SR: Audience Feedback 3: Throne Rough Cut 4

This is some other audience feedback that we got from our Y10's in the school. It was of good use for us as well as a good preparation for them starting Year 11 in September.

Some main points that they mentioned include:

• Too many still tri-pod shots
• Good choice of actors
• Mainly they argued that the audience could be between 16-23
• Bad lip sync
• Flashback colour effect "Dream" makes it look unreaslistic
• Good Drumming and Guitar
• Colour powder was good at the speed it was at
• Break up and fight was easy to determine but other narrative wasn't
• Convincing
• Good shot variety
• good locations
• convincing actors
• looked real 

PODCAST #15

SR

Script:

Hello everyone and welcome back to our 15^th weekly podcast. This week we filmed our full performance part for our music video, which worked really well. We had great lighting and managed to get a lot of good shot variety for our music video. Also, Kristian and I filmed our narrative, which consists of the couple scenes and the running sequence. Another part of the narrative is some underwater footage of our lead singer, which Kristian and I filmed with a waterproof GoPro in a pool. I have edited a sequence of 2min and 8 seconds together this week and have for each 40-50 seconds uploaded the rough cut to YouTube so that I can evidence the journey of our music video. By next week we will also try to get a nearly final rough cut 1 so that we can get some good audience feedback in case we would need to re-shoot something. We will by the end of January also visit a green screen room here in Luxembourg, where we will get some further footage of our lead guitarist, bass guitarist and lead singer. Furthermore, we intend to shoot our female protagonist burning some pictures of her and the male protagonist.

After having gotten some really useful audience feedback today that I can use when I am editing the rest of rough cut 1, I expect to have a full rough cut by next week Friday after we have visited the green screen room and have the final footage.

SR: Audience Feedback 2: Throne Rough Cut 3

This is the audience feedback that we got after having posted our 3rd draft of rough cut 1that I edited. Our audience feedback will weekly help us to reflect on what we can do better. Some of the negative points mentioned include: 

• Less running sequence
• More pool scenes 
• Clearer narrative
• More color powder because the effect looked good 
• Work with color correction

SR: Rough Cut 3

This is the 3rd rough cut that I edited together. It is a 2 min and 8 second clip.

SR: Rough Cut 2: Throne

This is my 2nd rough cut, which contains 1 min and 40 seconds worth of footage. I intend to post about 3-4 drafts in total of rough cut 1 in order to later on in the year do a post on "My Journey", such as last year. The "My Journey" post is supposed to reflect my work over the year and will also be a useful post for evaluation.

SR: UPDATE: Changing Digipak

After having changed our track and the idea for our performance and narrative, we have new pictures for the digipack. We also had to find two new band members due to one drop-out and timing. Right now we are working on what pictures should be on our digipak but also, which other elements are usually included on a digipak.

For the front cover, we were thinking of having a picture of the entire band rather than just having the leadsinger and including the name of the band. This is not the finalized version of the front cover, since we still want to work with color correction of the picture to make the color's stand out even further. 

Another possibility for the front cover would be to take a picture in the green screen room with just the leadsinger in the shot, with his microphone and then layer on top of it and add the title of the band and/or the album. This would be inspired by BMTH album for Suicide Season. 

Another important elemt of a digipack is the track listing. BMTH That's the Spirit album has 11 tracks, therefore we thought we would include these on the back cover. 

To achieve verisimilitude on our digipak it is also important to include other features such as the record label, produced by, copyright details, barcode and serial number. On most digipaks, the barcode is on the back cover, hence we have decided to put it down in the corner on the right side. 

Inside the digipak, we wanted to include some more colors such as BMTH did on their That's the Spirit album inside. We thought that we could do it by having colorful ink in water that looks a bit like colorpowder. Since color powder is also a part of our music video, we thought that we would want to include that. 

