Meeting Up With The Band

On Monday 29th September I meant the band after school to talk through some ideas for my work. Below is the image of my notes from the meeting with the band.

The band already have a EP with album art, created by Sam Shepard's(Lead vocalist) mother.

The name of the album they are in the process of creating is Revolutions, and maybe including the themes of the EP artwork would be best (Red and Black). album is about self discovery, God angry at sins created so cleanses the world(but written by Aesthetes so has that feel)

Dead Man Blues(Rocky Blues)- their idea for the video, Zombie Apocalypse, kills the band. They feel it would be very hard to film, so Demon is the other option; A typical metal song. If I were to do this song, they would want a red neck, hair metal parody.

Overall theme of their band is Black, with bits of Red and White like I assumed.

The website:

A member of the band has already started to create a website, but gave up. So he intends to find the site for me, to see and take inspiration from.

In terms of logistics they want red, black and white. with a homepage full of links, and a band photograph at the top.

Website Style

The look of the website is also very important. It needs to work and conform with the style of the music video and of the CD cover. To make me website i will be using Wix. I have got screenshots of a couple of website layouts that I could use for my website. The look to the website will in most cases be completely different but I have put them in as examples of what I could do in terms of layout.

The website to left is very simple but allows me to change is a lot. The theme is nice, however has more of a film style to it, rather than music.

This website has the potential to be very eye catching, obviously all the pictures and text be would be changed. It has a simple lay out, that can easily be made more personal and effect for the style of band I am working with.

This website like the previous is very simple but that isn't always a bad thing. One plus both these websites have is that the home page allows me to fill it with an image of the band for the audience to see as soon as they open the page.

This page is again similar to the previous two, however it is set to have more information shown on the front page. However it does also have a classy, higher class more prestigious look to the work, something I don't necessarily think it appropriate for the band I am working with.

This is the best style of page I feel. It gives me the ability to make the whole homepage a picture of the band, meeting a convention of many band websites from many genres, but unlike the previous pages, you can scroll up and down on each page, whereas on the previous styles, the page was everything you could see in the image. This style also still has tabs like before. I think this would be the best choice of website, as it looks professional, but most importantly, it means I can put the most important aspects of the website and latest news on the homepage for the audience to find straight away.

To prove that the rights can be edited to look more appropriate for the genre of music I'm working with I put together a quick mock of a website for the band Pantera. I used them as Black Syndicate have said they take a lot of inspiration from Pantera. As you can see the site style still looks effect in a completely different genre. 

Helpful Links

I was looking at the websites of different bands, and came across this artical going discussing what makes a good band website

Screenshot of the website I have found

http://www.myinkblog.com/elements-of-a-great-band-website/

The website works very well as it clearly breaks down the key things your website needs:
Band photo and member info
Showcase the music
Merchandise
Events
Newsletter
Contact Information

I do need to take this with a slightly different outlook, as this covers the whole website and I am just doing the homepage, but is still helpful and clear what to include.

Problems With Final Cut Express

I have tried to work on Final Cut Express to make my practice/experiment, however we have had a huge amount of issues with the software.

The only computer in our class that has the license uploaded has no Chrome, meaning when I get stuck working on it, I cannot use the internet for helping, resulting in me constantly switching between computers. Also, Final Cut Express requires the files to be in a MP4 or MOV file type, but even when I converted my files using Handbrake into this format, they still didn't upload. I have now spent three lessons trying to get past this issue, but it still isn't working. My tutor has recently found the handbook for the software, so I will read through the booklet to help, in hope that by next lesson I will be able to work on the software.

The genre of my products

Genre has become very difficult to distinguish between into clear set out genres and groups, as the boundaries between different genres have blurred, hence the emergence of hybrid/sub genres. However you can still work around the sub genres the band falls into(Heavy Rock/Heavy Metal), even the bands itself can't give themselves a clear genre as quoted of their Youtube page, 'Citing influences from all sorts of places (the guitarist being into blues and the drummer into heavy metal!)'

Attempting to use iMovie to create a Music Video

Over the summer holidays I wanted to film to create a practice music video, to explore how I create a video that cuts between different shots and angles, in an interesting and coherent way. However I found it very, very difficult to do this. It was not easy at all to create a video that cuts between shots. On programs like Final Cut, you have the ability to layer video over the top of other videos, in different section, giving you the ability to play either one, more, or all videos. This means that to create a video that flows from shot to shot is very easy. You simply line the videos up to start at the same point, then cut out section of all the videos, bar one to leave just one shot.

Practice video from morrighan humpleby on Vimeo.
(please make sure you keep it quite at the beginning as there was a sound issue, causing the end section to be incredibly loud)

Here is the video of my first attempt at creating the music video. It isn't even a minute long, yet to create that it took me nearly an hour. The only way I could create the video, was try to cut all the shots to start at the beginning of the song, and cut each interval at the same size. So I cut all the shots of the song, to 13s, then 9.2s, 3.5s etc, and then cut the section together from different shots. [INSERT SCREENSHOTS OF THE PROCESS, AND THE VIDEOS CUT INTO DIFFERENT SECOND INTERVALS] As you can see, it was very hard to make it coherent, and flow from one shot to another.

Our media classroom has four licenses to Final Cut. Next lesson I will try to create the video using Final Cut, too see how I find that. I will then do a comparison between the two.

Changes To Idea

I have considered my idea of using Powder paint for quite a while now, and after listening to more of Black Syndicates music, I have come to the conclusion that using powder paint wouldn't fit the style of their music. As much as I love music videos in the rain, it isn't practical as neither me or any of the band members have enough money to buy fake instruments to prevent damage.

The band have said that the main inspiration for their music is 'Pantera', so I watched some videos of theirs to help me generate ideas. Following a conversation with one band member, where he expressed how much he enjoys one of their videos particularity; Mouth Of  War
Pantera-Mouth For War from cagdas on Vimeo.

He said it is the bands favourite music video because of the way it looks. This is a style of music video I would like to create, one focusing on the cinematography and aesthetics of the video. This video is visually incredible and makes for a memorable music video. This is something I would love to achieve, watching this video gives me so many ideas for what I would like to achieve in my own work.

Many other bands produce music videos in a similar way,

Split Screen

Here is a video I found looking into how to create a split screen in Final Cut Pro X, this isn't the software we have, we have the older version Final Cut Express, but the information is still valid and helpful to some extent.