Reflecting on my work so far

           When reflecting on my A2 work so far, it made me realise how much work I have left to do and how much work I have done. I am satisfied with the work I have done so far in the sense that our remake of the Busted music video for ‘That’s What I Go to School For’ turned out a lot better than I had anticipated. The whole class worked so well together as a whole and we managed to get all of the clips that we needed plus a few more to give us all more choice of clips when editing our own versions. I believe that the most challenging part was the lip syncing which is a vital skill to obtain for our up and coming project on music videos. I found that I need to have a lot of patience and spend as much time as possible on getting the lip syncing right on my video to make it as authentic as I can get it. I also learned from the Queen lip sync, that I did with my group at the time, that the way we film our lip sync is as important as the editing of it. We couldn’t get the lip sync perfect at that point because we were mouthing the lyrics a fraction faster than the actual song and so this had a knock-on effect during the editing process.

The DVD cover that I did for my Queen lip sync I was very pleased with. I did a lot of research into the conventions of other Queen DVD covers and so used those conventions in my own. I need to carry on this knowledge of understanding that the more I research into the conventions of that particular band and genre, the better my own work will turn out. This I will pass on to the makings of my Red Hot Chili Peppers video.

When I look at my digipak analysis, I think that I could have taken my research into more detail and depth because this would have boosted my knowledge of the Alternative Rock genre even more. Although I didn’t look as quite as many digipaks as I may have liked to, I still found out some really useful details such as the lack of colour, the name of the album and artists being at the top of the covers and the use of one central image to draw the audience’s attention. I have looked at many of the Red Hot Chili Peppers music videos that they have made from songs such as ‘Californication’ and ‘By The Way’ and so this will help me when thinking of the best music video for the song we have chosen, ‘Can’t Stop’. However, I need to write this down and upload it onto my blog in order to show my ideas and where these originated from. It is also important for me to look at videos from various other artists from the Alternative Rock genre. This will help me with ideas for my own music video of that genre.  

I still need to think more about exactly what shots I we want to put into our music video as a group and work out exactly where in the song we want to put them. After doing my short thriller film in AS last year, I realised that I need to be so much more organised this year. I can do this by managing my time a lot better and making plans for each filming session. I’ll make a to-do list of objectives that we need to achieve by the time our filming session is over. I have already made sure that I have the mobile numbers of all of the members of my group in order to keep close contact with them if any issues arise and we are not together. Creativity is a big issue that needs to be thought about when making this music video. I feel that we weren’t very creative with our choice of location in the sense that we just stuck to Tasha’s house for the whole film when we should have used other locations as well as that one.

To prepare myself for the A2 exam, I’m going to analyse my filming and editing as I go along. I think this will help me as it saves me from having to go through all of my work and analyse it when it comes to the exam when all I will have to do is revise my notes I have made. I will also make sure that I have extended my vocabulary of technical words in order to gain the most marks as I possibly can in that area. I will also compare my work I am doing at A2 to that of which I have done at AS so that I have combined what I have learned from last year with my thoughts on how I have used my new skills in my A2 work.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers are a Alternative Rock band that have been around since the 1980's. We decided to choose Red Hot Chili Peppers because of the fact that they have had a massive impact upon the Alternative Rock genre. Rock and Punk originated mostly in the 70’s, but once RHCP came around in the 80’s, they bought out the Alternative Rock genre due to their music being in between genres. They began with rock but as time went on, they turned into Alternative Rock and really made the genre popular. They have also been going for around 25 years. It’s not often that a band can be going for so long and still be making great music. It is hard to categorize their target audience as they have been going for so long. They have to make music that continues to please their older fans but still appeals to the new generations. It is unlikely that people of the ages 70+ will like the band, as they would have been older when they first came around. Their target audience then would have been late teens to about 30’s, which means that people that are 50/60 now, may still follow the band and enjoy their music.

Brief History of Alternative Rock

Although many Alternative rock to be quite a modern movement, it turns out that the origins of this genre came from the late 1960’s when the first alternative music was made. Groups such as The Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges and others made the first music of this type. This then continued on into the 1970’s with bands such as David Bowie, The New York Dolls. These combined intellectual lyrics with artistic impression. Punk rock was very important in the progression of alternative rock. By the 80’s, punk was transforming into New Wave and so this was then passed on to a new generation.

In the early and mid 80’s, bands like REM were achieving a lot of airplay on college radio stations as well as 120 Minutes on MTV and also on other TV venues. Soon after, major alternative radio stations started popping up all over the US. In 1991 when Nirvana’s album made it into the charts, there were some changes to the genre. This genre was now part of the mainstream. Bands such as Oasis were now being marketed as alternative. Many people despise the term Alternative Music because everything is now labelled alternative music, causing the term to actually become a term describing popular music. There are rock Record labels and artists who are true to the definition of Alternative music as a way to express ideas and songs which fall outside the pop genre.

Genre Mind Map

Digipak Analysis

I started to look at examples of print products that come from the genre of music that we are working in, alternative rock. I chose to look at Snow Patrol, Coldplay and Charlie Simpson. I thought these would be good artists to choose as they all fit into my choice of genre and are all well known. I chose Charlie Simpson as an example because I wanted to see if lone artists' products resembled those of the bands because they share the same genre of music.

These three album covers have multiple similarities that we could then take and use to produce our own CD cover. The background of the covers are all simple which shows how the genre is neither heavy rock or heavy R&B and so represents the way that it is calmer and less outragous that other genres. The attention is not drawn away from the images and the artists' names with the use of a simple background. The name of the artist and the title of the album is situated at the top of all of the covers. This is because of the way that we all read from the top of the page to the bottom, therefore, this is the first piece of information that the audience will see. Bold text is used for the titles to make this stand out and the use of capital letters also helps create this effect. The colour of the writing contrasts with the background in all of the album covers in order to help the text stand out. There is a central image on the covers that is rather abstract on the band covers. This may be because the bands that i have chosen to study are both well known and so don't need to use an image of themselves for the audience to know who they are. The Charlie Simpson cover, however, has an image of himself in the centre. This may be due to that fact that he is not well known as a solo artist and it also relates to the title of his album, 'Young Pilgrim' in the sense that the audience then see him as the young pilgrim.

The tour posters are very much life the album covers in the sense that there is bold writing at the top of the images that are central on the posters. All of the information, however, is situated at bottom of the poster but is still in bold writing that contrasts with the background. This is so that the audience nows about everything so that they could buy the album or attend the concert, thus explaining the content. Both of the images included in the posters are illustrated. This draws attention to the posters as it makes the audience question what it is. Also, this makes the poster more individual as it isn't just a plain photograph of the members of the band, tying the posters in with the genre of alternative rock.