Digipack Ideas

Copyright Permission for Use of Track

As we are using a track that is currently owned by a record company, we are required to ask the respective company whether it is acceptable for us to use their track alongside our music video. The following is the letter that we constructed and sent to the record company:

To whomever it may concern,

We are a group of A Level Students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Feeling Good by Muse.

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely,
Isabel Boddy, William Edgley, Abigail Douetil and Elizabeth Ward-Thomas.
Hurtwood House School.

Feedback

This is soundwork - there are evident clear accounts of your planning and research for your music video production day after half term.  I like the way in which decision making is evident along with reflection and revisions, but this is somewhat descriptive rather than analytical at times, for example in discussion of Mise en scene and lighting which are important concepts in terms of the look that you want to promote.  Your cast list has been agreed and you need to be working on the set design and organisation of production. You need to recognise work that other's have completed in your group and identify what you have done - do this with individual evaluation.  Also try not to simply keep posting single images onto blog - use an online tool which helps display the images such as Flickr  Please make sure that you share resources but not evaluation work - which should be an individual effort.  Well done.

Dans Feedback

After having a conversation with Dan who is our lighting and set designer, we decided that we needed to think of a backdrop as it was something that all of us as a production crew forgot about. We came to the decision that we wanted a dirty backdrop of wallpaper that had been there for years and was starting to peel and had countless damp marks on it. This means that we have to make the wallpaper on our backdrop look dirty and old. We are going to use the same backdrop for both narrative and performance so it looks like both actors and band are in a similar environment.

We also decided that we want smoke around the whole band as they are performing and therefore we drew another set design to show this:

Set and Lighting Design

The video will start with the painist/singer in a spotlight and the rest of the band standing in their places in the dark. This is because there is only piano and singing for the first few seconds so the other band members will not be having to play anything. There will also be smoke along with the spot light to give it that mysterious feel.

After the drop, bright lights will come on all of the band to reveal their faces and they will all perform for a while. Throughout the video, the lights will slowly dim so they become of a similar low light to the narrative in which we are having a 'chiaroscuro' lighting.

chiaroscuro lighting in art is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. We will use it to indicate extreme low-key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in the video. This will give an almost black-and-white feel and we may even use a bit of black and white in there when doing after effects. This is an example of chiaroscuro lighting:

We are going to have an almost empty apartment to show that it is quite a sketchy acitivity what they are doing. We will have the simple objects such as a table on which there will be all the supplies used for the different activities, a sofa and some stairs. however, due to our use of chiaroscuro lighting most of these elements within the room will be in the dark.

 

Digipack Design

This is the second draft of the album cover for our band. Each member of the production group had an input into the creation and design of this cover and we all sat down together and talked about what changes we should make to this draft. we came to the conclusion that we needed to change

1. The name of the band changed to a larger font to make it stand out more. We also want to change the colour of the name so that it is more attractive to the eye.
2. The placing of the album name 'spanning three borders' as it can at the moment be read as 'three spanning borders'

We created this image by overlapping three images on photoshop. We used the photo of the Hadron Collider in switzerland, Leonardo Da'vinci's Man and a Pentogram.

Shooting Schedule

9:00 Meet with cast members (performance) in studio
9:10 Start shooting performance. Play song on repeat and get all of the shots of the performance.
Start with Wide Shot of band.
Move onto Close Up of singer.
Mid Shot of singer.
Close Up of hands playing the piano.
Wide Shot of piano player.
Over the Shoulder shot of piano player.
Close Up of paino players face.
Shot of drummer from behind.
Mid Shot of drummer from infront.
Mid Shot of drums from the side.
Close Up of drummers foot.
Mid Shot of guitar.
Close Up of guitar.
Mid Shot of bass.
Close Up of bass.
Tracking shot from piano's feet on pedals slowly up towards his hands on the piano and face.
Shot with singer in focus and rest of the band out of focus in the background.

12:30: LUNCH TIME

2:00: Meet with cast members (narrative) in studio.
2:10: Start shooting narrative.
Shot of guy grabbing nouse from table.
Shot of guy tugging on nouse.
Shot of guy hanging up nouse and tightening it.
Close Up of girl's head in nouse, smiling (creepy smiling)
Close Up of girl's head in nouse once it is 'tightened', she is pulling on it.
Shot from behind of guy tieing girls hands.
Reaction shot of girl whilst she is getting her hands tied, she has a smirk.
Over the shoulder shot of guy stroking girls hair.
Extreme Close Up of guy kissing girls legs on chair.
Mid shot of guy kissing and stroking girls legs whilst she is on chair hanging.
Shot of girl standing on chair, guy is shaking it a bit 'teasing'.
'Handheld' camera shot of guy kicking chair which girl is standing on, she is left to hang.
Close Up of girl fallen over on the floor holding her neck and breathing deeply.
Close Up of guy rolling out clingfilm from box - focus pull.
Shot of guy ripping clingfilm off in foreground with her in the background (out of focus).
Mid Shot of guy tieing girls arms around chair.
Close Up of girl's face with clingfilm wrapped around.
Mid shot of guy kissing girl whilst she has clingfilm on her mouth.
Mid shot from infront of her sitting down, him slowly beginning to rip off the clingfilm from behind.
Close Up of him ripping clingfilm off her mouth.
Shot of him pushing her off chair which falls to the floor along with her.
180degree tracking shot round the girl with guy standing next to her.
Tracking shot of guy wrapping clingfilm around girl's mouth.
Close Up of guy cutting rope.
Shot of girl falling to the floor from the rope.
Shot with camera placed on the floor (handheld) and girl lying on the floor hurt.
Same shot with camera on the floor but with him lying behind her.
Same shot again but with him rolling on top of her, they are looking into each others eyes holding hands.
Close Up of them looking into each others eyes, him on top of her.
Close Up of him holding her face, stroking her hair.
Shot of them rolling about angry with each other ripping each others hair etc, still from the floor.
Mid shot of her sitting ontop of him looking over him.
Tracking shot from floor (position camera has been in up to now) to them, her sitting on top of him, looking into each others eyes.
Close Up of their hands intertwining.
Close Up of his hand on her leg, caressing her thigh.

