A2 MEDIA STUDIES CALL SHEET FOR HELENA BEAT (KEYBOARD & BOGGLE ANIMATION SHOOTS)

• Track - Helena Beat - Foster The People
• Length - 3:45
• Shoot date - 2nd December 2011
• Location - DT Studio Claremont Fan Court School
• Shoot location:

• Crew: Alex Atkinson, 07523208980, aatkinson@yahoo.co.uk
• Crew: Will Jones, 07708633380, willjones567@hotmail.co.uk
• Camera equipment (Nikon D3100 Digital SLR camera)
• Lighting equipment (Angle poise lamp)
• A Green Table Cloth, One Roland Keyboard (Same as used in the performance shoot), One Boggle set.
• 2nd Animation scene so no costume included.

OUR VINYL SHOOT

The shoot of our spinning vinyl was a success. We decided to use a vinyl in our video because it helped us to achieve a retro feel in the mise-en-scene.

In the set up, we had some problems achieving the levels of light needed for capturing our footage, however, we found that the best way to achieve it was to use natural lighting instead of our own.

Here are some of our stills in the shoot, showing the different lighting in different parts of the room:

LIGHTING UP THE KEYS

Indietronica typically contains heavy use of keyboards and synthesisers, which is why my group and I decided to further this concept by lighting up the keys on the synthesiser (the one used in the video by singer) in different colours. 

 



We took this influence from the Michael Jackson's video for Billy Jean: When Michael Jackson walks through the streets, the slabs on the pavement light up. We have cut these images to the beat to tie in with the codes and conventions and to tie in with the art-house/neo-psychedelia theme.






We used green, red, blue and yellow as our primary colours:

NME ARTICLE

Are Major Labels About To Abandon The CD? Er, No

PLANNING THE BIKE SHOOT

We decided to feature a scene of the band cycling to the recording studio. This fits youth culture and added a narrative line. The Smiths cycled through Manchester in their video for 'Stop Me...', they are the icons of Indie so it was a good idea to reference their video as an influence for ours.



Another video we are using as an influence is Arcade Fire's video for 'The Suburbs', whose bike shoots are more angled towards youth culture as they have teenagers cycling not young adults, therefore their behaviour in the video is more playful than in The Smiths.




LOCATION
We haven chosen to shoot this at an alleyway in Hampton Court because it iscentral to where everyone is coming from and we can also keep the area we want to film in quite private.

PROPS
We need 4 bikes at Hampton Court somehow! As not all of the cast members own a bike, it will be neccessary to borrow these and get them to the location in advance of the shoot date. Fortunately, one of the cast members lives locally and is able to store the bikes. We will need a tripod for the camera.

COSTUME
As it is cold outside in December, all the band members will be wearing coats and not the same clothes as the performance shoot as this is a different period of the video.

SCHEDULING
As this shoot is to be done outside, the ideal is to have good weather and on a nice day so we are reliant on the weather being good to also achieve the ideal lighting quality. As it is winter, we can't do this after school so have set aside several dates to keep free so we can decide on the day when we see the weather.

POP PALATE

The talk by Trudy Bellinger called 'Pop Palate' gave very good insight into directing pop videos. She has worked with Girls Aloud, Pixie Lott, Sophie Ellis Bextor. She explained about how the videos are designed to suit the artist and song.

The British Music Experience interactive gallery was very interesting, a whole musuem of music through the ages and touch-pad guides of the history with lots of donated memorabilia from artists and other instruments.

ALBUM COVERS THROUGH THE DECADES

I have done another PREZI to show how album artwork has changed over the decades.

A2 MEDIA STUDIES CALL SHEET FOR HELENA BEAT(VINYL SHOOT)

• Track - Helena Beat - Foster The People
• Length - 3:45
• Shoot date - 16th November 2011
• Location - Alex Atkinson's house, Palace Road, Hampton Court

• Crew: Alex Atkinson, 07523208980, aatkinson@yahoo.co.uk
• Crew: Will Jones, 07708633380, willjones567@hotmail.co.uk
• Camera equipment (Canon EOS 550d)
• Lighting equipment (Table Lamps and some natural lighting)
• Props - One vinyl player and one vinyl
• As with the scrabble shoot, there are no people starring so there are no costumes needed

MARKETING POPULAR MUSIC

Roy Shuker defined popular music as "commercially mass produced music for a mass market" (Understanding Popular Music 2001). There is a lot more to popular music than this: it has become instrumental in reflecting and expressing popular culture and cannot just be defined in musical terms as it now encompasses a great number of styles. Popular music shapes the way people (teenagers especially) dress, talk and sometimes behave, it has always been used as a cultural thermometer (protest of the 70s, peace and love in the 60s, today's hip hop).


Music is a complex media animal, dependent on so many other forms of media and technology to succeed. Many music fans restrict themselves to a certain style of music and are therefore not interested in anything outside of the genre; music stores like HMV tend to categorise their music by genre, and music streaming services like Spotify rely on your past choices in order to play new music that might be of interest to the listener. Artists have to work hard to obtain a wider audience to that of their genre, and increasingly marketing is dependent on alternative rather than traditional methods.


Web 2.0 applications work particularly well for the music industry and technology is moving very quickly.

TWITTER - Used by bands for sharing news with their followers, for example; forthcoming releases, radio promotion/gigs etc. It is also used for fan to fan communication, JLS fans in south-west London flocked to a church in Hampton Hill at 10pm one Tuesday night, when someone tweeted that they were there! Twitter is a huge marketing tool; that is often used to feed small amounts of information the fans, making them go and buy the product.

