Back Cover Image Completed

As my music genre is folk rock I decided that I wanted to use wood etchings in my digipak. After a few days work I have finally completed the final draft of the image:

Our Current State In Production

Now we have got our narrative and part of our performance out of the way we are going to make the decision on what we should ideally be doing next as we have completed our schedule. As we are currently not satisfied with our performance shots and we'd like to get some shots in of a higher quality from different angles. We would also like to get some drum shots as we encountered some problems with getting drums in our music video. An obstacle that we still have yet to overcome.

 In terms of our filming we have been very prepared so far, we checked the weather report and planned our day in order to get our stuff. We are planning to film the last of our footage by January and we will need to prep until then to get all the equipment we need.

Breaking Folk Rock Conventions

We have decided to break conventions of Folk Rock, not only in just including a narrative but in attempting to make the music video more light hearted and comical. This is because so far I have been unimpressed with how many folk rock videos lack personality.

We wanted to go against this and take influences in our video from other subgenres of rock. We have done this in our narrative but we are also going to attempt to capture this in our narrative.

In addition to this we are breaking conventions of Folk Rock in having a carribean singer. As folk rock is entirely white dominated amongst it's artists (something very true of rock in general) we have chosen to have a black singer perform in our music video. This was at first not intentional, as he was in fact just the person who mimed the best (he was originally intended to be our bassist) and then we chose to have him as both bassist and singer.

We have decided to use this fact to break the conventions of Folk Rock within our music video.

Narrative Filming Complete

Sunday we successfully completed the filming of our narrative. We filmed James as our living statue stalking a girl through a park.
In addition to this we also filmed a few additional shots as we were unable to decide on whether to end with our tongue in cheek ending or instead take a second twist ending with him in fact stalking multiple women.
We have taken several photographs of our process of painting James:

While 5 hours of filming did prove to be very tiring however everything went well without any problems.

Tom Waits - Hold On (Music Video Analysis)

This is the second Tom Wait's video I plan to analyse as I feel this is a more typical example of Folk Rock music videos.

All aspects of the video have an old time filter on it, this could possibly . The video is almost entirely performance based with only a few brief narrative shots. This is reflecting his age but also the age of the style of music he is playing with Folk music having an extensive history.

The video is very performance heavy with him performing in different locations with different guitars. He stands very still while playing staying in one spot only moving his arms. This could be seen as reflecting his age which Tom Waits embraces.  He is represented in his usual manner of being dressed in a suit with a hat.

What little narrative there is involves a women in a car driving across America with no clear goal.

Tom Waits - Hell Broke Luce (Music Video Anaylsis)

Tom Wait is a musician who often borders on Folk Rock however he is perhaps better known as an experimental rock musician. I have chosen to analyse his video "Hell Broke Luce" for its narrative.
This video has a huge amount of symbolism.

This song is an anti war song, which talks about the real life suicide of anamerican soldier called Jeff Lucey. As such this video has a lot of anti war symbolism, it is also interesting that despite this video being clearly about the real world, the video itself is very surreal and otherworldly.

The core narrative of the video is Tom Waits pulling a house through the desert. This also makes up the performance aspect of the video as Tom is almost always seen with the rope which he is using to tow the house behind him. He travels through the video, towing the house underwater with the submarines fighting and through the desert and even through no mans land. This could be seen as Tom Waits travelling through the history of war, and how regardless of the wars changing, the story of the soldier is always the same. The story of soldiers carrying thoughts of their home (symbolised by Tom Waits pulling his home behind him) trying to make there way through the war.

Tom Waits is also represented in different ways throughout the video.

Similar to folk rock videos, the focus is very often on Tom Waits. However Waits is also telling the story of the video.  While there is no set narrative there is a lot of surreal imagery and this is an example of one of them. He is in a chefs hat with a saucepan as Jeff Lucey was a chef. Which is why Tom Waits is in this attire. Waits in this moment IS Jeff Lucey, and the song is sung from the perspective of Lucey.

Another odd way Tom Waits is represented is wearing a gas mask. This time the reference is to the London Blitz in which people would carry gas masks due to the possibility of gas bombings at any moment.

