Feedback

There are very good posts which reflect upon the shooting and process of constructing your product. There is evident decision making and revision from early ideas of the CD digipak and these are modified accordingly. Do check your posts from spelling errors - particularly the last one! An excellent blog which incorporates audience feedback and a theoretical understanding of the music industry. Well Done.

Audience feedback digipak

Today i asked our targeted audience some question about our digipak since the one posted on the blog is only our first draft made from Photoshop. I gave the people a picture of the photo of the whole digipak and then asked these questions to each person. Of course me and the group knew briefly what we needed to change but it was good to get an outer perspective about or work and we could discus some of the ideas and feedback given to us. Here is some of the answers that were given to me when giving out the questioner:

1. What do you think about the whole concept, is it easy to understand about recycling the mainstream music and artists and to represent the mod culture?
"The bin and recycling did make me realise that the album was about recycling and regeneration and that you were not promoting other popular artist, but since I’m not a media student I don’t really know much about the meaning of mainstream"

2. What do you think about the colour scheme?
The pictures are different in brightness which feels a bit disturbing and I think you should go with the brownish, rusty feeling

3.What do you feel is missing in the digipak, compared to other CD’s and digipak’s and what would you change?
I think you should do like a close-up on the lead singer having the band out of focus playing in the background or something similar. But it should still represent the scrap yard and broken things in the background.

4.Other comments
"I really like the representation of mod culture by the colours used on the front cover"

Shoot day , Scrap yard shooting

Since i was absent from the shooting at the scrap yard i was more involved in the planning process to make be able to get the finished shots which in the end looked great. But when my group came to the scrap yard the first thing they had to identify what place they would use for the kidnapping and were Teodora would be bound and gagged, the perfect place then turned out to be a scraped bus where Teodora was lying and waiting for Merlin’s rescue. As usual they started with wide shoots of all the different action and also dolly shoots following Merlin as he was crossing the scrap yard. The conditions were not the best and both Merlin had troubles with the cold but even though the shots turned out great. The filming continued and POV shots were done from Teodora’s point of view for example seeing Merlin rescue her etc. As Teodora was rescued Merlin was acting as a bodyguard that would do anything for her, not being “like everybody else”. After this Teodora and the team had some problems in coming up with specific shoots for the ending of the narrative but since it was promoting a film the shoots could be from different part of the movie and not a connected narrative.
Since our group has faced so many different kinds of problems I was very happy with the result that they were able to bring back from the scrap yard and is up to me and the group to now make the narrative and the performance to work and look professional.

in the picture you can see a mix of pictures taken by the team on the day of the shoot and we can the Merlin with a gun going around looking for Teodora which we can see lying bound and gagged on the bus. There is also a picture of matt the kidnapper going around in the scrap yard

Started editing

Today our group started the editing and we started by synching all the songs together with the sound but only choose to do the performance clips first since this will make the process much more time efficient. After synching the music with the clips we put them all at the clips at the beginning of the song and after that we started to cut using final cut pro. While going along with the song we marked the beats of the drums to make the editing more flowing which worked really well and we did a third of the song though it was hard work. We learnt how to use the razor toll (press R) then back to arrow (press A) this would ensure that no cuts were moved out of synch to the music but instead they were just dragged along. After we will finish the editing of the performance we will start using the narrative action which is still in process of being logged and marked as good or band shoots. But overall we have made allot of progress on our editing and the finish product is in progress though there is a long way to go.

A picture of the final cut pro toll used to edit but doesn't show our project.

Why developing a digipak

By developing a digipak it will help to sell the bands brand image to the audience as a promotion toll. But the digipak will also be a physical product that also reflects on art work and might be important for fans choosing not to download the track but instead have the physical product. We as a group have discussed the distribution and promotion of the digipak and since “infernal” is not a mainstream band their revenues is not as big therefore relaying on less expensive promotion then for example TV adverts. An example of a less expensive way of promotion would be online advertising and using websites such as Facebook and MySpace to reach the possible target audience and therefore also promote their CD. The majority of sales would be through online sales from example the intuitions webpage and maybe some in minor CD stores.

