inside cover plan

Inside cover

RHCP DVD COVER

The way that our DVD cover has turned out has exceeded my expectations in the sense that the overall look of the final image relates well to our genre and band of choice, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The DVD cover that we produced on Photoshop is very similar to that of our first design and therefore shows that we thought a lot about our plan before we began to take the photos that we needed for the cover. This is an improvement over my work last year and I wasn't as organised as I should have been. As a result, I have found that the work took a lot less time to do as i knew what I was doing before i had started.

The use of colour is affective in the way that we have used black and red as our main colours. the black background resembles that of other RHCP albums and covers. The red writing is there to represent the fire that is incorporated in a lot of their work as this relates to the bands name. We decided to wear mainly blue/black clothing in order to create that cold feeling in contrast with the red lips of which we had enhanced. The shadows around the photos of the band members allow them to stand out a bit more. However, we did have problems with getting a shadow underneath each of the figures and believe that if we had more time then we could have added this effect in and this would have made the editing more realistic as a result. To form a background for the red lips, we duplicated the layer and put an effect onto this layer that contrasts with the red. It looks a lot like a thermal image camera and so even though the feeling of the colours used is cold, the connection to the fire and heat is still there.

We changed the fact that the DVD was of the Red Hot Chili Peppers live at Hyde Park due to the fact that we had a track list at the back of the By The Way album and so decided due to this fact that we would make the DVD a compilation of various performances of songs from this album. 

RHCP cover plan

800 word essay on progress

My progress in Media from my first year going on to my second year has shown me a lot about myself. Last year my progress in to my Media course work went slow on some parts, there would be days which we would plan to do stuff on but would end up not going to plan. This was due to either lack of commitment by certain group members, weather problems or other important events coming up. Because of this we found we had less time to edit all our footage then other groups may have had which really affected our final project. This year we will make sure we stick to deadlines that coursework is set to; recording footage is always recorded on the date its set without any scenes being missing and/or wrong; then lastly that all group members put equal effort in to work. This should not be too hard as long as we realise that doing this will cause less hassle in the future. We have lost one of our group members who we believe put a real strain on the rest of the group as he contributed very little, and replaced him with someone who is hard working and achieved a higher grade then either me or my other group member Aaron. But in honesty it’s not like we are completely putting the blame on our old group member, because at the end of the day it was a group project. There could be days where very little to no work would get complete; this was not because we had finished but because we had become lazy. This year I and my group are going to stay focus and make sure we do some work every lesson in order to be ready to create our project on time. To create a good music video this year I am going to have to learn from the shots and takes I did last year and learn how to turn them in to amazing shots that go well together, by reviewing my old shots I can see that some scenes may have turned out better if certain things had been done. One example is when we were recording scenes in dull lit places you could see instantly that the quality of camera was not as sharp, so by having good lighting we can create ultimately a better project. Another thing to think about when filming is when and when not to use hand held shots, as they are only really affective in high paced scenes and using it to record just walking can look tacky and armature. Not only is there the course work to think about, but also the exam. The exam last year I had to retake as I had failed my first attempt at it.  This was a shock as some of my mock test scores were bringing me back with B’s and C’s. I believe that this was to do with lack of revision, during my holidays; I would choose to ignore my exam revision and go out with my friends instead. I now see that because of this I lost the ability to have a higher grade than I achieved last year. This year I have dedicated myself to get revision done every week when the exam prep actually starts, if I promise myself this I promise myself a better shot at a higher grade in Media. There are cases where my blog was not always up to scratch with what I was meant to be doing, in this case I would like to be able to go back and edit some of those things if I have enough time, adding to some work in certain cases where it might be able to boost my mark. I am aiming for a B this year, if I was to increase last year’s work to I slightly higher level and get good grades in both my course work and exam then hopefully this would be achievable. I tend to struggle with the writing part of the course as I am not as strong in English as I am in mathematical subjects, even though I do enjoy writing I believe that I f I was to practice multiple exam papers and learn how to write them out then I might have a chance at an overall better grade. So what I can learn from last year is actually quite a lot. I have learned that I am now a more focused student who wishes to do better for himself; I have progressed in camera skills as I have now learned a lot more shots such as the canted shot and point of view shot. So lastly I would just like to comment on the energy that my group creates, It is a lot more positive than last year and we are getting more done, quicker.

plans for our digipak

The photographs we will we need will be easy to take but hard to make. We will need a picture of a mouth open with a tongue sticking out. Then a picture of us standing infront of a green screen so we can put us on to the tongue. We will be located in the mac room in order to use the Green screen to take the picture of us for the tongue. All of us will be in the shot so thats what the subject wil be. Our costumes will be rather "rock based" so we will have funny hair and style.

