DigiPac Poster Analysis

DigiPac Poster Analysis

 

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Recording Studio Name

We decided as a group that we should create our own record label to make our CD more convincing and professional. We came up with three ideas for our record label:

• Zed Recordings
• Avenue Records
• Big Top Productions

After discussing as a group we thought that Zed recordings was most appropriate, so I therefore went ahead and created two logos that we can all place on our CDs and DigiPacs after we have decided which is best:

Schedule List

Schedule List

Representation - How?

As we have created an indie/alternative band, it is common for there to be approximately 4 or 5 band members, because of this we have chosen to have 4. We are representing the 4 members of the band as a group by the way in which we have one lead singer, Steve, two guitarists, Lewis and Georgia, and a drummer, Will; each person has a specific role in the band.
Due to the members consisting of 3 males and 1 female, we have chosen to not make the female, Georgia, stand out too much as otherwise the attention would be taken away from the idea of a band of 4. The ways we have shown that Georgia will not stand out during the video are that, firstly she will be wearing black shorts and black tights to blend with the dark trousers/jeans that the males will be wearing. She also joins in with all the activities in the music video, showing that the band all get along well and she feels like she fits in. The only time during the video where Georgia is the odd one out is when Steve, Lewis and Will are skateboarding etc, this is purely because these activities are not among Georgias talents.
Our representation of the band is shown through all of our posts, relating to photo shoots, band profiles, storyboard and other band-related posts.

Representation - Why?

Our music video has nine different locations and explores disjuncture with hints of performance and illustration. We have chosen to do this as it is the most suitable for our genre and the most conventional of the indie/alternative genre we are aiming for. During discussions of band members, we picked four of the most suitable (of many) that we thought could work well together, with good time management skills but finally, and most importantly, looked the part. The combinations of fashions of these four people are appropriate for our genre and really capture the "kitchen sink indie" that Little Comets are widely known for. We have looked and chosen carefully these nine locations as we believe it is quality in music videos, not quantity and this will allow us to use more technical kit, such as better lighting etc. as we will have to transport it less. We have also considered how many cameras to use and we are using at least 2 a majority of the time, as this will give us more angles and better shots overall if everything is being filmed from two angles.

Final Storyboard Drawings

As a group we all worked together on multiple occasions to gather ideas for our storyboard; we would make lists of different props we had in mind as well to plan some shots around. We have varied the locations well throughout our storyboard so that the main few are used equally (apart from the barn as a lot of performance is filmed there). We ended up with approximately 122 shots at our last count, some of which are repeated due to lyric repetition and some just purely because of the set-up of the shots.
Myself and Meg worked on the drawings (as we are the more artistic two  of the group), but Joe and Harry also came up with some excellent ideas such as the sleeping bag race, the coffin, and the stop motion sections involving instruments.
Below are scanned images of the entire storyboard to show a visual idea of the detail and amount of drawings that we worked on. 

Props

Props are a key convention of music videos; props can be anything from costumes to instruments to toys. 

Although this music video is not of our genre, it is a particularly outstanding video in terms of props, the whole location is a fantasy world so therefore a lot of props were needed to make it look realistic and as if the actors and performers were actually there.

Another example I have found of a music video that features disjuncture as well as multiple props is a Foals video, to the song 'Olympic Airways'; this song is more suited to our genre also...

To add to this I have Tubechopped a short clip from the video of which shows the exact idea of 'random objects'.

In our music video there are are number of props we are hoping to incorporate, we have drawn them all up in our storyboard and included rough sketches of the ideas of props but on the day these could vary slightly due to accessibility. We have looked at the idea of using random objects (in a previous post focusing on The Maccabees - First Love video), so this is where our inspiration for the objects has come from. 

