Generic Features of our genre

Our band is in the folk/indie/ska genre so we are going to have to find generic props including costume and instruments. The band wear costume which is in these genres so they include: trilby hats, shirts (checkered and similar) and for the girls- dresses, shorts, tops and leggings. The males hairstyles range from scruffy long and short hair and the females usually have layered and quite messy hair too.

The costume the band will wear is in an earlier post I have posted on this blog, the link being: http://caroline-a2media.blogspot.com/2009/09/initial-character-profiles.html

The costume are going to be our main focus as we want the actors to wear what we have chosen to represent the band more accurately. We also chose actors that were already wearing this kind of costume and have these kind of hairstyles so it is more efficient with it comes to filming and less time will be spent on getting the characters appearances correct. Furthermore, the costume is typical for this genre, with nice but scruffy clothes from shops such as Topman/Topshop adnd H&M.

A main aspect of our target audience research we have predicted is, that the audience will have a very similar dress sense to the costume used in our music video. The use of contemporary and popular costume will increase identification between the band and audience. Also it seems to reinforce how this style is a very popular and commonly seen style to adapt to and have, it is following the fashion trend rather than setting another unique trend.

Pictures found from hairfinder.com

We will also be having instruments for the actors to hold whilst in our locations as often indie/folk bands have their instruments with them. Some examples include: Paolo Nutini (Candy music video) and Noah and the Whale.

[M.I.I] Frostwire & Hype machine

FrostWire

-It is a peer-to-peer file sharing programme.

- Project started in 2004.

-Similarly to LimeWire Frostwire is written in Java, so it is capable of supporting multiple platforms.

-Two versions of the programme, free and paid.

-Provides a chatroom.

The Hype Machine

- It is an MP3 blog aggregator created by Anthony Volodkin.

- Created website in 2005 while at "Hunter College".

-Only stream music via Flash Player, not download.

- Lots of links to Amazon and iTunes to get users to buy music legally.

Existing Stop-animations

Some more intertextual references are these Stop- animations; some having the same imagery of leaves falling from trees which we are creating... The first also shows how the creator has combined animation and real-life imagery (like we are going to).
The first animation "Off The Beaten Track" (by an animator called Leo Bridle) is very similar to our idea of combining stop-animation animation (using cut outs) into real-life. The young man cycles into a woody area then continues through the jungle-like woods in animation. Another similarity is how the animator covered the screen. He used leaves and things whereas we will be using the parchment/banner to cover the screen to allow us to switch the black to white.

Roxxy and I attended part of the Norwich Film Festival, the Animation Bafta Night 2 on the 21st September. I was amazed by the work of the animations with the exception of already knowing how good the Wallace and Gromit animations are. The other examples included computer animations that were so incredibly detailed, one of a home-sick artist and another of a very cute rabbit-like animal trying to escape the new city that takes over its grass land (may have been tackling global warming or something...).

These stop-animations are done through drawings, which are probably more time-consuming than cut-outs. Especially the first of the two drawing ones, because it looks as though its done in felt-tip pens. The animator could have used tracing paper to copy the exact image onto more pages so it worked smoothly. It looks really sweet but I think I prefer how the leafs fall on the second example (of the drawing ones). The second has leaves falling and sweeping very smoothly and gently. It reminds me of the Winnie Pooh animations as there is more movement in the way the subjects move.

Paloma Faith

Paloma Faith is a relatively new comer to the musical world and to the Pop genre. She began with her first debut single "Stone Cold Sober", followed by "New York" and her debut album was released yesterday. Personally, I do enjoy listening to her music and love her unique appearance and the artwork. This is obviously a very useful promotional method to use for an artist and their music to become noticed and liked.

"All In The World I Dream of Paper" (the clip below) appears to be based on the Alice in Wonderland theme. The music video is made using stop-animation so it looks more childish, innocent and playful.

Animation Experiment 4

This is an extended experiment for one of our previous experiments (2) as we wanted to see how it would work if we did use this way to present The Wild Wolves song name. This is good practice (of the process) which will go through to create the animation and piece it all together.

So, the leaves use the same sweeping way of flying through the sky to form the words. They are first perched on the branches which we then pluck off and move gradually across the image. This is going to be every fiddly when it comes to moving all the pieces in one image, but it would look empty without all the added details.

