Planning for Filming

We have been planning how we will meet our filming deadline of the 19th of December, roughly 14 days from now. In our plan, we have included times we could use for filming, based around our timetables, though of course this will change based upon when our cast are available. In our plan, we divided it up by dates and days, as follows:

Day 1: Thursday 6th 

Individual Analysis

Location Idea

Day 2: Friday 7th

Regroup at lunch

Create a solid narrative

Individual analysis on progress

Idea's for storyboard

Day 3: Saturday 8th 

Individual research and analysis

Storyboard 1

Day 4: Sunday 9th

Storyboard 2

Final Storyboard

These are the first four days, where our plan is merely to prepare for filming by consolidating ideas and getting things ready. The idea of this is that once the immediate things are done, filming should go much more smoothly and be much better organised. By ensuring we work to this we will be better prepared and hopefully make a better video, in less time.
In this time we must also get together a small cast for the video. 

We made a short video blog post as a group focusing on organisation, time management and our aims:

From this we plan to use our time for filming, and have so far only worked out when each of us is free, which means we have a better and flexible idea of when we could film. Our times will have to be flexible as we may have things come up, or cast may not be able to make certain times.
The plans for the following 8 days go as follows:

Day 5: Monday 10th
Me, Andrew and Daniel- Period 1, 2, 3, 4
Renee- Period- 3, 4, 5

Day 6: Tuesday 11th
All have media period 5

Day 7: Wednesday 12th
Me and Renee are on an art trip
Daniel and Andrew have media period 1 and 2 and are free for rest of day

Day 8: Thursday 13th
Me, Andrew and Daniel- Periods 3 and 4
Renee- Periods 1 and 2

Day 9: Friday 14th
Daniel and Andrew- prepare period 5 and film after sixth form

Day 10: Saturday 15th
Should be free to film

Day 11: Sunday 16th
Should be free to film

Day 12th: Monday 17th

Me, Andrew and Daniel- Period 1, 2, 3, 4

Renee- Period- 3, 4, 5

Day 13: Tuesday 18th

aim to be finished

Planning a Narrative

We decided that we would definitely go with the stalking idea, and considered how the narrative could be put into the video, as normally songs and their video's run in a way which means that the narrative will build up at the same rate as the song, and reach a 'conflict', before resolving at the same rate as the song. We found that our song had barely any change, and so could reach this at virtually any point, though between 1: 50 and 2 minutes is likely best, we still had a lot more control over our narrative and it's structure than most video's.

We thought a bit more about how we could use the stalking idea. We realised that we'd have to make it much less serious to get it to work, because if we make it serious it will be cliched and look generally bad. Two video's came to mind when we thought of this, these being 'I'm afraid of Americans' by David Bowie, and 'Monster' by The Automatic. 

'I'm Afraid of Americans' was based on the invasion of homogenised culture, and how it narrows expression of life and strangles indigenous cultures. The video was  inspired by the film Taxi- Driver, and stars David Bowie and the Nine Inch Nails frontman, Trent Reznor, and features Bowie being stalked through New York by Johnny, a hostile American, who is played by Reznor. Bowie gets more and more paranoid as he is being stalked, and imagines he witnesses acts of violence being acted onto citizens by one another. Bowie ducks behind a taxi as Reznor fires at him with an imaginary gun, and awakes to witness Reznor carrying a cross in procession. Even though the idea is cool, its possible that something like this could be way too serious, and not work well for us. 

This video takes a much lighter approach to the idea, and although it is not about stalking it has a hunter and hunted theme to it, which is something we're considering playing on within our own video. The video features the band playing monster hunters, wearing false beards and hiking gear, and travelling in an old van which is draped in camouflage and newspaper articles about monsters, UFO's and Nessie. They encounter Nessie and Big Foot repeatedly, but are oblivious each time, and when they return to their van they are surrounded by the monsters, who are destroyed by a UFO, which then zaps up the band.

We thought that this would make the video much more satirical. From this we also thought about having the whole band stalking the woman, but rather than having them grouped together like in this video, have them appear separately along the same road or something like that. We also thought about maybe basing their costume around hunters, having them in deer-hunter caps and maybe with binoculars and things like that. 

Official Logo Design

I decided on my final logo design which I am going to develop in Photoshop . The reason I chose this design is that that it depicts an eagle, which symbolises illumination of the spirit and the divine, both of which the band will see as being important when it comes to music, as they take their music very seriously and feel it should be emotion provoking and a higher power than anything else. This also links with how the band want to be very in touch with their fans, and want to help their fans via their music. They are also symbolic of courage and power, as they are large strong animals and are often regarded as the 'King of the Birds'. Likewise, the band want to show themselves as being strong, by giving out strong messages to fans, and not being afraid to speak out too much. 

