MAGAZINE ADVERT DRAFT

Here is our magazine advert made on photoshop it matches our continuing theme of surrealism, colour and playfulness. With the bright strong pattern used it attracts the eye and makes it more aesthetically pleasing. The colourful televisions are also used in our video making a link between the video itself and the new album advert. The playfulness is shown through the band members as they are smiling and laughing looking on at scalextric cars. This also links in well with our video.

SECOND FILMING

Today we did more band performance filming shooting close up scenes of the guitar and drums playing. We will cut these into the song to make it more fast paced to match the music. We feel the filming could of gone better and next time we aim to focus on more close up shots of the lead singer. We are also planning to film the chorus again with the coloured cards.

CALL SHEET

• Title of page: A2 Media Studies Call Sheet for The Maccabees - Precious Time
• Length: 4 pm - 6pm
• 9th December 2011
• JGC Hall
• Crew: Jonny Bohane, 07789764914, jonnybohane@hotmail.co.uk
• Crew: Richard Holt, 07592016332, richard_holt@hotmail.com
• Crew: Alex Atkinson, 07523208980, aatkinson@yahoo.co.uk
• Crew: Will Jones, 07708633380, willjones567@hotmail.co.uk
• Crew: Greg Flynn
• Camera equipment: Nikon SLR D5000
• Lighting equipment: Overhead and Stand lights - Lighting Booth
• Props: instruments - Guitar, Bass, and Drums, 2 Key Boards - Band Clothing

SCALEXTRIC SHOOTING

Today we did the shooting of our Scarelextric idea, we set up the digital scarelextric and shot the cars going around the track from low angles and high ones. We want to fit the scarelextric shots into our video to match with our colourful and playful theme. We have added to the colour by placing a green rug underneath the track. We want to speed up the shots of the scarelextric in the video to compliment the fast paced music.

SCALEXTRIC IDEA

In todays lesson we came up with a new idea for our music video. For the lyric "and play super Scalextric" We want to emulate this childhood game by setting up out own set of Scalextric. We want to shot a scene of the cars going around as we can also fit them into other parts of our song. It also fits into our playful theme through the video.

CONSTRUCTING NOUGHTS & CROSSES

Today we got together our noughts and crosses cut outs and coloured card to shoot the scene to go into our music video. We made a high angle shot with strong lighting looking down onto the cards. With primary colours these strongly link into our current themes of the video such as our playful element. and also our digipack. We got band member to place down the noughts and crosses and then edited it to speed the shot up so it adds a quick fire effect along with playful themes. We also experimented with reversing the shot so that it adds to the fast paced music and verse.

NOUGHTS & CROSSES IDEA

In todays lesson we had the idea of using the same coloured cards as the chorus but using them on the floor to play a game of noughts and crosses in the video. This will fit our theme of bright intense colours and playfulness throughout the video. We cut out card in the shape of O's and X's and then made the board on the floor to practise the shot and how it will go. We want to have a high angle shot to really emphasise the game being played with the band members included in the shot also. This shot can then be put into the video during a non-band performance scene and most likely a verse.

BAND PERFORMANCE SHOOTING

In todays lesson we spent an hour filming most of the band performance shots. We set up the drum kit and amps and mic on the stage. We made the lighting very intense to focus on the band playing. We then took shots of the whole band synced to music played through the speakers. We then edited in the shots on iMovie to add into the band performance scenes of our music video.

YUDU PRESENTATION

Here i have been experimenting with new technologies to present my work. Here is a new software online called Yudu where you upload word documents and it transfers them into magazine presentations where you can flick through the pages online following the link below. I focused on more pictures in the magazine so it is more visually intersting.

Click Here To see my Yudu presentation

CHORUS SHOOTING

In todays lesson we started filming our chorus of the song. The lyrics go 'lets take our precious time about it' with a short space in-between them. We had the idea of having each band member saying a word each with a different colour background for them. With the colours of the background we made them more bright and vibrant. Each person is edited in iMovie to match the lip syncing of the words. It is a good effect for a main part of the song with bright colours that make it stand out.

MUSIC RESEARCH TWEET

Here is a tweet showing how i have read about British bands similar to the Maccabees that they have been turned into brands on the times.co.uk. It says how their image can become more important than their actually work and songs.

DIGIPACK EXPERIMENTATION

Here i have experimented with a digipack look inspired by the Maccabees. there is a mid shotof the band members all wearing similar shirt and ties and on photoshop i have added.

a hyperbolic pattern in the background with strong and futuristic, vibrant colours. This adds to the image in the foreground i have removed the heads of some band members making it more surreal and interesting.