When doing some research on digipaks, I found a website, where it is possible to create and design your own digipack with fonts, pictures etc. Once we have all of our ideas sorted and photoshopped, I wanted to try and create one with the use of this website. If it turns out really well, I intend to order it. 

https://www.discmakers.com

SR: Rough Cut 1: Throne

This is the first 1 minute rough cut that I created for our music video "Throne". We filmed all of the footage last week, however we will film more when we have a trip to a green screen room here in Luxembourg. With the green screen footage we intend to film the lead-singer, lead guitarist and bass guitarist and layer on top of this footage. We will film several sequences such as: a time-lapse of clouds passing over the sky, a sunrise (if we can get it), fire, which we will layer on top of the individual band members. 

I will create and upload a full first rough cut by Friday the 27th of January and we will get audience feedback on our rough cut's each week. 

SR: Reflection on Narrative Shoot #1

Kristian and I went to shoot the narrative scenes together with our male and female protagonist, Emilie and Wayne. Our music video contains a linear narrative, which consists of scenes where the two of them first have ice cream from a shop during the summer and then later on in the music video break-up. 

One thing that we really focused on this time was that our character's would wear different costumes in the different scenes. 

We especially emphasised this by trying to signify different seasons of the year, summer and winter. This was achieved very well with the difference in costume. In the summer scenes, the female protagonist was wearing sun glasses, a flower covered blouse with short sleeves and some nike shoes and the male protagonist was wearing a very simple T-Shirt. By also having them drinking a smoothie, verisimilitude is achieved and the footage really comes accross as having been filmed during the summer. 


Whereas in the winter scene, where the couple fights, they are wearing warmer clothes. Our female protagonist is wearing a warm blue scarve, gloves, a warm jumper and a leather jacket over it, and our male protagonist is also dressed more warmly by wearing a winter coat and gloves.

The only issue we faced with our narrative shoot was that we didn't get enough footage of them being happy together. Unfortunately our actor's weren't available for some weeks and therefore we intend to  film after the winter holidays at the end of February. 

As for the special effects, we added an effect called "Dream", so that it would look as if the leadsinger was having flashbacks back to the time when they were happy and where after a while everything escalated. Our music video therefore follows 2 steps of Todorov's 5-part narrative formula.

SR: Reflection on pool shoot

Kristian and I went to shoot the pool scenes in a pool here in Luxembourg. For this we decided to use a waterproof GoPro so that we could not only get shots of him falling into the water from above, but also underwater. The underwater scenes turned out as the best ones in our opinion, which is also the reason for why we have included so much underwater footage. In conclusion, the shoot turned out quite well and Kristian and I were really happy with what we filmed that day. 

We got our inspiration for the underwater footage from two main videos. One of them being MVid EG9 - Runnin' by Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé on my blog and the other one being This is Gospel by Panic At The Disco, which Bronwen blogged on. 

After having looked at these two videos, I quickly came to the conclusion that we had to work a lot with special effects for the water to look like an ocean and more ominous rather than a general light blue pool. The picture you see here on the left, is the footage without any effects added yet, whereas the footage below is after I added effects. 

In Final Cut Pro I therefore decided to use one of the color effects called Tint. I had also worked quite a lot with the Tint color effect at AS and had a good experience with it. Hence I decided to go back to this special effect and work with it.

The bubbles that automatically appeared because I was underwater also had a really nice effect and gave an "extra touch" to the shot, rather than it just being shaky underwater footage. 

When working with Tint, it was really important to change the color and work with the amount of Tint there should be in it. If I hadn't changed the color it wouldn't look at all like it does above, since it would really have turned very dark blue and not have the desired effect of an open ocean. 

Due to this, I went for a very dark blue/green color that made the water look very dark. It took me a while to discover which color to use however after a while I found that this was the right one. We also got good audience feedback for it, because in Rough Cut 1 Draft 1, I hadn't worked with any special effects yet and our audience argued that it was to plain and that they wanted to see a lot more special effects, especially for the underwater footage. 

SR: PODCAST #14

Script: 

Hello everyone and welcome back to our 14^th weekly podcast. Last weekend Kristian and I did a practice shoot with the new band members for our new track Throne by BMTH. The practice shoot worked well, but after looking at the footage we decided to change the costume of our key boarder because he was wearing something very similar to our lead singer and also decided to go for our lead guitarist not wearing glasses. Also, we found that we should have some more shot variety and some more “interesting” shots. Next week we will be filming the full performance part and the narrative for our music video, where we now know what we should aim for.

MERCHANDISE: More ideas

At the moment we have a 2 iPhone cases and 4 T-Shirts as merchandise for our merch shop. To expand on this here are some more ideas of what we hope to add to the store.

Ring: We think having a ring with the band logo on it will be a unique merch as not a lot of bands sell the. The ring will resemble that of a collage ring with a flat top so the logo can be placed.

Dog tags: Dog tag Jewellery is very common among rock bands and so we thought they would be a good addition to our store. The design at the moment is the letters BMTH going down the tag. We might create more designs as we go along. 

Baby merch: As BMTH have been around for many years, people that have been a fan for a long time might have children and therefor baby/child merch is very popular. The merch will be the same as the T-shirts just in baby clothes. 

LYRIC VIDEO: New Track #2

As we have changed the track of the song I created a new lyric video. This time I only used photos from our shoot as it would make more sense to have the lyric video be a teases showing small details of the shoot than actual footage that might be in the music video.



Things to change:

• Instead of using red font colour use a more metallic colour.
• Have the last picture be after the drummer
• Instead of having two lines for the band name make the font size smaller so it fits on one line
• Crop the black boarders.

SR: PRODUCTION SCHEDULE Update #5

This is the 5th update of the production schedule I created. It includes the tasks that we have completed so far, and the ones which are still to be completed. I always like to use color coding since it gives me a great overview of what still needs to be done. 

After last time we changed quite a bit, since we decided to film a practice shoot on the 14th or 15th before shooting the real thing. This was mainly because we wanted to make sure we wouldn't have any problems with the new cast and would know how to set everything up the day of the real shoot. We also wanted our cast to know exactly what to do for the real shoot so that we wouldn't lose any time. Also, we will not be able to film the pool scene or the narrative scene until next weekend and therefore I have changed the dates for that as well. Therefore the dates for the editing and rough cuts have moved as well. 

Production schedule Update 5 from Sophie2401

SR WEBSITE: Change

Today, we had a photoshoot with our band members and I wanted to put up the new pictures and edit our website. 

In the links list called "About the Band", I made quite a lot of changes. Firstly, I added the new pictures of the band members and in the near future I also intend to add a small bibiliography or quote from the individual band member. Also it says "About the Band" on the top of the page, where Wix had invented a small text below the title for it to look more realistic. My job has been to change these texts including the band bibliography and the official website text. Today I therefore changed the text beneath the title and I added the new picture of our band.

The text says the following: In 2004, Sykes formed Bring Me the Horizon, a band which rose to fame very quickly. The band released their debut album Count Your Blessings in 2006. Their second album Suicide Season was released on September 29, 2008 and their third studio album There is a Hell. Believe Me, I've Seen It. There is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret on October 4, 2010 and they released their fourth studio album Sempiternal on April 1, 2013 which feature the new member Jordan Fish and Sykes playing rhythm guitar for the album and they released their fifth studio album That's the Spirit on September 11, 2015.

Furthermore, I decided to change the layout of the first page of our official website, since I thought that it was difficult to read the white font on the picture of the band but even with just the logo behind it. Therefore I ended up with a black background where the fond is easily readable and you can see a picture of the band with all of it's band members. The text says: 

Only a year after starting out as a band, Bring Me The Horizon gained significant attention! Composed of a group of 5 inspirational musicians and skillful performers, the artists behind Bring Me The Horizon have throughout the last 12 years earned their reputation as a talented metal core band. By also winning the awards for Best British Band twice and Best Album, BMTH are internationally admired by millions of fans for their distinct and enjoyable musical style. Explore the site and check out their music, tour dates and merch below.

