Video finished!

We finished editing on Thursday of last week as we had a day off timetable to it! We also took some photographs for our CD cover, our back cover and an inset for the inside on the CD.

Before we took these photos, we had a look at other CD covers in the same genre as Animal House. One that stood out was the Arctic Monkeys debut album. It is a picture of a man smoking as cigerette. We also searched 'indie CD covers' on google images and it came up with Baby Shambles - Schofflers Nation and The Killers - Day and Age. These covers include fairly random props and images including half a naked woman (Baby Shambles) so we thought we would use this information and research in our our CD cover. But seeing as this is the bands debut album, we thought that we would include the band members in the CD cover so that audience can see what the members of the band look like.

We went back to the long road shot in the video to take the pictures and decided that we would also use the television that in also in the video as a random prop. Using both the scenery of the road and the TV would related the video to the CD cover and vice versa.

Ideas for Storyboarding

This lesson we have looked at many different videos to get ideas for our storyboard;

- Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma: From this video we gained ideas about what to have going on in the video, from the video we have been been influenced to have many things going on in the background, we feel this will add to the video and make it repeatable.

- Beck, Odelay: This video was used as a preference because it is very much the style that we want to achieve; for example having very random goings on in the background and the video seemed very clever and cutting edge.

- Blink 182, All the Small Things: This video works on the basis of intertextuality making it very humorous - we like this video because it brought comedy into the music and we would like to add comedy into our video. We also liked the weirdness of the very random 'What's my age again' video by blink 182 which also showed signs of intertextuality.  With this music video we alo learned techniques of camera angles, for example the running round the corner shot shown at the top of the post.

The last video we looked at was by Chikinki, Assassinator 13; We like this video very much as it uses a range of weird clips and many different costumes on one person. Watching the video you realise how long it would have taken to make therefore you watch the video and appreciate it.

Indie Music: The genre

The genre we are going to work with will be Indie. We have already researched into the various songs we could use for the final piece and have found a suitable track, from an unsigned band called 'Yellow Garage.' The track is called 'Money', the reason we picked this song was because we think it will work best with the video we had in mind as the tempo is reasonably fast. The song also includes a clever riff which will go well with the whole 'pursuit' idea.

I think we have made the right choice choosing an indie song to make a video for, as it will include lyrics therefore adding an extra dimension to the video. Also, with the video having four people all chasing an object, and the lyrics being about money, this gives us an idea of what they could all be chasing.

Studying of other bands within our genre

The bands that i am looking at and deriving ideas from are 1) Vampire Weekend 2) The Wombats 3) The Arctic Monkeys

We like the ideas that these bands have included in their videos. Things like that they have totally random props and videos that either contradict the lyrics of have no relation with the lyrics at all. An example of this would be in the video, 'Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma' where there are some really odd props in the background that have nothing to do with the song or the lyrics. Like cows in sheds and 40 children playing 'Cowboys and Indians'. We would like to include some things like this into our music video. Another example is from the video 'Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent' where it shows clowns fighting against some blokes in leather jackets for a reason which is very unclear throughout.

I think that this type of video would go with our song and band image.

I have also realised that bands like these have videos with just them performing. So, the videos are either completely random or are just of the band playing. But the majority of them do not have any link with the lyrics at all.

Video research

We were researching various videos on YouTube as we thought we would like to take some techniques out of them to use on ours. The two videos that we looked at were ; 'The Prodigy - Voodoo People' and 'Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma.' We like the style of these videos as they have very random scenes in, this made us want to make our video very unique by having events in the video that nobody will expect.

Audience Research

Within the next week to two weeks, the band are going to start undertaking their audience research (the questionnaires, etc...) as as soon as this is done, we will have a great idea on what the audience want and expect in our music video, meaning that we can storyboard, and then get filming!!

I think it would be most rewarding if we were all to do our research separately, then we can come together and compare our results, looking at the most popular/average answers making it easier to decide on a whole what the audience really want.

Audience Profile theory

Obviously we will find out the Audience Profile for real once we have carried out the actual research on audiences with Indie music, but this is a good idea of what we think the audience will be:

Gender: The majority of the audience will be male but there will definitely be some female appreciators.

Age: The indie/rock age range is those around 15-30. Some of the older generation don't enjoy the music yet those younger than 15's music taste may not have matured yet.

Interests: The average person within this age range would probably enjoy going out with their friends to parties and dancing. They probably feel that music plays a big part in their life as they listen to it a lot, whether it's at home on their computer on on their MP3 players, when they're on the move.

What they expect to see: Indie/rock music videos can normally contain anything. If you look at say, the Arctic Monkeys, there are no definitive plots in the video, quite often it's them in picture-esque locations and then there are cuts to the band performing.

How we will appeal to them: Animal House want to incorporate some sort of pursuit within the video, we think it would be quite interesting if the audience didn't necessarily see what the members of the band were chasing for, as it would add a sense of mystery and would also conform to the general rule or randomness within Indie videos.

How we are going to research our audience

There are many possible ways to research our audience and get a very good idea of what the audience will be like, demographically and psychographically. We can carry out questionnaires and also look at download records and comments on video steaming websites such as Youtube or Google Video. Looking at the comments and also the Youtube usernames of the people who have commented.

These are the set-in-stone methods of research that we will undertake:

- Questionnaires

- Looking at Video Streaming website comments

- Looking at the most common fan age ranges from the popular music genres of today

- Play the song that we will use to people that feel it would appeal to, and also play it to people that we know it wouldn't appeal to, and get them to note down their reactions/opinions of the song.

Video Ideas

Today in the lesson we discussed possible ideas for our music video. We decided that we didn't want a generic video of the band simply standing in front of the camera playing their song to the audience. We mutually agreed that something along the lines of a race or a pursuit would be 1) Much more entertaining for the audience, and 2) Much more exciting to film, allowing us to be able to use many different techniques and show our ability off as much as we can.

One of the ideas we had, was for maybe the four members of the band to meet in a busy town square area, and for them to run off in different directions, all trying to get to one item before each other member. The video can then cut between all of the members in each of their journeys to the desired item. The members can use all sorts of transport devices such as trains, cars, bikes, quad bikes, skateboards, etc... Once one of the band members gets to the item, they can see that it's not there anymore, and in the distance, a random character has walked off with it. Shortly following this, the rest of the band gradually turn up, and all show their annoyance, for the video then to end.

We feel that the audience will enjoy the idea of this video, it would be much more entertaining to watch, almost comedic in a sense, as it contrast slightly with the genre of the music, similarly to how our band name contrasts with the genre.