CT: Mag Ad/Digipak Research

For our magazine ad we are taking into account both our primary and secondary audience. For this we may be placing ads in more than one magazine. Different magazines represent a different target audience.

This is my initial knowledge of magazines and their target audiences...

Jay Z on the Rolling Stone cover

• Q magazine - Target audience 25-40
• MixMag - Target audience 18-32
• NME - Target audience 15-24
• Rolling Stone - Target audiences 16-24, 25-40
• Mojo - Target audience 25-40
• Fact - Target audience 18-32
• FHM - Target audience 15-34

Dance specific...

• djmag - Target audience 18-32
• Core - Target audience 25-40
• Maxumi - Target audience 18-32
• OHM - Target audience 18-32

• 

  MixMag Cover

Magazine Ad conventions

From re-searching various magazine ads i have drawn a list of my own magazine ad conventions, these are below...

• The release date
• Album/song title
• Image of album cover/image of artist
• Artist name
• Brief information on the artist/album
• Record label logo

This is a post that will help us with our digi pack we are creating for our music video. We will be creating album artwork and a magazine add for the song 'Insomnia' by Faithless. To begin we are going to look into previous album covers that were used by Faithless and seeing if we can pick out any conventions or any techniques we could use.

Back cover

Faithless - Greatest hits 2005

In this cover the singer looks un happy, this may be because all of his songs have negative connotations or it could either be following on from some of his music videos. The ones i have looked at such as 'Mass Destruction' and 'Muhammed Ali' the videos are very abstract, and this is where the no shirt idea is taken from. Because in Mass Destruction, Maxi Jazz is sitting down in a blazer with no shirt on.

Front cover

Also having the male by him self on the front cover looking down is a gender representation signifying a dominance from this performer.

However on the flip side he is standing imtimately with a woman which may signify equality between sexuality. This is one of the things i picked up on when analysing his videos, in Mass Destruction a counter-type is used as the females play the drums and guitar which would usually be performed by male characters.

This Ad is a very simplistic design, though it still follows the main magazine ad conventions. The artist, the title of the album, and the date theses are probably the main ones that would be found on any magazine ad and digipack as you can see from the examples below. The mag ad is on a plain background with a single image in the center, there is a variation in the font size however the font stays the same. The red shirt worn be the person in the image makes the ad stand out, in magazine ads there is usually one aspect that will draw someones attention.

Faithless' We Come 1 magazine ad follows all three conventions which i mentioned above and is again a very simplistic magazine ad design, this will be a factor of the post modernist movement as if this was compared with the magazine ad below there is a clear change in image and colour of the magazine ad. The add contains a picture of two of the artists from faithless which is usually a regular thing when it comes to magazine ads having a picture of the artist or band.

This is a digipack cover Faithless produced for their final ever album called The Dance, which i have blogged on Faithless The Dance Collectable Box Set. This is a very bright cover and has a very large contrast of colours to make the image stand out. This cover is very effects heavy and has minimalist text, this is one of Faithless' magazine ad conventions as most of the mag ads and album covers don't include an extensive amount of text and a significant amount less when compared to other artists in  the Dance/House genre.

CT: Mag Ad Research Vodcast

This is my vodcast on magazine ad research and the main conventions i have found.

Faithless The Dance collectable boxset

Faithless are to release a strictly limited edition official book in a collectable box set called The Dance. This includes a book describing their 15 years of success in their own words. The book also includes two limited vinyl discs with a number of exclusive remixes and two cd's and an exclusive print.

This is the link to the pre-order http://faithless.sandbag.uk.com/Store/BoxSet.html

Faithless book cover

The upcoming release of this book shows that there is clearly a market and a wide fan base for Faithless. In retrospect we will be creating a cut down version of something similar to this but just a CD cover. Because we have know where near the budget to produce a piece of merchandise to this standard. However, we can also get some key ideas and inspiration from this for our album artwork and magazine ads.

Book images

There is a key theme throughout the box set as the colours all link together which runs through out the book. The use of images really gives it some flavour and would indulge the reader, which is something we should look to use.

The lead member of the band always looks depressed

Research Into Digipak Front & Rear

Digipak Front & Rear:

Her Make Believe cover rear.

From researching I found that a common convention for the cover of digipaks was that there's a link between the front cover and the rear cover, for example here the colours are matching and the design flows from front to back which works well. Therefore with our digipak we're planning on creating a design that flows similarly with colours, design, etc.



