My Digipack Ideas

Initially my main idea is to use a simple two fold digipack cover, not too complicated and easy to use. I would put simple pictures on the front and back covers of something to do with superheroes for example a mask and a cape. The design will not be over complicated. The background will have a black fade. The inside of the digipack will be two pictures of the band in something like a warehouse with their instruments. On the front underneath the images will be the band's name: Lazy Sharks.

 This is an example of what I will have on the front of the cover, probably just the eye slits.

 The cape in this image is similar to what i would want to use on the back cover.









This is also a similar idea to what I want to put on the cover.

GoPro in London

This video inspired us with lots of ideas for a wide range of camera angles shots that we can us with our Go Pro camera and cannon cameras while we film our music video around London.

A few examples of shots we are planning to use are as follows. At the beginning of this video the Go Pro lays on the floor of the train station and watches the train pass by in the station. We believe these two shots would be good to use in our music video as in will give a good view of our superhero and a wide view to see everything going on in the train station.

The Go Pro is also left to record around London as it pans across many sites. We would like to use this having our superhero standing still throughout the centre of the frame, while the footage is sped up as seen in the video above. We believe this will look good and go with certain parts of our music video.

We have also chosen to incorporate a Go Pro camera due to its versatility and ease of good quality shots.

Similar Video

We recently found this music video of '5 Seconds of Summer' for their song 'Don't Stop'. It was created in May 2014. Watching it now we see a large similarity to it in our music video idea which is quite unfortunate and makes our idea seem quite unoriginal. The scenes where the boys are dressing in their superhero costumes is very similar to the shots we have already agreed on and decided to do. We also had a similar idea of having an old lady being helped across a road when she actually doesn't need help. Having found this music video we have to try and make sure that we don't make ours too similar to theirs. Although there are overall differences in the sense that these superheroes are achieving their goals by the end of it, whereas our superhero will be a failure throughout the whole video.

Another Location

We are planning on filming the majority of our music video along the Thames at Southbank. We like the idea of capturing real responses to our actor wearing a superhero outfit in public so Southbank is perfect as lots of people will be there, especially tourists. But at the same time Southbank is filled with people wearing weird outfits and performing shows so he will also be able to fit in.

We also want to use the skate park in southbank in scenes to emphasise the failure of our 'Superhero'.

Music Video Tips

Our teacher gave us some useful tips on how to make a successful music video:

• The essential idea of what we are doing is manufacturing a band or a song, and this will be that bands first release, and it is our job to make the video successful.
• we will start with the image of the band, ensuring that their style is fit or the style of the song and that they know how to play the instruments required so they can realistically mime the track.
• The band we are creating obviously has no fan base, so it is up to us to get them out their via various marketing techniques and digipacks.
• The best type of music video contains three different narrative strands, a performance element which the label think is vital as it act as a fail save. A lip sync element, just simply singing in a situation with very few props. Lastly, a narrative element, the story, which will be led by genre and style. The music video will then consist of constant cutting between these narrative strands, this keeps the video exciting and interesting.
• we were advised to make a 'mood film' or prezi, this involves a set of images or a simple video to create a short film to demonstrate the ideas for the final product. This helps clarify the idea, and helps identify potential problems.

Evaluating Our Storyboard

The storyboard was extremely difficult to do, mainly because the group were quite indecisive about a lot of the scenes we wanted. We wanted to make sure that the storyboard was accurate to make the next steps as easy for ourselves as possible, for example making the animatic would be very difficult to construct with a messy storyboard and could easily confuse us when trying to edit it. Also we will be using the storyboard on the day of filming to make sure we have all the shots we want, so have a scruffy and inaccurate storyboard what complicate the already stressful day.

It took a long time to produce our final storyboard as we had to scrap a couple other storyboards when we changed our minds, each drawing had to make sense and and we need to relate it to the timing and what was being sung at that time.

VAL

What is a VAL?

VALS ("Values, Attitudes And Lifestyles") is a named research methodology used for psychographic market segmentation. Market segmentation is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them. (source  Wikipedia)

This is some research I have conducted into the demographic breakdown of 3 films based around failed superheroes as this is the main recurring theme throughout our video

 As you can see, I have learnt that the main demo graph for these films have been young adults between the ages of 18-29. We aim to appeal to the lower age of this spectrum for both males and females.

I can use VAL's to further describe who would be classed as our 'ideal target audience member. For example, they may read comic books, be out going people, not afraid of danger and confident people

Val's are about profiling your audience we have learnt that our target audience enjoy watching films about failed superheroes. Therefore.Therefore our music video will incorporate this narrative element to appeal to our target audience. We also watched films like a clockwork orange so we have used an inter textual reference in a tunnel but we will change it to make our character the hero.

Genre – by having a superhero element we will appeal to the same target audience as bands like Weezer (buddy holly) and Fountains of Wayne (Stacys mum) who appeal to ages 15+. Both these bands have a pop-punk sound that is different to classic synthetic artists such as McFly/Busted. We therefore thought that by creating a intertextual reference to a classic film we will distance ourselves from synthetic bands as above and move towards the organic end of the spectrum.

