Closing Post

This blog is now closed. We hope you enjoy looking around as much as we enjoyed the project itself!

Directors' Commentary

Once finished, we sat down to record a commentary on how some of the effects in the video were achieved and the reason we put certain shots there.

Audience Feedback: A2 Media Focus Group

We set up a focus group with some of the other media students in our year, to get a more constructive view on our final project. Below is a video showing what they said:

Colour Grading

Styling and the overall look of the video was very important to create the correct glam rock/ pop rock genre characteristics. We also wanted to ensure there was a strong colour scheme running throughout, predominantly that of black, white and pink on the website. For the music video, we wanted something similar to the retro, lomographic style created by  filter-equipped camera apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic, providing easy ways to take pictures and upload them via photo-sharing websites like Tumblr and Flickr popular with our core target market of teenage girls. Inspired by a music video by British band The Vaccines (in which the whole video is made from Instagram photos) we experimented with the idea of doing parts of the video in stop frame still photographs.







However, we eventually decided that this wasnt necessary since with the correct grading we could create a similar effect. We used the Adobe After Effects plug in -SA Colour Finesse to up the magenta and gamma, crush the blacks and create a high contrast and vibrant and edgy look. We also decided to put a radial blur and vignette on the edges of the video to give it even more of an artistic and stylistic edge.

Here is a video showing how we achieved this:




However, when we re-exported back into Adobe Premiere, we noticed that it looked a bit washed out so we corrected this by using the ProCamp tool to increase the contrast.

Competition

To promote our band and brand sucessfully we decided to run to a contest on the website to encourage fan participation. We began by brainstorming ideas, researching popular contests on social media marketing sites to inspire us.

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2009/11/11/five-great-twitter-contests/

We decided that Twitter would be an ideal platform for our contest as it is popular with our core target audience.

Twitter Users

http://mashable.com/2009/09/09/twitter-teenage-girl/

We agreed that a symbiotic relationship with a well-known brand would be a great idea as the partnership would be mutually beneficial and we could have some fun with our campaign. After looking through some magazines we found a perfume called LOUD by Tommy Hilfiger, a well known brand popular with young people.

"LOUD was created through an open exchange of ideas - a creative collaboration of the best talent in music, fragrance & film. Put simply, it is scent remixed."

Their ad campaign happened to be black, white and pink, matching our strong brand image, and they used popular celebrities like Daisy Lowe and The Ting Tings in their adverts.

We thought that The XYZs would be great brand ambassadors so we decided to create our own version of the magazine advert to use on our website as part of our competition and marketing campaign:

This meant that we could place the advert on the competition page of our website without ruining our colour scheme.

Then we decided on a prize that would appeal to our core market:

• Hang out with The XYZs on the set of their Tommy Hilfiger TV ad shoot
• A signed copy of their debut album 'Exhibit A'
• An exclusive Loud by Tommy Hilfiger gift set worth £45

Using the brand name LOUD we thought up our twitter competition idea:

"Upload a video to YouTube of you (with up to three friends) shouting "HEY! STRIPPER!" in a public place... the more extreme, the better. Try and think outside the box; this competition is all about making an impact, having fun and being LOUD.

Once you've uploaded your video, tweet the YouTube URL to @theXYZs including the hashtag #XYZLOUD. You must be following @theXYZs and @LOUD_Hilfiger to enter."

We then said that The XYZs will pick their three favourite videos and post them on the website, where fans will then be able to vote for their favourite. 

Incorporating this idea of being outspoken, and using a tricolon for emphasis, we came up with a tagline -

"So, get creative, get outrageous and most importantly, GET LOUD!"

To keep the campaign realistic we ensured to post a link to Tommy Hilfiger's website and of course a photo of the fragrance, so we are advertising their product.

This competition would be fun for our fans to enter, and it is a really simple idea and doesn't require too much effort, as perhaps covering a song or making a whole video message would. It also utilises social media, which of course is very important in targeting young fans in 2011. We would hope to get them involved, especially with the voting stage where the best ones would be posted on our website, and it could even go viral as people search YouTube for these funny clips or people shouting... it even serves as free advertising as they are shouting a line from The XYZs' song!

Whilst researching other artists' websites, despite looking at at least fifty, hardly any of them seemed to have a competition or symbiotic relationship similar to ours, so we felt they were missing a trick. The most similar one we found was on Ed Sheeran's website, where there was a competition to win a trip to Legoland - this is of course a partnership between the arist and a brand, like our campaign. There are links to the Legoland website so both parties benefit. It uses new technlogies, as entrants must film themselves building a Lego house then upload it online; similarly, our competition involved YouTube and Twitter. It also links to his song which is called 'Lego House', just like our competition involves shouting the lyrics to our song, 'Stripper'. It also heavily involves the artist himself, as it says  'Ed will be watching them all', and we mentioned that The XYZs themselves would pick their favourites for our competition, plus the winner gets to meet Ed, plus win other prizes, in a similar way to our prizes which involve hanging out with the band, plus more.