I also decided to add a gallery with a scrolling through rather than just that one image. Now there are images of the band that automatically appear and change after a few seconds, but also it is advertising for the newest merchandise. I put a picture up of the new merchandise (white T-Shirt), where I then added a link that the audience could click on and would automatically be re-directed to the merch site. 

In the future I intend to add a picture of an upcoming concert, where the audience can click on one button where it says "buy tickets here", that then re-directs them to the official BMTH tour dates and places they can buy tickets. I believe that small tricks like these make the website appear more realistic and can also attract a wider audience.

SR: Practice Video: Throne

After having decided to do a new track, "Throne", Kristian and I did a practice shoot with the new band members to check the location, mise-en-scene of costumes and instruments, tattoos etc. We thought it would be a good idea to try out, so that we knew exactly what to do on the day of the "real" shoot. Some main points we picked up on included:

• Our lead guitarist had glasses on to see if it would look better with or without, however after a while we decided he should not wear any glasses, since it looked better and also fits the genre more. 
• The costume of our keyboarder was to similar to the costume of our leadsinger (T-Shirt, Jacket) and therefore we decided to give him a similar look to the keyboarder and guitarist from the official BMTH band
• Another thing we did was position the music equipment (e.g. amps) a bit differently compared to the practice video 
• During the practice video, we used two different types of cameras: SONY A58 and Kristian's camera, which is a CANON EOS 70D. After having looked at the footage in Final Cut Pro, we quickly realised that there was a difference in quality between the two cameras and therefore we decided to use the canon camera on the "real" shoot, since the footage was better quality
• We also brought a GoPro to the "real" shoot compared to the practice shoot to film some extreme-close-up footage of the guitar's

Below you can find some footage of the different costume of the keyboarder and the differences in glasses with and without. 

PODCAST #13

SR

Script: 

Hello everyone and welcome back to our 13^th weekly podcast. This week Kristian worked a lot on our Digipack in order to get it done for today. Kristian and I worked on getting the website up and running. I worked on the band bibliography and the texts that go onto the website, while Kristian focused on the news, and the gallery links lists. Also, I tried to set up our album and upload all the tracks of BMTH album. In the beginning we found it really difficult but after a while I figured out how to do it and decided to create a tutorial on it which is up on my blog. 

Unfortunately Bronwen and I have been ill, so when we haven’t been there Kristian has focused his lessons on exam preparation, media language and working on website and digipack. Next week we will be filming the performance and narrative for our new music video for the track “Throne”. However we will change the band, since we feel that there isn’t any more time to waste and not all band members were available next week so we might change 2-3 band members such as the lead guitar and the drummer.

SR: Tutorial: Tracks on Wix

This is a 2 minute tutorial in which I explain how to upload a track to Wix. The reason why I chose to do this tutorial is because Kristian and I experienced some difficulties in how to upload it, but after a while I figured it out and thought I would evidence it here on my blog.

SR: GIF in music video

For our new track, there is a part where the lead inger sings: "So you can throw me to the wolves tomorrow I will come back leader of the whole pack". 

We thought that it would look amazing if we included a wolf in the music video. The wolf is a symbol of dominance since it is such a prestigious animal but also of guardianship, ritual, loyalty, and spirit. It is quite fitting for this music video, because the album of the song is "That's the Spirit" and is a lot about spirit and how you can convey negative thoughts into positive ones. 

We have two different opportunities to add the wolf into the music video. One of them would be to have a GIF in the music video, however this would be less use of technology and the GIF would have to be a bit longer than usual unless we layer it well into it. The reason why I thought of the GIF is because it would be easier than creating an animation of a wolf and would also be more real looking than if I would create an animation. 

These are some of the GIF's I found at, mainly on a website called Best Animations:

This is one, where I really liked due to the snow effect, but also because it shows the wolf from a bigger distance in it's entire prestige and power.

This GIF would be perfect for layering, because it features the wolf on the side so we sould layer it well. Also, it is close-up of the wolf's face, which is what particularly caught my attention. 