SLIDESHARE

I have been experimenting with new technologies in order to present my work and in this case research in a new way through new technologies. Here i have used Slideshare an online way of presenting my work in an online slide show

to see my Slideshare click here

BAND RESEARCH ONLINE

The Maccabees interact and socialise with fans through many different ways online one way is through Twitter. This is a very direct link to the band on here the are able to contact fans who also have twitter account. They can see how many fans they've have gained through the amount of followers they have.

Social media have completely changed the way audiences interact with their preferred bands. This is a new trend i have noticed with many other band and artists included. It is also avoids record labels having a stranglehold who have previously been gatekeepers, controlling access to bands and artists as gatekeepers.

I read in The Times newspaper (19/10/2011) Shaun Parkers claim that the American Indie band Foster the People in the past year has gone from obscurity to the most listened to band on Spotify. He says "this was because fans began sharing their songs over social networks".

Another way is through The Maccabees official website where they have more promotions and advertisements e.g. band touring dates and latest releases. Here they have also used new album artwork and themes to introduce their new album and have also advertised to pre order it on Amazon.co.uk. Most people use new technology to do their shopping and music buying is a really good example of this with a whole variety of different way to buy music, such as Amazon, iTunes and Napster. They also provide links at the bottom to their other pages.

I researched what was trending at San Francisco Web 2.0 2011 conference this week. I noticed that there were innovate ways of buying, listening to and sharing music.

Another social networking site they use is Tumblr which is an alternative blog allowing short posts of mainly pictures. Here they have publicised there own 4 page spread on NME via Tumblr to show that they are back and up and coming.

I read NME regularly online, i have noticed that many different institutions have now produced online versions such as The Times and The Guardian also with other music magazines such as Wired. Apple has also introduced a news stand app allowing you to download magazines in the same way as audiobooks. Both institutions like the music industry and audiences like myself use a huge number of new technologies as a matter of course.

TREATMENT

DIGIPACK ANALYSIS

In the digipack above also the man adds a surreal image and seems artistically influenced by the likes of Magrite or Dali the boat seems a reoccurring theme where the shot of the man holding a large boat plays around with shapes and sizes perhaps making it more abstract.

OPENING FILMING

In todays lesson we had inspiration from the Foals video 'hummer' were at the start they have a 4 second close up of the drums playing and the symbols. We liked this idea of close up camera angles so did our own for our video. We filmed close ups of the drums and symbols and edited them together using iMovie and made them go along with the music. for the opening 3 seconds of our music video. We like how the music is matched up to what is playing as the timing is well done through the editing.

PRACTICE SHOTS

Here we have taken some practice shots of what our band will look like on stage with a blank background, we have done 4 shots each with a band member moved round. With the camera on the tripod we can switch these images and they will look in the same position and change around. We want to go along with the stop frame theme and in the real thing include outfits and colors too. We made sure people stayed in the right place with markers on the floor.

DIGIPACK PLANNING

Today we have talked about our Digipack and how we are going to present it. We have taken inspiration from this artwork with the idea of showing the 5 members of the band and photoshopping them with differnt colours strongly contrasted together we want to change the position of the band members and experiment with different backgrounds.

We want to show strong colors in our album artwork as well as in the video itself to create a link.

STORYBOARD ANIMATIC

Here is our storyboard draft put into an animatic film showing all of our drawing in one show. We placed the band in certain positions in order to get the best shot of all playing. We also came up with the idea of having a different band member saying 'lets take our precious time about it' with different faces every time. This will be an effective way to emphasise the chorus. We also had some ideas of close up shots of the instruments such as the guitar at the solo part. Because we drew them out of paper we could play around with where they go and in what order. We made the animatic on the iMovie software as shown in the print screen.

DIGIPACK RESEARCH

Here we are analysing other album artworks and taking inspiration from them for our own cover for the digipack. Here is the first one we looked at, it is from the Maccabees album. It has a cartoon effect with a number of people following the same colour scheme. The colours refer to the album title 'colour it in' which is what we may like to do is refer the album name visually on the cover and throughout our digipack.

In this album artwork from another band the Futureheads it shows all the different members of the band on the cover. We also want to do this and have all of our band members on the front of the cover with a cut out effect and experiment our with colours such as the Futureheads have done. They have also header up their band name at the top in bold letters and font which we meat also like to do. The patterns on the cover also make the album exiting too.

Here is another album artwork from the Drums where they have gone for a simple but effective cover. With wooden letters of the band in the foreground with good lighting on to them and a nice shadowing effect. On the stage with the curtain also indicates stage and live performances.

PRECIOUS TIME LYRICS

Pound for pound and cheek to cheek
Cheek paler than a lamp light
Take me down to light the box
And play super Scalextric

And turn this
Darkness
Into light
And I'll turn too bright
Forget all the hype

I'll need heart and I'll need courage
We all need...

Toe to toe, there's nowhere to go
So I'm tiptoeing around it
I held you down and I held my own
And now I feel like I'm floating

So turn to this
Head on
And keep on
Keeping on

I'll need heart and you'll need courage
We all need time

So let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us

Let's take our precious time about it here we want to have each person saying this
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it

Don't you know, nobody knows
If there's somebody waiting
So you'll hold yourself up and you'll hold yourself in
And then pray that you are growing

And turn to this
Darkness
You turn it into light, and you'll turn too bright Here we may look into playing with the lighting
Forget all the hype

You'll need heart and I'll need courage
We all need time

So let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us
Let's make time work for us

Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about it
Let's take our precious time about This part of the song is sped up so we may do the same

'cause we'll need heart and we'll need courage
In these times
We'll need heart and we'll need courage
In these times

Because time can mean so much

Are you still mine? This ending line is just a close up on the lead signer

PERMISSION TO USE TRACK

Here is proof that we have asked the Maccabees on Twitter for permission to use their song Precious Time for our music video, we have the opportunity to directly contact to them through Twitter. Asking them for permission helps our group to make sure what we are doing is allowed. We used Twitter via the Blackberry app and also used the MunchScreen app to take a picture of it on the screen of the phone in order to show it here as proof

PRECIOUS TIME VIDEO

Here is the original video from the Maccabees, it shows some of stop frame animation with the faces which has inspired us in our own video. It also has some studio shots of the band which we also want to emulate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0629SPfofVI&ob=av3e

A2 TREATMENT

The Maccabees – Precious time – 3:55

In our video we hope to have a range of shots of high and low angles on a band playing the music. We also want to try a 360-degree shot all the way around. For the lyric “lets make time work for us” we want to use stop frame animation for a clock going round to show time going by for an interesting and new way. We hope to have some narrative within the video but not too much and break it up also in-between shots of the band playing. When the band does play we want to have a blank background of white with strong and colorful lighting on them to highlight them.

We also are going to try getting colorful backgrounds of the band members and adding it into comic life. We will show it as stop frame in the music video of the band each saying the word “take our precious time” so it has a comic feel to it with colors and showing the different band members. We could also show the boards themselves and make them fall down showing a different member every shot.

At the start of the video we want to use a close up of the drums and of the symbols in time to the music. We took this inspiration from the 'Foals' video of 'Hummer'. We want to also have a close up shot of the guitar at the start and also for the solo bit at the end. We want to amplify the lyrics of the song also with our colourful study effects we have planned out.

LESSON WORK

Today we have worked on our treatment coming up with new ideas, we want to have a color background and have pictures of the band members face onto it for a colorful and comic like effect in the video. We can use the software Comic Life and add it into the video as a stop frame effect to make it look like a comic.

We have also decided on our 5 band members with a lead singer, drummer. bast and 2 guitarists

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS PREZI

Here is my music video analysis of 3 videos on Prezi online. Prezi is a software we have used before and here we have created a presentation of music video's analyzed. We used the Prezi format because i found it dynamic and exiting and formal at the same time in a new way.

http://prezi.com/sgerqln6n39t/a2-media-analysis-of-3-videos/

TREATMENT RESEARCH

Today we have looked into how to write up a treatment for our planned video. We have looked at websites such as http://www.georgeking-assoc.com/education/vid101c_summer07/how-to-treatment.html. We found out that the treatment is to present in the present tense what we are going to do in our music video. So now we are going to start writing out our treatment for our video.

MACCABEES

The Maccabees are a UK based alternative band who we are making our music video for. We want 5 members of the band such as in this image. They were colorful clothes and have long hairstyles. They have had 2 previous albums 'Color it in" (2007) and 'Wall of Arms' (2009). The song we are going to use is Precious time released in 2009 from the 'Wall of Arms' album.

The Maccabees are known for being very colorful and alternative as people. Their album covers are usually very bright with primary colors. There videos are also very creative using stop frame animation and studio work performances we how to emulate this style.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS

Today we have analyzed music videos in class we have looked at narrative and performance elements of the some music videos. We looked at Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag. We looked at the conventions of this video. The first element we noticed were performance shots of the band with close us of lip syncing with very stylized gestures.

This pleases audiences with the feel as though they are getting close to the stars of the video of the band. Most videos are not primarily narrative and mostly include band performances shots

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS

We have been using new software on the macs in Adobe After Effects. we have experimented on it in todays lesson by looking at potential effects within the actual video itself.

We have seen how to do this by watching tutorials on Video CoPilot. We have found effects useful and can possibly use these in our video.