Screening Feedback

Here are a sample of the feedback that we recieved from our screening:
Age: 18
Gender: Male
What genre do you think the band belong to? Why?
80s Indie stereotypical bassist with Afro/guitar
What venues do you think the band would play at? Why?
Jazz club, bars, massive stadiums- Hammersmith
What bands/artists do you think they'd support? Why?
Maroon 5, Duran Duran
How would you describe the lead singer?
Blonde? Cool? Rapist?
What do you think happens in the narrative?
Kissing, lots of kissing
What do you think is the relationship between the characters?
Heated
Does it look like a music video? Why?
Yes. It is cool.
Do you like it? Why?
Yes. I'm in it.

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Age: 17
Gender: Male
What genre do you think the band belong to? Why?
Rock/Indie, 80s-style
What venues do you think the band would play at? Why?
e.g. Hammersmith Apollo, moderate sized venue
What bands/artists do you think they'd support? Why?
any mainstream 80s-90s indie band (British)
How would you describe the lead singer?
Moody/blonde
What do you think happens in the narrative?
Love
What do you think is the relationship between the characters?
Girl/boy friend
Does it look like a music video? Why?
Yes, switches between studio and black and white narrative story.
Do you like it? Why?
Yes, looks well-made but edgy, gritty.

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Age: 16
Gender: Female
What genre do you think the band belong to? Why?
80s rock; drum machines, electronic effects
What venues do you think the band would play at? Why?
Bars
What bands/artists do you think they'd support? Why?
Other 80s bands
How would you describe the lead singer?
Blonde
What do you think happens in the narrative?
A girl breaks up with a guy but she wants to get some last-time action before breaking his heart.
What do you think is the relationship between the characters?
PAST LOVERS
Does it look like a music video? Why?
Yes... music. And performing. With a storyline.
Do you like it? Why?
Yes because it looks professional. But I didn't like the song. OR the kissing, I was shocked.

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Angela

Myspace

http://www.myspace.com/thescarlettpimpernells

Having a few issues with 'copyright infringement' on myspace when uploading our song. I would try again but i'm worried that myspace will just delete us altogether...

So now I'm working on a 'customised' top friend list

...and of course the rest of the myspace

-cat

First attempt at MySpace layout

This is the first layout knocked up in a preliminary fashion by Luke:



Group thoughts:

• too personal/individual- e.g. not conventional of band myspaces, and looks like the myspace page of an individual.
• We also don't really like the background.

-Angela

Myspace Layout

I've made a rough plan of what I thought could be a good layout and everyone seems to be ok with it, so here it is:

It's pretty conventional, which I think is good. It's also simple and easy to navigate.

-Angela

MORE PHOTOS..? =]

-cat (and james)

This is really cool

All we have to do is pull together a bunch of pictures with a cool mix of colours and shove up the contrast and make a collagey, scrap booky effect which would look amazing.
-james

Photo Inspiration

Recently we've been trying to decide what look we're going for as a band i.e. our band image. We've decided we definitely don't want to look indie and are instead going to try and create a really arty, post-modern (and as James said earlier pretentious - see earlier post) inspired look.
I've been doing some research into bands who've done this and have found '3o seconds to mars' to be very influential. (--> also made me aware we need to think really carefully about our band logo)


I think a photo along the line of this would suit our band image very well, not least because it's arty and bot indie but because emphasis is placed on the lead singer (Jared Leto) with the other band members in the background which is something to consider when we film (i.e. our lead is meant to be self-centered, arrogant etc). It is also important to remember that if we're clever about it, we can fake thing for example the bed in the photo - all we'd need is a throw and some tables or boxes. This could even be done somewhere like the drama block as the lighting there is amzing. I've realised lighting is very, VERY important after seeing some of ous slightly grainy, narrative shots.

Others


I think the outdoor location and wintery attire the band are wearing works really well in making them seem quite laid back and easy to identify with whilst retaining a professional air.

I like how the main focus is on the lead singer leaning forward toward the camera with the other band members sitting in the background. The colours used teamed with the high contrast and lighting makes the shot look professional.

-Cat

The loverly band

When thinking about the photoshoot, the album cover, and how everything ties into the music video, we had to create a story for the band and the members of the band. We desided that our lead singer was goign to be a really pretentious, wannabe singer-cum-actor-cum-songwriter-cum-artist-cum-director, so we desided that it would be him who directed the music video, he starred in it and he sings in the band. The photoshoot will be very reflective of the band itself as it would have been planned by the singer, so we want it to be very post modern, aka weird for the sake of weird.

Planning for ending sequence shots & edits (incl. storyboarding)

Quick Storyboard of a shot sequence (near the end):

-The actual sequence used was slightly different to this, e.g. with more cutaways to the performance.

-Angela

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Storyboard of the intimate instrumental section

Try not to laugh =)

-cat

Plans for the Weekend

Photo shoot on sunday - hamsted heath or hilly fields?

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After much deliberation, we've decided we're going to go for hilly fields as it's more convenient and if there are any weather problems we won't have to do the 1 1/2 hour trek home. Means we have longer to get really good shots rather than rushing...

-Cat

Reckie

Here are some of the photos from the reckie that James mentioned.

The tunnel of trees:

This location was better the day before this because the leaves were oranger and the weather was nicer. I think (and James agrees) (and I think everyone else now) that it is too urban and rather dull. If we were going to go for a more rural look (as in the picture from James' post below) then epping forest on a good day would probably bring some good photos. At the right time of the day the lighting could look really good.

A bridge:


I like the perspective on this bridge. The shots are from different ends of the bridge from low angles. We could even use a wide angle lense to distort the band if they stood in the foreground- think it could be interesting.

- Angela

Album Photoshoot

Me and Angie were going to put together a mood-board thingy, for how we thought the photos and image for the band should be. But then I realised we only had two pictures that sumed up the feeling. Firstly, the first thing we wanted to avoid was an 'Indie' image. If our pictures made the band look like an indie band, we would have failed media. We wanted them to look modern, but without following the current trend and just blending into the indie scene. A band that managed to do this quite well are Take-That. They have an image that is modern and mature, and it does not look like they are trying too hard.We also took inspiration from Mark Owen as an indivual for the styling for the lead singer. He is slightly more 'rock and roll' than the rest of the guys but he still fits into the image. I think it would be a bad idea to try and portray our lead singer as all sophisticated and mature because firstly it would be pretty boring, and everyone is fed up with moody, pouty front men; secondly my new peircing doesn't exactly ooze sophistication and thirdly I probably look like the youngest in the band. I think if the lead singer was wearing just a pair of slim dark jeans with a v-neck t-shirt and a massive chunky scarf, like in this picture, it could work.

One thing that me Angela discussed was the location, we don't think it should be set in an urban location, mainly because that'll make it look like a london indie band. Another thing we have avoid is 'kids in the park' syndrome, as put by Angela. We really thought we should use the fact that it is autumn and all the outdoor colours are amazing. Angie is going on a reckie today to get some pictures of a possible location. The most important thing we believe to avoid looking like complete idiots is, on the shoot, not to look set-up in anyway. If you take 4 guys and say 'pose and look cool' they will look like complete mugs. So we think we should just give Cat and Angie a camera each and spend the day taking pictures of the band interacting and looking natural. Maybe messing messing around with leaves and chatting. We need to remember that the image in the video isn't necessarily the band's image, they are a young band of four guys, they arent going to be pouting pouting all day long in real life. An image that we really liked was this one that we came across when browsing through bands on myspace:

The colours look amazing, and they look like a young band and there is nothing unatural or 'set-up' about it. I dont have a clue who the band are, but just from looking at this picture, I get a very similar feel to how I imagine our band to be.

love James

Update

Today me and james made quite a lot of progress with our video i.e. we put in most of the narrative and wrote a list of all our problematic shots which we're going to stick up next to our edit suite so everyone can see it and edit
However, we've noticed that there are some parts of our video that are quite bare and some of the footage we have just doesn't work. Therefore we may have to reshoot a few ONLY a few bits of james and some of end narrative...

-Cat

Myspace

We (luke and cat) made our myspace just now...

Things to think about
Where we'd play our shows
Background ideas

loveeeee cat

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ps here's the link

www.myspace.com/thescarlettpimpernells

xxluke

Group photo anyone?

Love James

Friday

Just had a look at the exhibition times and it says it only runs from 10 until 6. Seeing as we're filming in the drama block after school that means we might not be able to make it

...If this is the case, seeing as me and james will be dressed up already, we could go from school and get the rest of our narrative shots done????
-Cat

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Oh no, this is a bit sucky. I agreee. =)

-Angela

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Guys, we cant go to the exhibition cos it finishes at 5 and we got loads of filming to do tonight. We will be seeing some pictures that people will be takign for us though.

Love James

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boo, that's irritating, it sounds super helpful

xx luke

Shoots

We have two shoots coming up after school today and on friday. The focus of todays shoot is to get millions of close ups from different angles with direct address. The aim of fridays shoot is to get the entire performace with just the singer going through different emotions such as anger, sorrow, passion etc. We have known for a while that we needed more close ups and it has been hard to make much progress in the editing suite without these shots. We have a complete performance bed that has some sections that we love and some that we hate. We have put in some of the narrative, but we need to wait until friday before we get the shots to link the performance to the narrative.

James
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We also (possibly) need some of the female character in the drama block and the CU abstract shots of hands etc
-Cat