional look we needed. We also used a variety of shots to enhance the viewing experience, from close-ups, mid shots to even pan shots, so we could create the most effective prelim we could offer.

 

The instruments we used were the schools own equipment, but they were in decent condition and we used it to its full poltential. We also used people from outside our group to help us with the performance during the video.

 

Hannah and Jessica were the two mainly operating the camera, we had Jamie and Joel helping out with the lights in the drama studio, as none of us new how to do it, then Henry and I performed in the video, I was the lead singer, and Henry was the lead guitarist.

Groupings

During the duration of my Media A2 production I will be working in a group with 'Hannah Phillips, Jessica Cooke and Henry Louth' We all have our own individual roles Henry and I will be performing in our media promo, and Jess and Hannah will be the ones working the camera.

During our media prelim, Henry and I performed in the prelim with the song 'We are young - fun.' and Hannah and Jess did the camera work, but then as a group we all pitched in with the editiing of the prelim, so we all agreed on what it looked like etc.

Conventions of a Digipak and Magazine advertisement

The Digipak and magazine advertisement are part of campaign to promote the artist. These are things a campaign will typically include:

• A regonisable font used across the campaign E.g. Album, Digipak or magazine advertisement.
• The colour theme would stereotypically be simple and used throughout the campaign with little or no change.
• Usually they're will also be symbolic objects, pictures etc that will refer to the band or artist. This will give the audience a little hint and arouse interest.

Here are some examples of the same genre we have chosen; Indie Pop:

 

 

These Digipaks are very symbolic to the band, they have the same look as the band. They arent completely different to the look of the band. The top one is a 4 side digipak where as the bottom one is a 2 sided digipak, this can differ from how many songs the band has in the album, to how the band likes to represent themselves.

Conventions of a music promo

Analysis of Skrillex - Bangarang

Mise-en-scene

The mise-en-scene in the music video is very rural and shows that the children may live in a third world area showing that they may need to steal, to get by in life, and as they are children, ice-cream would be a suitable thing that they would think of stealing. The clothes the ice-cream man wears may infer that it is set in a earlier period of time, maybe in the 70's or 80's. The video starts off with a dog walking the streets, the audience can infer that the dog may be a stray dog, also showing the audience that it is set in a rural area. The car seems to be quite old, which again is either showing the audience that it is set in a rural area, or is telling the audience that its set in the 70's or 80's again. The clothes the children wear, appear to be quite bad, in the fact as its typically what a criminal would wear, ie. the handkerchief around there face, to try and hide their identity, they also wear hoodies, which aid in hiding their identity, and also making them look more rough, or 'bad ass' as some would say. 

Illustration, Amplification and disjuncture

There are three different ways in which the music video can relate back to the song itself. These include;
Illustration - Everything in the music video is based on the source song. For example the song Everybody hurts by REM and Parklife by Blur

Amplification - Enables the director to become an artistic force in the construction of the music video as a whole. Keeps a link with the lyrics/song however, constructs complementary layers of meaning. For example, Imitation of life by REM and The Scientist by Coldplay

Disjuncture - Intentionally ignores the content of the song and genre of the music and tries to create a whole new set of meanings. These music videos don't tend to make a lot of sense and can often use abstract imagery. For example, No Surprises by Radiohead