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.

VINYL SHOOT PLANNING

Influenced by retroism - we wanted to include a vinyl/player as we were lucky enough to have access to a working one and thought it would be a good feature in our video as it is less common to have this feature.

Oasis' video for Wonderwall was the only example of this I could find so it was a relatively fresh idea to think of as decks are being used in night clubs now for indietronica itself. We also like the idea of bringing old music memorabilia into a new/futuristic genre.






As to not damage the record player, we will shoot the footage of a vinyl player spinning at the friend's house. The last time we tried shooting in a house, the lighting and quality was poor so we simply plan to film this section when we get a bright day.