Location

As most of our camera shots are close up and don't require a background or only require a blank background, we don't need many locations to shoot our music video.

One of the locations we used was just simply, a room with a flat wall on which we blue-tacked large sheets of white paper. This was used for our slow motion shots. We didn't need a background for the shots of the eye opening as they are extreme close-up shots. The only place we specifically used a location for so far is the close-up shot of a glass bottle through which you can see cars and their headlights. For this we needed to find a fairly busy road with not many pedestrians so as not to disturb our filming. We chose a roundabout close to our school which has frequent cars that drive in different directions creating a really nice effect when sped up on iMovie.

Another location we need is for the scene in which the camera tracks through various different materials and finally ends up in a small dark room with an old lady and a crystal ball. We haven't shot this yet but to film it we need a small room and with a round table in the middle. This shouldn't be too hard to find as our school has many rooms suitable for this scene.    

So Far...

At the moment we are doing a practice music video to see the kind of things we can and can't do. We have made a few changes to the order of our video but we have kept the new concept of merging together various different shots. So far it looks really good and we may use some of the shots from the practice in our final production. I have been enjoying playing around with the editing system on the school Macs and I think that, even though it is only the first draft, what we have made so far looks quite professional.  

Music Magazine Cover Research

Some examples of music magazines:

As you can see from these examples Music Magazines tend to use the colours Red, Black and White as these colours stand out from one another and draw in the customers' attention.

They also (especially in NME) often use a bold skyline with band names or articles in it and colours that stand out.

All music magazines involve a picture of their main feature (a band or artist) with headlines of the stories going to be included edited on top of the photo. 
Out of these magazine's "The xx" would most likely be in  NME  or  SPIN which are both alternative, prestigious magazines.

Edits of Initial Album Idea

   

1)

2)

3)

 4)

5)

6)

Here are some example edits of our initial album cover idea. 

To get some audience feedback we printed these images out and asked a group of people which one they preferred  and what they would do to enhance them.

The majority of these people (including my group) agreed that  number 2  and number 4 were the best of the images. They also said however that number 2 was too dark and reminded people of a horror film cover. So we decided to plan around  number 4. We realised that we were missing "The xx"s trademark X and so we decided to see what number 4 would look like with the  Xand this is what we came up with:

Initial Album Cover Idea

This is our initial idea for our album cover. We decided to incorporate a crystal into it because of the song we have chosen "Crystalised", this is also because we noticed that many bands name their album after/include something to do with, one of their singles.

We used an eye in our initial idea because we would like to use various shots of an eye in our video. 

We realise that our initial idea hasn't got the same simplicity that "The xx"s album covers usually have but because we are making the video far more complex than "The xx"s original video we decided to carry that idea through to our album cover.

New storyboard

This is the storyboard for our new idea. I think this is better than our previous idea as there is a lot of Mise en Scene involved as well as different camera shots and different kinds of editing [e.g. slow motion, close up shots, tracking shots]  so it should be interesting and an audience will want to watch it all the way through.


Although it doesn't feature in this storyboard we will have various shots of someone playing a musical instrument so as to somwehat stick to Indie pop conventions. Other than featuring an instrument we know that the video doesn't go with the media conventions of the genre, however we decided to prodominantly go against the indie pop conventions due to the fact that "The xx"s music is completely different to any other band and to go against the simplistic nature of the band's music. 

Change of plan

We tested to see if our previous production idea [setting Steph's camera to a high shutter speed and take pictures of somebody moving] would work and we found that in order to make a video like this we'd have to edit every single shot separately in fear that this would take far too long we decided to change our idea completely.


We are now planning on creating an abstract video of short sequences including various slow motion close-up shots, as well as incorporations of crystals to link to the name of the song "Crystalised". We may even include a short section involving snapshots so as not to completely lose our initial idea. 


The following video is what inspired us to involve the slow motion shots 


Sunday Girl- Love U More

It also inspired us to include props falling into the frame from above e.g. Glitter.


Although this is more pop than indie pop we thought that this style of video would go well the changing rhythms of our chosen song as we can change how fast and/or slow the video the video is depending on which part of the song it is. 

Last.fm Similar Artists

Last.fm also create a list of bands similar to the one you have searched this is what came up when I searched for "The xx":

and here are some examples of their music:

Crystal Castles - Crimewave

Jamie xx and Gil Scott-Heron0 - NY Is Killing Me

Lykke Li - I follow Rivers

Florence + the Machine - Cosmic Love

Target Audience

In order for my group to create a music video for "The xx" we need to understand who their main target audience is by researching who generally listens to the Indie Pop genre. 
We decided to use Last.fm as it lists the age, gender and location of people who have recently listened to certain artists as well as listing similar artists:

From this picture you can see a pretty equal amount of male and female listeners, however after refreshing this page several times there was a significantly higher amount of female listeners. This is very important as it will have an effect on how our digipak is perceived.


