Poster development, Images

Original photos and the edits for our magazine advert:

Original photographs

Aisha was given the exciting task of taking the photographs while we were on set here is a link to her blog to see the original photographs pre-editing! Click here.

Research into indie genre music promotional posters

Now that we have obtained some general research on the magazine-music institution, we are now looking a little deeper into the area that is particularly important to us- the indie market. The reason we are doing this is although there are conventions in general concerning promotional magazine advert, there are also differences in the way that different genres are presented in order to reach their target audience. Firstly I have looked at a HMV advertisement for The Killers. I have briefly analysed this, identifying the main features that make this poster successful and make it have impact.




These two magazine adverts are both very similar and both come into our target market audience. Both use dark backgrounds, simple bold text and also simple images. These are elements which we feel work very well as they are simple yet have a big impact. We feel if we make our poster too busy it will look unrealistic and unprofessional as all the adverts we have seen so
far have been fairly simple.The first magazine advert only uses white and red text. The information is very simple and consists of; the album name, release date, one critic view and the band website. The second magazine advert only uses white text. The information is far more in this advert. The magazine advert includes; the album name, several critic reports, the singles on the album and the band website.

Filming day one TAKE TWO!

Cast

So these are our new and final characters for our music video. There are only two characters in the story which is our main actor, Harry who is tormented by his inner deamon the puppet:

Profile:

Name: Harry Painter
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Role: Schizophrenic teenager battling his inner "demons" which takes form through the puppet. He is not in control of his own life and the line between reality and nightmare begins to overlap.

Costume: Indie/shabby style, hoody needed

Profile

Name: Charlie the puppet

Role: Puppet must torment main actor and embodies the lack of control he has over his life. The clown must be ominous but also sutble. Something that looks normal to people in a normal state of mind which in taken out of context and made sinister by the exaggeration of the main characters mind

Poster research

In order to create a professional looking poster as part of our digi-pak we needed to do some brief research firstly on the overall conventions of music posters in the industry. After this we will then put some more extensive research into our target genre conventions concerning promotional posters. As we can see from the following images there is a huge variety of ways to present a promotional poster:


This is a fairly simplistic poster which would most probably be seen as an advert in a magazine or on a billboard. It is a clean fresh looking poster which is eye catching and the text is not over-whelming. The information is informative and on a need to know basis. it also shows a copy of the album as well as a photograph of the artist.
This poster promoting Oasis's album is a whole new way of presenting a promotional poster and features no picture at all of the band. It is simply based on the artwork of the album which is used to enable the viewer to identify the artwork, making it recognizable. Again the poster is simple and to the point with little text.
This is an example of one of the new JLS album promotion posters. The poster is very simple with minimal text with just the band name and album title. However this poster is used to promote the album after it's release therefore does not need as much text. This poster consists of just one of the band member which is slightly unconventional, however it works as the band is so famous and identifiable
This Girls Aloud poster although fairly old has been very useful as to me this is a traditional promotional poster. This is the same artwork used on the album cover which is being used to promote both the band and the new album.

Animatic

Untitled from Megan Painter on Vimeo.

Mise en scene

The Mise en scene of our video will be crucial in not only creating the house style of our brand but also to reflect the mood and feelings of our character. As titled "Shadowplay" we felt that it was important to incorporate the idea of shadows into a video, and is in fact central to our main vision of the video. This meant that darkness would have to be used to create the shadow, which also fits in well to reflect the torment of our character. Throughout our video we plan to use dark, forbidding imagery to convey his state of mind and a sense of being trapped. We also plan to use strobe light towards the end of our video to fit in with the fast and manic pace of the music which also reflects the madness and un-stability of our main character. Overall the darkness and horror-movie element gives a very dark and gothic style to our video which we feel not only reflects the lyric of the song but also the emotions in our story-line creating a strong image for our video.

Costume

It is important to our video that before we go out to film we put research into the type of clothes our actor should wear. His clothes not only must reflect our genre of music but also must look like they belong in a music video. In order to to this we have research the type of clothes worn by the killers themselves and also other similar artists in the indie genre.

The Kooks

Scouting for girls

Arctic Monkeys

Bombay Bicycle Club

Most use the term "indie" to describe any rock music produced by artists working within the network of independent record labels. However in modern society it is also used to describe the way a person dresses and the music they listen to. Stereotypically the type of clothes and style associated with this movement are skinny jeans, checked shirts, denim jackets, boat shoes, long messy hair, vintage/retro clothing and much more. As shows in the pictures above indie bands take all these elements to create a strong image for themselves. However as I have noticed for many of these bands often they are very normal looking, and seem relatable to their fans. They do not dress as if they are rich and famous which would make their image unattainable to many. This is something we to endeavour to achieve to conform to constraints of the music industry.

We have decided from our research that our main character will be wearing: Black skinny jeans, a checked shirt, a dark jacket and "Vans". We want him to appear like a ordinary person who our audience can feel empathy with and can relate to.

