Marketing Banner for MySpace

Here is the banner that we put on the top of our MySpace. We originally thought we should use the image of the artists on their album cover, however, this was used as our background image so I decided to use the brick. This means that the banner ties in with our album artwork, and the video.



- Mel, for the group -

Digipak

Here is our final digipak cover:
Front:


Back:


Inside Sleeve:


Where the CD goes:






















I personally think that the cover matches the style of the genre and of the artists, and I think all the elements work well together. The only bit I'm not 100% happy with is the difference in the shadows at the bottom of their faces, but it would have been hard to avoid this as the photos were taken in two different locations. 
- Mel, for the group -

MySpace

We have set up an email address for our artist:
Email: Tainted09@hotmail.co.uk
P-Word: anyonebuthim

We have also created a MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/tainted09

Our MySpace also links to blog entries we have written, as well as our group's working Twitter page. We have also posted our completed video on the MySpace.



- Group -

Test Screening

Today we held a test screening of our music video with other media students. This was both for us to see the video on a bigger screen so that we could see if there was anything wrong with it, and to get feedback from other students to see if there was anything that they didn't like or thought we should change. We got a lot of good feedback that was really useful in completing the video:
- We noticed, as did the other students, that a lot of the lipsynching was out of time. We hadn't noticed this before on the edit suite so it was useful to see this on the bigger screen.
- Many of the studens also said that they thought the blur on the flashbacks was too high meaning that they couldn't really see the shot as well as they would want to. They also thought the white blur around the shots was too much, which meant the dreamy, flashback effect didn't work as it looked too much like a white border round the shots.
- One of the students also wasn't sure about the last shot, stating that it seemed a bit pointless. However, we feel that the last shot sums up how he's feeling (lost and confused) and is a nice way to end the video.
However, we also got some positive feedback:
- All the students agreed that the performances we got out of our actors were really good and believeable. They also said that they believed in the emotions portrayed, and felt sorry for our main artist, which is what we were aiming for.
- They also said that they liked the editing. Including the parts where we cut quickly between similar shots and when we cut on the beat, among other edits.

 - Mel, for the group -

Progress...

Yesterday, we had our narrative shoot. Although it didn't go quite to plan, as it was difficult to get many of the shots we wanted out of our actors, as well as issues with lighting outside, we still had enough footage to put into our video. After talking to Miss Blackborow, we decided to put the shots in black and white with a slight camera blur and in slow motion. We have gotten positive feedback for this. We also put a white effect around the shots to make them seem more dreamlike, and to distinguish them from the other shots. However, we have had mixed feedback on this effect, so tomorrow we will ask more people's opinions and should hopefully have our video completed by tomorow afternoon.
Today, we have also finally come up with a name for our group. At first we were thinking of 'Tainted Dreams', but realised that it would sound more like an album name. I then asked around about what people thought of 'Tainted' and with some feedback changed this to 'TainteD'. This plays on the lead artist's name (Daniel) and as we were planning to change Bernard's name, we are going to give him a name beginning with 'T' and are considering naming him 'Tyler'.
For our album cover we have already completed the inside sleeve, and today I began a draft of a back cover. It features a picture of Bernard standing at the top of stairs, leaning against a brick wall. Daniel's face is superimposed on the brick wall as if it is graffitied on or is part of the wall itself. I also experimented with different effects. We have a completed tracklist, and I have put this on the back cover. The tracklist is not in a conventional list but is spread out across the back cover, and following BLK's advice I made some of the track names bigger than others.

- Mel, for the group -

Track List

We have completed a track list for our album 'Blurring Boundaries'.
The track list is as follows:
1. Gone Too Far
2. Anyone But Him
3. Through The Pain
4. The Other Side
5. Better Days
6. Who Am I?
7. Not Possible
8. Suspicious
9. Flashback
10. How Does It Feel?

We feel that the tracks all match the idea of  the artists debut single 'Anyone But Him', following the idea of heartbreak and soul searching. 

