R+P Post 23: Planning my web pages

To plan our web pages we had many group meetings in which we discussed our website influences, conventions, and style elements that we would like to include in our website.

Website plan 1.

Website plan 2.

CONVENTIONS WE WILL INCLUDE:

• A homepage dominated by a focal image/video of the band members. More prominently of Casey Tyler. We will do this by adding an interactive click-through of different images and videos on the home screen.
• A start page before entering the website that promotes the most recent album. This immediately shows the audience that they can buy the new album, and it will be available on mny platforms such as iTunes and Google Play.
• Links to the band's social media accounts (conventionally Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). We will do this with icons at the top of the page that take you to the social media pages when clicked, as well as embedding their most used social media account into the homepage.
• Links to a music page, purchasing opportunities, the distributor's website, and a homepage in a bar across the top. We are planning on making the website format so that when one of the links is followed, it automatically scrolls you to that section on the main page, instead of having many different pages.

This is our final rough plan for our website.

We have chosen this design because the audeince feedback we took showed that our audience will appreciate a highly interactive website that engages them constantly. This design achieves this by having a click-through gallery and other features such as a contest.

R+P Post 22: Planning my promo shots

We planned to take two sets of promo shots: one set in the studio, and one set out and about. This would show that our band is serious in music, but also has character. Additionally, it would help to show off the individual band members’ personalities a bit more.

Firstly, we planned our promo shot schedule around the times when we were all free (including Tom). Unfortunately, Tom was only free in one period of school at the same time as the rest of us, so we took that as an opportunity to take shots of just him, and some shots of the band together in the studio. Jack, Emilio, and I all had similar frees, so we were able to take promo shots out and about of each of us, as well as some of Jack and me; this would highlight Hugh and Casey’s sibling relationship. 

We plan to take a range of shots in different poses, with different props/accessories, and different framing. For each band member we took shots in CU, MCU, MS, and LS, to make sure we would have enough photos to use in any circumstances. We also took some photos of Casey on the floor of the studio, a conventional photo style for a female artist. Additionally, Emilio allowed us to use his Nikon camera when taking shots out and about, with lenses that allowed us to play around with the depth of focus to create some really aesthetically pleasing shots that suit the edgy/indie aesthetic we are hoping to achieve.

Here are some example promo shots that inspired our choices:

All of these promo shots cntain all the members of the band portraying their aesthetic and the personalities of the band members. For example, the bottom-left photo of Echosmith shows all the band members smiling in laid back positions outdoors. This shows their positive, laid back personalities, and creates voyerism between the band and the audience. Additionally, they are all sitting close together, showing how close they are with each other, as they are all siblings.

R+P Post 21: My key shots storyboard

We made a story board so that we could visualise our shot ideas for the music video so far. Our music video will contain lots of fast paced editing and a wide variety of shots, so we made our storyboard contain only the key shots we plan to include in our music video.

Story board page 1

Story board page 2

We made our storyboard using post it notes so that we could easily rearrange, add, or remove ay shots we felt necessary. Additionally, each different colour represented a different type of framing; yellow is CU, blue is MS, green is LS. Each of these contained every type of this framing (eg under LS there could be an ELS or an MLS).

PLAN FOR BAND SHOTS:

• Handheld individual shots of each of the band members playing.
• MS, LS, and CU of each of the band mambers playing.
• Handheld shots of whole band.
• LS, MS, and CU of whole band.

Our influence for these shots came mostly from Echosmith's Cool Kids, which had a rnage of band and solo shots filmed both in handheld shots and in stationary shots.



Band shots from Echosmith's Cool Kids.

PROS OF MAKING A STORYBOARD:

• Allows us to plan exact shots we want in our music video for each scene.
• Allows us to visualise our narrative and ideas for the video really well, including helping us pin down costumes, props, and lighting set-ups. This meant we could prepare well for pur shoot.
• Helps us to make sure we have a good variety of shot content and framing, to ensure we keep the audience's attention and engage them with interesting visuals.

R+P Post 20: My Music Video Timeline

We decided to make a timeline as it would help us to establish the narrative structure of our music video. We decided we would structure the music video using a narrative cut between performance shots of our artists and band.

Timeline section 1

Timeline section 2

Timeline section 3

OUR NARRATIVE:

1. Casey falls asleep on the sof after having broken up with her boyfriend and gathered nostlgic items arund her to make her feel better.
2. She wakes up in a dream where she sees her brother in a Singing in the Rain landscape. They dance and have fun together.
3. She then finds herself in an arcade with her best friend Sgt. Pepper, where they play with a slot machine together.
4. She wakes up in Wonderland and finds that she is Alice. She sees an apple that says "EAT ME" and eats it.
5. The apple transports her into the world of Mortal Kombat where she must fight her ex-boyfriend: Scorpion. She defeats him3 but helps him up and leaves.
6. In her dream, she relives the moment she got home fter the break up, but this time all her friends are there to have fun and cheer her up.

PROS OF MAKING A TIMELINE:

• It allowed us to solidify the exact timings of certain events in corrolation to the timing of the actual music. This allowed us to know when the verses and choruses are in the song, so that we could plan our narrative accordingly.
• We also got an understanding of how the mood in each part of the song could be conveyed, while fitting in with the narrative structure. For example, the slower part of the song in the bridge will have slower paced cutting, and lighting to reflect the shift in mood to a more sombre part of the song.
• We were able to find flaws in our original plans and fix them. For example, we realised our original idea of alice defeating Scorpion from Mortal Kombat was too long and looked to harsh, so we listened to that part of the music again and worked out that we could crosscut this section with clips of Alice picking up nostalgic objects, self referencing the beginning of the music video.

R+P Post 19: My Influences and vision for the project

OUR INFLUENCES

Sheppard - Geronimo

We took most of our influences form indie pop bands that use lots of pastel colours, quirky theme, and high-energy artists.  For example, we liked the aesthetic and editing choices of this whole-band shot of Sheppard in their music video for Geronimo, as it has fast paced editing and handheld camera movement to engage the audience's attention. We also took a lot of inspiration from Crazy For You by Best Coast, as the colour scheme is similar to the one we hope to achieve, and it uses face-on framing to mimic a "TV Music Show" feel, such as Top of the Pops. Using this technique would help us to connote the feeling of nostalgia we hope to achieve with our music video.

A clip from Singing in the Rain

We also took inspiration from pieces of old media, such as Singing in the Rain, Mortal Kombat, and Sgt. Pepper, as we will be using mis-en-scene to create intertextual references of these. These will help us to achieve the correct costumes and props for the actors, as well as to choreograph appropriate movements that will help the characters be more recognisable to the audience.

This is our steal-o-matic. It takes influence from different music videos and media texts.

R+P Post 18: Analysis of my track's lyrics and instrumentation

Jack's lyric sheet page 1.

Jack's lyric sheet page 2.

LYRICS AND IDEAS:

• "Slot machine" - we will have a prop slot machine in an arcade, as a literal connotation of the lyrics.
• "Don't wake me up I'm having  a sweet dream" and "do you remember" - The lead singer is reminiscing over her fondest memories and doesn't want it to end. We are going to portray this using a dream sequence that depicts her reliving close moments she shares with all the people closest to her in her life.
• "Sitting under the old magic tree" - This reminded us of Alice in Wonderland sitting under a tree before she enters her dream world, so we thought it would be visually engaging for the lead singer to become Alice in this part of the video. It also amphasises the fact that she is in a dream that is very different from reality.
• "Lucy in the sky smiling down" - We will make an explicit intertextual reference to the Beatles by having one of the characters dress as one of the beatles from the sgt pepper album cover. Our other references include Singing in the rain and a fight game sequence.

Our narrative will follow the lead singer falling asleep and entering a dream sequence where she is reliving old memories from her past, highlighting her relationship with her brother, her best friend, and her ex-boyfriend, finishing with her wakng up and realising that the present is not as bad as she thought it was, and that she needs to stop living in the past.

The style of this particular song uses a synth/keyboard with a muted affect, which sounds similar to retro game music (for example on Super Mario Land). Additionally, the guitar part in the opening of the song is slow and dream like, whihc is why we went for a retro-dream aesthetic for our video.

My lyric sheet page 2.

My lyric sheet page 1.

R+P Post 17: My Chosen Track

Black Cat Zoot.

Mutable Transformer Act album cover.

Our chosen track is Sweet Dream by Black Cat Zoot. They are a German indie pop band that try to incorporate classic rock music into their unique style of indie pop. Sweet Dream is on the album Mutable Transformer Act, which was released in Aril 2009, and was produced by Hazelwood Music Production, a production company that focuses on indie pop and rock. Additionally, the song was released as a free download on theor website, so using this song for our music video project wll not have copyright problems.

Hazelwood Music Production logo.

WHY WE CHOSE IT:

• It is a unique take on the indie pop genre.
• There are no copy right problems and it is less than 3 minutes long.
• We have lots of ideas for a fun and visually engaging music video to do with this song, especially involving the nostalgia theme.

HOW IT WILL APPEAL TO OUR AUDIENCE:

• It is an indie song that will appeal well to the niche audience of avid fans.
• There is a female lead singer, so the audience (which is skewed towards girls) will find her aspirational and relatable. For example, 26% of our audience survey said they relate to artists that are the same gender as them.