Another Filming Location

As the room we oringally had filmed in was unavailable, I found an old building with no roof in Sutton that we got in to to film.

View Larger Map

 

Though it's not as ideal as the other location, I think it works with some genre conventions as it fits the grungy kind of scenes in music videos.

 

Digipak final draft

I have finished making what will be my final draft of my digipak before asking for feedback on a survey online.
I have made up the the tracklisting and added the required legal information.

Idea for Filming

On Sunday I'm filming some more footage for the video, I was stuck for ideas on what else to film so it wasn't just a video of my actor walking across Nottingham. I've decided I want an extra aspect to the music video - a twist at the end showing that the actor wasn't just needlessly paranoid, and someone is actually watching him.

I was thinking of nearer the end, just after the lyrics "You're alive" and him walking out the abandoned room doors. Then it shows an over the shoulder shot in a darkened room of someone on a computer clicking and watching footage of him. I was thinking of filming in the media room as i could move the monitors and towers of the computer with the little lights flashing.

As well as adding something more to the video it might be quite beneficial as it covers one of the characteristics that Andrew Goodwin writes about when definining music videos in his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory.

"There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes etc. and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the body)."

I'm not sure yet but the person on the computer could either just be shown at the end as a twist, just a shadow of someone watching him; or it could be dispersed throughout the video then the twist at the end be that it's the main actor himself that's watching it back.

On Sunday I'll also be filming more in the abandoned room place to get some footage similar to the video for The Fall by Gary Numan. Filming my actor in different parts and editing so it looks flickery, and also to get more performance footage.

Digipak: First Draft

I made my first draft of my digipak on Serif Photo Plus, and prezi about how I got to this point:

digipak template 

source: www.duplication.ca

Digipak on Prezi

Digipak Research II

Stuck on where to start for the planning of my digipak, I looked at apparently the only one I own - I don't buy music :( -The Horrors, We Are The Horrors EP.

 

         

Also, in better detail, the legal/extra information. This includes the record label names/logos, both the band and label's websites, the certification mark of the company which formatted the CD and the copyright and anti-piracy information.

I'm now starting on planning my digipak properly now. :)

Adobe Premiere Pro

Now we finally have the audio working on Adobe Premiere Pro, I'm starting the actual editing of my footage; at the moment I'm just cutting the parts that I don't need from my footage and starting to place them in the right order and time.

 

 

 

As I didn't get as much more filmed on Thursday as I would have liked,I can see how much I've got properly and film more footage when my actor is next available if I need to.

CCTV Effects

As I have not yet shot all my footage for the complete editing, I have been creating the CCTV-like effects of my filming on Adobe After Effects with the help of this video.

Creating the flicker effect

First I opened a new composition, added the video –already cut- changed the tint and the framerate; then added noise and a timecode.

Then made a new layer black and added fractal noise and changed the width and contrast. I added it on to the composition and changed the opacity to 10% to imitate the flickering of real CCTV cameras.

Then, after looking at another video, I decided to add the animation preset "night vision",  changed the preset colour from green to a blue-y grey,and turned the opacity down put the venetetian blinds setting as "Bad TV 1: Warp" which added lines across the screen.

 



"night vision" effect

 

Magazine Advert Update

I have added Facebook and Twitter logos to make the reader aware of the artist's online presence.

Magazine Advert III

I've made some slight changes to my magazine advert, this is the most up to date one.

 

I've make the quotes slightly smaller as they seemed to be taking the focus away from the band/album's name. I also added the website and changed an error with the review bit - it had four star ratings and only three names..

Filming Update

My actor has cut his hair really differently so as well as being worried about continuity, I don't think he'll have time to film on Sunday. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, so I'm just going to film lots of shots of the location when I can next and see what I can do with the footage I already have. D: 

"The Fall" by Gary Numan

The scenery for this video is really cool, though I haven't been quite that lucky in location, I was thinking if I could some similar camera angles and techniques as this when filming more on Sunday, it would be good. :)

 

But obviously mine would be mixing that kind of scenery with scenes in crowds and in the streets like I've filmed, too.
 

