Website in Construction

This is the website so far. Looking good.

Music Video Editing Update

After the video shoot last Saturday, we came away with enough footage to put together the final couple of scenes for our music video. This includes the meeting of the band and the main character, and the final realisation of the mother that her child has been a victim of an accident. This is where the music video will end.
So far, we have around 55 seconds of video edited to a high standard. I think it's going pretty well. Whilst I am editing the footage we have so far, Ewan is busy creating the main bulk of the website, ready for this weekend when we do a photoshoot for the CD cover. These photos will also be used for the website, as a news feed post.
There are a couple of shots in the footage we have so far that we may consider re-shooting at a later date, but from now on our main focus will be on the CD cover and website, until the deadline for these has passed on 15th December.

Past Students CD Covers 1

This is an example of a high quality piece of past student work. I agree with the high mark as I think it is a great, eye catching design. The students have obviously taken their own photos, but they are well framed and placed. The idea of having the back of the photoframe on the back of the cover is a novel idea and a nice touch. The inside is just as good, creating a real old style indie image that doesn't over egg the visual pudding, but is still nice to look at.

Past Student Websites 1

 So this is the webpage for an artist called Daft Punk. The logo is further up the top and I couldn't fit it in. I think the use of colours is very reminiscent of all the 00's scene kid electro type music, so obviously appeals to the right audience. The overall colour scheme and look also melds well with the actual video. The section on the right showing fan comments is a nice touch and a nod to the interactivity that band pages offer these days.

CD Cover Mockup Idea 2

This is a second mock up I made, taking an art style I really like from an online game called Daymare Town. While I have never played the game, I feel the art style is really atmospheric and what we want. Like the last mockup, it's in keeping with Blink's recent cover art, but we still have our own spin on it. As this is from the Internet we can't use it, but I will be borrowing heavily from this art style.

CD Cover Mockup Idea 1

So this is a mockup I did on photoshop based on Sarah's design. Obviously we can't use this because the images and font are all from the internet, but I wanted to show the idea of a prominently hand drawn cover, black and white, to go with the covers of Up All Night and Neighborhoods. 

Potential Fonts.

When making our CD cover and website, it is vital to think about appropriate fonts that could be used for promoting the band and the image that comes attached to them.
Blink-182 have a very distinctive font, that is recognisable as being related to them as a band. When re-designing this blog page, I looked up the font that they use on their album covers and such like and found it to be a font called "Resurrection". I downloaded it from Dafont.com and used it for the header on this blog page. As you can see below, it is the same font that they use on their album "Blink-182":

It is worth considering using this font for our website also, as it definitely puts across the image of Blink-182 and makes our webpage immediately recognisable as their own.

Making a website - iWeb tutorial.

Similarly to the CD cover tutorial, we were also asked to look up tutorials for iWeb, the programme we will be using to make our website. This is one I found on YouTube that I thought would be useful.
On this tutorial, we are basically introduced to quick tips and the ins and outs of iWeb. We are taught how to use the templates given to us and how to edit and change it to suit our needs. Obviously this will be helpful for us, as it is likely we will initially start off with a standard template and then adjust and remodel it to look how we want it to. None of the shown templates on this tutorial would suit our genre and band, and therefore I feel this is where the use of editing would come in handy, so it is a good thing that this tutorial has shown us how to change and edit the pages we are given.
The tutorial shows how to add in videos and photographs, which is partiularly useful for what we want our site to show, being a band home page.

Making a CD cover - YouTube tutorial.

In preparation for making our own CD covers, we were advised that we should look up tutorials for the processes of making a CD cover on photoshop. This is one I found on YouTube. I tried to find a tutorial that accommodated our genre within the tutorial, and this was the best one I could find. By the looks of it, the chosen band are of the rock/metal genre, which is close enough for me.
I found this tutorial fairly useful. Firstly, I felt that by making the dimensions of the CD cover clear first off was very helpful. This tutorial also introduced me to many aspects of photoshop that I was previously unaware of, such as text effects - this is something that we could perhaps incorporate into our own design and CD cover.
As we will be including logos and several images in our own CD cover, the way in which this tutorial helped to clarify how to import and edit separate layers and images was significant and useful in relation to our own project.

Blink 182 Wordle

We used wordle.com to create a Blink 182 word/mood board kind of thing. It's pretty.