New locations

A slight glitch

Over the past few weeks we have had quite a few setbacks especially concerning the weather. However, we understand that we still must meet our deadlines and have tried to film when and where we can. Despite this we have now encountered a new problem; our main actor Lewis has been unable to attend much of the filming as he has been too busy due to school commitments, not only this but we have been filming and also our main location after getting our first lot of material back did not work as well as we have hoped. These have been huge setbacks but after much debating and panicking we finally over came these problems! As a group we decided that we needed to change actor in order to be able to get the crucial filming done as time was soon running out! Over the Christmas holidays we have taken out a camera and we have decided to use my brother Harry as our main character. As Harry is my brother it is much easier to grab him for filming etc. We have also changed our location so that it is nearer to mine and Hulya's house so we can film more often. Hulya cleared out her garage which had to plain white walls; just what we were looking for, and over all gives us a much better location that we had been hoping for. Although we have now had to pretty much start over again we are hopeful that now we will be able to make some steady progress despite our setbacks. Although it could be seen that our previous filming was a waste of time, we have learnt a lot from it and in a way this gives us an opportunity to create something better than we would have been able to the first time round!

second day of filimg- time lapse

First day of filming

On Sunday we began filming at our first location- the shed with the white walls. Unfortunately we had not received our puppet by this time and we were only able to shoot a small amount of the video, however something is better than nothing. The day went relatively successfully and we learnt a lot from it, especially to be more organized as it took us a long time to set up. We come across a few problems one of which was lighting as it was very dark on set. To try and resolve this problem we used torches to create a dim light as we wanted the location to look dark and ominous.

We used candles to create another dim lighting effect which I feel worked very effectively. After filming the opening sequence to the video we moved onto the strings in which we plan to show gradually growing and then attaching to Lewis establishing the main idea that he is not in control of his own life and he is trapped.

This took a very long time to set up and in hindsight we should have set it up before we were ready to film as it meant we all had to take a trip to ASDA as we had forgotten to buy string! After this we could finally set up but the overall effect ended up looking quite good

Then we were finally ready to get some footage. The first thing we decided to film was the "strings scene" this ran quite smoothly and we were quickly able to move on. We then began to film the opening sequence which involved Lewis striking a match then lighting the candle giving him light from below him giving an ominous horror-like look. This had to be filmed in two separate parts as the light below him on the candle was too weak. This meant that we had to film him striking the match, PAUSE the camera, followed with a close up of his hands lighting the candle the camera up PAUSE and then we placed a small torch underneath his face which was out of shot giving the appearance of candle light.

Locations

Location 1

Location 2

Location 3

digipak research

Digipak

While we had a bit of spare time we decided to use it constructively and began research on the digipak part of our coursework. So before we can even begin to think up ideas and designs we need to understand the conventions of a digipak and how they are targeted at their audiences. This required intensive research on the topic .

So what is a digipak?

A form of jewel case, for holding one or more CDs or DVDs, in which the outer cover is of card rather than plastic.Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

Digipaks are not only used for CD covers but as mentioned also DVD's. However it is important that in order for our case to look professional we must use the correct sizing which is used normally. We found this information out from a website called www.4bmartinvest.co.uk which distributes the "Flexi trays" used in digipaks.

The information we found out was that the typical size of a CD tray is 135mm x 125 mm. Now that we know the correct size of the tray this enables us to make correct sizing of our images on photoshop etc.

The word digipak is really just a fancy way of saying what we would call a CD case. In modern society with an increasing competitive market in the music industry and the competition from downloading online, the digipak has become increasingly more important to the success of the single/album being sold. The CD cover is the thing which makes a CD stand out on the rack, it is the thing that makes you remember it on a TV advert or you simply see your favourite artist featured and you go out and buy it. This puts a huge importance on the design and layout of the digipak. However this also varies according to the market you are trying to appeal to. Here are some examples of a variety of genre digipaks:

Rhianna: Loud

Seen in the photograph above is Rhianna's latest album "loud", and is a particular favourite of mine. What I feel works really well about this digi-pak is its use of color and also its simplicity. The delicacy of the layout makes this a strong and powerful image and creates a very feminine look, which is the main target audience of Rhianna. This particular album also links to Rhianna's latest music video "only girl in the world" which makes it instantly identifiable to those who have watched this video. The images have clearly been manipulated and desaturated slightly which works well as it creates a softness to the photos which could otherwise be too bright and over powering. The CD itself also follows the style of the digi-pak and shows a great attention to detail. This digi-pak is not only designed for its purpose but it is also been designed for the user to enjoy is and be ascetically pleased by it.

Filming Schedule

Ebay

Finding the puppet

While the anamatic was being finished off by Hulya, myself and Aisha headed off to ebay and amazon scouring the net for a puppet to use in our video. This was very hard as the puppet is central to the plot and it had to look right or the whole video just would not work.We searched for ages for puppets, ventriloquists, string puppets- you name it we searched it! After days of looking we still could not find a puppet that looked the part....




Finally after about a week of endless searching we found exactly what we were looking for! However the auction had five days until it ended, We got into contact with the owner straight away to see if we could buy it outright if we offered him a fair price. However unfortunately he would not take it off, as it had already received bids so we had to hold tight and wait. Sunday came and we were all at the ready with our credit cards, and in the last two minutes we went bid crazy! Luckily we managed to win the item and received the puppet just a few short days later and we were finally able to film our video.