- Group -

Narrative Shoot

We're shooting out narrative today and here is the schedule we will be following tonight:
Photos for album:
- D against brick – profile
- D+B together against brick
- D+B together upstairs (D close to us, B further back)
- Brick
Photos for phone:
- D+B
- D.B.S – Close together – laughing
- D+S – Kiss on cheek

Outside:
- Walking down road – holding hands/laughing– LS/Track and CU of hands
- In hut – Laughing etc – CU of faces

Bel’s Room:
- D.B.S – MS – Laptop and joint reach
           - CU – Hands – Laptop reach
           - CU – Faces – Look at each other
- B+S – MS - Snuggling – His arm around her
- D+S – MS – Laughing etc
           - MS – Snuggling – His arm around her
           - MS – Shouting at each other
           - MS – He reaches out to hug? – She pushes him away
           - CU/MS – She’s on end of bed (looking at cam) he’s behind. She gets up and leaves
           - OTS/CU of face – He’s looking through phone

Kitchen:
- D+S – MS – Flicking water at each other

Sitting Room:
- D+S – MS -Sitting on sofa – snuggling – Mug
           - MS - She pushes him away
- D.B.S – MS – Sofa - Fighting for remote from her
            - MS – She walks in, hugs D, looking at B
            - CU – Her face + B’s face
            - B+S – MS – her lying on him? Her resting on him looking up at him smiling
            - MS - Hugs her, pulls back, puts her hair behind her ear, wipes her tear, and pulls her close to kiss (& kiss).
            - CU – her face – same as before
            - CU – his face – same as before

Front Door Area:
- D+B – MS - Bro Hug
        - OTS from D and B – D opens door, B reaches out to shake his hand? (we good?), D pushes B away, B smiles and turns to walk away (ok) and D closes door. D leans on door, sighs.
        - M/LS from side – same
        - CU – each persons face – same
        - CU – B’s hand knocking – D’s hand opening door – D’s hand closing door

- Mel, for the group -

Artist Name

I think D-Fine could work but might be too centred around one artist/sound too much like one artist?
I was looking at where band names come from and a lot of them seem to come from quotes, lyrics from songs and sayings, so I thought I would think about names from thses sort of things.
I searched song lyrics of people that I thought would inspire our artists, such as Motown legends, newer R&B artists and artists such as Kanye West. This didn't lead to much so I thought about quotes, and came up with a few:
- Dream Weavers/Builders/Creaters/Definers >>> (Kanye West quote, ‘I can let these dream killers kill my self esteem-or use my arrogance as steam to power my dreams’)
- Death is Expected (Kanye West quote ‘Nothing in life is promised except death’) but this spells 'die', not quite what we're going for!
In the list of band names it said that '311' was named after police code in Nebraska, so I looked at police codes and got 10-2 (meaning you're being received clearly)
I thought about them in society, ‘The banished’, ‘The Spurned’, ‘The Deserted’, ‘The Condemned’, ‘The Zeroes’, ‘Zero’ >>> from ‘rejects'. And ‘Full of Fail’, ‘FailProof’ >>> from the idea of them being 'failures'. And ‘Recreating Reality’, ‘Reality Rebirth’ >>> from the idea of them building new ground.
Then I thought about common sayings and came up with ‘Live Hard, Die Hard’, ‘Live Hard’, Living Hard’ >>> from 'Live Hard, Die Hard'. And ‘Beats, Soul and Teamwork’, ‘Beats And Soul’/'Beat And Soul'/'Beats & Soul' (etc >>> (from ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’).
Personally, I think most of these are really bad but I quite like 'Beats And Soul', because it represents what each of the artists bring to the group. But I feel like it might need some work to sound more like a group name.

- Mel -

Teacher suggestion for name

Girls Mrs Dymioti suggested D-Fine for the name - what do you think? Great idea to play around with letters like that I thought and maybe their real names could be changed to tie in somehow.

To Do....

- Finalise plan for narrative footage
- Finish album front cover
- Choose titles for 10 more tracks
- Plan album sleeve image and back cover image
- Plan last shot of Dan and Bernard

- Mel -

Feedback

This week we've been editing the footage we shot on the weekend. We chose to make the video black and white but then decided to make the performance part of the video black and white, to show that we're documenting their relationship now, with the narrative in a faded colour. The colour will show that this was the 'good times', but the colour will be faded as it is kind of a negative memory for them as it reminds them of what they've lost. DYM liked the idea of doing the whole video black and white and liked the idea of the split screen in the narrative. She suggested that we should use split screen as a tool for showing the narrative to distinguish it from the rest of the video. However, now that we've decided to put the narrative in colour this may be too much, although we will try it and see how it looks. Today, we changed the video so far, to black and white and BLK watched our video. She suggested doing a performance bed, completing the video as if it is just a performance video, and then slotting the narrative later. This is a good idea, as it means that we don't have to decide where the narrative is going to go now, as it's hard to tell without any footage to look at. She also suggested prolonging some of our shots as we have a lot that cut quickly but would work if they were slightly longer. She also suggested having more shots of Bernard performing facing us. All the feedback we've had has been really helpful and should help us construct the best video we can.

