The Poster for our band

My first step was to decide what exactly the poster for the band was going to focus upon; the forthcoming tour or album sales, or both.  We decided that our band will focus on album sales and so decided that our focus should be mainly about the promotion of our CD and new songs to be released. 

The next aspect of the poster design was to analyse the audience that we are focussing upon and look closely at what interests them.  We are focussing on a teenage and young adult audience and decided that most teenage audiences associate a band firstly with its music and secondly with itís appearance without too much written content.  So what we decided to produce was a picture of the band members along with some of the songs that they produce.  It needed to be of high quality, concise and attract attention. 

Our target audience is teenage and young adults and to this end we wanted to create a mod culture as we wanted scope to introduce new or different ideas to refer to without constraint.  We wanted the band to be going against the mainstream, and as Dyer argues the image of the star can then be used to position the consumer in relationship to dominant social values.  This can then be positioned so that it rejects or goes against the mainstream or dominant social values.  In essence we wanted to show that the band had values such as creativity and quality as their priorities which connect to Keith Negus ideology "the natural ideology of creativity".  Thereafter we made the decision that the band should focus on album sales instead of singles sales focusing more on a sophisticated audience.

We decided to focus on the image of the band to enhance their profiles and values taking the idea of creating something modern because of the influence of mod culture representing recycling, re-using and community spirit.  In this respect we targeted our audience as modern youth and young adults who are prepared to go against the mainstream in order to show care and concern for their environment and the earth on which we live.  Since the band is however mainly focused upon producing quality music they will almost certainly attract people with other values and ideas, but still in keeping with the mod culture. 


We analysed other posters produced for similar audiences and this confirmed our decisions about the content and focus of our poster.  For example, if you look at the posters below,  you can see that our poster is similar to Nickleback's promotion poster for their album, "The dark Horse."  We use band members to represent the group as a whole, along with their CD name, in essence creating a brand in the form of a poster.

The decision to use the scrap yard

Our group is promoting the band along the theme of recycling, re-using and community spirit developing out of a mod culture.  Society today has become very wasteful and often things are produced to use once or for a short period of time and then a new product is bought.  Take for example milk, most people purchase it in a carton or a plastic container which gets used once and then is thrown in the garbage where it is probably taken to landfill.  Years ago milk was purchased in milk bottles which were re-cycled and re-used.  Our group is attempting to promote the recycling and re-using going against the use once and throw it out mentality of our modern society.  

To reinforce the idea of re-using and recycling in the video we chose to set the scene scrap yard.  The cast is socializing demonstrating their community spirit and concern for recycling and uses both girls and boys representing equality to promote a message.  But, we also tried to used good looking and attractive people to appeal to young teenagers that might not appreciate the music as much as the video.

Organising out shots

We logged and quickly assessed all of our shots, from the first shot taken to the last in order to make the editing process easier and efficient. 

We looked through each shot and marked it with different colours to differentiate their quality and usability.  This was a relatively easy process each shot was marked on a scale of 1 to 3 for quality and likewise for useability.

After doing that we annotated all of the shots with a marking tool

If the zoom or the focus in the shot changed, we recorded the details of the change.   This would help us piece everything together and organize our final video as we were now able easily access the shot that we might be needing in the final editing process.  

In doing this it would help us to have ready cut shots in order to use them in our final production.  This process was well thought through and took about an hour and did enable us to be better prepared, was very useful and did save us time in the long run.

20th November - shoot in the junk yard

On the 20th of November we are taking our second shoot, which is going to be in a junk yard where they recycle and reuse car parts.  We are using the junk yard on a Sunday as this is the only day that the yard is closed to the public.  Unfortunately only one of the cast of four is able to turn up on this day so we have been forced to use other people.  We still want to convey the message of recycling, reusing and community so the shooting is going to show what the mods might do as a normal activity as a group and not be specifically about the band as we had planned. 

The cast will be

Tom Evan    -    guitarist
Wells Shaw
Niall Green
Ed Nightingale   
Nina Jakbsen

Unfortunately we are restricted by the numbers we are allowed to bring to the scrap yard and this may mean that myself and Nina may have to do some of the narrative for the video at  a later time.  We will be using people from a mod club coming especially just for us to film their bikes and to get an iconic part of mod culture into the video.

Video Shoot Part Two

During the shooting we all had different jobs that we were responsible for. Nina was annotating and recording the shots, which will be very useful when we come to editing and piecing it all together.
Charlotte was in charge of playback and checking that the scene had recorded as we had planned.  She was also responsible for taking photographs during the shoot.  Both these processes will help when it comes to the final editing and production of the video as we will quickly be able to associate the picture with the screen shot.
Teodora was head of camera and responsible for getting the best pictures with the correct lighting and exposure whilst the group determined the different shots and angles.
Our group were well organized and this seemed to affect the cast who responded well to what we wanted them to do and were most helpful.
I canít wait to start editing our video, which will be after our final shoot on the 20th of Nov at a scap yard for motor vehicles.

Shooting Day Part One

This morning we gathered in the studio to prepare the props and set up the studio.

We also got a first glimpse of how our video looked on camera and we all liked what we saw and all contributed to the design of the set which also looked really good.   About 9am the cast began to change into costume and we still had many decisions and choices to make about what would best suit a mod theme.  It is not always easy to decide which clothes to select until you have the person wearing them ñ and we also took the advice of the cast as well.   When we had finished choosing clothing at around 9.30 we did our first take starting out with a wide shot of the whole band but we then realized that the lighting had to be changed as we realized some shadows that had appeared when the cast and instruments moved.  This was a technical glitch that I guess you only learn about through experience and making videos.   So we did another take of the whole band as well as nine different shots of the band in the original set focusing on different cast members and instruments.  We explored different positions and shooting angles to make the shots appear more natural.

We finished at around 1pm and were all very satisfied with the shoot, which was at times hectic and hard work but quite rewarding.

Tuesday 8th November

This afternoon the group designed the set for our video.  There was a lot to think about from props, staging, lighting and how we would progress from one screen shot to another.  We referred to our intial plan and after a few hiccups with props we all reached an agreement and decided the drums and microphones would be among the props.  We talked about the lighting once more and then set it according to our plan.  After an hour and a half putting together everything we were happy with the result and made sure that every one was prepared for the shoot tomorrow.  Each member of our group had specific jobs to do; recording, organising props, annotating the shots for editing,  checking the playback and photographing the shoot.

Casting

Unfortunately we have encountered problems with people being ill and some cast members have not been able to make it so we were forced to make some decisions that will affect our music video. As mentioned Will Bodnar, the drummer is not well so we had to find a substitute  drummer just in case.

 We were forced to look for people to take on this role at the  last minute, but needed someone to be able to play the drums in a realistic and convincing way.  We found girl  drummer called Laura Cheese.  Laura has played the drums before is familiar with the instrument and was also one of the few people that was able to help us just a day before the shot.  She was also able to fit into the mod culture we were promoting easily.

So even though the cast didnít turn out exactly as planned I still feel that we are on track and conveying the mod them that we set out to.

Monday 7th Soundcheck

Today our group met with the cast to ensure that they know their roles and are as realistic as possible whilst playing the instruments for the video.  Whilst this did not present any real problems we have encountered another.  The scrap yard where we want to film is only available to shoot on Sundays, as it is closed to the public on this day.  Unfortunately some of the cast are not happy about shooting on the weekend and we will need to make a backup cast in case.