Foster The People - Torches (Album Cover Analysis)

Twitter First Draft Feedback

Earlier today I sent out two tweets to my friends with the hopes of gaining several opinions on the first draft of our music video. I have put a video together of the outcome. 

After reading the feedback I have decided there are 5 main areas which we need to focus on. 

1) We are going to have less shots of the band, this is something which Megan suggested and we are going to take on board. A lot of people said that they where unsure on the story line, and also where far off when describing what they thought it was, which is simply unacceptable when you are trying to create a high standard music video. We aren't going to cut the band footage out completely, as it is essential to the indie genre - Just minimise it. 

2) We are going to have to film more shots of the female lead waiting at the bus stop. There seemed to be some confusion that she was drunk and passed out, which is not the case - She is waiting for him at the bus stop, where they had agreed to meet, before he forgot about her. An idea we thought might work is several different shots of her at the bus stop, which could also reflect the amount of time she has waited.

3) Although one person picked up on the fact that the girlfriend is cheating, we have agreed it isn't clear enough and we are planning to film more shots of her with other males. The holding hand shot is something we are also unsure on because we don't think it is clear enough that its not in-fact her boyfriend, but another male, another worry is that it is too PG and not amplifying the lyrics enough. 

4) Our initial video concept was the female lead to be portrayed as a sort of bad girl, and for the audience to feel towards the boyfriend. Something which has defiantly not worked as some people have mentioned that they thought he was abusing her, which is the opposite to what we are trying to put out. We have storyboarded several ideas of possible shots, such as waiting on the corner of a road, to imply waiting for drugs.

5) To nail the genre I think we need to continue our research on indie music videos, not one person mentioned what they thought the genre was and although this may just be because they didn't feel the need to mention it, we want to include and make sure all connotations are spot on before uploading our final product. 

First Draft of Music Video

After 2 weeks of editing solidly in class as a group we have curated our very first draft our music video, we are calling this our first draft as we are going to be asking for feedback on how to make improvements, both online and by word of mouth. We want to make sure our story line is clear, and to do so it is only right we gain opinions.

Diary Entry Week 16

Making progress on our editing was key this week as we are edging closer to competition of our final music video. This started by uploading all of our footage onto iMovie, and actually nailing the first 5 seconds the video. The beginning of the video was essential to our group as we wanted to set the genre as soon as possible and we believe by using edgy band footage we have achieved our goal.



I have also completed a lot more research towards my digi pack this week, looking into the history of album artwork and analysing indie albums. I think by this time next week I will have planned a rough digi pack and maybe even the front cover will be finished.

Video Concept Explained

So today we finished filming, and now it is time to begin post production I thought I best share the concept behind our indie music video.

Firstly our research (Genre Post) shows that indie bands use an aspect of performance and narrative footage throughout there music video and it is something we wanted to try and replicate, explaining the reason for the switch between the two.

The narrative of our music video is based around a young couple, the male in the relationship is frustrated as he feels that the relationship is too one sided and essentially he has fell in love too hard, while the female in the relationship is the stereotypical bad girl, involved in drink and is sleeping around behind her boyfriends back.

The video has two tenses, the present and the past.

In the present moment the male character has forgot about his plans with his beloved girlfriend, realising when he looks at his phone to see several missed calls. Throughout the video we can see him running endlessly to try and reach his girl, who is waiting at the bus stop which they agreed to meet. There are shots of the female character tiredly waiting around, and by the time the male character arrives she has got up and left. Leaving the male feeling deflated due to his mistake.

In the past we are portraying the happy and sad times during this troubled relationship. We have filmed happy times such as, the couple playing the guitar, goofing around, intimate moments. And not so happy times such as the female character being spotted around the town with several other males, in fact amplifying the lyric "fxxing the whole town," also arguments in public, and shots of female after too many drinks.

Now we have finished curating this footage we are now going to have to edit it to give the effect we believe the video / story deserves.

History of Album Artwork

Last week when the weather wasn't the best I decided to use my time and start researching album artwork for my genre - Indie. This is because as well as our music video we have to create what is called a 'digi pack', so it is important to research album's just as much as it is the music video.

