Print work- Album covers and Magazine Advertisment

After looking at still images that could be suitable for the front/back album cover, we looked at the common conventions between a magazine advert and an album cover. In lesson, we looked at Ellie Goulding's album cover and magazine advert "Lights" and Oasis album "Be Here Now". 

We looked at the similarities between the album cover and the magazine advertisement: Ellie Goulding- Lights

                                                   




                                                     Ellie Goulding - Lights magazine advertisement



Ellie Goulding - Lights album cover

• Both the magazine advert and album cover has the image of the artist. This publish when she just started, and so he image use so that she might be easily recognised by her audience.
• Muted colours of sparkling gold and black are used on both magazine and album
• Her name is written written with the same font on the album and the magazine which stands out and is almost recognised as a logo.
• Her achievement,  awards and reviews are written on the magazine which is important as a new artist to show of her talent.

Oasis- Be Here Now

 
                                         
Oasis - Be Here Now- magazine advertisement 



Oasis -  Be Here Now- album cover

• The album and the magazine advert uses shared image. The magazine is a mid-long shot of the album cover which is a close-up shot. 
• The Oasis logo is on both covers
• Unlike Ellie Goulding's covers, the Oasis did not use any image of themselves on the magazine advert. This is because they are establish enough, and their audience are able to  recognise them through their logo. The use of their picture on the album cover could be to stand out in the competitive music market. 
• The band's website is written on the bottom of the magazine to inform the audience where the album can be downloaded. This also emphasis the importance of technology in this age. 

After looking at this album covers in lesson, I decided to look at album cover and magazine adverts from the metal-core genre. I looked at Bullet For My Valentine their album Fever and Bring Me The Horizon their album Suicide Season. 

Bullet For My Valentine - Fever

 

Fever - Album cover                                       

                                                                                   Fever - Magazine advertisement

• Both the album cover and the magazine cover have a shared image of  girl who is standing naked on the album. The picture could be criticised for "Male gaze" as it objectifies the woman on the cover.The  band members did not use pictures of themselves which is not unusual as bands from this genre hardly ever use their own pictures. 
• Both the album cover and magazine advert uses the same sanserif font for the name of their band which is used in all their print work and can be represented as the band's logo. The name of the album "Fever" is also written in the same font on both covers.
• Compared to the Oasis and Ellie Goulding's print work, Bullet For My Valentine has more information about their album on the magazine cover than the album. This might be because fans buying the magazine will be directed to the website where they can download the album and find other information about the band. 
•  Mise-En -Scene elements used on the album and magazine include under-exposed lighting and dark muted colours.    

Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season

Suicide Season- album cover           Suicide Season- Magazine advertisement

• Both covers used shared image of a girl on cover, and  unlike Ellie Goulding's print work, there is a lack of band imagery for advertisement or promotion of the band. Oasis did not need it because there are already well establish and the do not rely on the extra advertisement to sell the album. 
• Mise- En-Scene elements includes the theme of black and blue colours;  the blue colour is used as the font colour on both the album cover and magazine advert and it is also used for the bubbles the girl is holding, while the black is used on the girl (black dress). The lighting used in the covers looks natural which is unusual for this genre as they always use dim colours to reflect the mood of the album. 
• The name of the band is not prominent on the album cover as we will expect it to. However, their fans will recognise the band as they do not have a consistent logo or a way of being represented. 

From looking at the above examples and focusing particularly on the metal-core genre as it will be useful to use for our own print work, I thought that we could include the following on our album cover and magazine advert; the use of under-exposed lighting and dim colours on our album cover. We also want to use still images from the music video to make the album cover cohesive and easily recognised during advertisement. We do not plan to use a shared image for the album cover and magazine advertisement as we wanted a  cohesive imagery with to music video. 

Editing

6/11/12                                                 Rebecca's brother drawing "FUCK" on his arm.

At the start of this week, Hannah did most of the editing while Rebecca and myself started the print work for our album advertisement. Hannah imported the footage of Rebecca's brother writing the word "Fuck" on his hand. She also had to split the to put the footage of the "fuck" in-between the current footage of James and Robynne walking in the park so that it matches the lyrics. 