Props and Technical Requirements

To complete our animation part of the music video we will need these props:

• Sugar paper,
• Scissors,
• Drawing equipment
• and pair of compasses.
• We also may need sellotape to secure some stencil/cut-outs and sheets of acetate for sticking pieces together- particularly for the landscape imagery.

A list of Technical Requirements:

• OHP (Overhead Projector) to project our image onto a plain white wall.
• Digital Camera to take pictures for the stop animation.
• Video recorder for the real life part of the film.
• Tripod for both animation (to balance and keep it positioned) and real-life shooting.

Animation Experiment 3 a, b and c

a) The first version of the experiment shows how we need to take care in when we take the picture, as three times my hand is in the shot- which we don't want! On the other hand, it shows how we did do it- by simply moving each piece one movement at a time.
In the image, we kept the tree and the moving leaves and added the Wolf. We weren't sure whether to have the Wolf move in the way it does- or whether to cut separate legs and move them. This would add to the time-consumption however and would be incredibly fiddly. However, we did ask other media student's opinions and our teachers and they said they preferred the way we moved it.

b) Now, this example is another version but without the hand shadows as we wanted to see if we could just delete the three images and not have to take another picture in the same position. This seemed to be successful as the movements didn't seem affected as much as we thought they might be. As this was only a test, we thought we wouldn't spend too much time worrying over it. However, when it comes to the final imagery, we will spend a lot more time attending to details to make it the best it can be.

c) Our final experiment for this certain shot, was edited in Premiere to be slower than the last two, as we thought it may better slowed down. It was easily done by changing the duration of each photographs frames. This could be useful for when we want to sync the music and film in time and if it needs to be slowed or quickened up. We could play around with this technique to see how it can make the animation look perhaps more realistic.

Animation Experiment 2

Animation Experiment 2 shows how we were thinking of other ways to present the song's name (Moon Song)- in this case, we thought of leaves flowing in a line across the sky. We are not sure whether we will use it but it was an alternative to the stars and moon on the black sky. Our concern at the moment is how we will make the sky in the background alternate from black to grey to white, so it is gradual and smooth. It may be possible to edit the photos in Photoshop before processing them through to Premiere.

Evenmore, we only realised how the images had the date and time recorded as my camera had the feature on. This was overcome by simply choosing the option "OFF" so the image was then blank, which we needed.

Animation Experiment 1

This is our first animation experiment which was really exciting to finally try. We cut the stencils out, placed them on the base of the OHP and repeatedly moved and took a picture til the leaves hit the ground. We thought it was a very successful try despite it being a very quick clip. The clip shows one tree with some leaves falling gracefully to the ground. We plan to have more images (in each sequence) to make the final image more defined and smooth. This is going to be a very time-consuming method but with patience we think the final product will look great.

Cast

In our music video, we are going to have around half animation and half real-life. For the real-life part, we need to have actors to represent the band, more specifically, 6 members made up of 4 males and two females. The real band members look in their early twenties so by casting similar looking actors, it will be more realistic. The band members also wear indie/folk costume so we have tried to spot and ask possible actors who do too. The costume reflects mainstream popular culture, influenced by audiences dress styles (seen around our school environment we have noticed how popular this look is). A typical outfit may consist of: (males) jeans, checkered shirt, printed shirt, casual shoes or trainers; (females) cardigans, dresses, leggings/tights, shoes/boots and similar items.
Having searched around our school and asking people we know, we have come up with seven of the six members, but some are not definite - which are shown as (?).
1. Jessica Allen
2. Elizabeth Greengrass
3. Jakob Montagu-Shaw
4. Matt Beaumont
5. Will Wynne (?)
6. Jack Mullane
7. Oliver Kirby (?)
8. Johnny Allan


Mug shots of our cast...

All the actors including myself fitted the characteristics we needed to represent the band. We would have preferred to use the band, as they would have been able to perform (live) professionally but they were unable to come from London to Norwich. Therefore, our sources were limited and we ended up searching for actors amongst our year group. We were fortunate to have actors who looked similar to the band. We hope that the actors represent the band in a mature and professional way.

Individual Responsibilities

My responsibilities include:

• Drawing outlines for the animation shadow puppetry (as I study A level art so have illustrating skills...)
• Movement (picture by picture - small movements) of the puppets/cut-outs for the stop animation, changing it after each frame.
• Finding suitable actors.
• Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
• Taking pictures of the experiments for our animation.