Digipak evaluation

Our finished digipak with four panels that is shown below we can see that we are representing the scrap yard by having pictures from the actual shoot and also using the recycling sings on the front cover to emphasis even more that the bands concept is all about regeneration. To then connect this to the music industry we choose to show that we want the band to go against the mainstream and connected this to the “The natural ideology of creativity” that Keith Negus argues is all about being natural and producing quality. Therefore we used a bin and filed it with known artist/bands that represents the mainstream according to us, all about quantity not quality adhering to the “The synthetic ideology of creativity” of Keith Negus. This ideology by Keith Negus I would argue explains our idea and the brand image of the band very well. We have been very straight forward in what element we are using for example recycling signs, scrap yard pictures and a bin and are therefore easier to be interpreted by the audience.

our first actual draft of the digipak without any barcodes etc which is something that is going to be developed with time

We were influence by the album made by the “six pistols” in the beginning but our front cover idea changes during the process, not using our original idea because of problems with the colour schema. But more than that we didn’t take any specific ideas from any other existing band just being influenced on fonts and colours.
In the making of the digipak we started by doing the product by hand using pen and paper to assure that the colour scheme would be appropriate and to know exactly where to place the different pictures and element included in the CD cover.

After this we as a group agreed on the plan and we then gave each other one panel each to prepare, we then gave feedback on the panels and it was a continuous process of accepting or rejecting ideas. We all used Photoshop when doing the digipak and also pictures from Google when using different artist and bands in for example the inside picture.

Shoot day , Scrap yard preparation

Since we have had so much problems and complications for the scrap yard shooting we ended up with just being two media teachers and Teodora and Merlin as the cast members. It was now important to be well prepared so that we would get the shots that we wanted and assured that all props were taken to the scrap yard.

Before driving to “Aldershot" Scrap Yard it was assured that everyone had their costume on and the makeup that was needed for the day before we left the school around eleven a clock. The weather was also a factor that influences the shooting since it was foggy and cold outside which made the process harder but the end result on the camera looked good and the mist couldn’t stop us. Overall the process of planning and preparation went well.
Below is a picture taken from the actual scrap yard

Progress on our digi-pak

During the week we have been working on our digi-pak and we can't really finish until we've done our shot on the 20th since we are using pictures from the scrap yard. The first picture below is the picture that is going to be inside the CD beside were the CD is suppose to be

We also looked into what the other songs on the CD was going to be called and this is what we came up with that we also though fitted into the mod style but also the concept of recycling etc.

1.I’m not like everybody else
2. Long Story
3. Go home
4. Stop Moving Around
5. Leaving me alone
6. Beautiful Day
7. Taking Risks
8. All day
9. Love Lies
10. Not your business
11. Left with nothing
12. Stop Moaning

This is a picture of the unfinished front cover of our digi-pak to show the recycling concept but we also use the mod colours red, blue and white to give a good representation of the band and its culture.

In the end of this week we will have finished our first real draft for digi-pak but the process is constantly ongoing and the work always have to be fully thought through and match with the concept of the band and the music video and the hardest part is to find the correct colour scheme.

Change in concept

In preparation for our second media shoot happening on Sunday the 20th we had big problems with getting people to turn up since this wasn’t compulsory. So after allot of problems we thought that the best way of dealing with the situation was to use the cast that was able to come and this caused us to have a change in our narrative. 

We then came up with the idea of the male character suppose to be “not like everybody else” towards his girlfriend since had a male and a female character.  So we decided that we going to do a music video related towards a movie, a music video that has parts of the movie to promote both the band and the movie. We also came to the conclusion that this would work really well since this would also create a synergy between the two products and a good way of promotion. So the final story for the shot in the scrap yard would be, a girl has been kidnapped by a man for money and the younger man tries to saves her. Since the song is classical British and we were aiming towards a British action film we still thought the concept would fit well even thought the changes, still using the recycling concept.

This might also help the band to generate a bigger targeted audience since it will be know from the movie and might get an audience that normally wouldn’t by the CD but will now associate it with the movie.

Here is a clip from a movie called “stormbreaker” which we were quite inspired by

Feedback

Excellent account of shoot - reflective and draws on media theory well.  This is a good diary of events and the problems you have overcome.  The images used are strong from the shoot today.  An area for development is to sort your larger posts into smaller ones and add images?  Well done none the less.

