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.