I decided the bird would be black, even though it in an eagle, because the colour would stand out much more, meaning the logo would be much more noticeable. I also changed the font, as I wanted something a little smaller which had a slightly more unique font, as unlike the previous one it is not as unique or easily definable. 

Folk Rock Music Video Analysis

The video starts with the lead singer of the band asleep/passed out on a bed, with an awake women sat next to him. There are a variety of quick shots at different angles of the woman stroking his face. The woman looks out of the window, and a man dressed similarly to a typical 'ninja' enters from the window, and grabs the lead singer, putting a bag/sack over his head, and dragging him back out. We see the dragging happen several times in several different angles. It then goes onto a long-shot of a car on a suburban horizon, with very quick shots of the man walking him to the car and they use quick close-up shots of different parts of their bodies. They go on with this until the man throws him into the car and the shot lingers as he closes the door. After this, the video follows this again with really quick short shots of the car moving, and the objects and lead singer in the car. The shots in the car move about as though the camera is being moved as though it is in the car. The action is very fast paced and moves on quickly, which is aided by the shots. The singer is then tied to a stool in what appears to be some sort of bar, and the action slows a little bit, but not by a huge amount, and he breaks out. The action  then speeds up again as the singer escapes and runs off, with the camera moving about in a surreal as he does so. The camera then jerks as he is jumped out at by another man, and goes through several flashbacks of things which have already happened in the video, before much slower and lingering shots of him being carried away again. There are a few long shots of the environment, before a close up of the lead singer in a crate, and a long shot of the crate having a lid put on it. There are quick but slow moving shots of the singer with a match, while the woman from the beginning circles around it.   The shots slow down as the crate is lifted up on a forklift and as it moves the camera's begin to move and shake with it. The crate is loaded, before being crushed, and the shots are slow and suspenseful. The singer wakes up on the bed he started with, and the shot is long and basic, before fading out to black. Interestingly, the entire video is narrative, and there is no performance element at all.

The video is made up of a strange combination of narrative and performance, with them put together. It alternates between Dylan singing in a dark room with a cigar, and him singing in a car. It has no real narrative, and focuses on the singer for the whole thing, which is typical for folk rock.




The entire video is made up of performance, and Buckley is the entire focus. There is also a purple tone to the whole video, and this effect makes it look older.

Analysis of Questionnaire and Focus Group Findings

Analysis of Questionnaire and Focus Group Analysis

Focus Group

We have just finished conducting our focus group, and we have gained a lot of new information regarding our music video and the preferences of our target audience (which seems to be 15- 25 year olds).



We conducted the focus group keeping in mind the following:
The track
Possible music video pitches (for both narrative and performance)
The genre
Music channels which they watch, if at all
What they look for in a music video
How they like narratives to end
If they are reminded by any other bands by the song

We interveiwed people who were the ages of 17-18, which could be a fault, as it is a very limited age catagory, and the opinions of a 17/18 year old could be incredibly different to that of a 25 year old. We also noticed afterwards that we had a much larger male to female ratio than we would have liked, however, after looking at the questionnaire results, we felt this was justified, as there was a much higher ratio than this.

Creating the Webpage

This is the first part of the webpage of 'Lift Off'. So far, I have only created every page, and done a very brief part of the Homepage. The homepage so far consists of a title, a small bit of text, and an image. The empty part of the homepage will have a decorated side panel which I will have to draw myself and add as an image at a later date. The fonts still need to be decided and changed, as do their colours and sizes. The image which is there will be replaced with an embedment of our music video after it is produced and uploaded. The pages along the side have all the different pages which will feature on the site, via a link at the top of each page. Homepage is clear. 'Latest News' will feature a link to the bands blog, and maybe their separate blogs, and the page will consist of latest news from the band, where they may have featured recently (magazines, TV, publicity, etc). 'Shop' will obviously be there online shop, where fans can buy CD's and other merchandise of the bands. 'Music' will have all of the bands music, including video's, lyrics and sheet music. 'Tour Dates' will have the dates and places of each tour and allow for fans to purchase tickets. 'Community' has the option to sign up to the site for message boards to connect with other fans and sign up for the bands weekly newsletter. 'Contact us' provides all the information for fans to interact with the band, including an address to write letters to, and an email address to send emails to.