Magazine Advert Draft II

As well as correcting my spelling on the advert, as a part of audience feedback I asks members of my family and some people online what they though of my first draft. Though it was mainly positive feedback, the reoccuring answer was mainly regarding the lightness of my advert and how it should be darker, so I used curves to darken the picture, making the text easier to read. I also changed the order of the "reviews" as people said the BBC Music one would be the most eye catching.

Magazine Advert Draft

I've been trying some things out on Photoshop regarding my magazine advert, though I originally thought I wouldn't want a picture of my artist, I found the gaussian blur effect and noise, with the colour selection making it more blue and cyan to look kind of cool.

I tried out the font Mom's Typewriter and though it suits the genre conventions, it seemed a little overused and cliche, so instead I used the font Devil Breeze as it looks modern which sort of shows that the music isn't just industrial and also reminds me of the How To Destroy Angels font a little bit. Here is my first draft.

I think it might be a bit too basic looking at the moment, so I'm going to try a few more things this week beore the deadline. :)

edit: just realised I've spelt "fascinating" wrong, I'll change that next time D:.

Update

Though I'm happy with what footage I've collected, looking at it at school, I think I'd need a lot more before going into editing. This week I will try to collect some more clips of cameras and city stuff, then again on Sunday, I'll get some more footage of my actor, more focused on using the tripod.

 

Until then I will work on my advert for the first deadline.

My Artist's Logo

After looking into logos more, last week I went onto Dafont to look for fonts for my logo, just realised I forgot to upload it, I mainly looked in the sections Techo, Barcode and Typewriters: 

I really like most of these and think they fit into my genre, though I'm unsure on which would look best right now; I'll wait until I have a better idea of how I want the aesthetics of my advert and digipak to be. :)

Pictures From Nottingham

Whilst driving to where we had planned, we saw a really old, looking kind of garage room thing (which we think might be the back entrance to a store called Whistle and Flute Menswear on Wollaton St.) that looked really perfect for filming in, so we filmed some of the vocals we had planned to do in that factory place. I haven't taken many pictures, I was obviously focusing more on filming, but I've taken a few. 

 

Filming in Nottingham from Ashleighhh-x

As well as more abstract pictures or stills from my filming, I tried to take a few of my actor that I could use in my magazine advert:

I could mess with colours on them, and change the focus maybe. :)

Filming Today

Going to Nottingham to film in a few hours; just getting everything prepared. I've not completely finished my time plan as I was struggling to visualise everything that exact. Though I've annotated a printed out sheet of the lyrics to take with me as well. I'm going to try film some lip syncing today, but hopefully the most of that can be done in that factory place next week.

Snapshot_20121118_1

This is my only chance to film all the Nottingham bits and I'm a little worried about it, but hopefully it should be fun still.

Adventures on Private Property

A misunderstanding with when I was going to film, so we're going into Nottingham tomorrow to do the filming there. Though, looking for the "dark room" mentioned in other posts I was kind of out of ideas when my brother mentioned some abandoned warehouses/factories and places he used to hang out in, so we went to explore and take some pictures. 

The first place was locked up, but I took some pictures from outside.

The next place was really cool, after walking the muddiest path ever and thoroughly ruining my shoes (annoyingly we found a better way to get there after we'd left). We kind of crawled under a door and found really cool room, my brother filmed the majority of it, it's a reaaally wobbly, and our voices sound weird. 

We stopped filming in a rush as we heard someone outside and panicked, he was a bit scary and told us to leave. But still, hopefully, we'll be able to sneak in there again next Sunday to film my actor doing the vocals, it would definitely be better than my living room. :) 

Equipment and Technology



 Sony HDR-CX190

In planning the making of my video and the ancillary texts, I needed to have a knowledge of what equipment and technology is used in the industry, and what I can used to get the same effect. I would think that in making a real music video, the would have a bigger crew thus more cameras, probably better/more professional ones too. 

I will be using the Sony HDR-CX190 and a Jessops Tripod. 