This GIF, only features the teeth of the wolf and should therefore if being used, appear later in the music video so that the audience knows it is a wolf. It could however also appear in the beginning and make it more mysterious.

This GIF is different because it zooms in on the wolf until it is extreme close-up of the wolf's face. This GIF allows the audience to see the wolf's face in it's entirety and would therefore be useful. There is also the snow effect on it again, which is also an effect I really like. 

The other opportunity would be to include an animation that I would create myself, via an animation software. In case I would decide to create an animation myself I would use "Express Animate" as the program. 

Download here:

http://www.nchsoftware.com/animation/index.html?gclid=CjwKEAiA79zDBRCgyf2FgeiY-CESJABzr0BMS7KanwH4Z29IwKFXw_S8Fn1rWTsrjWJ4k7HN1B2t6BoCwOXw_wcB

UPDATE: Changing track

We have decided to change the track for our music video. The original track was "Follow You" by "Bring Me The Horizon" and the track we changed to is "Throne" by "Bring Me The Horizon".

(Google Play Music) Lyrics:

Remember the moment you left me alone and
Broke every promise you ever made
I was an ocean, lost in the open
Nothing could take the pain away

So you can throw me to the wolves
Tomorrow I will come back
Leader of the whole pack
Beat me black and blue
Every wound will shape me
Every scar will build my throne

The sticks and the stones that
You used to throw have
Built me an empire
So don’t even try
To cry me a river
'Cause I forgive you
You are the reason I still fight

So you can throw me to the wolves
Tomorrow I will come back
Leader of the whole pack
Beat me black and blue
Every wound will shape me
Every scar will build my throne

So you can throw me to the wolves
Tomorrow I will come back
Leader of the whole pack
Beat me black and blue
Every wound will shape me
Every scar will build my throne

I’ll leave you choking
On every word you left unspoken
Rebuild all that you’ve broken
And now you know
I’ll leave you choking
On every word you left unspoken
Rebuild all that you’ve broken
And now you know
Every wound will shape me
Every scar will build my throne

So you can throw me to the wolves
Tomorrow I will come back
Leader of the whole pack
Beat me black and blue
Every wound will shape me
Every scar will build my throne

The reason for changing track was we were not to happy with the narrative we chose for the "Follow You" and we decided that we could create a better narrative with "Throne". This will also give use the opportunity to change location of the performance, I felt this new song had more opportunities for technology such as green screen and layering. We also decided on this song as we felt it would be easier to edit to. 

SR: PRODUCTION SCHEDULE Update #4

This is the 4th production schedule I created and updated. It includes the tasks that we have completed so far, and the ones which are still to be completed. I always like to use color coding since it gives me a great overview of what still needs to be done. 

We have changed our idea and chosen a new track, which means that we need to re-shoot everything after Christmas. This production schedule shows the dates for after Christmas on when we will film. 

Production schedule Update 4 from Sophie2401

Reflections on genre theory

Defining the genre is very important in a text as it lets you know who the target audience is. Most genres are already decided before the text is constructed and the producer already has an idea of who the target audience is and what to create for them. The genre of a text if it is a movie or a music video will determine how is producers, distributors, and retailers go about the text. This year I worked with 2 others to create a music video for the band "Bring Me The Horizon". BMTH been describes as many different metal and rock genres. Now the genre is mostly seen as a Metalcore band but when the band first started in 2004 they where more Death Metal. Some of the other genres they have been associated with are alternative metal, alternative rock and post-hardcore.

Marketing will be effected by the genre of a text. Mittell talks about how genre is used by the industry to sell the product to the audience. Music can be very easily accessible on websites like Youtube and streaming services like Spotify this is a great way to reach the younger audience like teens and young adults as they find it easy to access and use. While for an older audience who prefer having a physical copy they can go to a store and buy a CD or in some cases a Vinyl a good example of a band that does both stream and sell Vinyl is "The Rolling Stones" as their target audience range from all ages. This depends on the genre of the music for example you would most likely not find a Dubstep Vinyl from some one like "Skrillex" as it would not be appropriate to the target audience instead it would be streamed on websites and apps. As the music video we created was of the genre Metalcore the audience would most likely stream the music and so we uploaded the music video to Youtube. We also used social media to interact with our audience all tho now a days that is used for all genres of music. We also created a Digipak so we could reach more of our audiences who prefer to have a physical copy, this has already been done by "Bring Me The Horizon" and other band of the same genre such as "Bullet for My Valentine".

Genre is constructed up of what can be seen or heard which is a point Chandler talks about. He talks about how some texts might not have all the characteristics of the genre it is in. He also talks about how genre doesn't have defining edges and instead blend and fade into one another and this is why there are sub genres and genres such as Rom-com. Rom-com for example is a mix of two genres Romance and Comedy. Last year for my project I created the opening scene for a Zombie Action movies. When you have two or more genres they often go hand in hand for example Rom-Com but in some cases you have one genre that doesn't usually fit it for example the movie "Warm Body's" which is a Zom-Rom-Com this is to reach a wider audience in the hope of making more money. This also effected how we created our music video as we wanted to have some a romance element but didn't want to make it look like an 80s pop song like A-ha's "Take on Me" where it was all about the girl. We took some inspiration from horror movies and you can see some intertextuality to the movie "The Blair Which Project".

Thanks to web 2.0 it allows the audience to interact with the producers of the band and create fan art or other fan produce texts, "Linkin Park" has had fan art created by their fans (Picture Bellow) and so has "BMTH". Before Web 2.0 the producer and advertise their product to the audience but now the audience equally helps to promote a text. There have been instances of fan made trailers for films and fan made posters. There are fan participation that are easy even for the less creative something simple as a GIF which is a small clip of pictures to create a looping video, this has been done by "BMTH" (GIF bellow).  Something as easy as this promotes the text. David Gauntlett talks about web2.0 and how it turns the audience from passive to active. We took advantage of this by creating gifs and lyric video. It is also good to use social media and have them enter competition where they can win something and the winner is the one with the best fan art for example.

In the narrative of our music video we have to main characters the singer and his girlfriend, even though we only have 2 characters you can still link it in with Props character theory. His theory mostly revolves around movies but can be seen in our music video. The female character can be seen as both the princess and the villein in our narrative as she is the one who broke up with the male character. We didn't follow the stereotype of the Rock an Role singer who is to good for the girl but instead made the singer be angry at girl for braking his heart. Laura Mulvey could argue that male gaze is in our video as the female protagonist is wearing skinny jeans and high heels as well follows the stereotype of the hot girl for example in other songs like "We Don't Talk Anymore" by Charlie Puth. We chose her as it fits with the genre to have a female character in the narrative of the story like in the song "Numb" by Linkin Park.

Abercrombie talks about how boundaries of genre are shifting and becoming more permeable and this can be seen in the history of metal music videos. If you look at old metal music videos they didn't have a narrative which can still be the case today but most music videos now have a mix of narrative and performance not just performance. You can still have music videos today that just have narrative for example "Follow You" by "BMTH" or songs that are just performance but it is becoming more normal to have a mix of both but in the 90s it was mostly just performance in metal core videos with maybe some unrelated shots occasionally. 

PODCAST #12

SR

Script:

Hello everyone and welcome to our 12^th weekly podcast after the Christmas holidays. During the holidays our group talked a lot to each other and we decided that we wanted to change our track. We came to the conclusion that it was really hard to edit to the song “Follow You”, especially because it wasn’t as fast paced as a usual rock song. Also, after some audience feedback we discovered that our narrative idea wasn’t clear unless we had told the audience the story beforehand. Therefore, we sat down and talked about changing the track to another BMTH song. We didn’t want to change the artist since we thought that we had spent too much time and effort on creating website, digipack and social media accounts in order to throw all the work away and start from the beginning. We will create a new narrative story and also re-shoot performance in different locations than the skate park. I will do a pitch, that will explain everything in detail next week.