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.

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

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: