Song List

As we have been starting to create and get images for our digi packs and websites, we decided as a group that we need to come up with the list of songs. This will feature on the digi pack and also on the website so the song names need to be within the electronic genre to keep with the synergy.

Here is the list of 10 songs we came up with:
1. Sail!
2. Realism
3. Countdown 2 Electro
4. Hybrid
5. Level Out
6. Protocol
7. Lets be Clear
8. Dance With Me
9. Game Over
10. 21/12/12

Filming Evaluation (12/12/12)

Before filming we took images of the location, this included the lecture theatre along with the corridor which we may potentially use. 

This is the lecture theatre before the chairs have been put out. We had to organise with the caretakers when the chairs should be put out because it is also used as a dance studio. 

Once the chairs have been put out, this is what the room  looks like, the use of the seats going up at an angle gives each person in the audience a chance to see the lecture. The camera will also be able to see everyone in the audience. We used this room so we could have a lecture-style set up which was the setting of our music video. 

We may use the corridor outside the lecture theatre to film the actors walking in/out the room along with close ups on the door handle.

Throughout the filming we followed our 2 column storyboard, we also gave it to our actors so they were able to follow what we was aiming to film along with knowing how they should act on top of the directions we gave them. 

This is the projector that we used as our main source of light, it is a unique use of lighting rather than using a normal light source. This projector is going to show the power point I created onto the white wall below it.

Here is shown the front of the lecture theatre, there is a desk and a chair for the teacher/actor. The extras that we organised were students attending the lecture that the teacher has put on.

 We pre-booked this lecture room with the school as we thought it was the most appropriate place to film as it fits with the narrative of our music video. There were some complications with this location as it had been double booked but we managed to still use it and get some good footage from the time we had. We used reliable actors who were sensible and took our directions really well. As our main character needed to act a bit crazy we thought it would take our actor time to settle in to the character but he got straight into the role and wasn't shy at all. This helped whilst filming as we was able to get our shots done in a good amount of time and to a high standard. We used the HD camera which will give us better picture quality rather than using a handy cam, this will make our final product look more professional.

We ensured that each member of our group had a chance to film and direct. We allocated different shots to each member for example, my role was to record the part where the teacher gets into an audience members face. This was from the side on and I was able to get good facial expressions and emotion from the footage. Along with this I sat in the audience and recorded the lecture from the audiences point of view, this wasn't a planned shot but it was effective and we will see how it can be used within the music video. 

This is an image of me filming the side on shot where the actor climbs up over the chairs into the audience. 

There were other shots that were unplanned but we believe we will be able to interpret them into our music video. One of these was the actor holding the camera, whilst moving around and singing the lyrics down the lens  this could add to the craziness of the character. We are not entirely sure of how this is going to look but when we go over the footage we will see how it looks when put into the narrative.

At the end of the filming session I took time to take images of the main character which I could use for my digi pack and website. 

Overall, yesterdays filming was a success and I feel that we have got enough decent footage to take forward for our music video. If there is any footage that wasn't good or we didn't get, we are able to do it in tomorrows double lesson as long as it is done before the deadline of Wednesday 19th December.

Digipack Practise

We have started creating a digi pack for a artist within the electronic genre. I chose to make a digi pack for Tiefshwarz which is a german electronic artist. This is practise for when we have to create our own digi pack for our artist. The template we used is shown below.

I firstly found images of the artists from http://www.wide-agency.com/artists/tiefschwarz, the image I used for the front cover is below. I edited this image through picmonkey.com so it fit more with the electronic genre, I firstly changed the colour saturation and temperature to give it a slight blue tint, I didn't think the blue fitted to the genre so I used an effect called 'Focal B&W.' This effect allowed me to change the colour of the image to black and white whilst having a focus which keeps the image colour, I put the focus in the bottom left hand corner of the image as I thought that it looked good and didn't over power the rest of the image. I added a texture over the top of the image which was electricity waves. With this I was able to edit the 'fade' which made it more transparent so the artists were still visible behind the texture. I think this effect meets a genre convention and also worked well with the image I chosen some of the electricity waves were visible on one of the peoples necks and looked like a vain which I personally thought looked good.

I finally added text onto the image, I tested some text out and found the one the best fitted the electronic genre and the feel I was trying to get from the cover. The text I used was called 'stapete.' 

As I was creating this for my digipack front cover, I had to come up with a name for the artist along with the name of the album, I chose 'Encode' for the name of the band and the album was called 'Expression.' 

This is the final front cover image.

I then started creating the back cover, as I have done research into Digi packs, I know that the contents of the back cover needs to have the names of the songs on the album. Along with that there is usually a bar code and recently twitter/Facebook logos have been included because of the increased in the social network sites, this allows the audience to connect with the artist even more.Keeping this information in mind I went on to create the back cover. 

As the name of the artist was now Encode, the first thing that came to my head was a type of coding. The image I chose to use is below and I believe it comes from the movie 'matrix.' Before using it in my digi pack I decided I would need to change many things, firstly the colour as at the moment it would not be synergistic with the front cover as I haven't used green at all. 

To implement the image I used the same features as I did for the front cover image. I changed the colouring to blue and then using the focus black and white tool I focused in to the right of the image which made that part blue and the surrounding area black and white. I had to come up with some song names which relate to the electronic genre and would be expected within the album. I used the same text as the front over, which kept synergy within the digi pack but changed the colour to white as it stood out on the black and white background. I got an image of a bar code along with the twitter and Facebook icons off of Google and added them into the bottom right hand corner as this is their general location on most digi packs. 

Below is the final back cover, if I was to improve this I would make sure there is small information about the record label and any details about the album as there is often this on actual digi packs. As this is only a practise I will ensure I take this into consideration when creating a digi pack for my artist.

I had 1 inside cover of the digi pack to create along with the actual CD.
For the CD I used the same texture image as I used for the front cover, this was the electricity waves. O went through the same process to put it on the image of the CD, I also used the same font but put Encode in white whilst the name of the album 'Expression' was in black.

The final image I used was for the inside cover, I found an image of the artist that I thought would look effective within the digi pack. The image was already black and white, when I put it into picmonkey.com I used an effect called 'tranquill' which gave the image a cool effect. I put this within the digi pack to see how it looked but it wasn't synergistic with the other images and looked really odd. 

I kept the effect on the image but used the tool of focus black and white again which made the whole image black and white apart from the section I chose, this was similar within both the front and back cover of the digi pack and therefore I thought it looked better and kept within the scheme I was going with. As in each of the other images within the digi pack had a touch of colour and the rest of the image was black and white, I chose to do this with this image and made the colour go on both of the people in the image.

Below is an image of my final digi pack that I created for an artist within the electronic genre as practise for my own digi pack creation.

Pre Filming Meeting

In today's lesson we had a meeting to understand what more we had to prepare for filming tomorrow. We have a book in which we use to keep note of things such as:

• To-Do list
• Priority Orders
• Schedule
• Actors/Extras for music video
• Shot list
• Props List
• Power point plan.
• Location information

This book will allow us to keep ourself organised during the production of our music video, the information will all be in one place so if one of us is ill and had important information the whole group is still able to access it as all the notes will be in this one book. 

Today we sorted the power point, double checked the actors were all ready for filming tomorrow along with confirming the booking of the location and ensuring that the chairs in the lecture room were going to be put out in time for when we film.

Below is an drawing that shows where the female actor should sit along with one shot that we plan to include, this shows that the camera is going to go up the stairs from a side on point of view.

Powerpoint for Lecture

ADD

Here is the power point that I created which is our main prop within our music video. It is going to be used in the back ground whilst the lecture is going on.

Overall Research Feedback

From our research we have come to several conclusions about what we are going to include in our music video. Firstly, we have decided that within our final idea there will be very little (if any) violence and conflict as there was no positive feedback on these. We will be making sure that the footage we get includes the artist in as many shots as possible, this is what we have included into our final idea and the shots of the artists are interpreted within the narrative. We are going to give our artist a look based on existing artists within the industry  this will be similar to Calvin Harris as this was the most popular voted look.




We decided that our target audience is both males and females aged 16-29 years.

Digipack & Music Video Analysis

Digi Pack & Music Video analysis on Prezi

Two Column Storyboard

Here is the final of the two column story board, we took into consideration the feedback we got and added the specific location along with completing the narrative. We will use this story board when filming along with giving a copy to each of the actors so they understand what we aim to get out of the filming.

Peer Assesment

We created a 2 column story board for our music video after we made a plan of the narrative. Below is the first page of the 2 column story board which shows our narrative at each stage of the song. It shows in detail what we are planning to have happening at each section of the song. We use the lyrics as indications as to where different pieces of the narrative start and stop. This is a good way of story boarding our plan for the music video as it allows us to go into detail and if we was to give it to our actor they would be able to know what is expected of them. This is a resource that could be used by many people in understanding what is going on in the music video, in the real music video industry this would be a useful document to create as it will inform anyone who reads it what is happening.

Once we had created our 2 column story board, we then gave it to another group who then peer assessed our work and fed back to us. They gave us their opinion with any criticism and improvements they thought would benefit our idea and storyboard. The feedback we received was:

In order to make the 2 Column story board more useful we was told to:

1) Describe the location we were planning to use as in the storyboard we said 'room' rather than being specific with the location

2) What kind of shots were going to be used for the opening shots, these were going to be close up shots but we didn't clearly state this in our storyboard.

They thought we had a good blend between the narrative and the performance, we appreciated this comment as we had taken time and constructed this in a way which will make it effective rather than switching from performance to narrative throughout.

Another suggestion was that we needed a slight improvement on the narrative. This comment is taken into consideration as we only gave them the first page of our 2 column story board which started from 00:00 up until 01:18. We explained that the building up of our narrative was continued on the other pages of the story board and they then were happy with the narrative. 

Our Narrative

Here is the narrative for our music video, we have included time durations, shots types, audio and actions.

Freytags Theory

Freytag suggested that drama is sectioned into 5 parts;
1.Exposition
2. Rising Action
3.Climax
4.Falling action
5. Resolution

He suggested that tension rises steadily to a peak and then is followed by rising action to ensure audiences interest is maintained. Once dramatic tension reaches a climax it is then released quickly during the resolution.

I put this theory into practise and created a Freytag diagram for our soundtrack. We are going to use this diagram when writing up our narrative, were going to use the key points such as rising action, climax and falling action and plot our narrative within this.

Music Video Analysis- Basement Jaxx- Wheres your head at?

Music Video Analysis

Questionnaire Results Analysis

Questionnaire analysis

Webpage Design (First Draft)

This was the first draft design of my website. I took on board the aspects of a website which I see on artists websites such as the banner with the artists name and logo along with a social update section. On each of the artists website I saw there were links to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter which increased the interactivity with their fans.

I then received feedback on this website draft and this was to add colours, add other pages and go into more detail. After taking on board the feedback this was my improved draft.

This is the enter page for my website, I am currently using the eye logo but this could possibly change. The user would click on the X which says enter which would then direct them to the home page which is shown below.

Within this website I am going to use a black and blue colour theme. The background is going to be black and in the header there will be laser like lines which will be blue. I haven't fully decided on the font style I am going to be using yet but there are some options in the mood board I created. I have added a photo gallery to the webpage so I can add images such as those from their concerts, the recording of the music video and them in their free time, this will give the users more of an insight to them and they can feel more involved and connected with the artist. 

Logo Ideas

A possible logo that was taken forward within the group was the idea of the eye with an X inside the pupil.

 We came up with an idea that we could all use the concept of an eye within our logo. This could also be used within the footage we plan on getting there as we could add in parts which close up on the eye so that this is being consistent within our work.

Rather than all having the same eye logo, we would change the symbol, design, colour etc so that they were different but easily relatable back to Mad Xibit. This has been seen within the Rolling Stones, their logo of the lips with the tongue out has been changed and different symbols, colours are added but it can still be easily related back to the band.

This is an example of how my eye logo could look (without the words enter, this was for the draft of the enter page for my website)

Other ideas within my group around the eye logo design are a union jack, fully black eye, glass shattered eye and global eyes.

Possible Logo Ideas

These are some of my logo ideas I came up with to go with our name 'Mad Xibit.'

I adapted the first MX logo and tried to edit it basically on the computer and here is what it turnt out like:

I decided to use a paint brush, casual effect for the letters and I added a laser effect, I added this effect and thought it would look good because it is a convention of our chosen genre. This could then be used in the background of my website and be synergistic across each platform. 

Electronic Genre Research - Focus Group

This is our focus group that we have done in order to gather even more research into our music genre. We will analyse this alongside our questionnaire results and see what we can conclude from them both.

This is our evaluation after the focus group had taken place.       

Completed Questionnaires

Here is evidence of the questionnaires we created and handed out to gain responses which we will later analyse. 

Focus Group Prep

Along with the questionnaire research we have decided to carry out a focus group which will allow us to ask questions along with showing YouTube videos and gaining analysis of them. We will use individuals between the age range of 16-30 which is the age our music video is going to be aimed at, this will give us in-depth information on who our specific target audience is and what they expect from our genre. 

The questions below are those we are planning to ask:

1.How old are you?

• Knowing the individuals ages will allow us to analyse the data in terms of their age and we can use the answer from this question and combine it with other answers from both this and the questionnaire to see what interests their age group.

2.What is your favourite music genre?

• We used this question so we can clearly identify the favourite genre of music, this allows us to bare in mind the genre that they are most familiar with and aspects of videos they are most likely to identify.

3.If we say electronica as a music genre, who comes to mind?

• As this is our genre of music, we wanted to include a question which gets the audiences opinions. This will allow us to understand their knowledge of the genre itself along with any artists/songs they associate with the genre.

4.In every band they have a unique selling point about them, something that makes them different. Can you identify what you think the main 'trademarks' are of these artists.

• With this question, we put together a power point which is shown below, that included various images of different artists who create electronic music. We wanted to see what made an artist noticeable and memorable, whether it was their image, logo or their music. 

5/6/7. What do you like/dislike about this video?

• We firstly will show the participants 'The Prodigy-Firestarter' then,'Rihanna-We Found Love ft. Calvin Harris' and finally 'Fatboy Slim- Weapon of choice'. We want to find out things they like and dislike about the music videos. Then we could take these points into consideration and possibly include/not include aspects that are brought up. We will show them 3 different types of electronica videos, we found love is more of a pop electronica whereas fire starter is more rock.

8. Which video was your favourite and why?

• We ask this question so that we can begin to understand what aspects of electronic music videos our audience like and therefore could involve them in our idea.

9.What was your least favourite video and why?

• We included this question so that if there are any parts of the music videos we have shown that they don't like, we will avoid including them into our video.

Focus Group

Practicing iWeb Software

In today's lesson I was introduced to iWeb which is a software I have never used before. I needed to develop technical skills in preparation for the ancillary production of my homepage. To develop these skills I made a webpage about me and added a basic layout along with adding and changing text, fonts and colours. I used tools shown along the right hand bar which allowed me to add YouTube posts and images. From this I now know how to embedded a YouTube clip into a page on iWeb along with changing fonts, updating colour pallets and changing position of images on page etc. I feel confident with using this software when creating the website for my ancillary production as I now know how to use the software and it also gave me an insight to what functions the software offered.

Once I had a go at creating an irrelevant page just to learn how to use the software, I then went ahead to do a draft of my website plan.

Pitches for Music Video

As a group we came up with some ideas from listening to the soundtrack over and over. We took each others ideas and built upon these so that our ideas were fully structured. 

Idea 1
This is an idea we came up with as a group.
Dark lighting and the actor is sitting in the middle of a room with a spot light on him. The camera does close up shots of the persons different body parts creepily moving for example their fingers moving, their foot tapping, their eyebrows moving etc. These shots will change to the beat of the music then when the first big beat hits it will show his eyes opening then when it says 'sail' it will move to his mouth saying the word. The whole video will be shot using one actor from various different shots, it will be dark and have many close up shots of the actors face with intense make-up on. This is only the beginning of this idea, it will build up to the actual physical appearance of the artists, it will leave the audience to want to carry on watching to find out more about the person we want the artist to portray.  