Costumes for Both Actors and Band-members

Band image:

 


we chose to use black skinny jeans as it fits our dark indie/alternative look that we are trying to show to our target audience, we also chose white t shirts and denim shirts as it also fits in with the indie look that we are trying to achieve.

Actors:





the girls in the group decided to make the girl within the shoot to be extremely pale with bright red lipstick to suggest lust and inncrease the amount of tim that people are drawn to her. We also decided to put her in a large baggy white t shirt as we are trying to draw attention to the sadism aspect of this video rather than making it 'sexy'

the male actor is going to be topless with dark hair and dark eyes.

Props list

• Keyboard/Piano

• Electric Guitar

• Bass Guitar

• Microphone

• Drumkit

• Rope

• Wooden Chair

• Pliars

• Clingfilm

• Dirty bed sheets

• Fake Blood

• Dolly for tracking shot

• Harness

Recording of Storyboard Animation

Storyboard Animation and Evaluation

• this was a huge step forward for us in terms of getting prepared for the editing of our main task as we have all been away from editing shots for some time. Although we all felt that this was a great platform for us to work from, after going over the finished product we came to the conclusion that the estabilishing shot might be too long but it would be hard to cut down as it is a tracking shot and is designed to take time and take everything involved within the mise-en-scene. Along with us doing this to show people what we are planning on doing, it is a great way of describing our narrative and displaying it easily. Finally, it gave us all of the shots in chronological order which is important if we need to change anything

Artist image and Cast list

After we decided to change our idea from 'Two beds and a coffee machine' to the cover of 'Feeling good' by muse we realised that we would also have to change the artists image that we are going to portray. Instead of using a good looking single artist, we are moving more towards an indie/alternative group that is less clean cut than we imaged our inital idea to be.

         

this image that muse have portrayed is crucial in the way in which we portray our band as we do not want to lose the alternative image within our interpretation.

our cast list is as follows:

1. Patch Wadsworth - leadsinger


2. Freddie Dixon - drums


3. Kyle Foreman - guitar
4. Connor Vickery - keyboard
5. bass ????

6. Molly Astley - lead female actress


7. Jake Cecil ? - lead male actor

we chose many of the members of the band due to the way that they suit the criteria that we are trying to fill. Most of the members of this group are individual/alternative looking people who would easily match what we would be looking for.  We also chose them due to their musical prowess as we need it to look realistic rather than people merely pretending to play the song on their respective instruments.

In regards to the acting side of this shoot, as it is reasonably disturbing, we needed to find two actors that were comfortable in doing this with each other and to make it look as if it is real rather than people merely acting it out.

Muse - Feeling Good lyrics

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me..
And I'm feeling good

Fish in the sea
You know how I feel
River running free
You know how I feel
Blossom in the trees
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me...
And I'm feeling good

Dragonfly out in the sun
You know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all out having fun
You know what I mean
Sleep in peace
When, the this day is done
And this old world
Is a new world
And a bold world
For me...

Stars when you shine
You know how I feel
Scent of the pine
You know how I feel
yeah, freedom is mine
When you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me...

yeah, ooh
Oh, ooh...

Oooh, ooh..free, free loving you...
Oooh, oooh
Feeling good

The Name Decide...Finally

Finally, our group has come to a decision on the name of the group. THE VIBE. Although this name is extremely simple, it is Effective and it sticks in the mind! The aim of this name, although it is simple and has no meaning as such, is to draw people in to the band and to the music rather than the name and the underlying history of the band.



this is the first idea of our band CD cover, although it will most probably change, it is a good start. We created this by mixing both an image we already had and an image from google and we photoshopped them together.

We would like the CD cover to be more simple but effective rather than hugely creative and different.

Deciding on a CD cover

to go along with this new type of genre that we have uncovered, i feel that our band CD cover should be slightly different and more individual than what our last artist would have used which is more mainstream. An example of the type of cover that i am hoping we will use would be covers that have been created by Muse which is the artist we are using

however, although muse have been known to do this type of album cover, the group has come to an agreement that it should be different, but at the same time have an image of either one member of the band or indeed the whole group

Decision Made

although our first idea was to go with 'Two Beds and a Coffee Machine' we came to the decision that we are going to change this to 'Feeling Good' by Muse. We made this decision because we felt that the first song was to slow and maybe slightly boring with a too limited audience. We are extremely happy to do this in the studio as it is probably too much to find a whole set and different settings as this is an extremely diverse video that we are aiming to create.

Muse - Feeling Good
 http://youtu.be/CmwRQqJsegw