I created a tally chart for the age range of The xx's listeners by refreshing the Last.fm page several times and taking note of each age. This was done until 55 people had been tallied:

As you can see from the chart there are a lot of listeners between the ages of 15-20 and 21-25 and then the amount of listeners get smaller as the age range gets older. Because the amount of listeners between the ages of 15 and 25 is significantly greater than the amount of listeners ages 26 and above we can assume that if I had carried on the tally for a larger amount of people there would be a similar distribution.


The Last.fm site also shows where each listener comes from and from looking over a series of people I found that a lot of The xx's listeners come from a lot of different European countries such as, Poland, Netherlands, Croatia, Austria and Finland and also I noticed a lot of the listeners come from  the US and Brazil. Surprisingly there was a very low number of UK listeners. However this may be because not many people in the UK know about this site or that they use a different music sharing site to listen to their music.


So overall we have found that the average listeners of "The xx" are Females ages from 15-25 and come from varying countries.

How the Juno Opening Sequence was made..

I really like the opening sequence of Juno (video in previous post) so i researched how it was made. 
I found a video explaining the way the sequence in the film was actually made and also a simplified method (shown in the link below)...


http://library.creativecow.net/articles/bonner_simon/The_Juno_Look/video-tutorial


I like the effects of this sequence and my group and I would like to do something similar to this. We researched the programme that Simon Bonner used to create the drawing effects (Adobe After Effects) and it turns out it costs a lot of money to install it:

We can't afford to buy this and so we have decided to test Steph's Pentax K-X camera at a high shutter speed to see if we can get a similar effect. 

Inspiration

My group and I want to make our music video interesting and include some of the Indie music video conventions but adding a twist. We came across some video's which have inspired us:

Opening scene of Juno

We really like the way this short clip is animated and how it goes from being filmed normally to a cartoon at the beginning. We also like the way the clip is moving as though a series of pictures have been taken and put together to make the animation. 

Sia- Breathe Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSH7fblcGWM

I really like the way this music video is shot and the use of hundreds of poloroids being taken to portray movement within the photographs. I would really like to incorporate something similar to this into our music video. 

While searching for inspiration we came across previous A2 students videos which have shown us what it is possible for us to do. Such as,

A2 Media Music Video- She Makes My Heart Go (Demo-Kid)

The animation of this video is amazing and it's hard to believe that this was done by A2 students. They have used Green Screen to produce the Mise en Scene in this video and it is really good quality. I also like the editing of this video and the way the camera shots cut to the beat of the music.

Music Video by Sarah McKinley, A2 Media Studies at Wyke College

I really like the beginning of this video with the use of the camera and the 'photobooth' style pictures. I also like the really animated editing in this music video which makes it really fun to watch. 

Album Cover

The most frequently used Album cover to "xx" is:

However, you might come across this album with the X in the middle of the black background filled in with blurred out images and colours such as:

and:

About the song

Crystalised is the first single by The xx released from their self-titled debut album "xx". The single was first released in the UK in April 2009 by Vinyl and in November 2009 by digital download, it was then re-released in October 2010. It has been used in many advertisements and TV shows and now has over 15.5million views on YouTube. It was covered by the Gorillaz whose version was used in an advert for Grey's Anatomy in late 2010.




The www.songmeanings.net  website suggests the meaning of the song is as follows:


"This song is about feeling smothered in a relationship. When something is crystalized it has been compacted down to it's hardest form, a representation of how you become when someone you care is holding you so tightly that you become harsh in your love and reactions to them. 

"Things have gotten closer to the sun
And I've done things in small doses
So don't think that I'm pushing you away
When you're the one that I've kept closest"

Getting closer to the sun represents the feelings coming to a peak, as in, everything is just going to break soon.
The person wanting space has tried to slow their relationship down, "small doses", but the other person just can't understand why and thinks it's an attempt for them to be pushed away. Which builds up to the line "So don't think that I'm pushing you away, when you're the one that I've kept closest". It's desperation, they both want each other, but can't figure out a balance, and if they don't soon, it will never work. It's almost a plea."

Video Analysis

The original video for "Crystalised" centres around the band and their instruments. I think this is because "The xx" are an indie band and their music is largely based around their instruments. It could also be because they want to show they are a credible band and are not a manufactured pop band which are very common in the charts at the moment. 
There are long shots of the band throughout the video where they are standing in front of a white background with videos of clouds and different elements being projected onto them. This as well as the variety of camera shots (which are synced to the beat of the music) such as , close-up shots on instruments and band members when they are singing makes the video really interesting and nice to watch.
The use of instruments in music videos is not just solely done by "The xx" in fact, it is typical to the Indie pop* genre. 


  * Indie Pop
"Indie pop (also known as twee pop or twee music in the United States) is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcards Record label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid eighties,The Smiths. Unlike Indie rock, Indie pop is more melodic, less noisy, and relatively angst-free." 


