Hey! Watch this... Music Video Final Cut

This is the final cut of our music video, with final sound mix & completed effects. It's available on Blogger, blip.tv and YouTube to ensure it can be seen regardless of technical issues.

Analysis of The Auteur's Web Presence

The Auteur, typically for a modern band signed to an indie label, promotes itself primarily through Web 2.0 sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. This allows the band to interact more directly with their fanbase, which is critical for smaller bands.



The band's YouTube Channel consists primarily of live videos of the band performing, which is important in attracting the target audience as the generic conventions of rock place a strong emphasis on performance aspects. By posting these kinds of videos, the band plays up their image as a genuine rock package - with a modern edge, because they're web-savvy.

The band's MySpace puts the music and the records at the fore. The first thing seen upon visiting is the band logo represented in large proportions, connoting an image of scale and importance that an indie band like The Auteur might not otherwise be able to connote so immediately.



Surrounding the page are tiled photographs of the band hanging out and mucking around. This, again, appeals very much to the target audience of (Predominately) young adults and teens. Scattered in amongst these pictures are photographs of the band's instruments, teasing that where the band goes, rock follows.

The MySpace page allows fans and potential fans to sample the band's latest music and provides links to buy both it and band merchandise. Additionally, the page promotes the band member's Twitter pages (Promoting fan interaction with the band themselves, creating a friendly, approachable image) and encourages fans to get involved with grass roots efforts to promote the band (Often referred to as "Street Teaming" in Pop Music industry parlance).

The design of the MySpace Page is understated other than the large logo and the scattered photographs behind the main content. It uses a plain but attractive blue/black on white design. This use of simple colour pallets is generically conventional for rock band promotions, as labels tend to use a specific set of 3-4 colours to represent a band's image.

The band's Facebook page is significantly smaller in terms of followers ("Fans" in Facebook parlance, "Friends" in MySpace's). However, this is not entirely a disadvantage, as Facebook Fans are more likely to recommend things they see on the band's page to their friends, as Facebook has built-in sharing features.



The Facebook does allow the sampling of tracks, but is used mostly to communicate with the band's core following, promoting events the band are playing live & so on, as well as supplying the fans with a healthy supply of pictures to get excited about.

In designing our website, we will take some cues from the band's existing web presence. For example, the site will promote fan interaction and will put the band's content and performances at centre stage. This strategy is the best for connecting with the market of teens and young adults, who tend to be more web-savvy and prefer to learn about music through the internet (And usually purchase music this way as well - af act which aids bands like The Auteur as digital downloaders are more likely to make impulse music buys).

Additional Dialogue

After looking at our audience feedback we decided to add some extra dialogue to the opening narrative sequence. We decided to do this because the feedback suggested that the opening was too quiet and this made it boring.

The dialogue will be added to the third scene in the sequence to flesh out the narrative of the couple having issues & to explain more clearly why the girl decides to slap the singer & leave.

We will also be adding some sound effects to the first part of the sequence to explain why the singer leaves. We may also add an audible sigh to make the girl's reaction clearer.

We will be recording the dialogue sometime next week.

Plans for Stylistic Effects

In order to better differentiate between the narrative and performance scenes in our video, we have decided to apply spcific and unique titling & effects to each. We took our inspiration for these from both research into videos aimed at our target demographic (Males, predominately teens & young men).

The first effect we are applying is to the performance sequence. This was filmed using "guerilla camerwork", which refers to a style of shooting designed to mimic the style of video produced by untrained videographers - eg. home movies and other no-professional videos. To accentuate the effect of this shooting style, we have chroma keyed in a custom-made video camera effect.

This effect features the kinds of graphics usually seen on a camcorder viewfinder or screen, such as a battery meter, date & frame indicator. This accentuates the impression that the band are an idnependent group of freinds who are just "jamming" in their attic for fun - which matches up with their character profile.

As for the narrative, we have decided to include titling & other text effects throughout in order to help the audience better follow the narrative. These captions & so on will be styled after a comic book, as these are a popular medium with our target demographic, and we feel the slightly comedic style created by doing this will strike a chord with our audience - to test this, we will be conducting a poll.

Both of these effects have been used in videos aimed at the same demographic as ours. This Eminem video, for example, whilst for a different genre of music, is also aimed at teenage boys and young adult males. Additionally, the Rap and Pop/Rock genres have, to some extent, shared origins in separate (Though related) youth rebellion movements.

Video Second Cut

This is the second cut of the video, which I'm making available so we can gain some audience feedback ahead of making the finishing touches. Transitions are near-final, as is the editing & timing. We have cut the opening scene for time. Captions and titling are still missing, as we're waiting until the final cut to add these.

Audience Feedback on the Rough Cut

We showed our rough cut video to our media class and asked for their opinions. We collected a list of good points, bad points and points of which to improve on.