- Mel, for the group -

Had another couple of narrative ideas from watching the 'Oopsy Daisy' video (watch from 2.44 to 3.05)...what about the two of the guys walking together and the girl's walking past. Bernard points the girl out to Daniel but Dan starts talking to her and gets her number. Also, could have the three of them sitting on a bench, Bernard gets up and leaves and looks back at Daniel and the girl, and we focus on his face.

- Mel -

Shoot

We had our final performance shoots this weekend. On Saturday we shot with Daniel, and on Sunday with Bernard. The shoots went really well. Both actors were moving a lot more in the shots and we also experimented a lot more with camera movement. We'll know for sure if we have all the footage we need when we start to edit but at the moment it seems like we do.
We're going to shoot our narrative during this week, and should hopefully have finished the album cover by the beginning of next week. We are going to edit and do our album cover and MySpace at the same time as each element will help us with the others.

- Group -

Album Cover Ideas

As we have decided to do a duo rather than a solo artist we have been rethinking our ideas for an album cover. As the duo represent different groups in society, we thought 'Blurring Boundaries' would be a good album cover name. We have also been discussing ideas for the image that will feature on our album cover, and have tested one of our ideas. We developed this idea after Mel suggested doing something similar to the 'Face Off' album cover (pictured below)



Ours features both artists back to back, with the centre of the image blurred. This highlights their differences as people and in their music styles. The artists are facing away from each other to show that their styles are very different, however the blurring of the two images will show that although very different from each other, they are coming together through music. In contrast the 'Face Off' album image is used to show the similarities of the two artists.

- Group -

Artist Name

We have been thinking of names for our main artist and have come up with:
- Adam Young/Nolan/Gray/Ross
- Nathan Adams/Gray/James
We are going to try and narrow them down so that we can get started on our album cover.

Update:
We have decided to do a duo rather than a solo artist featuring another as the relationship represented in this song could be one that it carried through and album.
Now, we have to think of a name for the duo. We quite like the idea of taking inspiration from N.E.R.D (No-one Ever Really Dies) and G.O.O.D (Getting Out Our Dreams), by having the duo's name stand for something else.

- Group -

Narrative Ideas

We have been discussing narrative ideas for our video, because we have decided not to show the two artists as young boys. We think it would be better to show them older, to make the friendship of the two boys and the girl clearer to the audience. We would also like to show the girl seperately with the two boys.
Our ideas:
- Split Screen - 1. The girl is with the main artist, Daniel, then runs/walks out of shot and into the shot with Bernard. This shows that she has left one for the other. 2. The girl is with Daniel and Bernard, showing the three of them were friends, and then we move to split screen with her with Bernard in one shot and Daniel in the other. 3. The girl with the two boys, doing the same thing with both of them, eg. touching them in a similar way (see 'Knock You Down' 4.25)


- The three of them walking together, with Bernard behind. We see him over the shoulder of Daniel on the right hand side, smiling, then wipe past Daniel's head and his face has changed. (See Kano video 1.59-2.02). We could then go to an OTS shot from Bernards perspective and see the girl looking at him.

- Daniel looking through his phone, in his bedroom, at photos of the three of them together, of him and the girl together, and of him and Bernard together.
- Clips of the three of them together, or of her with the two of them seperately (see shot on the right - 'Knock You Down' 3.15)

- Mel, for the group -

We can't shoot Sunday...I forgot that Daniel can't do it, so we're going to have to shoot on Saturday from 1pm. I think if we rehearse in the morning and make sure we have a really really good plan then we should be able to get it done.
- Mel -

Video ideas...

