I have done a draft magazine tour poster and a draft album poster for one of the ancillary tasks.
We will be taking the ancillary task photos when we film the band shots and we will also try and do some location shots as well. Because we have done draft work for our posters and for the digi pack we know what type of shots to get and how to place the band to when it comes to putting the writing on we can do it easily.
To get some extra evaluation from people outside of our group and school peers, we decided to put up our video on YouTube to get some advice about our video from people all over the web!
We managed to get the instruments need to do some band shots so we booked out the drama studio at our school and tried some out. We then put the videos onto PremierPro and synced them up with the music.
We thought this would be a good idea to do because it showed us what types of locations will and will not fit in with the mise en scene of our music video genre. It also allowed us to see what the selection of shots we collected looked like when put to the music so when we film our real band shots we knew which ones would work and which ones wouldn't.
We are now going to film our band shots in our schools gym which goes pitch black when all the lights are turned off, we will then use the photography lights to light up the band and in theory the rest of the room will still be pitch black. We got this idea from looking on YouTube at other A2 music video's and thought it was a good idea to try.
We have created another video blog, which is showing the different range of video shots we are planning on using in our music video. This helped our group to become knowledgeable with the camera equipment. Also it let us find out how long it would take to set up all the equiptment so we can plan our days effectivley.
These are the shots we talk about in our vlog in order.
Mid Shot
High-AngleTwo Shot using a Handheld-Jib
High-Angle Shot with Reverse Zoom using a Handheld-Jib
High-Angle Shot withTilt upwards using a Handheld-Jib
Full-Shot with Tilt upwards using a Handheld-Jib; an example of Gaze Theory
Track and Pan using a Dolly
Track and Pan using a Dolly
Tracking Shot with Zoom using a Dolly
Over-The-Shoulder Shot using Steadi-Cam
Pan into an Extreme Close-Up using Steadi-Cam
Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom using Steadi-Cam
Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom using Steadi-Cam
Mid Shot; an example of using the 'Rule of Thirds' using Steadi-Cam
We decided to create a video blog talking through some of the things we had achieved so far. By doing this it gave us the opportunity to use the video camera and then edit the footage on Premier Pro which is the software we will be using for our music video.
Here are some shots of the real band Paramore.
We were looking at these to give us some inspiration towards the band photos we will be taking.
In these shots of Paramore they always have Hayley Williams (lead singer) in front of the rest of the band.
The photos could also be seen as quite quirky as they are never just plainly smiling in the shots.
I also looked at some other band shots from within the genre and found that they also took their pictures with the lead singer based in the front of the shot. Also none of them are particularly serious.
I looked at band's different types of posters / advertisements from the rock genre to see how they had set theirs out and what kind of pictures they used.
Paramore's tour poster had the band logo at the top with a big main image of them underneath and all the informational writing in smaller fonts beneath the photo.
You Me At Six's film documentary poster also had a big main image of them, however had the band logo underneath the picture with all the informational writing at the bottom in a smaller font.
This shows that most posters have the same information on them and are set out in similar ways with a big picture of the band normally in the center and then the bands logo will be placed around that with information about them at the bottom in a small font.
Here are two scans of our story boards. We have sketched and planned out 51 shots which we will use when filming. When we come to editing our music video we will add in all of the quick cuts. We done the story boards so we would know what locations and shots were needed in the specific part of the song we are filming at that moment.
Here are some shots of us drawing out the story boards.
Videos from the Rock genre that we have chosen are normally quite fast paced and have a lot of quick shots. They normally consist of band shots with the band normally in a plain room with a narrative running alongside.
I decided to look at some Paramore videos to see what they do so we could perhaps use some of the more common things we know the audience like so we can add them to our videos as well.
For example in Paramore - Crushcrushcrush, they have the band shots with a narrative and even though the band shots aren't in a room they are still in quite a simple location so the band are the main focus. A lot of closeups of individual band members is also used, this is something we can use in our video as it's easy to achieve.
I also looked at Foo Fighters - The Pretender, in this they also have closeups of each band member. The video is also filled with quick cuts and wide angles so you can see all of the band members together, these are also things we can try and get when we start filming our video.
Before starting any of our ancillary tasks we decided to come up with our band logo which will appear on everything. We started off by researching other bands logos in the rock genre to see if we could get any inspiration from theirs.
We went on to Photoshop and started to play around with different designs and different ways of having the band name written down. We finally came up with something we all liked which was to have a big P and E at the beginning and the end with grey and mustard yellow lines to represent the bands colour scheme.
To help keep things consistent through our project we made a style guide, in this we have:
The fonts - Orator STD and Agency FB
The record company – Fueled By Ramen (this is the same one that Paramore uses)
Colour schemes – Mustard Yellow and Grey
Costume ideas
Location ideas / shots
Here are some screen shots of our actual stlyle guide - We have kept it on the computer instead of writing it out or sticking it down so we can always come back and change or add things if we need to.
After finally choosing what song we were going to do we started looking at different fonts we could use for our band title and for any informational writing, we need our fonts to be consistent all the way through the project so our audience could start to associate the fonts we choose with our band Paramore.
We looked at a range of different fonts but finally chose to use Agency FB for the band title and Orator STD for informational writing (see ticked fonts).
For our band title we also put some drop shadow on, just to make it stand out more.
The song we are going to do for our music video is Misery Business by Paramore.
After pitching both ideas (The Only Exception and Misery Business) to our teachers they said that we should choose Misery Business as our song. They said this because it is a lot faster than The Only Exception so the shots will be quicker and the editing will need to be fast so it will be more of a challenge for us, but a challenge that we should be able to exceed at because of the separate skills that each person in our group provides.
We started off our advanced portfolio task by writing down songs that we would like to do for our music video, we ended up with loads so we sorted them all out into their selected genres and created mood boards of pictures of the album covers of the songs we chose so we could see which genre was most popular between our group. Through an elimination process we managed to get it down to four songs, so we wrote down a narrative and discussed ideas for each of the songs to see which ones we liked best. By doing this we managed to get it down to two songs both by the same artist, these songs are The Only Exception and Misery Business, both by Paramore. We have to show the ideas we have so far in a pitch which will be presented to our class and we have decided that after feedback from our peers we will then decide which song to choose.
To help us with our advanced portfolio task we had to get into groups and produce a video that will be used for our schools open day. This was done so we could learn how to use the software, premier pro, and would have a better understanding of how to edit and cut videos, sync music onto the video and how to use different transitions when we come to use the software for our main task.
Today I set up my blog, so I would be able to document everything I do and my progress throughout the G324 Advanced Portfolio Task.
Our groups have already been put together and I am with Joanna Sibley, Paul Healey and Hannah Vandervennin. We decided to choose the task in which we have to create a music video. Our next steps will be to research different genres and decide on a song to use, whilst examining the different codes and conventions of a music video.
