This week, I'm going to be focussing more closely on particular technological techniques I can improve. Alongside my continuing creative progress with my print production and music video planning, I will also try to follow three targets for myself:
Try out the splitscreen technique on Adobe Premier Pro
Experiment with colour filters and saturation on Adobe Premier Pro
Research possible techniques for Adobe After Effects to give shots an aged appearance
All these will be helpful preparation for when my partner and me begin to edit our music video.
In this week, I've started working in earnest on my Print Production task and, with only vague ideas of what I wanted, I began to experiment on Photoshop. I know that I want to include some sort of woodland imagery so, for now, I've been playing around with a picture of woods that I've found on the internet. After building up some textures with low opacity dry-brush style brushes (and erasing with the same types of brushes) to get a mottled effect, I placed the image beneath it, then altered the colour levels and opacity. Having done my research on fonts that I liked, I used my favourite as the centre feature of the cover, experimenting with alignment and font size. I know that I want to keep this elongated font style, even if my design changes.
Though I'm happy with this, I think I might use a simpler design. Whilst I was looking for a woodland image, I came across a "shoe tree", a tree that is laden with shoes. I thought this would be a useful reference to the use of hanged people in our video, without putting anything gruesome on the cover, and so am going to try and pursue this with my next attempt.
Sir Ken Robinson & Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson thinks that creativity is based on failing or doing things wrong. He says that children are unafraid of being wrong or making mistakes and that as we are educated we are made to be scared of failing or doing something wrong or different and this quells our creativity.
In experimenting in this way, I'm bound to get things wrong or encounter products of my ideas that I'm not happy with. I need to not be afraid to make these mistakes, as I'll be able to learn from them in order to produce the best possible digipak.
To get a better idea of how digipaks are successful in their presentation of their bands, I have began to look into different digipaks, analysing them and understanding how they are relevant to their corresponding artist and genre. Muse's album digipak for "The Resistance" stood out in particular.
Muse - The Resistance
Outer Covers
Inside Covers
Disc
Analysis
It's interesting that Muse have taken an illustrative approach to their digipak front cover; most album covers use promotional-like photography of the band or subjects relevant to the band in order for a viewer to identify with them. Indeed, given their alternate music genre, it's obvious that they have chosen a similarly alternate route in digipak's presentation. Even the photos of the band defy the mainstream norms. Whilst most pop artists define their albums by using their own image, clear and looking straight at the camera (and thus targeting the audience) in a studio-type location, Muse's photos are black and white, blurred action shots, suggestive of a constantly active lifestyle, and not clearly staged and falsified as some mainstream cover photos may appear; with run-down urban settings, these are far from the glamour of a pop album, making the album's name, "Resistance," perhaps more symbolic in its ability to resist the mainstream expectations of an album's appearance and the music it contains. Indeed, the first track, "Uprising" states, "they will not control us." The bleak colours also shadow the dark, dystopian mood of many of the tracks' lyrics.
It can also be observed that there's a lot of symbolism in the cover's image. The multi-coloured geometric structure surrounds the centrally aligned Earth, with the side of the path producing reading lines which lead the eye from the bottom to the centre of the picture, back to the planet. It's impersonal; all we see of any person is a silhouetted form, leaving us with no idea if this person is old or young, male or female, a contrast to more mainstream albums, whereby the target audience is generally embodied by the cover photos/images. It can be understood that Muse's audience is not as particularly age or gender specific. Instead, by focussing on the Earth on the cover, a sense of universal importance is instead portrayed. The stars in the background of the picture link to many major Muse themes, and could be intertexually referring to Muse's older albums such as "Black Holes and Revelations", which had strong space themes. Theme consistancy is even displayed in the use of text colour on the album - just as the cover's colours graduate through a reverse-spectrum of colour, from purples through to oranges and reds, as does the track list and the title on the spine, allowing it to stand out against the otherwise bleak colours. It also shows how the cover image continues on to the disc, now in an utterly spherical and colourless form.
It's clear that Muse is a well established band; they have no need to clearly brand their material and so, wheras a new band may have a large band logo or title to clearly promote the artist, this cover shows both a small band logo and title, leaving the image as the prominent feature. This suggests that the band has a large enough following for fans to seek the music out, rather than rely on simply spotting it on a shelf.