So did this wordle create an accurate image of Blink 182? Well, Blink 182 seems to be the largest word, so that's a good start. Also Neighborhoods, obviously their new album, along with together, time and Barker, surname of Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker. This is all well and good, but it doesn't really tell us anything about Blink. Some of the smaller words sum up 2011 Blink 182, words like new, tension, real and disorder. These words sum up this new, more mature and tense incarnation of Blink 182.

On Set Photos

On Saturday we shot the performance section of our video. Sarah took some photos before and after we did the shoot, and during filming. We plan to use these photos on the band website as a "behind the scenes" post on a news feed or something similar.

Setting up the cheap homeless person "drumkit"

Me filming. I think

Run through of the performance

Missing Poster Prop

So this is a missing poster prop we made up to try and add to the reality of the film, and indicate that time has passed after a point in the video. It doesn't look perfect, but it is only glimpsed for a second at the end.

Filming Update

Unfortunately, we weren't able to keep with the schedule and shoot the scenes we intended to shoot yesterday evening. Our actor Rory was unavailable, so we're shooting those scenes next Monday. However, we did manage to salvage the evening by filming the final shots. We have had to replace Andy Moore as the parent with Alison Moore Copsey as Andy has other commitments and it would be hard to keep him locked in for frequent shooting.

We decided to film the last few seconds of the music video. We decided to indicate that some time has passed since Rory first ran away from home, so we made up a mock missing poster which I'll upload in another post. All in all the footage we got was worth maybe ten seconds, but it looks okay.

Breathe - Angels and Airwaves

To add to my analysis of Tom Delonges side project AvA and it's relation and influence on Blink 182's new image, I decided to look at one of AvA's music videos, Breathe.

So this video is a much more subdued affair than anything we have seen Blink do. The whole things is a performance in a white room with the odd shots of a girl dancing or being naked. The themes of this video are pretty unsubtle, it's about sex.  This, in a way is similar to Blink, however this song doesn't sing about sex in a crude way, it makes sex out to be this lovely beautiful thing. Much unlike Blink 182. The videos location is a simple performance area, not a suburban street or skatepark as we would usually see with Blink. This I think, makes AvA a little unaccessable when compared to Blink. The camerawork involves lots of closeups of Tom doing his trademark AvA dancing, and cheeky shots of the female human form.

When looking at how this video has impacted on how Blink do things now... it's plain to see that it hasn't really. Since Tom plays a guitar in Blink, he isn't dancing around as in AvA. His image has changed, yes but the way he is in Blink videos and the way he is in AvA videos remain separate.

When Your Heart Stops Beating - +44

I thought that it would be relevant to do a little analysis on this video by one of the Blink-182 side project bands, +44. After watching the video, I realised that they conform to many of the same conventions as Blink-182 do, unlike other side project Angels & Airwaves.

We see in this video that they once again use the idea of youth and rebellion as we see plenty of examples of teenage tomfoolery (such as nudity, sexualised behaviour and partying). Similarly we see this sort of thing in Blink-182 videos and therefore we can see that the members of Blink (well, in the case of Mark and Travis) still stick to their genre conventions in their music videos, despite their new direction in the form of +44.

This is not apparent in Angels & Airwaves, but that's mainly as their sound is dramatically different to that of Blink-182, whereas - as mentioned before - +44 are more of an easy transition and sound similar to Blink. The use of locations is also quite familiar and similar to those used in Blink videos - the half built, graffitied building has aspects of mise-en-scene that make for a great pop-punk video.

Just as a point of interest, the music video includes an appearance by Mark Hoppus' wife, Skye, who plays one of the lead female roles.

When making our music video, we will try to consider the sort of genre conventions used by all aspects of Blink-182, including side projects, to ensure that the video fits with what fans and such would expect from our band.

Blink-182 Side Projects: +44

Just 3 months after the disbandment of Blink-182, Mark Hoppus (bass guitar) and Travis Barker (drums) went on to form +44, a band name inspired by the international dialling code of the UK, where Hoppus and Barker first discussed the formation of the band. Although not quite as outlandish and contemporary as Angels & Airwaves, +44 went on to make music that was undeniably Blink inspired, but still something new and original. With the inclusion of new musical aspects such as keyboards and computer recordings, +44 were a comfortable transition for fans from the raw, pop-punk vibes of Blink-182 to the new and exciting routes that both Hoppus and Barker were embarking on. With regards to the new Blink-182 album, released 5 years after the debut and only album to date from +44, we can see definite inspiration from Mark and Travis' side project.


