CD Cover Planning

Another important part of the task of creating the band was to design the CD cover of their first album, featuring the song you had made the music video for. The concept of our music video was crime scenes, using photos by the famous 1930s crime scene photographer Arthur Fellig, also known by his alias “Weegee”. So for our CD cover, we thought we would stick with this idea and took stills on the day using this concept.


Arthur Fellig

Copyright Permission Letter

After deciding on the song that we wanted to use for our pop video - "Let's Get Outta Here" by Madina Lake, we needed to get the copyright holders permission to use the song in our production. To do this, we found the copyright holders offices address, and wrote them a letter to ask for permission to use their song.

Below follows the letter that we sent:



Alex Kohnert
Hurtwood House
Holmbury St Mary
Dorking
Surrey
RH5 6NU


Warner Music Group
75 Rockefeller Plaza,
New York, NY
10019 October 6th 2010


Dear Sir or Madam

I am part of a a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. I am writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

‘Let’s Get Outta Here’ by Madina Lake

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely


Alexander Kohnert
Hurtwood House School

Multi Media Campaign

A multimedia campaign is an advertising campaign which uses various media to raise awareness of a brand or product. In our case, our brand was that of our band. The variety of media that can be used is huge, but the main ones are; internet, television, radio, newspaper and magazine. Using shots we took on the day of our shoot, we created several images that could be used in various media. It is important to think about your bands star image and what type of media you are going to be displaying your advert in before you take pictures. For example, a picture for the front cover of a music magazine would be very different from one for an interview in a respected broadsheet newspaper. Richard Dyer says that star image is based on several things and that bands attract fans by being rebellious, anti-establishment or a variety of other concepts which can add to the myth of music stardom. To appeal to certain audiences, each publicity photo would have to contain or reference to different aspects of Dyers concepts of star image.

Below are examples of some of the publicity shots we took:

Shoot Day

Thanks to all our prior planning, our shoot day got off to a good start, with all our cast assembled in the correct costume with the instruments they needed. We then proceeded to set up our camera rig, which consisted of 4 cameras. The camera filming the wide shot was a JVC 1500E and the three others taking close-ups of the various band members were Sony PD170’s. All the cameras were mounted on Vinten tripods which we moved when we needed to take new shots. On the day our team comprised as myself as a camera operator of the wide shot and another PD170, and two members of the Media faculty on the other cameras. Lauren Holley was the director and oversaw the whole shoot, and also did the clacker board for each take. Laura Nixon was in charge of the playback of the music track, which the band played along to. After lunch, we were done with the entire band except the



singer and so they left while we turned the studio into a blue screen room. The afternoon was spent shooting the singer miming his lyrics and acting on the blue screen on the JVC. All in all, the shoot day was a success as we managed to shoot many good band performances in both wide and close up shots and also managed to get some novel footage, like the close up of the bass drum pedal playing. However, some things did go wrong, which if not quickly dealt with could have put our whole shoot day off. Early on in the shoot, the



guitarist attempted a movement whereby he swung his guitar around his neck, and in the process dropped the guitar on to the concrete floor. This shattered one of the holding pins for the guitar strap and slightly broke the joint where the neck joined the body. To rectify this, a screw was put into where the old guitar strap button was, which acted admirably as a strap button for the rest of the day.

Pre-Production Continued

After developing our idea and starting the pre-production, we finally got on with preparing for our shoot day. We created a call sheet – a document saying how the shoot day will be run. Our call sheet included the names, functions and telephone numbers of everyone in our team, equipment, locations, our original storyboard and the lyrics to our chosen song. Using this call sheet we had an idea of what shots we were going to shoot on the day, and the amount of time it would take to do this. The day before our shoot, we went to the studio where we were going to shoot the video and began to ready it for the next day. First we erected all the lights that we needed to use, including redheads in a 3 point lighting configuration.




Then we began to assemble our set, with help from other members of our crew. Our set comprised of some flats with painted fake brickwork, and some old construction site fencing. We also collected rubbish and spread it about the floor, to give a more urban and grimy feeling to the whole set. To complete our set, we added police tape, a chalk outline of a body on the floor and a blue light set to flash at quick intervals to represent a police light. This helped enhance the theme of our video, which was crime scenes and law enforcement. The only props that we used in our video were the bands instruments and a gun, which we set the day before to make sure we didn’t have to waste time looking for them in the morning. The cast also brought their own clothes, which we had checked before to make sure they were suitable for the image of the band we were trying to portray.