James - The Final Scene

We still need to to shoot one final scene. It will be of George and Aimee (our narrative characters) arguing and then George will take a Polaroid photo out of his wallet and throw it to the ground. On the Polaroid will be the two of them when they were happy, and the image will then start to move. The reason we could not film this shot earlier is because we did not have the footage that the photo merges into.

JCutts- Feedback on shoots

On friday we shot our performance shots in the studio and then saturday went to london for more narrative shots . I feel both were very successful , after having a look back on the computer of our studio shots we were pleasantly surprised by how good some of our shots actually turned out. We will put the London shots on the computer today and start to edit. On thursday we experimented with a few special effect and have a fairly good idea of ones we could use when editing. We drew special attention to putting our video or certainly some aspects of it into black and white. We feel this will not only make our video more of a piece of art, but also convey the drained colour as the lyrics to the song may portray.

Group - Feedback on Rough Cut

Yesterday we showed a rough cut to the rest of the class and the feedback was as follows:

• People liked the style in which we represented the band e.g. the costume.
• Some mise en scene was a bit out of place.
• The cutting rate was not fast enough.
• Synching could have been better.

Overall there was a lot to be inmproved and we will address all these issues.

James - My Contributions

So far I have contributed the following to our groups production:

1. Created rough drafts for our digipak and advert. I am now startign the final drafts.
2. Filmed some of the narrative shots in london.
3. Directed some of the shots in London and The Pantiles.
4. Completed risk assements.
5. Booked the equiopment, drama studio, and instruments for the performance shots.
6. Eddited part of the london footage.

George - Ideas from other videos

Here is JLS' new track and video which I think has some good ideas



I think that the black and white look is something really affective which when used well makes the video look more official and professional which is something we may use in places in our video.

I also like the blurring in and out of focus as when used properly is very affective and can help to crest an enigmatic view of the band in terms of Dyer's theory.

One thing we have all decided as a group is that filler shots are very common in music videos and can help to create a more professional look especially if the lip synching is not the great or authentic.

George - My contribution to production

So far this is a lust of my contribution to the production side of things.

1. Filmed the band and lead singer shots in studio, London and the pantiles.

2. Emailed Mr Fiveash to book out kit and filled in risk assessment and call sheets.

3. Started to edit and piece together a rough cut of our song.

4. Acted in the narrative scenes in London and helped organise additional cast.

James - Deconstruction of Hurts advert

I really like this Hurts advert and thing that we should defiantly take inspiration from it when thinking of ideas for ours. I am going to deconstruct the semiotics of this.

Iconic & Linguistic Signs

Font - all of the fonts used are very sleek and compliment the well groomed image of the two band members.
Costume - The band members are dressed very smartly and look very well groomed. This is also seen in way they have styled their hair, this has been done so the two men have a very classical look.
Body Language - Both men are showing little emotion on their faces and have a very paired down/simple look. This combined with the lighting that they have used has artistic merit and gives a very strong impression to the audience about what the band will be/sound like.

Quotes - The quotes that have been used are from 'NME', 'The Fly' and 'The Independant'. The first two of these are very respected indie music magazines. These have been used because the type of people who read these two magazines are the target audience for this band. They have used 'The Independant' as a quote because they are also trying to appeal to a broader audience and appear as a slightly more mainstream audience.
Web Address - They have included the bands web address on the advert so that anyone who is interested and wants further information about the band knows where to access it.

Juxta - Position

This is how all of the above signs come together to create the band image. The Juxta-position of the signs means that the bands image is constructed as being very sleek and simple. From this poster my immediate thoughts were that the band would create very meaningful and artistic music. I thought that they wouldn't conform to the current norm within the pop charts where people cant play their own instruments and use things like 'vocoders'.

What social myths is the advert conforming to / breaking?

One of the current social myths is that people young people do not create their own meaningful music. Many people would say that all young artists simply conform to the generic 'rules' of current pop music and don't create anything original and interesting. This advert suggests to the audience that this band is very serious about the music that they make.

Another social myth that this advert breaks is that men cant be well groomed with out being homosexual. The band members look as if they look after their skin and hair, whilst also caring about what they wear, but there is no sign of them being gay.

Lexical Signs
By supporting this band its fans are creating their own image. I think that if you like 'Hurts' music you are slightly 'cutting-edge' and 'indie'. You do not care that the band are not in the pop charts and are not widely listened to, instead you like them for their extraordinary musical talent and song writing ability.

James - Things To Do

In the next week we are hoping to complete the following:

• Re-design the blog
• Complete the semiotic analysis for our digipak mock-up's
• Create a final draft for both the digipak and the advert
• Analyse the mood boards that we created at the start of the project
• Edit our Brighton reccie footage and put it on YouTube and the blog
• Put footage onto the animatic
• Shoot our band performance shots in the drama studio

We will hope to complete all of this by a week today (Wednesday 24th November). However recently we have been having problems with our editing computer and so it could take a bit longer to complete the Brighton reccie footage.

George - Postponed London Shoot

This Thursday we were hoping to go back up to London to do some filming in the night time, however due to the illness of one member of our group and other obligations we have now had to postpone it.

Deconstruction of an Advert.

I have chosen to deconstuct the scissor sisters advert for their album 'Ta-Dah' . I feel this is an interesting advert that has more than one meaning when you start to deconstruct it.

Genre;

• The tongue in cheek entertaining image really portrays the bands attributes and songs on the album. The sciccor sisters use there stage prescence and humerous performances . This is conveyed with the lead singer facing the opposite direction and the viewer could be seen to be looking at his crotch area.

Media Language;

• This advert actually doesn't use the rule of thirds in terms of the image. This is likely to be have done to keep the originality and unique image the band tries to show. The use of lighting makes the lead singer much more predominant and stands out , which is what the band bases a lot of their performances on.
• The lighting making the lead singer stand out which is predominant when selling the band, through the lead singer.
• The mask that only the viewers on the advert can see , this is hidden from the charecters in front of lead singer. The mask conveys he is revealing something as a magician would do hence conveying the ''Ta-Dah' , the name of the title

James - Write Up of Photoshoot

Yesterday we went into the drama studio to take photos of me and Jamie (the band members) which will be used in the digipak and advert.

We set up a portable white screen and borrowed a SLR camera from the schools photography department. Using this along with all the lights in the drama studio allowed us to create a really professional look. At the start we did find it difficult to get the lighting right because we were trying not to create any shadow on the white screen. We managed to solve this problem by aiming one of the lights behind the subject and just onto the white screen. This meant that the subject was no longer blocking out all of the light from the white screen.

Another problem we encountered was that, when trying to take a photo with me and Jamie in the shot at the same time we were not able to frame it as we wished. We were trying to get pictures of us from just the waist up and so thought it would be better to photograph each one of us separately and then merge the two photos of us together using Photoshop.

When we were taking the photos we were aware that we would need to edit them in Photoshop. It was for this reason that we took them in the RAW mode on the camera. This means that the camera doesn't turn the photo into a JPEG file, instead it simple remembers the photo's raw data meaning it can be edited whilst still remaining good quality in Photoshop.

Overall I think that the shoot went very well and we have now got good enough photos to use n our digipak and advert. Some example of the photos we took can be seen below:




**insert photos** 

George - Decisions made by the group

• Yesterday we had decided to take a few photos for another possible idea for our digipak and advert.
• We decided we wanted to use the studio lighting and a white screen to create a bright white effect and shoot the members of our band in front of it much like 'The Hurts' advert James has analysed below.
• Another decision we made for today in our lesson was to go and film some shots of our lead singer in our local town as the weather is holding up and its a good time to do so.

George - Semiotic Analysis of Advert Mock Up

Here is a possible idea i have made for our advert:

The overall image or sybols i was going for here are fairly straight forward. As the albums name is 'Science and Faith' i used two iconis images that would represent bith those aspects of society.

