Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Research: What is a Digipak?

Digipacks are officially a type of CD packaging which is made from cardboard material. Digipacks can open out like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that hold the CD is made of plastic which is attached to the cardboard background.Digipacks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the this form of packaging became more and more popular and more demanded, it began to be used by more manufacturers. Thus the generic "digipack" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

I looked at a website called coverdude.com
This website provides examples of thousands of different digipaks.  




This website will allow me and my group to find an example of a 6 sided digipak for us to analyse and deconstruct which shall provide us vital information when considering making our own digipak. 

Saturday, 15 October 2011

Lack Of Responses on Survey Monkey

Since I posted my survey on Facebook, I have had less than five responses. I do not deem this to be a sufficient amount of responses. I will put the survey back into circulation and will attempt to collect some more responses.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Our Survey Link

In an attempt to increase the number of people who have completed our survey on survey monkey, here is the link we generated for the survey so people can access it via looking at my blog.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RN3D3RM

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Album Artwork Deconstruction

To help with our planning and research reguarding our digipak's, I have examined a famous artists digipak, Eminem - Relapse,  to give me a indication to what should go on our digipak. By examining an established artisits digipak, it will allow me to see the reasons behind what goes on a digipak and will help me and my group to choose what will go on our digipak.

Saturday, 8 October 2011

Planning: Mood Board Montage Using OneTrueMedia.com

I created a montage of the mood board I created to give a visual representation of some of the idea's we have for our music video.

Friday, 7 October 2011

Planning: Mood Board

In today's lessons I created a mood board. We did this activity separately so we can all visual our own interpretation of how the video will plan out. By doing this we could all gather individual idea's and then discuss as a group.  


Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Target Audience Research - Focus Group Findings

From observing the video, these are my findings of the questions asked.

1) What are your first impressions of the song ?

Almost all of those asked said that there first impressions of the song was that it was "Fun"and "Upbeat". This complies with our initial thoughts of the song. We will use this information to our advantage as we must make the music video feel and appear "Fun" and "Upbeat" as we need to recreate the fun feeling of the song and incorporate it into our video, as it would make no sense to have a sad or slow video with a fun and upbeat song.

2) What genre or style would you say the song is ?

Again the majority of those interviewed said that they felt the song would most fit in with the "Pop" genre. This finding is vastly important as we now know more about our target audience and what music video conventions we should now apply to our video.
3) How does the song make you feel?

The most common answer from the focus group was "happy". This corresponds with the fun feeling and the type of genre the song is aimed at. This information will help insure we include a very "fun" and joyous feel and environment for our music video as it is our most successful chance of appealing to our target audience.

Target Audience Research - Focus Group

This week my group and i conducted a Target Audience research task in the form of a focus group. This is were a asked four random citizens the following questions about our song we are using in our music video.

The questions asked are the following;

1) What are your first impressions of the song ?
2) What genre or style would you say the song is ?
3) How does the song make you feel?

Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Survey Monkey: Audience Research

To help with my music video me and my group have constructed a short survey on Survey Monkey. This survey was created to help us gather some idea's regarding the video. It will help us in regardes of what type of audience we will target our video at.
I used survey monkey to distribute my survey as it allowed me to post the survey on my facebook, which will allow me to collect more responses and make my research more accurate and valuable.

This is when i posted my video on my facebook

The making of our survey.

Here is the link to my survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RN3PXW7


When I collect a reasonable amount of responses I will comment on my findings.

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Booty Call - The Midnight Beast - Audio

This is the audio of our song Booty call by The Midnight Beast

Booty Call - The Midnight Beast Lyrics

These are the lyrics to the song , booty call. This will help us when it comes to performing the song because we will be able to memorise the words.