When closer to editing I'll look more into that. :) 

Band Name

Thinking of one word "modern" names, I really wasn't sure but I looked at lots of other band names and they were made up words or slang, and I knew I didn't want that. 

Name finding

To try sound modern for some reason I thought computing terms or something might work so I googled that and came across "Subroutine" I'm not sure why but it already sounded like a name to me, so I've decided to use that. :)

"Lofticries" by Purity Ring

Though this music is really different from the song I have, there is an effect in the video that might be interesting to try when in the editing stages of my video..

Purity Ring's "Lofticries"  dir. AG ROJAS


That effect of scene changes from person to person, kind of glitchy, melting effect, though  I think it might be quite difficult to do successfully.

Survellience Themed Shoot (Inspiration)

Survellience Themed Shoot of Trent Reznor

Band/Song Name

For the name of the song I think I will just go with the obvious choice as a main lyric: "Strange Days".

I really really need to think of a name for the band to get on with both the advert and digipak. I wasn't certain on anything at the moment other than it being a one word name, so I asked some family members and friends to listen to the the song and look at the moodboard and tell me things it made them think of. All I have really gotten from them is that it would be modern sounding.. 

And so, I'll be looking into possible names in the next few days!

Moodboard

I collected images to help me map out ideas about my work, including locations, costume, adverts, album covers, actors and logos, I also added some general imagery for how I'd like aesthetics of my work to be:

(Click to enlarge)

More Actor Photos

I found some more pictures of my actor that kind of look a bit more like him.. so I thought it might be helpful to put them on here. :) 

Magazine Adverts II

I found some adverts in magazines in class I could use, mainly Q, Uncut and The Guide: 

 

 

Other than the Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan advert, each has at least one bright colour making it eye catching for the reader of the magazine and use a memorable font, if not the band's actual logo i.e Muse. Some, with any marketing, might use inter textual references to interest a wider audience, for example Massive Attack's Heligoland looks reaaally related to A Clockwork Orange.

 

Again, with each of the magazine adverts, the title of the band, album art (or similar artwork) underneath, and nearby the title of the the album. Underneath each is the further information such as the reviews, record label and where to buy it, such as HMV, Amazon, etc.

Location ideas

I've added some more points to my Google maps in preparation for filming, just hoping they will look at least a little bit similar to how they did in 2008.. 

Actor for my video

Just got my laptop working properly after a few days, but finally I have a definite actor for my music video, my friend couldn't get her drama school friends to help so I've managed to convince my sister's boyfriend to do it, it might actually work a bit better, looks-wise as he's a little older (he's 25) and it might look a little more convincing. 

Some picture from Facebook, with his permission

Once I have sorted out exactly what is happening in each part of the video I should start filming,  as he's going away soon and will have a tan, and I feel like it might be better if he was pale. So within the next two weeks, hopefully!

Costumes/Make up in Videos

From what I've seen in similar music videos so far, the costumes aren't anything extravagant, but really simple: in most of these videos the vocalist, or any other character, is wearing dull colours, greys, blues, whites or darker shades. Usually just a long sleeve shirt or plain t shirt and straight legged jeans or trousers and maybe a leather jacket, shoes don't seem to be filmed all that much. 

(printscreens)

Depending on what the actors (sorting it out this week) will already own, I think I will keep it pretty simple in recreating that, no visible make up or maybe just natural if any blemishes or anything upon filming.  

Magazine Adverts

For my ancillary task, I will have to make a magazine advert for my bands album/single. So I'll need to research how it can be marketed to suit the genre; I was struggling to find some in magazines I had at home/sixthform so I've found some online that might be of use.

 

The advert for Tricky's 2001 album Blowblack uses a simple type face, and colour scheme: black grey and white, with the part saying 'back' reversed to link to the ideo of it being backwards. It gives detail on the release date so fans know when they can buy it, what looks to be different test shots of the album cover as the background and all the necessary publishing information near the bottom with the ANTI- record label logo and reviews.

In this second advert, the design looks reasonably simplistic; contact and publisher information at the bottom and reviews nearer the top. The main focus is the artwork, the same as their album so people will recognise it from the advert.