Her Make Believe cover front.

Also with the rear cover of digipaks it's common for them to have a bar code with their own unique bar code number, so we'll have to incorporate this convention into our rear side part of the digipak.

Then there's the track listing that's also a common convention found on the rear side which specifies the track that will be found on the CD, and this will be another convention that we'll incorporate with our digipak.

Along with some small print which specifies the record labels and the companies behind the production of the album, and in this small print there's always the copy right logo.


Her Make Believe Spine

 Also there's the spine inbetween the rear and the front cover, and on this spine it's a common convention to have the record label and the CD issue number which is unique to each CD, also there's the title which is repeated here.

 

Creative Arts Evening

On the 4th of December we volunteered to use our valuable free time to participate in the creative arts evening. The arts evening ran between 7.00 - 9.00 and as well as our media subject there were the art, drama and music department all showing off their work.

We had come up with an original idea previously to the evening for a potential viral aspect. This was that we would place our iconic chair image in different locations of the school. We would then proceed to tell the visitors the whole concept of our original video and what we were planning on doing. Secondly, we would tell the visitors to lip sync a specific line and we would then edit them all into one clip along with the mp3 in the background.

We had a variety of people sitting in our chair ranging through different age groups luring them in from outside the door showing them our 'different' set up. The experience was very enjoyable for our group as we were able to get peoples opinions and positive feedback. We edited the clip as we went along, taking the SD card to the Mac at relevant intervals. Surprisingly we had all the lines lip synced with-in the first hour of the evening. Thus giving us more time to master the editing and prepare it for our 8.40 premiere in the main hall.

This was a very good way to promote our video as a lot of people were highly interested in what we were doing in our actual music video. We took the opportunity as well to advertise the IGSmediastudies   YouTube channel as a lot of people were interested in the previous music videos that were made by other students.

We learned that:

• When needed we can edit very fast
• Our directing skills have been improved
• We have very good people skills

Therefore, all in all the evening was a success for team Deja Cu. We were impressed with the amount of people that showed up and were willing to interact with our video. 

We hipe to have the full video edited by the 6th of December where it can be viewed on our Youtube channels. 

Shoot 4: Plan

Shoot 4: Planning: 3rd December (skatepark, bedroom, brooke street)

As our third shoot didn't go as according to plan as we had hoped. Therefore, we will be using our shooting schedule the third shoot for our forth shoot to save time because we have missed some vital shots and scenes that still need to be done. As a result, it is arguable to say that we are behind schedule now however, we will be using the time we have left efficiently to get our full rough cut shot and edited.

Shooting schedule shoot 3 from CurtisTiplady

CT: Mis-en-scene: The mattress

For our third shoot we decided that we would use a prop that we thought would work well in our music video. This was a mattress which linked in perfectly with our music video - Insomnia. 

We put the mattress in an open field as you can see from the picture on the right. We filmed a variety of shots using the mattress and emphasised that our character cannot get any sleep, that his bed is like just sleeping in an open field. 

The mattress

We plan on experimenting with this prop we may layer a clip with our character trying to sleep in his own bed.

There was one problem that occurred which was that when we filmed the mattress we left it bare, with no covers or sheets. This would give our shot the preferred reading that he was actually trying to get to sleep not that just he is lying in a mattress in a field.

Shoot 3: Plan

Shoot 3: Planning: 28th November, field, skatepark, Ilkley, graffiti wall

This is a post on our planning for the third shoot we are going to do we have focused on the key locations where we will be shooting at, and will be shooting both narrative and performance footage and hopefully we will have enough footage to create our first rough cut. From previous experiences we know that we have to plan our shoots before hand to use our time a lot more efficiently. 

Here is our shooting schedule for our third shoot



For our third shoot we are planning on shooting at five different locations as you can see from the shooting schedule above. Luckily two members of the group can drive therefore we can fit the chair in the back of the car and use it in any ideal location.

Sample Scene 4 Feedback

This is the feedback we received from our sample scene.

Sample Scene 3 Feedback

This is the feedback we received from our sample scene

Sample Scene 2 Feedback

This is the feedback we received from our sample scene.

This is feedback for our time lapse experiment, the outcome was very good and what we are hoping to hear when we get audience feedback. Also she gave relevant ways to improve the video which was good as they were only slight improvements that can be altered quickly.

