Digipack

In this blog I will taking an in depth look at digipacks, explain what they are and discuss how they are used by artists for promotional purposes. I will additionally be analysing existing digipacks from the artists genre I am producing a video on and make appropriate decisions concerning my digipack. Later on in the blog, I will be producing flat plan designs for the digipack, gaining feedback then making decisions from this feedback before creating a final design. To begin, a classic digipack is a type of CD packaging made from card used to hold a compact disc. Digipacks flip open like a book and have three portions, one package opens to the right and another to the left, with the centre portion holding the CD. The digipack we are producing, is in the format of a DVD box but in a cardboard form similar to the original digipack design. Digipack are used by artists because they are visually pleasing and look attractive leading to the consumer purchasing them. I will now analyse my three existing ideas for a digipack for my artists single, I have followed a format by showing the front and back, as well as the inside and inside back covers to demonstrate my ideas. I will make appropriate decisions concerning the digipacks and eventually decide upon a digipack I think will be the best one to use for my coursework. This first digipack flat plan has been an idea of mine from the early stages of the task. After researching my target audience, (http://lukesidwella2coursework.blogspot.com/2010/09/target-audience-of-band.html), I came across some existing digipacks used by the band that I found interesting. I noticed that a lot of them just incorporate a simple image and use the signature "lighter" that can be seen in all of the bands CD covers, pictures of these will be seen later in the blog when I analyse current digipacks the band have produced.

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In this digipack, my idea was to use the name of the band to reflect a theme of being on the streets, making a clear link with the bands name. The front cover shows tower blocks in the background showing a street and urban feel to the cover, which would coincide with the video as it is shot all in an urban setting in and around large buildings in a city environment. The bands name and the name of the song are shown to be in the form of a billboard, being lighten up and shown in the foreground and against the urban background. Sitting on the billboard I plan to photoshop in my main protagonist, so a further link can be noticeably created between the video and the digipack. The inside cover will follow a theme of an urban setting and show large buildings to create a city-scape. All of the information needed for the digipack will be suitably placed around the back and inside covers. This digipack certainly would appeal to the target audience of the band through the fact that it is similar to other digipacks created previously by the band, this means that the targeted group would be enticed into buying the CD as they make the association with the band, due to it following a similar trend of previous CD covers. However I feel the digipack is far to similar to previous CD covers and can almost be seen as a copy of another CD cover that has already been created by the band. The tower blocks in the background I now feel are to simple and not very aesthetically pleasing. In addition to this, the billboards with lights on that I have chose to incorporate into the cover, are often only seen in America and with the video being set in an urban England setting, this could be contradictory to the footage seen in the video.

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My second digipack design was one that came to me at a later stage of the planning process. I thought the idea of having a cartoon cover, against such a serious song could be effective. The cover shows a protagonist, laying on the road with yellow lines either side of him representing this. It cuts off the bottom half of his face, showing the top half in a view from above. The inside shows him on his face with a puddle of sick and a bottle of alcohol laying next to him, this demonstrates the lyrics of the song and instantly shows the consumer what the song is going to be based around. For the CD section, I decided to keep it simple in my design and incorporate the image of the trademark lighter the streets often use in their songs. The song title is shown in a bubble, making a connotation that he is thinking about staying positive through a drug addiction. The back cover, just shows the road again with speech bubbles coming off it. I though initially the idea would be effective if i were to put it into production, however when considering the target audience and what the bands usually produce it was a bit to different and would not appeal to them. The streets usually include large images of urban landscapes suiting the theme of their music. I believe the initial idea would be too ambitious and I should stick to a design that the target audience are comfortable with so the digipack would appealing to them and ensure that if it were to be produced that the CD would sell.

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This is the third and final digipack design that I produced, and is the one I am going to select for my final design. I have used the idea of following a narrative throughout the digipack and making links between each cover so it follows a story as you look through the digipack. Their is a constant image of a lamppost and a wall leading throughout the digipack with the main protagonist sitting on the wall. On the cover it shows them sitting on the wall with their legs dangling down, additionally they will be wearing a hat to cover their face so the character can not be seen. The name of the band and the name of the song will be written on the wall beneath the protagonist, so it is blended into the environment and doesn't look falsely placed. On the back you see the same shot but from behind the character, with the track listings and the technical information being written underneath on the wall, following the format of the cover. On the inside cover the story continues with the character standing up on the wall kicking a can of drink over, with grabs of lyrics from the song written on the wall underneath him. Behind the CD is just a basic image of the wall and lamppost without the character standing there. This digipack is my favourite because of the fact that it sticks to the theme that the target audience of the band are used to seeing on the streets CD Covers which is why it makes it my final choice and the one I will be using. I plan to develop my ideas and will evaluate and discuss the photos and fonts I will be using in the digipack, later on in the blog.

