Monday 14 February 2011

Final Pitch Vodcast

Rough Footage





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Here we were trying to catch the quirk and fun, fast pace of the song in our video, and using a variety of shots and angles that help capture this. We tried to play around with obscure angles and shots to see how effective they were on screen, many worked with match-on-action as well to keep a nice solid flow throughout as well as giving ellipsis with chopped up footage.

Location Scouting



We went around the town centre of Ilkley with a still camera to capture images of desirable location to shoot our music video. As it is about travelling we therefore wanted a variety of locations hence why we have images of the town centre, the railway station, pubs, restaurants and gardens.

We also will be filming in the countryside as well as the inner cities, I will be taking my video camera to New York with me to capture some footage to bring back to add into our music video too, to signify it showing a whole world journey.
* Due to problems with my video footage in New York it is too poor quality to use in our music video, however I have a great variety of still shots of land marks and icons from the city which I think we can successfully overlay onto our current footage which could work well and significantly give the impression of a journey in our music video.



The above footage was taken at the 'Monkey Wrack' at the top of Brook Street in Ilkley. I thought it was an ideal place to take footage for the video in. It is incredibly atmospheric despite not being a particulary large area, and through angles and framing the size was not apparent, we could make it seem as large or small as we saw fit. It had an almost rainforest/jungle feel to it, which was perfect as we could almost make it feel like the 'Australian Bush' as it was complete with high green tree's and bushes, as well as a flowing stream and fantastic branches which had beautiful shapes and this strongly helped the mise-en-scene. Also the bridges would be perfect to take footage of our characters interacting/performing on, just to give it an edge and make use of such easily accessible location.
As I wanted to display Roadsigns in the film and have the Koala bear poking out in certain locations this was definitely a great place to use, as I could have road signs balancing on tree branches or even stuck to tree's/benches and could have the Koala poking out from behind trees or out bushes or crawling along branches to add to the feel of the music video. It felt like it was truely the right mise-en-scene for the film, going nicely with our cast set and prop's.

Also I chose to film on Ilkley Moor, which is not only iconic and a tourist attraction, linking with the idea of Australian traveller, etc., but also it was a beautiful big open space and providing the weather was sunny and bright would really create a great impression on film. I want to have some of the band members running around all over the moor like it's the outback and they are isolated, especially on the line "you better run, you better take cover". A beautiful and iconic landscape, and whilst recognisable to locals, it could almost be anywhere in the world.

We also chose to use Fat Face in Ilkley as I wanted interaction between the cast and people around town, also Fat Face is quite a bohemian/surfer style shop which is perfect for the type of video we were doing. As well as it having a canoe on the wall and the dressing room door was in the shape and style of a Volkswagen 'Kombie' which was perfect to go with the opening line of the song.

Also the Loafer bakery in Ilkley was used as the sandwich shop in the video, again for interaction and would also be a quirky link to the line in the song. The counter displaying the sandwiches was perfect and the boards behind with 'specials' and pork pies, etc. I thought it was the perfect setting and the owner was more than happy for us to use it!

We eventually decided on the following locations to film our Music Video;

Fat Face, Ilkley
Ilkley Grammar School Front Lawn
Monkey Wrack, Ilkley
Ilkley Car Park
Ilkley Moor
The Loafer Bakery
Ilkley Paddling Pool

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Target Audience (GS/EM)

Today we did a voxpop and spoke with a group of teenagers about 80's music. It was interesting when asking them whether they listened to music from the 80's and most said no or that they were unsure, this was interesting because as soon as we named an array of bands from the 1980's they all recognised them and said that they listened to them, so perhaps many people do listen to 1980's music today but they are not sure of the age it was made.

Men At Work were at there at the peek of success during the 80's. So it may be hard to appeal to a younger audience. I myself had never heard of the song until George's initial pitch, therefore the song would needed to be re-branded.


Making our primary target audience being 20-40 year olds, who are most likely to be aware of the song.

If we were going to attempt to attract a younger 'youth audience' not tweens as this is a new age category associated with 'Pop music' not Folk, so we aren't going to try to appeal to this audience. One way we could do this is especially with the video, we want to use a old song and try a incorporate new ideas. To make the video appear modern thus appealing to a 'youth audience' as well as 20 to 30 year olds.

To illustrate what our target audience knows about the track itself and the 80's, we are going to do a vodcast to demonstrate this.

We are going to ask a few people in our target audience age rage 6 questions.


Do you have any 80's music on your ipod or downloaded recently?

Can you name three bands from the 80's?

Have you heard of the track before?

Can you name the band?

Do you think it would appeal to a youth audience?

Would you choose to listen or download this track?

From these questions we want to understand what our target audience knows about the 80's music.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Final Cut/HD Camera

Elizabeth and I took some sample footage of both of us walking down a corridor from a variety of angles, edited it to make it look as though we were merging into the same person, we edited it using Imovie on the apple macs and then put it into Final Cut. We decided to play around and learn more about it as we had not previously used the software. We were able to overlay the footage and add transitions and effects onto the footage which was far more advanced than Imovie, which is still incredibly useful software.
When we changed the speed of footage it kept the smooth motion rather than it being choppy no matter how fast or slow the speed was changed to, we could also enhance the footage with colouring and the sharpness and contrast.
This was also due to the use of the High Definition Cameras that used, the difference between this and the ordinary video camera was phenominal. It made the reflections and surfaces of objects more like what the eye would see and the picture quality was far superior in many wyas enhancing even what the human eye would see. It was much easier to upload the footage too, as the HD camera did not require video tape and so the footage was stored on a memory card which we simply placed into the Mac to transfer, this also meant there was no chance of recording over any footage already taken which is a stress relief as it is a careless mistake which could happen quite easily.