JW: Sample Scene 4

Sample scene 4

When shooting we shot lots of me lip synching. We did this on the chair and lip synched the whole thing. Here is the outcome and a few points about it:

Mise En Scene
When shooting we took advantage of what we think is great mise en scene. We asked people what they thought of the background and they loved it, as it was urban and looked very effective. The graffiti is used in lots of music videos like Blue-one love as it gives the video an urban feel.


Feedback

We then got feedback on our video. The main piece of feedback was that there should be more emphasis when lip synching the words. People said i didn't put enough emotion into it and could be more clear with my lip synching. However they liked the mise en scene and some of the footage they said was really good but the best bits need cutting and small bits put into the video not one long bit

Editing
The editing of this clip was incredibly easy as i just matched the audio to the visuals of me lip synching. As soon as i did this the clip started to look very good and our team were happy with the results. As well as just dragging the audio, with like all of the other videos we chose the black and white effect to represent the dark place he is in.

CT: Editing Sample Scene 2

On this post i am experimenting with time lapsing my clips to see if they work effectively, this also give me a chance to look at the different tints that can be applied to the clips and which ones work well and which ones don't.



This is my experimental clip for the time lapse we plan on using as well as the added tint of black and
white. Obviously this isn't very continuous however i can get a feel for how it will look like which is good.

There are a few flaws such as the clips being repeated however, for our next shoot we plan on making this sequence a lot longer as the character moves into different positions. We plan for it to be in one continuous shot so there are no cuts in between any clips.

Take The Long Way Home

Another thing we plan on maybe using for this sequence would be the green screen behind it, the downside to this is that it would limit the shot types we could use to MS, CU and ECU which could also work but this would be something we would have to experiment with. The clip from Take The Long Way Home would be a shot like the one we be trying to achieve.

Audience feedback:
It would be good to use the slow motion effect also

Tint applied to our shot

We were experimenting with the different filters that could be applied to our shots. I tried one called the 'faded sun' which gave the the shot an abstract colour and did work rather well. However, it doesn't really go with the conventions of our music video which is rather dark and abstract, with this filter it still shows a sign of colour to the shot and i don't think it would give the same feel to the music video if this tint was used.

Faded sun tint

Sample Scene 1 Feedback

This is our first piece of audience feedback we got from our sample sequence one. Our feedback was from our target audience which is god as we could get ideas from our peers as well as them being our target audience. This was the edit that Declan did with the layering of our main character sitting in his chair. In the final cut pour character will be lip syncing in these performance shots.

JW: Sample Scene 3

 When on our shoot we decided to have a shot of me tapping my foot against the wall to the beat as we thought it would be an effective shot and have seen it in many different music videos like George Michaels Faith. I then edited the clip to the beat and found it quite effective.







As we have gone with the idea of having a black and white music video, when editing we always use the black and white to see how it looks. This is because it is not a definitive decision to go with black and white. if it looks good in colour we can discuss and decide whether or not we should keep with the black and white idea

CT:Sample Scene 2

This is our sample scene two where i experimented with different editing techniques. This is rough but it gives us and idea of how it will look when it comes to the actual shoot and we know what we need to do when it comes to changing it.

Mise-en-scene: The Chair

 

Muhammed Ali

What we have found is that in many of Faithless' music videos is that Maxi Jazz when he is lip syncing is usually in a stationary position. He is usually either standing up straight or sitting down.

We took particular interest in the music video Take The Long Way Home by Faithless as they use an old looking armchair for Maxi Jazz to sit on whiles he's singing, and we're planning on incorporating this in our music video and will form an intertextual link with Faithless' other videos, but also it's common

Take The Long Way Home

for juxtaposition to be used in Faithless' videos
for example in Take The Long Way Home Maxi Jazz
is seen sitting on an arm chair in front of a moon in his
 armchair and these two things are very juxtaposed, and
with our music video we're planning on shooting with an
 armchair in the middle of a field to achieve juxtaposition.

Like in the video Take The Long Way Home we are in the process of planning our green screen shot where we plan on shooting our main character sat in his chair with the green screen behind him. One of the main factors of this is choosing the visuals that will go behind our character whether they will be moving or a still image, it may be the safe option to use a still image however, using a moving background could be equally effective.

Sample Scene 1 Feedback

This is our sample scene 1 which we showed to a group of our target audience in class which we then noted down feedback.