Idea 2
This is an idea that Daniel came up with after sitting listening to the soundtrack many of time through. He thought of the different themes that are being put over in the song. The first theme was the idea of the instruments used, they create a machine-like atmosphere which could be related to zombies. He took ideas from our group idea, and thought the starting shots could consist of the same close-ups but they could be more lacklustre, giving a most of a zombie vibe. The shots would then focus on the artist's face, which has make-up on to make him look partially 'dead' but on only one side of his face. Following shots would then consist of different locations, rather than just the one, that gives both machine-like surroundings and isolation.
Although Daniel thought of this idea, as a group when we first chosen on our sound track, we did a brain storm on different ideas that could be interpreted into our music video, on this brainstorm included the 'zombie' theme.

Idea 3

The third idea is the theme of  a 'break-up' between the artist and a 'lover'. Daniel first thought of the idea when he saw the new lecture-style room that had been built in our school. This would be the setting for the music video, and would have a clear narrative and performance element to it. Like the first two, the starting shots would be the same but this time, there would be a number of shots showing the artist putting a CD on, and then on the projector, showing him and his 'lover' on a recorded video. This video would then be the main source of light in the room and then to follow this, there would be a number of shots showing the artist slumped in different spots of the lecture stand watching the video back whilst clearly singing/miming the soundtrack as well. This would be cut up with a number of shots showing the crazed look of the artist that has obviously been an impact of the break up, much like the one's planned for the previous two ideas.

Idea 4

From the third and first idea we came up with our final idea which was still in the setting of the lecture theatre, along with the main source of light being from the projector. Rather than love videos being played on the screen there will be a power point about love and it would be as if the lecture teacher is teaching the students in the audience about his love life. We are not sure whether having a full lecture theatre, half full lecture theatre, empty theatre or just the girl in the audience. We are swaying towards the half full lecture theatre so it doesn't look overcrowded and the camera can still pick up the facial expressions of each individual. The girl will sit in the audience and we can use this to make an interaction between the lecturer and the girl. 

Audience Research Questionnaire

Here is the questionnaire that I made, my group intend to distribute 20 questionnaires out to and age range of 16-30. The questions used on the questionnaire aim to generate useful data, we will be able to find out what people do not like in music videos along with what aspects they find most important. Not only are there questions about the music video but we included questions about the artists representation. Once we have gathered our responses we will then analyse our results in order to gain best from the research.


Book1

Moodboard for Digipack

We was given a task to create a mood board of any ideas we had for our music video. I used the website Urbanfonts.com to find different styles of fonts which would suit our music genre. To find these fonts I typed in a key word such as 'Electronic' and 'Futuristic' and chose the ones I thought were relevant to our music genre. I then researched images that I thought related to the song, these were electric waves, lasers and eyes. The electric waves and lasers relate to the sound of the song along with the genre and the eye images relate to the ideas my group came up with for our artist logo. 

Our different ideas

Frankestein-Style Representation Graphic

1. I chose to use a dark background with a spot light on the artist. This is how I want the artist to be represented in my music video. Rather than just dark lighting or light lighting, I want there to be a dark room and the artist under a spot light so he stands out rather than seeing the background.
2. The face shows how mysterious he comes across, he doesn't let people into his life and know much about him. This also works well with the lighting, the lighting makes his face dark and the spotlight gives it the shadow of light.
3. In this image the artist is wearing a causal jacket, this shows that he is a normal person and dresses casually.
4. The use of the Xbox control shows that although all of these things give an insight to his personality, like most people their other side of them they like to 'chill out' and relax and this shows that part of him.
5. The black smart trousers contradict the use of the casual jacket, this is to show that he has another side of him where he can be smart and sophisticated. 

First Pitch for Music Video

Idea 1
Dark lighting and the actor is sitting in the middle of a room with a spot light on him. The camera does close up shots of the persons different body parts creepily moving for example their fingers moving, their foot tapping, their eyebrows moving etc. These shots will change to the beat of the music then when the first big beat hits it will show his eyes opening then when it says 'sail' it will move to his mouth saying the word. The whole video will be shot using one actor from various different shots, it will be dark and have many close up shots of the actors face with intense make-up on. This is only the beginning of this idea, it will build up to the actual physical appearance of the artists, it will leave the audience to want to carry on watching to find out more about the person we want the artist to portray.  