I have formed a list of out final decision of which props we will use:

Tiger, banana, monkey and doctor full costumes;

Hawaiian skirts, feather boas, flowers, masks;

Sit-down lawnmower, skateboards;

Drums, guitars, microphone (+ stand), tambourine, drum sticks, picks;

Colander, balloons;

Tent, bunkbeds;

Examples of other texts- Benny Hill style

 We recently included a shot in our storyboard that involved Steve in a monkey costume chasing Georgia in a banana costume and I immediately pictured what I wanted it to look like. I could picture the classic Benny Hill theme that was used for his sketches when he would be seen chasing women around.



The video I found above of one of his famous sketches doesn't use the same infamous tune, but that doesn't particularly matter because the music in the shot will obviously be our chosen song, Little Comets- One Night In October. The short sketch shows him attempting different ways to impress women and essentially chasing them. The technique I had pictured in my mind when making the section of the chase in our video is the chase would be sped up and they'd be running back and forwards, on and off screen and in all sorts of directions.

I also think these Benny Hill sketches are full of energy and fun, which I know I keep mentioning a lot, but I really want that idea of the band being full of young spirit and slightly mischievous and incorporated this idea could boost that idea!

Music videos where this sketch, or inspiration from this sketch has taken place in can be found in various music videos. This clip I have chosen has been taken from Blur's video for Country House. Here it sticks to the same idea of a male chasing females, with them running in all sorts of directions and the shots are sped up.

Trying To Picture The Mise En Scene

In this pool we decided when story boarding that we'd like to have the band in here on inflatables. To get the mise en scene right, we'd obviously remove the cover, clear things away from around the side to give us more space to get long shots or use multiple cameras and put four inflatables. The lighting in here also seems to be quite dim so we'll have to sort that out with flood lights perhaps to get it more brighter in there.



The caravan will be used for two ideas, and that is a basic performance and 'messing around'. To get the correct mise en scene in here we will obviously need to tidy it up a bit and boost the lighting inside. An idea I  have just had is we could fill it up with balloons (but obviously only on the floor so the band can fit in) but I wont make any decisions myself and instead I shall discuss the idea with the group so we can decide together.



The barn is where the majority of the bands performance will take place. In here, we will have a microphone and stand, drums, and either two guitars or one guitar and bass. They will be performing in the biggest room. We currently haven't thought about including anything else in the shot to create a strong mise en scene.



I understand it will be quite hard to picture anything happening here but we do have an idea and would like to film a lot of shots here. Our idea is to film here when it's dark, clear up the area so there will only be the boat in the shot and put up coloured fairy lights around the trees. However, this wont be enough to light up the whole shot so once again we will have to use flood lights.

Researching Camera Angles For A Performance

We are currently roughly half way through our storyboard and we already have a lot of performance shots included so I thought it would be a good idea to research some performance shots so we could stay as conventional to our genre as possible. A video I am familiar with, suitable for my research and in fact what I believe to be a cracking video is the Arctic Monkeys- A View From The Afternoon. Even though the only instrument that is played during the performance, I think we could use the ideas for other instruments and even the lead singer with his microphone. The video is simple about a male playing drums throughout the day and into the night. He comes across distractions and people trying to stop him playing but he never gives up. The majority of the shots are of him playing and they use many different angles which makes the video so brilliant.




The first shot I have chosen focus' more on the person playing the instrument than the actual instrument. It starts off as a long shot and then the camera zooms to a mid shot and carries on zooming in until it's a close up. The close up shows the pain and energy he has to put in to playing the drums but also the dedication. I like how it starts off as a long shot and then zooms in because it introduces the viewer to him starting to play.



This clip shows different angles used, such as from the side, behind and high angles. It could be quite a boring video because it's just the same thing going on throughout, but by using different angles it makes it more interesting and shows different aspects of the performance.



I like this clip I have chosen because it used various different angles and shots but the majority of them are of the instrument being played. I think we could use shots like these because it could really help to emphasise that they are an instrument playing band. Shots from this clip I think we could use for the drums in the performance are:

Ideas For Inanimate Objects In Our Video

As we have decided that our music video will come under the category of disjuncture, we think this can be done best with fun, inanimate objects that have absolutely nothing to do with the song or lyrics.