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The images on the left are all existing Streets album covers that they have produced. Noticeable similarities can be made between them all, as they all focus on a basic image are basic in the fact that they only portray a single image onto a background. The two middle album covers show the lead singer sitting on a car in a rural background and him standing at a bus stop. This is what I drew inspiration from for the idea of having the main protagonist of my video simply sitting on a wall with a lamppost facing down on them. It is a pastiche of album covers already created by the streets and follows the pattern to appeal to the target audience of the band. They all also incorporate the signature streets lighter, I am not yet sure as part of the planning process whether to use this lighter on my digipack, it would be successful in following a trend set by the band but could also be seen as un-original. All of the images do however, use a background image that supports what is going on in the foreground and the main part of the digipack. Therefore I will attempt to take a separate photograph of an urban setting and photo shop my image over the top. An initial idea I have is that I want to show a set of buildings, as seen in the first of the album covers on the left, to look as if the protagonist of my video is sitting on the edge of a building, instead of just simply on a wall. Unfortunately I could not find any digipacks that were produced by the band only the front covers. So I am going to analyse two existing digipacks from different artists, one which I believe is effective, and another which I feel is not so good.

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The First Digipack I am going to analyse is Kayne West’s album Late Orchestration. The album cover is instantly eye-catching as it uses an image of a large bear crossing the road dressed in a school uniform. This is obviously something not often seen on CD covers and is unique in its choice of image. Therefore this will attract an audience who will be interested and want to know about the album through the use of an eye-catching image. The composition of the front cover shot is effective and the choice to have the bear off-centre allows us to see the London road sign behind it and establish the location. The border is additionally effective, in the fact that it follows the theme of the pedestrian crossing and the colours on the flashing beacon meaning it all fits together. The choice to have the name of the artist and album on the right hand side of the cover is interesting and the choice of font is matched throughout. The reason behind having the Y and W on the front cover in capital letters is however not evident. The back cover flows nicely from the front cover, using the taxi to link the two together effectively. The cab is used to display all of the relevant information including the track listings and bonus features which is shown in the same font as used on the front cover, showing that there has been attention payed to the choice of the font. Overall the digipack is well thought out, grabs the attention of the consumer and is relevant to the artists genre.

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The next digipack design I am going to analyse is one by a band named nine inch nails from the album all that could have been. The digipack itself and the design overall is very basic, clearly not a lot of thought or care has been put into producing the digipack and it shows in the final product. The front of the CD shows an image in the top half of the cover showing something which is not very clear to see, due to the fact the consumer can't see what the image portrays then it can be seen as irrelevant. The logo is composed to take up most of the cover and is placed over some of the writing at the top making it difficult to read. Additionally, the fact the logo is so large and the font describing whats on the CD isn't, it makes it difficult for the consumer to establish which band the CD is by if the logo is not already known to them. The choice of colours is very bland and unattractive, and the description of the band name and album is repeated at the top and does not look professional. Concerning the back of the CD, there is not many points to draw upon due to it being very basic. The colour of the font clashes with the dark grey and makes it difficult to read and the font is not the same as the font shown on the front, making the digipack flow badly and look as if the front and back cover are not linked. The information at the bottom looks as it it has just been slapped on without any thought of where to put it or how to position it. Overall this is a very poor example of a digipack and this would probably be reflected in its sales due to its unattractiveness.

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All the fonts I am about to analyse are taken from the website http://www.dafont.com. All of them have been print screened from the page and this is how they will be entered into my blog. The first font I found is a font which is presented in the style of large tower block buildings. The font is very imaginative and clearly incorporates the urban aesthetic that I am aiming for on my album cover. However the font is quite difficult to read and establish what it actually says. When producing album covers it is always important that what is written onto the cover can be read properly, making this font a poor choice despite is link with the album cover. This second font is one that I have found and think is the one I will be using throughout my digipack. It incoporates the urban feel and it is effective in its bold styling with scruffy edges, associating itself with a graffiti style and one that suits perfectly to my album cover. The fact my album cover shows a wall, means it can easily fit in with the style and feel i am attempting to create and would look perfectly suited on top of the image I will be using. The back to front lettering is also a style which I have been drawn to. If I were to use this font I would ensure that I kept it the same throughout, therefore using it on my front cover, back cover and on the inside to make the digipack flow accordingly. As I am still quite unsure concerning which one of my many images I wish to use for my digipack, I have looked into alternative fonts in case I change my mind and use another photo. This font co-incides with the second image I am looking to use, which will be seen later on in the blog when i analyse my photos and make my final decisions. In my second photo, there is no wall incorporated into the image, therefore the graffiti font would not be as suitable or effective. This font is similar to the one already used by the streets and have a desired impact when combining it with my image. The font is bold and narrowly composed, however the incoporation of the weathered effect on the letters, was what drew me towards this paticular font.