When you consider image, +44 basically adopted the same grungey, skater look as was present in Blink-182 and Mark and Travis (come the reformation of Blink-182) still continue  to show that to this day, as opposed to Tom who more recently sports his AvA inspired style, even in Blink.

Mark Hoppus in the music video for "When Your Heart Stops Beating", the first single from +44

+44, Hoppus and Barker not looking unlike they did in Blink-182, with two new members Shane Gallagher and Craig Fairbaugh

Blink 182 Side Projects: Boxcar Racer

There was a point during Blink 182's original run where they decided to take a year out to pursue other projects. During this, guitarist Tom Delonge and Drummer Travis Barker formed one album project Boxcar Racer. This contributed heavily to Blink 182s darker more mature image on 2004's self titled album.

It's undeniable that Boxcar was the bridge between Blinks pure Pop Punk image and their later image geared more towards the conventions of emo rock. The bands image, was less baggy skater and more dark emo, with black clothes and floppy hair. Of the two videos they released, There is and I Feel So, both are far removed from the type of video Blink had ever made at that time. There was no joke sequences, no running around naked and no dick jokes. The band gave straight up performances and the narrative revolved around other characters, both videos having unhappy endings. One, two kids apparently going a bit mental and the other saw a girls boyfriend getting arrested for some reason. Within the video for I Feel So, there is actually a section where we are treated to close ups of the band members tattoos, peircings and bloody fingers. It's like a list of conventions being ticked off before our very eyes. And this image was carried to Blink 182 in 2003, not to such an extent, but still obviously there.

The video for There is; dark emo looking shenanigans Rain, fringes, black clothes and angst. 

Blink 2002, Pre Boxcar

Boxcar Racer, 2003

Blink 2004, Post Boxcar

Blink 182 Side Projects: Angels and Airwaves.

I believe an important part of nailing Blink 182's new image is analysing the image of the bands that the members were involved in after their break up in 2005. I thought I would start with Tom Delonges project, Angels and Airwaves.

Almost the exact opposite of Blink 182 in every single way. This band was a far more serious affair for Tom Delonge, employing synth pop and effects laden guitars as opposed to the simple straight up punk approach. The effect of AvA on Blink 182's new image however, is undeniable. Not least because this is simply the person Tom became and after Blink got back together, he hasn't changed that.

Instead of the baggy skater look that Tom once had, with AvA he adopted a stadium rock persona, all leather jackets and massive gestures. Some said that he maybe started taking himself too seriously, but whatever the case, AvA is an undeniable influence on Blink 182's current sound and image.

Blink 182 before the split. Tom in casual skater Pop Punk garb...

...Tom Delonge rocking the AvA look in 2011, while his bandmates have barely changed.

Photographs we need to take.

For the CD cover and Website design, we need to use completely original photographs of our band and music video. There are several different shots we need for each, as listed below:

CD Cover:

• Photo of wasteland with instruments set up (without the band) - this will be the image used on the CD itself.
• Shot of kid sitting alone in a dark place - to be used to for the front cover
• Another shot of the kid on his own, but in a different location (perhaps in the streets underneath a street lamp) - this will be the back cover of the digipack.

Website:

• For this, we mainly need shots of the band
• We will need a shot of the band during the video shoot, perhaps showing us filming.
• Also, we'll need to take a shot of the band that will look legitimate as a band photo shoot, for the main bulk of the website.

Photographic Inspiration.

This is an image of the AMF bowling alley in Ilkeston. Why is this relevant? Because this is where Sarah got the idea for the CD cover, and where we may more than likely shoot some images for the cover.

Analysis of Blink 182 single covers.

Here are some of Blink 182's key single covers, and how we plan to build on or away from the conventions and influences of these.

Blink 182's big breakout single Dammit. The cover for this looks fairly simple and cheap, even. The image of the band is hidden under the text, which does work but now looks a little dated in my opinion. Our cover will feature a more prominent image of the band, and a more subtle way of including the band and track name.

