Digipak design.

Today we started our digipak design. We kept the theme of hands from the website and we used a close-up of a pair of eyes to resemble the stalker girl's eyes in our video. We also kept the colour scheme the same with red and black to coincide with our original theme that is within the website. We kept the same fonts as the website.
Here is a print screen of what we have done so far.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Website design.

Our headings for our website are to appear on the arms of a person.

This is what we have done so far in Photoshop. The top arm will have the name of the band on it and the bottom one will have links to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The other three will present either gig dates, influences or the music video we have produced. I will next paste this image onto iWeb to take up the whole page.

We chose to have arms as a theme as in our video the stalker girl cuts into her arms in the intro.

Siobhan :)

Today's editing.

Today I filled in a lot of the walking shots with performance shots as this was pointed out to us last lesson for being too long. Now we have cut down the walking a considerable amount and it looks a lot better.

This screen grab shows the clips highlighted in blue which are now, not just walking shots but performance shots too. This shows how much walking we have cut out and replaced with the bands performance.

Now the whole song is full of clips and is practically finished giving us a bit more extra time to work on the website and CD cover.

Siobhan :)

Audience feedback

Today in our class we were given the chance to look at each others music videos so far and evaluate them

We got mainly 'good' for music video with two 'basic' and one 'excellent' for each of the points on the evaluation sheet.

The comments were 'some shots too long', 'narrative wasn't clear' and 'too much walking'. 

We are currently working on the too much walking point and hoping to put in some performance shots to fill this up.

This week we have filled the whole length of the song with shots in a suitable order, so it is just a case of shortening shots down and adding more performance in. 

It was suggested to us that we should do a bit of extra filming to make the narrative more clear however this seems unlikely with Christmas coming up as many of the band members will be busy or away for the festive period and it will be very difficult to get them all together at one time. It also seems too late to film now as we only have 4 lessons left before the deadline in January- it has been extended as we missed a weeks worth of media lessons due to the snow- it will create a lot of pressure to get these shots edited and put suitably into the video in time. 

The screen grab at the top is of our video so far and the clips that have been highlighted in blue are the ones that are solely of the band walking, this is what we need to shorten down and add the bands performance in to. It is 6 shots worth of walking and next time we blog we will have hoped to have shorten this down considerably.

Siobhan :)

Today is the first time we've been able to edit due to bad weather conditions. As the college was closed all of last week, we weren't able to book out equipment to shoot new material. The deadline for our music video has been extended to the 11th of January, so hopefully we'll be able to get the new material.

In the lesson i've shortened some of the clips down to go with the tempo of the music. I did this by using extra footage of the band practice and pasting them between the previous clips.

Safina :)

Band performance taster

Today we edited the main band sequence to coordinate with the music. We used several close ups of each member performing, and then a medium long shot of them all together. We need to do more beat editing to  go with the pace of the song.  

 

Intro of our music video

Here is the intro to our music video. We are really happy that we have got the first part of our video done as we are finally getting somewhere. It's good because it fits directly with the intro and finishes just before the vocals come in.   

Siobhan Drake & Safina Frankson

Filming is over!

On sunday we filmed the last of our music video. This was the second time we had to shoot so we could finish the band performing and getting close up shots of them. Also we needed to re-shoot the part where heather cries as the lighting was too dark, and the part where she rips down the tribute wall.

We've just finished importing the rest of our footage and have about 28 minutes of it. As we shot the band performing the song individually, the amount of footage we have has shot up.

We worried a lot about the filming as the guitarist was 40 minutes late for filming. This was problematic as we didn't know when he was going to turn up and there was a chance that we would have had to film again if he didn't. If this had of happened, it wouldn't of been fair to ask the band to bring all their equipment for just a couple of shots.


Safina & Siobhan :)  

Film Notice

This is the notice we used whilst filming on the park last week. It explains why we needed to film and to notify members of the general public that we'd be using the park for a bit.


