4 key choices - track

After narrowing our song choices down to three final tracks, we decided on fast in my car by paramore for multiple reasons. we couldn't do the nina simone track feeling good because none of us would have been able to capture the soul and age of her voice as we all look too young and inexperienced and we couldn't do the bastille track no scrubs because bastille's singer has such a distinctive voice and the song was too slow to make interesting; we didn't want to bore our audience.
fast in my car is upbeat and fun and by choosing this song we managed to make our genre different from the original song: paramore fall under the 'rock' genre but by listening to the song we made our band electro-alternative. the song is also different than anyone else's track choice in our year.

4 key choices - artist

After choosing the song we had to come up with an artist. we decided to be a band rather than a singer as most groups have chosen a solo musician or single-genre group and this would be something fresh and different. our band is also mixed-genre which we think would be our unique selling point - two females and two males.
We have instructions to stray as far away from paramore's image as we possibly can. the first thing that we changed is our genre: instead of being a female-fronted rock band, we chose a female-fronted electro-alternative band as our song choice involves a lot of electronic sounds such as the synthesizer at the beginning.
Ellie will be the vocalist, I will be the guitarist, Jonathan the bassist and Zahra the drummer. we all have to have a different personality or 'role' in the band. i have chosen to be the kooky, almost ditzy frontwoman who doesn't really take anything too seriously.

4 key choices - audience

Primary audience: rock fans. Due to the punk rock song we have gone with we should hopefully draw in a crowd of rock fans to our band as it helps fit in to their favoured music genre.

Secondary audience: teenagers. Due to the fact that we are a new and modern band and the majority of us are teenagers or young adults we should appeal to that demographic as well as having a punkie image that will again appeal to certain teenagers.

4 key choices - record company

We chose Dirty Hit as our record label as they have a habit of taking on small and independent bands and do well in promoting them.

Other artists they work with include little comets, the 1975 and benjamin francis leftwich.

Group Strengths & Obstacles

During our recent efforts at filming it has become clear of the obstacles that our group is going to have to overcome during the production of our music video. A major obstacle that was apparent to us all even before filming was the fact that we do not have many free days to film between us as in one week we might only get two or three days to film as other people have prior commitments such as work or family events. 

Another obstacle that our group has also had to deal with was the schedules of locations. As a majority of locations we have filmed long scenes in, are apart of the school so there is only a certain amount of time that they can let us use their departments.

However through all of this our group has been doing well and is progressing nicely, as even though we only had a limited time in filming per day will still aim to give our all and put in a huge amount of effort when in front of the camera and make sure to get the best possible take we can to further help our video. As well as this I think that our group is doing very well in keeping on top of our blogs as we are on target in reaching 100 posts by the end of the year. Another strength of our group is our editing as seen in our first draft we used various effects and cuts to produce a promising first draft. 

Overall I am confident that we will make an enjoyable and well-made music video.

Fast in my Car- First Draft

 

Here is a rough draft of our music video that helps to show our progression in making our media production. In this segment of footage we have used various angles such as deep shots, high camera angles, as well as wide shots. We also used various effects throughout the video such as black & white colouring and will be adding more in our final production.

Rough of Alleyway's Website

This is the rough plan for our website that Ellie drafted up for us. As you can see it features a circular design in front of a pitch black background to highlight it as well as bright and bold colours. The website also contains various different areas that will have various sources of information for our views including merchandise, social media of the band, touring dates as well as a bio about all the different members of the band which we though was a nice touch. There are also several links littered around the website that will lead you to places like our  bands iTunes page as well as our Twitter and Facebook profiles.

 

Shooting Schedule

 

Here as we can this is the shooting schedule for the first 4 days of our shooting for our music video. This schedule that clealry list all the performance shots and props that we will be used in our filming.

We made sure to make this schedule as inticate as possiable so as to make sure we are on time for filming what days we have to be on set and what we are doing while we are there.

Jonathan's Image

As we can Jonathan's iamge for a band is very trendy with brand new cloths mixed with old school classics such as black van's for his shoes. By wearing this outfit Jonathan easily pieces togehter with the trendy and new wave image that our band is going with.

Zahra's Image

This is the style that Zahra will be going with in our band for which is a modern and colourful one this will help her fit into the bands image which is a new era and trendy look.

My Image

 

These are the costumes that I will be wearing for the majority of our music video as it keeps in touch with the style and audience that our band is going for which is modern and trendy.

Evidence of Editing

Here we can see Jonathan hard at work editing our footage that we filmed in the drama studio as well as additonal footage that we filmed in the recording studio

Evidence of Filming

 

 

Here in this video you can see how we used several effects such as strobe lighting to help make our music video as well as making sure we put in lots of energy when we performed in front of the camera which we hope will look good and realistic when we began editing.

Evidence of filming

 

Here as we can see are photos taken of all of our group as with begin setting up for and starring in our music video. We created a set by utilising local instruments that we were allowed to borrow as well as several rolls of fairylights to help create ambiance. Including this we put up several industial lights and even used strobe lighting to help create an even more intense video this was all enchanced by having a white sheet as the back drop for our video which helped us all stand out.

Photoshoot 3

 

 

These are the photos that we took for our 3rd photoshoot which were on set of our music video we choose to take additional photos here as the backdrop would be perfect for our bands image as well as giving fans some behind the scenes hints about our upcoming music video.

inspiration - video

Here are two shots from Mumford & Sons and Tonight Alive both of who use wide camera angles to encapsulate all the band members into the scene to show how they are all equal and its not just the singer. This idea is something that we will keep in mind when filming our music video and we hope to emulate this style.

Prop List

These are the props that we are going to use in the production of our music video.
1. instruments - guitar, bass, drums and a microphone - recording studio/drama studio performing shots
2. balloons - drama studio performing shots
3. glow sticks (to spell out 'alleyways') - drama studio performing shots
4. bubble guns x4 - Dom's garden filler shots
5. bonfire pit - Dom's garden filler shots/performing shots
6. gopro - Dom's car performing shots
7. blankets - Dom's garden filler shots/performing shots
8. disco ball - drama studio performing shots
9. trolley? - street filler shots/performing shots
10. fairylights, lamps - drama studio performing shots

Font Research

we looked on the website myfonts in preparation for creating our website. at first we looked at fonts which were straight, clean and simple to embrace the 'electronic' side of our music. the following were fonts that we found appealing and appropriate:

they all feature straight lines and bold, separated letters and are all either completely in lowercase or completely in uppercase. then, we toyed with the idea of our font having a fun, less structured, grungier aesthetic to it, to embrace our alternative, carefree side. we selected the following:

we kept the idea that all of the letters should be in either upper or lowercase. however we finally found a font that all of us agreed, unanimously, on. this font would fall under the first category of clean-cut, straight and appropriate for electronic music. we think it stands out and is individual and versatile, like our band.

Evidence of Filming

 

 

Here we can see more evience of our group filming for the second time inside a recording studio to show how our band is creating our song. We decided to be adventrous in our filming so decided to use high/aerial shots as well as reflective mirror shots while we all played our instruments. 

Peer Evaluation

This is our feedback from the Alleyways presentation we did together showing the progression and ideas of our band.

What our peers think went well- The groups that watched our presentation commented upon how close we all seemed as a band and how we were believable as a group. They also thought that the idea of a fun and upbeat song was a good plan for our music video task. They also believed how we had a uniqueness about our band that helped us stand out by being comprised of two girls and two boys.

What our peers thought could be better- The other groups did not have many criticisms about the style of our band but they did have concerns over the story of our music video and its direction but did like the song itself.

Fast In My Car- Steel-O-Matic

Fast In My Car- Steel-O-Matic

The video features short clips from the following music videos (in order of appearance):

Lights - Portal
Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine?
The 1975 - Girls
Tigers Jaw - Hum
Circa Waves - Stuck In My Teeth
Moose Blood - Boston
Marmozets - Move, Shake, Hide
Lana Del Rey - Born To Die
Moose Blood - I Hope You're Missing Me
The 1975 - Sex (EP Version)
Milk Teeth - Vitamins
Tonight Alive - Come Home
My Chemical Romance - Teenagers
Tonight Alive - Starlight

By creating this moving moodboard it has helped us as a group to picture what our upcoming

music video will look like and gives us inspiring ideas about what kind of things we should record for 'Fast in my Car'.

Photos On Set

These photos show us all on set and behind the scenes filming our music video 'Fast In My Car' these photos help to show how everyone is doing their part with Zahra filming, Dom and John acting and Ellie taking the pictures for the day. We will also utilizes these photos by uploading them on our social media accounts as a 'behind the scenes' sneak-peak of our up coming video to help attract mystery and potential fans.

Song Permission Letter

 

This a letter that I have written and sent to Fueled By Ramen the label that represents Paramore. By sending this letter we ask for persmission to see if we can it will be acceptable to use their song

'Fast In My Car' in our A level music video.

Level 4 Student Videos

I think this groups idea was well thought out and used effective cuts with good coustums to help sell their story but in some parts it was quite boring as they spent to much time focusing on the band and the singers face instead of focusing a lot more on the story of the song. So it could not truly decided wheather to be a perfomance or narative piece seeing this I will be sure not to allow this to happen to our group.

I think that this groups final video is very well done with an excellent use of props such as their instruments and cool use of coloured smoke bombs although this group again used numerous shoots of the band they used numerous quick cuts to different band members to keep it fresh and made sure not to focus on anyone person for to long.

This groups final music video was quite intresting by using a psycodalic styled video occumpided by a collideascope camera angle the use of editing and post production was ustilised to its fullist for this music video. However there were some errors in editing but these were few and far between. The use of crazy coustumes and props was also appreciated to liven the video up even more. Overall it was a very eye-cathcing and colourful video.

Album Covers

Foo Fighters- Wasting Light

This is a cool and neon option for our bands album cover by blending all of our artists faces together shows how we are a unifying band. As well as this by using such bright and neon colours for our album cover helps mirror our bands style which is a bold and colourful one. By mixing this with a black background it helps to highlight our bright colours.

Oasis- (What's The Story) Morning Glory?

Another potential option for our bands cover is by doing simple street shoot or rather a shoot of an alleyway as this obviously fits in with our self titled albums name 'alleways' and so would make perfect sense for us to use such an image. 

Watsky- Cardboard Castles

Another interesting idea that our band can go with is a creative and geometric one. By choosing to use bright colours and big bold shapes to help our band stand out and be notice, Watsky's album might be good inspiration.