This is perhaps the boldest image within the video. The symbol on the mans hat is clearly referencing both nazi germany and america. The comparison being made here is that Tom Waits is saying there are similarities between nazi germany and america. He does this by putting the eagle of nazi germany and combining it with the eagle of america and places it on the shield of the american flag.  This is of course a very bold statement to make and it places Tom Waits as being firmly anti-war regardless of the cause.  Soon after the hat ignites. Fire is often shown as a negative image connoting pain, suffering and intense heat. Similar to that of what is felt by the soldiers in iraq which the song is dedicated too.

The general "nailed to the desk" planning a war. he is not shown as a real person instead almost like a cartoon. This dehumanises the generals and instead puts sympathy on the soldiers.

More firm anti-war imagery with a person in a skeleton costume also in an army hat. This is symbolising the death of soldiers albeit not in a grotesque way. The movement of the soldier is also quite disturbing. The way he writhes around is unusual and abstract. This adds to the almost otherworldly tone of the music video.






Tom Waits' video for "Hell Broke Luce" is a very dark surreal anti-war video making a large use of symbolism to convey its meaning. It reflects Tom Waits as an artist who is known for his metaphors and poetic style of song writing.

Explanation of Our Narrative

The narrative of our video begins with our woman walking through the park and passing a living statue. The statues eyes turn (the only bit of movement from which you see throughout the video). We then see her walking through the park and each time she turns she sees the living statue in a different frozen position not far behind her.

Initially she only gets slightly worried and uneasy. She cautiously continues her journey and the statue is found in many unusual spots watching her (behind bushes, walls etc.). While waiting for a bus she spots him frozen by the bus, and she panics and runs away.

As her journey continues and she begins to notice him more and more and she eventually panics more and more. She begins to run frantically away until she trips up. She stumbles to her feet to find him frozen behind her, she screams but then realises that the living statue was in fact only attempting to return her purse (he is frozen with his arm extended holding it).

Blog Update

We have had a few problems deciding when to start filming. This is due to the cast not being ready to film tomorrow and we thought it unfair. In addition to this we were not ready in terms of props and costume either.

So instead we have arranged to get props and costumes ready as well as do a final location scout for our narrative. In the mean time the cast are now currently learning the song to get ready for the video

During tomorrow in the time we are unable to film we're going to painting the costumes if needs be and then we will be ready to film Friday after 6th Form. Then this sunday we shall be filming all our narrative.

BLOG UPDATE: Confirmed Cast / Developing Narrative

Now that we have decided that we're going with the comedic stalking narrative we are trying to develop. We have also organised the cast and they have all confirmed that they will be joining us to film our music video.

The narrative of the video will contain the singer as a living statue in London "stalking" a woman. We do not see him move throughout the video instead we only see him in different locations and positions, we thought this could add comedy to the video. The woman grows increasingly paranoid however it ends up that he was only attempting to give her the purse that she had dropped. To add a comedic twist to the end of the video.

Our performance section of our video will be fairly straightforward performing, in keeping with folk rock music videos.

We are also staying true to the genre in keeping the singer as the focus of the video the whole time even in the narrative. Of course folk rock is limited in terms of its narrative so we have taken what I had seen from Bob Dylan's videos and applied it to our comedic set up.

Here is the video log recording our progress:

Recruiting cast members

We have determined that we only need three band members for our video:
A singer/rhythm guitarist, a bassist and a drummer.
We have sent each actor an email asking them to perform in our video:

This is our default email for the people that we have asked to play bass for our video. We have asked two members, encase one is not able to make it or bails out on us.

Below is an email intended for our guitarist/singer:

At present we are not sure who to ask to be a drummer however we shall be recruiting a drummer within the next two days.

Planning our Narrative / Difficulties with Researching

Thusday 6th


In keeping with our plan we're now planning our narrative and attempting to decide what sort of narrative best fits our video.

The cause for debate among our group is that we are currently not sure whether to include our initial comedic stalking narrative. This is because from our research so far we have not found any folk rock music videos that include a narrative.

