Subsidiary Task: Digipak changes

Although we initially felt that the cover of our digipak should be something that is quite obscure and random with little relevance to the album title or the artist we have changed our minds. After creating our first draft with the love heart sweets as the basis to our design we felt it wasn't extremely conventional and it did not have the desired effect we wanted it to have. Therefore we have looked into other indie artists album covers and concluded that it is best to use an image of the artist as our album cover. This is a much more conventional style of album cover and will allow us to create coherence between the different media texts much more easily.

Subsidiary Task: Website Construction

For one of our subsidiary tasks we have chosen to create a website for our chosen artist. This is going to be created on wix.com I have used wix before and found it simply and easy to use therefore it seemed the best website generator to use.

We had already analysed other artists websites and had a list of clear conventions of our genre that we feel are best complied with.
We have chosen to use a grey and red colour scheme, this is because on other websites we looked at the background and general fonts were simple colours and there were some bright colours that stood out against the duller colours. We felt that red was a good colour to choose as the narrative to our music video is about love and red connotes love. The grey, black and white colours are basic and create a simplistic design, also the colours are coherent with our other tasks. For example our music video will have a large majority of the clips in black and white, making you concentrate on the storyline and the more important elements of our video.
After analysis of the other music websites we were able to recognise some very common pages to feature in the menu bar of the website and we felt that the most common positioning of the menu bar is generally across the top horizontally. Therefore we chose to position our in a similar place to be placed under the artists name which will be displayed across the top of the page. Also on our home page we intend to include the main task; our music video. We realised after looking at different music website it was conventional to have their latest music video placed on the home page and as we are creating a music video we felt it was probably best to use this on our home page to create continuity between the texts.
The pages that were most common on other existing artists music video were:

• Info page
• Gallery
• Music

Subsidiary Task: Digipak Draft 1

This is our first draft for our digipak, we decided to explore the idea of the love heart sweets and this is the outcome

This is the front page, the artists name and the album title is incorporated.

This is the back cover of the digipak with the list of songs and a barcode

This is this inside left page, and is a letter to the fans

On the reverse side there are lyrics to the songs on the album, they cover 4 pages

After thought we have decided that this doesn't really have the correct link and continuity with the other media texts that we would have hoped to create. Therefore although this draft has taught us a lot about the layout and design of the digipak, we will not be using this style. However the layout will be kept similar.

Changes to Filming

We made some decisions to changes to scenes on the story board when filming. They were only slight changes, they were:

1. Instead of using the concept of the couple walking their dog in the park we decided to not use the dog and to just have the couple having fun on a romantic walk around. 
2. We chose to remove the scene were the male character gives the female a key because although it linked the idea of them moving in together, in the time limit we had it would have been difficult to convey what they were doing.

Subsidiary Task: Music Website Research

In order to complete my subsidiary tasks to the most conventional of the genre we need to analyse existing music artist websites in order to obtain clear conventions of music websites.

Interview With the Artist

In order to gain an insight into the type of person our whole music video and subsidiary tasks were about when we filmed our live footage of him we had a quick interview.

Q. How old were you when you first started playing?
A. I played piano at 8 and played guitar when I was about 14

Q.What was the first song you wrote?
A. It was really, really, really bad. It was about a nightmare.

Q. Who's your all time favourite artist?
A. Bob Dylan

Q. If you could play anywhere in the world where would it be?
A. Paris

Q. Why?
A. Because I've never been and it looks pretty suave.


This interview, although the questions seem pointless and don't seem to help the coursework tasks, we feel that it has allowed us to get to know the person we are trying to replicate in our digipak and website.

Live Footage

Finally we managed to film the live footage for parts of our music video. It took a lot of organisation but we eventually got there. The footage has turned out well. However whilst we were there we tried to take pictures of the artist but because we were unable to use flash they did not turn out as well as expected. Therefore we will use a few of these for our subsidiary tasks and the others will be from our filming process and pre-existing images.

Filming and Editing schedule

Subsidiary Task: Researching Album Covers

Recce

Before filming for our music video we decided it would be a good idea to do a Recce of our locations to check they are suitable.

1. Wicksteed Park: This location is going to be perfect because it is in the countryside and in the autumn/winter when we are going to film it will look how we want it to for our genre of music.















2. The Donkey: this is where we will be filming the live footage of the artist. It is a pub and there are places we can set up the camera that will give us a good view of the stage without obstructing the view of the audience. Also the lighting and stage layout suits the typical venue an indie artist would perform in.



3. House: the inside part of the house will be filmed in Alice's spare room. Although it doesn't look like a room that people with little money would own, it will be fine to use because we are hoping to put it in black and white. There is no/little furniture in the room making it easy to use as we needed an empty room.


4. Pub: we needed a pub that was fairly empty so we didn't disturb too many people. We feel like this was the best place to use because it was easily accessible to all of us and is not too busy. Also we gained permission from the owner to use it to film. This will be the location where the couple meets for the first time.


5. Street: this is going to be used to film the male character leading us through the story with an opening and an ending. This is a road that isn't busy and looks quite quaint and in a little village.


6. Moving in: we are using the back of our friends house to film the scene with the two characters moving in because it isn't a busy road and parking isn't too much of an issue.

Actors, Props and Locations

For our music video we are planning to have two 'sections' - live footage for the chorus of the song and the second an acted story for the verses. The live footage was quite simple to film, all we needed to do was turn up and position and set up the camera and then film. For the second part of the video we will have to organise actors, decide locations and gather props.

Actors
We need a male and female character for the role of a couple who convey our interpretation of the song.
The male we are using is Alex, we believe he will be the most reliable person to use and is 17 years old and is interested in fashion so can relate to the target audience well. Because he can relate to the audience it gives the music video a personal feel. As we needed a couple with chemistry or they must act like they are in a relationship we used Tamsen. This was because her and Alex were good friends and were comfortable
together.

Costumes
We need to consider our target audience and how to relate the costumes to this audience, they also need to be relatively 'fashionable' but because of the story behind our music video they are quite poor therefore no brands or major labels.

Empty room scenes-

Male: casual t-shirt, red jeans

Female: black jeans, jumper and a waistcoat

Street scenes-

Male: chino trousers, black coat

Female: leggings, denim shirt and hat

Bar Scene-

Male: suit jacket and trousers

Female: dress, more formal hair
Park Scene-

Male: purple jeans, t-shirt, coat and hat
Female: jeans, denim shirt, parka coat and hat
Moving In Scene-
Male: checkered shirt and chinos
Female: yellow jumper, jeans and hair up

Props

There aren't a great deal of props to consider, however we will be using a guitar for the male character to use walking down the street and in the house. For the park scene we want to use a dog to show a romantic walk in the park. However we will need a number of different props to make up the mise en scene. 

Locations
This was definitely the most difficult of all the factors to consider. We knew we wanted believable mise-en-scene, but some of our ideas were realistic, for example a 'derelict' or old house will be very difficult to find and then there would be legal issues. Therefore we will film the inside of the house in a house that we do have access to and the outside scenes will be filmed outside a property that is quite old and affordable for a young couple. Also quite a few of our locations will be open for public to use making it quite difficult to plan our filming precisely, but we want to film in these locations to make the story more believable.