Safina & Siobhan :)

Website design

Today we've been working on our website. We made background on Photoshop of the lyrics of A Graceful Descent's song- No Remorse repeated over and over. We are now planning to create logo with the band's name cut into an arm. Arms will be a repetitive theme on our website, using them for the titles and sub-titles.
This is our early attempt of our final website.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Weather report for Sunday 21st November

We are planning to re-shoot this coming Sunday, even though what we need to shoot is all inside- the garage performance and some of Heather's tribute wall scenes, the camera will need to be outside for the garage part so that we can see the whole of the band performing together.
The forecast is white cloud which is relatively similar to what we had when filming last Sunday so we should be able to work with this type of weather. This forecast is from the BBC website.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Review of Sunday 14th November's shoot

We had our first film on Sunday 14th November. It went relatively well and we got quite a lot filmed- most of the story line anyway. However, we did have some difficulties.  We did want each member of the band- apart from the lead singer to sing a line of the breakdown. ("I'M GOING DOWN, YOU'RE COMING WITH ME.") However, none of them were too confident to do it so we had to change it so the lead singer sung it instead.
We then filmed Heather, the stalker girl in the bedroom with the tribute wall. But looking back at the footage we think we may have to re-shoot some of the scenes. The one where she runs into the room and rips down the posters off the wall is not done as aggressively as we would like and our extreme close-up of her crying is too dark.
Once we got round to filming the performance aspect of the video we found it was too dark to see the band properly in the garage so we are needing to re-shoot on Sunday to do this as long as we can get hold of the equipment.

This is a short clip of what we filmed of Heather in the bedroom. It isn't fully edited yet but it is on here to give a feel of how our video is coming along and to show the few shots that we will need to re-shoot at the weekend.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Updated weather forecast

Here's another weather report from the BBC closer to the shoot- it's still set to be sunny on Sunday!

Siobhan :)

Weather forecast for Sunday 14th November

We are planning on doing our first lot of filming this Sunday- the 14th so we thought it would be a good idea to check the weather reports in order to be able to know for sure whether we could do our outside location shots or not.
Here we have to print screen shots of weather reports, one for the BBC and one from ITV, these tell us that it is due to be sunny on Sunday which is good news to us. We shall post another further on in the week, closer to the shoot to check that nothing has changed for us.

BBC

ITV

Siobhan and Safina :)

Production of our website

This is the start in the production of our website for our band. We're not too happy with it at the moment as it doesn't very professional  but we're hoping to improve this. Hopefully when we shoot on sunday we'll get a wider variety of shots to use on the website.

Safina & Siobhan

Dark mood board.

This is a dark-themed mood board. It shows jealousy, revenge, hate, remorse and death. These are the key things that we want to be portrayed in our music video. We wnat to recreate a dark and intense atmosphere in our video that is felt by the viewer when watching it. It connects well with the mood and lyrics of the song. This puts our main themes, ideas and mood into pictures that are unable to be described in words.

Siobhan :)

Original ideas.

Although we know that this is very late into the planning process we both decided that it would be a good idea to post what our original ideas were for the video and to explain why we did not carry them out any further due to errors and faults in our plans.

Gig.
We originally wanted to do a gig scene as the performance aspect of our music video. However, we soon came to the conclusion that it may indeed be too difficult to get a big amount of actors to be the audience at the gig and to have them all be avaiable to shoot on the same day and at the same time. People can often be late as well and re-shooting could have also proved at big problem. Plus, the only places that we could shoot a gig scene would be chuch halls and function rooms and there is almost always a hire fee to use these for any kind of event. We concluded that this could make the shoot quite expensive and were not willing to spend so much money, especially if a re-shoot was necessary.