Our target audience is actually quite varied, the band Red Hot Chilli Peppers is incidentally aimed at a lot of different age groups. You cannot group RHCP in to one ages or genre, it is alternative rock with a bit of funk but to say they're for 9-50 year olds is a good estimate.

Why we chose Red hot chilli peppers

Our group chose the Red hot chilli peppers, formed in Los Angeles in 1983 this American Alternative rock band have shown countless times they are able of making amazing music. We have chosen this band as they are a timeless band that appeal to all generations and audiences of people. To give them a target audience would be trying to assume that certain people would like or dislike it, you cannot generalise a group of people who would like their music or wouldn’t. I know people who listen to heavy music that listen to them or people that listen to solid rap that still like them. Their music is that good that all people like them, that is one of the main reasons we chose them, if they have such a large fan base then it will give our video more chance of being liked. Another secret reason why I chose them is because I personally think that Michael “flea” Balzary is one of the best bassists in the world and would love to do a music video to his bass.

History of Alternative rock.

Alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, Britpop, gothic rock, indie pop, and indie rock. Alternative rock started in the 1980’s but was more popular in the 1990s. The music industry saw the potential of making the profit out of many famous bands such as R.E.M., Jane’s addiction and Nirvana, who in turn, became some of the biggest bands of the times.. Alt rock was known for its underground music, Alt rock was a genre of music that rejected commercialism and most bands would be set to independent labels, which would mean there venues would remain small to places such as clubs or parties. Nirvana was a big influence on the music, there was a big chill in the hearts of many Nirvana fans when Kurt Cobain committed suicide after his music had become part of a profit for a big company instead of being just about the music, he hated that companies would use his music and make it mainstream in order to make money. This death actually started the decline in popularity of alt rock and it started becoming less and less mainstream. England had a different version to alt rock going on, at the start of the 1980 a sub-genre of alt rock came out called “Goth rock”. This was described as the darkest type of alt rock and was full of synth guitars and deep, dark lyrics.  Many British alt rock bands did not become very popular in America due to the difference in music. As alt rock is so wide in what the music could sound like our pop-style genre and dark Goth style did not hold well against the American pop-punk groups. All in all alt rock had a lot of different views and styles but it inspired lots of other people to try the music themselves and is still popular today in many different countries.

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front and back cover

How my video went

I believe that the video my class recorded went extremely well, by the time I had finished editing my work I came to a few realisations on how I could have improved my work.

I think by taking our time on the assignment we could have got the shots we needed quicker, and maybe of even had shots that we needed that we may not have had while editing. I think that because some of the scenes were missing we had to make do and use other clips for our editing which could be seen as lowering the quality of the overall finished project, on the other hands being able to use what your given could be seen as a strength in real life production. On times I found my pace is slower than others, I would like to believe that this is because I try to take my time getting every little bit right instead of getting a lot of work done quickly but to a lower standard of quality, I enjoy making footage and I like it to look right.

The lip syncing I think was one of the more easy tasks in my opinion, I believe as long as you can clearly see what the person is saying then you can link it up to the song with relative ease, the only thing I would have changed about the lip syncing is the actual clips we had of the singing and making sure it was on the correct people for the correct scenes would have made the job easier.

My role in the music video was to play one of the 3 main roles, Charlie Simpson. I had fun re-enacting this role as he is quite a big hero in my life so I believe this gave me more motivation to perform. All in all I would like to see our music video as a big success and I am very pleased with the results that I and the rest of my class have created.

Busted music video

lip sync