Scans of the Digipack

Here they are, in high-quality .jpg format:

Website complete

The website is now complete with the video also available to view via the "videos" section of the page. To access the page follow the following link:

http://www.wix.com/powerdrive/tempertrap

Finished Video

We're delighted to announce that the video is now complete and can now be viewed.

Digipak

with the video and website both nigh on complete this leaves only the digipak yet to finsish.Myself and Will feel that the following images reinforce the sombre, contemplative nature of the video and deem them appropriate for the digipak. We feel that these images reitterate the recurring motifs of the video, such as the contrast between light and dark.

Recent activity

Filming over the last few weeks has proved somewhat successful, with our initial ideas of a muted pallette, and darkness contrasting with artificial lighting producing some interesting visuals to work with. We have however, realised that due to the length and pace of the track we selected, more further filming must take place in order to complete the project. With the fast approcahing deadline in mind, We've also decided to alter the song slightly, chopping minor sections out of the song in order to cap the length of the track to a managable size.

Eleswhere in the project, our first ancillary task in the website, is all but finished, barring an image on the homepage we intend to replace with an image from our digipak. We've also began to plan our answers to the four evaluation questions, however we await the completion of the video before we can look to tackle the evaluation. Finally, with regards to our second ancillary task, the digipak, we've selected our desired images, taken from our footage, to feature on the pack. We now intend to use 'Photoshop' to find the appropriate template for the imagages and thus complete the pack.

Editing so far

Okay, so we've managed to collect a decent amount of footage from our various shooting sessions over the past few weeks, and so we've got to the point of editing and the video really appears to be coming together. We still need more footage, however, we've realised, to make up the time of the song, and we're also figuring that we're probably going to have to edit the song down lengthwise in order to suit the appropriate length of a music video, which happens in real life, so we feel there's no reason why it shouldn't happen here. Plus it'll give us the oppurtunity to include the original as a 'full version' on the digipack.

We're shooting again on Tuesday, since that's been the only day in the past week we could manage it (Due to jobs and Ben, our actor, being on holiday and such), and hopefully, in fact definitely, we'll be able to totally finish the video with a worthy amount of footage.

Website

Ok, so in terms of researching for our ancillary tasks, myself and Will have decided to split off and spread the work load, with my focus on the website and his on the digipak. Having ploughed through site after site, I feel that the 'Arctic Monkeys' and 'Oasis' sites were coordinated in a way that, as a consumer, was simple to use, and replicating it should be quite managable. As opposed to sites such as the 'Coldplay' site that aimed to limit the amount of information on the main page and lead consumers to corresponding links; it seemed difficult and confusing to find the relevant information. The templates for the 'Oasis' and 'Arctic Monkeys' sites however, proved simpler to navigate through with information displayed almost like a blog, and with any relevant links clearly sign-posted.

http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/

This site seems a solid template for our site, with the band logo and links situated at the top of the page, and with news and gig information streaming down the page in columns.

On HD

We've decided to try doing our next shoot with a HD camera, mainly because, while our last footage wasn't bad, it wasn't the greatest quality either in terms of its graininess and lighting. Lighting, especially naturalistic lighting, has become an important element of our music video, and therefore we think it's worth using a better quality camera to really capture the lighting correctly, since the general aesthetics of our video remains of high importance. We'll see how this works out...

First Shoot

So we've obtained our first wave of footage that we shot at our first location in Bury last Thursday. The stills posted below are two examples of the footage taken, highlighting our desire to capture urban and natural usage of artificial lighting. Emphasising the contrast between light and dark is a prominent theme throughout the video and we're encouraged with the way in which this concept was realised in the first shoot.

In the next stage of shooting, we aim to concentrate on the narrative aspect of the video, and collect close-ups and reactions shots of our main character. We then hope to see our video really begin to take shape. With the foundations of the video in place we can then experiment in post-production with some conceptual elements we had planned to incorporate such as time-lapse and layering.

Shooting Tonight

So we've selected tonight as the first day of shooting, since this is the perfect day for everyone involved to be able to do it (Me, George and our 'cast'). Tonight won't be the most technically difficult shots - that'll come later after we've got some preliminary footage, as well as the chance to get some on-location test shots, maybe to try some more editing techniques in preparation for what we can get done in the future.

Layering

Posted below is a still image taken from some test shots we carried out a week or so ago. The image demonstrates the technique of layering, with apparently two of the same figure in a single shot. In actuality, we managed to achieve this using 'Final cut', splitting two different shots and layering them to display this illusion that there is more than one of the same figure in the shot. We're looking to use this techinque in the video, shooting our main character running on a bridge and then the passing traffic below. We'l then split the individual shots to create one shot with the character running in real time whilst the passsing traffic is sped up, creating an interesting illusion as well as refelcting the character's state of mind.

Additionally, we may seek to use this technique towards the latter stages of our piece, when the narratives of the piece collide. Cross-cutting between a mysterious roadside commotion and the unexplained anxiety of our main characters, we may look to eventually merge these two narratives, with the realisation at the end of the piece, that the injured civilian at the centre of the commotion is actually the same person as our main character. In order to illustrate this to our audience we intend on layering two individual shots, to create the illusion that, as our test shots demonstrate, there is two of the same individual.