FACEBOOK - Social networking site used widely to interact with fans (more interaction than twitter), it gives people the feeling of interaction with the band themselves and also promotes chat. It can be used to show video clips of live performance (in October, Coldplay's live performance of their new album was streamed online), bands can also put on snippets of new releases, promote tours etc.


SPOTIFY - It is used to stream music from major and independent labels very cheaply (it used to be free), however, some people have criticised the rates that they charge, saying that the artist does not get enough benefit from the track. Users used to have a free account that was supported by visual and radio style advertising, but now it is by paid subscription and premium subscriptions come without advertising. Because Spotify is integrated with Facebook and other social media, it encourages music sharing which is a great form of promotion. Other music streaming sites include WiMP, Grooveshark, Pandora and MOG, they are increasingly popular and most have a smart phone application.

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS

The artwork for cds is pretty much the same for the old style jewel pack as it is for the newer digipaks, it is just presented in a different form. In this analysis, I will therefore choose the most interesting and relevant examples to analyse without limiting myself to the digipak format. Click HERE! to view my SlideShare presentation on digipaks and associated material.

ANALYSIS OF ALBUM COVERS

The artwork for cds is pretty much the same for the old style jewel pack as it is for the newer digipaks, it is just presented in a different form. In this analysis, I will therefore choose the most interesting and relevant examples to analyse without limiting myself to the digipak format.

KEYBOARD SHOOT PLANNING

We were inspired by Michael Jackson's video for Billie Jean for this shot and decided to do an alternative take off of this.

As we are using keyboards and synthesisers in our video, we thought that the best way to portray this would be to use animation again but with colours on the keyboard. I asked permission from the school music department to use a synthesiser for our shot, again we will take this shot in the DT studio and then replicate it in photoshop to get enough images for animation.

A2 MEDIA STUDIES CALL SHEET FOR HELENA BEAT (SCRABBLE SHOOT)

• Track - Helena Beat - Foster The People
• Length - 3:45
• Shoot date - 8th November 2011
• Location - DT Studio Claremont Fan Court School
• Shoot location 

• Crew: Alex Atkinson, 07523208980, aatkinson@yahoo.co.uk
• Crew: Will Jones, 07708633380, willjones567@hotmail.co.uk
• Camera equipment (Nikon D3100 Digital SLR camera)
• Lighting equipment (Angle poise lamp)
• One Scrabble Board
• Animation scene - no characters included

PLANNING THE SCRABBLE/BOGGLE SHOOT

Influenced by The Maccabees' Precious Time video, we wanted to use stop frame animation to be creative with our choruses. We are going to use Scrabble and Boggle to spell out the lyrics in the chorus that stand out to illuminate the lyrics.

In the early stages we tried this shoot at my house, it was good practice but the shots had poor natural lighting that day - it was a dull overcast day - despite setting up near the conservatory. We are very happy with concept but are planning our second shoot more thoroughly and are going to shoot in a location where the light levels can easily be controlled.

We will use an artificial light to bring out the vibrancy of the shot. We have chosen to use the DT studio because it is well lit and also there are tables large enough to hold the board and enough clear space around to set up the lighting and camera tripod.

We will use a digital SLR camera with a tripod which enables longer exposures without camera shake as this will capture the most detail.

My partner will take the images as he is a photographer anyway and I will manually control the light levels and do the set up for each shot.

The lyrics in the chorus that we are spelling out are:

Yeah yeah and it's okay.
I tie my hands up to a chair so I don't fall that way.
Yeah yeah and I'm alright.
I took a sip of something poison but I'll hold on tight.

PLANNING THE PERFORMANCE SHOOT

I decided that although our video was going to be mainly art house style, we could not dismiss all of the typical music video conventions as it would therefore be less marketable as a music video. This is why we decided to include elements of performance in the video.

Although Foster The People has only 3 band members, however, their videos with heavy performance element feature more live performers and we want to follow this trend. We decided to cash in on synergies as use the people in our media group in whose videos we will also be performing! This means we get used to working with each other and can learn from each other's techniques.

With 4 people, it is much easier to choreograph to the music, we do not want a static video (Like Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love) so as musician and regular performer, I feel this is my area of strength to make the performance energetic.

For our costumes, our lead vocalist will be wearing something more pretentious than the rest of the band to make him distinguishable as the frontman. The rest of the band will be wearing modern/more casual clothes to comply with the indietronica culture.

PUTTING OUR SONG INTO ADOBE PREMIERE PRO CS5

Before we were able to start filming on our music video, my group and I had to edit our song in Logic Pro 9 to achieve the right timings, I took responsibility for using automation (a volume control) to give us a fade out and a fade back in.

Our song was also very long initially (4 mins 36 secs) so finding footage for that length of time would be very difficult in time circumstances so I was able to cut the track down to 3 mins 45 seconds (Taking out the instrumental breaks which is sometimes done for music videos anyway) instead which still gives us the right amount time for footage (not too little).

We decided to use new technologies to demonstrate our understanding and filmed an explanation of how we did it.

 

Here is the screenshot of the edited track in Logic Pro - There were elements at the beginning that we did not want to use: I therefore cut the section and replaced it with another - the whirling sound, therefore giving us more time to film the vinyl spinning.

When we put our song into Premiere Pro, we had to change the sound levels on our music track as they were too high. When the decibels level is too high on any software, the audio file distorts and crackling can be heard, which is why it was essential our levels are lowered carefully. 

The original level of the track was 0 db, I lowered it to -1.7 as it was the highest level that would not distort.