In contrast with the more alternative approach from Muse, I've looked at how a mainstream artist would approach digipak design too.
Contrary to Muse's illustrative approach, the album for Se7en uses photography to portray the artist. A close-up head-and-shoulders shot of the artist establishes his image as a branding device - looking directly at the camera, he establishes a connection with and targets the audience. This photo reoccurs on the CD design, too. The colours are muted and in almost sepia tones, and the background is dark shadow. This, combined with the artist's unsmiling face connotes a sense of seriousness and darkness.
The colour themes are echoed in the use of font colours - using a yellowish colour for Se7en's name, and also giving a shine to make it appear as gold, suggestive of riches - "bling" - and all other words are similarly given a metallic sheen for presumably the same purpose - the appearance of expense and class.
In order to gather feedback for our music video plans so far, me and Beth put together a note on my Facebook page, which included the previously posted final concept, the song and some information on possible costumes and locations we would use. At the end of the note, we devised five questions that should help us continue to tweak and improve our plans. These questions were:
Would you recognise this as a folk-genre music video? Why/why not?
Do you feel that this video targets your age range? How/why?
Does this sound like an authentic music video that you would expect to be broadcast on TV? Why/why not?
Would you watch it? Why/why not?
How would you improve it?
I then tagged the people who most closely fitted the target audience for our video so that we could gather the most relevant replies. These were some of the replies:
Everyone responded very well to the setting and appearance of our video, and found that they could draw links with the folk genre easily due to the stereotypical elements we included to enforce our genre - natural, woodland settings, for example - which meant that the genre could be deduced even without the music, as noted by Chris in the comments.
Whilst two of the main three who commented suggested that the age range for the folk genre should be more generalised, the youngest of the three, Jack, suggested that people of his age would be more interested in more mainstream videos and themes, which enforcers me and Beth's understanding that we should be aiming our video at a more mature audience.
What was most important for us to understand was how believable and authentic our video appeared; all three agreed that from what they could see of it so far, it was indeed authentic, but perhaps, as it had dark themes, it ought to be aired later. This reading of the text is something me and Beth will perhaps need to attempt to alter - although our video has an appearance of darkness, there is supposed to be an air of quirkiness and surreality to alleviate this and make it more accessible. We'll have to think of a way to bring through this lightness in a more dominant manner.
As these people are representative of the sorts of audience we hope to target with our video, it was also important to understand if the video would interest and engage them. Whilst, as Chris pointed out, the watchability of a video is partly based on the music it is representing, he also noted that the themes and imagery were "intriguing" and so would watch it out of interest in the imagery. Jack said that he would watch it due to its narrative plotline, which therefore appears to attract an audience, as people would be obliged to watch it to the end to seek the resolution of the narrative sequence, and Emma noted that she would like it simply due to its genre and that the video was representative of it.
Whilst it seems that most were happy with the video's concept as it was, which is cheering, Chris suggested that perhaps we could make less of the repetitive untying of the ropes, unless we could find ways to vary it. This will be very helpful when we come to shooting and editing, as we now know how to approach these shots and how to add interest to them, as well as knowing how many of these shots to add to the final cut so as to not get too repetitive.
Working with Beth, both in class and over the internet, and referring back to the feedback from the pitch, we worked our ideas into a final concept that we can refer back to for our music video storyboarding.
This Young Boy
Finalised Concept
Main character pushes his bike up the path (no music). Arriving at the top of Red Hill Lane, he looks around.Pan shot of landscape around lane (POV). He climbs on his bike and, kicking off, the music starts. From different points of view, we watch him cycle down the lane. As he nears the railway bridge, the lighting begins to shift and become more surreal. As he rides beneath the railway bridge, the image is blown out with light, and we lose visuals.
