Ancillary Task.

After completing all our editing we had to begin our digipak, the digipak consists of 6 sides and we did a quick free hand plan of what we wanted, as seen above. We had to get stills for our digipak from our video and this was problematic when sometimes they became fuzzy, but we edited them with effects on photoshop and consequently we became a lot more aware of what photoshop had to offer. We also knew that we had to keep a continuous theme throughout the digipak and we also thought we should link it to the actual video and also our magazine advert. We also included various other songs by Maxine Vauzelle on the back of our digipak and made up quotes from institutions about how good the album was. We feel it looks authentic and would be available in shops.

These are our final pieces and together it makes the digipak. We used the same font throughout and chose it because it was cute and arty similar to our promo, we got it off dafont.com and had to scroll through quite a few until we came to our decision, we particularly liked the hand-drawn feel it has, like our love hearts. The last part of our ancillary task was to make a magazine advert. Compared to the digipak this was fairly simple and didn't take us extremely long to do as we knew what we was aiming for by now and knew our way around photoshop a lot better than at first.

Storyboard.



Shot List.

This was our first basic shot list, it has now been adapted but this is where our main ideas came from:
1. Mid-shot of Lidia sat on a bench strumming guitar.
2. Extreme close-up of Lidia's face, expressing emotion.
3. Scenery shot.
4. Stop motion animation of love hearts.
5. Lip-syncing shot.
6. Establing long-shot of Lidia near water.
7. Close-up of lip syncing.
8. Long shot in town sped up.
9. Long shot with scenery at Rutland Water.
10. Couple mid-shot.
11. Lip-syncing close-up.
12. Spinning shot, close-up.
13. Mid-shot of couple arguing.
14. Stop motion animation of love heart being drawn.
15. Lip-syncing close-up.
16. Close-up of feet, inspiration from Kate Nash.
17. Natural mid-shot.
18. Long-shot of Lidia throwing leaves.

Filming and Editing Process.

Filming:
We decided to take two cameras on our day of filming because we thought we could get the same shot from different angels and this is the kind of thing that would appear in a music production, we also took with us two tripods to use and this means even if we don't need them, we have them to steady shots just in case, they will also be good for close-ups.
Once we go to Rutland Water the sky looked grim but we got set up at our first location, started shooting, then the rain came, instead of wimping out we worked with it and used it as pathetic fallacy, taking shots of the rain hitting the lake and they looked really good. We got a good range of shots, including mid-shots, long-shots and close-ups and took them in different locations, we also took more than we needed in the form of lip-syncing because we know this works well when editing. After we felt we had finished with all the locations at Rutland Water we ventured into Stamford town and went straight to the high street to film around 12 minutes of Lidia stood in the middle while everyone moved quickly around her, as we would be speeding it up on the Apple Mac. We did encounter some problems with this as many people felt the need to move out the way of the camera so we found ourselves having to ask people to move into shot as this was what we were looking for. It took a while but was pretty basic as the camera just had to be left on the tripod and we soon ahd everything we needed. The next day at my house was a lot easier as we were indoors so we could manipulate the lighting a lot better and although we had two actors to work with that day, we knew what we wanted and the only problems we had were with making the actors do what we wanted.

Editing:
Our editing process took a long time and we spent many hours sat in front of the Mac. We firstly had 56 minutes of so sort threw and decide what we wnated to keep. Some of the footage didn't work at all, mainly stuff at Rutland Water near the lake and often the stuff at my house was poor lighting. The good thing was we knew what we wanted and always sticked to it so there wasn't to much disagreement. At first we didn't want to use too  many fo the Mac effects because we felt it may be cliched but after a while we saw the footage became boring and so adding the odd effect made it more interesting and effect ssuch as 'aged film' worked really well with our genre. We aso forgot about our other camera for a while and then remembered we had footage on it and this footage of Lidia spinning around came in really handy and we ended up using it.

Further Planning.

Day 1:
We have planned to go to the location we all decided on Rutland Water's, 'South Shore' where we can hopefully use the lovely scenery to our advantage. We will drive there and pick Lidia up on the way, she's going to bring her own acoustic guitar with her and we will have the cameras already in the car, full charged! Once we get there we will have a quick look around at potential shooting spots and we will have to test to see if the lighting is alright. Lidia has already learnt the lyrics but we will bring our ipod to keep time.

Day 2:
The second day of filming will take place at my house, everyone will make there own way here and we will start shooting in the morning. I have a really nice feature wall in my bedroom with pink, cream and gold wallpaper which will be good as a background for close ups of Lidia lip-syncing. We will also get shots of Lidia and Jacob together. Our main inspiration for today will be the video 'Foundations' by Kate Nash.

Methods of Marketing.

Traditional methods (indirect):

Press, radio, television and general advertising

This puts the record deal completely in the hands of the record comapny, Marketing costs are not recoupable under this model, and so unless a minimum figure is set in the recording contract, then here is no guarantee that a label will put a effective amount of money into support a band's marketing campaign.

New methods (direct):

The internet, particuarly websites such as MySpace

Bands are able to use this direct marketing to their advantage as they can talk directly to their fan base before they even have a record deal. This has cut ou the necessity for a more traditional marketing platform in order to reach and audience. However, in order to have long term success, the band neeed to have a strong marketing strategy combining both direct and indirect marketing (radio, press, TV, online and club pluggers as well as advertising).

Record labels usually base the amount htey spend of the marketing on the estimated number of records that each artist will ship to the shops. Managers do not have any control over how much money the label invests in marketing their band.

Due to the rapid decline in physical record sals, the music industry is llooking at different models to break and markt new artists.

How a plugger can help?:

Most record labels build a promotional campaign for a new band by investing in plugging teams who deal with national radio, TV and press promotion as the main areas to focus on, followed by regional press and radio,, and student and club promotions on top of that. A radio plugger will see a new live band and approach them to offer their help. National radio and press are often more likely to play demos of unsigned band if they know a plugger is involved.

Touring:

This is a vital area of marketing, if a band has a successful national tour, there willl be a regional radio and press campaigns to build the profile around each date.

Finding fans:

 

There are no rules when it comes to breaking a new band and there are various marketing tools at the artists disposal. The internet is still one of the best places to market a new artist The general idea is to initially try and find the hard core fan base for a band and once the album is released to move beyond that fan base by marketing to a wider audience usuing billboards and Tv advertising.

Casting our Actors.

We chose to use our class mat Lidia Dodsworth to be our very own Maxine Vauzelle. She does performing arts as an A level so we knew that she was capable of acting and getting inot character and this was our main priority. Lidia also conveniently plays acoustic guitar which is just what we needed in our video as acoustic guitar is featured. Another thing that really drew us to to using Lidia was that she really loved our song and took to it quickly with learning lyrics. My group also felt she had the right kind of look we wanted and considerign she was one of our friends she will feel comfortable around us. For a few shots of our music video we also needed a boy to act the boyfriend mentioned in the song, we found it difficult to find a boy willing to do it as it is quite a girly thing but eventually we came aross Jacob Thompson who is a close friend of all of ours and he was up for taking on the role, he also, like Lidia, had the right look for us and we knew he would feel comfortable acting around us as he is quite an outgoing character.

Jacob Thompson is a close friend of ours and is an outgoing character, as we felt nobody at our school would fit the type of character we wanted, we asked him. He was happy to do this and as we all know him well we knew he wouldn't be afraid to act and get into character. Jacob's looks is also suited to the kind of boy we wanted and this was another bonus.

Marketing - Kate Nash.

The opening to Kate Nash's website is a really gorgeous illustration which looks like its done by hand, the illustration doesn't fill the page and is placed in the middle of the scree, it has no other words than Kate Nash, this is a really simple opening page and if you came across it you wouldn't even be able to tell it was a music artist, but if you did know it was a music acoustic I think it would be quite obvious to see that it is for the genre acoustic or maybe folk.

This type of illustration is seen throughout the website as a theme which is common with artists websites. On Nash's website you can transport to various sides, including: her blog, tour dates, music, photos etc. Here we can see various aspects of her and even personal photos and blogs which makes you feel in touch with the star. Also, you can of course purchase music, posters and clothing on her website and this is easily accessibly by simply pressing 'shop' on the main menu, it isn't complicated and therefore this idea will hopefully generate more sales. Other than buying Nash merchandise and music on her website it is of course available in traditional record shops which are often still popular with the dedicated fans. Also, a link posted on Nash's website which states 'new album' takes you straight to the amazon website when you click on it and this is a very clever way of generating sales, this is also a form of convergence and synergetic marketing where Amazon and Kate Nash are both promoting each other.

Kate Nash also shot to fame because of her being found on myspace music, so this still plays a big part in marketing for Nash. www.myspace.com/katenashmusic 

Lighting.

In most acoustic music videos the lighting is kept really natural and wont be strong and there won't be high tech sequences where different coloured lights are flashed around. Like with everything else in the acoustic genre, it's all simple and all meant to be about the music. Therefore, in our music video because we are filming outside we will use natural light which will come from the sunlight and when we film inside the house we will try to keep it not really bright and hopefully be able to use the natural light coming in from the windows, if not we will just use lamps and try and stay away from using the main light fixtures in the room because they may come across too bright in the pictures.

Planning.

In preparation for our shooting date we have taken a few things into consideration, such as what Lidia might look like/wear?

We decided she should of course match the type of genre we are using; acoustic. Therefore, we want her looking quite quirky, cute. We don't want her wearing a completely thought out outfit which has specific colour scheme and matches, we feel she should look a bit mismatched and have various prints such as floral. We also don't want her looking glamorous and as though she is a pop star, because she isn't, we feel the less the make up the better, keeping it really natural and having hair simple, possibly wavey and all just down. Other acoustic stars such as, Kate Nash wear quite funky prints on tea style dresses, which is the look we want. Lisa Mitchell is also very natural and often doesn't appear in aything other than jeans and blouses, this keeps the focus on her music rather than creating a huge global selling image around the artist which keeps it really raw and basic, which isn't a bad thing. Here are a few pictures of things we may go for:

Our Pitches.

Pitch 1

______________________

• Stop motion animation using printed out polaroid pictures
• Narrative of a girl and boy in love with each other
• The girl lip syncing and playing her guitar
• Set in a big, old cute house
• With bright lighting and quirky props

Response - The class/mentor really liked the idea of the stop motion animation, so we feel this is a big possibility. However the polaroid pictures printed out will be too expensive to put in our final video, with having to trial and error with printing them out with the type of shots we'd like best so we'll just use our own camera's we've got and load them straight onto the Macs. The narrative suits the lyrics to the song so thats a must having Lidia as the main person and a boy in the video aswell. We got the idea of having it set in a big house from all the videos we've watched for inspiration but the class felt it would have a better feel to it if it was both outside and inside, because as it's winter there could be some good shots including the rain and wind.

Pitch 2

_______________________

• Girl playing the guitar and lip syncing
• Set on a windy beach
• Winter clothes
• Emotions really shown with the use of extreme/close ups
• Just the girl, gets angry throughout the song - throws stones?
  
  Response - The idea of being outside and showing her emotions was liked a lot, and actually being at the beach was questioned as there's perfectly picturesque places much closer that we could visit and see which one we prefer. The winter clothes is a must, maybe a cute dress boots and a big cardigan to fit the genre. And the class liked that we could use an array of emotions shown throughout the video, happiness and sadness.

Pitch 3

_________________

• Girl sitting by a river
• Winter clothes
• Playing the guitar/lip syncing
• In a bedroom with her boyfriend
• Them falling out
• Stop motion animation

Response - We had a really good reaction to this pitch as it has the balance between perfomance (lip syncing and guitar) being outside in natural settings (light and weather) and inside a house to make it feel more intimate between the couple. And the stop motion animation will be a good touch if we test out what looks best.

Stop Motion Animation.

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on it's own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continous sequence.
We saw this featured used in other acoustic artists such as Kate Nash and Lisa Mitchell and we really liked it, we thought we could fit it in easily with our music video but thought we should test whether we could make it before our proper music video. We simply drew the hearts out by hand roughly, in the style of the childrens programme Charlie and Lola and rearranged them in each picture. They represent love growing and retracting, liek the song suggests. We think it looks really nice and as a clip looks lovely!