Editing Feedback:
With our editing the feedback we received was positive as they thought the layering of the clips worked well and achieved verisimilitude, and they complimented the black and white tint we used as it works well with the track. Therefore we're planning on keeping the black and white tint for our final piece and  the layering techniques.

Mise-en-scene Feedback:
Our target audience thought that the mise-en-scene worked well with the natural rural setting, and the costume also was very unique and they preferred this rather than a stereotypical costume for the main character.

Set-up Feedback:
However, they thought that with the set-up we could have chosen a spot that was more isolated, and that all the chairs should be facing one chair in the centre of the frame.

Continuity Feedback:
They also commented on the discontinuity within this section because in the background there's birds flying into one scene and not in the others, also the movements are different in some of the scenes which doesn't look as good.

This is our first piece of audience feedback we got from our sample sequence one. Our feedback was from our target audience which is good as we could get ideas from our peers as well as them being our target audience. This was the edit that I did with the layering of our main character sitting in his chair. In the final cut pour character will be lip syncing in these performance shots.

JW: DeJaCu's Twitter Page

Our twitter page

Our group have created a new Twitter with the username TeamDeJaCu. We will use this twitter as an advertising tool and to let people know about our group and what we're planning to do. Here is our twitter account!
















As well as just setting up our twitter and tweeting we have also followed influential twitter pages. One of these pages was beggars group media. A media group responsible for videos from the likes of Bon Iver. They are an english group and they are a company we take inspiration from.
We also followed Faithless as he is the artist of the video we are doing and we take many ideas from his work as inspiration.                                                                                                                              

CT: Mise-en-scene The Chair

THE CHAIR:

Muhammed Ali

What we have found is that in many of Faithless' music videos is that Maxi Jazz when he is lip syncing is usually in a stationary position. He is usually either standing up straight or sitting down.

We took particular interest in the music video Take The Long Way Home by Faithless as they use an old looking armchair for Maxi Jazz to sit on whiles he's singing, and we're planning on incorporating this in our music video and will form an intertextual link with Faithless' other videos, but also it's common

Take The Long Way Home

for juxtaposition to be used in Faithless' videos
for example in Take The Long Way Home Maxi Jazz
is seen sitting on an arm chair in front of a moon in his
 armchair and these two things are very juxtaposed, and
with our music video we're planning on shooting with an
 armchair in the middle of a field to achieve juxtaposition.

Like in the video Take The Long Way Home we are in the process of planning our green screen shot where we plan on shooting our main character sat in his chair with the green screen behind him. One of the main factors of this is choosing the visuals that will go behind our character whether they will be moving or a still image, it may be the safe option to use a still image however, using a moving background could be equally effective.

Sample Scene 1

From our shoot on the 16th November we managed to get a scene where our main character is sat in an arm chair on a field, and in this scene we wanted to see if duplicating the character in the armchair would work, and to do this we had to keep the camera rolling in one long take and in the same position whiles we moved the armchair in different positions.

Editing:
With the editing for this scene we had to use the blade tool to chop up the long take that we took and then separate the clips that had the armchair in different positions, we then re-timed each clip so that they were all the same length and then layered them over the top of each other by cropping each clip to the point where you could see each clip in the same scene.

The Clip:

CT: 2nd Shoot Diary 16th November

2nd SHOOT 16th November

On the 16th of November we decided that we would shoot during our media lesson at 9.00 And due to our locations brainstorm we knew the locations we would be shooting at. Because of problems last time due to lack of planning we fully prepared with our storyboard. Therefore, we shot everything we set out to do, which was to get the lip syncing footage from two different locations, these were:

• The Ben rhydding field behind Declans house 
• The graffiti wall

These locations were ideal for some of our lip syncing sequences because we used an abstract backdrop which worked extremely well as the mise en scene of the graffiti on the back wall signifies a 'badboy' role which is what we hope will be our preferred reading from our target audience.

Here is our behind the scenes footage:

In this shoot we used a major prop which was the arm chair, when looking at faithless' previous music videos he seems to be sitting down frequently and we thought it may be a good idea to experiment with a shot like this. In the end we decided we really liked the look of our character lip syncing whilst he is sat in the chair. These are shots we plan to experiment entirely with to get the perfect shot of our character.

