Below are some album covers from existing artist's which i think look particularly good.
The album cover above is that of British pop/rock band Keane and their most recent album Perfect Symmetry. I like the abstract image of the cover as all the pictures of the man are mixed up against triangles. The album cover does look good even though the cover isn't showing perfect symmetry like the album name suggests it would.
The album cover above is from 1969 and is by The famous Beatles. The album itself is called Abbey Road which can be seen in the cover as the Beatles are walking across it. This has made this street famous across the world but the name actually comes from the recording studio that is there an that the Beatles used.
The final album i have chosen to look at is London Calling by The Clash. I'm not a fan of the font used on the album cover but the image is what makes the album iconic as it shows the image of a bass guitar being smashed after a show. This image is clearly for the fans as every Clash fan knows this image and it also shows more emotions of the band in the sense of passion that they have for their music.
On our third day of filming we once again had moved to a new location. This was perhaps the best location overall but one we could have had prior to our first time filming. We had original thought of filming our music video at The Red Lion pub in Northfleet where many local bands first start out. This made the location a convenient choice for us as our band would feel more comfortable and it would also look more realistic as it is where bands play. At first the lighting was an issue as we couldn't light the whole band and when we did it didn't look to good. However after talking to the landlord we were able to get the stage lights to come on and this helped light the band better which meant we could continue filming. In total we got nearly an hour's worth of footage after being there for nearly 4 hours. In this day of filming we were able to get hold of another camera which should lead to better video quality. My main concern about this day of filming is if we got enough decent footage to use and edit in our final cut version. We may need to go back and get some more footage, and before i look at the footage on the computer i already feel that we didn't get as many handheld moving shots as i would have liked. The one remaining problem we have with our filming situation is that we are quickly running out of time and we are starting to feel the pressure.
My second video analysis is of the Foo Fighters hit song 'Best of you'. The video was directed by Mark Pellington, who was the one that chose the theme of the video and not the Foo Fighters. The genre of the music is rock and this is expressed across the video with the band performing live on an abandoned hospital. The main characteristic of the video is dealing with the pains in life and making sure you make the most of this by doing your best in it. The first 44 seconds of this video is just a close up on the microphone with Dave Grohl (the lead singer) leaning in and out of the shot singing the opening verse and first chorus. This is very rare for any music video to be like this but the tempo of the music is slow and the lyrics are the main feature of this opening sequence. The video does have some shots of imagery that represent the vocals of the song. The shots involve two young children playing, a car crash, a lion hunting, a snake attack, a zebra kicking a zebra, a snarling wolf, crash test dummies in a car crash and men and women showing affection for one another. All these shots helps to add a representation to the video that it is based around nature, youth, love and death. I feel that the video is amplifying the effect of death through nature and that you should give your all before you die. The video does start off very slowly but when the pace of the song picks up we start to see more shots in the video. The video does cut to the drum beat but some of the shots are so quick that they don't stay within the beat but the effect still works as the lyrics are represented outside the beat. After 47 seconds the whole band start to play and this is when the shots become short and there are far more unlike the opening 47 seconds where it's just Dave Grohl singing into the microphone. The performance of the band shows extreme passion as they are all giving there all in this performance. The record company could be looking at selling this record through the passionate performance of the band as it would shows their fans they are very passionate about this song which could lead fans to share the same feeling. The filming of the bands performance is with a handheld camera which helps to add the effect to the viewer that they are closer to the band. This is seen in most performances in music videos as a static shot doesn't give the same effect as a handheld shot because if you were at a live gig of the artist you would be moving around and not standing still. One thing i noticed about the Foo Fighters is that they always wear jeans and a t-shirt along with trainers. This is a very casual look for a band but one that is common amongst most rock bands. However the difference between this video and all their other video's is that they are all wearing black as if their mourning. However after researching the video i discovered that the director of the video had seen his wife die a few months prior to filming. This is the reason why mourning and death are very common in this video. Overall this music video is based around a performance by the Foo Fighters with some imagery seen in short cuts within the music video. The shots of the live performance are all handheld but the shots are cut very quickly so that we can get a view of the whole band very quickly. This video to me is all about the passionate performance given by the band and this would have been made to be this way by the director. From this video i have learnt that you have to show the band up close and personal to get a better effect, this is something i plan to do in my groups music video. This is the video by Foo Fighters for 'Best of You':
After filming for the first time to our new song i was optimistic that it would go better than previously. We arrived and we were instantly handed the task of getting the hall decorated to the way we wanted. This was far more time consuming than we had thought it would be and it took an hour and a half to fully set up, which was far to long. After setting up we then had a problem of what shot to do and how to do it. Once again we hadn't learnt from our previous mistake. However we had got some filming done which we will upload to final cut and edit it to see exactly what we can do with original filming. Once again we failed to use our planning to help us film and i will address the group about this along with our overall effort to get the job done as i feel this is holding us back from getting our music video done. Overall this filming session wasn't as productive as i hoped it would be but we got enough work done to help us build upon which should leave us in good stead for our next day of filming on Saturday.
This is the animatic of our music video. This is basically a video that i made on behalf of the group that showed when we would use the shots with the song and it also shows where we would use our transitions. This is only a rough plan and i would expect us to use more shots than we planned and more transitions. I think that the animatic will be different from our final video as editing still images means you can't see the instruments being played but this is only a representation of what we want the video to look a little bit like.
After a change of song we decided to re-think some of our original ideas and look at new angles and new shots that were now available to us through a change of idea. We had moved away from the concept of doing a story-based video to the idea of video a live band. We had immediately brainstormed some ideas that we thought were very promising and we were all eager to get filming. We started to talk about where we should film. Our initial idea was to film in a garage where our selected band normally practice. This would look authentic to a 'band practice' session which we could be representing. However group member Jacob said he could get hold of a scout hall and excellent lighting which was a great opportunity we couldn't turn down. So on Sunday 30th January we were going to film for the second time. We had an early problem when the bassist was miss-informed about the time of our filming which was down to our poor communication with him. The problem was resolved when already had someone else available to play the bass which was a nice piece of planning on our behalf. We estimate we will have around 3 hours in which to film so we should get enough done to start editing next week.