Alberta Cross, Jeff Buckley and Bob Dylan are all heavily performances based. The closest we have come to a narrative was in the music video for "The Islander" by Nightwish, however this was a celtic rock song and it was not a true example of a folk rock song or a folk rock artist (Nightwish are a symphonic metal group and the song was not typical of them).

Because of this we have decided to look at other styles of rock and the sort of narratives they include in their music videos. We are going to take a look at pop rock and hard rock for inspiration. Particularly pop rock as their videos tend to lean more towards the humour that we would like to achieve in our video.

We have chosen to take keep our idea of a narrative involving comedic stalking
The narrative will be the following:

Draft Digipak

I have used PicMonkey in conjunction with Open Office to create a draft digipak. I have taken inspiration from the Tom Waits digipak that I analysed in an earlier blog post in terms of colour scheme (a dusty tan colour).

As my genre is perceived to be Folk Rock I have chosen an un-doctored image of a folk rock artist, in this case Jeff Buckley to create an idea of what I want my final digipak to look like.

I have used this image of Buckley:

I chose this image is it has not been photoshopped. Also it has a plain white background which makes it far easier to play around with to make the image my own. I rotated the image and zoomed so his face would take up the entirety of the image. I removed colour from the image, making it a pale sepia tone. I then brushed colour back into the left half of his face to create this effect:

I also put in the name of my artist, Lift Off, implying him to be the lead singer of the band. As there are a large amount of rock bands that only use their front man/lead singer in promotion material, for example Evanescence's Amy Lee, HIM's Ville Valo and Bon Jovi's Jon Bon Jovi. I have chosen to do this because our artist is not a folk artist, they are folk rock artists. As such conventions of rock are still fair to use as it is a hybrid genre.

For our back cover I have looked at traditonal wood etchings, as they have a celtic/folk vibe. I used this wood etching of an owl, as themes of wildlife and animals are common in folk music:

To keep synergy using dustier yellows in colour I chose to do a similar colour to my front cover and I put the track names in, in the same font as the title font, once again, for synergy. 

For our inside panel I have chosen to put in another image of Buckley, as inside panels of Digipaks usually contain an image of the artist again but in a different pose.

For this image I chose to keep synergy by editing it in the same fashion that I edited the digipaks front cover. I once again added sepia tone and then brought  the colour back into the artist but not the background. In this case however I recoloured his whole face.

However when it came to placing in the digipak the shape of the image meant it didn't fit in the frame. So I cropped it down. This cropped version fit much better into the draft:

This is my draft digipak to give me an idea of what my final one should look like. It is so far only missing the inside right where the disc should go. I am so far very pleased with it. It fits the genre of Folk Rock well with its use of sepia and dusty colours

Plan for Filming

As we now know the deadline for filming our music video we have come up with a strict plan that we shall stick to.
We have worked out what times on what days we are available to film and have a loose plan for each day.
We have recorded a video diary entry discussing in brief our plan and what we hope to achieve from it:

VIDEO DIARY

                       

IMAGES OF OUR PLAN

This is our plan for our first four days typed up:

Day 1 - Thursday 6th
Individual Analysis - write ideas of narrative
location

Day 2 -Friday 7th
Lunch - regroup
create a solid narrative
individual analysis  video progress ideas for storyboard

Day 3 - Saturday 9th
Storyboard 1
Individual research and analysis

Day 4 - Sunday 9th
Storyboard 2
Final storyboard

We have only typed up the first four days as these are the immediate things we need to get done in addition to finding the cast. We do not want to focus too much on what lies ahead until a few days prior to it. As we approach the third day we shall be start looking more at the next four days of planning and so on and so forth. Our first four are predominantly about organising and doing the final plan for the video, working on the storyboard and final narrative for the video. Then the later days will be focussed on filming the video.

We have paid careful attention to the time schedule of others, as some of us within the group have other commitments. The first thing we did was find slots when two or more of us were free to get on with production, then we began to choose what days would be used for what.

Day 5 - Monday 10th
We are all free to film our video.

Day 6 - Tuesday 11th
We are free during our media lesson to film

Day 7 - Wednesday 12th
Only Daniel and I will be able to film as Alisha and Renee are on an art trip.

Day 8 - Thursday 13th
Renee is free during 1 and 2.