Album artwork, or cover art by definition is either an artwork as illustration or photograph on the outside of a published music album and was created by Alex Stienweiss in 1938. He created the idea of custom artwork on record album covers and designed the first covers with original design, replacing the existing cardboard which simply said the name of the album and artist. His covers all seem to be abstract pieces of work with a lot of colour used to make it as eye catching as possible. The font and size of the font varies in each of the covers making all of them unique.

By the late 1940's, all major record albums featured their own colourful papercovers. Some used classic art while others used more original designs. Once the work of Alex Steinweiss was produced many more music producing companies followed in his footsteps and started producing the same, with all the albums containing art on the cover. These included the works or artists and designers such as: Jim Flora, Jim Amos, Rudolph de Harek as well as more of Alex Steinweiss’s work.

During the 1950's album covers didn't really develop, the trend was still bright colours with the artists name. But although the idea stayed the same there was a clear improvement between the works of 1940 and 1950, as there is a lot more thought to composition and style - this majorly being shown by the legendary Elvis Presley and through the creation of Rock and Roll.

In the late 1960’s album covers started to become more creative using cartoon drawings, and higher quality photography to give the albums a more modern look. The Beatles were the main artist making the most unique designs for their albums with all of them being very eye catching and abstract showing that there are no boundaries with the album art and that anything could be done.

One of the biggest influences on album cover art and art in today's society was the introduction of computer imaging. First made in 1973, computer imaging is art created by the use of software on a computer, it gave the artists a huge range of effects and styles to use. 

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980's punk was the most popular genre of music. Though being very controversial punk was undoubtedly a revolution, the era effected the album art with black usually being the main colour instead of the usual bright and colourful theme. Like the music the album artwork seemed to turn a lot more controversial with artists pushing the boundaries of what they could publish.

Through the late 1990’s and the 21st Century album covers have been developed even more with the use of computer graphics and more detailed covers being shown. The works of art are very high quality and even more interesting to look at. Artists have even found the effects album art has on the sale of there album and have thrived on making them as appealing as possible. Artist have also tried to pass messages through there art though some works are found to be offensive to some viewers.

Diary Entry Week 15

We are week 15 into our coursework and things are finally beginning to take place.
This week was a very exciting week for our group as we have completed all of our performance shots we require for our music video, we shot this on Wednesday on our school stage and everything went perfectly. The shoot itself lasted about 3 hours and we are really proud of the footage we shot.

This ended up being one of my favourite shots of the entire day, and it was originally an outtake. I think it is a perfect shot of the lead singer of the band, and it's a shot which we believe would make the fans of our fake band 'fangirl'.



Now we are roughly 75% finished shooting we have began the taskly editing process, it was all our first time using the software and we have realised how time consuming it is to even import footage. We know this is going to be a long task, but we have gathered Rian is our strongest editor already so me and Jack need to get some practice in.

Beginning Editing

Today in class we began the editing process and quickly realised Rian is the strongest editor in the group, as iMovie is a software we all aren't familiar with we all struggled at the beginning and Rian defiantly took to it the fastest.
As we don't have all of our footage completed right now, it was a case of inserting what we had, the song, and in place of missing footage we wrote what we intended to place in at a later date.

More Narrative Shot's

Today we battled the weather and finished 75% of our outdoor narrative shots with only the night time shot's to film and the indoor 'flashbacks' with the female and male characters.

We shot the very beginning shot of the music video and it something we are all very pleased with. As a group we are striving to make the narrative as clear as possible and I think this one shot itself is extremely effective when telling our story.

The 5 second shot begins with the male lead and an extra charlie walking along, the pair of them walking along together is to portray the closeness between them and how good of a friendship they share. As Callum pulls his phone out of his pocket he is clearly shocked about something, leading him to turn around and run into the opposite direction to where him and his friend Charlie was going. This shows that whatever has just appeared on Callum's phone, he values more highly than the time he was originally spending with his friend Charlie, and this is a shock to him as shown by his reaction. Also the speed in which Callum departs at shows that whatever he has read on his phone is vitally important and needs urgent attention.

  

Performance Shot's

The weather is brightening up meaning that hopefully later on in the week we will be able to film our narrative shots without getting blown away, but in the mean time we have decided to make use of our times and today we filmed our performance shots.

When choosing our 'indie band' we was extremely lucky, as we are friends with an already formed indie band, who regularly gig and even have an established EP out. This made the whole filming aspect really easy for me, Rian and Jack for many reasons. One of the main reasons was they was natural in front of the camera, the lads are used to being filmed and photograph as they do so on a regular basis so they wasn't shy in playing up to the camera and done exactly what we asked of them. Another aspect which was easier for us was the styling aspect of the video, we had an idea of what outfits we wanted the band to wear and when we shown them they made it work for us. That was so much easier that our AS Level piece of coursework which involved buying and borrowing clothes, this year the band themselves where already prepared.

We filmed the band on the school stage and I think we deserve a pat on the back for making a school stage not look like a school stage, as this was a big scare of ours. As we was trying to create shots which usually are on big stages in big arena's, in a school hall with a capacity of 200 it was defiantly difficult but I think we pulled it off. One of the main thing's which I believe helped a lot in making the stage look as professional as possible was the grey backdrop, it was an actual stage curtain and when we uploaded the footage onto the computer it gave a really indie affect and really completes the shots. Another aspect of filming on stage I liked was the speakers at the front of the stage, something I have seen in all professional gig ventures and when asked our lead singer Dean was happy to climb on them to bring attention to the professional features.

An aspect of the video which was important to us was the saxophone solo, we wanted to make it as spontaneous as possible, bringing as much emphasis to this section of the video as possible and our friend John fitted the role perfectly.  We styled him in complete contrast to the rest of the band and he played the role exactly how we wanted.

Diary Entry Week 14

This week the weather has not been on our side at all, meaning that we was unable to film any of our music video giving me time to focus on my digipack side of things.

I started the week in class by analysing our storyboard choices shot by shot and uploaded that into a detailed blogpost. I think the storyboard choices will end up being one of the most important blog posts as everything is based around that, so it is definitely an essential part of our creative journey.

In our final lesson of the week we had some time to concentrate on starting the digipacks, although I have finished my website side of it at the beginning of this week I hadn't even looked at a signal album cover and now I have a slight idea of what I am going to be going for. It's amazing how similar all indie album covers are and how now I know I could spot an indie album in any CD shop. I am going to be concentrating on the sketching side of my digipack as I think it really makes the album cover disgustable to others.

Storyboard Choices

Shot 1 - Band Setting Up

We have chosen to include a shot of our bad setting up the equipment before the music starts to give a sense of authenticity to the video, also the use of ambient sounds give it a really natural effect. The genre indie is all about live performance aspects so we wanted to get that in there early and set the genre.

Shot 6 - Guitar Close Up 

This shot is a close up on the guitar doing one of the solo's, we have wrote in big letters 'cuts on the beat'. We want to have the cuts on the beat to capture the energy and make the viewer feel apart of the video by giving it a real smooth professional effect.

Shots 8 - 12 - Facial Expressions

Shots 8 to 12 are 4 quick 1 second shots of the band members faces in the performance aspect and the actors face as he begins running on his journey to find his girl. We have chosen these shots as the calm expressions on the bands faces will contrast with the concerned male actor and emphasize his worry about his girl.

Shots 13-17 - Girl Moving 

These shots we decided would be ideal to show the audience how uneasy the female character is and also show that time is passing,and she is getting impatient waiting.

Shot 19 - Guitar Playing

We wanted to show flashbacks of the relationship between the two main characters and this is the first in the storyboard. As the lyric is 'beats are made for two', we are going to show on screen the two characters proportioned in the shot, while the male is effectively making 'beats' while playing on his guitar. The important aspect of this shot is the equality shown between the couple, that they both matter and love each other,

Shot 38 - Chest Out 

This shot was the one our group spent the longest debating over purely because we wanted to get it perfect, we had so many ideas what we could do with the lyric and it really allowed for alot of creativity. We decided on having a collision between the male actor and the bystander, with the bump of chests happening as the lyrics is sang.

Shot 40 and 41 - Controversial 

The lyrics which are in time with shot 40 and 41 is what almost stopped us from being allowed to use this song all together, with reference to drugs, sex and even swearing. We wanted to still use the song, with the promise we would play down the lyrics during the music video. So for the drugs reference of 'rocks and browns', we have used the shot of whiskey on ice, implying the rocks is ice and browns is the whiskey. The sex reference 'fu*king the whole town' we have played down subtly with a male walking out a room while the female is laying in bed.

Shot 59 - Rian's Idea

After seeing this edit in a two door cinema club music video a lad in our group Rian has been obsessing about it and to his luck there was a part of the song which would fit the slow motion edit perfectly. The concept is the lead singer singing his line in normal speed, with items in the background moving in slow motion. He even filmed an example video to prove to me and Jack it would look good in our music video.

Album Cover Research

Even though our main piece of coursework is the music video, the digipack aspect of it is just as important. The digipack includes my website, which is fully finished and an album cover which I have yet to have started, so today during lesson time I researched some previous indie album covers.

Pictured above is what appears when you type 'indie album covers' into google. It is clear that there are 2 common themes - Sketches and Animals, meaning that unlike other genres such as POP it is not common at all to see the actual indie artist face on the front of an album cover. This could be for many reasons, but the most obvious to me is that the indie genre is known for it's songwriting abilities and using that the sell records, rather than using the pretty face to sell records like the POP genre. I am defiantly going to take that into consideration and not use a band picture on the front as I want my piece of digipack to portray the indie genre perfectly. 

Wolves are also something you can see alot of while scrolling down previous indie album covers, which is strange and can be taken to one extreme or another as they are a symbol of both good and evil. This may be a popular animal to use because maybe the albums which use it have been going through good and bad times while writing the album, or maybe see it as a symbol of hope - If they are going through a bad time then there is always a good side, and the good side is coming. 

I think the idea of using a piece of artwork for my album cover is a idea I like, some of the sketches are so beautiful and although I have never even heard of some of the albums or songs I get the meaning just from the timeless piece of the front of the album. Some of the sketches I have found are off scenery and some are off people, I like the idea of using people on mine and maybe possible band members. 

Diary Entry Week 13

We have finalised our story board.

One of the hardest things we have had to do up to now is create a storyboard, this is because all the decisions require shots down to a second and there are 3 of us all trying to have our own input - so even though it took longer than expected it is finished.

During this week we have also filmed for the first time and successfully managed to curate numerous high standard shots for our music video, sticking to our storyboard for the majority.


This shot we had planned very accurately and even spoke about it in our location planning post.


 But this shot on the other hand was completely unplanned, and wasn't even on the storyboard. It came as a result of our main actor getting too hot in his outfit in real life, and as this is a true factor we wanted to include it in the video as we want the video to be as realistic as possible for the viewer. So that is defiantly something we have learnt on our first week of shooting that you sometimes have to adapt to certain situations, and make them work for you.

First Day of Shooting

Today we woke up early.. On a Saturday and managed to shoot numerous shots which we was extremely happy with the quality of. We are lucky as Jack has an incredible knowledge of film and camera angles and really helps when we are trying to think of a creative angle or an effective shot.

We learnt that sticking to the storyboard is harder than we expected, as there are factors out of our control that impact on the filming and our original shot ideas. One of which was that we started filming with our main actor callum wearing his coat, and as he was running in every shot this became impractical because he was complaining of being too hot. As we had already captured shots which in our eyes was perfect we didn't want to go back and reshot so we had to improvise by filming callum taking his jacket off and throwing it in a dramatic fashion. Even though the shot was unplanned we believe now it gives a sense of drama to the narrative and will hopefully help portray just how desperate the male lead is to find the female lead.

We was anxious about filming for the first time whether our ideas would be portrayed on camera as well as we thought they would in our minds and on paper, but now have done it once and filmed shots we are more than happy with we are looking forward to planning our next filming session.

Callum on the right with his bike is our male lead, and this is the first time a picture of him has featured on my blog. We used the bike to try and attempt tracking shots but the outcome was too shaky.