My media a2 brief was to use between a number of different tasks then create the product mentioned in the task. I had a choice between 13 different asks all which required a main text and two supporting ancillary texts. We also had the choice to work individually or in a group.
For my task I decided to create a music video and a Digipak and advertisement to support the video. I also decided to work in a group.
The start of production began with members of my group gathering a range of different songs they would like to make a video for. After each member had gathered a range of different artists to create a video for we narrowed our choices down to one artist, we chose the artist that we knew the most about, their style and another factor was if the song we chose had a memorable video which may make our filming similar to that of the original video, we decided we didn’t want that because we wanted the video to be original. We decided on Brandon Flowers- Magdalena, we decided as a group we knew about Flowers through his work with The Killers and as a solo artist which meant that we already had an idea of what type of group he represents.
We then looked at what type of clip it was going to be, Performance, Art/Abstract or Narrative. Performance clips feature the artist(s) singing directly to the camera, we see no cutaways to a story of some sort, an example of this would be Mumford and Sons – Little Lion Man, 2009, Dew Process/Universal Music. Art/Abstract clips are texts in which we see much more irrelevant imagery than any form of narrative or performance structure, an example of this would be Animal Collective- Brothersport,2010, Jack Kubizne, Domino records. Finally a Narrative clip is one which tells a story of some kind, often focusing on the lyrics presented in the song, an example of this being Arctic Monkeys – Left before the lights came on,2006, Domino Records.
The next thing I decided to do was look at The Killers and Brandon Flowers music videos, I looked at a number of different videos by these artists, from their different phases, looking at how they had developed, I found that their music videos always run with the theme of redemption and religion, these texts also have stories of bad guys getting there just deserts. I analysed The Killers performing A Dustland Fairytale,2008, The Island Def Jam Music Group which tells the story of 2 men fighting over a woman which results in the death of one of them after a knife fight, the killer is then released from prison years later to find the girl and seek forgiveness. The Killers-When You Were Young, 2006, The Island Def Jam Music Group, this video tells the story of a couple religious couple that fall in love, the husband then cheats on his wife he then finds out that his wife was the one he cares about and not the woman he had an affair with. Brandon Flowers-Crossfire,2010, The Island Def Jam Music Group, in this video Flowers is being constantly captured by Ninjas and held hostage and tortured, whilst the woman who loves him Charlize Theron constantly battles to win him back until they are eventually reunited. In just these 3 videos all 3 texts tell the story of love, religion and characters getting their just deserts. Another popular theme that runs throughout all 3 videos is the texture used, the finished films all have a certain texture to them which makes them appear much more gritty and older to the original, I think that the videos have been altered to such a low contrast and saturation to make the text appear much darker and have a much stronger/darker meaning to the story portrayed in their narrative sequences such as ‘When you were young’.
The below pictures are screens (from left to right) ‘When you were young’ and ‘Crossfire’. These images show the gritty texture I mentioned above, this was something that we thought about adding after the editing phase when we felt the video was complete.
After analysing numerous texts, also looking at performance texts and art texts from Mumford and Sons and Animal Collective I decided to take pictures of possible screening locations, because my group had already established a basic idea of a character going on a pilgrimage we knew that we needed roads, empty spaces and religious icons. This took us to various locations such as graveyards, long stretches of roads, fields, and churches. After picture taking we had to look at how we wanted our protagonist to be represented, we knew about the Killers religious ties and wanted our image to be the same, because of previous research we had done we had established a audience, through research we had discovered the Killers being an Indie American rock band had an age range from anything above 14 however we felt that our narrative story may be easier to perceive from the age of 16 which is were we aimed to promote our music. The reason for this age was that we found that this age was much more exposed to this genre because of early development in this kind of music, were rock music would be promoted through college radio systems exposing them to this genre.
As mentioned we wanted the right style of clothing for our protagonist within this text, we wanted a religious background and the story would be religious so we knew what message we wanted the audience to receive. We knew that marketing the right look was important because of research we had undergone looking at music magazines, inside these we found how a band would look to appear to a certain audience, for example on the front cover of ‘Kerrang!’ we see a group of aggressive looking youths in chains and leather jackets clenching fists and barring teeth, this was obviously not meant to appeal to an audience of church goo-ers but rather a much more heavy style of music like metal, thus making the audience perhaps more aggressive metal lovers. With this in mind we decided to make our protagonist look like more of a saint like character, dressed smart despite this journey he is going to make, we dressed him in white in a Brandon Flowers inspired apparel.