Roxxy's (my partner) responsibilites:

• Cutting out the imagery for shadow puppetry after I (Caroline) have drawn them.
• Taking the photographs of each action/movement and ensuring the camera is in the same place/right angle.
• Finding suitable actors.
• Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
• Taking pictures of the real life locations to be used.

Peter and the Wolf

Part 3 of the 4 clips (source: YouTube)

Peter and the Wolf is an animated short film by Suzie Templeton (released in 2006). The film based on the 1936 composition of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It won an Academy Award in 2008 for Best Animated Short Film.

The intertextual references include one of the main characters being a Wolf. The Wolf is portrayed as a wild, hungry and scary character to the innocent boy, Peter, and his friends (a Duck and Magpie). The narrative of the film focuses on how Peter wants to escape onto the other side of his Grandfather's land, which is boarded off with large scraps of material. The idea of there being another world behind something relates to our own idea of our Wolf going through a tree into another world. Obstacles such as his Grandfather stop Peter from going and exploring the other side which could link to how our Wolf likes to be in the darkness of the woods.

I researched some animators in the Animation Department and according to IMDB, a number of animators have helped create other well-known films. Tim Allen participated in the making of Tim Burtons Corpse Bride, "Nakoma" in Pocahontas and in other Walt Disney films including, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Martin Davies was involved in the production of Chicken Run whilst Jan-Erik Maas contributed to this years Coraline.

I remember watching this when I was younger, or another earlier adaption and was frightened of the Wolf as it is represented as an evil creature- killing one of Peter's animal friends. It has moral meaning which many children stories do. In this case, it could be to perhaps forgive and forget, because Peter sets the Wolf free when his Grandfather captures it.

I was amazed to discover how the first part of the short film includes a POV shot in the Wolf's perspective(39secs to 47secs) which Roxxy and I are creating for our music video. We have planned to use a POV shot when the Wolf steps through the door into the other world and also when he follows the band down the street. The latter depends on whether we manage to find an actual dog which could look like a wolf, if not we will use the handheld camera technique to represent the Wolf instead. We could experiment with the camcorder to see what it looks like.

Inspirational music video

This music video is by Peter Gabriel for his song, Sledgehammer. It is stop animation which is the same process we're using to make our music video. The video includes Peter Gabriel's face, appearing as though he is having twitches and spasms. The use of the his face is an example of Andrew Goodwin's theory, how a music video should have many shots of the artist or band. In this case, the artist is shown in nearly every shot. The music video is very creative and playful so it could appeal to a range of audiences (perhaps more young adult audiences), similarly to how we want our music video to too.

This is an intertextual reference to how we will use stop animation in our own music video. It can create a lot of movement and variations of speed and movement can help keep the audience interested. Furthermore, by having different fun and entertaining shots of Gabriel increases the focus of the audience. For example, the audience would have more attention with Gabriel 'dances' around in a bright room with ladies to the music.

Location

These pictures show the location which we intend to use in the real - life part of the music video. We want the location to be shot in the evening so the lighting will be just about right so we can see the actors (representing the band) in their surroundings. The actors will probably be carrying instruments which are played in the real band. The Wolf will come out of the door into a clearing in a woody garden, and see the band.


























The street that we wish to use for when the representation of the band walk off into the real world, with the wolf, is conveniently on Roxxy's street. It is a suitable area as it has trees and a pleasant surrounding. The shot of this picture is close to how we will have a shot when we come to filming, unless we cannot get a dog which looks like the Wolf.

Meeting schedule and Shooting schedule

This is our meeting schedule:
DAY PERIOD WEEK
Weds - p4 - 1
Thurs - p 1 and 2 - 2
So far, we have meet up to discuss our ideas and planning in and out of school at the times named above. We have had the opportunity to expand on our planning in lessons, in particular, our music video teacher.


This is our shooting schedule:
DAY PERIOD WEEK
Weds - p4 - 1
Thurs - p 1 and 2 - 2
We will also meet at lunchtimes and after school so we can use the schools facilities, as we can't use them at school. This specifically includes the OHP as it belongs to the school and we aren't allowed to take it home. The real life part of the music video will be shot out of school, our location is in a garden and street that Roxxy lives on.

[M.I.I] Myspace

Myspace is an example of a social networking site but has special features which make it slightly different to it's competitors, such as Facebook and Bebo. It is based in America, Beverly Hills more precisely, owned by Fox Interactive Media and was founded and launched in 2003. Myspace became extremely popular in the US in 2006 and developed into an international website.