 

With both, and most magazine adverts for albums, the name of the artist or band is at the top, and the name of whatever release they are advertising. The album art, or something similar is usually included. I will bear in mind this conventions when making mine, but before I do so, I will try to look out for more magazine advertisments to help me a little more.

Research into Band Logos

Not sure on what I had to research within band logos, I tried to look at them overall, then went in to focus on some similar to my genre/to what I want to create. 

Band Logos from Ashleighhh-x

I don't know what I will name "my" band yet so I don't know how much further I can go with looking into logos at the moment. Right now I'm thinking a colon in it would look cool, I think influenced by Global Communication's album 76:14, though I know that's not very related..

Lighting In Music Videos

Now I have a slightly better idea about my video I need to think in more depth about how I want each scene to look. From looking at some videos I've noticed that if the focus of the video is on the vocalist, they may be alone in a room, like what I've planned for mine, the idea of darkened rooms, shadows and silhouettes has interested me as I think it looks kind of personal and feel it kind of mirrors how the music feels in parts, dark and mysterious.

 

 

This particularly seems to be the case in the first forty seconds in the video for Massve Attack's Risingson and the first forty seconds of We're In This Together by NIN.  In fact the lighting in a lot of Massive Attack videos is pretty interesting, I'd like my video to be quite inspired by theirs as the sound really appears to be. :)

 

The effect of this is both done by outside lighting shining in, or high contrast and dark clothes. Also, keeping the room dark and only using the light to shine of certain parks might be hard to do subtly but I willl try to create this effect. Also, in looking at the first forty seconds or so of the NIN video is a good example of how I would like the intro for mine to be, with lots of close up images of parts of the face/hands etc.

 

 

Nine Inch Nails: We're In This Together (1999) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

Marketing and Distribution

Usually, both marketing and distribution aspects are left to the record label rather than the direct members of the band. Wikipedia says "marketing" is a business term referring to the promotion of products, advertising, pricing, distribution channels, and branding. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to sell goods or services.

With music it can essentially be seen as an extension of the artist/band's work; it can portray them as certain image/brand to make sure the right audience are finding out about them; this includes things such as their advertising,online presence, press etc.

For this they could contact companies such as Drowned in Sound, NME or Pitchfork for music news, and album and gig reviews, and of course create profiles for themselves on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr (and maybe Myspace?) possibly linking fans to free downloads at Soundcloud.

To make sure they are getting listened to it is important that at they are distrubuted correctly; a huge portion of the music industry is solely on the internet now so it would be important for any emerging band to try get on internet radio stations, adding an album to spotify for the public, etc.  To get online sales they could go with a lot of different distribution plans with their record label.





Source: David Byrne at wired.com

I think "my" band could if first starting up would try go for a profit sharing and self-distribution model, as at first it might be easier to allow the label to help distribution  though it would be more independent if they could sell their own music, on websites such as bandcamp, letting the fans pay as much as they want, like what Radiohead did to sell In Rainbows.

http://www.unsignedbandpromotion.com/resources-marketing-music/

Advertisement/Album Art Idea

Recently, I found an old receipt that I had accidently got some perfume sprayed on it, it left little purple-y black marks where it had hit. I kind of experimented more with this and got lots of cool effects. 

(Taken with my webcam, so not the best quality)

I researched it and apparently it is due to the chemicals reacting with the ink as it is thermal paper, it also occurs if you hold a lighter underneath it. I'm trying out lots of different effects at the moment. I like how it looks and it does seem to link into some of the black and white, abstract looking album covers I've looked at; I think it could also continues a kind of dark theme, without getting too caught up in the aesthetics that heavier bands use.

Sprayed with perfume then scrunched up (left), folded and a lighter led underneath (right)

Location Ideas

I decided I was going to look for kind of grungy, industial streets to film in around Nottingham city centre. At the moment, I'm exploring around streets surrounding Maid Marian way, mainly, using the Street View tool on Google Maps. Though I've taken into consideration it might be a little different as some of the image dats are 2008, so they might look cleaner or a bit different now.