Superheroes.
An idea for the narrative aspect was that the lead singer of the band was a superhero and a girl was his rival. We were planning to have the band completely unaware of the vocalist's real identity and for the video to end with a fight scene between the two rival superheroes and both of their identities being revealed and finally, an innocent victim of a tragedy. But we realised that portraying the two characters as superheroes would be too hard to put across without some form of dialect which is very rare in music videos and may have been difficult to incorporate. The effects we would have needed to show the superheroes may have ended up looking tacky and cheesy and not very genuine.

Death.
The idea that we decided was our final one for our music video includes a death. We originally wanted this to happen to the drummer of the band, Rob and for it to be carried out by the stalker girl, Heather. We soon came to the conclusion that the height difference between Rob and Heather was too much and that a small heighted girl could end up looking awkward and odd killing a tall boy. We finally decided to have Heather kill the lead singer, Dan. We originally thought this but was worried it would be a too obvious outcome but in the end we had to go for what was more pratical and what would look best on the camera.
The type of death was also a little tricky to decide on. We were both quite happy with a stabbing, however this would be too difficult to act out with a knife and a lot of blood. We also felt it could end up being too similar to our horror films in the AS side of the course last year and agreed that we wanted to try something different this year. We eventually decided on Heather strangling Dan in the park.

Safina and Siobhan :)

First film shoot!

We are planning to do our first filming shoot for our music video this Sunday- 14th November 2010. The band and stalker girl have been notified and are aware of the equipment that they are required to bring- style of clothes, instruments, etc. A weather report will be posted later on in the week so we can be more aware of whether we will be able to shoot the outside shots or not. All locations and actors are available for this date and if needed, a re-shoot will be arranged too. This could possibly be Sunday 21st Novemeber 2010- one week later than the first shoot. We wanted to start filming as soon as possible so as to have as much time as we need to re-shoot and edit.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Hayley Williams analysis.

The stalker girl in our music video is going to be styled similarly to Hayley Williams as this style suits the genre of song well. Hayley Williams is the lead singer of American band, Paramore. She is an individual person, as she is one of very few lead vocalists in a pop-punk band. Her dress style is usually skinny jeans, either a band t-shirt, plain dark or brightly coloured t-shirt or a t-shirt with some kind of cartoon image on it, with Converse shoes or high-tops. Her hair is dyed bright colours (red, orange, yellow) but is normally kept quite simple in it's style- down and straight. We will aim for the mork darker side of Hayley Williams' style which is shown in the above. The stalker girl will wear dark skinny jeans, a dark plain or band t-shirt and have a dark coloured hair in the same simple style as Williams'.

Photos of the girl will be uploaded after our first filming shoot along with images of the band.

Siobhan :)

Wordle app of lyrics.

This is a wordle app of the lyrics to No Remorse. The bigger words are the ones that are said the most in the lyrics. We can see from this that the one that occurs the most is 'time'. This gives us better insight into the song, as we are able to analyse the lyrics more accurately. The fact that 'time' is said so much makes us think that the aim of the song is to let the  victim know that they are either out of time or are being given a second choice. 'Remorse' is one of the main words too, this makes the song hateful and vindictive. We will use these lyrics to adjust the mood of the video to fit in with the song. We will make a dark and heavy tone with dartk lighting and evil characters.

Siobhan :)

Mark Ronson website analysis

1. The website links to the style/image of Mark Ronson as he has the same theme running throughout. His inspirations come from the 80's fashion and pop culture. This is shown by using bright neon/ fluorescent colours and pop art.

2. The main features of Mark Ronson's website are the video and audio players. Also there are features about upcoming gigs, news about his album and images from the video's.

3. There are no comment that we can see from the fans but they do have the opportunity to upload pictures of themselves with Mark Ronson.



Postmodernism and Nostalgia 


1. From the images we can see intertextual see artist/band such as Elvis Presley, Duran Duran and the Beatles.

2. One of the particular 80's iconography that is featured on the album artwork is neon wayfarer glasses that mark ronson is wearing. These were typical fashion in the 80's and so represents that era well.






Siobhan & Safina :) 

Analysis of Mark Ronson CD covers.