Some Examples:


The Smiths- This Charming Man

Aztec Camera- Somewhere in my Heart

and more modern music videos such as;


The Temper Trap- Fader

The Fratellis- Chelsea Dagger

A convention of most Indie pop bands and definitely all of the videos above is that the videos are centred around the bands playing their instruments. However the video for "Crystalised" is a lot simpler than these examples. For instance, in all of the videos there are far more varied camera shots and all of them show the bands playing their instruments with a lot of lighting effects and Mise en Scene whereas, "The xx" are just shown against a wall with a projection on them. Also in the "Chelsea Dagger" video there is a brief story line which connects to the lyrics of the song.
I like the simpleness of the original "Crystalised" video however, when my group start creating our new video we plan to make it slightly more detailed as a contrast.


Some other videos by "The xx" are more detailed such as,


The xx- Islands

This video still focuses on the band but has the added Mise en Scene of the dancers and their trademark X.

The Original Video and Lyrics

The xx- Crystalised 

LYRICS

You've applied the pressure
To have me crystalised
And you've got the faith
That I could bring paradise

I'll forgive and forget
Before I'm paralyzed
Do I have to keep up the pace 
To keep you satisfied

Things have gotten closer to the sun
And I've done things in small doses
So don't think that I'm pushing you away
When you're the one that I've kept closest

Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh

You don't move slow
Taking steps in my directions
The sound resounds, echo
Does it lessen your affection
No

You say I'm foolish
For pushing this aside
But burn down our home
I won't leave alive

Glaciers have melted to the sea
I wish the tide would take me over
I've been down on my knees
And you just keep on getting closer

Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh
Ahh, ahh, ahh

Placid as I melt into the sea 
(Things have gotten closer to the sun)
I wish the tide would take me over 
(And I've done things in small doses)
I've been down onto my knees 
(So don't think that I'm pushing you away)
And you just keep on getting closer 
(When you're the one that I've kept closest)

Go slow
Go slow
Go slow
Go slow
Go slow

Timeline of our plans for the year

In the following link there is a timeline of our plans for the year.
If you click on each date, it shows what we plan to do in more detail.

Link:

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/timeline-of-our-plans

AS Media Blog Re-Evaluation

Looking back over my AS blog I realised how little effort i put in and how badly I managed my time throughout the year. I think I cared too much about what my blog looked like and less about the quality and quantity of the content. Also instead of equally distributing my work across the blog and the 2 minute film my group and I made I spent most of my time just working on the film. This led me to leave all my blog work until the last minute and so it wasn't done to the best of my ability. 

I also think I should have made my blog on Blogger as apposed to Wix because the effects and the fact you could build your own website distracted me and made me think I was doing a lot more work than I was.

The grade i received for AS media has made me determined to do put in a lot of effort and hopefully improve my grade for A2. Things I can do to achieve this are:

• Make a timeline for when everything needs to be done and stick to it.
• Create blog posts at least three times a week and post about anything significant to my work.
• Show a good amount of detail in each of my blog posts.

First post...

Welcome to my 2011-2012 media blog!!

This year my A2 media group includes Jade, Stephanie and myself Laura. At the start of the year we were given a list of briefs and told to choose between the thirteen it contained. We decided to go with brief 1: “A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video…” as well as “a cover for its release as part of a digipak” and “a magazine advertisement for the digipak”. 

The band we have decided to use is The xx with their song Crystalised. 

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" The xx  are an English indie pop band, formed in London in 2005. The band's members met while studying at Elliott School. They became a trio when their second guitarist and keyboardist, Baria Qureshi, departed in late 2009. In September 2010 they won the Barclaycard Mercury Prize. The group's debut album, xx, was met with critical acclaim, achieving a rating of "Universal acclaim" on Metacritic. The album also ranked well on "best of the year" lists, placing ninth on the Rolling Stone list and second for NME. In the 2009 NME The Future 50 list, The xx were positioned at number six, and in October 2009, they were named one of MTV Iggy's "Top 10 Bands with Buzz" (at the CMJ Music Marathon 2009). Their songs have featured internationally in adverts and television programs such as, Cold Case, 90210, the Greek version of Next Top Model and features regularly in British dramas Waterloo Road and Misfits. In addition, a track mix of four of their songs featured in Karl Lagerfeld’s Fall/Winter 2011 Fashion show. Their songs are also frequently played on British Radio stations. "

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We chose The xx because we all enjoy their music and love the fact that they are completely different from any artist out there and that you can recognise them instantly. One worry our group has is that our video won't compliment the song we have chosen.

We decided on a fairly well-known signed band as opposed to making up our own band and song so that an audience could enjoy and connect more with our video with a band/song they had heard of. Also creating our own song would put pressure on our group and take up a lot of incredibly needed time.