Here is a scanned in image from an extract from The Sun daily newspaper, with clear reference to CD covers and some imitations using household items. I thought this would be interesting to add to my blog as it is a non IT resource and shows how CD covers can be made. Since part of our project is to make a CD cover for our bands music video, I thought this was appropriate thing to add, so I scanned it in to the computer and added it to my blog. I've also enlarged some of the extract so you can see some CD covers up close.
Here is our rough cut for our music video. Overall, I think we edited the footage well and cut quite quickly too. We used a least 6 different angles not including close ups so this was great, we have loads of extra footage - but its always better to have extra footage than not enough.
I think the members of the band were all enthusiastic and was really pleased with the amount of effort everybody put in beforehand, such as learning lyrics, guitar chords and drums to the song.
Here are some pictures of our editing process for the rough cut. As you can see from the editing post before, we have added the main footage which we filmed at Manor. You can see the markers added, as well as all the different angles on seperate editing lines. I think the editing process is going well, and we have finished our rough cut and after feedback will continue to edit for our final music video.
We shot our main footage today at Manor Community College, as the venue at the Junction was unavailable to be used after 5. From the moodboard of shots below you can see what the place is like in general, with a big hall and good area of stage. I think filming went really well, we got 38 minutes of footage in total which is so much more than we need so thats excellent. We filmed from 5 until half 6, with some breaks in between.
The stage was a great area to film, and much bigger than the Junction stage so this worked in our favour. We had enough space for everyone and arranged everyone well on the stage. Overall I was very pleased with the amount of footage we got, and the level of general effort everybody put in. The music technician at Manor had actually set up the microphone, drum kit and stage lighting so that we would have less setting up to do, which helped considerably.
The only downside I can think of is the darkness of the footage, as it was either having a couple of lights on, light the footage shows, or all the lights on which was far too light to use. I thought that lightness can be added and saturation etc in final cut or after effects, so hopefully this will look effective.
From the pictures you can see the process we went through, first filming three angles from near the stage for a kind of mid shot, then close ups of each member of the band and then some long shots to get a range of shots. We shot from 9 different angles including the close ups which count as different angles. At colleridge on Monday we will add this footage to the footage we got on Tuesday of the significant moments and then we will edit everything together for the rough cut deadline on wednesday.
Here are some shots of the location and pictures of when we were filming. I think the location turned out really well and overall the band were much better than what I expected, I was really pleased with how much effort everyone was putting in individually. Zoe learnt the chords to the song as did grant, Tasha had a lot of practice drumming and Subash learnt all the lyrics and knew them effortlessly.
Here are some screenshots of our first editing process, we filmed Tuesday night and then uploaded the footage onto the mac computers at Colleridge. We then started to edit our 'significant moments' which go into our music at various points.
Then we will add the main footage, (which we are filming tomorrow at half 4 roughly), onto the timeline and will edit it accordingly. Hopefully each bit of footage will blend well, and will be effective. We have added two significant moments, which are roughly 30 seconds long, and we have enough footage for another two if we need them.
Above is our diagram created in Photoshop which shows the audience demographic for our band and similar bands to it. It shows what
- our character's name would be, their age,
- their gender,
- their clothes,
- their activities,
- other media they watch,
- where the music is from etc.
However this is a specific stereotype and perhaps everything about our character may not be true. For a wider age range it would be 16 - 25 year olds which would enjoy the music. Their class financially wold be someone who could afford an album every now and again but not be an excessive spender. They would have a part time or full time job and would therefore be able to afford some of the more expensive CDs.
I rang the second venue today just to check availability and ask if filming would be possible, incase the Junction venue is not available after half 4 when we need to film. After ringing, they confirmed that it would be o.k for us to film there etc and what times we would like - I specified half 4 to half 6 as filming time, and the hall is now booked incase we need to use it. We also need a drum kit, an amp and lighting for the stage (but this is the least important aspect.) If worst comes to worst the main singer in the band, Subash has a drum kit and an amp so we can use these.
This venue is the back up venue incase the first venue, The Junction, is not available to use in the times we would like. Either way, I think this venue will be just as effective and hopefully will create a good music video.
Above are the images I took on my digital camera while out filming our first days shoot. Today after college time we filmed the 'significant moments' that would go in our music video to add a little story to the video, so that it is not simply all performance.
We had previously checked the possible locations for the significant moment, which consisted of near the riverside, and various other places. In the end we chose to do the significant moments near the riverside and went there to see where we could film. We found some nice areas in which would be perfect for the video, and as you can see today I have taken photos of the locations we previously liked. We used these locations in our music video, these consisted of:
- A clearing of path with trees either side of it,
- A bench near the river with the sun setting,
- A bridge on the river overlooking the area,
- A behind shot of the couple sitting by the river.
For the significant moments after a discussion together Matt and I decided it would be a nice idea to have the main singer of the band with his girlfriend, which would could as the 'significant moments' throughout the song. Since they are a real couple this was fine for them and they enjoyed helping us.
I think overall today was a good experience and helped us establish what would blend in well with our music video. We still need to do a health and safety assessment for the area, which will be added soon, and I have noted down possible safety problems that may have occurred while filming.
Here is my internet banner advert to promote our new music video. For the poster I simply took different pictures from a creative commons search on Flickr and added them onto the poster, I made some of the pictures transparency less and then made the main text 'Feeder' appear over the top so this is the main advertisement. To see the poster better, click on it to make the poster bigger.
From emailing the band 'Feeder' and asking permission for using a song I would like to use in my music video, I have received a reply, it is shown in the above picture. I will not use the video music track to exploit commercially so therefore this should be ok to use the music track. It would be great to advertise the band themselves and I hope that the music video I make will also promote the song etc for Feeder.
Here is the model release form for the 3 people we are using in our music video, we will get them to sign it and agree everything is ok when we shoot. It is important that we get permission to use each person in the video and that they agree fully to be in the music video.
Target Audience - Who would watch your video and where it would be shown? have you blogged this?
In terms of a target audience, I think people aged from 16 - 40 would listen to our song. as it is quite slow and is nice to listen to. The video will be interesting to watch as it will include a little story too, so I think the same age group as above would watch the video, but 20 year olds and over do not tend to watch music channels etc so I think the video would target an age of 20 years and younger. If the video was shown just on the internet, I think the age group of 20 years and younger would apply here too as not many people look at music videos unless to research them for academic reasons.
I think teenagers would specifically listen to it as I really enjoy the song and a lot of my friends do as well, so I think others the same age would also enjoy the song and the video. The video would be shown on the internet such as youtube and on the bands myspace page etc for advertisement purposes, and would also appear on the TV, but only certain channels, for example it would not appear on Kiss or MTV base as it is the wrong genre, and it would also not appear on Scuzz or Kerrang as it is not a rock genre to a large extent.
Also in terms of radio, I think our song would appear on Heart and BBC Radio 1, 2 etc, it would not perhaps appear on Kiss Radio as it is not the hip hop, pop or R&B genre that Kiss features.
From the pictures above you can see that Feeder appear at the Isle Of Wight festival, and therefore do attract a younger audience as people above the age of 25 do not attend festivals as regularly as younger age groups, therefore this backs up the point that our song video and genre would be more attractive to a younger audience as opposed to an older one.
Throughout our course we have had media practitioners attend Long Road and help us in terms of video, music etc, but two of the most important practitioners we have had were two music video directors Jake and Jim. They explained to us very clearly the process of music video production and what happens in various stages.
Below, in my own words, is the process explained. The first stage is the initial stage for the music video. After the music is agreed and the artist is happy etc, things start to become finalised. The video Commissioner at the music artist's record company puts or sends out the specific music track to a list of potential directors and/or production companies, in which they think the music will be appreciated and suitable to the record company themselves.
The second stage is the point where all the potential directors or production companies 'pitch' for the track. A pitch is a rough idea of what the video would be like, usually about 100 words or so , which explains clearly the ideas for the video, possible venue, props, timing, etc. The pitch for the track is usually the directors or production company's ideas/concepts, which are usually based upon the brief from the main record company and the music track they have listened to.
