Shooting Schedule

Now that we know where are locations are going to be we can roughly manage to write out a schedule:

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH 2011


Start - 8:30AM - HURTWOOD STUDIO - The Tea Party Room Sequence     
                                   The Bedroom Scene
                                   The Bath-Tub Scene
                                    
        1:30PM - HURTWOOD CLASSROOM - Awaken Scene (clash and end)
        3:30PM - Travel to Location (Foxbury) - 
                                   Stairs/Exterior /Corridor Scene.
        8:00PM - Finish. 


Obviously there are no breaks and this is just a very rough first draft, when we come together on Monday we will all work together to finalize a shooting schedule as well as re-contacting our actors and officially confirming them for the shooting day. 

Costumes

For our costumes, we don't want our house to just look like a house party, so we figured we needed some authenticity. For this we have decided not to use typical fancy dress costumes but instead to dirty the costumes and make them look scruffy with dark make up and messy hair. We are thinking of using a hire company which we obviously won't be able to make dirty but we can make up for this with the make up and hair.
We are going to look at the Hurtwood Costume department but also a few hire shops that are local.


http://www.fairygodmother.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=85_87


http://www.thedressingupshop.com/index.php?id=3


http://www.thejokeshop.co.uk/entered.php

Location

Originally we wanted a traditional old looking building for the set for our video to give an authentic look which we could make into our "haunted" house. We wanted to use Leith Hill house which is owned by the National Trust and is empty and nearby so it would have been great. We found many disadvantages with the house though and realised we would have to actually book an appointment to check out the place which wasn't good for us as we would have to make a few visits. We also realised that as the house is bare we would have to supply our own furniture which would be pretty much impossible.

We also realised that we would have lighting problems and would have to hire a generator.

Eventually we just came to a decision to use Courtney's house as it was ideal and close to school. The setting inside the house was also ideal as there is a great staircase and many rooms that we could use. This also means that we can make the house look how we wanted to with furniture and decorations.

Legal Letter

To:  VAGRANT RECORDS

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:
EELS - FLYSWATTER

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.


The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.


Yours sincerely

 SABRINA SALMON, COURTNEY MADINCEA AND SARAH WICHALL
Hurtwood House School

Digipak Covers

For part of the remainder of the project, we have to design a digipak cover which we haven't yet completed. This album cover that we design has to represent our band through an artwork or image. In my mind for our hypothetical band The Teacups would have an edgy and arty album cover.

There are a few album covers which will give us inspiration to create it:

This album cover from Panic! at the Disco has an edgy dark but still happy vibe to it similar to our music video.


Other inspirations are:








These music covers are also of a similar genre to our band which means that the audience is similar. The colours and style are also close to what we imagined which is why it may work for our digipak cover.

First Draft of our Timeline

PRE ROLL:


Little girl skipping down a path towards house, humming chorus of "Flyswatter" - with a box of cookies in her hands. Comes to the door -
Girl - "Knock knock" (Mad Hatter opens the door) "Excuse me sir, would you like to buy some cookies?"
M.H - " Why some cookies would be wonderful! I'm having a tea party, won't you come in?"

TRACK BEGINS 

00.02 - Mad Hatter puts his hand out
00.07 - Girl takes hand and walks into dark house (Door closes behinds her)
00.09 - Lights come on!
00.09 - 00.17 - tracking shot of overall of choas
00.17 - 00.21 - Cards falling from the ceiling, pigs running through ect.
00.21 - 00.25 - Pushed into tv lounge
00.25 - M.H singing
00.30 - sleeping beauty passed out of couch
00.33 - princesses fighting over tiara
00.40 - band preforming in bare room
00.45 - close up of mad hatter singing
00.53 - girl runs up stairs
00.57 - walking through dark creepy hallway
1:00 - Girl walks into bedroom and see little red riding hood and wolf in bed
1:04 - Red riding hood and wolf sit suddenly on the gutair riff
1:05 - Girl covers her eyes and runs away to bathroom and slams door
1:08 - turns around to see Captain hook in the bath playing with toy boats
1:16 - Girl runs out and down stairs
1:20 - Close ups on band performing
1:32 - Girl wanders into tea party
1:43 - M.H stands on table singing
1:50 - March hare pours the tea and she drinks
2:00 - shots of characters around the room
2:04 - Girl eats a piece of cake with a toothpick that says "Eat me" on it
2:09 - 2:20 - Flashbacks of all the characters around the house
2:24 - Girls faints and lands in the cake
2:32 - Girls is shown under a tree clutching a book of fairytales and covered in cookie crumbs
2:42 - Girl wakes up confused
2:50 - Bunny hops past her
2:55 - Girl skips away...
Track ends - 3:03


The ending, I must point out, is undecided and we still have yet to figure it out - however, having said that we want a strong twist to finish our song and to have it all tie into each other. 

