Audience Research

I did some research into products that are similar to our and found out what kind of audience they had, because if it was products like our it is most likely it will be very similar people that are going to be looking at our product. I chose to look up Taylor Momsen which is the lead singer of The Pretty Reckless, who is known for her image of rock and quite dramatic stylish, she had also toured with Marilyn Manson, this gives you and idea of the music she makes. Our lead singer has a few similarities to Taylor Momsen but we did not want the image of our band to be too dark. It is slightly rock but also seen as alternative and electronic at the same time.

I researched on sights such as Myspace, Twitter and Youtube. Taylor Momsen has these sights so that she can be in constant connection with her fans and update them about tours, songs and her private life. I found what I had expected, a lot of trait marks within the fans of Taylor Momsen have obviously been very inspired by her style and image. A lot of the fans also have shown to have a similar taste in music, such as other rock bands as Nirvana etc.

This above is a picture of a fan that has tagged Taylor Momsen on her photo on MySpace, it is obvious in this picture that she has similar clothes and animal prints, her eye make up is very heavy and it is obvious that she has been inspired by her style. 

Here is picture of Taylor Momsen so you can se the similarities.. 

This is a man named J.C. Nelson who follows Taylor Momsen on Twitter. You can tell by the way he is dressed and his whole image that he is very inspired by his taste in music. He has also chose to make a replicate of a Rolling Stone magazine with himself on the cover with a guitar. As Rolling Stone is a famous magazine for musicians you can tell he aspires to be more. 

Here you can also see the inspiration he has gotten from her classic black guitar, and the rock and roll clothes with leather and the choppy black hair. 

You can tell by the music that J.C. Nelson also has songs that look very relatable to hers. This is some music he has written himself and for example the first song he has on his list is "Get sick and die" one of taylor momsens most popular songs are "Makes me wanna die". 

As I looked through more pictures from fans and of Taylor Momsen. I also discovered the sexual image that she has. It's not enough that she barely wears any clothes, it has also become common known that she has female fans come up on stage with her undressing until their standing in their bras on top or less. So I looked through more of her fans and found this one above, and when she writes about herself she writes that she is bisexual. Seeing the image above from one of her concerts, this can be seen as she is portraying an image of exploring with sexuality which is inspiring her fans. 

All in all Taylor Momsens audience which is going to be quite similar to our are inspired by her style, and the image she has created for herself. They like that she shows herself as someone individual and a rebel, meaning that her fans are more likely to act out as well. They are also very interested in her live performances and the way in which she performes, bringing fans up on stage etc. We hope that the audience we would have is going to respond to the same way of being hooked on the style of the people within our band, and that they would enjoy the performance in our video so they would be very interested in tour dates and live performances. 

Photos From Shoot Day

Here are some photographs that I took on the Music Video Shoot day.. I have edited them differently some of them are in Black and White and others e.g. with the glitter are in colour. I have used an editing program for Mac Computers which is called "Aperture" this is very similar to Adobe Lightroom and allow me to edit photographs and play with color, contrast, retouch, curves, definition etc etc. Here is a screen shot of the program so you get an idea of what it look like, as you can see the picture is on the right and on the left is the panel where I can use sliders and buttons to change the photograph as I please.. Some of these might be used in our Digipack Artwork and Website, and can be used as either behind the scenes photographs for the website or as might be used as a photograph in the digipack background.

And here are the photos edited from the shoot day.. If you want to enlarge the image just click on it

Rough Cut Editing

Here is another screen recording of how far I have gotten with the rough cut. There is the performance element and you can see how i have fitted the glitter sequences within. As you can see I wanted to have the glitter shown slowly in the beginning of the song so the audience is aware that they're is something else going on. The skin colored morphsuits in glitter does have an impact on people because at first they're not quite sure what it is but they find it fascinating. In this way showing a clip here and there between the performance element will help engage the audience, keep them focused on the video because they want more, and they want to understand.

The glitter starts to built throughout the song and becomes more and more, as we did in our storyboarding. Because the story is that the glitter is invading everything. Because the morphsuits are doing things as drinking champagne, blowdrying hair, sexual movement etc etc. the audience is meant to slowly get the feeling of superficiality and image. In the end which has not been cut yet it will end with the morph suit people finally breaking through the clear wall and then collapsing onto the floor. Here is the screen recording..