The Third stage is the point when the main decision is made. The main Record company would usually choose the director or production company they think had the best and most relevant idea, suited to the music track they were sent out initially and the pitch given. The record company then allocates the budget for the music video; which can range substantially from very low (£100) to even above £40,000 for one video. The producer looks after the budget and makes important arrangements for the process. A percentage of the budget, (could be any percentage needed) is usually kept for this role in the music video. The fourth stage is where others are brought on board the process to help. The Director of Photography and art director (or production designer) are brought on at this stage. The art director usually oversees the planning of the look of video and sees if this is acceptable, he also oversees the scouting for locations and makes sure these are suitable for the look of the video, and the main planning of the shoot takes place. This is seen as the PRE-PRODUCTION stage.
The Fifth stage is perhaps the most important of all, this is the day where the music video shoot takes place. The shoot is usually one day but could vary depending on what the record company wants for the video in general.
The Sixth stage is the OFF-LINE edit stage, where the editor for the music video would put together all the footage filmed from the music video shoot over a period of a few days. However, the majority of the time, the record company and artist may want to see it in order to analyse the video themselves and see if it is what they had asked for originally. Sometimes, they may wish to suggest changes if the video does not meet the criteria they wanted.
The Seventh stage is the ONLINE edit stage, which comes only after the OFF-LINE edit stage is completed. This is the stage where if any special effects need adding, they will be added and this sometimes can be very time consuming. The main thing for this stage is getting the final version of the music video ready and ensuring it is all correctly edited.
The Eighth stage is the first stage where the music video gets shown to the public. The delivery of the finished video is taken to the client (the record company) and if everything is effective, the music video is played on TV, online etc, which is where it is shown to the public.
(Please note stages one to eight may take as little as only 3-4 weeks these days, as opposed to longer in previous years. This is widely due to the harsh reality that budgets have fallen and music video companies now know that an effective music video can be made without a huge budget, a simple idea could be just as effective as a complicated, time consuming and fiercely expensive one. Demands are also greater from the music companies nowadays as a couple of years previously.)
We have now arranged times in which we can shoot, even if the location of the junction can't be used, we have arranged the times anyway so that we can get things organised.
Tuesday 13th October - 4.30 onwards (significant moments etc)
Thursday 15th October - 4.30 onwards (main venue - junction or other etc)
More times may be added but these are the final times in which we can film.
After today's session at The Junction, I thought it would be good to have a back up plan which will help considerably if anything goes wrong. The junction is only available 12 - 5 thursday the 15th and thursday the 22nd - which is quite a big problem. The main singer in the band works every day until 4 - meaning we would only have potentially half an hour to shoot anything, even with transport and set up time.
Before now I thought the junction would be available until atleast 6 and have only recieved the information today that they are only available until 5. After a talk with a few leading people (Simon etc) there may be a possibility to use another room but if not then they will try and see what they can do.
The only possible back up plan that would be effective would be to use another venue. I'm afraid using another main singer would be virtually impossible as I do not know anyone that would be willing to help at this short notice and to learn the song, lyrics and listen to all my ideas, to be done on thursday. I also do not know anyone at all that could fill in and have always from the start of the music video had the singer (Subash) in mind, as he is the only person I know willing enough to do something like this, and do not know anyone at all else willing to stand in and do it.
Therefore, there is another possible venue that we could use as I have explained previously, there will be my old secondary school, Manor Community College, which have a stage and lighting which would be great for what we need. The stage is mainly used for in the hall, but this doesn't matter, Subash has also performed on the stage before so he would perhaps feel more comfortable here if we need to use this venue. I will need to contact the school A.S.A.P to ask and let them know my ideas, but I'm sure they would be willing at least one night to let us film there, as not many people use the hall after school hours.
This will be updated once I have heard from the junction about times and when I have contacted Manor. The final venue will then be confirmed.
For our music video, we had a talk in the hall with a former long road student.
- His name is Ed Lovelace and he attended Long Road from 2000 - 2002. He then went on to Bournemouth university to study a media related production course. He used the Imac of 2001 which was not as advanced as the macs we use, there was no Final Cut editing programme and they used an editing programme called 'cut premiere' for a short period.
- During his time at Long Road, he produced a Thriller in 2001 called 'Connection' which is the equivalent to our film opening sequence project. They were able to use copyright music as opposed to nowadays where we are only allowed to use non copyright music, unless we are granted permission from the original artist I think. His style is similar to the style of camerawork we use today, with a variety of shots etc needed in order to have an entertaining footage sequence.