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The photo I have entered into the blog is my initial idea for my front cover of my digipack. I plan to use this image and edit out the date and time the photo was taken at the bottom, as well as removing The water behind the shoes. The photo is meant to show our protagonist of the video, sitting on the wall dangling there shoes over the edge. We planned to use this image as there is no clear sight of where the wall starts and ends and could suggest to the consumer that the charecter is sitting on a wall thats really hill in the sky, or just on a small one. I additionally plan to brighten up the image and work further on its contrast and colour scale to improve it. Furthermore, I wish to make the wall look more weathered to match the font I have chosen above. The picture is simple, however after conducting research I did notice that album covers from the streets are never crowded and often focus on just a basic image. Which is why I decided to follow the trend and keep with a design that the consumer is used to seeing. Flaws with the photo are that it could almost be seen as too basic, and dosen't leave many ideas for me to create a back cover and the inside from. I will edit the photo, place my font on top and then decide whether or not to use this as my final digipack. To follow are my final designs for my digipack and my evaluation in the form of a video presentation.

Here are my notes use for my video presentation in the form of a google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16ZvnqQ4bh-oBrH5Ut6DJUHMK1OabfihpGWuiX63SPiE/edit?hl=en_GB&pli=1#

Shooting Diaries

When on location yesterday, we collected all of our footage and are now ready to edit it down to a final video and add a soundtrack. As we only had one days filming, we have a relatively short shooting diary, however I had entered into this blog the diary from yesterdays filming drawing upon any problems or issues we had during the day and how I felt the filming went.

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Wednesday 16th March- Filming for Music Video: The day started well with us heading into college and picking the camera up from Craig, we had already completed the Risk Assessment form during Danns lesson the previous week so it was a simple process to pick up the camera and meant us heading back to Telscombe Cliffs to begin filming instantly. The weather was a dark and windy morning which suited the exact conditions we wanted to begin our film with, minus the rain which we were lucky enough that it managed to stay clear whilst we filmed. Upon arrival at our first location the beach front was deserted which was exactly how we had planned it as we wanted it to reflect an early morning and despite us not filming till 10, we managed to ensure this effect was reflected. We encountered a slight issue with the handycam,as we realised the person filming would only have one hand to be able to use in the shot as the camera would be being held in the other which proved to be difficult, however we decided for the scenes in which both hands are required to have the other person who was not filming to hold the camera whilst the other did the movement. We had difficulty with the ipod scene, as the camera could be seen in the reflection so it took a few takes to get this right, and we will edit it down during the editing process.

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All of our filming down at madeira went perfectly, with the weather continuing to be miserable, exactly how we wanted it, however there were some members of the public around so we needed a few takes to ensure no-one walked past during our shots, as it was important to ensure our character was shown totally on his own during shots. Other than that we had a very incident free filming process and returned the camera on time to Craig ready to begin our 6 weeks of editing, which we ensured we had enough time to complete.

Shooting Schedule

Now we have storyboarded, the next step for us is to create a shooting schedule. This means us working out how and when we are going to organise everything for the filming including the booking of the camera equipment, organisation of the crew and directors and the filming itself and what we are going to shoot and how. When scheduling our shooting, an important tool to use is a shooting script which is a document that is used on the day of filming including a list of shots we are intending to film. After shooting, there is space on the shooting script to write information on each take and which one was the best which will make it easier for us when capturing back the footage during editing. As me and Sam got ourselves organised we had a very simple process concerning our filming and managed to get our footage on the same day which was made easy for us by the fact it was shot in first person and meant we didn't have any actors to organise, and didn't have many props to sort out. On the left is my shooting schedule scanned in that we carried on set with us, as well as the shooting script used for one of our shots which can be found below. The shooting script pictured is the one we had to use as we encountered an issue when filming this shot, the picture in the shooting script is print screened out of our test filming.

Health and Safety

Health and safety is often an area that is misunderstood in terms of its importance, when considering video and film production. When producing media forms, there are a lot of external factors that need to be considered to providing a safe and risk free set for actors and directors to film in, a technique that works to eliminate risk and promote safety is a risk assesment. The risk assesment is a way of highlighting potential risks in the form of a document and discussing ways in which it can be eliminated contributing to a smooth as possible production experience. We had experiences involving risk assesment forms and had our own risk assessment form when on location (a template of which is on the right). We considered filming in wet weather as being a risk to both the camera becoming broken and potential slipping and injury of actors, as we are deciding to film both on clifftops and the underpass, we need to ensure the weather is suitable before embarking on filming. Additionally every time we booked a camera from the college we were required to fill out a risk assessment form which was covered by the college insurance policy and also helped us to identify any risks to ourselves, general public and production equipment. This means us having to evaluate access requirements and permission to film, which in our case is not such a defining factor as we are using public locations and will ensure no external member of the public is featured in our video.

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Additionally, contributing to the health and safety is carrying a call sheet at all times when on location, a call sheet is a list of everyone working on the film with a reference to one of more contact details such as mobile phone number or email address. This enables you to be able to contact all relevant personell, including actors, equipment suppliers, crew and anyone involved in transport and logistics. it is a vital piece of equipment across all stages of the production. Below is the call sheet use between me and my partner, we had all the contact details of our college tutors and technicians and had this on us at all times. I also had Craig the technicians number in my phone when on location in-case there was technical difficulty with the cameras. We didn't have much difficulty in producing the call sheet as we don't have any actors in our video, due to it being shot from first person.