Feedback

You have made some attempt to catch up on the work missing from last week, but once again there are gaps remaining in your blog from this week's work - the timeline itself and the research into album artwork.  There is a competent sense of the development of your artist's image emerging but it is vital that you are putting in some hours outside of class to keep your research and planning portfolio as complete as possible.

James

Institutional Context

The band we are using, Eels are an American band signed to Vagrant which is an indie rock based label. They sign bands that are all similar to the Eels which is interesting.

Our hypothetical band, The Teacups would be signed to a similar label but most probably British and smaller such as Fueled by Ramen. This label signs indie/rock/alternative bands that are sort of strange and different, a lot like our band.

Our band The Teacups are very similar to Panic! At The Disco which is why we picked Fueled by Ramen, as they are signed to this label which is an independent pop record label.

Fueled By Ramen

Fueled By Ramen was started as a label by Less Than Jake guitarist Vinnie Fiorello and John Janick in 1996. The label is a key player in the development of Punk Pop and released early recordings by Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World and Yellowcard. Among the key artists currently on the label are:

- Panic! At The Disco
- Less Than Jake

Very non-mainstream record label that originates from New York City and is a subsiduary of Warner Music Group.

www.fueledbyramen.com

The Pitch

Pitching our idea to James and Luke was really useful. The feedback we recieved will really help us along our way.
We told them and the class our basic ideas and narratives and overall it went down well.
Some of the feedback we recieved is here:

- Need to think more about the performance element
- Strong narrative
- Costumes need to be well thought through otherwise may look like a normal house party
- Thinking more about the opening pre roll which we want to have. Who? Where? Age?
- The furniture in the house may be non existent so we need another plan

Our Target Audience

When thinking about our band and track, we have thought about a specific target audience.
- Gender : both male and female
- Age : teenager / young adult
- Dresses in indie clothes
- Other favourite bands include Muse, White Lies and The Strokes
- Plays guitar
- Middle class British / European
- Likes to be "different"
- Watches NME and buys the magazine
- Likes going to gigs and festivals like Reading, Hop Farm and Download
- Idols include Pete Doherty and Jarvis Cocker

Chosen song and Research on the band

Our chosen song as I have already mentioned is Flyswatter be Eels. To get a better and more clear idea about the band I have decided to research further about them.

They are an American band originally formed by Mark Oliver Everett who features a lot in their music videos, and is featured a lot more than the rest of the band members.
 They have also been featured in many films including the first three Shrek films which is ironic as we are looking at having a fairytale concept.

Research into Similar artists

When thinking of ideas for our music video, we needed to have inspirations as without being hands on and making the video, we needed help to visualise our ideas.

Here are some people we thought of.

Panic!At the Disco do many similar music videos to what we are hoping to achieve as they also use a strong narrative. Their target audience is also similar to ours and the image and colours on album covers and in music videos is also alike to our ideas.

This is an album cover for Panic!At the Disco. The surrealism of the people and the idea behind it is similar to our impressionistic video.

In this video, the lead singer Brendon Urie acts as a ringleader and we see him singing the lyrics in character to fit in with the narrative. This is much like what we wanted our Mad Hatter to be like in our music video to Flyswatter.


Another artist/band that is similar to ours are Muse. Their music videos have the right mixture between a strong narrative and performance element which we want to contain in our video.

Here is one of their album covers for one of their more successful albums. Even here the band focus more on the narrative rather than the band's star image which is like ours. The band have strong narrative's as a lot of their inspiration is from space and the universe which is why they always have a strange twist in their videos.


