Female Lead Update

As you know our group faced some problems with regards to the female lead who would be appearing in our music video however Jack put out a casting call on Facebook and Twitter hoping that somebody would accept the offer. Luckily there were many girls interested in the position and after considering our options we have decided to pick Bethany Draper. We feel that Bethany has the features required play the part that we are looking for.

Casting Call

As we get closer to actually shooting our video, we are now faced with the problem that the girl meant to play our female lead in the video has had to pull out due to commitments elsewhere, which has left us needing a new actress, because of this I have asked Jack to put out a casting call asking any girl between the age of 15-18 if they would like to feature in our music video.



Shooting List



Below we have put together a list of everything that we feel will be needed for our week of filming. So far we are yet to find our everybody's schedule so until that point this is just a filming plan between the 24th October - 2nd November. 

 

 

Finished Storyboarding...

Reflection Post 13-17th October

Throughout this week many steps forward have been made in our planning stage. This progression is a great forward move because it has enabled us to start actually story boarding. Although we have only managed a few shots, progress is being made and that is one of the main things. To story board, we used a decent sized wipe board and then used post it notes to write each shot on and place them in order. Post it's were a good choice because it meant that they could be swapped and placed differently if need be.

Something else that i managed to come up with this week was my logo for the band. I felt that enough valid research was done and therefore I could create what i feel is a professional logo for an Indie/Alternative rock band of the 21st century.

A link to the official website of The Secret Nothings

Now available above my blog archive is a direct link to the official website of The Secret Nothings. Click on the band logo and you will be taken directly there in a new tab.

Band Logo

As a music band, it is very important to have something that represents you as an icon, so that when people see this icon as such, they instantly associate it with your band. To do something like this, we decided to create a band logo.

By completing extensive research on the topic, I was able to think of some indie bands that are already world famous and had a look at how they pieced together their logo using things that represent them so to speak. The bands I looked at where: The Killers, Arctic Monkey's, Two Door Cinema Club, The 1975, the Fray, the strokes and so on. 

 

 

One thing I noticed that each of these bands had in common was that every single one of their logos seemed to be created in black and white, and that this was done on purpose. As I know from earlier research, black and white is a very popular choice for indie bands as a lot of music videos created are solely done in black and white. 

Having a band logo is highly important because as well as becoming an iconic symbol a band logo is a way of helping promote your band. Band logos can be placed everywhere from t-shirts to badges and stickers. Plastering stickers everywhere helps spread your bands image and name and wearing band merchandise helps with the growth and popularity of a band, which is why I have come up with two logos; a shorter one for badges and top corners of t-shirts, and a larger one for general use.

This particular logo I feel stands out as sometimes less is more, and the simplicity of the design and the text is rather quite eye catching, which is what you want from a logo.

Story Boarding...

As you can see from the picture above, this week in our lessons we had a go at story boarding. This is nowhere near finished and will not be exactly the same as what our music video looks like because there will be many things that will need modifying under certain circumstances, but bare with us...

Band Merch

As part of our band's promotion we have decided that it would be a good idea to try and create some suitable merchandise for our band. Our research shows us that bands rely on the sales of their merchandise to keep their profits coming in because people can only buy their song digitally so many times and after a few years the purchases of their songs don't really matter anymore. Therefore they continuously release new products that their fans can purchase and wear which also helps promote their band.

The Spares

As we have decided to create an Indie band we needed to make sure that we picked the right band to represent The Secret Nothings. As Olivia, Jack and myself all know an upcoming indie band from Liverpool, we reached out to them to ask if they would act as the Secret Nothings in our music video. This band is called The Spares and fit the part perfectly as they are a very 'indie/alternative' band.

"Only by the Night" Album Cover Analysis

"Only by the Night" is an album released by Kings of Leon on September 19th, 2008. It gained awards for; Juno Award for International Album of the Year, NME Award for Best Album, Brit Award for International Album. As well as being a fantastic album, Kings of Leon gave their album artwork a very creative twist.

 

Above, you can see that the artwork is compiled of 4 images, these each being a section of a band members face. By taking pictures from the same range of each member, the designer is able to create 1 face from 4 which I think is very abstract and is straight away eye catching.

 

The album is titled "Only by the Night" and there are plenty of features which hint at this title on the artwork. First of all, notice that within the face you can see what resembles an owl. Remembering that Owls are nocturnal and are therefore mostly active "Only by the Night" this is a clever play on imagery. Another way they have done this is by sort of green scaling the art. What this does is give the image a look of "night" vision, once again a good use of colour.

 

The band name and album title are not the first the you notice when looking at this album cover however this does not matter as the designer has used a direct mode of address in order to instantly create a bond/relationship with the audience so they are drawn the the album this way, only to then see that it has been composed by their favorite band, bonus.

The 1975 Album Cover Analysis