He is suddenly in woods, the lighting dark and with muted colour. He looks around. Canted angles, circling tree shots, more POV. He begins to walk the path, still singing. He halts. There is something dark and out of focus behind him. Shift focus: from main character, to body, back to him, to the foreground, where rungs of ladder can be seen. He calmly reaches his hand towards the ladder without looking at it (and from now everything he does has a slightly quirky, almost -but not quite - humorous approach to offset the darkness). He turns, the ladder tucked under his arm, and approaches the person. He props the ladder against the tree beside the body and begins to climb. Close up of hands undoing the knot on the branch. See the rope slip away (slow motion). POV of looking down over the branch, see the body splayed on the ground. Low angle shot looking back up at the main character in the tree who begins to climb down. Back to the first high angle shot of him leaving the ladder. Picks up body and props it on its feet. Close up of face, eyes opening suddenly. The revived person follows at a distance as the main character picks up his ladder, sticks it under his arm and walks away.
Switch to storyline 2. Lighting is bright and warm. Establishing shot of rolling countryside taken from inside a car (Note: when shots are taken from inside a car, this is a family holiday video – handheld shots). Also shots of the countryside around. See car in background. Sound of song is lower. Radio turned up and sound returns to full volume. Long shot of location, car goes by, zoom in on a tree.
When zoomed out, we are back in the wooded location. Side shot of main character leading a procession of about 4 dead people. Time begins to move faster, and in a series of faster shots, we see repetitive actions of him placing his ladder against various trees, his hands picking at knots, the bodies dropping. From a low angle, only the newest dropped body is seen, and the feet of others in the background. The main character leans into the shot and helps the new person to their feet. As they rise together, the camera follows until, at normal height, the camera is looking across a crowd of people.
The bridge begins. The main character is alone in the centre of a clearing. The camera circles him. As he looks around, the dead emerge from the trees. This is intercut with a short fragments of the continuing storyline 2, shots of the car turning into an estate, shots of inside the car with the family laughing. Then back to the main storyline. People continue to emerge. This continues in this manner until they, at a distance, surround him and begin to slowly dance around him, circling. The camera spins from the centre of this, flashing past each face.
They stop, and the circle parts. The main character’s eyes fall on something out of shot and, the crowd of the dead split into two equal ranks on each side, they follow him, though the camera angles deny the viewer of what he is seeing, showing him approaching the camera from a high angle. Finally a reverse shot is provided, a close up of dangling feet. There’s a shot back of the main character, whose eyes travel up the body. In splitscreen, he looks at the face – it is a dead version of himself. He steps backwards, out of shot. There are still interrupting shots of storyline two. Slowly, he climbs his ladder. As there’s another close up of his hands on the knot, and it releases slowly.
As it does so, there’s a final sequence of the car, turning a corner, and travelling down a short road. Jumping to inside the car as it approaches the bridge, we see the main character on his bike, going underneath the other side of the bridge. It cuts back to the body falling the final foot to the ground as faint sound of the car brakes screeching is heard. A high angle POV from the branch looks down at the body, and the crowd of dead watch. From ground level, we see the dead version of the main character’s head and shoulders. A match-on-action, we then see the boy in the clothes he wore at the start of the video, lying in a similar position on concrete, the wheel of his bike spinning in the foreground. In the last moments, after lying still as if dead, he opens his eyes.
Having completed our pitch, we were given back the anonymous forms that the class had been given to review our video ideas. This has been helpful in aiding our understanding of how we can improve.
The class responded well to our audience research, noting that it was "realistic" and "well researched", and, commenting on the originality of the idea, noted it was "different" and "entropic", a response Beth and me are very pleased with, having set out to overthrow redundant themes and aim towards something very quirky and interesting in its originality. However, there was a comment that suggested it was similar to Mumford and Sons. This is an opinion that I disagree with quite strongly, though I can understand where similarities lie in terms of mise-en-scene (the costumes and settings) perhaps, though this aspect is unavoidable - we still need to retain some of the redundant characteristics we pinpointed in our music video research to ensure that our video can indeed be recognised as a video for folk music.