- He then produced a music video in 2001 like we will for our A2 media exam coursework. The song he used was 'Infiltrator - Sleeping words'. It was a conceptual idea and he explained they did not have a clear idea what to do and were in a group of 5 so all had mixed ideas. He explained that planning was very important and that they had no set idea. However there was no lipsyncing which I found interesting as we now have to use lipsyncing in our music video to get the higher band of marks. The video I think was effective and liked the effect at the start, which is what we would like to use in our music video, where the girl was still in a town street and then people were moving really fast around her.
- Lovelace then went on to Bournemouth University, where he studied from 2003 - 2005. He liked the university as there were a huge amount of media related courses to choose from and Bournemouth is respected as one of the leading media universitys. There were a lot of good connections in terms of teachers etc and the lecturers had actually worked first hand in the industry therefore there experience helped considerably. The lessons were similar to Long Road, and the skills he learned at Long Road were very useful for later production work at Bournemouth.
- He had a 3 month placement in which he worked as a runner for six weeks or so. He said it was a good way to get into the industry for some but he personally didn't enjoy it and he didn't seem to progress in six weeks there.
- He then got a job at 'Creation' music production company, who worked with artists such as Oasis, Primal scream etc and produced their music videos. He would film the bands at the venues, such as the junction etc and cutting live videos against their performances. He made low budget videos, with a budget of £100 for roughly a year. He made a music video for The Gallows called Abandon Ship. This video was interesting as it was similar to our music video idea with clear shots of instruments etc. From watching the video it was clear he used 8 camera operators from different angles and this is important so that the music video does not get boring.
- He then got a job at Pulse films, which was linked to Creation production company. Pulse films is based in Soho, London and creates feature films, commercials etc. He is currently doing a Myspace project, in which he has different music artists around the world to promote myspace. For the process, the record label come in with a track, then the agnets give the idea to him and he listens to the song and tries to come up with a idea and pitch it.
In terms of budget, Each video he produced firstly was roughly £100 each. However prices dropped recently, as the record labels know that effective videos can be made cheaply and therefore do not need a big budget. He produced a video for the band 'Cage the elephant, called In One Ear. This had a higher budget, as it was simply 20 thousand roughly to just build the set, it was shot on 60mm film and was only a 1 day shoot. For this, he had a considerably budget of £40,000.
For the inital process of music video production, Lovelace has to use references to films etc to promote his pitch, and explained this is very important as without clear references most record companies and bands are not interested without a clear visual reference, 'its like ...' He then has to sit with the editor and help edit the video. He has 3 days to pitch, A week of planning beforehand, 3 days editing and 1 day shoot. He explained that they had to downgrade the footage as it is too big to use on editing programmes and is considerably slow, therefore they upgrade the footage again to higher quality once the editing is done.
- For his other 'Cage the elephant' video, he had a budget of £40,000 again and the song was called 'Aint no rest for the wicked'. There was some back projection used and some found footage in which they bought. He then produced a video for 'Cutting pink with knives - Laser Hannon'. This incredibly, only took 2 hours and a week of planning.
- Lovelace then moved on to produce his feature film, in New York, with a budget of £10,000, they did a tour with a singer for 2 months in the UK. The feature film was called 'Werewolves in America' and may be showing at the cambridge film festival. It is still in process and will be shown in the music festival in Texas.
Q + A with Ed Lovelace
1) Is there any film you would like to reference in a video but havent? "Yes, there are many including Eternal Sunshine film by Michel Gondry."
2) What is your policy for looking for work in the industry? "I didn't like the idea of bring a runner, I felt I wasn't progressing. My main advice would just be to start making videos now, so you have some experience and can show future employers."
3) Is there any band or singer you would like to work with? "Well, at the moment for the myspace project we may work with artists such as Jay Z and Beyonce, Jay Z would be interesting."
If we can't use the junction we had to think of a backup plan:
We could still keep the similar storyline, with moments slipping away, i think that the pictures zooming out to the screen will still be good to do and we can shoot that pretty much anywhere, because the location is not that important for these shots. The main problem we have is if we can't use the junction because there is not enough space for us.
If this problem occurs then we will need to find somewhere else to shoot, I still think we can pull of a band performance, just maybe we can play on the point about being around no one, so we could have the performace in some deserted place such as deep in some woods somewhere or up on a big hill, the only problem with that is it would be very hard to put a drumkit up there so we would have to think of how we can still have drums in the video without having to take it to these locations.
