Final Music Video

IMAGE / TEXT / WEBSITE MANIPULATION

Editing the Performance

We are currently working on editing our shots from our x2 days of performance filming into our sequence of narrative, keeping the different threads on x2 separate timelines in order to simplify the process. The computers we have been using are extremely clogged up and therefore take a great deal of time in order to operate on final cut. Thus rendering files has become an extremely time consuming job and has majorly slowed down our production. We are concentrating on stringing together the entire song through performance clips, even though around 50-60% of the final music video will be narrative based, purely because we want to leave all our options open in terms of our overall style  and shot range. Something which has proved particularly challenging is lip synchronisation, mainly because our lead male singer (Bing) harmonises 'The Vaccines' song and has trouble enunciating his speech, singing at times as though he were a ventriloquist. We had to be extremely brutal in choosing the selection of clips & spent a great deal of time moving the audio along the time line / slowing it up or speeding it down, in order for his vocals to match the rhythm of the song. We are aware at times that the narrative/performance is perhaps incongruous to the audio, though we planned to sustain this effect in order to make our piece as abstract and surreal as possible. In fact today when editing my co-worker said "If we hadn't made this, I would have no clue what it was about", and my response was..."yes but that doesn't matter" - simply because we aimed for a basic thread of intertextuality & historical references, but even if our audience members do not understand the intended plot, they will still (hopefully) be able to gain pleasure from viewing our piece, which is after all our key aim - along with selling 'Suburban Typo' as a commercialised industry product. 

BAND NAMES BRAINSTORM

SKINNY FRAMEWORK

SUBURBAN TYPO

HEY BULLDOG

NOBODYS HERO

Discontented honey

HEYLA HEBA

SELF ASSURED

OBLADI

UP YOUR JUNCTION

PROPER STINGING

MUCH OF MISTRUST

LEAKED LOGIC

THE GRATEFUL DENIALS

QUESTIONS OF SCIENCE

THE RYDELLIES

 

We finally chose our band name 'suburban typo' a title which connotes the bohemian individuality of the indie ethos. We wanted a name which represented our band as an anomaly in society, posing them to be outcasts in a suburban maze. 

http://www.wikihow.com/Find-an-Interesting-Name-for-Your-Band - Interesting article on how to choose a band name 

Photoshoot planning

 

Today I did a photo shoot with x4 young boys who were posing as the younger version of our indie rock band. I wanted to incorporate the idea into my ancillary project, that this group had a real story behind their formation, they weren't just a manufactured construction from a reality TV show. I aimed for it to seem as if even as small boys music was in the foreground of their interest- an intense passion, which sculpted their childhood and brought them up into a world where they all shared x1 key goal. I based my photos on the physicality of the vaccines album covers, aiming to mimic their formation and create links to this particular style of musical photography. I took several photographs on an SLR - then edited them in after effects & also took a number on a disposable camera in order to achieve an indie, festival style effect & I also printed off a number of photographs on a polaroid camera in order to make them seem more vintage. I did originally want to photograph a band of late teens & I did several brainstorms of ideas having EG: x4 boys sharing one face / a face made up of photograph & painting & sketching - to build up a tactile image, using a polaroid shot of x4 boys by a London landmark completely shadowed, created a line of boys posing as if their were going through evolution into each other or grown men, having x4 boys doing handstands against a brick wall, having x4 boys spraying the band name on a brick wall, x4 at a festival on a disposable - playing their instruments by a tent...etc - However actually acquiring a group of people to use proved to difficult & thus I thought I would try and explore other options in order to achieve something more realistic! My shoot overall went really well, I am not 100% sure if I like my idea / images, or if I am stretching my abilities far another, however I took a diverse range of photographs & the boys were fantastically easy & energetic yet tameable to work with (something which worried me as they were only 10!). 

Idea for Band name

 http://www.wix.com/create/my-account- WIP WEBSITE 

http://www.facebook.com/RaggaziBand?skip_nax_wizard=true# - WIP FACEBOOK PAGE

                                            

 (small mood board of an idea)

Seeing as we don't have a fixed group of trendy (or indie) looking teenagers to play our band I thought that instead I may possibly delve into the roots on the indie ethos & photograph this band as if it was a shoot from when they were young children - boys obsessed with music, growing up & breaking the rules. This is only one possible idea for my ancillary task, and may be scrapped at a later date, but I felt it would give me a lot more scope in relation to creative & photographic possibilities. As we don't have a set band & only physically have a lead singer (Connor -who of course I can photograph & play around with graphically in the editing suite) it makes the task of designing an album cover for an entire band a lot more challenging.

 Many artists albums don't include the artist at all, simply imagery that reflects that album or the band's image over all, so of course simply using a quirky image which isn't of any of the members again is a possibility & I have done several brain storms of possible ideas I could adapt without the need for a band at all. However I will need a band to put up group photos on my blog & website & the facebook page I have created. Thus I felt that the possibility of basing the whole album around their youth & journey as a group would give me wider artistic availability.  So many 'indie-rock band's' use photographic apps like Instagram  or pictures taken with Polaroid or disposable camera ( creating a visually vintage photograph effect + in fact 'The Vaccines have a whole video made from festival clips & instagram shots) - which connote they way that this type of musical group supposedly have a very laid back, spontaneous, rebellious & care free, yet passionate approach to life. I felt that by using x4 young boys & dressing them in the stereotypical clothing that our base band would be seen in (The Vaccines) I could then at least attempt to  capture some of the authenticity of an un-commercialised soulful band  in my own work (who aren't slaves to a perfectly moulded modern industry). I wanted to photo-graph the young boys looking very cheeky & inquisitive forging a stronger link between the bands consumers & members. I felt by exploring the bands roots & past it would help increase the compulsive levels of knowledge modern audiences crave. I felt that I could maybe have them playing with inappropriate (age wise) items or fooling around as lads, in order to either makes the shots quite comical or meaningful dependent on what style looked more effective.  

The meta-narrative in our music video is the idea that 'love beats everything, loves saves us & completes us' & I wanted this to stretch into my album but in another direction. I may later decide to simply use photographs from our shoots & one's on Connor to explore imagery which is much more based upon the historical concept of our video, however I feel that I would much rather create an individual persona for our band which differs from that of simply one of there songs. Furthermore if we had a full band to work with (we have contacted many comrades over the course of our planning & filming stages and any friends we know off who are in a band have been too occupied with exams, coursework & jobs to free up any time to help us out. Having little-no budget & limited contacts we knew this would be a struggle from the start!) I would have loved to also create a video blog to import onto my band website in order to create the contemporarily crucially close link between artists & their fans. I would have liked to get the fake band to upload (under my direction) quirky videos sharing anecdotes from there past, their recording sessions & their filming shoots as i feel that simply the conventions of typical websites wouldn't really feel complete enough. 

So many of the generic features are now stretched in every direction not only through the world of social networking sites where we can visually & verbally get an incite into the day to day actions of our favourite stars; but also through video blogs, & extras on band's websites like 'in the dressing room with Freddie' - a section of 'The Vaccines' site which shares guitarist Freddie's personal music taste. If i could have made this possible I would have loved to, although I may still get the younger boys to make a video blog (& play around with the footage on after effects to make it look more retro) discussing what they wanted to be when they grow up & mentioning  (subtly) contextual features from the start of the 90's when the boys would have been youngsters. I also plan to set up a twitter account & ask friends to follow the band, as well as review their website & its usability in relation to how simple it is to navigate (Trajectories and Traversals - Jay Lemke).  

BAND MERCHANDISE EXPERIMENTS