Star image

Our star image is based around a fun organic act but with some synthetic elements. The failed element suggests they are a more organic artist. They have grown naturally and have had time to develop. As seen through films above who use indie music to signify that the protagonists start out as losers and unlucky in love. Start nerdy and end up cool. The failed superhero so indicative of Kick Ass and Scott Pilgrim will appeal to indie fans who like that nerdy aesthetic. 

One Location

This is my house and one of the locations we are going to use whilst filming our music video. We will film the first few scenes here where the hero gets up and ready to leave the house. We will film in my bedroom and bathroom as shown below. We have chosen this location for a number of reasons: easy access to get equipment to and from, local to both actors and crew, fits with the star image of our band - teenage boy band i.e. in one of their bedrooms. It also adds to the fact we are trying to make our superhero seem average or normal. Having a location that the audience can relate too further normalises our character adding to the effect we are trying to create.

Inspirations

Curtis: So, what happens now? Is this it? We gonna be like this forever? 

Simon: What if we're meant to be, like, superheroes?
Nathan: Superheroes? You lot! No offense, but in what kinda fucked-up world would that be allowed to happen?

Recently, we have been looking at Channel 4’s TV series Misfits as inspiration for our music video. Misfits is a British Speculative Fiction series about a group of young offenders on a community service programme, who get caught in a freak electrical storm that leaves them with superpowers. 

The series debuted in November 2009 and the second series aired the following year with a bonus Christmas special. A third was broadcast in late 2011, minus Robert Sheehan (Nathan), and a fourth series in 2012. The fifth and final series was shown in 2013. It won the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series in 2010.

The "Misfits" are a group of five teens who are united by a series of traumatic events, and the emergence of their freaky new superpowers. These newfound abilities all relate to their deepest personality traits and psychological drives; turning their desires into realities, and their greatest weaknesses into weapons.

Timetable

This is the timeline of the music video depicting both the narrative and performance elements of the storyline. It briefly describes the length of each scene, the shot type and what will be occurring. Having the seconds of each scene lasts for will help us when we need to cut to the beat during the editing process editing.  Secondly this will also help massively when we shoot, as we will know the duration of each scene, what position the camera needs to be and what shot type will be required. We will take the timeline both when we shoot and also when we edit in the hope that it will simplify the processes. Doing a timeline of events is very helpful as it shows our clearly thought out preparation and planning.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard we have created showing our music video idea shot by shot. This version includes the timings and angles and shot type noted along the side. This process is crucial when making a music video because it allowed us as a group to clearly lay out our ideas on paper so we can gain a rough idea for what the finished product will look like. More often than not, people have different visions of how they think something will or will not look, but by creating a visual representation it starts to makes it come to life.  We realize that the video will not look exactly like we have depicted but we are just trying to map it out. This is one of our first big steps towards making the video.

Music Videos of Artists Similar to Ours

All three of these music videos star the band themselves, they all have a narrative and performance. The bands are shown to be having lots of fun and enjoying themselves, they are selling their appearance. Our band will be very similar to these bands and we will represent them in the same type of fun way. In the 'Vamps'' music video they are seen playing their instruments in the garage which is similar to what we will be filming.

The age group of our band is late teens/early twenties. We want to go for the young and sweet look like the vamps and include a slightly older look like The Wanted. One Direction probably has the most similar look to what we want. All of these bands' main audiences are teenage girls, which is also he audience we are going for.

The Vamps' video is a lot more vibrant and young than the other bands, The Wanted's is very fun and playful though, opposed to the One Direction video which had duller colours and a less playful and more meaningful storyline. Ours will be me most like The Wanted's video because we will have a playful and comedic video but to add to the comedy we will have mostly dull colours with the odd vibrant scenes coming up.

The image of our band will be more like The Wanted and One Direction as they coordinate their clothing more than The Vamps, and we want our band to seem more like a band.

Bruno Mas Album Cover

The top picture is my interpretation of the picture on the bottom. It is one version of Bruno Mars' album cover for 'Doo-Wops & Hooligans'. In the lesson we were given the image of Bruno, the aircraft and the Mars image. One hard thing to do was to edit the image of the aircraft, I had to rub out everything that wasn't the aircraft and then flip the image round in adobe photo shop and then shrink it down to the size it was meant to be. The hardest part though, was making the squiggly trail made by the plane, I had to cut out a shape from the dark yellow colour and then pin point the points on the erased bit to pull on, this gave he rounded trail effect. I picked the background colour to try and match from a selection as best I could and did the same with the font and colour of the writing. To make an outline around the wording I had to right-click the colour along the side of the screen.

Star Image for Our Band

At this current stage of research and planning we have not yet decided a name for our band which will perform the song ' All Star.' However, we have decided on what we want the image of our band to be. We are going for the the typical boy band look similar to the likes of One direction, Union J, The Wanted, the Vamps and 5 Seconds of Summer. We aim to dress them in chequered shirts, jeans and modern boots. They will mainly appeal to teenage girls and anyone interested in pop culture and music. Through their dress they will appeal to their target audience as it is what the consumes of their music are expecting from a band of this calibre in this particular genre. Our band will be synthetic in nature as in a real world scenario the song would have been written for them, a heavy emphasis will be placed on their image and clothes and the type of music would have written for them. Also as this is a synthetic band emphasis is based on releasing singles and most importantly albums to support and promote the band.