Album cover design

(27.01.10)


Today we planned our album cover design. I decided that it would be a good idea to do a random shot, as Kate Nash seems to do in her pictures. I plan to have the artist doing the pose I have shown in my album design, as this is a pose she frequently does in her shots. Although this is not the pose that may fit with the song we are doing, as it is an album cover, it fits with how Kate Nash represents herself, as she seems to come across quite cheeky. Which I hope will come across in the actual album cover once I have done my picture.

Planning our story to the lyrics

(25.01.2010)

Today we planned our story with each line of 'Nicest Thing'.

We felt that this would be a good idea to do so that we know what we are filming for each line, as from previous experiences we know that it is extremely difficult to fill up each line if you do not have a solid plan, we both decided that this plan is not for definite, as once we look at our locations they may change, but the we will change the plan with them once we have decided on our locations that we are going to film at.

Further research

(18.01.2010)

Today we researched how Kate Nash presents herself in her pictures, and what sort of attitude she gives off in her poses, some artists show a type of 'cocky' attitude in their pictures, through their expressions and their positioning, so far we were under the impression from Kate Nash's songs, such as Foundations, Mouthwash and Nicest thing, that she was quite down to earth.

After researching through her pictures we put together an A4 page worth of her pictures together, to try and give us an idea of the way she is, here it is:

After looking at her pictures we decided that our impressions of Kate Nash were correct and that she seems to be very down to earth, and its almost as if she does not think of herself as an artist, and that she knows she is just a regular person doing a job that she loves. Her shots are not glamourous and appear not to be airbrushed as other stars are, and she seems really genuine in her photos, laughing, pulling silly faces and just having a good time. We decided that this could be an approach we could use to our album cover, but will look more into this soon.

Planning our Video

(15.01.2010)


Today we decided that we needed to make some definite decisions for our video so that we could begin to research more about Kate Nash and her appearances in her videos, to get the way she and her songs represent her.

Firstly we decided on our locations.
- We decided that as the song we have chosen is a love story, our video should be shot in two houses, the artist's house, and the boy she is in love with, to demonstrate the separation she feels. Also, showing the separation in their lives, but also the similarity.
- Our second location we decided would be to hopefully use the drama studio in our school, as Chris does the lighting for the school plays we thought that we could blacken the drama studio out and put one spot light on, and have instruments playing in that spot light for a delicate touch to the song as it is quite a delicate song and the subject it is on is delicate also. We also decided after listening to the instrumentals in the song that a guitar and a violin would be the instruments we would film.

Secondly, we decided our characters.
We decided it would be just one girl and one boy, we thought about bringing other characters in but decided it would be best just to use the two characters so that we could really show its about them, and not about any other character involvement whatsoever.

Thirdly, we decided on our genre.
Fitting with the song, we decided that we would base it obviously, on romance. Based on the girl character in love with the male character, and trying to get across just how much she loves him.

Fourthly, we discussed our camera shots we would use.
We decided that we would need to use a wide range of shots to have some variety in our video, including close-ups to get the emotion across from when the artist is singing.
We also decided to do some medium close-ups when we are filming a holding hands scene, to try and demonstrate love and show the closeness that the artist wished she had with the boy.
We also decided to shoot some mirror scenes, perhaps with the guitar playing.

Fifthly, we decided how we would go about our editing.
We decided it would be best to limit the special effects due to the pace of the song, as the point that is coming across in the song is slow and meaningful, so special effects may take away the focus of the song.
We also decided that we would focus more on getting lip syncing right rather than worrying about special effects.

Asking the artist for permission

(14.01.2010)

This is evidence of us asking Kate Nash permission to use her song for our video.

Kate Nash - Nicest Thing

(11.01.10)
Our main reason for choosing this song is that it is easy to tell a story to, as it is a love story and we can get a couple to act it out, with the main feature being the girl, miming certain lines etc. We thought it would be a perfect video to shoot as we could incorporate it with the spring season on the way, and show it as a summer romance, but one that really does mean something.
Also, there is no video to this song, therefore we have nothing to go by and it will completely be our own work, without any influence from anything else.


As you can see in the spider diagram, we have a few ideas already about what we want to do with the video, since taking this picture we have come up with more ideas but in the next lesson we need to take another picture of it to post on here.

Research
I thought it would be good, as there is no video to this song, to research a song that I felt was in the same genre, so we could see how that video told a story.
Katy Perry - Thinking of you, is a song that is similar in telling the story. Assessing the video, we noticed that the main feature was the artist herself, but also, there was a story to the video, which was what we wanted to do too. Looking at this we were confident that our video could be a success.


(us researching Katy Perry's video)

Planning process - Next step!

(5/01/10)
In today's lesson, at the beginning we were able to eliminate some songs after thoughts and some research into the lyrics, as you can see there are songs we have crossed out in the spider diagram, unfortunately though, adding more songs as we went along, because after researching some songs last night, it lead us to listening to more songs and coming up with more ideas:



We started to look through my Ipod and then Chris asked to listen to Kate Nash - Nicest thing.
As soon as we started listening to it we both realised it would be an excellent song to shoot a videoo to, mixing the lyrics with story telling and also featuring the artist. We were happy to come up with one song from about twenty, and after looking at the other songs, we decided it was the best idea.

Summary of planning process so far

(4/01/10)
In today's lesson we sorted out the groups we wanted to go in, myself & Chris made a group of our own.
Today we made a spider diagram of what songs we potentially think would be good ideas for our media videos. Here it is:


A few of the song ideas we came up with were:

Nickelback - Photograph - we thought this could be a good song because the lyrics tell a story and we could develop that story in our video.

Busted - What I go to school for - we also thought this would be a good video to shoot and a fun story to tell, however we both know the original video pretty well, and thought it would be too risky because it would be easier to copy it as the ideas are already in our heads, so therefore may not be able to come up with anything original.

In today's lesson we decided it would be too hard to discuss what songs we could definitely do without actually researching the lyrics and the videos, and as we didn't have any laptops or computers with us, so we're going to research the other songs and in the next lesson we are going to try and eliminate more song choices.

A2 Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include music promotion video, together with two of the three options:

- a website homepage for the band
- a cover
- a magazine advert