Digipack

Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums and the tall DVD Digipak (DVDigipak) is used as a premium package for DVDs and DVD sets. Because such packaging is less resistant to abrasion than jewel cases, it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly."- This is a quote from the wikipedia page on Digipaks.
My digipak should link to my video in some way so as to advertise the video before viewing.









For my digpak design i have decided to pay homage to the artist David Hockney, and i will be creating a 'joiner' for my front cover.
Hockney's Wikipedia page has this information on joiners-
"Using varying numbers of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. One of his first photomontages was of his mother. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with Cubism, which was one of Hockney's major aims—discussing the way human vision works.
These photomontage works appeared mostly between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as "joiners". He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject would actually move while being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer's perspective. In later works Hockney changed his technique and moved the camera around the subject instead."

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography. Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one eyed' approach, he later returned to painting."







I First got the inspiration of the idea from a David Bowie album cover for the 'Best of Bowie' which also uses a joiner. I really like the sporadic nature of this cover, it looks like an organised mess; which in my eyes is ideal. The colours are eye catching and appealing. Bowie's trademark different couloration of his eyes stands out masssively putting his stamp at the fourfront of the image. The images that make up this joiner are images of Bowie throughout his career which sums him up and also correlates with the 'Best of Bowie' album.

This is bedouin soundclash album cover for the album 'Walls fall down', the most imediate thing that stands out is the band name and logo, this imediatley notifys you of who they are and is eye catching to the fan's. It uses a filter to give the image an older, more worn feel, this matches with the bands videos which also sport this effect. This kind of vintage feel gives the image more character and it is something the fan's would identify with.

Health and Safety

When filming we discovered many more hazards than we first anticipated. For example we wanted to film an actor walking towards camera with the camera moving back with him. We realised the this would be hard for the person filming as they wold have to walk backwards blind unable to see obstacles. We over-came this hazard by making sure when we do these shots that we always have one other member of our group guiding the person filming.




Another Hazard encountered was when crossing roads we didn't want to ruin shots by waiting for ages for cars to pass, this problem caused a few close shaves with cars. There was no real way to overcome this problem as we couldn't stop the traffic, we just learned that we'd have wait for the shot and that getting run-over was not worth it.

Mise en scene

Setting/Locartions:

• Open land- Fields/ countryroadsatc.


• Town- Along the high street, possibly including the public.


• Countryside- Woods, open space.

Props:

• Asortement of hats
• Asortement of headphones
• Varied costume changes

The Pitch

The power point presentation we used in our pitch is here.
The video of our pitch is here.

The script for our pitch was this:
Finding out information which could help us deduce the target audience has been harder than expected due to Bedouin Soundclash appealing to a niche audience in the UK, and therefore not featuring in many magzines and suchlike.
However I have investigated using other means;
On Bedouin Soundclash's facebook group, their genre is described as 'Reggae/Dub/Soul which gives us a rough idea of who might be listening; for example, they are not likely to be listened to by tweenies (8-12), old age pensioners, or perhaps certain subcultures such as 'chavs' or 'emos'.
I also searched on youtube for their official video to 'when the night hears my song' and found this information:
Bedouin Soundclash are from Canada and it's obvious that they have a loyal following in their homeland from the map showing the concentration of fans.
The screen grab also tells us that they are most popular with females between the age of 13-17 which is a very small range compared to the male listeners aged between 18-34.
NME.COM is Europe's biggest and most viewed music website. It has earned worldwide respect for its rock music news and features, which are updated around the clock. With 1.3 million unique users generating over 13 million page impressions nme.com is the U.K.'s premier music content website. It offers unparalleled access to an affluent young audience and a unique opportunity to communicate with them in an environment that they relate to and return to frequently - 63% visit the site weekly or more frequently*.
63% visit the site weekly or more frequently*. The nme.com audience is made up of key demographic groups that can be difficult to target through other media: -
• 65% Male*
• 50% 16-24*
• 23% 25-34*
• 79% ABC1*
• Our readers are passionate about music and as a result of their close relationship with the site content they are far more responsive to advertising. Whether they are more positively disposed towards brands that they see as supporting their favourite site or accessing advertising that they see as particularly relevant to them and their lifestyles they are 33% more likely than average to have taken action as a result of seeing an advertisement on the site*.






• On Bedouin Soundclash's facebook group, their genre is described as 'Reggae/Dub/Soul which gives us a rough idea of who might be listening; for example, they are not likely to be listened to by tweenies (8-12), old age pensioners, or perhaps certain subcultures such as 'chavs' or 'emos'.

• Dub is a genre of music[1] which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre,[2] though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae. Music in this genre consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings. It is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, emphasizing the drum and bass parts (this stripped down track is sometimes referred to as a 'riddim'). Other techniques include dynamically adding extensive echo, reverb, panoramic delay, and occasional dubbing of vocal or instrumental snippets from the original version or other works
• Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s.
• Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the skank
• Soul music has its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues.
•
• from the map showing the concentration of fans.
The screen grab also tells us that they are most popular with females between the age of 13-17 which is a very small range compared to the male listeners aged between 18-34.




1. The track ‘when the night feels my song’, when first heard inspired us, and there led onto numerous ideas.
2. The first and main idea we had was to have a character walking towards the camera in the shot, this was directly linked to the song, of which had a bouncy/soft reggae feel.
3. Another idea sprung to our mind, of which we researched, liked the look of and hope to use in our video was eye-match software that would give continuity against the background as it changes. In addition to this it would make our video look more professional. Eye-match is when several photos are taken, making sure the eyes of the person are kept in exactly the same position in the image. The background, clothing, hair and other facial features can be altered, however, careful care must be taken to keep the eyes in the same position. Here is an example we liked the look of.