I was thinking of ways of doing the narrative part of the video and discussed some ideas with two other students and came up with some ideas.
- We could do split screen, of Bernard walking with the girl, and Daniel walking with the girl, and as they get closer to us, they somehow all end up walking together. I thought we could do this by like cutting to her face, laughing or something, and then cut to a long shot of the three of them. Or we could do some sort of wipe to the three of them together? Or the shots could somehow merge into one? (I haven't really tested it so I don't know what would work, we could test it on Monday)
- We could do something like they're all walking along and Daniel and the girl are together with Bernard behind (like your brother suggested), and have the girl pass Bernard something and like hold his hand a litle too long, or look at him a little too long or something to get a hint of their relationship developing before she broke up with Daniel.
- Bernard could be sitting opposite the girl in a cafe or something, and they would be talking with Daniel sitting looking at them or something (we could ask to do this in Latymer Cafe, maybe when they're closed?)
- She could be walking with Daniel, go round a corner, and then be walking with Bernard.

Personnally, I prefer the first idea just because it would be a really obvious way of showing that they both have the girl at some point AND that they used to be friends. But we could also make the others work, or use any other ideas.

I thought we could fade the colours for the narrative, because we've changed our mind about the black and white/sepia tone, but maybe still need someway of distinguishing it from the rest of the video. I tried it out and the shots look quite good, but I don't know how it would look in the sequence as a whole.

I also thought we could fade the girl over Daniel while he's singing some lines, to make her look kind of like a distant memeory or something. I found that sort of thing in the video for 'Broken Strings', (click here) when Nelly Furtado starts singing, at 1.36. We could fade the girl, Bernard or the girl and Bernard together over him.

Also in this video I really like the way that he paces and stuff, and I think we could get Daniel to do that, to get more movement. Also, I was talking to other students about the video, and they think as the video goes on Daniel should start to get angry, and we had an idea that when Bernard comes into the room, Daniel grabs him by his top and is about to punch him but then decides he's not worth it and leaves. Daniel could be getting more and more angry with the last few verses, while Bernard looks really arrogant and unbothered when he's saying 'me, me...' etc. Daniel could be etting really frustrated. I don't know if it would work though, because in the song, at this point Mr Hudson doesn't sound angry so I don't know if it would look weird if Daniel is. But I'm not really sure, it's something to think about at least.

Studio...

Just got an email from Sarah. She said that the windows don't look any different, which is a relief and she said that the studio is free, from 1pm onwards, but all day Sunday. I told her to provisionally book the studio for the 14th, but maybe we should shoot on Sunday instead? Or do half day Saturday, half day Sunday? I told her we would let her know on Monday so we'll discuss it and let her know.
- Mel -

MySpace Inspiration

Calvin Harris MySpace – Background links to album artwork:
http://www.myspace.com/calvinharristv


Whilst researching music MySpaces for our band website, I found this one for Calvin Harris. Although his music is not in the same genre as ours, I was inspired by the desgin and layout of it. Key iconography for himself as an artist is the main feature on his album cover. This is then followed through onto the background of the MySpace where he uses the same iconography. The colour schemes are also similar to the ideas that we have (black, white and grey.) The sleek design is an effect that I think we should aim for as this is generally associated with male artists.
Overall, his MySpace works really well and shows synergy between the products, which is essential for our promotional package.


I have also looked at the types of promotion that they do on MySpaces for the band's music. Generally when I've visited an artist's MySpace page, the first thing you see at the top is an advertisment for their new album or sometimes a new single. I visited the MySpace of the music artist Chris Brown and I really liked the design of the banner advertising his album. They used the image of him on the album cover as the background for the banner and this created a really nice effect and helped it all tie together. The image is also really striking and immediately catches your attention, which is the main aim really, as we want the viewer to read it and then buy the album. The fonts used also tie it all together as it is the same to that on the album cover. An actual image of the album is also featured, as well as the link to his official website where you can order the album.
The main thing is getting the advertising banner to catch your attention and therefore I think we should use a striking image of our artists on the banner. It's also important to link it to the design of the album cover, as this is what you're promoting, as well as to the style of music. Therefore we should bear this all in mind when we design our banner.

- Tanya -

Idea for Album Cover...

