Promo Shoot

We needed to have a promo shoot to obtain a variety of photos of the band for our website. We tried to make each photo different and interesting by taking both group photos and individual shots of Arianna. We also tried using different props within the pictures, for example a stool and a microphone.

To make ourselves feel more comfortable in front of the camera, we began by putting on some music and having some action shots taken. We had two friends at our shoot to take the group photos, we felt this was necessary as our band unity needed to be clear on the website. We took a variety of group photos including some face-on with blank expressions, standing in a diagonal line and creating a formation around Arianna on the stool.

We also ensured we had lots of individual shots of our lead singer. It was essential that we had enough choice for the website that would create connotations of her craziness.
We decided to replicate the theme of red and black dresses that we used in the projection set-up of our video as these are our band colours. With Arianna in heels and the rest of the band in heavy black boots we ensured that our band image looked glamorous but still with a touch of grunge. Everyone had relatively neutral make-up except Arianna, who wore bright red lipstick to emphasis how she is different from the rest of the band.

We had difficulty with lighting the first set of shots. The area where the promo shoot took place was quite small, and inevitably some of us were blocking light and creating shadows on other members of the group. However we quickly resolved this by re-positioning the flash light and were able to achieve a nice light for the later photos.

Creating the Website

After creating our initial website flat plans, we began drawing up the basics on Wix, the program we used to create the website. 

To start with we created the task bar at the top, and the top strip and made this visible on every page as the start point and the basics to navigating around our band website. This included having the menu bar, our band name (logo) and the option to play our debut single and a small menu bar to link to other social networks, such as instagram and facebook to view our band pages on those websites.  

For the menu bar, we also wanted to create synergy with our main band colours, by including red in the menu bar; we did this by using a mouseover. On the website the menu words are just plain, but when the mouse is hovering over a word, it turns red. This helped to create more synergy with the website and our band.

Following this, we began to work on the homepage, and the main pages to give us a layout and a structure for the following pages. We decided to make the background of every page of the website, the image on our debut album cover to create synergy with our new album, and to keep the audience interested, and make the website look interesting and visual. The home page needed to attract the audience's attention and give some opportunities to interact with the band and explore the website. This was included by a slideslow of new news, including our debut album, a competition and available merchandise to buy. 

After setting out the main layout and structure of the home page, it helped our group to decide what the other pages should look like. This included ensuring every page was very visual, interactive and worked in synergy with eachother, and making sure there were links to different activities on other pages, for example on the events page we have a link to the competition page. On every page, we have also made sure that there is buttons to comment on facebook, like the page or write a tweet.

We did make a lot of changes from our original website flat plans, to ensure the website flowed well, and was interactive for the audience. Due to the website promoting the debut album and our new single, we also put the album image as the background image for our website. The website did go through a lot of changes to eventually be one we were pleased with, and thought our target audience would enjoy.

Album Cover Shoot

Ofter discussing many ideas for our album cover shoot, we finally were able to shoot our album cover and although some things went to plan, we did have a couple of problems to resolve.

For our album shoot, we took a variety of photos, including us individually and us as a group so can we could experiment with our idea and decide what looks best. In our group shots we took photos of us all looking at the camera head on, and also looking straight on turned to the side. 
We then took individual photos of us head on and sideways both dry and wet. We tried a variety of shots so that we could test out what looks best on our album cover. We also tried to make sure that we all had exactly the same shot and framing to create unity between the band. The wet photos were the most difficult to do, because we had to keep pouring water over our heads to make sure it stayed wet and looked consistent. 
We also chose to have neutral make up, with only a small bit of eyeliner and mascara on, with some neutral lip balm to create a very basic photo, but with the bare shoulders and a white background to make us stand out.
We had some trouble with lighting with all four of us in the shot, because sometimes some of us were cast in shadow, whilst others were overexposed. In the end we decided the individual shots were easier to light, so they could be edited together onto the album cover, with the same lighting on each band member.

Here is a link to problems faced on this shoot:

http://latymermusicvideo2013group4.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/problems-faced-on-our-shoots.html

Problems faced on our shoots

We faced a few problems in each of our shoots, but on the whole managed to resolve them to make sure everything ran as smoothly as possible:

Album Cover Photo Shoot:

For our album cover shoot, our plan was to shoot the front cover in a bath. Our problem was lighting, we were not able to take photography lights home, and instead had to use lights normally used for filming and getting lights at the right angle not to reflect the water seemed like it might be a struggle, on top of the fact getting the lights wet was a hazard!
- We managed to rectify this by using only 1 light faced up at the ceiling and it lit the whole bathroom, including the bath, giving us the type of lighting in the shot we wanted. 

The rest of our shots for album cover were done in our school studio, and because we wanted some shots of us covered in water, we had to find a way to make sure we did not leave the studio floor soaking wet, or damage any equipment.
- We all brought towels in to wipe up any water, and put down on the floor to ensure the water did not spread and we mopped up any leftover water off the floor at the end of our shoot.

 

   

Brick Lane Video Shoot:

After having done our location reccie, we realised that some of our locations would be very busy on a Sunday so close to Brick Lane, because that is market day around the Brick Lane area. We also only had a limited amount of time for the days in Brick Lane, because we needed the shots to be light, and so we had to be finished by 16.30 and on top of that we had to fit in with our dancer's needs and work with him to make sure he was happy.
 - We ensured we had notified him months in advance of the days and times that we wanted him, and he confirmed early on, meaning that there were no concerns on the day and everyone knew when and where they were wanted. We also made a shoot schedule so we could make sure we took all our shots on time and to the schedule so that there was no fear of running past 16.30. 
- In regards to the number of people, many people realised we were shooting and just walked around us, whilst some thought we were selling equipment on the side of the road, so we had to ensure we kept an eye on all our things the whole time.

Studio Band Shoot:

This run quite smoothly other than the fact that we did not keep to our schedule at the beginning of the shoot because it took us longer to set up the studio, and do hair and make up than expected, so we had to try and get easy shots done more quickly in order to make sure we had enough time to get all our shots done and had enough time to work on longer shots.Alice, the drummer, was not used to the song and occasionally found it difficult to play to the beat.
- We were able to catch up on time later on and the shoot ran more quickly and smoothly than expected once we started getting into the swing of things. Although an extra 10 minutes was taken from the schedule to get Alice playing the drums to the beat, so that in the video she would not look out of time.

Hospital Scene Shoot:

We faced a similar problem of water on the studio floor, as in one the shots Arianna spits water at one of her nurses, and we had not brought towels along, so had to use coats and other items on the floor to make sure not too much water went on the floor. 

The bed we had bought for the studio was quite unstable, especially when we put it on two platforms to make it higher and Arianna was nervous that it would break.
- To solve this, we put tape around the bed, strapping it down to the platform, to ensure the bed would not fall of the platform and to make it more stable.

Our shoots

Here is just a range of shots we took in each of our shoots:

Our album cover shoot:

Our promo shoot:

 

Music video shoot: 

Initial website designs

We went through the development of our website, first drawing out basic flat plans of what we wanted our website to look like, and the different page designs, leading to what our website looks like now. 

 The picture on the left is one of our original home page designs, with our band name in large writing over the top of the home page followed by the menu bar underneath. We planned to have a large box with a slideslow of band photos, and a facebook and twitter feed either side of this for viewers to post and comment about the site and our band. The pictures help the audience to interact with the band and feel like they know a bit about them from seeing the photos.

On the right is a pop up we wanted when someone first looks at the website. We planned to have it as a round pop up, due to the shape of our logo, with pictures and news cut into the logo. You could then press click the small 'x' button to lead to the main website.

Following designing our home page, and pop up, we planned the layout of a few of the main pages, such as the gallery and the recent band news page. For the gallery page, we decided to have a main photo to click from each gallery that leads you to a large gallery of our band shoot, our video shoot. We liked the simple design and this design is exactly the same on our website now. For the news page we wanted to have main news down one side, with older news in an archive that could be opened up. Our plans for each page have influenced the website alot, although some have been adapted and changed to create synergy across all our pages and also just to be more fluid and interactive.

Feedback on Website

We had a group meeting today and decided it would be useful to get some more feedback on our website. These are the main points that were highlighted:

• Back button on gallery needed
• A contact page needed
• Make sure institutional information is prominent
• Ensure there is a variety of images and costumes
• Clear opportunities for purchases and interactivity needed
• Enable Facebook comments on everything
• Create a Forum
• Pre-order/Buy Now on merchandise
• Dates need to be highlighted

Album Cover Bath Shoot

Our final idea for our album cover was a CU of Arianna's face underwater. We decided the best way to do this was to use a bath tub. Conveniently, Ella had just the kind we needed, and so we booked a shoot at her house on Wednesday 4th December. 
We were worried that lighting would be an issue as we could not take the flash lights away from school, but we were able to use an arri redhead 650, a light usually used for filming, which ensured the bathroom was well-lit. As the space was quite tight, we had to be extremely careful when using the lights and camera around the bath. 
The shoot turned out to be a lot longer than we had intended, with frequent reapplication of make-up and false eyelashes needed. It was also more difficult than expected for Arianna to stay underwater without creating lots of bubbles which made those shots unusable.
However, we managed to get the shots we were looking for and therefore a re-shoot was not required. 

Here are some of the photos taken in the shoot:

Animatic

Instead of drawing out a key shots storyboard, we decided to make a titled animatic. We did this so that we could see where each shot would go in the video, how much time they would take up, and where the gaps were in terms of spaces without key shots or spaces with too little or too much of one set-up. We also drew out some of the most important shots so that we shared the same vision for these.

The colour coding for the Animatic is as follows:

Hospital
Dancer in brick lane
Grunge
Projection



Making the animatic was incredibly helpful in terms of the progression of the pre-production of the music video. When filming, we ensured that the band performance was particularly strong in shots that we knew we would use for that particular set up, and we took care to get good quality takes of all of our key shots.

Through making our animatic and through the editing process, we realised that we would confuse audiences by introducing all four set ups right from the beginning. Even the initial flashes of Kai (the dancer) were too confusing to start from 15 seconds in alongside hospital and grunge, two set-ups we definitely needed from the start. For this reason we decided to introduce the projection set-up at the beginning of chorus 1, and the dancer set-up at the beginning of the verse. We feel like this really helped to make the concept clearer to the audience than it otherwise would have been had we not made the animatic.

Flat Plans for Album Cover

After having brainstormed and finally planning our album cover, we drew out these flat plans to ensure we collectively shared the same idea for all four panels. Also, once drawn out, we could check that our ideas worked, and could identify any larger or smaller problems we may have with our proposed idea. For example, after talking to media teachers and showing them these flat plans, we were realised that the front cover shot may be very difficult to light. This is because the bathroom is very small, and we could not use flash as it would reflect from the water. Furthermore, we could not take the photography lights out of school as they were not portable. In the end we bounced a fill light from the ceiling in order to light our subject evenly. When shooting out of water, we used a spotlight to give depth to the portrait. 

Front Cover

This image denotes a close-up of Arianna submerged in water, looking directly into the camera with a completely blank expression. Her make-up is perfect and her hair is flowing and voluminous in the water. The image is striking and has connotations of Arianna being powerful and bold, despite having a blank expression. The band name is at the top and bottom of the panel and the album name slanted at the side. 

Back Cover

In this image Arianna has seemingly come out of the bath, however now she is dripping wet and her make-up has run down her face. Again she looks directly into the camera and at the audience and she wears a blank expression, except to the audience she is no longer connoted as powerful, but much more vulnerable. The track listing appears next to her with the bar-code and record label logo at the bottom of the panel.