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.