Visual style - It has a quirky style which makes it interesting. Looks similar to a ransom note.  

Colour - Various bold colours are used; black, white and red and orange. The colours have a 80's style to them.  

Inspirations - Newspapers/magazines, ransom notes, 80's bands etc. 

Connotation - 80's style is shown through the bold colours and the way his hair is styled in the torn up image.

Visual style - Half cartoon half real life photo. Part of the image look like the image of Elvis.  

Colour - Bright neon colours - Represents 80's. 

Inspirations - Pop art  style like Andy Warhol, colours similar to the Scissor Sisters.

Connotations - The colours can be associated with the gay target audience. There's a mix of two decades 50's & 80's, through the image of the record and neon glasses.   

Siobhan & Safina 

Textual analysis



For our music video we had to reseach bands of the same genre. The band I chose was Enter Shikari and analysed their so 'No sleep tonight'. On the grid we had evaluate several things within the video like camera angles and the mise en scene.

Safina :)

Summer task

This is the second part of the work we had to do over the summer. In this task we had to analyse an artist or band by looking at their past and present music videos.

Safina :)

This is a test shot for the stalker girl played by Heather Batten. Her image in this picture will be the exactly the same with her dark hair and clothing.

Safina :)

Digipack analysis research

This is A Day To Remember’s album Homesick. The dark colours purple, black and blue have been used to highlight the genre. This is generic of the screamo genre because the image is linked with dark tone of the music that the band creates. The white writing works well with the black background as it contrasts it, making it more noticeable. At the bottom of the cover  there’s a silhouette of what appears to be a man. This is interesting because it looks as if he’s reading the font and looks mysterious. 

Alexisonfire’s album stands out because the elements of black and white contrast each other. The image of the skull within the heart makes this interesting because it features two opposing themes. Hearts are normally associated with love and skulls are linked to death but it makes the theme as whole work well. Another thing that makes this album stand out is that it doesn’t display the name of it on it adding to its appeal to find out what it is.

This album is quite different to the previous albums, as it has brighter colours on it. The blue, red and sandy brown colours stand out on this album, as they are not normally associated with the screamo genre. On the cover the images that stand out are the Red Indian, the monster and the world with a face on it. This is different because it gives the album a more fun approach to the genre and shows that it doesn’t have to follow the normal conventions of it.  The font of the writing has a similar style as words written in old English. This also goes along with the image of the crown and shield and could represent medieval times. 

This Bring Me to the Horizon’s album ‘There is a hell, believe me I’ve see it. There is a heaven let’s keep it a secret.’ This cover comes across as striking, as the image is different. I like how one side shows dark elements and the other shows light elements. Although you can’t see the title of the cover the image relates to it very well. It shows that one side could represent hell and the other heaven.

Bullet for my valentines cover is goes well with the image and sound of the band. The dark colours go well together, especially the dark purple, red and black.  It gives the cover a gothic style to it. This is similar in some ways to ‘ A day to remember’s cover. I like the way the red border leaks into the white background. It gives it the effect that blood is trickling down. It also relates to the name of the band because the name signals death and image gives a sense of death, like the purple carnation flower.

For our digipack idea, we thought that we could use a still from our music video of the band for the front cover. To relate to the genre the font we are considering is a gothic style print as seen in many of the covers of the same genre. Our video features blood in it, so we decided to incorporate this with the colouring of the font and make it a blood red colour. To add to the genre, a black background will be used around the edges of the image of the band. This will make it stand out even more. On the back of our digipack, we came up with the idea of using a close up of the girls’ eyes, with tears streaming down. We think that this will be striking, as it's the only thing that will feature on the back. Our digipack will represent the band because the band have a deep -dark sound and the digipacks design reflects this.

Safina :) 

Digipack research design

This is my digipack research design which was part of the task we were asked to do over the summer. The artist i chose was Colplay, so i came up with a design that i think best represents them. To do this i looked at other artists within the genre, such as Razorlight and Snow Patrol. Since the band have a laidback style,  I used a simple design to create a new album cover for them.

