Deciding upon an appropriate age rating for our media product

To decide upon an appropriate age rating for our media product i looked at the British Board of Film Classification's guidelines, we had initially thought that out media product would have to be a 15 as it showed someone paying a prostitute for sex, when we looked at the BBFC's age 15 category guidelines for sex which stated that "sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail.

There may be strong verbal references to sexual behavior" we then compared this to the BBFC's age 12 category guidelines on sex which were "Sexual may be breifley and discreetley portrayed" and that " Frequent crude reffrences would not be accaptable" which i felt our video featured. Another reason why we have classified it as a 15 is because throughout our video there is the use of a gun by one of the characters, the BBFC's guide lines for a 12 certifictaion said that " weapons should not be glamourised" which we felt was the case in our music video.

This is why i feel that our music video fits appropitley into the 15 cetifiaction, which is what we have decided to give our music video.

Digipak completion

I have now finished creating the Digipak front cover, which involved me using Adobe photo shop to split three images of three different characters and making them into one singular image with the head of one character, the body and legs of the others.

I then placed the 'monsters' in front of a police line up as this is a reference to the film 'The usual suspects' which linked in to our Band name that we had decided upon 'The Unusual suspects' hence the reason for using the police line up.












I then had to add on the DVD logo, the bar-code and decide what the age rating should be.

Photo shoot two

Today we had another photo shoot of all the characters in walking poses which we are going to use for our poster.
We are thinking of doing a poster in the style of the 'Beatles' 'Abbey Road' but maybe not using a zebra crossing.

Photo shoot one

We have done a photo shoot of all the characters so that we can use them in our ancillary texts and for our digipack cover, we took close ups of each characters head, torso and legs and then full figure shots so that we had plenty of pictures to use. 

Final decision on digipak cover

I have now decided upon a final idea of our Digipak cover, it is going to be a split image of different characters from our video for example the head of the main character, the body of the businessman and the legs of the vicar. i got inspiration for this from watching Examples "Kick starts"

An idea that i want to use for our Digipak cover is this use of front and back, where on one side of the cover there is the front of a person or object.

Then on the back of the digipak is the back of the person or object, my idea for this approach to the digipak was inspired by the self titled album "she wants revenge" who have also incorporated this method.

Ideas for additional items

We have decided to make additional items for our digipak, items that wold appeal to fans such as pictures, posters and signatures. The reason we have decided to do this is because we feel we cannot express all of our creative ideas in just the digipak and advert so are using these additional fan items so that we have more room for  ingenuity and creativity. 

My idea for the additional items is to create a small booklet that has information on each of the characters, such as who played them, ideas we had for their costume, a brief synopsis of the characters story and a a Polaroid picture of them.

Final Filming

This is weekend we did the final shoot for our music video where we were shooting shots for cut away and the final band shots, fortunately the weather was good and similar to our other shoots so the cutaway shots keep the continuity, the band shots we did were at the ford in Tealby, the reason we picked this location is because we thought it was quite unique and made good use of our local environment..

Filming of prostitute scene

Yesterday we did the last of the filming which was the prostitute scene. the shoot took around 40 minutes, which was good as it was rather cold and i was wearing a dress. The location we used was an alley way in Market Rasen the reason we used an alley was because people stereotype prostitutes with dingy, secluded urban environments.

The costume we had designed for the prostitute consisted of a low cut dress, tights and accessories we felt that this was a a good stereotypical look for a prostitute and we were trying to make it as evident as possible so that the audience would realize that i am a prostitute.    

Album Artwork

For our Digipack cover we want something unique and different so that it stands out and looks cool. 

One idea for a Digipak who be to give it a cartoon or hand drawn look to it. such as Mewgatz's "love songs and car boot elctronica"  

Another idea that i like, for our digipak cover is to have the picture/image that is in black and white like Clint Listing's cover for "my father,my Keeper"



Another idea i really like is for the front cover of the digipack, is to have a split screen still of all the characters that we have in our music video. Then on the inside have individual shots of some of the characters.

News reporter mustache

For our news reporter scene i was in charge of putting together my costume so i decided to wear a white long sleeve shirt a black tie and a black jacket, i also decided that the news reporter should have a mustache so we tried a selection of fake mustaches to see which one looked the best.





 

Filming 18/09/10

This weekend we stated filming the outdoor shots as we had checked the weather forecast which told us that Saturday was going to be sunny and Sunday would be a mixture of cloudy and sunny. we were all going to meet at my house in Tealby as that was where we were filming. Once the two Matt's had arrived we prepared all the equipment and Matt Sharpe got dressed into his "Gangster" costume.