Here are some ideas that we have thought about or already included in our story board:

Inanimate Objects on Prezi

Examples of other texts - Existing band photos

These images are examples of other existing band photo shoots, we have looked at some other photos before taking our own to gather inspiration and technique. The camera's used appear to be very high quality, we tried our best to use the best cameras we had, these consisted of two Canon 1000D SLR's and one SONY NEX-C3.

Fashion of the band

This is post is to show the fashion sense of one of our band members in particular, Georgia. She has previously been spotted in Leicester City Centre as being an iconic fashionable teenager by the Leicester Mercury fashion reporters. The article talks about how Georgia's fashion sense is outstanding but this is not due to expensive prices as she mentions more than once about how she shops around for bargains in places such as fashion charity shops, vintage fairs and handmade clothing stores. This is inspiring for our band's image as it shows that not everyone has to be extremely rich in order to keep up with fashion trends. Georgia will be an iconic figure in our band without a doubt, partly due to her being the only girl member of the band but also her fashion sense will be inspirational to teenagers and young adults who listen to this style of music.

Below is a photo taken of her image and article down the side of the Leicester Mercury newspaper back in April 2011.

Research and Planning - Images

Here I have taken images of my fellow group members, this is to show our progress as a group through images rather than plain blog posts. These photos are taken in one of the computer rooms in our Media Studies department at Lutterworth College. Examples of these images show: Meg drawing images for the storyboard; Joe posting on Blogger; Harry showing everyone his Macbook on which he blogs his own posts and will edit some of our clips on once we have finished filming; and myself (Jess) scripting the storyboard ready to be drawn up onto the real version.

Examples of other texts - The Maccabees

This video is inspiring for our disjuncture ideas for our own music video; for example the obvious connection of illustration with the random objects being pushed together as a 'First Love' (hence the title of the song). I think this type of disjuncture works really well, as it is almost too obvious to make any sense; due to our song not being a typical illustrative style we will only include aspects of illustration within disjuncture. With the use of random objects in this video, we will take ideas and inspiration from the style of this video but convert it into our own original ideas - this is to ensure that our video is not compared too closely to another existing official music video.

Here are some screenshots from this video that demonstrate what we mean when we say random objects:

Objects we have considered using within our video consist of;

- Costumes e.g. banana suit, hawaiian dress

- Pots and pans hanging from ropes (in the style of Little Comets)

- Masks

- Toys e.g. hobby horse, giant teddybear

- Pool inflatables

All of these objects will help to make our music video memorable and interesting for the audience to watch; this is a typical skill for disjuncture videos to have which is why it is important to include as many random ideas as possible. From researching other music videos we have learnt as a group to take ideas from existing bands, but not copy them in a obvious way - simply take inspiration and express it in a different way to reflect our band's own individual personality and style.

Stop Motion Experimenting

Here, i've created a stop motion video just to see what is possible for our music video, also, this could be used for further inspiration in our video.

Band Styling - Steve

We have each chosen a member of the band to style, my chosen member was Steve. I have decided that from the band photo shoots, Will looks best suited to wearing a shirt, Georgia wearing a vest, Steve and Lewis both wearing t-shirts.

As a group we decided that it is conventional of this genre for the members to all wear dark/black jeans except one member, such as in Foals:

 therefore I am going to ask Steve to wear black jeans/his dark jeans he wears and possibly get Georgia to be the person who doesn't wear black/dark trousers.

As part of the photo shoots, we previously asked Steve to wear his black hooded zipped jacket, and we think that this works with the cords tied together either zipped or unzipped.

Also, we prefer Steve to wear a t-shirt, opposed to a shirt as it suits the band better to have a "cheeky" lead singer, therefore less well presented and less formal. We want Steve to have graphics and designs on his t-shirt, but obviously we cannot have them with brands on, so maybe an image or just a design as he does in the picture below:

Some shots also show Steve wearing a hat, and this suits the genre well, so I will keep that as an optional accessory for Steve.

Here are some people that dress similarly to how i wish Steve to look: