First shots

.GIF Construction

As a group we were thinking of different ways to add some simple touches to our blogs, one of which was the animated .GIF's. These were really simple and easy to make although quite time consuming.
The basic idea is to make a background that is completely blank and place the item that you wish to animate in the center of the set, we then took a photo and then rotated the item around a 1/12 of a turn, the more photos will mean a smoother animation but 12 is enough.
After the photos have been taken we then imported them to a computer and loaded all the 12 images into photoshop layers in the same image as you can see here. This is simple to do, but i personally choose to open them in Bridge and then highlight the photos i need then load them into photoshop layers as i personally think its quicker.




After that is done you then need to go to >Window and choose >Animation and then this window at the bottom will appear with all the photos from the layers.

Then press the play button to check to see if there are any repeated photos, if there are then click on the photo that is repeated and then click the dustbin icon to get rid of it.




From there i then checked the timing of the animation, if the timing was slightly wrong, i changed it using the drop down menu underneath each of the pictures, i chose 0.3 seconds for each photo.

After that, the file then needed to be saved as a .GIF, this can be done by going to >File >Save for Web and Devices, this then brings up another window in which i chose the file type as a .GIF then lastly click save.

Band Research by Danny

The lineup: David Beadle, Thom Powers, Aaron Short, Jesse Wood, Alisa Xayalith. 
  
Background: The Naked and Famous have  slipped into the market, since they committed commercial hara-kiri earlier this year. The five-piece from New Zealand, began as an electro duo in 2008 after the two members, Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith, met at music school. They have taken the sound indie rock and turned it into a their own style of electric rock. That's have found a gap in the market and are filling it with a commercialised version of a successful, cool American band's most popular tracks.

The New Zealand post-punk revival band from Auckland formed in 2008 when Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith recorded two EPs with engineer Aaron Short, a fellow student at Auckland's MAINZ music college. The EPs were subsequently released on a local independent label and Powers and Xayalith began performing live with Ben Knapp (bass) and Jordan Clark (drums).
In 2009, the group recorded the single "All of This". Aaron Short became a performing member of the group and Jesse Wood (drums) and David Beadle (bass) joined the band as full-time members.

The band were involved in NME's rising stars for 2011 and did an interview. There is a clip from that interview below.

 The group then set about recording the single "Young Blood" and their debut album, recording mostly at home and at Auckland studio, The Lab. "Young Blood" debuted on the New Zealand chart at number one on 14 June 2010 – the first New Zealand artist in three years to do so. The Naked and Famous released their debut studio album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, on 6 September 2010 on their own label, Somewhat Damaged. The album was produced by Thom Powers and Aaron Short and mixed by Billy Bush.

Equipment

Here are a list of the items that we shall be regularly using during the production of our music video, all of which are displayed in an animated .GIF

This is one of the three cameras that we will be using, its a Nikon D5100 that shoots full frame video as well as it serving the purpose of being an SLR camera. The camera is equipped with a standard 18 to 55mm lens that is perfect for the amateur production that we are under going. It takes standard SD memory cards which allow us to use the ones that we already have so that we can shoot more on one setting.








This is the Go Pro Hero 2 that we will be using to shoot the action shots for the music video, it also takes SD memory cards which makes it a whole lot easier as we will be using one memory card type. The camera is a fully waterproof, shock proof and drop proof action camera that can handle pretty much anything, making it suitable for any slightly more dangerous shots we are going to do,
the camera is also equipped with a standard fisheye lens that gives the video a nicer look as well as it being full 1080p HD at 25fps.

This MacBook pro is one of a few we will be using to do the post production of the video, all of which are installed witch Final Cut Pro 10 and all the Adobe CS5/CS6 software.
As well as having the desktop iMacs for use at school we have these to take out on location with us so that we can instantly upload any footage we have to see if it needs sorting on location or not.

 

One of the key pieces of software that we will be using is Final Cut Pro X, Its the most up to date editing software from Apple themselves.

It has a simplistic design and is simple and easy to use, this should be easy enough for the whole group to use and to be competent with, the software is also installed on the MacBook Pros that we will we taking on location so we can even edit the video on site.

SteadiCam
Previously when i wanted to get into videography i had the idea of making a home made Steadicam, but unfortunately i never went through with the idea, now that were making music videos i thought that a Steadicam will be a great thing to add and help us out with the look of our videos and clips.
The homemade steadicam is made from 3/4 PVC pipe and some other connections, i also used a bearing and a double jointed multi rotational fixing to create the gimbal to give the desired effect from the Steadicam.

Tripod
The tripods we are using are very basic and are nothing special, they are both height adjustable up to 1.6 meters and have rotational panorama heads and portrait shooting tilt on.

Canon 550D
Another Camera that we have is the Canon 550D, its of a slightly higher spec than the schools camera that is given to us so it is of some use to us. This camera has a higher frame rate of filming and is 18.8 megapixels.

Lenses

On the Nikon that is given to us, it has a standard 18 to 55mm focal length, this is good for shooting the basic stuff that we need to, i also personally have an 18 to 55mm lens for the Canon, along with a 75 to 300mm zoom lens and an 8mm full frame fisheye, which will look different and give a really good effect to the shots, it will also work well with Steadicam as it needs a wide angled lens to make the movements softer.

Clothing by Luke

As the song that we have chosen is to of the indie electronica genre, the clothing and styling of the band members is absolutely crucial to how the band will be portrayed to the public.

The main focus for us is to create a typical indie band and to try and keep strictly to indie styled clothing and hair styles etc. This will prove difficult but if done correctly it will give us the star image that we want to give the band. This is seen in our research as most artists have an iconic look which not only attracts a fan base but also reflects their persona. A key example of this is the band 'Kiss' who consistently wear leather with their black and white face paint - giving them their identity.
Recently we have been searching the internet for different sort of outfits for the band members to wear and we decided on the lead singer, as she is a female that she should wear a typical floral type dress for the performance part of the video, here are some ideas;

When researching what makes an indie outfit we looked at a selection of blogs and websites such as googling 'How to dress indie?' - sites such as 'WikiHow' came in very useful as there are lots of tips that we can use to enhance our own knowledge that we have already. The research sort of already confirmed the image we had in our heads of what 'indie' actually is but we could just get a better insight through the experts advice. We could then go away onto websites (below) with our new knowledge. The key thing to remember was that indie literally means 'independant' therefore we have a lot of flexibility and options

Florence Welch is a fashion icon and we can use her example to see what makes a unique female music artist as our lead singer as mentioned is a girl and we want her to stand out in the music video - by creating a qwerky alter-ego we can achieve this look. 
Florence usually performs in flowing dresses which contrast against her hair colour. Because she has such a distinctive hair colour and style, she compliments it and almost highlights it as her identity even further. Even when she is dressed casually as you can see, she dresses with independence and this reflects her personality.




This little slideshow shows some of the ideas that we have had from looking at fashion websites such as; Topshop, Urban Outfitters, ASOS etc. and google images. As a group we may need to purchase a the perfect outfit for the lead singer. We want to portray her as a fashionista, leading the way for other people to follow. In this case, she needs to stand out as being a unique individual who does not neccessarily follow any trends - she sets them herself. This being said, the style needs to be in keeping with the indie feel of the music video otherwise the two elements of music and fashion will not compliment each other. They need to show what direction we are heading in.

The other narrative based part of the video is going to be slightly different, as its going to be lots of different groups of people doing lots of different activities, the clothing will be tailored to who the people are and what they are doing in the scene that they are in for example, in the camping scene, all the actors will be dressed up warm around a camp fire wearing jumpers in sleeping bags etc, in the scene thats in the field it will be the same sort of attire that they were wearing during the performance.

We decided that the males in the performance part of the video will be wearing clothes that represent the indie genre also, for this we also looked into fashion website for the males like; Topman, Urban outfitters etc. Here are some examples of what we are looking for.....although some have hipster/electronica elements fitting into groups such as Scenester kids.

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Styles that I personally like are the bright and vibrant AZTEC ones. This is actually very in fashion at this present moment in time with the winter season. You can see these styles appearing in a lot of retail stores...it is the idea of patterns and bold colours being put onto a piece of clothing. It makes a big statement and has 'indie connotations'. When looking at websites this was a prominent theme. Also a lot of people at our age of 17/18 have started to settle into this Aztec niche market and if adults in bands are wearing this style they do look much more young and almost appear more creative and exciting.

