Q.1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The genre of our music video is rock/metal and usually with these kind of genres, there is usually quite dark and Gothic narratives (stereotypically). Using the song Faith for our music video, we've made it so that the narrative is linked through the pace of the music, the beat of the music and the general feeling of the whole song and of course the lyrics.






When I first listened to this song and we were trying to come up with ideas, I felt that it would be quite dark and mysterious and that it would be a bit uneasy as some of the lyrics touch on mental health; in my opinion. For example one line is 'Who are these voices ringing in my head?'. I think that this is suggesting that the main person in the song has or has had either something like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia which is why we used the masked conscience as it's there to reinforce the character's guilt and shame about the accident as it won't leave him alone and follows him around. This links to the film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). Fight Club consists of a person who has a created a person himself as a result of his depression. this links directly to our video as the conscience is created directly through the character's guilt and grief at what they've done. Fight Club's non linear narrative also inspired us too. This is because the beginning of Fight Club is actually the end; or the begining of the end! We wanted to use this technique as our video is based on similar themes to Fight Club. The factor of bringing the story full circle is highly ambiguous as it's difficult to understand whether the sequence is the actual beginning or the actual end. This is also why we put the beginning sequence in reverse so it was esier for the audience to understand which part it was.

Screen shot

In our music video we have used both narrative and band footage which is quite a common convention especially in the rock/metal genre as it's heavily instrument based. If we had done a pop video then we might not necessarily have had band footage because that's genreally not a convention of the pop genre. We wanted to stick to the conventions of the rock/metal genre as we wanted to make it as professional as we could. We edited the band footage to be in black and white as we thought that it would look more interesting and be more immersing for the audience to watch. The rest of the footage is in colour because we didn't want to lose any attention away it so we left it as bright as possible.

We have used an inspiration from the film V For Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005). The inspiration we used from this film was the idea of the mask and at one point we did actually talk about using this particular mask. We used it for both the CD cover and advert too. For example the V For Vendetta film poster is centrally based around a creepy mask. We used this idea in our poster as we wanted it to stand out. This mask makes it memorable and we wanted the audience to be able to remember it and aybe even be a bit creeped out by it as it would definitely stay in their minds then.


We realise that our main influences for the narrative are from filmic products; we wanted to make a post modern music video so we wanted to use filmic and cinematic products such as these films for inspiration in story line and filming techniques.




For inspiration for our music video, CD cover and magazine advert, we also used other videos from our chosen genre. An example of this is a CD cover from the band Saviour Machine. This is the cover of one of their albums: 

We feel this relates strongly to our CD cover but we also got the inspiration for our magazine advert from this too. 

We used a lot of conventions from metal/rock videos. For example, the biggest one we could use was having a performance and narrative based music video. We split up the time of the video into our story of the conscience and footage of As Gods playing a live set at local a venue in Bristol.

Print Work...

This is a collaboration of all my posts about progress of our print work.

Print work begins! We've decided to make a three fold CD case as we think it would be more interesting. We've made a three box template in InDesign in two lines with tabs to stick down with glue in order to seal it. A band from our genre that uses this kind of CD case is a band called In Flames and the album that they've used it on is Come Clarity. Their case is a three fold too and this is where we took some of the inspiration from.

For our front cover we've got two ideas. Because the song that we're using is called Faith, the band is called As Gods and our opening scenes were in a church, we thought a cross might be a good idea as the front cover.

Whilst looking on the internet one day I came across this DVD cover:

Although it's a DVD cover and not a CD cover, we still liked how the skull was made out of people. We thought maybe we could do the same with a cross. Deciding on the design of the cross wasn't that simple as we all had different ideas and images in our mind. I wanted a traditional cross made out of seven or eight people but they would be the outline and maybe have a glow behind it like in The Descent poster. Nick wanted a cross with tails on the end made out of four people and Tilly wanted two people to make the cross traditionally. So as you can see there was a lot of ideas and maybe a heated discussion about what we thought was best.

There is a band that use a cross made out of people for their CD front cover. The band is called Motley Crue and the album is Saints of Los Angeles. This is the kind of cross that Nick wanted and although it's a good idea and a nice design, I still think that a cross like The Descent poster would be better.

Motley Crue are a band from the rock/metal genre that we're studying and that our band is from so it's lucky that our work links to them!

Here are some cross ideas that we drew in order to help bring our creations to life!

Our cross designs

Our CD three fold case has six panels and we've come up with a plan of what should be where and how it should look. For our front cover we've got either an image of the mask or the human cross. We want to have an image of the band somewhere in the case and we are thinking of having a striking image of something to do with the actual video itself like a location or a character as a panel. We would also like to have a panel for lyrics and of course we want to put the band's logo in. To make a three fold, you obviously have to fold it up but that means that some images have to be upside down and not in the place you immediately think they should be. That's why we drew out a plan in order to keep ourselves sane whilst trying to figure it out and also because it's visual, it's easier for our brains to take it in!

First screen shot of case

We've almost finished our CD three fold. We've decided not to go with the cross idea as the front cover as it's time consuming and also because it doesn't tie in strongly enough with our video as it's not seen anywhere else. We're all disappointed but we might use it as a second image; for example the first inside image you see when the case is opened.

We've put in a screen shot of the band as one of the images because we wanted a photo of them all and this image ties in with the video because it's directly from it, and also because the lead singer has his arms upwards like he's gesturing towards the heavens. We feel that this image strongly links to the song name, the band name and our setting of the church. We've put in the lyrics to the song as well because that's a convention that I quite like to see and also, you enjoy a song more when you know the lyrics and can sing along in my opinion. This photo is in colour although the band footage is in black and white. We've done this because we thought that for a photo for the CD cover, it would be better in colour as it's more eye catching. We also did this because the CD case has three black and white colour scheme panels already so we didn't want to overload our audience and buyers with too much black and white.

We've chosen an image that we photographed of the church we filmed in and we've edited it in Photoshop.

The photo before the edit:                                                And after:

                                               










To get this effect we went to image on the drop down menu, chose adjustments, went onto HDR toning and turned the detail up. I really like how this photo has turned out as it's grainy and everything is more in tune and all the detail is easier to see.

The mask photo we decided to use was just a simple image of the mask on a background of green grass as we felt that this contrast interestingly. We did a few edits to see what it would look like and just to have a play around with ideas in Photoshop. Here are our edits we did:

Our finished CD cover!

In the picture before, the band's logo was the inside middle panel and the photo of the church with the track names was the back cover but we've decided to swap them. We decided this because we had put the band's website, their Facebook page, twitter link and Myspace site on the inside panel and we thought it looked more professional if the black panel with the logo and websites was the back cover. We then put the church panel with the track names where the black panel was. They were both directly above or below each other so it wasn't difficult to move! As we were swapping them both over, this meant that the track names would be on the inside. We knew this was unusual and that we were breaking a convention but we decided to do it anyway because our CD case isn't your typical one. For example, it's a three fold case which isn't so usual although it's becoming more popular, so we decided to do it and it's also eco friendly as well as it's using less plastic.

The band has three logo designs on their Myspace website (www.myspace.com/asgods) and we decided to use two of them in our CD cover. We used one as a whole base for one panel and the other was just the top half of a panel which we put dedications and copyright and record label information.  The record label we decided to put our band on is RoadRunner Records. RoadRunner is a label which is for the heavy metal/rock genre. Some artists on the label include Nickleback, Slipknot, Black Stone Cherry, Kiss, Lynryd Skynryd, Lenny Kravitz, Slash and Korn so there's quite a range of musicians on this label.

One Big Massive Editing Post

I thought it would be easier if I wrote one post on editing but would come back to it each time we did something new as it's easier to read in one bit instead of going through my other posts to look for it.

(1) We've filmed our introduction and put into iMovie which is the program we're using! So far, we've got the introduction and a little bit after that which is the character and the conscience walking out of our setting of the churchyard. We edited it all together and it comes to a total of 1:36 which is more than we expected!

However, when we showed it to our teacher, she pointed out to us that some of our shots were too long and it didn't cut to the beat. She said 'It looks like you've made a film and just put music over the top'. This was such good feedback for us because we then realised what we should actually be doing and we were able to change it as we hadn't filmed much. So now, I'm going to make sure everything is cut to the beat and we're going to be so meticulous about it!


(2) We've finished filming most of the narrative but can't edit it until we've filmed our band footage but that's not for another two weeks! Here's a Facebook print screen of the event that was created for it:

Print screen

The gig is in half term so we'll need to 'hire' out two cameras and a tripod from our teacher and we're borrowing an HD camera from a friend and I also have a tripod so we'll have three angles to film from which will have a variety of shots! We've decided to have two cameras on a tripod; one on each side of the stage and one person holding a camera moving in and out of the crowd getting different shots of the band from long distance, medium long distance, medium close up distance and close up distance.


(3) We've filmed the band so technically everything is filmed now but there's been an issue with two of the cameras. Whilst filming, we think that maybe we were too close to the speakers and they switched themselves off. However they would turn back on so everything was fine! But not a lot of footage got filmed because of this so we decided to film more than our chosen song as we would have extra footage just in case we needed it.