After splitting the clip, Hannah found that the iMovie started freezing the ends of new imported clips. As a group, we decided not to do anything about this because when we first started and had the same problem, our teacher advised us that the footage might stop freezing when we import it to a disc. 

Hannah was also able to add a footage of Robynne and James walking in the park, in-between a shot of Ian walking away from Robynne to make the visual faster and choppier so that it matches that sound. Myself and Rebecca thought Hannah's idea works well as the audience will sympathise with Ian's character, and so continuing the narrative.

                                                                                   James and Robynnne walking away together

7/11/12

During this lesson, we ask some students in class to watch and give us feedback of our video so far. We asked four questions and they include;

1. How do you think our video reflects the metal-core genre?
2. What do you like/dislike about the video?
3. How do you think the editing works with the visuals?
4. How can we improve the video?

 







Feedback from qestionnaire


Not everyone in our class listens to the metal-core genre, so we had a range of views from our classmates. Someone said "Imagery/motifs reflect genre and target audience;fire writing on arm, live gig" for question one. Another person said "I like pace of the editing and with the music" for question 2, "I don't actually know what the song is saying" for question 3 and and for question 4, someone said "develop storyline in the background do it makes sense".

After knowing that our storyline might be confusing for some of our audience, we decided to move and add some footage. We thought that our audience might be getting confused by the difference between the two male characters , James and Ian. They might not know who is breaking up with Robynne and who went together with her.  So we decided to add a footage of Robynne and James walking towards the camera in-between Ian walking away so that the audience can see that Robynne is no longer with Ian; and has moved on. This works well because the idea of Ian walking away emphasis the lyrics of a couple breaking up and one moving on. 

James and Robynne hand in hand

 

 

8/11/12

During this lesson, we wanted to make our video easier to look at and understood by our audience. Hannah took out the footage of Robynne and James walking and replaced it with Ian and Robynne walking to keep the narrative clear. She also change the footage so that we could use it later in the video. After watching the video on the full screen, Hannah also spotted an editing error. When Ian first walk away from the bench, he is just about to turn the corner. We cut that shot to live shot, and to another narrative shot which means that a few minutes must have gone. However, when we went back to that shot, he is still in the same position, so there was no continuity. Hannah changed this shot and put it forward so that continuity is achieved. 
Hannah thought by Ian walking away from their breakup, the audience only sympathsed with Ian's character, so she decided to add a shot of Robynne smoking on the bench and looking sad. She changed the saturation from the average of 51% to slightly darker 49% so that the mood of the video is quit depressing and the audience can see that Robynne is also affected by their breakup.

Robynne sad about their break-up

Hannah changed the saturation for that shot to make it deem.

13/11/12

This a zoom in image of the blurry shot we used.







Clear shot
During this lesson, I decided to do some editing with Hannah along with some feedback at each stage from Rebecca. I thought it will be a good idea to change the steady, clear shot of Robynne and James sat on the bench in the park to a blurry, hand-held shot of both of them on the same bench. The blurry shot moves away from them, so the audience are kept in suspense as they wait to see who she is with (James or Ian?). We didn't just put in the blurry shot in the video because it might look good. We thought it could be a metaphor for memory and relationship. We then cut back to the shot of the arm progressing, and then to a live footage of Ian playing the drums, and then back to the zoom out shot revealing who is sat on the bench.

We then cut to the shot where Ian is walking away at the top of the park by the lane. The idea behind putting a shot of James and Robynne in the park together before adding a shot of Ian walking away is to show that he knows about Robynne's relationship with James and he has come to accept it and is moving on. For the shot of Ian walking away alone, we changed the saturation to 55% to emphasis his sadness.


Saturation of 55% to dull the mood

We thought it will be better to make the video choppier as it's an important music convention in this genre. We cut 0.9 seconds from the shot of James and Robynne talking on the bench and 0.5 seconds from the shot of Ian walking away.
                                                                                         shorter cuts to make it choppier

Hannah and Rebecca tried to trim out the man talking

Cutting off the shots allowed time to add in a fire shot before cutting back to the shot of Ian walking away. By the end of this lesson, we had reached the part of the music where an unknown male's voice is talking over the music and we  think was an editing error, and so Hannah and Rebecca decided to try and cut it out, but without releasing, they ended up removing the lyrics out of synchrony with the visuals. During the next lesson, Hannah and I decided to start editing the music again to make it synchronise with the live footage at the start of the video, and Hannah later came back during her free lesson and finished the editing.

