Group Commitments

Above is a list of when our group members have commitments so it is easy to schedule time to shoot. This is the best way to organise our time seen as we all work and have other work to do for college. As it stands we have filmed the majority of our music video during the half term. We plan to use Wednesdays (particularly enrichment time) to shoot the remaining scenes of our music video.


Cara.

Recee - Location One: Aliss' garage

For our first and main location we chose our friends garage because of the bright colours it is painted in with abstract imagery on the walls in graffiti. Foil has also been used to cover the walls which gives the futuristic effect of the electro genre. 

The images below show how we set up the room for filming different sections.

The screens along the back wall of the garage correlate with the futuristic and electro theme of our video so we decided to leave them in their place. We used a metallic foil umbrella to add to the effect.

Above is the main corner we want to use to film the UV scenes of our video.

Above is the wall with our start music button on it. One of our robotic dancers will press this to introduce the main beat. It is ironic that there is a banana graffitied on the wall seen as we plan to film a banana gun fight here.

We hung fairy lights from the ceiling to create a more futuristic effect.

In this image you can see the whole room we are using to film in.
Cara.

Textual Analysis Grid - Klaxons: Golden Skans

I chose to analyse the Klaxons video "Golden Skans" because of their conceptual style. Both Klaxons and Daft Punk use futuristic costumes in their videos. The costumes that Klaxons wear in their videos have an armour style to them shown by material wrapped around their body.

Emma

Character CD Cover Experiments

From the images that Emma took at our filming session i used the character ones to experiment with techniques for our CD Cover. To achieve these results i used Photoshop and added filters then changed the colouring.

I think the effect 'Glowing Edges', which I added to the images below works really well for our genre. My favourite of the experiments so far is the one directly below in which i altered the colouring to purple tones using the sliders in Photoshop.

Cara.

Character Makeup

All of our actors will do their own makeup, making each style unique to their character.

Here are some makeup looks for our characters:

Eve Miller:

1. Black mascara                               
2. Black liquid eyeliner                        
3. Porcelain coloured eyeshadow        
4. Red lipgloss                                    
5. Loose gold glitter on the lips            

Cara Wain:

1. White facepaint band across eyes
2. Black liquid eyeliner                    
3. Black mascara                            
4. Red eyeshadow                          
5. Red glitter eyeliner                      
6. Red lipgloss                                
7. Red loose glitter on lips               

Aliss Whitehouse:

1. Blue/silver glitter on eyes
2. Black eyeliner
3. Blue/silver lipstick
4. Black mascara

Emma

Our First Filming Day - 26/10/2010

Our first filming day was really successful. Our friend and co-star Aliss Whitehouse let us use her garage to film in. Inside it's covered in graffiti and brightly coloured paint. This was a perfect setting. We got everything done we needed to there. Here are a couple of photos: 

 (Above: Harriet filming Aliss Whitehouse)

                       (Above: Harriet filming Eve Miller )      

We started filming at 3:45pm and finished at 11:30pm. It was a super busy day because we had to retake bits and film scenes more than once so that when we come to putting the video altogether, we can choose which take looks better.

Those there on Tuesday were:

1. Harriet Taylor
2. Cara Wain
3. Emma Bott
4. Eve Miller
5. Aliss Whitehouse
6. Evie Hainsworth

Emma


Whilst filming at our first location we encountered few problems. However, it was nothing major and could be solved.

1. One of our actresses couldn't take part in filming because she had a personal commitment on our day of filming.

- We solved this by one of our group acting in the video.

2. An actress having to leave early which meant she couldn't take part in the filming because we needed her for the whole filming session and not just 2 hours.

- This was resolved by using the footage we had taken with her as test shots and starting over when all our actresses had arrived.

3. We started filming late in the day

- Everything got done because we continued to film until we had finished and then stayed the night at our friends house.

4. Our planned banana fight scene could not be filmed because one of our actresses is scared of bananas and also they weren't left on set to film with.

- We will film this scene another day in one of our other locations. Most probably the blacked out performance studio so we can light the scene appropriately. 

5. As a group, we planned to film a paint fight but we realised this would be too messy and hard to re-film. Instead of this we could use food colouring in water so bright liquid is thrown.

- On the day we did not have food colouring so we decided to leave out this scene for now. We may change the filming location to the street outside college.

On the plus side we got lots of footage on this day and filmed everything lots of times. We even added in shots we had not planned to take because we thought of good ideas on the spot i.e straws used to spell daft punk.

Cara.

CD Cover Experiments

Below are some photos I took to try out ideas for the CD cover we will create for our artist, Daft Punk. With the genre of Electro being everything a bit crazy I thought it would be great to try out some blurring techniques. I achieved these images by pressing down the shutter of my camera halfway to focus on the object then when this was done I pressed the shutter down fully whilst extending or compressing the focal length as I took the photo.

