Timelapse of Production Day

Editing Finished

Showing "Trouble In The West" Rough-cut to the audience

This week our assignment was to show the rough cut of our Music Video and see audiences reaction, whether they understand our storyline. One of the people I have displayed Trouble In The West to was my friend Anna. Straight from the first location (Foxes house) she understood where we were going with our plot. She especially liked the scene where Mr. Fox rips off the advertising paper with The Boss's face on it as it is so visual and goes well with music. The next person I showed the video to was Alistair. Although he eventually understood the plot, I had to explain to him the party scenes and that the purpose for them was to represent artist's image and that it's crucial to do so in music videos. He really liked the music we have chosen and also the idea of using foxes as our main characters. He found it unique and quirky. The last person from whom I got my feedback was my roommate Nathalia. She like Anna, understood the whole plot line without my help. Her favorite scene was Mr. Fox shooting The Boss. She also really liked the narrative saying that it's deep and meaningful (just like I intended it to be).

In the end, this task was really useful as now I have a clear idea what needs to change and what should be kept the same. For example, all three people said that the running scenes are a bit too long and boring so such critique is definitely something we need to think about and change in the near future. Maybe if we cut the scenes shorter and more to the beat, the reaction to that sequence will be different. 

Rough Cut Evaluation

For the past week, we as a group have been working on finishing the rough cut for our music video “Trouble In the West”. The whole process hasn’t been easy as I am still learning how to operate Final Cut Pro Program but with every practice I feel more confident about my editing skills. As of right now, I am content with the pace of our music video and the length of the shots we have chosen as it goes well with the beat of the song. Also the set which was designed in the studio looked great on camera and goes with the narrative perfectly. The difficulty for me personally is to fill in the gaps which occur during the “party” scene as I am a little concerned that they will look repetitive and will bore the audience. When comparing our rough cut video to our storyboard, there aren’t many significant changes but during the office segment, we had to change the idea of Mr. Fox lifting and flipping the desk to him just throwing papers because in real life, the desk was much bigger and just impossible to lift. After we will be done filling those gaps in the video, we will move to completing special effects and switching that green-screen background to the forest at nighttime in order to represent Mr. Fox’s surroundings and set the scene.

 

Beginning of the Website

Here is the first draft of our website for our artists, KOAN Sound. In order to create such website, program “Wix” was used. As we were getting introduced to this program, we discussed as a group our objectives and ideas for the site. We all agreed that we needed it to flow and to connect with the album art cover. So we later proceeded in creating five pages that would include Home, About, Photo, Music and Contact features. It was important for us that the website is of minimalistic style and is easy for fans to use. To achieve that we kept it clean using a big, modern font against the white paper. Also we didn’t want the website look commercial as our artists are underground and niche market. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter will help KOAN Sound to connect with their fans, as it is a crucial part in the music career. Next thing we are planning on achieving with the website is adding a Newsfeed page where fans can see when and where KOAN Sound will perform next.  It is also in our plans to create a Merchandise page where fans will be able to support their favorite artists by wearing/buying special t-shirts or hoodies. 

Cover Art: What we did so far

Drawing inspiration from Artist's website

The first website I drew my inspiration from was Suie Paparude's website. The fact that they used their symbol in such big way on the first page and incorporated it really inspired me as I believe that this way they represent truly their artist identity and there is more chance that it will stick on people's mind. Also I like the clarity of the website which means that the fans don't need to spend hours searching for the needed information. Suie Paparude are also smart in connecting fans to their music through soundcloud so while they are browsing through the site, people can listen to some of their tracks.

Other website I liked was Jamie Callum's. It is modern and simplistic. It follows minimalistic and sleek approach and concentrates on artist's talent which is important as our artist is pretty underground and not commercial at all. Callum also has a gallery page where his fans can follow his everyday life and him on tours. This is a fantastic and a personal way to connect with fans.

The last website which is really worth mentioning is unconventional and very original artist's Tauba Auerbach's. Her website is artistic but I think that this factor is very crucial and worth noting as many of our target audiences are artists, painters themselves therefore they will really respond and appreciate this type of a webpage.

Album Cover Art

Today during media class time, the group and I were discussing the possible album cover art for our artists. After looking for a website to get inspired, we found "facets.com" that contained beautifully structured shapes which could potentially go on the album cover. I especially liked the forest inspired one as it links well with our plot line. The image of a fox done by Justin Maller is equally impressive and something that we will try to achieve and recreate by using photoshop.

From Facets I moved on to Dubstep musician cover arts like Knife Party's "Road Valley", Skrillex's  "Bangarang"and Bassnectar's Heads Up".  I noticed that there are a lot of similarities between those three in tone, style and scheme. I also liked the presence of surrealism in them and such appearance is likely to stay in the viewer's mind.