Ideas for print work.

We started thinking of ideas of what we could include on the print work and promotional material of the music video. We thought it will be a good idea to use some still images from the footage intended for our music so that the print work will be cohesive to the video. 

Some of the key images that stood out from the footage for us, and we though might be cohesive, if used for the front and back cover were the following; 

This image would be good to use on the cover of the album because it is prominent in the video, we the audience can see the the lyrics on the paper which was our aim of writing on the papers.

We thought that this image would be cohesive to the lyrics as it emphasis James's lyrics of "carve the four letter word". 

Again, this image is cohesive to the lyrics as it emphasis the lyrics of the breakdown of a relationship.

This image could be used in the print work as it is of the band performing onstage which will be cohesive to the to the video and most of the footage is of the band on stage. It also shows all the band members which could be seen as introducing the band rather than having a general picture of them posing. 


Even though we cannot use all this pictures for the album cover, we will choose two which we like the most for the album, and then the rest of the images will be use for promotional materials such as posters to advertise the band further. 

Start of Editing

In today's lesson we started edited the first footage Rebecca filmed. I noticed that we cannot exactly follow our story board as first planned, we took of some scenes form the storyboard and improvised other scenes. We inter-cut footages from "Remember the Ruined" live performance which was filmed a few wee ago and put it together with the narrative shots of Robynne, James and Ian so that the video almost look "jumpy".  So far, what we find most difficult when editing is synchronising live footage to the diegetic sound.

What I have learn so far in editing is the significant of planning and preparation. Even though we planned our storyboard, because we were not able to film every idea of the video, we have problems following the narrative thereby making the visuals almost impossible to synchronise with the sound.

We imported the live and narrative footage into iMove to edit. We all already had a gist of how this software works as we used it early this year to edit our films.

Live footage of the band performing in Fleece in Bristol.

















A blur shot of fire burning.

In the group, we are confuse of what footage to use to start the video. The decision is split as some of us want a live footage, Ian carving into his hand or the blurry fire. I personally want the blurry fire because it gives a sense of memory, some one trying to retrieve a lost memory which would converge  with the narrative as Ian is still in love with Robynne in the video.

Questionnaire and Pie Chart

We used the research into the metal-core lifestyle to do a questionnaire to see what the niche audience would want to see in our own music video. Below is a unanswered and answered questionnaire.

Blank questionnaire (1)

Blank questionnaire (2)

Answered questionnaire (1)


















Answered questionnaire (2)


From the answered questionnaires, we were able to create pie chart to show the response from our audience:

1.) As seen above, more females took part in the questionnaire than males.

2.) The majority of the people who listen to this music are teenagers. This might be because most of our audience research was done on students from school who fall within this age group. The audience age group works well with our music as the band members are teenagers and so might be able to relate  to the audience.

3.) As seen, we asked people who like different range of music rather than focusing on a particular target audience who prefer the metalcore genre, music and life style. From this, we though we could add ideas from other music genre conventions so we could get more audience.

4.) Just as the favourite music, they are equally people who wouldn't like to listen any of the music genres listed.

5a.) Gigs is a prominent part of the metal-core life style, and from experience, I would rather attend a gig because it gives a real sense of connction to the band. From the result, our target audience would have been to a gig to understand the importance of gigs in the metal-core genre.

5b.) Peopl attend gigs, for metal-core music and other music genres for several reason. As shown above, some metal-core fans attend it for the atmosphere.

6.)Metallica and Iron Maiden are some of the inspiring bands in the metal genre, so, it is no doubt that the majority of the participants in our audience research like them the most. This is also good for our music as "Remember the Ruined" takes inspiration of their style of music from them, so the audience will like our band.

7.) Live footage is always included in metal-core music video and so, we would also be including it in our music video.

8.) From research into metal core life style and audience research, gig venues are usually included in metal-core videos, so we plan to include in our own video as well.

9.) Live footage is an important convention for metal core genre, and our video fits this as we plan to include a significant amount of live footage.

10.) The majority prefers emphasis on lyrics, but we plan to emphasis both but especially on music through live footage.

11.) Metal-core bands try to avoid lip synching when performing their song as an error trying to sing at the wrong time or act uncertainly can damage their throat.. The results from the fits well with our idea as we have live footage of the band singing which we could match with the visuals.

12.) This again fits well with our plan as we want members of the band (Ian, James and Robynne) to be in the video.

13.) It is not surprising that their first impression would be "scary" as the music is quite loud. This does not however affects our music as the audience already know what to expect.

14.) From watching some of their video, I also think Bullet For My Valentine creates effective videos. It is also important that we look at other video, even the unpopular bands, and see how they create their video and what image they are sending to their audience.

15.) We will look at music videos from these band(The Devil Wears Prada, Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine), and what makes them memorable. We will the try to include some of the elements so as to satisfy our target audience.

Storyboarding and Filming

As a group and from analysing other music videos, we came up with ideas of what we wanted in our music video and Hannah drew them on a storyboard. 

 1.) We decided to start our video with a live footage of the band performing "Remember the Ruined", which was filmed by Hannah and me.

2.) Quick cut and close-up shot of Ian standing in front of a white plain background.

3.) Another quick quick cut and close-up shots of Robynne against a plain background. We want to include an element of the "Male Gaze" by possibly showing close-up shots of Robynne's lip and eye.

4.) Quick cut of live footage of the band to synchronise the music.

5.) Narrative footage of Robynne and Ian which would lead to their break up. In this shot, both characters are in the centre of the frame. The argument synchronise the diegetic sound. 

6.) Some more live footage of the band to synchronise the sound.

7.) Out of rage and frustration from their break-up, Ian burns up the lyrics which he wrote for Robynne. This again synchronise with the diegetic sound of the James's vocals. 

8.)  More live footage of the band to synchronise the diegetic sound, with more of Jame's "screamed vocals" 

 9.) Shot of Robynne kissing James on a bench in a park to synchronises Jame's clean vocals. 

10.) We cut to more live footage of the band performing to synchronise the sound which might include the band "head-banging"  (A key convention of the metal-core genre)

11.) Return to narrative of the burn out lyrics to synchronise the diegetic sound of "growling" screamed by James. 

12.) A quick cut to live footage with more head-banging shots of the band. 

 13.) Ian carving the four letter word into his arm synchronises Jame's Lyrics.  This shot would be filmed against a plain background to avoid any effect of colouring.

14.) Cut back to live footage of the band performing.

15.) More extended shots of live footage of the band members. Some of the band's fans might be included in this shot to demonstrate the metal-core life style and how the band relates to their audience.

16.) Quick cut to Ian's fully cut arm to synchronise the Jame's lyrics "carve the four letter word in to your arm".

17.) A final quick cut of Robynne walking glumly in the rain on an empty road

18.) The final shot is of the screen fading to black as the diegetic sound comes to an end.


After drawing our storyboard, one of the ideas we wanted in our music video as seen above is Ian burning up a paper with the lyrics written on it. Below as some papers Rebecca made by pouring hot coffee on it to make it look vintage. We included a vintage look because it is sometimes used in some metal-core music videos, and it could also be seen as a metal-core convention.

Each member in my group wrote out the lyrics in different colours and font size so that we could choose what works best when filming our video.

Start of Filming:

Due to different school schedules with the band members, we were not all able to go and film the narrative of our video. Rebecca went to meet some members of the band; Robynne, Ian and James on Friday after school to start our filming. She was able to film scenes including  Robynne was breaking up with Ian in a park on a bench, and  Ian walking off angrily. She also filmed some scenes of James and Robynne getting together in the same park where Robynne broke up with Ian. There were also scenes of them talking in the park and then walking off together. However, Rebecca wasn't able to film all of the plan we had on the storyboard such as individual footage of Robynne and Ian. We are either trying to get hold of the band again to film the missing footage if we can, if not we will improvise with what we have.

Below are some still images of the narrative Rebecca was able to film.

 Robynne and Ian breaking up.

 Robynne and James getting together

 James and Robynne walking off together










 We thought that fire/ burning was an important metal-core convention from analysing other metal- core videos, and so we decided to fire into our own video. Rebecca was also able to film the shots of the lyrics burning up.  

We were thinking of using the shot to start our video instead of in the middle because it adds and effect of mystery and  uncertainty to the audience.