Other then that the rest of our idea should be ok seeing as we can shoot these anywhere.
Here is the plan for the shoot, with dates/times/places/props/costumes etc as much as I can explain.
PEOPLE - There are three main people in our band. Subash Gurung - Main singer (already plays in a band etc so has some relevant experience and is quite confident.) Base Guitarist - Zoe Few (Plays Base guitar already and is learning the chords) Electric Guitarist - Grant Cole (plays guitar so has experience.)Drummer - Natasha Bennett(Has some experience of drums but as they do not feature much this should be fine.) DATES - Rough cut deadline is in two weeks time, wednesday 21st september. Therefore shooting will take place before this but a time will need to be arranged with the junction and Matt and I will do this asap, we will ask on thursday's time at the junction. The main singer of the band does have work and university so I think we will have to either shoot on thursdays about 4.30, (after his work) or the weekend, but we will check availability and confirm asap.
TIMES - The main singer of the band does have work and university so I think we will have to either shoot on thursdays about 4.30, (after his work) or the weekend, but we will check availability and confirm asap.
PLACES - Either The Junction, Cambridge or Manor Community College (my old school) the stage here is just what we need so if we cannot use the Junction we will use this venue.)
PROPS - Obviously instruments will be needed, but unsure if these count as props. However, we will need a drum kit, 1 or 2 guitars and a microphone, also an amp and amp lead. (Unsure whether the junction will have these, I'll ask on thursday.) The main prop we will need is a photoframe with a picture, or just a picture on its own. I think a good idea would be to take a picture, print it out and have that in the singers hand, however also film after taking the picture so it is very similar as the camera zooms into the picture and the significant moment, which will be in video form.
COSTUMES - For costumes, we will use casual clothes, but after doing a moodboard of images and watching indie videos most of them are in casual clothes too. Jeans and an indie style top would be fine for the genre we are trying to create.
This is the first 2 minutes of our song in an animatic. Although it is a bit blurry, it should explain to everyone the rough idea of our music video and the shots we hope to produce. We will have variety of shots, and hopefully it does show this a little in the animatic, although it is hard to draw exactly what you want! I hope this video explains roughly the type of music video we are trying to create and the shots we would like to use, aswell as the initial story to the video (though it is only a little one.)
For the version of Feeder - Feeling a moment, we have decided to shorten the music track in which we have shortened by about 30 seconds, as it is simply a bit too long to do the whole video, so at the moment we have a length of 3.48 while shortened.
The full length of the song is 4.13. I think 3 minutes 48 is still a very long time for a student music video, and looking at other students tracks in the class they all seem to be at the most 3 minutes long, so perhaps we can cut the song a little bit more but I think to create a video to 3 minutes 48 will be a challenge too.
It simply is a shortened version of the music track, and suprisingly unless you know the song really well (as do Matt and I) then it is really hard to notice the difference. A lot of bits in the song are repeated quite a lot so Matt has been working on shortening the song and has come up with the shortened version which I think is just as good.
However, we may decide to use the full version of the track, depending on the amount of footage we have after shooting.
Today we have worked on the shotlist for the song, Matt L has worked previously on this before as I have been away, however I think this is going well, as well as the shotlist which there are pictures which are shown above. There is more to come later, so far we have done about a minute and a half of the song in the morning at Colleridge, so in an hour and a half.
Shot 1: For the intro, i was thinking maybe of the band setting up, a long shot from them Shot 2: In the brief silence before the music starts i thought about having a close up of someone plugging in a lead to an amp Shot3: When music starts with the "oohs" its going to be a mid shot of the band all together. drummer to the Left, guitarist(s) to the right and main singer in the middle
Shot4: Side shot of Singer singing.
Shot5: Close up of guitarist.
Shot6: Close up of drummer drumming.
Shot7: Long shot of band members again
Shot8: Close up of Singer straight on
Shot9: Right side shot of all 3 band members Shot10:Man walking down an Alley or in a room singing "Feeling the moments slip away" he has something in his hand Shot11: over the shoulder close up of the picture in his hand.
Shot12: Camera zooms into pictures + significant moment