It is simple to enter, fun and interactive, which is why we believe it is a great example of a music artist competition involving a symbiotic relationship with a seemingly unrelated brand.

Group Meeting 25/11/11

One week ahead of our production deadline, we made a to-do list to make sure we got everything done in time. This was the list of tasks we wanted to achieve before the weekend. We stuck it on our edit suite wall and ticked things off as we went along, so all three group members were constantly up to date with tasks. 

Behind The Scenes Video

We made a short video from behind-the-scenes footage from our shoots to post on our band website:

Utilising Social Networks

As part of our website and promotional material, we decided to create a Twitter page for our band:

We stuck to our website colour scheme, using our logo as the background, to keep a strong brand image across all the advertising platforms. Each of us also made individual member Twitters too, as most bands have an official band Twitter plus personal member pages to tweet from as well, as fans can follow their favourite members, interact with them and feel much more involved in their lives, which we believe is the key to a strong fanbase.

We also made a Facebook page for our friends to 'like':

And a Tumblr page, a blogging/social network site popular with teenagers and music fans, who of course we are specifically targeting. Again we used the same black/white/pink colour scheme, and Odelia designed a layout for the page. We posted some photos from our music video shoots to make it look authentic.

These platforms are all integrated into our official website which is the hub of our online presence and the centre of our marketing campaign where all these different links come together, allowing "fans" to interact with and feel involved in the band in as many different ways as possible.

Photoshoot

Yesterday we had a photoshoot for our album cover. We dressed and styled ourselves differently to the video to show diversity, and decided to go for the more classic look, similar to the Glamour photograph shown in the previous post. We photographed each other for the solo shots and enlisted the help of Chris, our technician, and Eoin, a fellow media student, to take the group shots, though of course we directed ourselves.

Here are some of our favourite shots after editing in Photoshop:

Record Label

We have created a fictional record label for our new band to be signed to called Walkout Records.

It is a sub-division of Island Records, a large record company which is owned by Universal Music Group, a huge global conglomerate and biggest record company in the world.

In America Island is part of The Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the United States as a rock-based record company, and as a standalone company in the UK. So although Walkout Records is a small British label, it has financial backing and stability from Universal. This means that we have the reputation of being signed to a new, unknown homegrown label, making us seem very British and down-to-earth (some bands are accused of "selling out" when they sign to a large label) but Universal gives us more funding and opportunities than an indie label.

Group Meeting 15/11/11

We met as a group to discuss this week's targets.

After our successful performance re-shoot, we now have all the footage we need for the music video.
We now need to book a photo shoot for our promo photos and album cover photos. We decided this would be Thursday the 17th, periods 4+5 and lunchtime if we need it.
This was fine with the teachers and technician, so we went ahead to book the slot.

After some discussion with our teacher, we decided that as we already have so many photos on set with instruments and glam-rock styling, we should go a bit more sophisticated and classic for this shoot, so we have decided to dress in black, gold and silver with red lips, so we all have similar styling.

We also decided on some targets we wanted to meet by mid next week, so by our lesson on the 23rd:

• Finish website completely
• Rough cut of music video
• Plan title and song names for album
• Have rough album cover finished
• Make record label logo

After taking a look at our website so far, our teacher gave us suggestions to improve it:

• Add a competition, aimed at women/girls
• Add a forum/comments page for more interactivity
• Downloadable wallpapers
• Make song available to download as a ringtone

Re-Shoot

After viewing our footage after the half term shoots, we were extremely pleased with the narrative footage. However, we realised that throughout the performance, we had some framing issues as we did not realise that our backdrop was too low down, resulting in an ugly dark blue strip and parts of the ceiling were viewable in nearly all of the close-up shots, distracting from us and slightly ruining the beauty shots.

We looked at ways of correcting this in post-production, such as colour-grading and black and white conversion, but after some discussion with our technician, he said that it would be difficult to completely solve the problem, so we decided a re-shoot would be the best option. All the painting narrative is great to use, but we will be re-shooting the performance this Thursday at the school Seward Studio, which was our original plan, as it will be easier to light and frame our shots there and wouldn't mean having to set up the garage all over again.

We have booked the studio for most of the day, from 11am to 5.30pm, so we should be able to film everything in this slot.