Research into poster design

To prepare and start planning our poster for the band I’ve looked at some other bands recent posters to get some inspiration and see what you can do and what is needed to make the poster realistic. First of all we have to choose between having a promotional poster just with the album or to include some tour dates as well. As our band is focusing more on album sales I think the best idea would probably be to just promote the CD and the new songs that have been produced. So what we want to include I think is the band members and the release date of the album and not a lot of writing. You can see some examples below and what I mean is something similar to Nickelbacks promotion poster for their album dark horse. It is classy and clean but that I also would argue sometimes represents quality which is what we want our band to be representing. The decision of using the band members on the poster would be nice since this would help represent the community and the spirit of being together but we could also go with having a picture from the scrap yard to represent the community.

Target audience

During the research and development I have been commenting briefly in our decisions how our targeted audience have influenced us but never really explained in detail what audience we are focusing on.

In the developing of our idea and what music we wanted to use the mod culture since we thought that this could be something that you could come up with different ideas to make reference to. So after deciding our track and coming up with some initial ideas for the video we wanted the band to be going against the mainstream, and as Dyer argues the image of the star can then be used to position the consumer in relationship to dominate social values and can be positioned against the mainstream or with the mainstream or somewhere in between. So by positioning the band against the mainstream we wanted to show that the band had values such as creativity and quality as their priorities which connect to Keith Negus ideology “the natural ideology of creativity”. We therefore made the decision that the band will focus on album sales instead of singles sales and to focus on a more sophisticated audience.

So we decided to focus on the image of the band to enhance their values and we took the idea of creating something modern because of the influence from the mod culture so we wanted to represent recycling, reusing and community. So our audience would be non mainstream people caring about the future or the modern idea but also an audience that focus on the recycling theme. But since the band is also focusing on producing quality music they might also get and audience that is just interested in the music or belonging to the people still interested and committed to the mod culture. What we did realise in the early stage is that we might be covering a quite big age group since this often happens to music that is seen as quality music, it targets allot of people.

So to reinforce the ideas in the video and to appeal to the audience that we actually choose we decided to for example be in a scrap yard to reinforce the recycling ideas, the cast is socialising there creating a community, being both boys and girl to represent both genders. But we also tried to use good-looking people so that it could also appeal to young girls or boys that might not appreciate the music as much as the video.

Richard dyer and Keith Negus

Logging our shots

During the end of the week we have been logging our shots from the first shot that we had on Wednesday to make the editing process more efficient. So we looked through each shot one by one and we then marked them with different colors showing if they were the best shot, okay or not usable. After doing that we used a marking tool in all the shots if the zoom changed or the focus in the shot changed, so were the marker was we wrote the details of the change to then easily access the shot that we might be needing in the final editing process. By doing this it will help us to have ready cut shots in order and also labeled on what quality and how useable the shot may be. This process took us about an hour but was also very well thought through when we did it to be as prepared as we could be when we get the shots from the scrap yard on Sunday.

 

Here is a picture of the paper that we recorded all the shots on the day that we were shooting which also helped to make the process easier and more efficient when logging the shots.

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The shoot on the 20th of November

So with two weeks we are going to do our second shoot which is going to be in a junkyard were they sell old car parts and so on, therefore we were only allowed to shoot their on the weekend since Sunday is the only day the junkyard is not opened. Because this was notified later in our planning our original cast wasn’t aware of this and therefore only one out of four is available to turn up on the 20^th. So after some reconsidering and planning we decided to use other people then just the band members, so we thought by bringing new people in we could get the idea across that the mod culture is all about the community and being together. So the shooting of the junkyard is going to show what the mod’s might do on a regular day as group and will not anymore be about the band as much as we planned in the beginning. But I do think that this have lead to a better narrative then we planned from the beginning since we will now be more clear about the actual culture then just trying to portray it trough the band we now use other people as well.

The cast for the 20^th
Tom Evans – (The guitarist in the video)
Wells Shaw
Niall Green
Ed Nightingale (Part of the production team)
Nina Jakobsen (I might be starring myself)

What have restricting us in our cast choice is that we are only allowed to bring a certain amount of people to the scrap yard which means that myself and Ed might have to in some parts of the music video to complete the narrative and to make the story realistic. We are also going to use two people from a mod club coming especially just for us to film their bikes and to get a iconic part of the mod culture into the music video.