I was trying to think of ideas for an album cover, and thought that a close-up would work really well, and I like the profile shot we have of Daniel so I came up with this:

Obviously it's really rough (and we're still not sure about the artist name) but I like the simplicity of it and think that something like this would work really well for our album cover. One of the reasons for this is that it matches the simple style of the video. I also personally think that Daniel photographs better from the side than straight on, and when promoting him, as an album cover does, we would want to show him looking his best. Although a straight on shot could work, and after a small amount of editing could look really good. I think we should definately start thinking about album cover and start sketching some ideas.
- Mel -

Planning

That’s a good idea because we cant really get anywhere with editing at the moment because I think we’re going to replace everything – practically all the shots – with all the new footage that we get next Saturday so its a bit of a waste of time.

1. First we need to decide on/adapt our final target audience (I think this has changed since the start of the project)
2. I think we should then decide on what kind of artist we are going to have (we need to ask if we'll have to create an artist for the rapper too)
3. When we’ve decided on this, we can start building their profile, then hopefully a name will come from this when we do lots of notes and stuff.
4. When we’ve decided on his/their image, we can play about with idea for the album cover and MySpace by using imagery and a style that we relate to him/them.


- Tanya -

Things to do...

After talking to both teachers, I think that as well as planning for our shoot on (hopefully) 14th November, we need to start thinking about our MySpace and album cover. If we start on these then it means we can concentrate on editing without worrying about not having enough time for our album cover and website, and we will have to properly decide on who our artist is and start building a brand, which will help us on the shoot as we will really have to think about the sort of artist he is/TA and so will be able to ensure that he personifies the artist really well.
- Mel -

Album Cover...

I like the idea of doing a really simple album cover to match our artist. I like this album cover as the background colour is really simple as is the font and size, of the title and artist name. But I do think that for ours, the name of the artist will have to be bigger as he is a debut artist. We could also have a straight on picture of him, or side on but better lit, but I really like the dark shot on this cover, and do think something like this could work for ours. - Mel -

Performance & Narrative Inspiration

As preparation for our re-shoot soon, I have been looking for music videos that help demonstrate some moves and gestures that we want Daniel to do in order to add a bit more movement to the video. In our current footage, he looks too still and therefore quite bored, but we need him to get across the emotions in the song. I think the video for this song What you say by Jason Derulo shows some good gestures that could work for our video. Examples include things such as him leaning on the wall and singing, him kind of punching the wall. The montage of shots at the beginning of the video contains types of shots that we could use. A lot of these could be shot in the hallway that we are using at the studio.

Also the shots of the guy with the girl on the sofa are a good way to show they are a couple, so I thought for the narrative part of the video where we need both guys with the girl, one of them could be sitting with the girl like this on the sofa in the video to show they were together. There are also shots of them together where they are shown to be close and laughing and stuff.



Here are some snapshots of shots that could work:

PERFORMANCE:

Close-up leaning on the wall

Collapsing down to the floor

Punching the wall

NARRATIVE:

I thought this would be a good shot for Bernard when he's with the girl. He could look at the camera and kind of smile in an arrogant way.

Close-ups of them laughing

On the sofa with the guy's arm around her

Close-ups of the guys with the girl

Beauty shots of the girl

- Tanya -

Dan just called me and he said that in five weeks he has a show where he needs to have long hair, and obviously he needs short hair for us, so we need to shoot as soon as possible really. And looking at your list I think we may need another full day (at least more than the three/four hours we planned) so I think Saturday 14th. I emailed Sarah and I'm just waiting for a reply. But to be honest, I don't think it's a major problem if he has longer hair, as long as we style it how we want it. The only thing is it depends on what exactly we reshoot because we obviously don't want him with different hair in different clips of basically the same shot, but if we're going to reshoot most of it then the difference of his hair wont be a problem.
- Mel -

Narrative

We need to be able to get across our story behind the song quite quickly and simply, but also effectively. So I was thinking that we might be making things pretty difficult for ourselves by showing them as young boys, which might also be too complicated for the audience, when we can have narrative from a couple of months ago. Then we would show just how close the two boys were, implying that they’ve been best friends for ages. Also we can get this across to the audience, as well as the story with the girl. So it would all be shown in one narrative part that we could cut to a couple of times. I think this is the best way to avoid complication, as the narrative is quite a small part of the music video, which we’ve decided will be dominated by performance. When shooting this, we can also get the photo done, and when we see him later on (or before?) looking at the photo, the audience will recognise it, so it all kind of flows and connects. I don’t know though, we can still try and sort out the thing with my little brother, but my mum said we might have problems with asking one of his friends because some parents are funny about things like this, and we’d have to organise it through my little brother who isn’t exactly the most reliable person.