Naturally, with the setting and concepts included in our music people, health and safety was questioned a lot. When asked about how achievable they thought the music video would be, most of the class expressed doubts about the "hanged people" we wanted to include in the darker scenes, asking how we would manage it. This was, however, already a point which we had carefully considered: we will not have a rope directly connecting a person to a tree. The rope which hangs from the tree and the rope that circles the characters' necks will be two different entities, cancelling out all risk of accidental injury in this respect. The shots of the hanged people will not show the full body at the same time. Rather, if we want shots of the upper half of the body, the actor can stand on a chair, or even on the floor. If we want shots of feet, we will find a low branch and get the actor to sit and dangle their feet in the air. Of course, climbing the trees is also potentially dangerous, and we will be mindful in picking appropriate trees with branches low enough to present little danger of falling and sustaining serious injury. In the woods, we must also be careful of tripping hazards such as roots and sticks, and be sure to keep warm. All we really need now to keep in our considerations is the weather - filming outdoors with unpredictable weather could seriously harm our shooting time scale if the weather makes a turn for the worse, and we'll have to be mindful of this.
A few people commented on the lighting. If we're in woodlands, the possibilities are that the shots will be much darker than intended. As we can't really take studio lighting into the woods, we will be careful to choose areas that are well lit and edit the shots in post production to rectify brightness and contrast issues.
Overall, almost everyone everyone agreed that it sounded like a realistic and exciting idea.
With our initial research and ideas compiled, the class was requested to present their ideas to each other in the form of a Pitch. Whilst some people used Prezi and others cut their ideas into a video, Beth and me put together a Powerpoint slideshow in order to present our ideas.
Pitch Notes
Genre and Taxonomy
We wanted our video initially to have all of these above attributes - it was certainly going to be folk, matching the genre of the song we'd chosen and, as including rural scenery is a large feature in folk music videos, the choice to also make our video relatively scenic is an easy one. We want it to tell a story, so it will have a strong narrative structure, but we didn't want to follow a redundant path. Following the idea of binary opposition suggested by Levi-Strauss, we wanted to contrast themes of light and dark, life and death, and, attempting to get away from redundancy, had initially thought our video to be disjunctive due to its rejection of the lyrics. (However, since then, as our ideas have developed, it's clear to see now that our music video will instead amplify the meaning of the video, as it too talks of death and has dark themes, despite the cheery nature of the song).
This is David
David Gibb, the artist of the song we're going to be using - "This Young Boy" - is a clear example of his own target market, who are likely to be students between the ages of 16 - 21, with indie/vintage fashion tastes and likely to shop both at independent vintage shops as well as places such as Urban Outfitters and Cow. The target audience is likely to be in the C1 - A range of the demographics, and, psychographically speaking, are likely to be hedonists and aspirers. As lovers of folk music, they would probably have a greater appreciation of the outdoors, as well as enjoying music festivals, drinking and perhaps smoking.
Inspiration and Influences
In this, we referred to our initial music video research and displayed the music videos for Mumford and Sons' "Winter Winds" first, and we stated what appealed to us and what we could carry across into our own video, as well as what we disliked.
We particularly liked the mise-en-scene in this video. The costumes were perfect, and easily displayed the vintage/indie style we'd picked up on for our target audience. The settings fitted the conventions of a music video well too, with many scenic locations - country roads, cornfields etc. It also showed us that the weather and brightness didn't have to be an issue - this video seemed shot beneath a very dark sky which we'd be likely to face when we shoot our own video, it being winter at the moment. Time was taken over particularly picturesque shots, such as the carrying of a chair and guitar through the field. However, there were aspects we decided we definitely didn't like. There was much use of fade-to-black transitions. Both me and Beth felt that this ruined the effect of the video and didn't fit. We also agreed that the video felt too cheesy - whilst it was clear to see the band were having fun, in some shots, the close up shots of their smiling faces as they ran up the road with wind and bunting trailing behind felt far too over the top and cheesy.
The music video for Bon Iver's "The Wolves" was also well liked. It fitted well with the idea of scenic locations, and had a majority of its shots dedicated wholly to attributes of the scene - trees, paths, the sun through the trees etc. We liked how despite the low amount of narrative structure and variation, it still held our attention, and some of the shot types, such as a spinning extreme-low-angle shot looking up through the trees at the sky were highly effective. It also showed, again, that shooting in winter doesn't have to be a problem - snow appears to work well on camera. However, we did feel that the scenic shots were a bit much, and more time could have been devoted to the artist or at least in developing a more followable plot line.