Glitter Sequences

After I had rough cut the performance element, I wanted to put in some of the glitter sequences to get a feel of what it would like. I also did this so I did not edit the performance element perfectly not knowing weather it would even be seen in the final product. To make the cut easier to work with I made the rough cut of the performance element into one long "cut" so that it would be cleaner to look at and so it would be more handy for me to layer the glitter on top of the performance element. This does not mean that the performance element cut is final, if I want to change something within the performance element I can simply double click on the moment I want to change and it will take me straight back to the performance element cut with all of the different shots.

To begin with I created different "bin" files on final cut pro, which is basically folders where I can input different shots. Further more I created a separate one for each of the different sequence e.g. "floor Sequence", "wall sequence" and "champagne sequence" etc etc. Here after I dragged the different sequences into the folder that they matched. This made it easier for me to find the exact shot I wanted, otherwise the glitter shots were completely mixed in with the shots that we had of the band. Here is a screen recording done on Quicktime player where you can see how I dragged the hairspray glitter sequence into it's folder.

Rough Cut Editing

Here is a photograph of how far I have gotten with the editing, you can see that I am trying to use most of the shots and incorporate them differently by the song. I also found that some of the shots have different nuances in color, and there are some of the glitter sequences that we shot with a sharp focus that I have to make blurred so that it fits with the other shots and because it makes the people in morph suits look much more interesting. This will all come later, when the editing is done and I have my chosen shots of what will go in the video, otherwise I might edit 20 shots into slow-motion that I might not use in the end product. 

Rough Cut Beginning

Here you can see the first minute of my rough cut editing of the performance element of the band. As it is a screen recording on the program Quicktime player there is unfortunately no sound to match the editing which obviously makes a huge difference, but you can still get a feel of what it looks like during the process of it in a rough stage. I am trying to match the amount of shots of the 3 different band members equally as they are all three equally important to the audience. Some females may like the band because of the lead singer but I can imagine a lot of males are watching the video because they are interested in the instrument use by the boys of the band. You can not see this in the video because the music is missing but I am editing the change in shots accordingly to the different instruments and beats playing within the song. As you can see in the beginning there is shots on the guitar and the it switches when the lead singer sings her first word and switches back to the guitarist and then to the drummer as he starts playing the high hat and snare drum. 

Editing Further

I continued to edit a rough cut further through out the song, with the same method that I started with. I wanted to edit the entire song only with the performance element and the cut in the glitter sequences afterwards. I did this because I knew that since our band has a rock and roll image, the performance element is the most important to the audience as this is what will sell tickets to live concerts. Therefore I edited through the material we had of the band. I did discover that our lead singer some of the time did not lip-synch with the song, which caused some problems with having several takes of her in the climax of the song but I decided to put it in anyway because I am going to re-edit it with the glitter so I can just remove it by that time and fill it in with another shot from either the champagne, hairdryer, bath, floor or wall sequence. 

Here are some pictures how you can see my editing process evolving.

The Beginning

I started the the beginning of the post-production of our music video. As I had synched all the shots on top of each other it made it easier for me to cut in between the different shots and I could try out different shots to see what fit best together and what looked best in rhythm to the music. I started editing the beginning with having focus on the guitarist as that is the only sound you hear in the beginning of the song.

 I had a tough time editing with the establishing shot as we had shot one of the band in front of the gold glitter curtain and one without. We all decided on the fact that it did not look very fitting for our video but thought it looked like something you would have at a high school prom. This meant that I had to edit with one establishing shot of the band that we had only once without the gold curtain. 

Here you can see the beginning of the editing process and how I could easily cut between the different shots. Some of them are darkened as I was experimenting with different ones. This meant that i could try one shot but then if I wanted to keep it but see if there was something better I could try with another one without deleting the first one. 

Here you can see that on Final Cut Pro there are to windows for the images. The one on the right is for playing what I have already edited and the one on the left is to look through whole shots. 

Synching Tracks

After all of our shots had been uploaded we started synching the tracks to the first beat, so that all of the tracks would be synched to the cut. We are using Final Cut Pro for Mac Computers.

Shooting Part 2

As you know we did a second video shooting to finish off the rest of our shots. We brought in our morph suit people once again.. we re-used the glitter from our first day. We only had an hour to film 3 different sequences, so everything had to be quick decisions and we had to be focused. We had to film our "pushing through the wall"sequence, "on the floor" sequence, "hair dryer" sequence and "champagne" sequence.. It all went really well and we are going to have to do so post production work on some of the shots to blur them out and remove writing on fx the hairdryer..
Here are a couple of pics..

I found out that breath on the plastic wall looked really great, therefore we used this more.. 

Breaking through the wall..