A fantastic thing about programme's such as Final Cut is that many production companies, including Hollywood companies, use the programme for making movies. A famous one includes the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain directed by Ang Lee, or 300 made in 2006 and directed by Zack Synder.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Casting

For our main band members I wanted the actors to be young, late teen years surrounded by the background of elder characters to add a form of binary opposition and even a juxtaposition maybe making these band members anchoring the stereotype of youth being revolutionary compared to more mature conservative characters. The band members will be caucasian, signifying they are European Australians as opposed to Aboriginal Australians.

The lead singer will be the most eccentric character. Flamboyant dress and will sing and not play any instruments. I was advised to play this part as I do a lot of dramatics and musical theatre in my spare time as well as act in many fellow students coursework.
For the rest of the musicians and band members I decided to use people who I know from other bands and those with a striking image, both in appearence - hairstyle and features, but also dress sense.
There would be five band members, the others being the drummer, lead guitarist, percussion (e.g. flute player/keyboard) and a bass player.

I was thinking the guitarist would be played by a friend of mine who plays lead guitar in his own band, 18 years old and has an individual appearence and clothing style. I want each band member to have their own look whilst also being collectively a group with a style or common theme between them.

Lead singer - George Scaife
Lead Guitarist - Joseph Iliff
Drummer -
Percussionist -
Bass Guitar -

We faced difficulties with our casting towards the end as many people were unable to make filming at the last minute, though we managed to recover from this minor glitch. Rather than just having a band of 5 we decided to have a central protagonist and lots of characters revolving around him, and interacting with a variety of people as he is travelling. We used several people of the same age, as well as some more mature actors. We went into the bakers and used the baker there as one of the characters that our protagonist meets, who gives him "a vegemite sandwich" as the lyrics say in the song. As well as another character going into a shop to try on a jumper and interacting with the staff behind the counter, and then disturbing a couple on a bench whom chase him and punch him.

Hamish Yewdall - band member
Harry Knight - band member
Tom Wardman - band member
Mark Allan - man on bench
Laura Birtwistle - woman on bench
Robert Micklethwaite - Band member
George Scaife - lead singer
Joel Colborne - Boomerang man
Johnny Hughes - Didgeridoo player
Graeme Smith - Baker

In the end our cast was made up of a variety of people, I included more footage of myself as the lead singer lip syncing as I felt it was not clear I was the lead in the first and second rough cuts as I was barely on screen. I therefore ensured there was much more footage of me in different costume and locations to again signify the idea of a journey.

As the second singer/backing vocals I chose Robert as he is an eccentric and flamboyant person who was perfect for the type of music video I was doing and he kept within the style of the song perfectly, as well as doing some of his own choreography in certain parts.

Johnny Hughes and Joel Colborne were also perfect as characters in the video, whilst they did not sing/lip sync they were used as a sort of comedy duo in the video and it was there spontaneity as actors that attracted me to them, a lot of what was eventually filmed was on the spot and I decided to just film some messing around which actually afterwards looked so good it become part of the final project which was fantastic!

Mark Allan and Laura Birtwistle were also used for comedy effect and a binary opposition, as Mark is a more mature adult male and her being a young teenage girl this worked nicely. I wanted interaction between all my characters of all ages, and again whilst I planned and story boarded most of the sequence they are in some parts came from their presence when acting which I really wanted to portray on screen.

Graham Smith was an ideal choice for the video too as we wanted a baker behind a counter looking jolly and again showing some interaction, there was also a bit of sarcasm in the song as the line is "he was 6ft 4 and full of muscles" and to go with the quirky feel of the video we wanted someone who was the opposite of that, a smaller, bald chap rather than a tall, muscular, blonde haired hero.

Men at Work videos (EM)




Men At Work- Who Can It Be Now

The open 0.06 seconds represents the motif we want to create with the flute in the chorus of A Land Down Under. Similar to the rest of the videos the band member are all separate but conjoin later in versus.
Reference to the song lyrics and alcohol represented similar to Down Under. We can to represent them drinking in the back of the hippy van. To signify them enjoying them self's as the song is upbeat and energetic.
A lot of engaging with the camera and the audience, this seems to be a common feature in their videos.
The costumes and mise en scene is basic and minimal.
Unlike the other video's this includes some performance footage.





Men At Work - Overkill

This video appears to be in a more urban area and has more similarities with modern rock/pop music videos.
Colin Hay seems to be the most dominant singer within the band, we had adapted this a want to include George as the main, dominant singer.
Again engaging with the camera and the audience. But this video seems to include more editing techniques and new wave editing. Altering the colors, fading into close up's.






Men At Work- It's A Mistake - Concept video


This video again reinforces the bands individualistic style, the video is energetic and uses animation, that at the time would of been relatively new and hi-tech.
Including the all band members in different situations that join together, similar to our idea with all band members on a journey coming together at the end.
As well as creating unusual situations as we want to do in out production, for example the old women hitting the man in the forest their video compared to ours in a modern day situation of a zombie walking down the street eating a veggie-mite sandwich.

SUMMARY

Overall all the videos seen involve both a concept idea and performance, George and myself want to include both concept and performance. As well as having one main band member being predominately shown and singing. Present in most shots.