 

I'll use this as a kind of log to come back to and edit, a list of all the street names I've found so far that I could use. (Use the map in the corner and zoom out  to see the other points on the map that I've made.)

 

View Filming Locations in a larger map.

"Dead End" by Reptile Youth

I just came across this video on Tumblr and thought it was cool in a really disturbing way. It's pretty much a compilation of creepy moments in culture, mixed with lots of strange imagery; kind of interesting though totally unrelated to what I want to do.

I know I couldn't really do anything like it, as it's all found footage, from films mainly but I just thought I'd put on here as some possible inspiration for later on maybe.

Ideas III - Video Plan

Over half term I continued to look at ideas for videos, and a little on band logos. Feeling I had lost some direction in my ideas, so we started to just reiterate my ideas as of yet and looked at breaking up my given song into sections so it was a little less intimidating and more apporachable. :)

 

Here are my ideas so far,

 

Actors - Male performer, possibly two male performers, one to be the vocalist, one for the narrative sequence.

I think I have got people to be in my video, I have a friend who does drama at college and she may be able to ask some of the guys in her class to help me out. If I find out soon, I'll give the song to them so they could learn the lyrics to be able to lip sync more realistically.

 

Locations - Darkened room in which the vocalist (focus on shadows and silhouettes).

                 - Nottingham -> Urban/industrial settings

Maybe some back streets so I can still film parts of what the audience could imagine were office buildings or the like, so show the character is on the out side of that scene.

 

Ideas/Themes - Anti-capitalist aspect

                        - Grungy dark colours/ low temperature filming.

 

Narrative - I'm not certain of any story or focus in particular other than a man walking about on industial sort of back streets of a city, looking alone. I'd still like to include some sort of intra-intra diagetic scenes on fuzzy screens and things, but i'm not sure how I'd include this at the moment. I might look into being more influenced by Massive Attack videos, in particular Intertia Creeps where the singer is looking at the screen. I'm not sure yet.

I'm creating what will be a really detailed filming plan, at the moment it's just breaking the song into sections where it sounds similar, and working out what sort of thing will be shown at this part. This is what I have planned so far:

 

 

I've came to a kind of halt with writing this at the moment as i need to work out what -in more detail- to include in my narrative, I'll working on developing that this week.

Later I hope to link this in with the lyrics, making it more detailed so I'll know exactly what I'll need to be filming.

Ideas II - Camera and editing

Today, when pitching my ideas as of yet to the rest of  the class we talked about some of the more technical aspects of my video, as I have a (kind of) idea what it could be like aesthetically; I spoke about having a man feeling out of place in a corporate world, city type surroundings maybe; which we decided might suit an instrumental part midway through the song filmed kind of jittery and spinning around, possibly slowing down.

π (1998) trailer, with Boards of Canada too :)

I could possibly take some inspiration from the beginning part of this trailer for the film Pi.

Digipaks

In my previous post, I briefly looked at the aesthetics of album covers in the genres my song falls into, of course with this I will have to create the rest of my digipak so I decided to get a bit of information about them.

A basic digipak

A digipak is a style of packaging for a CD or DVD, they usually consist of a book-style fold and often used for singles and Special Edition copies. Digipaks can vary in how many sides they have (usually depending on the amount of discs included) , sometimes forming cross shapes or simply opening out as a line.  

The general conventions of a digipak are similar to any music packaging: album cover, track listing, band information such as website, thanks to anyone else involved, lyrics (maybe), music publisher and information, the record label and other legal information. A digipak may consist of more album art, and more than one CD. 

Looking at some similar band's digipaks may help me think about what images as well as information I will need to include in mine.

Album Covers

Looking into album covers in preparation for the creation of one of my ancillary tasks: to make a digipak for the given artist. It looks like it will be quite hard to create my own being inspired by others because unlike some music videos fitting genres, a lot of album art within the same genre still varies lots! However, so far I've looked at the likes of Radiohead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Tool, Placebo, Portishead, Sneaker Pimps etc.