Storyboard and Animatic

In this blog I will scan in my initial storyboard that I produced before any filming had taken place to outline my original ideas and enable me to be able to follow my plan when on location filming my video. A storyboard is a very vital piece of work in relation to a film or music video, through its ability to enable the director (in this case myself), to pre visualise the video before setting out to record it. It can be used in pre production, to sketch and outline the initial ideas that could prove to be inspirational in producing a good video, there is nothing worse then having a great idea for a shot, then forgetting about it! It can also be referred back to post production to allow the director to see how accurate their film/video is compared to his original plans, and whether or not they stemmed away from the idea they initially had and how accurate the storyboard was.

The storyboard I have created demonstrates my groups idea which is to produce a video shot completly from a first person perspective, we wanted something edgy and uncommon to accompany a track that is one we found difficult to intepret, leading us to make the decision to shoot it from this perspective. Our locations and lighting we are aiming for is dark and very tonal colour balances with an urban, city backdrop. We want the camera to be handheld and strapped to our main protagonist, who's face will never be seen, adding to the mysterious ambience we are aiming to create. This means having a shaky and blurry camera movement, which we aim to look intentional without looking like it has just simply been badly shot. We want this to reflect the protagnists disorientation he is experiencing and create a video that almost breaks a mould and is purposeful in not looking perfect, and as true to reality as possible.

In a storyboard, my proposed idea needs to be put onto paper in a shot by shot format with a sketch for every shot and a detailed description next to it. Each shot is numbered and includes a description of the shot type, movement of the camera and the action and movement within the shot.The storyboard should be ideally around 30 shots long, to allow great detail in portraying an idea that the director has, however at this stage of the process, I do not have a clear enough idea to be able to produce a 30 shot storyboard. I will incorporate the shots I have planned into this blog in the form of small sketches demonstrating my idea, I do have some test footage however I feel it is more beneficial for me to draw the ideas so my idea can be fully expressed. I have a clear idea for the opening of my video, but am not yet sure of how to draw the video to a close and how to develop a narrative into it. In the later blogs, my storyboard will be used to create a shooting script and schedule.

Mise-en-scene

In this blog I will be discussing the choices we have made regarding the mise-en-scene of our video. The term mise-en-scene is a french term which basically means everything that goes into a shot that can be seen by the viewer. We have ideas on all aspects of the mise-en-scene, which we wish to use in our video. In terms of the setting, we feel due to a lonely dark theme of the song, we will select a setting of a local town in the early hours of the morning where no-one will be around to reflect the theme of loneliness. The aspect of the clothing our main protagonist will be wearing needs to demonstrate that the character has been out all night and using drugs, this also means we will need to use make-up to darken the eyes and make the skin pale. Important props we will need to use is the mobile phone, which helps to start the video using an extreme close-up of a text message from a relative, additionally there is not many props we will need to use, as the video doesn't contain any other characters. Furthermore we have an idea to use a bottle of vodka to reflect that he has been drinking.

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All of the mise-en-scene elements we have selected contribute to the videos themes of drug use, loneliness and depression. It strongly reflects the genre of rap, as rap videos are always very powerful and true to the lyrics that the song possesses. All of the streets previous videos, such as dry your eyes, follow a simple theme, therefore we know that the video will be welcomed by streets fans as it similar to videos they have already seen. To gain some ideas for our mise en scene, we used a recce. A recce is a starting base for a project and involves visiting potential locations for filming. Below are some images that constructed our recce and are the locations we will be filming in.

The Pitch

Link to the presentation: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0QNSAHIClA-NGZhNGMyZWItNTgzNy00MjQ0LWJhZjEtZTAzNGFmMmNmY2Yx&hl=en_GB

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Link to the video: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0QNSAHIClA-YTA0MzQ1M2UtOWJkYi00Yzg2LThhM2QtOGNmZGQ5NjVlZGE0&authkey=CN_E8T8&hl=en_GB

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In this blog, is a video of clip of me and my partner presenting our initial ideas for our video to the rest of our group. We used information previously gathered earlier on in the blog on target audience and presented this information to the group. Above is a link to the video of the pitch and the presentation that me and my partner produced.

Initial Ideas

The image below is a print screened image of the mind-map we produced on the initial ideas of our video. Please click the image to enlarge.















We have many initial ideas to go into the production phase of our video. Our main idea is to shoot the entire video with a black and white effect, to reflect the dark mood and tone of the song. We have chosen to incorporate the idea of the flashback to show the history of our individual and why he is so troubled, showing things like splitting up with his girlfriend over drug abuse, leaving home and getting into trouble with the police. These flashbacks will be shown in a darker tone of black and white, as they will be showing dark moments from his past. We plan to shoot the video in the middle of the night before sunrise, showing our character leaving a police station after spending most of the night in custody. He then proceeds to put his headphones in, as the song starts and the video begins.

Our character will need to be wearing old tattered clothing, look tired and unclean and appear to be in distress. As the song progresses we plan to show the flashbacks showing the dark past of the character before cultimating in the realisation of his drug addiction with a twist at the end. We plan to use a handheld camera to reflect our characters disorinetation and confusion. At this stage of the planning process, we feel have collected a number of ideas which will hopefully be put towards making our idea for the video become a reality.

Copying an existing video

One a lesson a week, we have a session which focuses on teaching the class how to use the cameras effectively, introduce the class to the cameras as well as basics in using them safely. Our first session of the term, we looked at the video "Teenage Dirtbag" by a band called Wheatus. This particular video was shot in a school in America, so the aim of the class was to recreate and replicate the video shot by shot to aid the class in using the cameras through effective demonstration. Before any filming could take place, we had time to familiarise ourselves with the camera by looking at how to set up the tripod to gain a steady shot and how to safely add and remove the camera from the tripod. We additionally looked at how to replace the tapes to record footage as well as how to record and zoom when filming. We then spent a lesson breaking down the opening scenes of the video in a storyboard, and learnt how effective the use of the storyboarding technique is in media production. This helped the class to realise how much time and planning is spent before the shot can be recorded, looking in detail at factors such as the location of the shot, costume and props used in the shot, the description of the sound and audio and many other factors. You will a copy of the storyboard scanned into this blog.

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After focusing on the storyboarding of the video, we then went on location to begin to film the opening shots as a class. This enabled us to use a shooting script for the first time and learn how to put this into practice when filming. The shooting script provided us with information on the shot number, shot type, description of the action, the camera movement as well as the number of takes and notes on each take. The notes on each take would enable the class to decide as a group on whether or not the take was effective and what needed to be done in the next take to make it better. We also got to use to using the clapperboard, you will find a copy of the shooting script scanned into this blog. Once all the background research had been done into the video, we split up into two groups and filmed half the video each so more footage could be filmed in our restricted time period. Each group used their own props and used their own knowledge of camera movement to produce shots which were similar if not replicating the ones used in Wheatus' video. At the end of both groups conducting the filming, we came together as a whole class to edit the footage. We were split into groups and given a laptop, using the program final cut pro to edit our footage. To take part in this process, we needed to connect the camera to the laptop through a firewire cable. We then logged and captured the video so it was copied into the program and allowed us to cut between the shots. We additionally learnt how to convert the video from NTSC to PAL and reduce the frames per second. Furthermore, we were shown how to use shortcuts and to save our clip to a scratch disk. Here is a link to a copy of "Teenage Dirtbag" produced by our group and a link to an example of using timelapse filming.

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Teenage Dirtbag: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0QNSAHIClA-YjQ4ZmUwMDktNWViNS00ZTZlLWE1NzUtNTM1ZTI0NWJmZTk5&hl=en_GB

Timelapse: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0QNSAHIClA-ZDQ5ZmM2MDctOTUwMC00Y2JjLWFjYTUtOTg3YjQ0MmVmMTE3&hl=en_GB

Video Analysis

Video 1: The Streets- Dry your eyes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHOf3s70w-c)
Video 2: The Streets- Blinded by the lights (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MCbis75wk)

In this blog I am going to focus on two additional videos from The Streets to see what sort of videos they have chosen to produce previously. This will hopefully provide me with inspiration and ideas for my video and allow me to see the sorts of videos The Streets choose to produce alongside their songs so my video can follow a similar trend. I will be adding screen grabs from the videos on chosen shots which i feel lead to the video being effective and providing the video with a story. The first video is a song called dry your eyes. The song is about a man trying to cope with his girlfriend breaking up with him and went to number one in the UK and in Ireland. I felt it was a good choice to decide to focus upon this video as it has many connotations to stay positive with similar themes of loneliness.

The video opens with a long shot showing the lead singer and the persona of the video sitting under a light on a un-lit road with his dog. Instantly the video is telling us that the character is alone and is shown in a shot on his own to demonstrate this. The video then proceeds to show him in a snooker hall, with the theme of loneliness being replicated in that no other character is shown in the shot other than himself and the dog. The use of the dog is showing that it is the only person the character can currently relate to and the only thing wishing to be with him.

Throughout the video, there is a constant theme of loneliness as Mike is never shown in a shot with any other character just himself. When the camera moves in for a close up (as pictured), his face is very sullen and has little expression demonstrating that he is likely to be in a bad mood and upset with what has happened. The Video has similar shots throughout, with a number of establishing shots showing his change of setting from the swimming pool, to the cafe, to the betting shop and other locations. This could possibly suggest due to his varying location that the character is looking for something or someone and that it is thing certain thing that will cheer him up or make him feel better.

One shot which i found interesting was the close-up on the games machine when he visits the arcade. The screen reads "you lose", which other then suggesting the character has lost at the game, also suggests that he is a loser and has lost in his relationship with his girlfriend. The video shows locations which would usually be full with people such as the supermarket, cinema and a football stadium, all empty with only the character and his dog being shown in each one, this is effective in showing that the character feels totally alone in the world and lost.

The video finishes with a shot of the main character and his dog back at what looks to be his home, the dog seemingly moves towards Mike who lovingly accepts the dogs gesture and he embraces the dog looking as if the dog is the only thing left who he can relate with and who wants to be around him. The video is powerful in demonstrating the mood of the character after his girlfriend splits up and shows him alone throughout the video clearly promoting a constant theme of loneliness. The theme of the song is very similar to the song we have chosen, therefore i may use the idea of this video in the production of my own.

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The second song and video I have chosen to analyse is a song called “blinded by the lights”. The song focuses on a main character, again played by the bands lead singer Mike Skinner, who goes to a wedding to meet his girlfriend. He then proceeds to take drugs whilst the girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend. The video focuses on the mood of the character as he notices his girlfriend isn’t there and turns to drugs and excessive drinking to try and make his mood better. The video opens with a phone conversation between mike and his girlfriend. The signal drops and the girl sends him a text message saying “c u in da corner x x”. Due to the text and the alternating shots between the couple, it tells us the couple are close and plan to meet at the party. At this moment of the video we assume they are together.

The scene changes and Mike is seen at a wedding, a handheld camera is used to track Mike as he walks through the wedding looking around trying to find his girlfriend, Simone. He realises she isn’t there and spots some friends over on another table who are drinking heavily and he joins them. The handheld camera is effective in showing mike’s confusion about where simone could be and it also could potentially show nervousness due to the shaking of the camera about meeting her. A close up then shows him taking MDMA with the continued look of confusion on his face as he looks around for her.

Mike then walks to the front of the building to get reception or as the lyric states, "get bars on my phone". He begins to send a text to his friend Dan who is also not there, the shot then changes to an over the shoulder shot which shows simone and dan in the cloakroom kissing. It's at this point of the video that Mikes mood really deteriorates and a close-up over the bar shows that he is starting to feel the effects of the drink and drugs as his friends are shown to be forcing him to drink more, possibly due to the fact they know what is happening between Dan and Simone and they want Mike to not realise by getting him drunk. There are short shots however throughout, still showing Mike looking around for Simone. The handheld camera is then used again to show Mikes drunken state, with the angle tilting and moving as he walks into the toilet and does a couple of lines of cocaine. Its then we see that Simone and Dan are now in the toilet with Dan filming Simone giving him oral sex in the cubicle. A high angle shot reveals Mike and his friend in the next cubicle snorthing cocaine demonstrarting how close Mike came to finding them.

They then walk through into a disco room, where the handheld camera is used to focus on Mike's face showing us that he is in a drunken state and the tilting of the camera is again used. Through a point of view shot we see a medium close up on Simone and Dan dancing together. This is the first point of the video where Mike realises what has been potentially going on. As he attempts to make his way over to them, a fight breaks out between all of the men which cultimates in Mike ending up on the floor covered in blood in a dramatic close up to finish the video. This video demonstrates an emotional rollercoaster of an evening for the main character, it shows him at first being concerned about Simone not being there, then getting drunk of excessive drinking and drugs and eventually discovering his girlfriend has been cheating on him. The main point of the video was the handheld being used to demonstarte Mike being disorintated and is a technique im debating about using in my final video.

Both videos from the streets were very powerful and hard-hitting and both focused on the theme of women leading to mens lives being ruined. The dramatic style of both videos is something I will hoping to capture in my final video. Things such as in both videos the main character mimed the words throughout in an epilogue style format and the fact both videos featured constant close up on the character are two techniques I will be looking to incorporate into my video.

Target Audience of Band

In this section of the blog I am going to discuss and establish the target audience of the streets in terms of their psychographics, demographics and the socio economic classification of the bands fans. Psychographic variables are any attributes of a consumers personality relating to their personality, values, attitudes, interests or their lifestyle. These can be contrasted with demographic variables such as the consumers age and gender which can be classified as in-nate personality variables. A socio-economic group, or a social grade, are based around the occupation, job and income of the household and how that income might be spent.

To first try and establish the type of consumer associated with the band, I investigated the bands facebook fan page,http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/TheStreets?ref=tss, to have a look at the sort of people joining the group and posting comments on the page to the band. I looked through a lot of the comments and noticed at least 90% of comments where from middle-aged males asking when the bands next album was to be released. In terms of their psychographics, they seemed to be of a large build with a shaven head, the sort of style usually associated with the British football hooligan. This did not come of a surprise, as the streets lyrics are very harsh to reality and often contain profanity, which is why the words of the lead singer "Mike Skinner" have attracted this sort of range. Demographics suggest that the consumer is usually in their middle ages, late 30's/early 40's and male, very little women made comments or join on the bands page. In terms of ethnicity, they are all of a white/British ethnicity and appear to be from a working class background. A comment was posted onto the fanpage, specifically talking about the song we have chosen to produce a video on saying, "Stay positive always gets me up and moving on a hungover monday".