This single cover shows a good example of their old "toilet" humour. Our track is from current Blink however, so we won't be using anything like this, and the font and colours are in keeping with the conventional 90s pop punk. All simple primary colours. These days, pop punk bands mostly favour darker shades and such.

One of my personal favourites, and a good example of one of our influences. The muted and simple colours are in keeping with new Blink, while the band and track name are integrated in a clever innovative way.

Blink 182's most recent single cover and the best example of the kind of look we want to achieve. While we will be taking photographs, we want elements of hand drawn artwork, and once again, the track name has been cleverly integrated into the image.

A History of Blink 182 Part 3

After a brief break in which the band pursued other projects, (which we will go into more later) Blink 182 returned in 2004 with an image that was different from anything they had done before. Their comeback single was "Feeling This" A song that borrowed heavily from new wave yet still maintained the catchy pop punk sensibility. The video for this song maintained most of Blinks staples. Youth in rebellion, a sense of fun, adults as dictators. The only thing that had really changed was the way the band themselves were shown. Before, they were gently easing out of their image as dumb teenagers. In this video they are completely removed from the youth. They're even playing in a cage which the youth clamber to get into. The album itself, released in 2004 was a different beast to anything they had done before. The adrenaline soaked riffs and goofy subject matter was replaced with new wave synth and guitars, lyrics were darker, themes of death and losing love. The cover for this album was the first to not feature some kind of crude joke, punctuating Blinks new era. One of the popular theories as to why they changed their image so much is because around 2004 they all became fathers. The band however, claim this wasn't such a huge factor, and it was more to prove that they were real musicians. 

This new phase in the bands career was cut short however, as in 2005 Blink 182 announced an "indefinite hiatus" following much fighting within the band. The final video and single was "not now" which was a montage of previous music videos intercut with performance sections. This was the end of Blink 182 as anyone knew them.

Costume Ideas

In line with the Pop Punk Conventions act of 1993 (which I just made up), the characters in our video won't be in a variety of flashy costumes, like you would expect from glam rock or pop. Our actors will be wearing normal everyday clothes, our "kid" character will be wearing a Blink 182 shirt just because we thought that would be a nice little touch of self reflexivity. 

Our band will be dressed, to an extent, as homeless. While they won't be wearing scruffy hats and wielding savage rotweilers, they will be muddied up a bit, maybe fingerless gloves and torn jeans, just to help along the homeless theme that we are trying to convey.

We want to achieve a homeless look... though maybe not to this extent.

Set Design Ideas

These are ideas we had for the band performance set, as all the other locations will remain untouched, to add to the gritty feel that we are going for.

For the band performance, the main inspiration originally came from the video for Up All Night (again). 

As you can see, around the bands set up, debris is littered around them, giving a post apocalyptic vibe. Obviously, ours will be played down, mainly for the reason that we can't light a load of fires and burst a water pipe. However, we are going to use a load of old mattresses, sleeping bags and broken up household appliances. We hope that this will create a feeling that adds to the wasteland location, and creates ideas of desolation and hopelessness. Lovely.

Digipack Design

Here is our initial CD cover design. We have a rough idea of the sort of thing we want from our digipack, and this is the first design we came up with. We are using photos from our video shoot as the basis for our design and hope to include the main character of the video in the design also.

Lighting 2

This video is a great inspiration for us, lighting wise. As the majority of our narrative is shot at night, we want to get a really good, clear lighting effect so that the audience can plainly see what is happening in the video. Obviously we don't have like, stadium style floodlights like Blink do here, but we shall endeavour to do the best we can with the resources available.

Lighting 1

During the filming of our video, there are several occasions where we may need to use lighting to ensure we get a well lit scene. For example, we have a few scenes that are shot in darkness, outside. There will most likely only be lighting from street lamps, which won't be substantial lighting for our music video.

In these cases, we could use 3 point lighting in order to create certain effects and moods whilst also lighting our scenes effectively. During the street scenes when the kid is walking down the alley, about to be attacked, I feel this is a good opportunity to use 3 point lighting.

For the performance part of our video, I feel the lighting could be similar to that used in the Blink-182 video "Stay Together For The Kids". We particularly like the grungey, dull colours and lighting and I feel we could incorporate this sort of lighting effect into our own video to conform to the genre conventions of Pop-Punk.