I love the above image and the lines created coming out from the laptop in all directions. Hopefully i will achieve this effect with an actor from our music video or a prop involved in it.

With this photo, i love the way that the eyes pop out at you, which grabs the attention of the audience as well as the bright colours. I think this image fits the conventions of electro well.

Cara.

Filming Planning

We have planned to begin our filming during half term on Tuesday 26th October at Aliss' house. We will be filming all the scenes that take place in her garage which include the paint fight, some of the dancing, UV scene, banana gun fight, blowing and throwing confetti, along with some of the malfunctioning and exploding. So, the majority of our filming will have been done, we will make sure we get plenty of shots of each scene and film it in an order so that paint isn't already on people's faces, because of this the paint fight will be last to be filmed.
The order in which we intend to film is:
1) Dancing section at beginning
2) Blowing and throwing confetti
3) Banana gunfight
4) UV scene with malfunctioning
5) Blowing glitter
6) Paint fight


We have a more detailed shot list to work from which lists every shot we need to film throughout the entire video. If we need to re-film anything from these scenes we can do it on Wednesday afternoons if this is okay with our friend. We also plan to film the other sections of our video in this time and to choreograph the set dance routine in this time.


Hopefully all the filming will go smoothly on Tuesday and we will not need to re-film any of the scenes. If all goes to plan, the things we will have left to film are:


- Dancers using material (filmed on college street)
- Keyboard close-ups (filmed in college)
- Dancers in the street without material - blow powder at end of the routine
- Ninja running, waving Samurai and lip-syncing 'look out now!' (filmed in dance studio)
- Dancers in dance studio
- Dancers malfunctioning (dance studio)


Cara.

Step Outline

Initial Ideas to coincide with our track:

What we have kept so far from these initial ideas are that dancers are introduced on each beat at the beginning of the song, lip syncing on lyrics that are there yet minimal, characters throwing items in the airs on 'woo!', retrograde on the scratching part of the song, characters heads exploding at the end & blowing glitter forward and in reverse.

Step Outline:

When we did our pitch to the class we had a basic step outline of events and below is our up to date and detailed one. We have added in happenings that we had not thought up before such as a character pressing a big red button to cue the music starting, a banana gun fight and close-ups of keyboards being played.  We decided to include more scenes so there is plenty of variety of shots. There were a number of places we wanted to put the fast movements and head explosions but we have planned to end our piece with that as it will make a dramatic and exciting ending.

Different locations are symbolised by a colour on each sheet so it is clear to see where each section will be filmed. However, the scanner didn't recognise the colours on the first sheet, yet it is labelled beside each scene anyway.

Cara.

Glitter Fight Ideas

These screen shots were taken from Florence and The Machine's video for Dog Days Are Over. We really liked the way the characters used glitter, whether it be throwing in their faces or slapping other people's faces with it. Also the glitter looks really good against a dark background and this is something we might try in our own video.

Emma

Music Video Proposal Treatment

This is our treatment sheet. A treatment is what you want to carry out in a project. On our sheet, we wrote about the visual style we intend to create, how that will relate to our artist and if our video will have a narrative or conceptual storyline.

 

Emma

Analysing Previous Music Videos

In our lesson, we analysed and critised music videos by previous students. Most videos have both narrative and conceptual stortylines. The highest mark we gave for a video was 32 out of 40 and the lowest was 16 out of 40. All videos had things wrong with them and we hope that we don't make the same mistakes.

Emma

Video Style

This flowchart contains all our initial ideas for our video. We split up our ideas into headings like; Mise en Scene, Lighting, Movement, Editing, Shot Types/Angles and Locations.

Emma

Website Research

Crystal Castles

www.crystalcastles.com

Genre:

Electro - design of website goes against the genre conventions

Images & Logo:

Sad looking little girl, band name as an image. The band is represented in an abnormal way.

New technology & links:

Video for latest song is embedded on home page as a link through Youtube used to promote themselves. In the top right-hand corner an address bar is used to subscribe to their newsletter using your email address. Links to all other pages of the site run across the top of the homepage. 

Colour & Style:

The colouring of the website is monochrome and boring which does not go well with the image of this band. In addition to this the style of everything on the page is simplistic.

Written Content:

There is no written content on this page other than links.

Font & Layout:

The font used on the page is very simple and boring yet clear to read for all users. The page layout is also simplistic which makes it user friendly for everyone.

Target audience:

I believe the audience (17-24) is targeted through use of the link to Youtube and newsletter subscription. However, this website is easy to use for people of any age.

