Digipak photo shoot...

I plan to take the Digipak photos at school tomorrow lunch time. I want to take it at the bootom field, as this location has a thin woodland at the bottom, therefore linking to the music video of the woodland locations. I have asked all the actors/actress to bring/wear grungy clothing.. preferably the clothes in which they have used in the music video. Hopefully the weather will be good tomorrow. I want to take the four different shots (as shown in the posts below) of each actor from three different angles, high angle, low angle and straight on. This will give me a variety of shots to play with when putting the digipak together. Another idea of shot which I have thought up is of the two lead singers, both on either side of a tree looking grumpy and lonesome, which they have proven within the music video that they have become very good at it. This way I will be able to put the lyrics of the XX - Islands song onto the bark of the tree.

Editing..

We uploaded the footage which was shot over the weekend before school. Then we spent the whole of the first lesson cutting and editing a few of the clips down. These clips were of the close ups of both Grundy and Fitch (the two lead singers). After the lesson had finished we still had a couple of gaps left within our time line. As both Ruaraidh and Fitch had another lesson to go to, I stayed in my free and edited away, the teacher thankfully let me stay in the classroom while he was teaching. By lunch time the music video was finished.

However we still have to film a tiny bit more of the guitarist to break up the walk in at the lake location, as this shot appears to be too slow to go with the music.

Apart from this little detail, the music video is all edited into the timeline.

Ancillary Text - Website - Version 1..

I have just completed the first draft of our website for one of our ancillary texts. I have created a logo for the homepage and briefly done some of the links like "Bio" and Shop". However, some of the links are yet to be completed due to the stage we are in the task yet things like photographs for the "Gallery" and the Digipak for the "Shop" link will soon be in place. Follow the link below to the website:

http://www.wix.com/ruaraidh_j/islands

Mock up of the Digipak

This is a very rough idea of what I want the Digipak to look like... The quality is not very good, as we have to take the photos ourselves, these are just photoshopped, cut out pictures of the band members from photos that I found of them on facebook, where their whole body was in the frame, which was not easy to find, as many were just head shots.


This is for the inside cover. The location shot will be changed to the inside shot of the dense forest, but this image is of the field looking onto the forest.

1st inside cover

2nd inside cover

3rd inside cover

4th inside cover

These are very roughly cut out inages, however its just to gage an idea on how it looks as a composition. And I believe that it works well.

Things to do with the Digipak...

To help with organisation I am making a list of things to do, so that then I don't forget anything when it comes to shooting this:

1) Take the images of the band members in the locations.
2) Take profile shots of the band members.
3) Take Long shot photos of the band members seperately infront of a white screen.
4) Take Location shots.
5) Choose a font for the Digipak
6) Work out the wording for the Digipak
7) Chose the layout of the writting on the Digipak

Points 3 and 4 are for back up, incase the photos taken on location do not work out, I will be able to use photoshop to merge the images of the locations and band members together.

Idea for Digipak

We have decided on the layout of the Maltese Cross. This allows me to play with 10 sides, including both the front and back. Here is the template of the Digipak.

The whole idea of the music video is that the band members, and narrative crew are finiding each other when searching their way through the three different locations, the dense forest, the woodland and finally reuniting at the lake. This idea I also want to carry on with the digipak layout. However I want to minus the narrative characters, as this Digipak is for promoting the band and their album, and not for their music video.

This idea of losing and finding each other is going to be a key aspect of this Digipak layout. My vision for the moment is that the Inside four sides of the Digipak will be of the first location, the dense woodland. The top flap will have one band member, for example the bass playing. Then, going clockwise on the flaps, a new member of the band is added to the image. The position of the band members in each slide will be the same, but a new member of the band would just be added to the image. The order of the band members added will be: the bass player, the guitarist, the female lead singer, and finally the male lead singer.

On the back of the Digipak, the four sides, minus the back cover, will be of a simular layout of the inside flaps, however, the only difference is that the band members will be in the second location, the woodland. The order of the band members appearance in the pictures will be the same as the inside flaps.

Finally the back cover will have on it an image of the band members at location three, the lake. The layout of the band members will be of a 'V' shape, with the male and female lead singers standing further away from the camera than the bass player and the guitarist.

Digipak planning

As one of our deadlines are looming, we are having to split our time affectively and to direct different roles to each person within the group. As I'm the artist of the group, I feel confident that I can use my skills to the best of my ability to produce a digipak. To do this I have look at examples of digipaks to get an understanding of what makes up a digipak. Below are a couple of examples of digipaks which I have found while searching the net:

The three examples which I have found are all very different. The first concentrates on the lead singer, with close ups of the face front and side on. The Name is very clearly shown in the lower centre of the images. The second example uses one image which merges along all the pages. The colours are very sombre and mellow, with the black fading into the ball of fire with the glow shimmering around. The Third and final exaple had the name clearly shown on the front. The images are of the locations within the music video.

Out of these exaples, I will take a combination of the conventions of both example one and three, taking the close ups from example one and the location shots for example three.

Editing

The editing process has been going very successfully so far. Thankfully all of our footage we filmed of the actors/actresses are in sync. During our last lesson we were concentrating on editing the narrative side of our music video. This went well, and we decided that rather than matching the footage to the lyrics, for example starting a new frame when a new line starts within the song, we decided to place the shots to match the music, concentrating heavily on the drums and bass. Our narrative shots have been shunk in length, to make the music video snappy and exciting for the viewer to watch. However, contradicting this, there is slight variation in the length of the shots when the bridge and chorus starts.