Stornoway's "I Saw You Blink" was also very much enjoyed - it once again had the mise-en-scene we liked, and we appreciated how comedy was made mostly subtle - it did, however, sometimes come out as too cheesy, especially near the end of the video where they pretended to play instruments made out of other objects, which also showed particularly bad lip-syncing. The focus techniques in the video were very nice - we liked how they, for example, focussed on a branch in the foreground whilst action happened in the background of the shot. The narrative threads also wove together well.
The Wickerman
As already explained in my research, the 70's version of "The Wickerman" was the perfect example of how a bright folk song can be twisted to fit darker themes, and proves that our own attempts to do the same can be brought off successfully if done right.
Existing Video
To ensure that we were aware that a video is already in existence for our song choice, we showed the approach that another had taken to the song in the creation of the video. Whilst we want ours to be very much narratively driven, the existing video is driven much more by the progression of the visuals, the changing of outfit/body paint designs for example, and appears interestingly abstract in approach.
The Moodboard
As already explained here in my blog, Beth and me put together a moodboard in Photoshop to highlight aspects of our video - the contrasts between light and dark, the woodland - and possibly other - settings, as well as ideas for props, other mise-en-scene etc.
The Concept
Beth and me found that when other people did their pitches, they explained very little about the content of their video, and so we instead clearly presented our ideas. We know we want a clearly narrative structure, and want to contrast life and light with death and the dark. The central character has moved from life to a darker world, perhaps in between life and death, in a woods, where he's confronted with hanged people that he cuts down, the action apparently bringing these hanged people back to life. We want the video to build to the end, where he faces a dead version of himself which he also cuts down, ending the video. It's the concept that this boy's "idea" has saved the lives of others and his own.
Location Scouting and Dummy Shots
Missing from the internet version of the slideshow, I had embedded video clips of the location scouting and trial shots. In our experimentation, we found particular shots we liked (mimicking the rotating skywards shot as seen in Bon Iver - The Wolves, low angle shots of feet, extreme high angle shots of walking feet, landscape pans etc.) and displayed them to give the class a better idea of the locations and shot types we would be using.
I will try to edit together these clips in Premier so that they can be seen online.
Techniques
We've chosen particular techniques that would really make an impact on the effectiveness of the video. Splitscreen will play and important part at the end, when the character is confronted with himself.
To highlight the differences between the light and dark scenes, we would use colour filters to add a brightness and colour saturation to the "life/past" shots (as no doubt when we film, it will be dark and overcast, being winter), and also muting colour in the "present/death" shots to connote a greater feeling of lifelessness.
Asking Permission
We contacted David both through his Myspace page and by email, and managed to get a reply. As long as we show him our final video, we're welcome to use the track.
Health and Safety
The nature of our video presents a lot of health and safety issues. Filmed mostly in the woods, we will have to be aware of trip hazards and, as we may be using ladders and climbing low branches, we will have to be very aware of the stability of the tree, as well as obvious falling hazards. Due to it being filmed in winter, we'll also have to make sure that all of us are dressed warmly and don't remain outside for longer than is necessary.
Obviously, our big health and safety issue is how we will achieve the hanged people. We had initially thought about full-body shots, throwing around ideas of dummies, but this seems both too complicated and impractical, and have ruled out these sorts of shots for it. We also briefly considered harnesses, but this again is too complicated. Seeking advice, it will probably be best to shoot head and shoulder shots whilst the person is standing on a chair, and feet shots with the person hanging from a low branch.
We've also considered how the rope will be made - the neck loop and the main rope WILL NOT BE ATTACHED. Rather, the long rope will be tucked into the back of the person's clothing. This eliminates all choking/lethal hazards here.
The Outlook Web App that we use to communicate with each other also has a convenient calendar function, which allows me to put in events, their times and dates, and allows me to clearly see the length of time they span. With this, I should be able to keep on-time and organised as my planning progresses.
On this calendar function, there's also the option to share the calendar. In this case, me and Beth began planning our dates and times on her computer, and so it was her calendar. However, she was then able to share her calendar with me, so I could see it on my calendars. This will also prove useful later, when we have to organise many people for our music video, as we can simply share the date/time/place information clearly and easily.
This will hopefully be the span of events for the rest of November:
And December:
I can also easily add in new events/information if any comes to light.