The people that listen to all of these bands, are hopefully similar to our target audience as the genre is not all that different.
Panic! At the Disco are our main inspiration as they have very similar music videos to what we had imagined for us.

Feedback

This is disappointing, Sarah, as there is not enough evidence of any time invested in the planning process or the blog outside of the class this week.  My brief asked for your initial ideas to be posted, along with a detailed account of the idea chosen and detailed research into similar artists.  You have only addressed this briefly and will need to spend some time strengthening this material before you can move on to the timeline.  In addition, you have not yet posted your demographic and psychographic audience profile.

James

Hypothetical artist profile and star image

For the music video, we want to create a hypothetical band. This is not only because we need to, but it is also useful to be able to completely create a star image and mould them into exactly what we want.

We were thinking of having something similar to the actual artist of the song Eels. They have one distinctive band member and the rest change about quite a lot.

We want our lead singer to be quite wacky and loud, but also be qutie crazy. As we want this hypothetical band to be of an indie genre, it won't be completely revolved around the look, however we do want the appearance of our singer to be very extraordinary.

In terms of inspiration, I have been looking at other artists of a similar genre and seeing how they portray themselves. Bands such as Muse and Biffy Clyro, sell themselves on the performance element, which is what we want to do but also have quite a wacky star image.

We are still thinking of names but we are thinking of naming the band "The Teacups" to fit in with the idea of Alice in Wonderland and fairytales.

Initial Ideas for the Music Video

After we had decided on our groups, and I was with Courtney and Sabrina, we had to then decide on an artist, track and genre. We all had decided that we wanted to do something different and not the same indie alternative rock style music video we had seen in the past.

After a lot of discussion we finally decided on a track. Flyswatter by Eels.

I personally had never listened to the band before, but after hearing it a few times, instantly warmed to it. I like the genre of the track as it has quite a creepy atmosphere which really goes well with grim lyrics, for example:

Field mice, head lice
Spiders in the kitchen
Don't think twice 'bout
Whatever keeps you itchin'
Ice water, flyswatter
Gonna get you through

Our initial thoughts about the video were a Tim Burton kind of style inspired by Alice in Wonderland meets a haunted mansion/fairytale land. The tune in the song would go well with a creepy fairytale storyline and it reminded me of The Nightmare before Christmas.

We started researching artists which had made similar videos to us for inspiration. As we wanted a circus/carnival atmosphere in it, we used Panic! At the Disco for inspiration.

This video has the creepy but humourous style that we want to achieve whilst still being crazy.

Other videos we looked at were Metallica and Marilyn Manson. This was when we decided we didn't want to go down the scary/gothic route but instead have a sense of lightheartedness in our video and use mixed up fairytale characters.

These are still just ideas, however we are certain that we want to go down the creepy but humourous Tim Burton style video.

Introduction to Advanced Portfolio

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

-a website homepage for the band;

-a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);

-a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

 

 All material for all tasks to be produced by the candidates with the exception of acknowledged non-original sound or image material used in a limited way in video/radio work. Further guidance will be avaliable in the support materials. For music video, permission should be sort from the artist for use of the audio track.
The centre will be expected to allocate marks according to four levels for each three categories:

   1. Research and Planning.
   2. Construction.
   3. Evaluation.

Feedback

Well done, Sarah; you have got most of the material that I was looking for up here (though not the assignmnet on narraitive which Simon set you) and it is a great start to your A2 unit.  Keep going and make sure you get as much detail as possible in relation to the research and planning for the main task up on the blog for next Friday.

James

Advanced Production Portfolio - Initial Ideas

Once we had got into our group, we had thought about which song to choose for our music video.
We wanted a song that we can find something different to do to and we didn't really want a typical song that is quite generic.

The track that we decided on pretty much straight away is Flyswatter by Eels

Some of the thoughts that we had straight away, was a carnival/circus theme mixed with a haunted house. As the song is quite creepy it would work really well and with a lot of thought and preparation it could be very successful.

The lyrics of the song are also quite weird which would work well with the idea of a haunted house. The chorus is as follows:

Once we had got into our group, we had thought about which song to choose for our music video.
We wanted a song that we can find something different to do to and we didn't really want a typical song that is quite generic.

Acres of Life finished product. (Preliminary shoot) "Pretty Girls Smile"