I'm with my friends having a sleepover at mine,
Mum said lights off, but they're still on at half nine,
There's nothing gay 'bout doing nails and doing hair,
Nor nothing gay 'bout three boys playing truth or dare,
That's when my brush vibrated right between my legs,
T-t-to my surprise it was my phone instead,
Dru makes and interception,
Grabs my phone out my hand,
'Hello you've reached The Midnight Beast, you're ruining our plans! '

B-double-o-t-y
It's three over average girls calling three under average guys
"We're fucked up and we're ready to play
We wanna do things we'll regret the next day"
HEY!
NO!
I wanna play cluedo with my bros
NO!
I wanna paint rainbows on my toes
NO!
I don't wanna hoe, I want a comforting look
When Noah kisses Allie in the notebook
(booty booty) It's just a booty call
(booty booty)even if your boo-tiful
(booty booty)It's just a booty call

Now my phones on silent, they still call on private number
I can't believe this desperation to disturb my slumber party
I'm in my dressing gowny while Ashley's making brownies
Dru is in the back room playing twister on his own,
HELL YEAH!
We're wearing our jim-jams
HELL YEAH!
We're playing the flute
HELL YEAH!
We're showing our sizes, the fucking surprise is
that yours hasn't grown

And then I hear my!
B-double-o-t-y
It's three over average girls calling three under average guys
We're fucked up and we're ready to play
We wanna do things we'll regret the next day
B-double-o-t-y
Three overconfident, stereotypical, cheerleader types,
we're fucked up and
We wanna have fun
You can be the boys we'll regret when we're done
NO!
I wanna play Sleeping Lions
NO!
I'm busy defending Zion
NO!
There's no point in calling coz I'll never respond,
The boys and me are getting tits from Legally Blonde,
(booty booty)It's just a booty call
(booty booty)Even if your boo-tiful
(booty booty)It's just a booty call

I'm not a booty call, I'm just a normal boy
I want to stay at home and play with all my toys
We are three boys not looking for three girls,
My Ring-tone's like a missile bringing war to my world
Cheese-strings, Party Rings are my favourite things,
Marshmellows with hot choclate, bitch we're living like kings!
NO!
I wanna have cheese pepperoni
NO!
I wanna play My little Pony!
NO!
I don't wanna hoe, I want a chocolate fountain
Whilst we snuggle up to watch broke back mountain
(booty booty)It's just a booty call
(booty booty)Even if your boo-tiful
It's just a booty call
(booty booty)It's just a booty call
(booty booty)Even if your boo-tiful
It's just a booty call
right

Sunday, 25 September 2011

The Midnight Beast Profile

The Band


The Midnight beasts, also known as TMB, are a british comedy music group form London. They have had varies songs released but they are most famous for their Youtube cover-parody of Tik ToK orginally done by Ke$ha. Its members are Stefan Abingdon, Dru Wakely and Ashley Horne.


Stefan Abingdon





Stefan James Donald John Abingdon (born 19 January 1989) is a graduate of The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology. Abingdon is a multi-instrumentalist, and can be seen playing acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards and ukeleles in YouTube videos with his various bands. Before to the formation of TMB, Abingdon was a member of several music bands, covering many genres in the process. he was in the following groups
  • Ink, 
  • Icarus Burning
  • Killafornia, 
  • R.U.Twin
  • The Clik Clik,
  • Perfect People,
  • Chapters,


Abingdon also recorded songs as a solo act. In 2010, Abingdon recorded Drunk Girls for the soundtrack of British crime drama 4.3.2.1, and in 2011. He also  wrote and produced the title track for Selena Gomez & the Scene's third studio album When the Sun Goes Down.


Dru Wakely



Andrew Francis Wakely (born 10 January 1987) plays the drums alongside Abingdon in Icarus Burning, The Clik Clik, and Perfect People. Many of the groups early songs, including the "TiK ToK " parody and "Daddy", make comedic reference to Wakely's actual supposed feelings of abandonment towards his father. As described in "Daddy", his father left the house on Christmas Eve to pick up some milk at the store, and never returned. Wakely eventually discovered that his father had left him and his mother to run off and start a family with their Spanish housekeeper. 