Although we decided to change the song from Frozen to Faith because of time issues, we still weren't 100% sure of the change so we decided we would film the band playing Frozen just in case we changed it back again. Unfortunately they didn't play Frozen so looks like our mind is made up about which song to use!


(4) We're having some trouble getting the footage off the cameras and into iMovie. When we connect the camera via USB cable, the computer recognises the camera but iMovie doesn't for some reason which is odd. However we're getting some IT help so hopefully we should be able to start the rest of the editing!


(5) Finally after encoding, formatting and other technical things we've managed to get our band footage onto the the Apple Mac we've been using and into iMovie! This is great because it means we can finally sort out where to put band footage and how to split up the narrative and performance. So far we have put all our narrative footage into order in iMovie so now we need to decide where our and footage goes.


(6) We've started to put the band footage in and we didn't realise how time consuming it would be. For example lip syncing. It's time consuming because when putting in the footage, we need to sync the lyrics to the lead singer singing them. This sounds simple but actually it's not. It took us a while to get each clip to match with the sound but after a while we adjusted to it and started to make better judgements about where to cut it!


(7) At the end of our footage we decided to put the opening sequence in reverse at the end. We've done this to symbolise the fact that it's a full circle. For example after he's killed the masked man, the character unmasks him and realises it's him. Therefore he's essentially killed himself as it's his conscience so we thought this would tie in the whole back to the beginning/circular symbolisation.

Before

(8) We borrowed two cameras from college and another from a friend. Because all three were from different places, the quality was different. This meant that the two college cameras were lower quality than our friend's camera because it was HD. This proved a problem because all three cameras picked up the light differently at the gig and so some footage is really light and some is really dark. Unfortunately because the gig wasn't a controlled environment we couldn't make the lighting to our choice so we had to like it or lump it. But the thing we kept telling ourselves was that we weren't professional directors with a multimillion pound budget for our music video, we're students whose budget was £16! (The mask was £1 and entry to the gig was £5 each). So we felt better about this!

After

Because of the difference in light, we played around with the contrast and brightness levels in the footage. However, the footage began to be incredibly grainy and pixelated so we thought about putting it into black and white. We did this and although both cameras' footage isn't exactly the same quality or residue, we think it's made it looks better than before so we're leaving it in black and white!

Band Footage

As Gods were playing at a local venue in Bristol so we were able to go and film them playing their set. We met with them first before it was their time to go on stage to discuss about where our cameras would be so they were aware of them. We also talked about possibly having an interview with them too.

We prepared questions beforehand in case we could have an interview and luckily we could! We went and filmed the interview in their van and we told them our idea and they all said they liked it. We also asked them if there was anything they wanted in the video and they couldn't think of anything so we're fine on the narrative front.

Here's the interview:

At this point, we hadn't completely decided about changing Frozen to Faith. we wanted to record them playing Frozen as well as faith, just in case! It's a good thing we changed the song choice though because although Frozen was on their set list, they didn't have time to play it due to the bands before running over their allotted time. So it was decided there and then that our music video would be to Faith and not Frozen.

So now that we've organised to film the band, we've finished all our narrative filming!  Our last narrative film plan didn't go to schedule. One Monday we had an in-service day and used it to film the flashback scene of the victim being hit by a car. A little set back was that the person who has been acting as the conscience couldn't get to where we needed him to be on time but that didn't matter too much as long as we were finished by 2.30pm as one person had to have an interview at 3pm.

It got to one o'clock and Ben still hadn't turned up so we rang him and it turned out that he had got the wrong bus and was now the other side of Bristol! This put a complete spanner in the works as this was the only day we had left to film as he was going away to America for three months on Wednesday and we needed to finish filming before he went!

Anyway, Nick stepped in to be the conscience but luckily all our shots of him were only close ups of the mask or as a long shot so you couldn't tell it was anyone else! We decided to take photographs that day in case we wanted to use any for our print work and also so we could document our filming. Here are some photos that we took:

    

Song Issue

We've had a bit of an issue with our song choice. The song is six minutes long (but fades out completely at 5:29) and we don't think we have enough footage to comply with the time. We reckon we'd need two and a half minutes of narrative and then three minutes of the band performing which we reckon is too much and we wouldn't be able to make it the best we could.

So instead of Frozen, we've decided to use another of the band's songs; Faith. Faith is four minutes long whihc is considerably shorter than Frozen! So far we've only edited the intro footage as we can't edit anything else until we've got the footage of the band so the song change hasn't impacted massively on what we're doing. We've tested Faith with the intro and it still works although we need to change where the footage cuts as it's a slightly different beat but that's ok as that won't take too long. Faith's feel and tempo match our narrative idea so all is well!