I thought we could have shots from a couple of months ago of the two guys and the girl out and they are joking around. This is when the main artist was going out with the girl, and we can show this by him having his arm around her or something. The featuring artist is with them too – they were all close friends, but he is kind of following them behind the guy and girl, like the three of them are on a day out. They’re all laughing, the main guy is always turning around to the other guy, showing they are close friends, maybe the main guy like grabs the other guy round the neck laughing – ‘brotherly love,’ to show they were best friends.

Then I thought we could place the other guy like behind, to the right of the main guy and the girl and you see him joking with them, then the camera tracks to the left (goes past the main guy – the other guy is concealed behind the main guys head) and as the camera wipes past Dan’s head, Bernard is revealed again, now in the back centre of the two, you can see his face has changed and he now looks kind of evil, like staring at the two in front of him, showing jealousy, like he’s planned to steal his best friend’s girl for ages. Then the girl could turn around, the camera cuts to behind the couple, an OTS shot of Bernard and we see her look at him, suggesting that there is something going on and she likes him too.

To show that it’s a flashback and a memory we could make the shot really bright, or find the right sepia tone, or play about with focus.

I was inspired by the music video of Roll Deep - When I'm Ere where there is a clever use of camera work and although the guys look similar, they change with wipes past people, buildings etc.

Examples are at - 1:10, 0:55, 0:26, 0:40

For the shot of them three together, I thought the shot in Kano – Ps and Qs was quite similar to what I was thinking. This shot is at 1:58-2:02.
There is a guy behind Kano to the right, then he moves to the left.


Also, if we have lots of problems with our last shot like with lighting and things, then I thought we could do something like Dan goes to the door to leave the room and then Bernard suddenly appears and kind of laughs at him. We could then cut to a long shot where we see Dan backs off and steps backwards. This would represent Bernard like overpowering Dan, as well as invading his space.

- Tanya -

Re-Shoot Targets:

• Need more eye-contact. Both artists need to connect with the audience more to really get across their emotion. Dan is trying to look sad, but in doing that, he is losing the connection with the audience and this loss of engagement means the shot looks boring and doesn’t get across the emotion that he is feeling. Bernard also needs to look into the camera more to get across the meaningful lyrics properly, and through this his over-confidence will show. At the moment, he looks sort of sad and blank really, but he needs to show strong emotion, reflected in the lyrics.
• More camera movement. We need to get the right balance between static shots and movement of the camera. At the moment, we need some more shots where the camera moves to make them more interesting. Examples include shots where we could circle the artist, move around them, tracks beside them etc. I think me and Mel should sit down and watch loads of music videos where performance dominates and get some ideas for interesting camera movement that we can do.
• We must get the audience concentrating on the artist. We need shots where the audience don’t get distracted - I think the hallway shots are quite distracting and we end up not watching Dan. We can sort this out through more interesting camera movement, Dan singing into the camera, Dan moving around etc.
• Keep the blue in the shots. Miss said the shots that are tinted blue make our footage look more music videoy. The shots where the light is just ‘normal,’ is just that…it looks too ‘normal’ and real, therefore we should try and get more of those blue shots. Miss said we can also test out the colour adjustments in editing to see if we can maybe add the blue tint.
• Singer needs more movement. Dan needs to move more, make more body movements, move his hands etc. (I know we did try this). He can also move around the camera – really sing into the camera. We can also try stuff like leaning on walls... However we might be able to avoid a lot of this through editing where we can cut quite quickly to shots such as where he’s standing against the white wall.
• The white wall. We need to ask if we can get rid of lines on the wall somehow in editing because it doesn’t look very music videoy, it looks too real. If not then we need to find a solution for this.
• Lip-synching. Miss noticed that Dan looks like he’s not actually singing the lyrics in some shots, or looks like he’s whispering, even though we know that he was singing them properly, so we need to find out why this is. Also I know he was trying to look sad, but we need to get him to look more passionate and show more emotion about what he is singing, whilst also getting across the fact that he is sad. Miss said he must perform rather than just tell a story.

- Tanya -