Good:
- Use of camera shots/angles
- Balance of both narrative and performace scenes
- Colour tinting
- Correct costumes
- Entertainign and correct facial expressions

Bad:
- Lip syncing
- Intro is too long
- Didn't understand the intro
- Drum syncing
- Dark lighting in the attic
- Should have slapped Lewis harder

Improvements:
- Cut down the introduction
- Add or change the colour effects (one for the performance, one for the narrative)
- Sound dubbing

Video Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of the video, which I'm making available so we can gain some audience feedback ahead of making the finishing touches. Most transitions are missing, some of the edits are work in progress and some of the audio cuts need some modifications. Additionally, at least 1 instance of onscreen text is missing.

Lab records moodboard

This moodboard features some of the bands from Lab Records. It show there is a cohesive style across the label, especially in the clothing. The clothing the artists wear is derived from both emo and indie styles and we will dress our charactors in similar clothing when we record the video. This helps create a style which is relateable and understandable to the audience, as they can see what types of clothing the bands wear which generally has connotations about the music they make.

Lab Records

Lab records began as a Blackpool based promotions company in 2006, after working with some of the bands from the Blackpool scene they formed a record company. After the first release in 2007 it quickly began to sign rising bands from the North of the UK.

The Blackpool scene can be identified with other seaside towns scenes (such as Brighton-home town of The Auteur) with feelings of isolation and desolation. The themes often include 'Getting out of this town', or the melancholy of the cities. Where the city becomes like a prison to the artists or the youth from the area. Lab is an independent label and represents some rising bands, in the rock or pop genres.


In May 2009, Lab Records moved to Salford, the city responsible for bands such as Joy Division or the influential Factory Records. Manchester is famous for the 'Madchester' scene of the late 80's and early 90's, and is also famous for musical successes such as Oasis, Stone Roses, and The Smiths who have had a huge influence on the 'emo' scene, which derives the emotional, intelligent lyrics from Morrisey, who wrote about desolation and isolation. Videos by The Smiths are known for featuring close and personal live performances, with the camera close to the musicians, and the fans are always featured. In our video we will use similar themes of the close shots and movement to create a feel of seeing the band live.


This will link to our video as we will use other videos to influence the composition etc. The idea of a narrative based video with clips of performance is often used in rock and pop genres. The narrative will feature a mostly implied story, without much speech, and with the performance scenes becoming part of the narrative, as well as being intertwined with narrative elsewhere. The narrative is based mainly on the lyrics, we have used a vignette effect to make it seem darker and moodier. This is influenced by bands such as The Smiths who used similar effects in most of their promotional photos, as shown in the above photo of Morrissey.


Bands they have signed:

• The Auteur
• The Morning Of
• Mimi Soya
  
• Lost On Campus
• He Is Legend
• Adelaide
• Eat Sleep Attack
• Pegasus Bridge
• Lost On Landing

• Blitz Kids

History of The Auteur

The Auteur are a pop-punk/alternative band who formed in 2007 members of Brighton based screamo band 'Go&Comeback' (who were previously known as 'Angels Cry' and were active from 2005 till 2007), who had previously released an EP and toured Europe. The Auteur have toured the UK and have released their own EP ('Nightcap' in 2009) The first single is 'Hey! Watch This'. In 2008 they signed to Lab Records, an Indie label.

The Auteur are made up of:

• Alex Rumble-Guitar and Vocals




• Julian Bowen-Drums




• Kerry Williams-Bass




• Kev Deverick-Guitar

New Mood Board

Animatic

This is the Animatic to our video. I have taken Amy's illustrations from the storyboard and, with discussions between all three of us, edited them together with the song to show how we plan on timing the shots.

Script

This is the final (Last revision 2/12/2009) Story Script we are using for our video. It guides us in terms of the narrative and will feed into the shooting script and the second (More detailed) Storyboard and Animatic.

Download here

Storyboard

This is our new storyboard, as drawn by Amy Neumann.

Hey Watch This lyrics

I saw a broken reflection
A mirror with your face in
I saw a broken reflection
A mirror with your face in
Something's wrong
We've built this up
We built this up
Now we've seen this fall down faster before now
Your lips on mine won't stay
We'll never get this close now
In his arms you'll be
So place your hands to where I cannot see them
Don't breathe your words to me
I'm sick of worthless excuses
I'm sick of the way you speak
Lets pick this up
And remind ourselves that it's over
I guess this is my farewell
Your lips on mine won't stay
We'll never get this close now
In his arms you'll be
So place your hands to where I cannot see them
Don't breathe your words to me
I saw a broken reflection
A mirror with your face in
Let's pick this up
And remind ourselves that its over
I guess this is my farewell
I saw a broken reflection
A mirror with your face in
Let's pick this up
And remind ourselves that its over
I guess this is my farewell
Your lips on mine won't stay
We'll never get this close now
In his arms you'll be
So place your hands to where I cannot see them

Song Change

Due to the amount of work and the budget required to pull off a music video to the correct standard, it simply isn't possible for us to achieve.

The Michael Jackson/Fall Out Boy song idea, seemed good at the time, but now we are on our way into the planning process, we can see how many complications and issues there are.

We have therefore chosen a new song: 'Hey watch this' by The Auteur. They are of a similar genre to Fall Out Boy as so we do not need to change much when it comes to genre, mise-en-scene or mood boards.

This video will be narrative based with the band acting as characters. We will try to add in a few scenes of performance, because that is what the type of genre expects.