prop list

Locations

Studio
Studio – blue screen

Guildford
(Possibly near flower market in Guildford)

Props List

Keyboard
Bass
Guitar
Drums/drumsticks
Mic
Guitar piks
Ink – red, blue, green, purple, orange, black, pink
Paint – red, blue, green, purple, orange, pink
Wax Spray
Water
Buckets
Hosepipes
Empty Coke Cans
Hat for money
Money –coins
Plastic cup / cup
Bed
Cupboard / wardrobe
Wallpaper






Costume and Make up

Studio – Blue screen (In puddle) and performance in uniform eg. Military Jackets/blazer, black skinny jeans, mens shoes or plimsoles (no trainers)


Guildford – Casual tops (shows individuality), black skinny jeans, mens shoes or plimsoles (no trainers)

Keith Negus

Keith Negus
The Ideologies of the music industry
• “What I’m looking for is the working act. The real act. The act that can get up on stage and do it. That act will give you career. I signed Black Sabbath umpteen years ago; they are still making records. These are acts that are career acts… Two years ago I started a dance label… now that’s not a career-orientated label. I mean those records are one-off situations and every now and again maybe you’ll get an artist come out of it.”
• “When I first started it was more about going out and finding bands. That method is becoming more and more redundant. More and more these days I find it’s as much about: I sit here and think ‘there’s really a gap in the market for this kind of project…’. I don’t go out to gigs. That’s not how I find my stuff. It comes through various writers and producers. So if a writer comes in he may have some great songs and maybe is looking for a front person. Or maybe I have the front person who I want to launch into the market but I haven’t got the songs. So you put the two together.”

Ideologies of Creativity
• Keith Negus – Producing pop
• Identifies two distinct ways of thinking about potential artists from within the music industry.
• These ideologies shape the way in which the artists’ images and careers are developed, and the way that they are marketed towards specific target audiences.
• The organic ideology of creativity and…
• The synthetic ideology of creativity.

The Organic Ideology of Creativity 1
• A ‘naturalistic’ approach to artists
• The seeds of success are within the artists, who have to be ‘nurtured’ by the record company.
• The image of the artist is ‘enhanced’ by the record company.
• The artist is given time to evolve and progress through their career.

The Organic Ideology of Creativity 2
• Emphasis is given to album sales and the construction of a successful back catalogue.
• Often aimed at older or more sophisticated consumers
• Profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company.

The synthetic Ideology of Creativity 1
• A combinatorial approach to artists and material.
• Executives attempt to construct successful acts out of the artists and the songs at their disposal.
• The image of the artist is often constructed by the record company.
• The artist will be given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tried out.

The Synthetic Ideology of Creativity 2
• Emphasis is given to single sales and to promoting first albums.
• Often aimed at younger, less sophisticated audiences.
• Profits generated by this kind of artist tend to be part of an immediate, short term strategy by the record company.

Balancing the Two
• In practice, the success of synthetic acts will fund the development and investment in organic acts.
• Most big record labels will look to balance their roster with a combination of successful synthetic and organic acts to ensure that there are funds available for the day-to-day running of the company as well as long term profit making potential.

Promoting Organic and Synthetic Acts
• There are clear distinctions between the ways in which different types of artist are represented to ensure short term or long term success.
• Organic acts are often sold on their ‘authenticity’, both musically and socially.
• The image of the artist appears ‘unconstructed’ (although, of course, this is in itself a carefully constructed look)
• Synthetic acts are often sold on their ‘look’ or personalities
• The image of the artist is carefully and unashamedly constructed.

Richard Dyer

Stars and Stardom
• In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music star.
• The term ‘star’ refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience.

Some common values of music stardom
• Youthfulness
• Rebellion
• Sexual Magnetism
• An anti-authoritarian attitude
• Originality
• Creativity/talent
• Aggression/anger
• A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour.
• Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods
• Success against the odds

Richard Dyer
• Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music.
• Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common: A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg. Advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])
Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.
• Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media – magazines, TV, radio, the internet – in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
• The star image is made up of a range of meanings, which are attractive to the target audience.
• Fundamenally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and ‘open’. Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes.

Paradox 1
• The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer.

Paradox 2
• The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.

The Star Image
• The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to ‘make sense of’ of the image.
• This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products.
• In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimately unsatisfying.
• This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image.
• Finally, the star image can be used to position the consumer in relation to dominant social values (that is hegemony)
• Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the mainstream (though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumers within a capitalist system) or within the mainstream, or somewhere in between.

The Star Image QUOTE:
Richard Dyer (stars, BFI, 1981)
• “In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society. There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person’s “self” from his/her social “roles”, and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg. Gays in recent years). Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.”

final part of editin the storyboards

onto the final cut server, then went through the process of editing the footage to the track. Before we could edit we had to save the file to the desktop and change the footage to edit proxy so we could editing the footage. We then waited for the footage to save onto the desktop. Once it had we double clicked on it and it opened up in final cut pro ready for us to edit. All the footage was already in a bin so we named it so we knew where the footage was. We opened up the bin and began to edit, however before we could edit anything we had to upload the song. Unfortunately the copy we had of the music was a wav file so we changed it to a wmp so it was compatible with final cut pro. Once we had the music, I place it in final cut by dragging it and then I padlocked the music so it wouldn’t be affected whilst we edited. I didn’t start the editing process this time as I have not had much experience so a member of my group started it and the rest of us jut watching intently, picking up the editing process. With some extra classes and watching other people have a go at it as well as going along to the edit suite and had an experiment with different effects and the way of which to approach the different tasks we had to complete.