Over the six years it has been altered with new designed layouts and new features to improve its purpose. The feature of being able to select an emotion - a cartoon face or object which covers your certain mood was added in July 2007. The picture below shows this:

When you create your profile you can write about yourself in the boxes provided, including, "About you", "Interests", "Who I'd Like to Meet" and so on. It is similar to a blog which you can update but it's like a journal blog. The user can also add a profile picture which can be a realistic picture of oneself or any other picture. Extra security is used for when you want to edit your profile, by having a character (letter and/or number) typing question.

Another feature is MyspaceIM (instant messenger) where users chat online to their friends - similarly to Facebook's IM feature. They both alert users when they receieve new mail, comments and so on too which is useful.

Myspace also has seperate services for their Myspace Music and Videos. Myspace Music is a whole service dedicated to music artists and bands whether they are signed or unsigned. Users can search for an artist or band, for their profile pages, so it is a method for the artist/band to distribute and market their music. Many artists and bands have been discovered through producing and then distributing music across Myspace: Lily Allen, Kate Nash, and The Arctic Monkeys. It is easy to discover new music when it is this accessible and available to anyone. Focusing on the Pop genre, you can see how many artists and bands are in that particular genre, who have profiles on Myspace as it keeps a record of the amount, at the moment it is 723,426.

The Video service is very alike YouTube with different channels, for example, T5M which appears to be focusing on Fashion and design whilst The Hook Up seems to have clips of interviews and the makings of music videos. By signing up to Myspace Video , you can keep a record of your favourite videos because it's easier than searching again. There is a Top Video chart which calculates the amount of users who view particular videos. A user can embed, copy the URL, comment and subscribe to the channel or creator.

If you are signed up to Myspace, you can find your friends, invite and find new ones through the chat forums and searches. Myspace's forums, like others, has multiple choices of topics which users can choose to participant in or just read other user's opinions.

Myspace is one of the original social networking sites alongside Bebo, but has had competition with Facebook, losing some users (not fully but they concentrate more with others). Personally, I use Facebook the most out of the three mentioned as most of my friends have Facebook accounts. However, when it comes to finding music artists and bands, Myspace is the clear winner for its usefulness.

"Aw"

Here is our developing imagery of the wood, with the autumn trees, grassy ground and woodland creatures, including the bird, squirrel and main character himself, the Wolf. Despite the poor quality of my phone camera, you can see the basic idea of what the final imagery will be made up of.
We are going to be using stop-motion animation (taking photographs and moving objects) to create the first animated part. Once that is completed, we shall begin shooting the real-life part of the film (shown in our storyboards).

Storyboards

Our GENIUS idea of using a OHP! (Experiment 4)

Here, we are cutting our stencils out which we then place on the OHP which is in the image below.
We had the brilliant idea of thinking of another sort of projector, and came up with the OHP, which was exactly what we needed. The first type of projector we used gave the screen the white grid-like appearance, or lines, which we hadn't expected. The OHP has neither these, but we will have to wipe the screen and lense to ensure their are no marks that are then casted onto our final image...


The OHP allows us place our stencil on the base, which then reflects our images onto a wall. The long arm can be adjusted to create a blurry or defined image, depending on where you place it.




This is an example of a tree using the OHP. We were very happy with the outcome, so this is definitely our most successful and most likely our final method of creating our shadow puppetry.

The few more images are the stencil which have to bands name and the song name, amongst the trees and stars.

We will continue to make stencils, to create the images we want. For instance, the woodland with its trees, bushes and animals.




Our one concern is that there is a strange mark or something in the middle of the image- here (you can see it more clearer in the last image)- it looks like the flash of the camera, but it isn't...

[M.I.I] Audience consumption of Pop music (investigation)

Below is the questionnaire which I handed out to my sample of ten participants. The sample is unbias with five males and five females to produce fair results. I asked participants who are young teenagers to young adults (15- 25years) as this is the "young market". My research was carried out during two days and evenings, using open (self-explanatory) and closed ("yes/no") questionnaires. The aim of this questionnaire was to gain knowledge of how popular the Pop genre is amongst young adult markets and how they consume music the most, through the use of old or new technologies. (Click on below images to see closer...)

[M.I.I] Last.fm

Last.fm is a music service with Internet radio and is similar in ways, to a social networking site. The website is UK-based (but can be used in other countries), is owned by CBS Interactive and was founded in 2002.