Ashely Neil Horne 






Ashely Neil Horne (born 4 January 1989) is the only member of the group with no known professional musical experience before joining TMB. Horne originally pursued an acting career, and played small roles in a number of British television series, including Foyle's WarGenie in the HouseEastEnders and Doctor Who. Horne also stared during his early years in the West End production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a child. A number of the group's songs, "Booty Call", "Just Another Boy Band" and "The Dance Routine" make references to Horne being gay.

Thursday, 22 September 2011

A2 Preliminary Exercise - Dont Go Breaking My Heart

Over the last week we have completed our preliminary exercise which was a 1 minute extract form the song
Dont go breaking my heart - by Elton John & Kiki D

Preparation

At the beginning of the task we had the relative easy job of blue toothing the song from the iMac computer to one of the groups blue tooth enabled device i.e a phone.
The next step was to find any location as we wernt going to be using the actual live sound from the filming which is very different from last year, as it puts less enthuses on the location or being worried about sounds disrupting the filming. 

After we found the location we set up the camera at the correct position so that there was sufficient lighting. 

The filming

We decided we wanted just three types of shots, two individual views were kiki d (charlie land) and Elton john (Rory Kennedy) are staring straight into the camera, as if they are singing to the each others faces , and then one were both people are in the frame, singing to each other. 

We began with the shot with both Elton and kiki singing together. To help them with the words of the song we played out the song via the phone which we blue toothed the song too. This made the task easier as the guys could sing along and it made the overall task flow better as they felt less embarrassed. We kept the camera rolling continuously so we could increase the chances of having a good selection of shots to use. We made Elton and kiki do the song from this angle twice in case of any issue's regarding the first attempt.

Next we shot the individual views which was were one of the singers are singing directly into the camera. This view is being used as it is a point of view shot which also gives the effect that they are singing not only to each other, but also the audience.

Editing

What We Learnt

The filming only took us around 30 minutes and when we completed it we headed to our media rooms to begin editing on the iMac's using final cut express. What we found different from last year's editing is that our main aim was to get the lip syncing accurate as this was the fundamental objective of the music video. It took us a fair amount of time to get each bit of filming all lip synced but once it was completed then it became a simple task of editing the clips , choosing what we wanted from each an then putting it together. IN our video we have a very distinctive effect where the point of view shots of Elton and kiki are both shown within the frame at the opposite corners. This gives the effect of being able to see both singers at the same time and being able to see what they saw. This captures the emotion of the two and it was a new effect which we previously was unaware of. (FIND NAME OF THE EFFECT).

This is our preliminary video

Research: 100 Greatest Music Video's - #01 Michael Jackson, Thriller


The video that tops the 100 greatest music video's ever HAD to be Micheal Jackson's,  Thriller. When it was first released, it was deemed to scary and was only showed on a Friday night on channel 4. If anything, this added to the thriller craze as it could only be shown on one channel, at one time. The video itself is set out like a movie. This video single handedly change the face of the music video industry and created a new dance style with its iconic dance routine. The video is regarded as the biggest video moment EVER and it turned the industry upside down. The video helped propel Michael Jackson's career and helped it to sell over 50 million copies.

The sole enjoyment you recieve from watching the video, along with the unique dance routine and classic outsfits, rightly puts this video top of the pile, as the greatest music video ever!

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Research: 100 Greatest Music Video - #09 - Madonna, Vogue



This song is very influential. This video was iconic in the sense that it taps into the homosexual scene. Madonna and the directors of the video observed homosexual clubs at which by doing so added a key Post Modern elemants to the video. It cleverly mixes the new dance craze, known as the vogue which was a dance off between two guys who wanted to settle there difference, while drawing icons from history and comparing them to herself.
By Madonna 'tapping' into the homosexual scene, it did open the doors and it seems that over night, it did help homosexual's with there social acceptance.