The magazines the bands appear in is a great way of finding out the consumer audience of the band. Typically the bands that appear in the magazine NME will interest the reader, therefore the majority of people reading the magazine will be interested and fans of the streets. The article i have placed into this blog was one of many that the streets have appeared in, The Streets have appeared in NME on numerous occasions and have made the cover a couple of times. Just as some background information, the NME (New musical express), is a popular music magazine in the UK that has been published every week since March 1952. Its a magazine which originally focused on punk rock, but in todays issues, many bands from the "indie" genre of music can be found.

I visited http://www.nrs.co.uk/ which is the national readership survey website. On this website I managed to find statistics which show how many people buy and read the magazine and the background on the consumer. Approximatly each week, 325 people read the NME, 218,000 of these people are from a higher status working occupation. Examples include people who work in management of companies and people with office jobs. 107,000 people who read the magazine are from a working class background, so people who work in factories and labourers. This is an interesting statistic, and does not support the ideology of what we found on the facebook fan page. If i were to make a prediction i would have assumed more people would have come from the working class background, however different articles are produced every week containing different bands which can appeal to peoples varying musical interest. I believe the issue was to contain an article on the streets, that week more working class people would purchase the magazine, as that is the target audience of the band.

294,000 people out of the 325,000 consumers are aged between 15 and 44, with only 31 consumers being aged over 45. This is not a suprising statistic, i believe due to the NME wanting to be current and up to date with recent and upcoming bands, this would appeal more to younger people who are from the same era as the bands being published in the magazine. For someone over 45, they are more likely to not be interested in upcoming bands as they already have bands that they enjoy listening to from a different era to compare the musicians in the magazine with. In terms of gender, 241,000 of the consumers who buy the magazine where male compared to only 84,000 women. This suggests the bands that the magazines choose to publish, for example the band we are looking at, appeal more to men. This is understandable, with the bands featured commonly producing songs which contain profanity and are on subjects which women may find offensive. For example the streets produced a song called "Fit but you know it", talking about women being teases and self-loathing. Therefore if this type of band are being featured in the magazine, women will not want to read it.

Furthermore, i visited the website http://www.nme.com/mediapack/ for further information on the consumer audience. This paticular website focused more on the people who visit the NME website instead of purchasing the magazine. Therefore it is providing me with a different statistic and a more detailed view into the consumer. The NME website is europes biggest and most viewed music website generating over 1.3 million users and 13 million website hits. 63% of these consumers visit the website at least weekly or more showing that the website is succesful in capturing peoples interest, leading them to check the site on regualr occasions. In terms of the demographics, 65% of the website consumers are male, with 50% being aged 16-24, supporting the statistic of the people who buy the magazine. Suggesting that the same people who buy the magazine will additionally visit the website. 23% of the consumers are aged between 25-34 leading to the assumption that the magazine and website both attract a younger audience. The job occupation of the website consumer is mainly from a higher status job occupation, with 79% of people working in management or offices.

The website has a short description of the type of personality expected of the consumer. The consumer is suggested to be passionate about music and as a result are more responsive to brands an advertising. Another website which proved helpful in me collecting research into the consumer was http://www.ipcmedia.co.uk/. This website claimed that the median age of consumers was 23 and that the consumer has a strong relationship with NME and completly trust the brand. It provided information such as the consumer is influential when buying mobile phones and that they are twice as likely to convince friends and family which mobile phone is worth getting. It also stated that the consumer is completly obsessed with music and that they rely on the editorial and the adverts to keep them up to date with new music, the knowledge they posses makes them superior when it comes to music in friendship and peer groups. Furthermore, when concerning film and DVD, NME readers enjoy watching films both at home and at the cinema. They tend to buy a new DVD every month which is higher then the national average. I feel I have now gathered enough information about my target audience to produce a succesful video that would appeal to such individuals.

Permission

In this section of my blog, i am going to send an e-mail to the record label of the streets asking for copyright permission to produce a music video using thier song. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.The copyright laws are set-up to promote the creation of new things and ideas.

If the laws didn't exist then some people might not be willing to share their ideas and we would have fewer new ideas. So copyright is basically needed so people don't steal other peoples work. In terms of the music industry this is vital in meaning that other acts don't copy parts of other peoples songs or lyrics, to give each band a unique name and unique music is being created specifically to that band. For example if an act wants to sample part of a song from an older generation, as they often do, they must first gain a copyright grant from the other acts label and the act themselves. Here is the e-mail i prepared to send to the streets record label, who are 679 recordings who are an indie label based in London belonging to the warner music group.

Please click the image to make larger

Song Choice

The song we have chosen to base our music video on is a song by a band named The Streets called "Stay positive". The streets are an english based band lead by the notoriously recognisable Mike Skinner. The song is a track that was designed to brings peoples problems into perspective, Mike Skinner claimed it was created to read the minds of people with problems and lyrically confess them back to them.

It is a song that is very deep and meaningful, I believe the best videos in the industry are ones that are created in mind of the lyrics, which means the lyrics have to have meaning to create a justifiable video for the song. The Streets are a band which always create songs on this level of meaning which is why we decided to look in more detail at the band and eventually select this song.Potential choices for videos for us where all english based artists, we believed choosing an english artist would make it easier for us to produce a video using english actors and an english setting. We contemplated using songs from Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris, however as soon as we heard the song by the streets we both decided it would be the right one to use as we both enjoyed listening to the song. To follow are the lyrcis to the song..

Cos this world swallows souls
And when the blues unfold
It gets cold, burns holes
You're going mad
Perhaps you always were
But when things was good you just didn't care
This is called irony
When you most need to get up you got no energy
Time and time shit'll happen
The dark shit's unwrapping
But no-one's listening your mates are laughing
Your brethren's fucking and then you start hating
Your stomach starts churning and you mind starts turning.
So smoke another draw
It won't matter no more but the next day still feels sore
Rain taps on your window
Always did tho but you didn't hear it when things were so-so
You're on your own now
Your little zone you were born alone and believe me you'll die alone
Weed becomes a chore
You want the buzz back so you follow the others onto smack

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Feels nice and still
Good thing about brown is it always will
It's easy, no-one blames you
It's that world out there that's fucked you
You're no less of a person and if God exists
He still loves you
Just remember that - the more you sink the further back from that brink
Maybe you've lifetime scars and you think tattoos might be more fitting
But who's picking?
Searching for yourself you find demons
Try and be a freeman and grasp that talisman
Cos your the same as I am
We all need our fellow man
We all need our samaritan.
Maybe I'm better looking than you tho
Maybe I've got more dough - but am I happier... no.
Get the love of a good girl and your world will be much richer than my world
And your happyness will uncurl

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Stop dreaming
People who say that are blaspheming
They're doing nine to five and moaning
And they don't want you succeeding when theyve blown it
And you idols - who are they?
They too dreamt about their day
Positive steps will see your goals.
Whether it's dollars or control, feel the gold.
I aint helping you climb the ladder
I'm busy climbing mine.
That's how it's been since the dawn of time
If you reach a cul-de-sac
The world turns it's back
This is you zone, it's like blackjack
He might get the ace or the top one
So organise your two's and three's into a run then you'll have fucked him some
And for that you'll be the better one
One last thing before you go though
When you feel better tommorow you'll be a hero
But never forget today. you could be back here
Things can stray
What if you see me in that window?
You won't help me I know.
That's cool, just keep walking where you go.
Carry on through the estate, stare at the geezers so they know you aint lightweight
And go see your mates
And when they don't look happy
Play them this tape

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

I hope you understand me
Just try and stay positive
I aint no preaching fucker and I aint no do-goody-goody either
This is about when shit goes pear-shaped
And if you aren't or ever have been at rock bottom then good luck to you in the big wide world
But remember that one day shit might just start crumbling
Your bird might fuck off or you might loose your job
It's when that happens that what I'm talking about will feel much more important to you
So if you aint feeling it, just be thankfull that things are cool in your world
Respect to BC
Positivity
Positivity

Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive
Just try and stay positive

Due to the length of the song, at this stage of the planning process, the verse highlighted in red is one we are considering taking out of the song to avoid the video being too long. The final decision about whether or not this will go forward will be discussed later in the blog

Exploring Music Video

To gain an insight into the world of music videos as a class we watched a documentary aired on channel 4 showing a countdown of the "100 greatest music videos of all time". For this section of the blog i have been asked to look at four music videos which are all in different in thier genre of music, the representation being shown by the video, the type of audience the video is aiming at and how it communicates a meaning across to the viewer. I have prepared a short video clip to go alongside each of the videos, which shows me discussing all of these factors in a video presentation. The four videos I have chosen to analyse are:

1. Run Dmc vs Aerosmith- Walk this way (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIbHPs_M55Q&ob=av2e)



2. Queen- I want to break free (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYL1vybRU4)



3. The Verve- Bittersweet Symphony (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3m4e45bTo)




4. Fatboy Slim- Weapon of choice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5cBoAV5Ys)

Introduction

In this piece of coursework, I will be producing a media portfolio in which I will be producing a music video as well as presenting my research, planning and evaluation over the course of the planning process. I will be building upon what i have already learnt in the AS coursework and developing my skills along the way, I aim to complete the year having learnt more about the concept of blogger as well as the music video industry in general.

This is a link to my previous AS coursework: http://lukesidwell.blogspot.com/