The band Spector are good examples of making bright colours look qwerky and quite trendy. Normally it is common to think you stand out in a bad way but they have their own unique style and star image. Their style I think opitimizes them. Thry are normally seen with tie-dye shirts in yellows, reds, blues and various other colours. It separates them from the crowd and also highlights this fashion revolution.  I think that the clothing item of a shirt looks smart yet can be made casual at the same time - looking rather effortlessly cool.

Bands like Foals have the common look of skinny jeans and short sleeve shirts - shown in the Balloons video. It gives a summery feel despite the fact that we will be shooting our video in the middle of the winter period. They look tailored, especially with button down collars as these give the look a more casual appearance. Foals provide a contrast to Spector as they are more often seen in pastel coloured shirts as opposed to a variety of vivid colours.

Album Art by Matt

In 1938, Columbia records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director. Steinweiss is to this day credited for creating the first album covers and cover art replacing plain covers as before. After this other record companies started to follow his lead, by the late 40's the majority of album covers featured album art and to this day every single album will have artwork on the cover, this is also the case for digital forms of music, it will still have the album artwork in iTunes or other media players on the market.
Some of the most famous album covers art that of;
The Beatles, this cover showed a picture of the band crossing the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, their home recording studio. The album entitles Abbey Road was their 11th album.

 This was the first Beatles album sleeve to show neither name nor band name on the front.
The photographer of the photo Ian Macmillan was given 10 minutes to take the photo ontop of a steplader in the road while a policeman help up the traffic.

Another incredibly iconic peice of album art is that for Nirvanas second album Nevermind.
It featured a young baby floating underwater looking at a dollar bill that is hooked to a fishing line.
There was some concern over the fact that 3 month old Spencer Evan's penis was visible in the photo, Cobain the bands lead singer made it clear that the only compromise would be a sticker covering it that said "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."

The Dark Side of The Moon was the eighth album from Pink Floyd.
The idea of the prism was chosen because it shows three different elements; the bands stage lighting, the albums lyrics and Richard White's request for a simple bold design.

















Album artwork is extremely important for the artist and the single as it can reflect on the genre and style. For example pop and RnB artists are going to have posed highly edited portraits as their album art to show themselves off while indie bands may have a more artistic artwork.

Foo Fighters 

Foo Fighters are an american rock band and "One by one" is their fourth studio album. The final album was released in October 2002 after a year of construction. Singles from the album included "All My Life", "Times Like These", "Low", and "Have It All". The band planned to release it six months earlier but had an argument over the music saying it didn't sound right which ended up in them recording the whole album a second time. The black heart is suits the album and is used to symbolise the love and lust that band members had for each other throughout the creation of it. 

Coldplay

Mylo Xyloto is Coldplays Fifth studio album released in 2011. It was the UK's best-selling rock album of 2011, selling 908,000 copies. To date, it has sold over 8 million copies worldwide. Coldplay wanted it to be an explosion of vivid colors as a counterpoint to the subdued color palette of Viva La Vida. 

Paolo Nutini

Sunny side up is the second album released by Paolo Nutini in 2009. The album was the eighth best selling album in the United Kingdom of 2009 and the sixth of 2010. It sold over 60 000 copies in the Uk alone. The colours and nature of the music ties into the name of the album "Sunny Side up" projecting positivity in music. Everything thing from the way the eggs connote the sun to the slight yellow gradient on the text help establish this tone.

The XX


The xx are an English indie pop band, formed in London in 2008. The group released their debut album, xx in August 2009. The xx recorded their album in a small garage that was part of the XL Recordings studio, often at night, which contributed to the low, whispery nature of the album. The x symbolises the band’s name and connotes the only iconography on the cover. Without a title or name it creates a highly recognisable cover which can be recreated in later albums or concerts etc. 

Mumford and Sons 

Mumford and Sons are an english folk/rock band which released their first album "sigh no more" in October 2009. Much of Mumford & Sons' lyrical content has a strong literary influence, its debut album name deriving from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The band won the ARIA Music Award for Most Popular International Artist in 2010, and the Brit Award in 2011 for Best British Album. Furthermore, in 2011 they received aEuropean Border Breakers Award for their international success.