Filming and Directing; Pre Coursework Taster

Today our media class were able to film a year 9 band which would give us an insight to what its like to direct, film and also to understand how hard it is for the band to take orders from the director. 
We firstly set up 4 cameras, 1 (on the image above) a static camera, 2 a dolly camera and finally 3&4 were for handheld shots. We split the class into two groups, group one was firstly using the cameras and filming and then when it was group twos turn, they would sit and take notes on what the other group was doing. 

The static camera was able to give us a full shot of the band but often the other cameras were in this shot which made them unusable in some cases. The dolly shots enabled us to get a more interesting shot of the band at different angles. A path was set up which was in a semi circle around the stage which went behind the static camera. This is what I operated along with Becky, we found this easy to manouver but one major problems we had was ensuring we had a smooth line. This was difficult because we had a makeshift dolly (a wheelchair) which had a dodgy wheel. The hand held camera increased our creativity with the shots, we were able to move around the stage with the band. I also operated this camera during the end of the filming when the band were more confident with the cameras, I was filming the guitarist and got some amazing close ups of him playing the guitar and facial expressions. 

The first take we took didn't really count as the band were new to the situation and hadn't 'settled in' and gave us their full potential. By the last take the band knew what was expected from them and their confidence had increased, they were owning the stage!

From this filming experience with lots of different cameras rolling at the same time and people moving everywhere, I feel like I have more of an insight to what it would be like when filming my music video. Before this I would have filmed differently using one camera at a time rather than them rolling simultaneously. From a directing point of view I now understand how firm you have to be with the band and also giving them positive comments which increases their interactions and makes them the more confident. 

Characteristics of the Electronic genre

These are the characteristic's that were observed in music videos of the electronic genre.

These were found in the below music videos:

• Invaders must die- The Prodigy
• Take me to the hosital- The Prodigy
• Weapon of choice- Fatboy Slim

Electronic Research by

Genre Research- font, colours, logos

genre research by

Research Plan

As a group we have decided to do the following to contribute our research:

• Questionnaires
• Focus Group
• Interview
• Market Research
• Characteristics of Electronic music videos

From the above we are trying to find out what peoples perceptions are of electronic music along with what they are expect to find in a music video of the electronic genre. 

We set individual roles in todays lesson so each part of the research gets covered.

Me- Handling the questionnaires.

The questionnaire is going to include questions which give us an understanding on what people think of music videos along with characteristics of the electronic genre. The questions will be chosen carefully and structured carefully which will allow us to gain the most useful information from the questions.

Becky- Looking at the branding of artists and how they are being represented. From this we will have a deeper understanding on how we can represent and market our own artist.  

Stevie- Handling the focus group/interview. She decided to find different electronic videos which she can show the groups along with coming up with various questions that she could ask to them. She decided to use two focus groups; 17-18 year olds and 24-30 year olds.

Daniel- He watched many music videos of the Electronic genre and found similar characteristics in all f them. There are many effects that are used such as blurs, slow motion, flickerpads and many jump cuts are used. Images change on the beat and lots of point of view shots are used.

Cold Play Iconography

Cold Play Iconography

Lip Syncing

We were given a task to record a video of us lip syncing and then edit the video in final cut. Me and Stevie paired up and chose to lip sync to 'Justin Bieber - Boyfriend.' 

We recorded us lip syncing on the Macs from two different angles so the video had a change to it and then also recorded some 'action shots' of us. Once we had recorded the shots, making sure we was singing the whole way through, we uploaded them into final cut. In final cut we had to import the song first then the first line of footage, once this was synced up with the music we uploaded the second line of footage and also synced it with the music. Before we could cut the footage we had to ensure each line of footage was synced up with the music otherwise it would be much harder for us to work with. Once we had cut the footage up allowing for different shots to play, we decided to add the black and white effect to our video. 

I felt that the recording of the lip sync was fine, when it got to importing the footage into final cut and having to get it synced up with the music it took alot of patients. The point of this task was to get an understanding of what it is like to be in the position of having to act and sing into a camera which is what someone is going to need to do for our music video. It also gave me an understanding of how to use final cut in a way that I could successful sync footage with the music and use effects in final cut. These skills I will need to use when creating our coursework. 

This is our lip syncing video: