Previous Students Work

What I liked about this video

• The links between the music and footage 'I miss my alarm' and then a clip of an alarm clock shows up.


• The still shots of images of a house party. Goes with the flow of the music.


• The duplicates of the main girl dancing in one shot, it went perfectly with the beat of the song.


• The use of close ups.


• The slow zoom in when she is looking into the camera.

what i disliked about this video

• The amateurish way in which the camera was used throughout, slightly wobberly in places, especially the clip of the light spinning round.


• The way in which the colours change from black and white to in colour, bit confusing.


• The simplistic narrative, too predictable.

what i want to avoid in my video

• using a thematic view of a music video, I felt that this was too simplistic and want to challenge ourselves more when thinking about ideas.


• the change between blakc and white and colour, keep all the same, as too confusing for the viewer.

what inspired me in this video

• the snappy editing, I love how the images change quickly either on or off the beat, really interesting for the viewer.


• the slow camera movements used throughout


• the change of speed of the movement of the camera within one shot.

e-mail to the xx

We have asked for licensing permission from 'The xx' to use their song 'Islands' in our music video.
Here is our E-mail.

Music sheets for the band...

Below are examples of the music tabs/sheets which we gave out to the actors within the band. We have asked them to learn these off by heart so that when we come to filming they don't have to waste time looking at music within shooting.

Piano

Guitar tabs

Bass Tabs

Study on Jack Johnson's digi pack.

For Jack Johnson's album 'to the sea' he has used a three panelled digipak including his cd and nine paged booket of lyrics photos, photo montages and thanks and details pages. The album is artistic and humble The front and back covers have matching dark blueish low saturated colour palettes wheras the colour is somewhat brighter on the inside. There is a clear theme of seaside living, through the front cover of the making's of a wave sculpture and the compleated version on the back, the inside three pannels show a seamless darkened blue and wooden panneling and on the folded side of one of these pannels is an old photograph of a yaght at sea, and on the edge of the photograph some more wooden panneling. The feel of the album is very eco friendly, the album itself advertises johnson as a '1% for the Planet' member, and the digipak itself claims to have been made using mixed sources with help from the FSC product group, not to mention the frequent imagery of wood throughout. The small booklet contains lyrics for each song on the cd (put to the background of different types of washed up wood) as well as two seamlessly joined pages of what appears to be a personnal old black and white photograph of a man and child building the wave structure, the other two pages are a montage of personnal pictictures of Johnson playing guitar or sitting chatting to friends and generally selling his own specific lifestyle. All in all it's a beautiful, artistic digipak with continuity to themes as well as advertising political and social ideas. a well rounded admirable and inspirational study.

Digipak Examples:

A Digipak is a patented style of packaging a CD and DVD. It usually consists of a "gatefold" paperboard and acts as a limited edition of albums and DVDs. Because of there exclusivity and it's lesser resistance to damage than the conventional CD or DVD casing, digipak's are usually collector's items and have a very limited release.

Digipak Example 1: Minutes to Midnight - Linkin Park:

Linkin Park are a multi-platinum rock band from California. They released their third album, "Minutes to Midnight" on May 14th 2007. Shortly after which, it was released as a digipak. It was very exclusive and only 500 copies of the album were made in the digipak format. The digipak consists of :

CD:

1. Wake

2. Given Up
3. Leave Out All The Rest

4. Bleed It Out

5. Shadow Of The Day

6. What I've Done

7. Hands Held High

8. No More Sorrow

9. Valentine's Day

10. In Between

11. In Pieces

12. Little Things Give You Away,

DVD:

-Making of "Minutes to Midnight"

-"What I've Done" music video

-Making of "What I've Done" music video

-Portable audio files for all tracks

-Ringtone for "What I've Done"

-Toolkit with photo gallery, screensavers and lyrics

This is a very typical digipak as it includes both the album and also the special features of a "making of" and a few music videos. It also includes a booklet of lyrics and photo's and this will make it appeal to it's fans.

Digipak Example 2: Beyonce - Greatest Hits:

Beyonce is an American singer and actress from Houston, Texas. Her "Greatest Hits" album was released as a digipak. The album contains tracks from her first two albums and also had only 500 copies made in the form of a digipak. This included:

CD:

1. Ring The Alarm

2. Crazy In Love (feat. Jay-Z)

3. Get Me Bodied

4. Naughty Girl

5. Suga Mama

6. Upgrade U

7. Baby Boy (feat. Sean Paul)

8. Hip Hop Star

9. Be With You

10. Me, Myself And I

11. Yes12. Listen

13. The Closer I Get To You

14. Fever

15. Irreplaceable

16. My First Time

17. Summer Time (feat. Diddy)

18. Work It Out

19. Check On

20. Deja Vu (feat. Jay-Z)

DVD:

-Beautiful Liar (duet with Shakira)

-Irreplaceable

-Kitty KatGreen Light

-Upgrade U (featuring Jay-Z)

-Flaws and All

-Get Me Bodied (extended mix)

-Freakum Dress

-Suga Mama

-Deja Vu (featuring Jay-Z)

-Ring the Alarm

-Listen (director's cut)

-Credits

This is also a very typical Digipak, however in contrast it seems to offer a lot less in special features that Linkin Park's "Minutes to Midnight" does. It does offer multiple music videos, some of which are extended or are "director's cuts". This Digipak will appeal to newer fan's who just want to listen to Beyonce's big singles so this may be the reason that there is not a lot of personal or "behind-the-scenes" features on the DVD that would appeal to the more hardcore fans.

These example's give us a lot of inspiration as a group and can give us a solid foundation on which we can build and bring in our own creative ideas and themes to make our Digipak look professional and conventional.We hope to incorperate many of the idea's used in these Digipak's into our own. For example, on both Digipak's, images of the band/artist are visible and we would like to include some shots of the band and actors also in our own Digipak.

Audience Research - The Questionaire

Previously we made up a Questionaire for our audience to answer, to determine who to aim our music video at. The results came out the way which we expected. So here are the results, I have grouped the answers into yes or no's.


Do you like the band The XX or any of their songs?
Yes - 8
No - 7


Do you like Indie music?
Yes - 14
No - 1


Do you like the locations of woodlands and forests?
Yes - 13
No - 2


Do you enjoy watching:
A) Performance and narrative music videos. - 9
B) Symbolic or thematic music videos. - 6


Which do you prefer as colours to wear:
A) A darker blacks, browns, Kakis etc. - 9
B) Brighter blues, whites, pinks and any others. - 6


Do you like:
A) The 'Grunge' look. - 9
B) The high street look - 6


Do you feel lonely and disatified?
Yes -4
No - 11


Do you feel hopeful and confident?
Yes - 11
No - 4


Are you between the ages of:
A) 10 - 18 = 8
B) 18-25 = 1
C) 25 - 40 = 3


Do you ever visit musicians websites?
Yes - 10
No - 5


Where do you buy your music?
A) Itunes - 7
B) Shops (CD's) - 5
C) Others - 3


From this we found that our music video will be aimed at the lower age range, between 10-18...

Location Snapshots

Dense forest, location one. It should be lighter when we use this location.

Extra location if needed.

Woodland. Location two. Will also be slighty lighter when filmed.

Possible band performance space.

Planning and Research - Self Evaluation:

- There is limited organisation of actors/locations/drafting/scripting or story boarding.

-There is proficient research into similar products and a potential target audience.

-Time management is good.

-There is excellent level of care in the presentation of research and planning.

-There is excellent skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.

-There are excellent communication skills.

Overall the Palendrome Productions team believes that we are working at a high level. We are generally proficient in our work, however we are limited in our organisation of actors/locations etc. This is something we need to work on considerably as well as keeping the rest of our work to a high standard to achieve our full potential of a Level 4.

Director's study - Chris Cunnigham

Chris Cunningham is an English music, video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading in 1970 and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk. His work DVD was released in November 2004 as part of a successful director label set. Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records. Best known videos include one of the Apex Twins 'Come to Daddy' and 'Window Licker'. His Style has sexual ambiguity, darkness, violence and often includes technology. His work has a general sense of Strangeness.

Bjork - All is Full of Love

This video is a simple narrative about the world of robots being more than just machines. The robots are melting through love within the setting of a lab. The lighting within the video is bright. This suggests a sense of a heaven and multiple characters, including Bjork's alter ego. This video includes lots of sexual connotations and symbolism, such as the white fluids being semen and the cables representing inner organs.

The whole music video uses many special effects. The most significant special effect used is to create the robots. The robots are created by taking the key features from Bjork's face and adding the robot effect over the top. By using Bjork's face, Cunningham is following the conventions of a music video, performance. This also ensures that Bjork gets screen time.

There are many different camera shots used within this music video. These include lots close ups on Bjork's face (another convention of a music video) and the machinery. Cunningham uses shot reverse shots between the two robots, this shows that the robots are interacting with eachother. The last significant camera work used is a master shot of the lab.

Andrew Goodwin - Madonna - Frozen

Music and Visuals - There is no link between the music and visuals apart from slightly linked to the Indian Culture by the way n which Madonna has Henna on her hands and also by her movement.

Lyrics and Visuals - Firstly the cold tint over the video (added post production) links with the lyrics 'Your Frozen'. Finally the line 'You Only See What Your Eyes Want To See' is an ambiguous comment, which, like the images, it creates its own representation ,the audience's opinion.

Demand of Close-ups - This music video has many close-ups of Madonna's face, as well close-ups of Madonna doing Yoga, lots of hand gesticulation, bending and flexing.

Notion of Looking - Madonna looks at the camera all the time, if not looking directly at the camera, her eyes are closed, but she is face on to the camera. Also in this video, the dog looks directly into the camera, with bright green eyes, this colour draws attention to the eyes, as it isn't a normal colour for a dogs eyes to be.

Intertextuality - Henna and praying is a reference to the Indian Culture. Another intertextuality with this music video is John W Waterhouse's paintings, which have a breezy look, which is simular to how Madonna appears with her cloak with a hood. Madonna looks alike to the women in Waterhouse's paintings.