Audience Research

This video is part of our audience research, where we interviewed a few students and a teacher from our college asking them questions relating to the electronica genre.

Photos for Photoshoot

these are photos taken from our photoshoot. Kaye put up all the photos taken on her wix account. Click here to view.

New prop ideas

We decided against having a vodka bottle in our video. This is because of budget issues, as getting a vodka bottle and not drinking the vodka woud be a waste of money! We decided to use a hip flask instead as it is easier to use and is already obtained.

Mood Board

Before I get into producing the digipak, I need to research albums of a similar genre to Crystal Castles and gain an understanding of the conventions in indie and electronica album covers. I would also like to take inspiration from these albums/digipaks I have chosen by paying attention to the details of the album covers that make them unique. I have created this mood board to help me find inspiration because the album art for the cover is one of the most important things to pay attention to; they help establish genre. I will be going through the conventions that both follow up to them or challenge them.

The main trend that the majority of these albums have in common is having the artist or an actor centrally on the album cover. Most covers do not go into much detail. The covers that feature a figure at the front has little editing done as seen Bjork's Debut and Lana Del Rey's Born to Die. Most also have the title of the artist and/or the name of the album featured on the artwork noticeable. This is to ensure the sales of the album would be successful, with having the stars' names featured clearly on the cover.

   However, some of the album covers I have picked out go against that usual convention. An example of this is Bjork's album, "Debut" where the cover features only her in a black and white colour effect. This has been done for a more artistic route, as Bjork has been known for having artiste traits in her songs, music videos and album covers. Another notable album, which features no text, is Purity Ring's album, "Shrine." Not only does the album cover not feature any text, telling us the artist and album name, but the cover does not feature the duo, instead it features simple artwork. This suggests that Purity Ring chose for an album like this to show they are not a mainstream act and want to be seen as an artistic music act, instead of the usual "star image" artists in mainstream music that features the artist's face, their name and the name of their album.

   Some albums I've chose have went for a very simplistic route. An example is the self-titled album by FIDLAR. This band chose to just repeat the name of their band on their album cover, which is another unusual aspect of album artwork but can also be used effectively as it makes sure consumers know the artist. Another simple looking album is Arctic Monkey's, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not." Though this album features a figure on their album cover (in black and white) that is the main attraction, the man smoking on the cover is not a member of the band. Arctic Monkeys also don't feature the name of the album on the cover, like Diamond Ring's album Special Affection. This would make the focus of the album be the "star image" whether they are in the band or not.

Broadcast's Tender Buttons again, follows the simplistic convention of other artists on the mood board by having the lead singer only on the album cover and in black and white effect and with clear black writing, but with some of the writing backwards. This would make this simple looking album stand out from the other ones as along with the visual effect of moving part of the lead singers face, the text is very unusual and can grab the attention of people.

Unlike most of the above albums discussed, some of these albums do feature the "star image" and went for a more artistic route rather than simplistic. An example from the mood board is Mark Ronson's third album, "Record Collection." On this cover, the artwork features Ronson's face created by different record covers. This album cover unlike the others, is a lot more scattered, with the name of the artist and album name positioned very differently at different places (unlike the usual artist's name at the top and album name below it).

Other artistic albums seen are David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" and Schneider TM's "Zoomer." Out of every album on my mood board, these two album covers are the ones that arguably follow the most conventions of mainstream artists.
-Both albums feature the "star image" clearly visible on the album cover, making it the main attraction.
-Both have the artists name directly above the album name.
-Both feature much more artistic and heavily edited album covers. Both have visual effects that make them stand out.

Overall, these albums are very different but follow similar conventions in order for theirs to stand out. The genres are not mainstream and so don't usually feature the star image on the cover, but feature more of an artistic image for their artwork.

New Photoshoot Ideas

After much consideration, Kaye and I decided to drop the idea of the vintage look. We chose to go with the idea of having the singer and actor (Kaye) in a close up shot of her face for the album cover. We decided to go with this because we thought the idea would be simpler and that seems to be the trend in album covers of the indie and electronica bands. Examples of this are Arctic Monkeys' "AM" and The XX's "XX".

Original Idea for Photoshoot

When Kaye and I were thinking of ideas of our photo shoot, we both agreed to have a vintage theme. We thought that we could take a photo of Kaye (the actor) next to a small fire in a deserted area. This would be heavily edited to make it look older and more vintage. We wanted to achieve this by making the picture look like a polaroid

Male fan of Indie/Electronica

Typical conventions of the male indie from ecss1

Typical Female fan of Indie/Electronica

Typical conventions of a female fan of indie from ecss1

Call Sheet

A2 media studies call sheet from ecss1

Lyrics Breakdown

(00:00) Instrumental intro (00:30)

1. (0:34) She wears her veil at night (0:39)

2. (0:41) Shadows cast uninvite (0:46)

3. (0:48) Discourage affection (0:53)

4. (0:53) Sad eyes (0:56)

5. (1:00) Sad eyes (1:03)

6. (1:04) You can't disguise sad eyes (2:00)

Instrumental

7. (1:23) Feign care and warm concern (1:31)

8. (1:32) The kiss you did not earn (1:36)

9. (1:38) Discourage affection (1:42)

10. (1:42) Sad eyes (1:45)

11. (1:50) Sad eyes (1:1:53)

12. (1:54) You can't disguise sad eyes (2:00)

Breakdown

1. She is trying to separate herself from everyone else.
2. She's trying to protect herself from the shadows.
3. She does not want to come into contact with these shadows or people.
4/5/10/11. She does not want people to look down on her because of her emotions.
6/12. She can't hide from her negative emotions.
7. She pretends to care and be concerned.
8. She does not think her lover deserves her love as she believes he does not feel the same about her.
9. She does not want to love again.

Inspiration

The video above is a music video for the song "I'm His Girl" by Friends. I found this video very interesting because throughout the video, they keep the vintage video effect, making it look old, which is what we were looking for when making our music video. The video also has no link to the lyrics whatsoever. The lyrics tell the story of the girl sticking with her boyfriend even if he is insulting. The video just features the lead singer walking around with a boombox and performing with her band.





The video below is a music video for Radiohead's Street Spirit. This is one of my personal favourite music videos because I love the contrast of speed in the video. The speed of the video matches with the pace of the song. I could add this idea to my music video because I want to change the speed of the music video, depending on the mood and the situation the character is in in the narrative e.g. slow motion when she is hallucinating.

Props

We have decided on props that we're hoping to use within the music video. Our music video will be influencing the idea of heavy drinking, smoking and drug abuse, so the props that we will use are based around these categories.


Tablets - This will be used to show the girl taking drugs. This may be actually normal sweets.


Bottle of Alcohol - This will be filled with water and will feature in the narrative of the video, with the girl binge drinking.


Cigarettes - These will be used to show the character smoking in the video.

Change of Actors

As seen in the Rough cut, the actor in the music video was my partner, Kaye. The reason for this was because the original cjoice for the role, couldn't make it to filming so Kaye had to take her place.

ROUGH CUT 1

This is the first rough cut for our music video. It is unfinished so there are a lot of blank frames. This will be improved in our second rough cut.

Editing the music video

This is a screenshot showing the first few edits made for my music video.

Record Label Logo (First Draft)

This is the first draft of the logo for our record label, Mysterio Records. We chose this name as it is a unique and unusual name which fits in with the electronica genre. The logo was created in Adobe Photoshop and a ghost blur effect was created with the text. This creates a futuristic effect towards the record company itself. This is only the first draft and may be changed as Kaye thinks she can do something more effective.

Vintage Video Effect

Because of our genre being electronica, there are certain conventions we must follow. One of these is that it should be colourful. There is a website called digitalcinemafoundry.com that supplies free visual effects including visual looks. I experimented with this with some test footage and found it to be very useful for my music video.

Filming Issues

Me and my partner were supposed to film over the half term holidays, hoping to start and complete filming rather quickly, however, because there were no camera to hire out, and my friend who had a camera was not able to meet up and lend me it, we were not able to film.

We hope to film both the performance and the narrative over the weekend so we can catch up with making the music video and hopefully make our first rough cut by the end of next week.

What is a Digipak?

A digipak is a style of CD packaging, that also shows album artwork. These are typically used for special album releases. Digipaks usually consist of a gatefold, something associated with books. Also paperboard or card stock outer binding with one or more plastic trays that is capable of holding CDs/DVDs. These are attached on the inside of the usual digipak.

This format was popularised and created by MeadWestvaco, hom trademarked it as "Digi-pak." This was used by more manufacturers once it was more popular. Today, digipaks are very popular today and are purchased just as much as the usual compact disc plastic cover.

Treatment Sheet (First Draft)

Treatment sheet from ecss1

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment from ecss1

9 Frame Analysis - M.I.A - Born Free

9 Frame Analysis: M.I.A - Born Free from ecss1

This is a powerpoint showing a 9 frame analysis of M.I.A's controversial music video for her single, 'Born Free.'

Digipak Analysis - Deadmau5

Digipak analysis 2 from ecss1

Song Request

Kaye looked for an email address for the record company that Crystal Castles are signed to (Casablanca Records) however she couldn't find a contact email. Instead she tweeted the record company asking for permission to use the track for my music video. 

Initial Ideas

This prezi shows my group's initial ideas for our music video.

Track Choice

In my group, we have decided to produce our music video to Crystal Castles' "Sad Eyes." The track is taken from Crystal Castles third album, (III), released in 2012. The song is mainly associated with the Electronica genre, but also known as witch house and indietronica. This ties in well with my research as I have been mainly researching artists and bands associated with indietronica. The song juxtaposes as it has a fast and energetic tempo but Alice Glass' vocals are very slow and quite deep. Nevertheless, we still envision our music video will be very fast paced with fast paced editing and multiple camera shots and angles. The lyrics will to a degree match the narrative in the music video as the lyrics, although short, focuses about someone who is depressed and lonely but no one seems to notice.

Music Video Analysis - First Draft (twenty one pilots)

Music video analysis top from ecss1

Music Video Analysis (Travis - Flowers in the Window)

Music video narrative analysis from ecss1

This is the Music video narrative analysis for my research. The song I chose was FLowers in the Window by Travis.

Music Video Analysis - The Strokes

Music video analysis from ecss1

Lip Sync Task - All Star

For our lip sync task, we decided to choose the song All Star by Smash Mouth. This is the final cut.

Music Video for Analysis

A2 Brief - 2013

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with:

• a digipak for the album's release;
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak.