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.