December 15th - Final Digipak Design

T'was the night before Christmas. Well not entirely, it's still 10 days away but we're still working hard. Here's our final Digipak design put together by Rhys. We hope to create something like this for real.

It's very exciting how it's all coming together.

This is our final digipak design. It follows conventions of madness and confusion and we think it's really quite effective. We like the fact that our artist is shown multiple times and how the front cover is used to show insanity.

Sadly, this is my final post before the Holidays.

Rhys and I will come back very refreshed ready to finish the DigiPak, the music video and start work on the website. 

Eek!

Merry Christmas.

December 10th - Planning Ahead & Test Shot

So today Rhys and I got together to plan ahead for the coming weeks before christmas in order to make sure we're on track.
We have some blog tweaks to sort out and a few things to upload and sort but I'm glad to say we're pretty much on top of it.

We also improvised a shot for our inside Digipak covers. We wanted to see our model multiple times across a panoramic style shot.

We used my iPhone and managed to produce this.

I really like it, although the third Sid has his left arm cut off. I'll research photo-stitching so I can manually avoid situations like this.
Other than that, I think it looks quite cool!

I hope you like it as much as I do!

September 30th - Risk Assessment

Rhys and I have just been to school. On a Sunday - I know we're too committed. No stop, please.

We just completed a risk assessment for tomorrow ready for film. Got a busy day and an early start to avoid lots of school children but we'll get it done.

Have a butchers. 

September 17th - Shooting Schedule

Okay! Rhys and I have an action plan we're going to stick to! Here's what we'll be doing over the next few days when it comes to filming. I'll get the editing done between each filming day so I can see what we need to get done, show Rhys and our tutors so we can see where to go from there. It's all getting rather exciting.

September 14th - Our Treatment

The Concept

The song wehave chosen to use is called Fitzpleasure and the artist name we have created is PARAdox. For our music video we plan to use two of the three key music video styles, narrative and concept. We use a narrative of a man being tormented by himself, going insane and eventually beating it. We use concept in order to exaggerate the madness by making it look like he is crazy and singing to himself. Finally we intend to use special effects to make it look like he is being confronted by himself. And another that sees him rise up out of his own body. There are a few different locations we want to film. One is a run down old building, preferably derelict to represent his mind. Another location needs to be a big dining room so he can be presented to his friends at a tea party, and finally we wish to create a running scene where he travels from a morbid place to a happy place like a field. The pace and tone of the video will hopefully follow the songs feel because we used a visualisation technique to help plan our video. We wrote down what we saw so it should be pretty parallel.

Artist Style and Form

For our artist we decided he would be a solo artist. We wanted to make him, essentially, a slim figured gentleman so he would be appealing to the female audience. In our head we had an idea of Adam Ant meets MGMT meets Empire Of The Sun meets Noel Fielding meets Spector meets Calvin Harris and Pro Green. This is because of the song Fitzpleasure. It is a strange song and the both the lyrics and sound of the singing don't follow conventions. The music speaks for itself so in order to appeal to the largest possible audience we need the artist to essentially take two person as; off stage and on stage.  It's a rather vivid idea but to go along with his strange appearance we wanted a very leveled and mature. We wanted a Cambridge graduate this is again based on the song, the contextual references and the subtly behind the lyrics make him seem very clever and this level of thought the dedication continues through the whole of Alt-J's album.  It's a weird image to try and get your head around but it works in ours. 

Logistics/Issues

There are two special effects which I’m not entirely sure how to edit correctly just yet and they’re quite ambitious. One is the split screen effect where Rhys approaches himself and the other is an eye zoom transition where it looks like it zooms out of his eye and into another scene. But we can always leave it out. As well as this we think we may struggle filling up the time because there is a large portion of the song that is repetitive. Our back up plans would be to edit the song and remove 30 or so seconds of the loop. Also, in the spirit of charity and awareness Rhys will be partaking in Movember, due to this filming for November will be out because of continuity. So we will focus our efforts elsewhere.

Target Audience

Using our questionnaire and Alt-J's own demographic we decided to target an audience between the age of 15-24. Our focus group confirmed this with the great percentage of them enjoying the song and the majority of them visualising video ideas compared to the older group we asked. The fact that Alt-J's songs are played on Radio 1 and XFM as well as being popular on YouTube also confirm 15-24 as the most appropriate range.

Location

For our location we wanted a few different places. The main bulk of the filming we're hoping to find a run down old building or like an old hospital, which shows madness, a feel of broken, abandoned. Something spooky and a little freaky. On top of that we need contrasting, highly friendly and colourful places, and then one in the middle, the idea in our head is very Alice In Wonderland-esk this will represent a "happy place" which also reinforces the madness.

Technology

There is a huge range of technology we are using and going to use in order to complete our project. For starters we need computers to connect and create our blog, do research on websites such as YouTube, Google, Blogger. We also need a camcorder and maybe a still camera. On top of that we are going to need editing software. 

Here's basically all we need. 

May 5th - We'll start at the beginning

First post for the new blog. 

This is where my A2 Media journey begins.

Bring on the music video.