• The nuclear mushroom cloud i used i think is a breakthrough in science that everyone knows and has heard of therefore i felt it was most appropriate for the science aspect, common associations with nuclear weapons is the end of the world and i think this image could connote that.
• The red Jesus laughing ties in very much so with the cloud. I think that the message the audience would get from Jesus laughing at the armageddon is one of two possible things. The fact he's is red and has white eyes would sybolise satanic features so jesus has caused this as punishment to the modern secular society and a continuing decline of morales, i would think this to be the preffered reading. However the other reading of this image could be that he is laughing in an 'I told you so!' way, whereby the message from him is if you try to play God it will only end badly and he is laughing at the reprocussions issued.
• I decided to use a promotional free track as a hooking point for the audience of this magazine. As we decided to post it in Q magazine this audience consists of people who really enjoy music especially in this alternative genre, a free track is something in which will help to increase the popularity of the script with these avid music fans and therefore serve its purpose in advertisement by increasing sales.
• The quotes and ratings at the bottom of the page also act as an advertising tactic. The fact they are all five stars help to make the audience believe they are especially as they come from reputable sources including Zane Lowe who is quite influential in this kind of music scene.
• The only problem with this advert is an ethical one, the fact Jesus may be considered to be satan like may offend some people, and with the band being 'The Script' this is not the kind of image they would go for.
• In terms of Dyer this advert conforms to being both absent and extraordinary. The fact the band are absent from the photo help to generate a greater desire for the audience to consume more and create a larger image of what the band like, especially if they like the advert. I think the advert conveys the extraordinary side as there a a few different readings of the advert and the images can be quite contraversial yet express an interesting image which holds meaning and depth within it something people can think about, the message being told.

Group - Animatic

Here is our provisional animatic, some things have changed since production so a full new one will be up soon.

James - Possible Font for Digipak

I have emailed Mr.Fiveash asking him to download a font onto the school computer. I think it would be really good to use on the digipak and advert. The link to the font is below:

http://www.dafont.com/fenwick.font

Ideas for shoot on Friday- JCutts

• I think we should defiantly atleast attempt shots that could be included in the special effect we have spoke abour on a number of occasions. We will have to consider shooting in reverse like Mr Fiveash has suggested so it will be easier and more accurate when it comes to editing on Premier.
• We will also do some similar shots to what we used in London not only to compare what ones look better, but also as an insurance so we can use them if they are better than what we have already.
• We should include quite a lot of lip syncing shots of the lead singer as these are always good to have , just in case.
• We are also planning on trying a couple of iconic band shots , obviously without instruments , and possibly of george's character.

Let me know if you have any further idea's ...

George - London Reccie

After going up to London we tried some test shots and did a reccie of the location here are some stills:

With this shot we were hoping to use this as a five minute time lapse where it's sped up and use it as filler shots as it is picturesque and the scaffolding in the background creates an interesting pattern, along with the formation of the lamp posts how they are parrallel creates an nice look.

This shot is a 360 degree pan. We all really liked this shot especially in a court like area which created a looming, big city feel which is what i think The Script like to be represented against as they have done so in other videos i have researched.

These are two of the many shots of iconic London landscapes that we shot to use as a quick 1 second filler in places. We feel this corresponds to the Script again as they like to be associated with big cities e.g. New York in 'The Man Who Can't be Moved'.

This shot is a mid shot of our lead singer. I think the fact he is facing away is good with a position like this it seems as though hes in deep thought and really meaningful about what he's singing. Furthermore the fact you cant really see his face conforms to Dyer's theory of present and absent, the singer is there in the shot yet you cant fully see his face which would make consumers continue watching to see his face. The backdrop of London once again shows a typical represntation of The Script.

George - Picture special effect

One idea which we have developed and are using is that of a picture being dropped on the floor during and argument and at first it's just a still and then after panning in towards the picture it will start playing a clip we have filmed about a happy memory the two narrative characters have had together.

To do this we will need to film the happy memory in advance and take a still from that to then create a real life photo of the same image to drop on the floor to make a more realistic look.

After this we will then add in the motion of the clip in the editing process.

James - Digipak Mock-Up

I firstly hand drew some ideas about possible layouts for the front cover of the digipak, as can be seen below. This helped me to think about the benefits and problems of using the image of the alien. One such problem is that the head of the alien is curved meaning hat there is not much free space left to place the band and album name.

I then created a 'to-scale' net of a digipak and attempted to create a better mock-up on the computer. These mock-up's are below along with explanatory notes. The first image is the front and inside-front panels of the digipak along with the spine. The second image is the back and inside-back panels of the digipak.

James - Results Of 'Performance Shots' Reccie

Recently we went up to the drama studio to see what effects we could generate using the lighting. It was a really useful thing to do as we learnt about the capabilities of the lights and also found out that we are not allowed to move them without a teacher being present. This is a bit of a problem but it can easily be overcome of we plan exactly where we want the lights and then as a teacher to help us for a short time. 

We managed to shoot some really good footage and I also took a still which can all be seen below.