We used one shot where we kept the camera in the same position but moved our character in his chair to different parts of the field that our character was in which worked very well as we plan on cropping clips and layering them over one another to get a consistent shot of our character in 5 different positions in one shot.

Also we plan on using a time lapse, for this we filmed the chair in one location as our character sat in many different positions. when speeded up we feel that this will look very effective.

On our next shoot we plan to:

• Use storyboards more frequently
• Be prepared for weather conditions (umbrellas ect.)
• Shoot the narrative aspect of our video
• Have a full call sheet written up in which we can refer to when shooting

JW:Insomnia Idea Update 1

There are a few updates to our idea:

• Instead of a girl being the nightmare that the sufferer has, we now have decided to go with a mask to provide  a scarier nightmare. This mask will be borrowed from a friend or someone at school, we will use many different angles and effects to anchor the preferred reading.
• From the ASFF: 
• The use of smoke machines could be very effective. 
• An effect that signifies insanity. Here is the video in which the effect was used:
• Another idea we have had is a close up of the main character (me) tapping my feet on the floor along with the music.
• We also took major inspiration from the faithless videos that we observed. A key feature of almost all faithless videos is him sitting down in a chair lip synching. We are going to use this shot but add a bit of a difference by shooting in the middle of a field.

Insomnia Call Sheet

This is a call sheet that our group will follow through on in the next weeks.

CT Faithless Music Vid:EG1

Faithless - Muhammed Ali 

There is a lot of footage of Maxi Jazz' performance in this video as he sits in a stand as if he's watching a big match. The shot types vary on the lyrics the shot types are usually MCU, CU, ECU and MS.

2.23

This is other performance footage in the video which links the lyrics in with the visuals which he does quite a lot in his videos i have found. This is something that we should take into consideration in our planning.

2.30

Again there is dance footage included in the video however this isn't all synchronised.

Insomnia Summary Recent Ideas



Long-shot, Juxtaposition

Recently we've looked at music videos by the artist of our track to see if we'd find any influence, and from this we've found some useful scenes that have applied certain effects that we could use for our music video, also Faithless has some unique trademarks that we've picked up on and plan on using in an intertextual reference.

. Firstly from the music video Take The Long Way Home they've used numerous scenes where Maxi Jazz is sat in an arm chair singing directly towards the camera, and this is common in other videos from Faithless which is his unique trademark so this is the intertextual reference that we plan on incorporating in our music video.

Black&White

. From this same video a majority of the scenes were in a black and white tint which is common in most of Faithless' videos, and we think it'll work well in some of our scenes to signify that our main character is in a dark place. Also the clothing in Faithless' videos are commonly dark which is another common convention that we'll look to use for our music video, and this is because it anchors this dark place that our main character is in and that he's depressed.

Medium Close-up

. Then from Faithless' video We Come 1 there's a scene with a barking aggressive dog and it's been edited so that it's in slow motion and we think it works well, and from this we thought it could signify fear for our music video and work well with our plot as out main character suffer from insomnia.

Shoot 2: Plan

Shoot 2: Planning (Graffiti wall and chair)

Planning for our second shoot

Taking into account our previous shoot we have decided to approach our next one in a more professional manor, we will be using storyboards and call sheets so we know exactly what we are going to film and where ect. In addition to this our time will be used much more effectively as we won't be worrying about what shots to shoot we will already know as we have planned before hand.

JW Faithless Music Vid:EG2

Faithless feat. Dido - One Step Too Far 

Yet again we see another shot of faithless sat down lip synching the words. This is a common convention of faithless videos and something we have done on our first shoot.

This next point isn't so much a convention of faithless videos but more so with dance videos. This is using nightclub shots in the music videos, like dido in the middle of the dance floor of the nightclub. As it is intended to be played in a nightclub it is like an advertisement to show people what it would be like dancing to.

There is a shot here again of a nightclub scene. This is however behind DJ decks which looks really effective. It shows everyone dancing to the track and goes well with the beat.

JW Faithless Music Vid:EG2

Faithless - Bring my family back 

In this video, like many other faithless videos he approaches poverty and alot of the videos are set in poverty inflicted areas. This is emphasised by the mise en scene which has been graffitied.









In alot of videos like this one, instruments are included in the mise en scene. This represents that it is a music video.

Maxi Jazz wears alot of long coats and dark clothes. This is going to be used in our music video in our costume choice. We will wear dark clothes and if there is one available, a long coat