Website editing 2

The website has come along very well. Although it still looked a bit sparse, I altered this by adding in a music player by adjusting a text box and adding shapes to it, using the colours that we have prominently been using for our band's image. The shapes were slightly altered by resizing them and by blurring some of the edges. This has successfully kept it in line with the rest of the web design. I also added a bit more text, such as links to social networking sites and YouTube.

William Larkin

Website update

The website, although looking fine before, did look a bit empty. However, it is coming to life a bit more thanks to the widening of the contents page and the added text box. We also added a heavily edited picture of Arctic Monkeys to make the website appear fuller.

William Larkin

Website editing

The website has come along really well. Although it appears bare, it fits the genre perfectly and is simple, stylish and easy to navigate. I decided to use Arial Black font for the tabs and Arial for the text instead of having it all hand drawn and scanned in. This was because it was generally easier and it took a lot less time. The chosen fonts also suited the image to go with the website.

For the grey text-box I copied and pasted an image of the filming happening from behind the scenes off of our blog and made a news story for how the video for the music video is "coming soon".

William Larkin

Intro complete

Today I completely finished off the pre-song intro and the first 40 seconds of the video. All the cuts in this part of the song fit with the bass line and it's starting to look quite good and professional. The rest of the song still needs some editing doing to make it flow better with the rhythm of the song. I'm currently adding in the performance clips.

We've also put the video in black and white to fit with our website and CD cover theme. We're planning to also add a bit of red into the mix to completely fit with the theme















Tom Chamberlain

Inside sleeve of CD cover

The inside sleeve has finally been completed along with the outside CD cover. For inside I decided to use a simple black design and altered the logo to fit on the actual CD. With the disc being black, I had to change the colour of the logo.

For the spine I used the stripe (below)

William Larkin

Editing our film

The editing of our film has already begun, and although there is still some performance shots to be done the  music video itself has been coming along brilliantly.

The editing has been slightly problematic as we came across some problems. First off, some of the shots appeared too dark, but they have been slightly edited to make them appear lighter (below).

However, lighting them up by adjusting the exposure still brought out some problems in terms of colour, but because we have decided to have our video in black and white in keeping with our bands image it wasn't a problem (below).

William Larkin

Completed CD covers (back and front)

William Larkin

Extended deadline

The deadlines for our music video, CD cover and website have been changed to 11th and 13th January 2011 from the 16th December his year. This is due to the treacherous snow that we have had of late, which has given us a week off college and less time to complete our project.

William Larkin

Filming update

Today we managed to film a majority of our music video. Although we have shot all the scenes including the actors, there are still some shots of the performer  playing the guitar that we need to film due to technical issues. However, these are minor and should hopefully be done by Wednesday.

William Larkin

Behind the scene pictures of music video

William Larkin

Updated weather for filming tomorrow (27/11/10)

William Larkin

New website design

William Larkin

Weather forecast for filming

Due to issues with actors being unavailable and other logistical issues, we didn't manage to film on the date we wanted to. However we now have a new date (28/11/10) and we got the weather forecast for that day.

William Larkin

Concept CD Cover

This is the CD cover that we have in mind for our song. Obviously it will be altered, but it gives a rough idea about our image for the song. The whole CD cover apart from the text was done on photoshop. The text was written and scanned in.

William Larkin

New website

We decided on using a different template for our website as it fit more with the bands image we wanted to convey. We used tools such as photoshop and of course iWeb to create the logo. The silhouette we have on our homepage was from the internet, but it has been heavily edited on photoshop to fit the image of our band and for copyright reasons.

William Larkin

Weather report for filming day

William Larkin

Website

We have begun to put together our website homepage and we will carry on adding to it during the creation of our music video.

William Larkin

This follows the conventions of 80's music. I.e. the bright colours, special effects etc. and has inspiration from Japanese anime and films such as Tron. In terms of image there is a clear synergy between this, the cd cover and the website.

William Larkin

This webpage for Mark Ronson is very accessible and well layed out. It is also extremely colourful and the side columns are all records of his previous albums which is very successful and effective. The labels at the top of the page 'home', 'news', 'music', 'video', 'pictures', 'sign-up' and 'newsletter' make it easy to find your way around the webpage.