As mentioned above we had looked at target audience it would be best to first look at both The Killers and Brandon Flowers target audience. Because of the genre of both these ‘groups’ I would say that the music is particularly aimed at anything from early teens, 13 to anything above. As mentioned in my previous post, both bands have roots of indie rock/ American rock, this genre was most popular towards the end of the 19th century, as rock music was a main source of entertainment. This is evident when we look at the older generation in which many adults can appreciate rock music. The Killers have also been confused with indie pop, a genre in which the Killers casually slot into. Their music contains pop yet also carries a message, the pop factor of the song will come in the form of catchy chorus or instrumental, however there will often be a actual meaning to the song, in particular the Killers lyrics. Pop it is also associated with the same kind of audience as rock, this means that both Brandon Flowers and The Killers have an even wider market audience.
After target audience and various prep work mentioned above we decided to do some various test shots, the camera used was C A M E R A Y O U D I G M E D O G , we had a choice between this and a much larger HD camera, the benefits of this smaller camera to the larger one was first, obviously size, the extreme size of the HD meant less manuverability, and portability, whilst the smaller handheld camera could be easily moved around to suite your shooting. I felt that sometimes the handheld camera had troubles focusing at length or focusing onto something wrong, this could happen without any intervention from the person holding the camera, thus making it random, whilst the newer HD ones didn’t seem to do this, the HD camera also shoot in HD whilst the little ones shoot in a lower res, thus making the captured footage a lower quality. We also had a series of tripods at our disposal which all had their own drawbacks, for example the larger more expensive ones had much more stick to them which means they wouldn’t move if you left them to shoot on whilst the more ‘flimsy’ ones would, the tripods also all had different heights on them some would just only reach maybe 3ft which wasn’t ideal when it came to shooting close ups of a 5-6ft persons face.
We then began proper filming for the music video, using Trinity Church and the Methodist Church in Cottingham, we wanted a more traditional church when filming within because of the larger interior, rows of benches, religious iconography and stain glass windows. We also used long stretches of road such as down Snuffmill Lane and the fields down it, there is a shot within the film were the sun quickly goes down, this was filmed over the course of half an hour of the sun simply setting whilst we didn’t touch the camera.
There were obviously various problems we faced when filming, for instance the lighting in the church made it hard to guarantee if the shot would be clear enough until uploading onto the editing suite. This meant there were various re shoots, sometimes we would think we had a perfect shot however later find out there was something of inconvenience in the background. Sometimes we would also find that our protagonists clothes would blend in too much to the background, or various other colour problems.
As well as filming in the various locations mentioned above we also filmed in the green room, the benefits of this meant that we could go film a location without our actor and then, using the green room, we could super impose him into the image, making him look as if he was at the location. However as a group we suffered problems when we uploaded him onto the editing suite there could be various shadows over him which wont change if you change the background, this also meant that when the light reflected of the green walls you could see green across his face, which also wouldn’t disappear if you changed the background from green.
Editing was done on adobe premier pro, through adobe we could drag our clips onto a timeline and place them in chronological order, we could cut clips down or cut the clips into two pieces. We could sync the clip with the music, conventional in a music video by matching a cut with the beat from the audio. You can make a clip longer by making it slower and vice versa. Other useful tools include being able to put a tint over the whole film, giving it a film grain or sepia tint also black and white. You can also edit the cuts between slides, changing the transitions perhaps to a white fade in-between or to black etc.
Through the editing software you could add textures to the video, giving it a sepia tint or black and white tint, this was easy to add and easy to remove due to the advance in technology and upgraded editing suites. As well as adding these blend modes you could also change the contrast of them, making them darker than they were when you began or even lighter, if you wanted you can add a tint over a certain segment of your video or the whole thing, our original plan was too add a tint over the whole thing however if a certain shot was darker than the other when you added a tint across the whole thing it wouldn’t work because certain shots would be darker.
I think our finished video was mainly influenced by existing media texts such as the ones I have analysed, because we looked a lot at the Killers music videos and the ways in which they were constructed, because of their use of tint and the grittiness of the music video. The narrative story we have is also something that is likely to happen within a Killers text.
For the ancillary texts I originally began by looking at conventional digipaks and asking myself how they used imagery, if they kept a theme similar throughout the whole thing or if they kept changing imagery as they went along through the digipak.
