So Cool Video

Overall I believe that our music video has been successful. The range of shots and camera angles we used i feel mirrors the amount and styles used in conventional, professional videos. We tried to follow the same genre and techniques for example only using straight cuts and cutting on the beat of the music. In our video we included a slight narrative with artistic shots but decided to go for a more live performance oriented video. We did this because it was what our audience wanted when we gave out the questionnaire. To hide the fact that we were filming in a school drama studio we decided to stick magazine cuttings on the wall behind where the band were playing this also made it look professional. For the artistic shots of the body writing we laid her on a white blanket to hide the carpet and the covered her with a black blanket to give the allusion that she was naked. A weakness of our video was that because we didn’t have much narrative it seemed that the video repeated itself, to over come this we took a minute section out of the music using 'Garage Band' so that we didn’t need to try and fill the full length song with repetitive footage. We did cut the song but only by an amount which didn’t make the song to short. To compliment the video we created a magazine advert and digipak. We used images that we took and edited ourselves. Both i feel reflect the bands image and style. Overall I feel that the filming, editing and advertising material went well and we have created a good music video for the genre of music and style of band.

Stereo Decade Album Digipak

Front Cover

Inner front cover

CD Holder

Inner fold out

Outer Fold out

Back cover

After trying out a couple of album ideas we decided to take images that link to the video that we created as well as the genre of music we made it for. For the front cover we displayed the 'postcards' that were held up during the video with vinyl records to give it a retro feel. where the CD will be held is a single vinyl record which will be covered by the CD until it is removed. The fold out piece that covers the CD displays the bands name and three people holding the 'postcards'. The back cover has a link to the poster being the guitar. It also shows the track list, music label and the small print with barcode.

Below is a plan for the digipak which we developed into our final design.

Stereo Decade Magazine Advert

We have gone for a minimalist approach to our magazine advert, after looking at genuine adverts in magazines such as NME and Smash Hits we discovered that written information was kept to a minimum with only essential information displayed. Such as the band name, release dates, reviews and tour dates. The image we have used was taken by me which I then edited on Photoshop to make the guitar the only thing visible in the photo. The lettering we took from a website called dafont.com. We chose three different yet similar types of fonts because it helped to break up the advert and only having the band name in colour helps to draw attention to it. The name of the band is also visible on the guitar. We have also displayed the record label in the corner as this was typically visible on adverts that we looked at. After drafting three different magazine adverts we developed this one because it was more typical of the genre of music that we were creating the video for.

Storyboard

We have done a story board so that we have something to follow while filming and editing our music video.

Here are the original plans of the storyboards :

Filming

We were given two days for us to film on, and we managed to stick to those times. Our first day of filming we thought went well however after looking back at what we captured we had our doubts. We believed that the artistic elements in the shots weren’t to a high standard and we re-arranged to film again on our other filming day using different techniques, model and artist. That day went a lot better and we are all happy with what we got. We feel that filming again gave us the opportunity to improve and know what to do differently from the first time. On our second day we also filmed the band sections of the video which came out really good, the singing sections that we recorded could of been improved however we still have footage to work with during editing. During filming we used two cameras, one stationary on a tripod and another used for pans, close-ups etc. This proved really helpful as once we looked back at what we filmed we had plenty of footage to work with. In total we managed to film about 20-30 minutes of film and i think that will be enough to edit from for a 4 minute music video. We will be given two further days to edit our video as well as lesson time and free periods.

Shooting Script

- fridge magnets cartoon style rearranging footage to spell stereo decade.
- Close up of hands, begins to play for piano section.
- Close up of "dont be ashamed" on body.
- mid shot of electric guitar being played.
- Another shot (panning) down past body seeing more writing.
- When singing is about to start, shot of the microphone. the singers face is partly hidden.
- Shot of somneone holding a card infront of their face.
- cut to a mid close up of drums and bands name on the bass drum.
- Quick shots that go with the beat of the song of the cards.
- Cut to a shot of a band memember dancing this footage has a 'cartoon' effect on it.
- Cut to another close up shot of the body writing.
- cut back mid shot of  a band memember.
- cut to shots of the posters on the wall.
- go back to shot of lead singer.
- cut to cards held up.
- back to close up of drums.
- back to body tattoo with postcards scattered round body.
- a sequence of cuts between band playing, body shots and postcards.
- All cuts will go with the beat and be synicornised and will be straight cuts to follow the pace of the music.
-2/3's of the way through the video when a  single cymbal can be heard being hit, for every cymbal strike a image will appear on screen.
- At the end cut from singer to the fridge magnets, they begin to scramble back to their original position at the start.
- Fade to black.

Album Cover Development

After researching indie- pop album covers we went out and took photos to create our cover. Here are a couple of front cover ideas

- This album cover being modern and unique we feel doesn’t show our full potential of what we could do with a front cover. So, therefore we have decided to still include this but inside, this particular photo will appear behind the actual CD and will be visible once the CD is removed.

- This is similar to the other previous one however still lacks something, we still want to include vinyl records but not as the only thing visible on the cover. We might include the postcards which can be seen in the video and the guitar which can be seen on our magazine advert.


Below are some font ideas that we could include on our album cover or within the digipak. Stacking the band name like the one below or scattering them to look like stickers could be a page in the album along with the single vinyl picture.