Carys Bowen-jones, Tom Chamberlain & William Larkin

Mark Ronson case study

This cd cover looks like and old, ripped billboard, with 3 obvious layers showing through; one being himself, another being his name and the third which is just a red background. As all of his songs are cover versions, his inspiration for the cd cover could have come from this. By this i mean its like he is layering a billboard. He also has a 'motown' advertising inspiration with the trumpets etc. which he uses in his songs. 

This more recent cd cover looks like a collage of different cd covers and there are different visual styles on each 'record'. In terms of colour, it is far more colourful than the previous cd cover. This is due to the fact that they have used all the different colours of all the 'records' This follows the conventions of 80's record covers. This is because he is heavily inspired by different decades. The collage represents the varying mix of the artists featured in his albums.

Carys Bowen-jones, Tom Chamberlain & William Larkin

Weather Forecast

This is the weather forcast for the next few days as we are thinking of filming at the weekend. As you can see the weather doesn't look so good but we are filming indoors so it shouldn't affect us.

William Larkin

Pitch Feedback

Having presented our pitch, the audience we presented it to gave us some feedback in the form of sticky notes. We then looked at the feedback and acted on it. Therefore, we have decided to take into consideration some of the comments they put. For example, they thought that we needed to make it more stereotypically Nottingham i.e. have it more working class or even film more of Nottingham. We didnt want to make it obviously Nottingham but we have decided to make it more woking class as the band (Arctic Monkeys) are also working class. Therefore, it would fit into the conventions of the band. Another comment was that they thought it was a good storyline and fitted well with the song so we are going to keep that as it is and just make a few minor adjustments as we go along. Also, they thought that the mingling of performance and the narrative would be especially difficult but we have decided to take it into consideration but still try and mingle the two together. However, if it doesnt work then we will certainly act on that comment.

Carys Bowen-jones, Tom Chamberlain & William Larkin

Website Analysis & Research

William Larkin

Recee Sheet/Site Evaluation

Carys Bowen-jones & William Larkin

Production Schedule

Although our dates are not set in concrete at this moment in time, we know that we have our performer and our actors willing to be shot for next weekend (6-7/11/10) as well as our equipment that we will need for the shoot, which is pretty minimal.

William Larkin

Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum

Carys Bowen-jones, Tom Chamberlain & William Larkin

A View From The Afternoon

Carys Bowen-jones, Tom Chamberlain & William Larkin

Lyrics

Well now then Mardy Bum 
I've seen your frown 
And it's like looking down the barrel of a gun 
And it goes off 
And out come all these words 
Oh there's a very pleasant side to you 
A side I much prefer

It's one that laughs and jokes around 
Remember cuddles in the kitchen 
Yeah, to get things off the ground 
And it was; up, up and away 
Oh, but it's right hard to remember that
On a day like today when you're all argumentative 
And you've got the face on 

Well now then Mardy Bum 
Oh I'm in trouble again, aren't I 
I thought as much 
Cause you turned over there 
Pulling that silent disappointment face 
The one that I can't bear 

Well can't we laugh and joke around 
Remember cuddles in the kitchen 
Yeah, to get things off the ground 
And it was up, up and away 
Oh, but it's right hard to remember that
On a day like today when you're all argumentative 
And you've got the face on 

And yeah I'm sorry I was late 
but I missed the train 
And then the traffic was a state 
And I can't be arsed to carry on in this debate 
That reoccurs, oh when you say I don't care 
but of course I do, yeah I clearly do! 

So laugh and joke around 
Remember cuddles in the kitchen 
Yeah, to get things off the ground 
And it was up, up and away 
Oh, but it's right hard to remember that
On a day like today when you're all argumentative 
And you've got the face on


Tom Chamberlain

CD Cover Research

In terms of image, we looked at our band very carefuly and compared them to other bands of this genre. This was the same when looking at CD covers so we could create an appropriate one for our band. We gathered some images to compare from the internet, as well as have a look at some CD covers from the Indie/Rock genre in record shops. We noticed that there is not much use of colour at all, and the album covers either don't feature the band at all or they have a picture of them all, only they aren't usually doing anything particularly interesting. An idea for our album cover was that we have it in black and white, and like on the Franz Ferdinand 'You Could Have It So Much Better' cover we liked the idea of using a Roy Lichtenstein-style cartoon effect as shown below.

We also liked the idea of using another effect from a Kings Of Leon album cover which although is not a UK band, they are incredibly popular in the UK. The effect is that the band members faces are split into four with an eagle's face morphed into their faces. In terms of the faces being split this is something we want to do for our cover.

Carys Bowen-jones & William Larkin