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