An example of a pop/rnb cover

I've already noticed I naturally pick pictures with a colder temperature and darker rather than warm ones, so that might give me a place to start, if I look at ones like that.  :)

In comparision pop or r'n'b albums seem to hold a lot less focus on selling the idea of the artist's face/body, and rather on matching artwork to the music. The images are be darker, blurry and seemingly unrelated to the title of the album.

From looking at these, I think I'd like my album cover for my digipak to remain quite dark, and perhaps take a still from my video or something similar and mess with it on photoshop to look blurry, alternatively I could look into making the album cover just the band's logo and simplistic design like Burial's albums and the single for Stupid Girl by Garbage.

Record Labels I

In preparation for creating the brand that will be "my band", how I would plan to market or distribute them I needed to look into record labels that my band would be signed to. First, I'll look at popular record labels spanning the alternative or indie music, and genres the song fits into, then research smaller, independent kind of labels that would sign my band. 

Brief look at 'The Big Three' and labels such as Warp, 4AD, Rough Trade, Nothing Records and Mute:

Record labels from Ashleighhh-x

Ideas I - Lyrics

Recently I've felt like I've not applied the information I'm gathering back to the track I'm actually looking at, so taking the focus back to that,I thought I should look at my song in detail again: ("Track 19" for now) get a better idea of what I want my music video have in it. I decided to look at the lyrics in more depth to draw out any imagery or themes I could focus on. 

Moves and clues we're owed our dues there's no doubt about it that all above is about wanting to live long enough

Beats and freaks my mind reaps seeds sown and grown I've blown a whole in my soul oh no blow a hole in my soul too slow

cos I'm prepared to declare that every one of these scenes only means that only one of my eyes does disguise that I'm heading for surprise no more lies and no ties

As I defend to the end I don't depend on those rules and the fools who try and tell me how to be how to see it's not me cos i'm free

Look at the path you're on
Out of the way of shelter
Stranger days will come
Words are over
Strange strange days i'm not crazed i'm not fazed by laws .. I am the one who deplores all war you know you got to breathe not deceiveI pledge to the edge cannot censor my speech I need to teach that we are going down we're going down no sound

and the clues are clear

don't live in fear

And the words are strong

And you need to learn

Your time has come

It's the path you're on

Look at the path you're on

Out of the way of shelter

Stranger days will come

Words are over

I create I debate I don't hate all those vibes but the lies they make me want to leave not believe in all the good misunderstood you know you should and I would

So don't show don't blow don’t be weak and don't defeat all you meet your inner intent don't relent i'm hell bent...to stay alive

I adore my freedom's why I never wanted to try nine to five ain't ever gonna be part of this machine never will I be seen not to dream

Seasons fly they kinda make you feel old and tired try and let them make you young and wise try to let them make you breath - you're alive

The song seems to be about someone wanting to be free and to not conform in society; not depending on censorship, laws and rules; and how he does not want to be part of a corporate "machine" working a "nine to five" job.  He talks about how "stranger days will come" reminding people that one day people might realise they're "free" and "alive", as he says he is.

Tool's Parabola

There is not much direct imagery for my music video in these lyrics, but a lot I could make into a concept video of someone looking at business men separately from him as though he's an outcast from society already, it could maybe contrast with his idea of being free and how it's better as the audience could see him alone from them and perhaps struggling. They could see how it's his own choice and he thinks it's a positive thing.

Or, as he says he doesn't want to be part of a machine it could kind of be set in a really depressing, industrial landscape, like in Eraserhead (something else, can't remember?) and everyone around the main character is a 'mindless drone'. I'd have to contrast it with something really different though, else it might be too dark for the kind of song it is, actually.

Obviously these are all just super brief ideas for now but it could be a good way to incorporate both the ideas of cold colours, stony and metallic imagery to contrast with grungy, dirty kind of images. The latter being his life and the first to suit the clean cut kind of life which the people working "nine to five" might live. Perhaps I could include fast shots of birds or something to fit the theme of freedom but that might be really cliché, I'm not sure yet. 

I feel like the "beats and freaks" part might be talking about the beatniks and how their lifestyle is influencing him/making him want to feel "free" and "alive" with a bohemian kind of life style which might be quite interesting to look into, too.