Safina :)

Website analysis research

During October half term we were given a webiste analysis research task to do. We analysed 5 bands web pages that were similar to our artists so as to give us better understanding on what to do for our own band's website. We analysed Enter Shikari, A Day To Remember, Bring Me The Horizon, Alexisonfire and Bullet For My Valentine. Here is the sheet that we filled out and five print screen shots of each or the bands website pages.
Siobhan :)

Shot List

This is part of our shot list, as before some of the shots have changed as we came up with a different idea. As we already had the step outline sheet, it made it easier to complete the shot list. Our new idea involves the lead singer Dan being strangled by the crazed fan Heather.

Safina  and Siobhan :)

Step outline

This is our step outline sheet that we completed in class. It tells us what will happen at which point in the song- the time and whether it's the verse, chorus, etc. However, some of our ideas have changed slightly since we did this but the storyline is still roughly the same.

Safina and Siobhan :)

Character test shot.

This is our test shot of the lead singer of A Graceful Descent, Dan. His image for the music video will be roughly the same as it is on the current photo. This is also a shot that we would like the replicate in the video as it has a good effect on the audience seeing it.

We also have test shots for the other four members of the band and the stalker girl.

Siobhan :)

Location shots

This page in our folder is the pictures of our locations. The top left one is of the garage where the performance part of the video will be shot. The garage will be cleared out before the day of the shoot. The top right and bottom left photos are of the house where the garage is situated and where the bedroom of the stalker girl will be. This is where her tribute wall will be. The last photo on the page is of the park where the murder scene will be and where the band will first see the girl for the first time. We are currently still waiting for permission from the council to use this location.

Siobhan :)

Storyboard

This is our storyboard of the 4 main shots that will be seen in our music video. The first is of the girl in her room looking at the tribute wall, the second is of the band members on the park- this later becomes the scene of the lead singer's death, the third is of the band walking down the road to band practise and the last is of the band in the garage performing at a band practise.
The are the 4 main recurring locations and shots in the video so we thought it best to storyboard these shots.

Siobhan :)

Here are the lyrics to our music video. The verses in capitols are to highlight the screamo parts of the song, so that when we are story boarding, we know what would work best with it.


A Graceful Descent - No Remorse

It happened quick left in the dust, whose side you on anyway?
You got it all for free, you were a friend, then you go and fuck it all up
TIMES UP YOU LOSE NOT US YOU CHOSE DONT EVER COME BACK TO ME, YOUR WILL MY WAY CAN'T TALK NO GAME SO YOU CAN PLAY ANYMORE

No time for sympathising, you had your chance then you threw it all way, shot in the back and you want empathy?
Well better luck next time, no time for socialising, in 5 seconds you devoured all that's left of me, it's all your fault so there's NO REMORSE.

Time takes it toll 2 years no soul, maybe it is time to give up,
you weren't the one and yet you're done so we don't care anymore
OVER THE TOP THIS TIME YOU'RE NOT WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
HALFTIME NO SCORE WE WANT SOME MORE PLEASE WOULD YOU LEAVE QUIETLY
Do what you can do what you need just stay far away from me
their ain't no chance so don't attempt at trying anyway.

No time for sympathising, you had your chance then you threw it all way, shot in the back and you want empathy?
Well better luck next time, no time for socialising, in 5 seconds you devoured all that's left of me, it's all your fault so there's NO REMORSE.


IM GOING DOWN YOU'RE COMING WITH ME X3
YOU'RE GOING DOWN

No time for sympathising, you had your chance then you threw it all way, shot in the back and you want empathy?
Well better luck next time, no time for socialising, in 5 seconds you devoured all that's left of me, it's all your fault so there's NO REMORSE.

No time for sympathising x2
No time for socialising

It's all your fault so there's NO REMORSE.


Safina :)

PITCH