Initial Ideas

When first trying to decide on our song we discovered that our favourite artists songs my not translate that well to video. Our very first idea was to make a music video for Zoe's band 'early ghost', but then looking at the blogs we decided that trying to find out the target audience of an unsigned band would be near impossible. I then remembered a song that i loved and always played as i was walking out my house. That song was Bedouin Soundclash's 'When The Night Feels My Song', and then i had the idea to just do a simple video of some one walking along a street to the song, then as a group we discussed idea's and used some inspiration from videos such as 'Massive Attack-Unfinished Sympathy' and 'The vereve-Bitter Sweet Simphony'

Video Analysis

I have analysed two Bedouin Soundclash videos that already exist to try and gain some inspiration for my own.

When the night feels my song (link)

This is the official video of the song that we chose. The video begins with the lead singer looking down camera, he is placed slightly to the right of the screen which not only gives a better view of the Toronto skyline but also, due to the rule of thirds, makes a more interesting shot as his face sits in one of the hot points on screen. This also connects singer and audience together, consequenting in the song having more meaning. The lead singer then starts to walk across the water giving him a Christ like persona. The rest of the video is a sped up trip around Toronto with cars, buses and people whizzing by, this creates a sense of false reality to the video that makes viewing more interesting. The occasional shots of the band have band members slower than everyone else which makes them stand out.

The video's strange out of focus shots create the feel that you are searching for something and the mise en scene of having the band members always walking away from camera creates this feel too.

12.59 Lullaby (link)

This video looks like it has been mostly filmed on hand held cameras which gives the video a more realistic vibe and an almost voyeuristic feel of looking in on someone's life. The slightly slowed down footage creates an aerie and yet comfortable feel which matches the song well. The canted angle of the hand held cams creates the feel of disorientation and as though your on a night out. Using the lead singer as the main protagonist and cutting to and from the shots of him in a room playing guitar shows his vulnerability and creates a greater empathy for the song from the audience. The low angle shots of the city create the illusion that the city is overpowering, and again this video with its slowed shots and urban setting creates the feel that they are searching for something.

Target Audience of Artist/Band

In this blog i will discuss the target audience of Bedouin soundclash.

Finding information on the band has been harder than expected as they don't often appear on the covers of magazines or take part in a great dea of interviwes. This resulted in me having to come up with alternet ways of gathering infomation on the target audience. I created a facebook group-------->

but unfortunatley this was inafective at getting me infomation.

I left a comment on there Facebook page asking fans to write there age and gender bellow in the comment bar------>

but again no real infomation was learned from this.

Some good information i got was from you tube which i got from youtube and the hits and views and where they had come from. Bellow is a screen shot of where a bedouin soundclash video was being most watched. It shows that the two places where the video was most watched was canada and brittian -------->

I will update this blog as more information is added to the facebook pages.

Permisson

Copyright is extremely important to the music industry as it a legal shield that protects artists from having their work plagiarised. It also insures that the money earned from the song actually goes to the artist.

Song choice

The song we have chosen is Bedouin Soundclash-When the night feels my song . It took us some time to come to this decision as we had a lot of other suggestions to work with, but in the end we chose a song that we had a clear idea of what video could look like. We first toyed with the idea of using a Mumford and Sons track but decided that the music was too mellow and would be hard to work an interesting video around it. We also tried to use a Bombay Bicycle club track but we decided that it was a bit too hectic and that an intersting video that wasnt of just a band playing would just detract from the song.

The idea we had for When The Night Feels My Song was inspired by the feel of the music, I identified that the track was a walking song so we came up with the idea of having someone walking along and the background changing around them. The lyrics to the song are here.

Exploring Music video

In this blog i will be reviewing 4 music videos already in existence. This should give me a better idea of what does and dose not work in a music video.

The first video i looked at was Pulp's classic "Common People", i choose to look at this video as it it is a fantastic example of how good a straight forward video of a band just playing can be. The video (just like the song) is dominated by the presence of the front man Jarvis Cocker, but the use of eccentric 70's dance floor and colours gives this brit pop era video an edgy feel. The shot of Cocker in a giant shopping trolly is almost iconic added to later when he performed on top of the pops, in a giant shopping trolly.

The second video i chose to look was Godley and Creme's Cry this video caught my attention as it gave me great inspiration for my own video. A very simple technique of fading videos over the top of each other is used to give this video a very aery and spellbinding feel. This i think is also created by the constant eye contact with the audience, which also makes the you connect with the video and song a lot more.

The third video i turned my attention to was indie boys the maccabees' single Latchmere, i decided to explore this video as it is a perfect demonstration of just how successful stop frame animation can be. Latchmere is a home made video of just maccabee craziness, the beauty of this video is that there is no real reason for the things your seeing on screen its just a bunch a colourful mess turned magical. It is highly appealing as there is no story, meaning the only thing you have to concentrate on is the song and the aesthetically pleasing world created.

The final video i looked at is 50 Cent's 21 questions. I choose this video because it's very different to the others as it really tells a story. It starts of with 50 counting money for some un-known reason and then sirens are heard all very typical things for the start of a rap video, the thing i personally like about this video though is that it maintains it's kind of feature film feel all they way through and to be honest makes the action on screen more interesting than the song.

Intorduction

We have been set the task of making a music video for a song of our choosing. This task will be calling on all the skills i learnt in my from the A/S media task and it will build and develop those skills. The physical creation of the music video will be done in small groups and the research i do personally will recorded in this blog.