So I started editing. Firstly double clicked on the clip in the bin so they appeared in the first video window, then I dragged that footage onto the time line ready to cut up. Unlike the thriller last year there was no need for me to cut the footage in the first window then drag it onto the time line because each shot was 10 seconds of the same footage. So after dragging it onto the time line I started to adjust the footage. In the video we decided that we needed to set the scene because the singing starts straight away because there was no introduction. So using the storyboard as a guide I started by cutting the footage that we wanted to use before the music started. We wanted to start off by hiding the bands identities. So we have decided to start with a high angle tilted shot of a hat on the pavement with money in which a hand then comes into frame and picks up the money and puts into their pocket, the camera then continues tilting up the body after following the hand but stop just below the shoulder, the person in the shot then slowly turns their back on the camera and walks away. This whole sequence is one whole shot. As a group we thought this particular shot ‘set the scene’, and allowed the audience to almost guess where the person is and what they are doing and what they look like yet it is still all a concealed mystery. I like the fact that we are starting in close up because it attracts the audience.



The footage
We uploaded we are using the puddles to go between performance shots and context shots. By cutting to the music it has helped in showing us what works and what doesn’t for example some of the cuts didn’t work with the music so we either had to add shot or extend the number of seconds the shots were going on for. It has also allowed us to add and play around with shots because to the music some shots feel right and manage to flow fluently, but unfortunately life not perfect, we did come across a few bumps in the road, but luckily thanks to our insight to final cut pro we limply just switching shots around. Also because of the music all of the shots had to be adjusted to fit in time with the music so I had to use the marker tool to mark were the main beats are so that each shot cuts on the beat.

story board process

Today we filmed the story board ready to edit on final cut pro. We used a Sony Mpeg2 SD NXcam. I then set the camera up on its tripod and one of the group members pinned the story boards on the wall then I filmed each shot for about 10 seconds so in the end we would have lots of time to adjust how long a clip would go on for in the video. As our pop promo is a limited amount of time (3:58) to be exact and we will have to extend the shots or decrease how long they last for. This is a crucial part of the editing process as if we gat this part wrong it will effect the video and shot type, but however I do feel as if my organization skills have improved since last year.

story board process

In the lesson today we went through all the storyboards each of us had drawn, cut them all out, went through all the shots we wanted to use and where we were going to put them and then arranged them on plain paper ready to film. As a group we decided to discard the shots that were the same or had too many of for example the POV shots that we drew from each band members POV, this is because we wanted to keep the shots simpler because some of the other shots are, low angel, high angle, long shot, close up, extreme close up, over the shoulder. The way we placed them was a rough guide on how we would like the pop video to look however it would probably change once we started to edit it on final cut pro.

story board process

when I started to create the story boards we had to find out what kind of key elements we can apply, as this is there first music video the most important element is to present to there target audience can not be changed by what is conveyed through the pop promo, the elements that we have chosen as well as the band them self’s, they wanted there song about what they see and what’s going on around them in day to day life, they thought they could show this by shooting a train journey with the track simply just playing over the top, but being Hurtwood house we like to spice things up a bit so we then decided to shoot them walking through a street in black and white with some elements of color then cutting the image out once shooting them on a green screen, then trying to manipulate that image of into a puddle. I did try and approach the idea of this by going out by myself and making puddles on the ground then shooting them quickly as they just kept leaking away from the main puddle, but anyway I managed to take some interesting footage for high angles, long shots, mid shots, and close ups, I was also abele to get someone to walk through one as well as jump in the middle of one to, as these shot types are crucial to our pop promo.

story board process

We had our meeting with the band today. We pitched all our ideas and got feed back from them. They really liked all of our ideas, especially the black and white idea with a hint of color as in there eyes would be color as well as there instruments. They came up with a couple of ideas also which they pitched to us. They thought about shooting out of a train window, which we then had to say wouldn’t be possible for us to do because of the permission we would need to get to film on a train. However they liked our ideas so we have decided to go with our ideas which next lesson we will develop and start to storyboard.

story board process

Today we started to storyboard. I didn’t have all the same kinds of ideas as the rest of the group, so we had the idea to split the storyboards out to the group and we each decided to do separate storyboards to get more material and allow each of us to show the other members of the group what we had in mind. I did quite a number of performance storyboard shots because as the band is new, I felt that their first video needed to be more performance based so audiences can recognize them and it exhibits their talent to record labels etc. In the meeting with the band they expressed that they would like to be known and recognized as a local band. Given that they are local to Guildford we have decided to possibly shoot in Guildford, however none of us have started to storyboard the context of the video, we have only looked at the performance.
I have done classic performance shots such as CU’s of the guitar and the guitarists fingers and the singer and the drummer and drums. I also did several wide shots of the entire band and I also drew single wide shots of each band member with the coloured rain behind each of them.