To begin I looked and analysed 3 digipaks and a poster advertisement for a CD. Cold War Kids’ We used to vacation’ is an EP made in 2007 and contains 2 Cold War Kids songs on. The EP is all white with a black and white picture on both the back and the front of the case. The imagery is completely un-relevant to the music and lyrics of the songs. The front cover shows a photograph of a man stood in front of New York on a pebble stone beach with a parcel in his hands. The back shows the man laid on the floor in the same location with the parcel on the floor. Upon first analysing digipaks I discovered that the imagery wasn’t always relevant to the product it markets such as a music video or the lyrics presented in the song.
In Wolf Parades ‘Expo 86’, this is an LP rather than an EP, the cover shows 3 small children dressed for winter with paint war faces. The back shows what we believe to be the children sat in a car, this time in t shirts smiling to the camera. From looking at 2 cases I have found that the imagery may not link with the music but links together as a recurring theme across the whole case.
For my third case I looked at Local Natives ‘Gorilla Manor’ this showed all the members of the band stood diagonally on the cover with their heads exploding with colour, the case being black and white, then the words Local Natives repeated all across the cover. The back shows all 5 members face with no bottom half just colours. Again the same use of colour and imagery throughout the case but no relevance to any yet made texts created by the 5.
For my CD advertisement I looked inside an NME magazine and found one for Nicki Minaj ‘Pink Friday’ the imagery shows Minaj dressed in pink against pink walls, the most important aspect of this cover is that the advertisement uses an exact port from the CD no changes apart from size and positioning of size.
With all the above in mind I started to make my own front cover. I had taken some pictures on a FINEPIX S1500, FUJI FILM camera on the camera I took, light drawings, light drawings are created by altering the shutter speed on a camera. You next need a source of light from perhaps a mobile phone or a torch, then in the dark take a picture and draw with the light. For our lights we used stationary lighting which was use to light a path from building to building, instead of moving the lights we moved the camera which created some good designs in such little time. After I had taken the images I opened them up in Photoshop CS3, this programme allows the user to blend images together, crop them misshape them, duplicate them change opacity, fit them to a specific measurement and change the colour of the image. I used Photoshop to cut my images down to a specific size and place them where I wanted. I looked at how the covers from the cases I had analysed, how they had arranged them. So I followed a similar layout, with the picture centred and a small border around it, the title of the digipak cutting into the picture.
I feel as though to see my music video and digipak together the imagery represented on the digipak would not be relevant to the music video, however from what I have analysed it appears as though this is not the convention of an album cover but rather a single. As I was actually a fan of Cold War Kids and Wolf Parade I know that the album cover was not relevant at all to what their lyrics spoke about. This is something which I found most interesting, so conventionally I feel that my album cover is realistic however if it was a single I feel it wouldn’t have the same effect.
Because I knew who my target audience were, young students and above, I decided to hand out my questionnaire to a student audience, which were easy to get feedback from because of being at college and all of my friends are students. I asked a series of questions about both my digipak and advertisement and also about my music video, I also opened up a poll on blogger which meant that more people could access it, this poll had been open for a number of months. Through this process I asked my audience how professional they thought my digipak looked, I knew that as a combination the digipak and the video did not work as a promotional package however because of the texts I had analysed I discovered that neither did they thus making it a convention for an album to not relate to every song of the album, making the imagery unique. Another thing I learnt through audience feedback was how they felt the story presented worked in a narrative form, or whether the audience found it to suite more of art/abstract piece or performance piece. Some of the audience remarked that the digipak looked professional and could expect to see it on shop shelves, which is what I had hoped for when making, they also felt that together the advertisement and the actual CD worked well as a combination. Also the designs inside the actual digipak all worked well together and the imagery and colour scheme all worked well together throughout the whole campaign. They also felt that the video had a indie feel to it and expected that this could come from the Killers or Brandon Flowers as a music video, which is also something that we had hoped for as a group. I could also ask what type of music my audience liked so that it was a wider range of answers rather than just indie lovers.
In conclusion, I feel that we as a group received a positive response for our music video and my digipak was seen to be believable and realistic in its form. I feel that the albums that I influenced have influenced me to an extent that I could use them to relate to and work from. I also felt that because I followed the conventions of a music video and looked so closely at the Killers music videos that this gave me a great understanding into making a video which is similar to one which they would make.