Locations

Having recovered from my bout of illness, myself and Will have been working hard to find a suitable and viable location for our narrative/conceptual based video.
Initially, i was struck by an area local to me, with a large bridge overlooking a busy main road below. The area was perfect for what myself and Will had in mind, with areas to safely keep equipment when not in use, with the bridge a potential resource for some fantastic panoramic footage. However due to lack of use, the bridge has recently been uprooted, with a traffic light crossing in its place hindering its potential as our location.
Luckily however, Will seems to have stumbled upon a perfect substitute in Bury. With a bridge on-looking a busy road once more, the location seems reminiscent of the intended area for filming. Despite having not seen this location as of yet, i have full faith in Will's judgement and look forward to the shooting process.

Ideas so far

Now we've got ourselves a pool of ideas, a collection of specific visual elements, such as rain and birds and other as-yet obscure elements, all of which are connected by some vague idea in common. The elements are, generally, a bit depressing, such as the considerations we made for blood, broken bottles, wet, rainy streets at night and suchlike, but we figure that the nature of the song - while not so musically soul-crippling as, say, Nine Inch Nails or Bauhaus, is nonetheless appears to be lyrically concerned with anxiety, and in many respects anxiety for much of modern, western life itself. Therefore, we have decided upon visual themes to correspond with this, attempting to make the video, aptly named 'The Science of Fear', as subtly on-edge as possible, without being gratuitous.

We haven't, as of yet, started filming - me and George haven't seen each other in a bit due to George's absence, but as soon as we get together again we can go over everything we've planned and consider the most important question to start the filming process off - where exactly are we going to film? Bury St Edmunds is easy and well-known in terms of where to go, but may come across as too familiar. However, since neither of us can drive, it's going to be difficult to find anywhere else to scout out for locations. In all honesty, the location doesn't matter so much as what we intend to put there, or film there, so really it's not such a big problem. It just would make things a lot simpler if we knew exactly where to start the filming. We need to get some hard storyboarding done.

Music Videos from our Target Audience

We decided to focus our efforts, at least in part, on the target audience of the song in question - which we guessed, from the style of music, to be around the mostly 15-25 indie crowd. So, taking this into account, we decided to take a look at other music videos from artists we believe to also hold this target audience, and see if we could take anything from these videos for ourselves, or at least get a good idea of the videos that deserve to be aimed at this demographic.

We started off by looking at the 'artier' side of the still-diverse 'indie' subculture, so we first turned our attentions to Florence and the Machine, considering their were vague similarities in sound between the artist. However, after watching a couple of videos, we were in many ways unconvinced that we could take anything from their general style, considering it too light and arty for the kind of visual style that we felt was more suitable for our particular song. Therefore, after deliberating what other bands fell into the category we were aiming for, we decided to look up for a few Pigeon Detectives songs. What we found was exactly what we were looking for - a music video that was intended for the crowd we also had to consider, and also contained many elements of the general 'style' that we intend to set out to achieve, including many visual motifs of cars, urban degradation, wet weather and the destruction of appliances.

The Romanek influence

Myself and Will were unaniomous in thinking that a combination of darkness and artificial lighting, would create an intriguing atmosphere reflecting both the pace and lyrics of the track. Consequently, we decided to explore the works of Mark Romanek and assess the ways in which we could instigate some of his impressive lighting techniques to our piece despite a vastly inferior budget of nil. The idea was put forward to use general every-day sources of artificial light such as lamps, porch lighting and street lights in order to recreate the extreme contrasting light effects that Romanek adopts.

On advertising

There is a notable problem in this module of our media studies course, in that we are required, in our music video, to create a product that is intended to advertise the song, album and artist involved. Therefore, we'll have to be considering this fact all through our task - that our music video is not just an artistic work, but should also be intended as the tool of a (hypothetical) corporate entity of the music industry. This is particularly true in the case of our other ancilliary task, other than the album art - an advert in a magazine, considering this is entirely a marketing product. I'm unsure exactly how we'll go about this, since we've only just started considering it, but I do think it's a better idea than to make a website, since neither of us have any idea how to go about designing that. At least with an in-magazine advert, you can be a little more creative in targeting the artsy, indie audience that would probably more appreciate the song in question.

ancilliary tasks

In today's lesson, myself and Will have sidetracked from the main task and have decided to take this opportunity to thoroughly plan the ancilliary tasks that complete the digipak.

We've concluded that an album cover and magazine article would be the best course of action for our piece. At this stage, we've been scouring through various album covers for appropriate design ideas to suit the song we've selected "science of fear." We were particular struck by the album cover of "Only by the night" by Kings of leon



The unique design of the album cover, with the lead singer split into several sections reflects the mood and atmosphere of the music, with some hihgly self-reflexive lyrics in many tracks. Perhpas the band are attempting to comment on a 'split' or 'confused' personallity.