Iconic Album Covers 

More Album Art Examples in relation to their genre:

Target Audience

 

Our group went away during a lesson on own clothes day recently to interview some students around the school who we thought would be our target audience judging on how they dressed and looked. Two of my group members then came to conclusions on our target market, and who specifically it will be aimed at from our song choice and what sort of video will be most effective.

The song we chose, Young Blood by The Naked and Famous is that of the indie genre but it also has a slight electronic synthesised dance beat to it as well which fits well as every member of our group is interested in indie alternative rock, the song will be primarily aimed at the indie genre market or in that direction at least, but because it is also a dance/electronic type of music as well it means that we don't have to appeal to the niche market of the indie music lovers as it can also interest indie music lovers.

In order to get a good understanding of indie scenesters we looked at the UK Tribes website, this would give us an insight into how they dress, what they are like and how to attract them.
Here shows the type of brands that they are most interested in and tend to wear, their media consumption, so how they get access to media and how much of it they use and what are their most used form of media.
This means that we could target these specific/mostly used type of media for our promotion package to try and target them and attract them.

 Here is a video from the UK tribes website that explains the indie scene and what they wear.
"Indie Scenesters exist thanks to the fashionable status of guitar music (though for them it’s often about mixing it up with more electronic sounds) and are linked to the general rise of instant fashionability – of fashion and music trends having much faster lifecycles thanks to the commodification of cool. Scenesters don't mind bands achieving mainstream success, but prefer them before the masses cotton on – their own version of second album syndrome. There is significant role reversal in the Indie Scenester Tribe, with both boys and girls dressing in tight fitting clothes and often sporting make-up and accessories. The relatively recent return of the Ray-Ban Wayfarer (in all colours) is big with this crowd as they love to be the first to pick up on the rebirth of a once popular fashion item."

The above passage gives us an idea of what the band members should be wearing and what attire they should have, Both boys and girls dress in tight fitting clothes, this is typical of the indie scene also wearing 


The type of clothes that the band will be wearing is solely based on the indie tribe and slightly stereo typical in a way although its typical to the newer indie tribe, some examples of the type of clothes that the band will be wearing;

l very popular within this group and top man can provide them all. Above you can see a image that I have taken from the Topman website it shows a model wearing cloths typical associated with indie  Scenesters. It is also common for them to roll up there sleeves ans short and long sleeved shirts as well and rolling up the bottom of there trousers to show the ankles. common footwear worn would be Van's, boat shoes, desert boots and espadrilles. Commonly associated with the indie is the 'Old Man' look also called 'Vintage' where many people wear striped and patterned jumpers and shirts with colors such as beige being very popular. and knit wear often is worn.  Although baggy jumpers and tops are popular skinny clothes are also extremely popular and very common with skinny jeans a must for all indie 'wannabes'. 

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Pitch 1

I have sent an email to the bands manager to try and get permission to use the song for our video here are the screenshots;

With the performance part of the video we wanted to keep it as simple as possible. As researching the instruments behind the band were very stereotypical with two guitars, a drum kit, keyboard, synthesiser and a lead singer. We were thinking of finding an empty room, blacking it out and then having a single light (Maybe coloured) shining through from the background silhouetting and lighting up the band members. 


A member of our group created a 3D model in cinema 4D and rendered out to produce a similar reconstruction of the scene. Unfortunately the lighting isn't as realistic with a lower contrast than in real life but we can see a rough layout and style. The good thing about shooting in the dark is that the location wont have to be as important as shooting in the day time. There is also a video below of short rotation of the 3D models showing it a little clearer.

Also below are screen shots from the music video from the song "Speed of sound" by Coldplay. This shows a similiar sort of idea however instead of using a single light they use a massive screen which later lights up in the video. However the idea of light from the background creates a very clever effect. There are also screen shots from Muse's "Time is Running Out" and The Arctic Monkeys' "Brianstorm". The Arctic Monkeys' song also recreates a very similar effect with a sepia tone to the video but i included Muse's song because i think the overall blue lights and tone look better in comparison.

Speed of Sound by Coldplay











Time is Running Out by Muse





Brianstorm by Arctic Monkeys






Narrative

With the narrative elements and part of the video we wanted it to be quite random but sort the atmosphere and mood of the song. Therefore we were thinking of filming sequences of groups of different people and friends enjoying themselves and having edited to the music very similar to some of Calvin Harris' music videos. One idea i wanted to expand upon was a group of friends having a camp fire in a wood or field during dusk. 

In the music video to "Olympic Airways" a song by The Foals there a small clip of a group of people with a bunch of black balloons in a field and then letting them drift off into the distance. This was a very clever idea that looks very appealing while suiting the style of video we want to shoot. It is also very easy to recreate and can involve or be applied to all different age groups making it a viable 
option.

I also really like the use of balloons in this advert by aero for their chocolate bar "Aero Bubbles". Although it has no relation to music video i think the concept is really clever and as we were planing on doing some shots based in a skatepark it maybe really cool to try and recreate this concept into the narrative. This could link into the previous scene with the group of friends in a field. We could then use balloons to create a relationship between all of the narrative clips despite them being different locations and people. 

Another thing i think looks good is the use of flares in the background. This can be either used in the narrative with a group of friends mucking around with them as seen below or could be used in the performance and placed on the floor to light up the place. The pictures below are from Rihanna's Music Video (Left) "We Found Love" and Jamie T's video (Right) "Sticks and Stones". I personally think it would look better included in the narrative with people on the back of bikes with them riding along similar to Rihanna's video. 


Other related shots of use of a forest or wood in a music video by the artist The macabees who have a fight scene in a woods. It wasn't the scene that interested me but the way the shots were filmed with the sun rays coming through the branches and creating lens flares on the camera. These shots are very well suited to the style of narrative that we are aiming to accomplish. Luckily one of our members of the group lives right next to a forest so this is easy access and flares can later be magnified in post production if needed. 

Also as we have go pro camera's we are able to film under water scenes in HD and slow motion as the camera has a frame rate of 128 which is four times better quality than a normal DLSR camera. 


For example to the left is a photo of bubbles during a slow motion film clip which could include if it suited the video. In conjunction we were thinking of shooting a beach scene with friends running and around on the sea front and caves so this sort of shot could be tied into that. A shot of someone diving into the water filmed from below. This could create a very cool effect especially when played in slow motion. 

Proof that this sort of narrative fits style fits the music is the video (Left). This was created in final cut where we took the music video from Calvin Harris's "Feel So Close" which has the same idea of different groups of people dancing and having fun to music and then replacing the song with our music choice. Even though they are completely unrelated they fit together really well. The only parts which show the video isn't real is when the Calvin Harris sings along to his song in the video. 


Type of Shot

Obviously mentioned before was the use of a go pro camera to achieve sloe motion shots and underwater shots. But we have also researched into other types of shot we could play around with. One is called the vertigo shot which plays with the perspective of the shot. This was firstly used in the film vertigo and most famous for its use in Jaws but is a type of shot (Video) which we can try. It is created by zooming out the same distance as walking towards the character. This bends the background and focusses/stresses the importance of the object or character in focus. However i don't exactly know how we are going to be able to fit this in with a music video but it is a concept and idea available at our disposal. 

This is a shot which appears where the camera fly's through glass and in this case a window. This would be particularly good in the intro of the song, for example where the camera could fly through a window of a car into a shot of a man tuning a radio into the song. This is created in after effects and adds a professional element to the video giving it a making the overall video look alot more realistic. However it does require a dolly to have a smooth path when the camera tracks towards into the car. The original shot is without the window and then the window is added in post production. 

The Go Pro can be used for a number of different types of shot. The first is an underwater shot which can be used because of the compact case that the go pro comes with. This is water and shockproof, shown in the video below which is completely shot with the go pro showing the quality the camera can produce. The other type of shot that it could be used for is shown in Group Love's song "Colours". This is where the camera is fixed to the waist of the actor and then tilted up to capture the top half. This creates a clever effect giving the audience a feeling of the atmosphere in the video and could be included in the narrative parts of the video.