Advertisements:

The adverts used are to iTunes and amazon (in both the US and UK) which are where their music is available from. I think these adverts are suitable for the target audience.

MGMT

www.whoismgmt.com

Genre:

Electro - The generic conventions are definitely portrayed by these website in the way that everything is a bit crazy and abstract.

Images & Logo:

The background image is very warped and eye catching, as is the ever-changing band logo in the centre of the top of the page. These images represent the band as abstract which is what they are.

New technology & links:

Media technology is used to promote the artists new song with the video link to Youtube in the centre of the page. There is also a link to the record label, Columbia at the bottom of the page.

Colour & Style:

The colours are very vivid and bold which says that the artist is wanting to stand out and be different.

Written Content:

There is no written content on this page.

Font & Layout:

The fonts used for the band logo are wacky and fun which constructs the image of the artist perfectly. The layout also adds to this convention.

Target audience:

The target audience (17-24) is reached through eye catching colours and imagery.

Advertisements:

The only advertisements used are the video link to their new song and a hyper link at the bottom to Columbia Records.

Soulwax

www.soulwax.com

Genre:

Electro - The music is played loudly and flashing imagery is used.

Images & Logo:

None.

New technology & links:

Soulwax use video technology from previous gigs and talks to promote themselves. At the end of the video loop there is a link to their myspace.

Colour & Style:

The colours used in the video footage with the lighting are vibrant and flashing which makes it eye catching.

Written Content:

There is no written content other than the word loading in between videos.

Font & Layout:
The font is futuristic and bold which goes along side the image of the artist. As for the page layout, nothing exciting takes place. Simplicity is the key once again, with a plain black background which makes the video content stand out.

Target audience:
The audience is targeted by them starring in the video footage on the homepage and having eye catching lighting and cuts. Music from the band is also on the video.

Advertisements:

Soulwax advertise themselves on the website and have a link to their myspace, the way in which this is done is through the video loop which is suitable for the target audience of about 17-29

Daft Punk

www.daftpunk.com

Genre:

Electro - The conventions of this genre are generally met with this website.

Images & Logo:

The only images on the page are textual ones i.e the interstella 5555 logo that looks futuristic in the bottom right corner which links to the film that Daft Punk made for their entire album, Discovery (2001). Also, the Daft Punk logo in the centre of the page represents the artist in a futuristic way.

New technology & links:

New technology that is used on this homepage is a link to a Youtube video of their latest song, which pops up when you hover over the 'electroma' logo as well as an email address subscription at the bottom of the page, which are both used to promote the artist.

Colour & Style:

The overall colouring of the site is monochrome with bursts of fuchsia that attract the audience's attention to important areas of the page. On the whole, the page looks futuristic, which is the image that daft punk portray. 

Written Content:

There is no written content on this homepage.

Font & Layout:

In terms of the page font, it is futuristic and bold which makes it easy to read. The layout of the page itself is simplistic and easy to navigate.

Target audience:

As a group, we believe that this website is highly suitable for the target audience (17-24). Features of the page which attract the target audience are the bold font and style of the font & logos.

Advertisements: 

On this page there aren't really any advertisements other than the one for the film Interstella 5555 that Daft Punk made for their album, Discovery (2001).

Klaxons:

www.klaxons.net

Genre:

Electro - generic conventions of the genre are followed with this website.

Images & Logo:

Through the images on this page, the band is represented as eccentric. The album cover in particularly makes no sense and makes the audience question what they're seeing. All the other images on the website are crazy and make the audience think. The band name is on the left hand column in the form of their logo, which also represents the Klaxons as being eccentric.

New technology & links:

The website is structured in a blog format with posts included from Twitter. Links along the left hand side navigate users around the website. In addition to the internal links, there are links to places where the Klaxons music is available i.e hmv, itunes & youtube. 

Colour & Style:

Colouring of the actual website is monochrome with colour added through the bright pictures. The style of the website is modern in the way of a blog which infers that the band are modern. The images contained are futuristic just like the band.

Written Content:

Written content of the website is blog posts that inform readers of updates from the band and is composed in an informal style.

Font & Layout:

The layout of the website is structured and simplistic, which makes it easy to access. It is set out in blocks making use of easy to read fonts and a futuristic font for the band logo. I think these layout points go with the image of the band because the future is often portrayed as simplistic.

Target audience:

Abnormal pictures are used to capture the audience's attention as well as bold fonts. The target audience for the Klaxons is a bit wider i feel because they make it into the charts which are liked by a wide range of ages.

Advertisements:

As i said with the previous point, the target audience is quite wide so the advertisements need to be suitable for any age of about 12 - 35 which I think they are. The adverts on the page are for music stores i.e HMV, iTunes & Recordstoreday.com.

Cara.