The website includes music streams on radios, such as "Rock Radio" which has different bands and artists in the rock genre. Last.fm has lots of information on artists, music tracks and albums (and those similar to them), charts, statistics and more. Users can read about artists they are interested in, whilst checking out their most popular songs, browse through their albums, listen to their music and watch their videos. Additionally, advertisements and upcoming events are scattered around the website which help market other businesses.

"As soon as you start listening to music on Last.fm, or with your media player on your computer – for this you need our free Scrobbler software which you can get here– all this music will get added to your profile and you’ll see what you’ve been listening to so far and get your own artists, tracks and album charts. This is what we call “scrobbling”", Last.fm explains.

The website is also able to keep track of the most popular music searched and listened to. Even more, it has a clever feature as the listeners can easily find bands alike to their favourites and what music they already listen to. The users can create their own profile- writing in blog posts, with their own charts and stats, events calender and can invite and meet new friends through the chat forums. To create your own profile, you have to sign up.

Last.fm seems a good website to use to listen and learn about new music, either through searching yourself or looking on other people's profiles and playlists. It is accessible from any computer and is available for use on mobile phones. It also has a general Top Chart page which shows what artist or band and song has had the most views and listens. For the end of the week of 13th September, it was Muse with Uprising with 134,351 plays and 39,837 listeners.

Again Last.fm is not a downloading site, only a "listening"-site, it does have links to other internet sites which are music retailers and therefore have downloads available.

A disadvantage is how users outside of the US, UK and Germany have to pay after having a free 30-track trial. If they wish to continue listening to the streams, they have to pay ("only") three Euros.

Experiment 3 - cardboard with desk lamp

Experiment 3 was to see how a plain white bed sheet would work with cardboard stencils. It wasn't as successful as we thought it might have been, but shows how the process of experimenting can lead to our best method.

The shadows cast were not the best, perhaps because of the light having low intensity so the shadow wasn't so precise as our other experiments.

The images of the tree being cut into the sky shows how we were trying to think of a way to suggest a colour scale of: black (to grey) to white, so we could then have the Wolf's silhoeutte black.

It did work quite well apart from it being a dramatic change and the shadow was not pronounced and quite blurry.

For the tree shadows, we used to different lamps which cast two versions of the trees. It was quite good how the trees overlapped to give the appearance of more trees, but the image wasn't crisp and definite enough.

We tried both infront and behind the sheet to see where we could shoot if we used this method.

Our next experiment will be to see if black sugar paper improves the images definition. We will also try to think of a better light source, possibly a projector.

Experiment 2 for visuals

Using a projector (similar to this one in the picture) was our next experiment to see if the white light was stronger, to create a stronger and crisper shadow.

The second image shows how our stencils/cut-outs have to be a certain distance for the shadow to be crisp enough, especially for the writing to be legible. As you can see, this isn't the case from further away, so once we moved it closer to the screen, you could read "The Wild Wolves" and see the stars, like below.

This shadow was our most successful I think, as you can see the letters better than the others. As we took a photograph showing more of the whole stencil you get more of a realistic and accurate image- to what we will be using for our final film.

The second time of trying this particular stencil, we added another one above which was the "star" stencil. It was to try a larger stencil with more sky area...

The sky scene...

From this view, the shadow looks very crisp and bold, whereas the bottom two versions seem to have a fuzzy edge to them.

The final image shows a much finer image than the first experiment.

Overall, this experiment in some areas was more successful. On the other hand, I think the light is a lot harsher than the desk lamp with its sepia light... Even more, on the plain white screen, you can see the thin lines which aren't that attractive.

Initial Character Profiles

Our first initial character profiles shows the Wolf's head, with his ragged and dark fur. When it comes to seeing the Wolf in the "magical" world a.k.a the shadow puppetry part, he will be shown as a black silhoeutte. We will have to make sure he looks like a Wolf because that it is the whole point. By researching what wolves look like in general we can then apply a similar image to create our own.






























Below the wolf is a rough sketch of the The Wild Wolves with some tweeks of my own.
The band are wearing common styles for folkie/indie/ska bands: trilby hats, shirts, jeans, cardigans, dresses, shorts and leggings, with messy hair...
As we are intending to use the band or actors to play the band in part of the music video, we will use similar clothes and props to what the band have.

Some images from secondary sources...suggesting what- if we use actors- kind of clothing we want them to wear: