La la la, relationships...

Author: Amy /

There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.- There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.- Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography. There is a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in our music video. With the video consisting of animation and imagery the photographs and brush tools that we included in our video have a clear relationship with the lyrics. Throughout the video certain lyrics are represented by animated scenes to enhance the lyrics and create and relationship. Also a certain points in the video we have included words and text which reflect certain lyrics and again enhances the importance of the lyrics due to it holding the essence of the narrative.
There is also a clear relationship between the Music and the Visuals. At the beginning of the song the beat is slow and subtle and the imagery and animation that we used worked in relation to this. However as we reach the climax of the song the beat begins to increase and the track gets quicker in speed. Due to this we also enhanced the speed of our animation and also reversed particular parts of animation to show the dramatic change in the music and the visuals. Due to this change there is definitely a clear relationship between the music and the visuals in our music video for the Crookes, Chorus of Fools.

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Audience Feedback

Author: Amy /











Click here to take survey

Due to The Crookes being a young, unsigned band with the pop/indie vibe that they carry i knew that they would have a strong target audience. I believe that the target audience for The Crookes would people aged between 15-30 who have an interest in bands. Due to their 'folk and indie' vibs that the band have i believe that this would also be a strong target audience for the band. I know that knowing your target audience is very important when making a music video and portraying the band. The video has to match the style and theme of the band and their track. This is why we found that using photographs from the 1950s and the sepia tone would be most affective, it works great in combination with the track and should therefore appeal to the bands target audience. To make sure that this was put across i created a small survey to ask my audience wether they thought i did a good job and wether they thought my video was affective.

Here is the feedback that we recieved from the band after they watched our music video:
“We really felt that you managed to capture the essence of our band and what we want to portray in regards to the artistic value. The animation effects really help to reflect the song and we think that the narrative that you have communicated is very effective and fits in with the lyrics. We really like what you have done with the video and it fits in very well with our sound; the narrative really helps to show off our lyrics and especially towards the ending, it adds impact to the music. The music video ties in great with us as a band and you have included our lyrical background through the narrative of the animation. The only criticism would relate to the femininity of the video, but this aspect is what fits with the narrative. Overall we loved the video, good job!”








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Story Boarding...

Author: Amy /

For our video we found it very difficult to plan out step by step how our video was going to flow from section to section. Due to our use of animation opposed to filmed footage creating a set story board was more difficult then expected. As we collected various images and photographs and planned to use the animation tools that were possible on Adobe Premiere Pro we made a basic outline of how our video was going to form. Our track 'Chorus Of Fools' is about a relationship that is dying out and being reformed again; due to this we obviously wanted to portray this as our main theme and by doing this we wanted to use our photographs and animation to tell the story.
Narrative Theories
Todorov is a Bulgarian structuralist, mainly concerned with linguistic who began to produce influential work on narrative from the 1960s onwards. I believe that his theory relates greatly to my video, Chorus of Fools by The Crookes. His theory consists of three parts Equilibrium, Dis-Equilibrium and New-Equilibrium. The Equilibrium is the normal state of the beginning of the text. My video has a clear beginning; the couple are introduced, their love for each other is made very clear by animations such as love hearts and doves. However, as we reach the middle of the song we see the ‘Dis-Equilibrium’ this is when we see a break up in the happy couples relationship. We made this clear by having animation of pictures torn up, rain and clouds (pathetic phallacy) and sad faces. There is then a clear ending ‘New-Equilibrium’ this is when the couple resolve their conflict and their love for each other is rekindled. This is again clearly reinforced by the animations that we used. I believe for these reasons Todorov narrative theory relates greatly to my video.

Story Board
1) Section One- The introduction to the narrative. Due to our video being in the form of narration and the track having a clear story line we wanted to create the feeling of the relationship being a fairytale a 'story'. Due to this aspect we decided to start our video with the opeing of a book named 'The Crookes', with the story 'Chorus Of Fools' this makes the narrative clear and also ties in with The Crookes relationship to Literature. The book is the only film footage that we have but due to the overlapping animation it still works well with the rest of the video being animation.





2. Section Two- this is where the audience is introduced to the couple who feature throughout the music video. As the track progresses the lyrics and visuals match as the couple look back on their past relationship, happy memories of the couple walking down 'Love Lane'.


3. Section Three- this is where we wanted to create the sense of time passing. As the song recalls looking on the past we thought that the animation of a clock would be the most appropriate and effective way of conveying time passing. With the relationship changing, the dove flying across represents the "happy" couple also travelling with time.

4. Section Four- Here is where the couple our at their happiest and strongest, their wedding day. We thought this would be the best, most romantic way to convey the love that the couple used to share. Using cupid as an added symbol of love and using the flowers to create the added mood of passion.


5. Section Five- This is where we see a turn for the worst in the couples relationship. As the lyrics change to reflect negative feelings of the relationship we knew that we had to change the feeling of the visuals too, again to match the visuals with the lyrics. To represent this we used pathetic phallacy; bad weather acting as a warning to a bad storm in the relationship. We also split the photograph in half to act symbolic as the break in the relationship.





6. Section Six- this is the section where the relationship begins to return to how it used to be. As the couple reflect more on the past they see the fun that they used to have, looking back on memories at the beach, with their friends and generally living life together, happy. Again we matched the visuals with the lyrics.





7. Section 7- This is where the couple look back at their childhood memories. When they first fell in love, it acts as the point in which their love for eachother is rekindled.




8. Section Eight- As the track quickens in pace we decided to reverse some of our animition feautured earlier to portray the couple going back on the good times in their relationship and forgetting the past.






9. Section Nine- This is the final part of the video. Here we again finished with the filmed footage of the book, this time it closing with a cliched happy ending. The heart animation representing their rekindled love.

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its all about learning...

Author: Amy /








Throughout or project we have learnt lots of new skills and developed our knowledge. However, i believe that using Adobe Premiere Pro was our biggest challenge, by choosing to create our intire video using the animation from the programme we knew we had a lot to learn! Here are some screen prints of the techniques that we used and the skills we developed whilst using the programme.
Here you can see we used many different techniques:
  • Changing the opacity levels

  • Changing the speed and direction
  • Rotating the animation

  • Changing the scale
  • Changing the path of animation

  • Increasing/decreasing saturation levels

  • Using Four-point key tool

  • Changing key frames

  • Overlapping layers

  • Cutting and cropping animation
  • Using film grains and other overlays


There were many skills and techniques that i developed and as our knowledge of the programme developed our video grew in fluenty.

My own personal skills have greatened so much throughout the music video production work, my main skills that have improved and developed have been using Adobe programmes both Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe Photoshop. From the basics of cutting out images using the magnetic lasoo tool, too animating key frames. Throughout the project using these two particular prgrammes has made me feel much more confident and able and i believe this is apparent in my work. I now have a greater understanding of the process that is involved in Music video production, Research stages, to Planning and the final production stages. I had no idea how much time, effort and hardwork was put into making a music video! Although from the beginning our video was ambitious in our idea to use animation, i never thought it would be this hard! However, the hard work certainly paid off and im very happy with out final video and how much i have learnt.My skills for teamwork has progressed, working well and making sure all ideas were took on board was difficult yet we found a way round it. All members of my group were creative and this is what made our video distinctive and perfect for the Crookes. Once we shared our ideas we came to compromises which worked out the best and made our video effective.

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Media attention...

Author: Amy /

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Animation Vs film footage.

Author: Amy /

After collecting, collecting and collecting photographs and ideas we had to think carefully about the decision to keep the idea of film and animation or to wipe that clean and just have animation. Our main reasoning for the original idea of using animation for the Crookes video was due to their poetical and lyrical background and sound. We had to keep the origins of the band in mind as well as the target audience and genre of the band. As our confidence grew with the use of Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro we decided that we wanted our video to consist only of animation. This allowed us to play with our ideas freely, tell a story using images and also to be unique; just like the indie band themselves. With the song being 'Chorus of Fools' we had a story idea and the lyrics to this song gave us it. With the main idea of the song being about a relationship which has broken and been missed, with hope of returning, we found the use of images and the extra help of brush tools amoungst others, really kept us on track with our narrative. This in turn connected the lyrics with the visuals and we know that this is very important when producing a music video.
Test Footage:







We have used a range of images to test how we will be using key frames and to gain an understanding of building up an image, made out of a variety of other images. It allowed us to play with the effects and just get to grips with the programme and greaten our undertanding of it. We are pleased with the effect of the trial it helped us to see how the programme was going to work, how we would use key frames and how we can overlap layers etc.
The test footage has been very important to us, as we have now gained an understanding of how we will create our own video.

Here i have also included our test fiilmed footage. Due to our use of animation we didnt need much footage at all, however the sort filmed footage we did get we edited and minipulated to how we wanted it on Adobe Premiere Pro. This in turn allowed us to create the effect we wanted to connect with the rest of the animation that we created. Using the sepia tone and an old-grain overlay we were easily able to create this 1950s tone that flows throughout our video.

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Chorus of Fools Music video (8)

Author: Amy /

Chorus Of Fools...(8)
The inspiration from the Maccabees music video 'Tooth Paste Kisses' inspired us by its poetic and fairytale like mood and theme. The Crookes are a very successful band and their main influeneces is due to their early studies of English Language and Literature. In their interview they continually quote that the lyrics and theme of their songs flow from the knowledge and passion that they have as English students.

What inspires you?
Musically.. the above, and i guess as all English Literature students we're pretty inspired by different types of literature.

What are the main themes or topics that arise in your music?
Daniel uses a lot of literary references in the lyrics, the songs are often about fictional people who become the basis for a story. The songs are normally stories opposed to self-indulagent love songs.

'Chorus of fools' is one of the Crookes favourite songs this is due to the poet lyrics and beat which it consists of. This therefore has a massive influence of the band as a whole; lyrics, beat and look. The Crookes are also very family orientated and down to earth.

What’s the origin of your band name?
Well it was mine (Alex) and Daniel's idea really, we lived in Crookes in our first year of university and opposite the road from our accomidation was a sign for 'Crookes' so we went from there really.

Here you can see importance of their home ties and how much it has influenced the band- leading to the bands name. This is a big reason why we have chosen to include family photographs and images of our own and our home roots in our music video. We think that the band would love this idea as it gives background knowledge of the band to the audience.
'Toothpaste Kisses' is a unique video with very different ideas to a traditional music video, so we thought this video production would be appropriate for the Crookes. The style and animation of our music video will evoke the poetic and lyrical vibe that the band has. The huge influence of the band and their poetic and literacal background has inspired us to take this aspect further. The animations will enable us to play around with the images and create a music video which will give The Crookes justice. We will collect images and photographs from the 1950s, we want to collect photographs which have a meaning to us; therefore we will collect photographs from our older generations to add the family background which the Crookes have. By collecting numerous amounts of photoraphs we will use these as our basis to the video. Using Adobe Premiere Pro we will animate our collected photographs. Due to never using this particular programme before we have found experimenting ad learning to use it very enjoyable and have used this project and particular task as another learning kurb. Using affects such as 'overlaying' 'speed/duration' and lighting affects amoungst many others we will create an exciting and poetic video, influenced greatly by the Maccabees video 'Toothpaste kisses'. We want to keep to the cheeky and fun aspect that the Crookes have and 'Chorus of fools' allows us to do this freely as well as telling a narrative; we collected many other images and background images to help us do this, as well as downloading and using Adobe Photoshop 3 brushes and tools. (again reinforcing our skills on the programmes) We want to keep the theme of the 1950s and we will add to this by having the video in the Sepia Tone effect, but making sure we are keeping the true colour of the 1950s photographs which have collected, to keep their authenticity. In certain parts of the music video to again enhance the poetic and lyrical theme we will but emphasis on certain lyrics to make them speak out to the audience.
Schedule
Due to the use of animation we needed to make sure that we collect all our 1950s era photographs by the early December in order to edit them on photoshop to use in our production.
The images need to be cut out within a week of collecting them so we could get started on our music video animation asap.The filmed footaged isn't our main priority at the beginning, however once we collected our images we wanted to get our filmed footage complete so we can begin to structure our video as we needed to know the timing etc of the filmed footage.
Start the editing process: upload song by 18th December, ready for editing in January. Editing was going to take the longest due to us using animation. Due to our lack of previous knowledge of Adobe premiere Pro we knew that the editing was going to last throughout our project. However, once we got to grips with the programme the video came together in time for the end date.
Complete: 5th Februrary 2010
Complete Digipak: 5th March 2010.
Complete Magazine Advert: 2nd April
As we are more conifdent and familiar with the editing process, it will be much faster to complete the edits. Due to having three members in my group we decided that the best way to manage our time and stop people getting restless was to alicate certain jobs. For instance one person would edit the animation, one would edit photographs on photoshop and the other would work on the blog or collect images etc. This worked well and made us as a group work successfully together without any problems. We do not need any actors or cast for the video, as we are not using conventional footage of the band or narrative. We collected images that we needed from ancestors and we also used photoshop brush tools and other images to help us create the correct look for our video.
Locations.
We will need to go to a few locations in order to gather images:Elm StreetTomblandCentre of Norwich, River.
Health & Safety/ Risk Asessment:
Lots of breaks, water and chocolate! due to hours of editing we each took breaks to prevent headaches from the computer screens etc. Other than that our only other issue was to make sure we used the camera equipment correctly.
Risk Assessment, In any music video production it is important to consider the different aspects required in a Health and Safety assessment, making sure all runs smoothly!

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Giving them justice...

Author: Amy /






Due to numerous hours of trying to create the correct video for the band we came to a conclusion that our music video for The Crookes was going to be something very different, a video that could be seen as going against convention and a video that is both poetic and imaginative. Due to the huge inspiration from the Maccabees video 'Toothpaste kisses' we decided that the only way of giving the Crookes poetic and beautifully written song justice was to use imagery as a way of telling a story; a narrative to match the Crookes lyrics.


We began to collect our own personal photographs from our older generations, photographs which came from the 1950s; the era of which the band focus themselves on, by collecting photographs from our families, this again tied in with the theme of family roots and being British. The Crookes as mentioned previously got their band name from the road they were living on when the band formed, a very personal thing. Here are some photographs which we collected:





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