Once we were all ready to go we went to where we were filming, which was the path behind my house and began shooting.

The shots we we filmed were the ones with both the main character and the gangster in them, this took up most of the day and took several takes for each shot, once we had finished filming the main character and Gangster scene we went inside as it began to rain.

News shoot 16/09/10 and 17/09/10

Today we shot the news Anchor scene for our music video, i was the actor, Matt Sharpe was the camera man and Matt Gilooly was the director. we filmed it against a green screen which would then show a news studio to give the effect that i was in an authentic news studio without having to go to one.

on the first day we filmed i just said words and sentences and did actions as we thought we would only have the news presenter on the television screen, but then when we watched the playback of the footage we decided it would be a good idea to have the news presenter singing the chorus of the song which we could then use for our final split screen shot of all the characters singing, so we redid the shoot the next day and i sang the chorus against the green screen while in my news presenter costume.

Preparation for filming this weekend

This weekend we will be doing filming for our music video, we will be filming around Tealby mainly at the church and the streets.  

We will be using three "Panasonic NVGS 500" along with tripods and three tapes, two of the cameras will be for filming the music video and the third shall be for the filming of our video diary and behind the scenes video. 

We will also be making our instruments over the next few days, they will be made out of cardboard and plywood then painted.

The other things we are doing to prepare for this weekend are making sure we have the costumes sorted out, the other needed props and making sure that everyone can get to the filming location.

Ideas for shot types and editing techniques

From looking at other music videos i have come up with some ideas that i cold use in my media project, one such idea is to have lots of different people all singing the same song in different locations that are relevant to their character like in "Nickel back's" song "Rock star"



Another idea that i think is quite interesting is to film the entire video in the perspective of a bystander watching the main characters events unfold from a point of view shot with a hand held camera like in the "Foo Fighters" song "my hero"





I also like the idea of having a scene start of by a character looking a a still photograph, and then that photograph comes to life and becomes video, just like in "Kanye West's" music video of "Though the wire"

Story board

These are still photos of our story board.

Getting permission

To be able to do our chosen song for our media piece we first had to get in contact with the band and ask them for their permission to use their song. we did this by visiting Cage the elephant's "myspace" and sent them a message asking them for their permission.

Change of plans

I have now decided to join up with Matthew Gilooly and Matthew Sharpe, this is to make the making of the media product easier as there will be more people to film, edit and act in our product. This will also mean that we do not have to rely on other people who could potentially let us down and that the only people involved are ourselves.

The song we are doing is "Ain't no rest for the wicked" by Cage the elephant :   

who will be involved?

The people that will be involved in my media project shall be:

Myself as director 

Tom Greenwood as the main character

Dan Gaughn, James Campbell and Tom Greenwood as the band members  

Location ideas

Throughout the course of my chosen song for my A2 project i will have a figure traveling from place to place with lots of different locations. some of the locations i have thought off so far are:

The wolds around Tealby which offers good areas to do some wide landscape shots, willingham woods that give potential for lots of interesting angles for example in trees.

For more urban shots i will use Lincoln as is is near and easily accessible, some of the areas i have considered using are the big hill in Lincoln, the high street and the train station.

Other interesting shot locations i will likely use are Thornton Abbey in East Holton, which is the ruins of an abbey that is open to the public. 

Inital ideas

My initial ideas for the song "send me on my way" by Rusted Roots" was to have a figure continually moving in the same direction at different locations, with different shot types and angles to add plenty of visual stimulation for the audience. 

The figure will be moving in the same general direction coming from the left hand dside of the camera to the right hand side to show that the figure is moving i the one direction from the start of the song, getting form point A to point B over the course of the song.

02/07/10

I have now changed my idea so that the song will have a better story, my new idea is to have a business type person who is very uptight, who is then knocked by a free spirited type person. The businessman then goes ape and sees his reflection in a mirror the reflection of himself is distorted and disfigured to represent him as a person behind the flesh.

The free spirited guy then hands the businessman a card saying "Breathe" on it (which is a reference to the message that John Lennon received from Yoko Ono)

Then as the song continues the businessman is traveling through the urban environment seeing the word "breathe" where ever he looks such as posters car number plates etc, and as he progresses he gradually removes some of his clothes (i was inspired for this idea by the Visa advert for the 2010 world cup)

The businessman then has a moment of self realization and as he walks past a lamp post and the location then changes and the figure emerges from behind a tree dresses in lose comfortable clothes. then the figure moves more freely through the rural environment and gradually puts on his old clothes as he is enjoying his new mentality and state but not changing who he is just how he lives his life.