Through the editing process we have written down the lyrics in which we have to reshoot for the lead singers to sing, to follow the conventions of a music video, with lots of close ups. I believe that we can experiment a bit more with the angles of this part of the re filming, as many angles so far have been staight on. For the musicians I think the low angles would enphasise the importants of them as musicians, and that this shot is very effective within a music video.

Re-Shoot

After looking through the footage which we have captured, we have realised that we are missing a few of the criteria of a music video. Although we have a couple of close-ups of David Grundy (lead male singer) we are missing close-ups of Fitch (lead female singer), Dan Franklin (Guitarist) and Ruaraidh (Bass). This is essential for a music video. Therefore we have to reshoot to capture this footage. We plan to reshoot this Sunday.

Trying out WIX

We have all been trying out the WIX website in preparation for creating the final website. Here is a link to my first rough trial.

http://www.wix.com/bonnieboo43/the-xx-test-run-made-better

Location three exploration.

Whilst filming i also took photographs of location three: the lake. I tried to experiment with multiple angles and tried to find rythem within the water mostly with the camcorder, although some of the photos i took along the way also show this. i used the woodland behind the lake to film sections emerging from to woodland into the sparse land. This will be particularly useful for continuity aspects of our music video, even though this was not the woodland we used for the band shots.

Filming Problems, Editing Success...

Now we are back at school, we have started our editing process. Unfortunately, we have undergone many problems when filming and editing. One of our main problems was the amount of actors we needed to have for filming, which was around 10 and so we faced difficulties in finding a day in which everyone was able to film. Due to this problem we had to film over two weekends and this caused even more problems. The weather dramatically changed over the weekends from snow to sunshine and so this meant that the majority of the footage we shot from our first shoot had to be deleted.

However after a successful second shoot, we managed to get the majority of the filming done and have uploaded the footage onto the school Mac's and have started to edit footage. We are currently in the middle of our January exam's so the focus on our Media coursework has wained slightly as has our actors chances of having a free day to shoot the few and final scene's needed for our Music video. Nevertheless, we are progressing rapidly in the editing process and have devoted many study periods to getting it done as quickly as possible.

An analysis to enliven our mindset

These music videos include lively camera shots, something we have planned for our own music video, they are also quite unusual when compared to the mainstream glossy Hollywood music video's we see on MTV or VIVA.-Something we are also trying to avoid.- So i thought it could help enrich our music video understanding. Sadly the second music video's embed code has been disabled by request, but as it happens it was the one with the most active camera shots, so please ensure you follow the link to YouTube.
What the cat empire are about:'Where hip-hop meets reggae, where jazz is played with dirty hands, where a Cuban line meets an Aussie rule, where nothing seems in place but sounds like many places played in one earthy chord. This is the island where THE CAT EMPIRE was born.(Written by the band in 2001)

This band is very much branded, particularly through their songs but with a lot of help from their music videos. If we are looking at 'DAYS LIKE THESE' from a 'Goodwin's six' perspective, the strongest aspect would be the link between lyrics and visuals. From analysis of these videos you can pick up a lot of warmth from colour editing which expresses where the band come from, 'you can send us some sun and we'll play you a tune' The busy camera work and amount of extras in the video suggest the amount of party's they go to yet a relaxed atmosphere, it also promotes the idea of meeting a lot of new people, and having a lot of friends. 'its days like these kicking back, just doing what we do' The setting of the video is very rustic it suggests that you can live a lot even if you haven't got much, drawing links between lyrics and visuals 'bring a bottle of rum ' -'can't afford it but i bought it, to laze in the sun' again promoting the idea of having a busy social life.

All musicians look directly at the camera which ad hears to Goodwin's 'notion of looking' They wear glasses also which draws attention to their eyes and suggests they are in a sunny place which again promotes their 'branding'

i do not believe there to be any intertextuality to this music video.

demand for close up shots There are quite a few close up shots but when compared to a typical Rhianna video for example its not at all the same amount. The close ups are mostly of the two singers, but in handheld shots (which features heavily to suggest freedom, naturalness, liveliness...) the camera tends to be close to groups of random faces again, suggesting a busy party atmosphere and emotional closeness to everyone.

The link between music and visuals is that of a completely non pretentious, slightly crazy 'do whatever you want' kind of tone. The beats cut off and change to rap sections, within parts of the music a trumpet will kick in for a few beats the music is full of rhythm and beats, its lively, etc etc. The music video fits perfectly to the music as it uses different types of camera and therefore there is a mix of resolutions creating a type of bricolage, as well as them editing a kind of sepia tone to certain shots. The video is also aware of its own production which adds to it being postmodern.



PLEASE!!! also check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFxo4mpiKg <<< Cat Empire, sly music video. or type 'The Cat Empire, sly' into YouTube to see some very fast snappy camera work, something we are aspiring for.

first day of filming

We began filming in the Christmas holidays.
Due to the fact i live very close to the locations i went to film some early morning shots of our locations for use in the first few seconds of the song, later on the rest of the group joined me to film for the rest of the day.
Although we had planned to shoot 1 day per location, we found that due to the amount of actors we wanted; thier dates tended to clash. Therefore we have filmed first with the band and our next shoot will include our narrative group. Because of this we managed to get the shots done quickly and due to the fact locations one and two are based next to each other we wisely used the extra time to shoot the shots in the other location.
Everything ran smoothly and we used time well, achieving the shots we had planned. However we may return to re-shoot at a later date to ensure that the shots were of the best possible standard, but this may be difficult as we rely on natural light which varies considerably at this time of year.