   

**We need to put the footage on YouTube and then put the link in here**

James - Digipak Photo Shoot

Today we talked about the image that we want to use on the front cover of the digipak (and is also likely to appear on the advert). For a while now we have been thinking about using the image of the alien (see below) that we took in Brighton. However now we are not sure that we will use it on the front cover of the digipak.

  

Instead of using this image we are now thinking about taking a photo of me and Jamie because we are the performers in the music video. We are going to try and take a simplistic and stylish photo, to do this we will draw upon inspiration from this advert from the band 'Hurts'.

 

I particularly like the fact that the image is in black and white as it really conforms to this bands image. However I think that if we were to do something similar it would be more fitting to have the image in colour because The Script are more of a mainstream band. Another thing that I love about the photo in this advert is the costume and the body language that the two band members have. I think that when we have our photo shoot we should have reasonably expressionless body language and faces, and we should also think very carefully about what we are wearing. 

When & Where

I think that we should aim to have taken all of the photos that wee need to by the end of this week. We have two lessons ( Wednesday period 3 and Thursday period 2) which we could take the photo's in and then if we run out of time we can always use some of our free periods.

It is probably best if we take the photos in the Photography rooms at school because they will be able to provide us we a good quality camera and they also have a white screen that we can shoot against. This does mean that we will have to ask for their permission and we will have to book the equipment. I will try to send the teacher an email tomorrow to sort it out.

George - Problems

Recently we've had a few problems with our computers hence the delay in production of the animatic but we hope to get it up as soon as and start posting on it.

George - feedback to JCutts ideas

• I really like the look of the daughtry video the spotlight and genearal lighting in particular is something we really hope to go for in the studio.

• Furthermore the deuces video is completely different to our genre but i like the effect of the flashing of images which i think we could do in time with the drum beats at points.

• The other two videos i dont think are relevant to what we want to do.

Feedback #3

Guys - no posts since 1st Nov? What progress have you made this week? You MUST document it.

Take A Look - Jcutts

The link below is of the Scripts first single of there new album, it shows a similar narrative to our in the fact that the lead singer is not the main narrative charecter , they help to convey this with the use of colourfor the charecter to connote that it is present and B/W contrast on the bad shots and lead singer to convey him on another level. This could also help to put Dyer's Paradox's into effect in the sense the lead singre is present and absent. I think we should consider a B/W effect for our band shots or atleast experiment with dfferent contrasts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtCpC8jE_Cs&feature=channel

Possible problems.... JCutts

Today we had a lengthy conversation about planning days to shoot and how we were going to do it . This post will cover some of the problems we are facing.

• Work Commitments; All of our group as well as the one actress have work commitments at weekends, which would idealy be a good time to make a second trip up to London. We did think of going after school one day , however with the daylight saving meaning we are getting shorter days, it would mean filming at night. This could reduce the quality of our filming and shots, unless we come up with an idea which we could come round this. However we did talk about using a couple of shots of city lights that blur out of focus . This may useful but we will have to assess if this could be done in a more conveniant location or if the trip to London would be worth trying to fit in.
• Group Members; The fact all our band members and actress have fairly different time tables does not help the matter when it comes to organising a shoot. We have already found that all of us have different times that are more conveneant for us . I feel the best solution for this is to have a joint discussion and discuss actual dates and book a date to take out the equipment .

Write up on London Shoot - JCutts

Overall I feel our shoot in London was successfull, the first couple of hours of filming we encountered several problems that we have most defiantely used as a learning curve . However we did find ways to overcome all of these .

• The first problem we faced was that in a busy location, such as London, playing the music track off a phone is hard to hear as well as keeping it out of the shot. Luckily I was wearing a hooded jacket which in the end we ended up placing the phone in the hood . This allowed us not only to hear the track to time the lip syncing , but also to allow the lead singer and the camera freedom to move, without the problem of the music being unheard.

We Feel this will not be a problem in other locations such as the studio as it is a far more quiet surrounding, this suits us very much as we intended on a change of costumes and clothing , and certainly did not want to have the lead singer in a big jacket in a studio.

• Although we agreed this at a earlier stage it wa sproven to be a valuable theory , that it far better to have to much footage than to little. After looking at shots on set and thinking they looked good, on our way back onthe train we were able to pick holes in the shots , and will probably do so further when we get the footage into premier.

Despite these problems we all agreed it was a good lesson that we made mistakes early as we can over come them and avoid making them in the future.