Shooting Dates

These are the scheduled dates we have. These are the only ones we need, providing we don't need to re-shoot anything.

1st Shoot: Wednesday 16th.
Time: 4:30pm to 7:00pm
Locations: House scenes (first scene, and where we see the parent throughout the video) and street scenes (filmed at night and makes up the majority of the narrative)
Props/Tools: Lighting setup, Camera, Tripod, Stills Camera
Actors: Parent, (Andy Moore) Kid (Rory McColgan)

2nd Shoot: Saturday 19th
Time: 2:00pm to 4:30pm
Location: The wasteland area where we see the band performance segments.
Props/Tools: Camera, Tripod, Stills Camera, Mic Stand, Instruments
Actors: Tom (Ryan Moore) Mark (Joe Shiels) Travis (Sam Cowley) Kid (Rory McColgan)

3rd Shoot: Wednesday 23rd
Time: 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Locations: All street scenes before it gets dark (the first quarter of the narrative)
Props/Tools: Camera, Tripod, Stills Camera
Actors: Kid (Rory McColgan)

Current Progress

We handed in our planning folder last Thursday, fully completed I might add. With this finished we are now starting to think more about designing the web page and CD digipack. Our first shoot is scheduled for Wednesday, 16th. We are very excited. Hurray.

Previous Student Work 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2LccPAEtf4

Here we have a video for The Wombat's song, "Party In A Forest (Where's Laura?)". This is mainly performance based, however it has an element of narrative involved also. There are no conceptual elements at all and the emphasis is definitely on the performance side of this song. I believe this is something to do with the genre and ensuring that the audience are aware that the band like to place emphasis on the fact they play their instruments. The mise-en-scene is clever in the way that the have chosen a location that suits the nature of the song and its title. However, the only fault I have with this is the fact that this is the only location used throughout the entire video, which becomes boring very quickly. The costumes are very typical of an indie music video - normal and relateable clothing that could be seen on just about anyone.

I think that the strengths of this video are the uses of NVC in the sense that for the most part, the actors make an effort to use NVC and act enthusiastically. I think that their continuity editing is also particularly good, as they have several shots of one scene (especially in the initial few seconds) that all match up very well.

With regards to weaknesses, as mentioned before they have only used one location which is generally quite boring to watch. Their narrative could have been stronger too and much less stereotypical 'guy-meets-girl' situation. There's an awful lot of mid-shots too in my opinion. A bit more variety would have made it more engaging for the audience.

I give this video 27/40 as although it has promise with regards to actors and camera skills, there is a lack of interest and narrative involved and their choice of locations really lets it down as we never leave the forest where the music video is set. Once you've seen one part of the forst, you've seen it all really and this is quite monotonous.

Previous Student Work 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex5HkG9XQ5M

This video for Kate Nash's song "We Get On" is a mainly narrative video with an element of performance from the singer. Due to the nature of the song and the lyrics, the narrative is very clear and strong and appears to be well planned out. It keeps the audiences attention throughout as there is a storyline that progresses throughout the duration of the song. The only element of conceptual in this video is the use of animation and graphics that make it seem slightly bizarre, yet only in a way that suits this indie/pop genre. The animations are very girly which go hand in hand with the nature of the song. Costume and msie-en-scene are very well chosen as they fit with the genre and narrative by keeping it simple - the locations being normal, suburban places.

The main strengths I can find in this video include the amount of different shot types and the creativity of the song in general. They have thought of several interesting and different ways to keep the video entertaining whilst sticking to their genre conventions.

There are few weaknesses I can think of, as it is a well put together video. On occasions the acting can be cringeworthy and a little unconvincing and I think that some of the shots are a little too long in places, but other than that I think the video is overall very good and entertaining.

I think it deserves a high grade and therefore am giving it around 38/40. There are very few faults and you can tell there has been a great amount of effort involved in the making of this video, close attention being paid to costume and mise-en-scene. 

Permission

As we couldn't find a way to contact the record company of Blink-182, Geffen Records, we decided that we could take our request to the band themselves via Twitter. Here is a print screen of the Tweet I sent to Blink-182 requesting permission to use their song, "Natives".

The verified mark present on this Twitter profile ensured that I knew this was the real band, not an impersonator/fanbase and I was tweeting them directly.