Ceiling Issues

After our 2 day shoot in half term we captured the footage and began editing. We were very pleased with our narrative footage, however in the performance shots our band logo was not directly behind the band as we had intended. As the garage we were filming in had a low ceiling it was impossible to film any high angle shots and due to space the composition of shots would always included the grotty ceiling. Not exactly an ideal way to sell an aspirational girl band. We experimented with treating the video so that the ceiling issues were minimised and looked to this tutorial on Creative Cow to hopefully solve the problem.


Advanced Titler & Feathering a Track Matte as a Mask using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5

However this would have been very time consuming and highly complicated- we would have had to edit each frame indvidually. After much discussion with our technician and teachers we decided it was probably a good idea to reshoot. Going back to our original idea of having two separate set ups, we decided to film in our school's Seward Studio, allowing us complete control over lighting, space and angles and composition of shots as there was nothing obstructing it.

Watch some of our original footage in this video here:

Photos from Shoot

Thursday 27th and Friday 28th October 2011

Actor Contract

We drew up an actor contract to ensure coherence between the group and our actor, Josh.

Group 6 Actor Contract

Logistics and Technical Planning 18/10/11

We talked to our technician Chris to discuss technical arrangements and logistics for the shoot as we are filming in his garage. Together we drew up a rough plan of our desired lighting arrangement and marked out the paintable walls in order to consider positioning of shots for the video- we will arrange this lighting in the Seward Studio later this week and film a lip-sync test shoot in order to make sure we are fully prepared for our shoot. Having agreed on the filming dates of 27th and 28th October we also drew up a rough schedule including call time for actors and crew, however a more detailed schedule will follow once we have finalised our desired shots and completed our storyboard. We also compiled a list of props and other general 'things' we need to source or accquire.

Tenchical Planning

Group Meeting 18/10/11

We had a group meeting to start planning shots and creating a storyboard. Constantly listening to the song on repeat for inspiration, we used post-it notes to draw shots, in particular the CUs at the beginning of the video, which can easily be re-arranged on the paper if we change our minds about shot order, which of course we will at some point.

Once we had finished the rough idea of the storyboard for the opening sequence, we stuck this up on the wall of our edit suite along with other drawings of possible performance set ups, costume ideas and a variety of pictures to serve as a constant supply of inspiration.

Feedback on our Treatment

We gave our pitch to our class and teachers and recieved a bit of feedback, summarised below:

• We don't want to overly sexualise the male at the end of the video when he is stripped down, as we do not want the male to be the main focus of the video. However, as a group we decided that we did not want a really 'small, weedy' male to play the part as everyone will feel really sorry for the male and view our band in a negative light. Therefore we thought that we would have the same actor, but we would have to make him look really stupid and goofy at the end, for example with Superman boxers and days of the week socks.
• As we do not actually play instruments in real life, they thought that it might be a good idea to fake play the instruments and play them really over the top.
• It was also suggested that we could try and break the conventions of the usual hierachy within a band by maybe swapping instruments, so there isn't the usual "frontman", as we want to band to be shown as equals. It could also mean we could incorporate a drummer, which could make us seem like more serious musicians, as then one person wouldn't be stuck at the back hidden by the drums, as we would all take equal turns. However, it could be potentially tricky as we would have to convincingly play the drums in time, which is probably harder than pretending to play the guitar.
• Ms Blackborow said that maybe we didn't need the arrival of the male painter/decorator at the end as it might be too much, so perhaps it would be better if the guy is just left on his own in his underwear, then gets up hastily and runs off with his briefcase. Alternatively, we could show the band running out and giggling down the street, perhaps with a few neighbours or on lookers wondering what is going on, especially if we decide to have the stripped down guy run out after us. We decided that the best idea would be to film the alternate endings, as they are quite simple, so then we could decide what worked best in the edit.
• The teachers also worried that if we were not being very flirty or if we were being overly sexual the viewers would read the band in the wrong way, and not in the cheeky, flirty way we wanted to convey. So they thought that we could be really cheeky and when the man comes to touch us, we could maybe slap him away with a paintbrush; being really flirty and 'hard-to-get'.
• They also thought that if we were cross cutting between the garage and the studio it may look slightly odd and not work, so suggested that we have the performance aspect of our video in the garage too. To differentiate the two set ups we would have the performance shots with instruments and perhaps a dust sheet behind us, with our band logo painted in large.
• As painting may be quite hard to shoot, a third of the video could be shots of the band setting up: tying up our hair, putting up ladders, dipping paintbrushes into the paint buckets..etc.

Treatment

 Here is our treatment for our music video idea (click to enlarge):

Potential Logos for 'The XYZs'