Reece Howard music video blog

To the moderator

2011-05-18T09:53:00.001+01:00

I have thoroughly enjoyed creating this blog and carrying out all of the listed coursework tasks throughout the project, and i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i did.

kind regards,
Reece

evaluation question 4

2011-02-07T23:28:00.002+00:00

evaluation question 4, "How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages"?

Evaluation question 4 on Prezi

evaluation question 3

2011-02-07T20:37:00.005+00:00

Evaluation question 3, "what have you learned from your audience feedback"?

Evaluation question 3

View more documents from Reece Howard.

Evaluation question 2

2011-02-07T12:20:00.003+00:00

evaluation question 2, "how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts"?

media evaluation question 1

2011-02-06T19:23:00.003+00:00

media question 1, "in which ways does your media project use, challenge or develop forms and convetions of real media products"?

One man wolf pack

2011-01-19T22:34:00.003+00:00

Looks like I'm on my own now.
Harley has now left school to work full time at waitrose and to go onto Leicester college next year in search of a musical career (good luck H train), leaving me as the only member of this group remaining. Up until this point every post has been written in the grammatical context of a group, e.g. "we, us, our" etc. i would like to ask you to ignore this as it would take a very long time for me to trace back and change every single one of these posts. All future posts will be in this context and no longer written in plural.

Evaluation ideas

2010-12-13T12:34:00.000+00:00

Harley and i have been discussing ideas for our evaluation and we would like to present it in an effective and interesting method. We have reviewed the things that we have used in the past to convey certain parts of the project so far, as well as devices we used last year at the AS level, e.g.

Prezzie-interesting, yet repetitive and possibly ineffective for answering questions
writing in essay form with a word processor - generally boring
Video - defiantly a possibility, however the video itself is not the issue, more what we would do to make the video interesting and different
slide share - PowerPoint's require interaction with the user, however it is very little and the answers will be conveyed in writing, which would make a boring PowerPoint
animoto - again, very repetitive and is only interesting for the first 30 seconds, however if used correctly the outcome could be eye catching and interesting.
Documentary - Harley was particularly swayed by a documentary for one a video featuring a song by nas. The video will be uploaded in a post by him. This seems to be one of the strongest options, as it is quite unique and interesting, and we can cut betweenparts of the video and parts of the interveiw, which will create a more interesting way to answer the evaluation questions

Back up plan

2010-11-24T10:43:00.000+00:00

Me and Harley have been thinking about the fact that we have two days to get his whole thing done, and we are seriously struggling for time and loctions etc. So me and Harley have searched the school for back up locations if worse comes to worse. We found a small office looking room with a board which we could stick illuminati related posters. it looks like it could make an ok location, providing we can make it convincing enough so that it doesent look like it's in a school.

Major setbacks

2010-11-24T08:47:00.000+00:00

our progress was crippled yesterday by god himself, who has decided the night before the day we film was the best time to make Harley ill. This left me with little to do yesterday, as there was no filming to do without Harley. He says he feels well enough to come into school today, and he is on the way to school right now so that we can get our filming underway in Jack's house, our main location. There is a lot of work to do in just two days, and I'm working for most of one of them. that means were going to be forced to film everything and edit it in just two days. Obviously I'm not blaming Haley for becoming ill, but this could be our downfall. as soon as Harley arrives i think we will be heading out to film straight away, the clock is ticking.

Progress

2010-11-22T14:50:00.000+00:00

Even more changes to the story have now been made, this time even more dramatic ones. There is no longer a protagonist character, and the band will now take up the main lead as well as the performance shots. The agents focus is now on the band rather than a particular person e.g. jack. this is making things a lot easier, as well as possibly increasing our potential. We are retaining the file shot that Harley uploaded a still of onto the blog, and we are still following the agent who is keeping watch on the band. The files and projects that the Agent will be holding is still called project uprising, and the video is still going to be limited to indoor shots, including some over the shoulder shots of the agent on the computer. Today we filmed some of the inside shots, including our agent answering the phone, which will initiate the story of him watching over the bands activities. We also discussed tomorrows filming session, our editing needs and certain variables about the video such as the mise en scene of the computer monitor when he sits down, e.g. what should be on the screen when the agent sits down.

Mise en scene 2

2010-11-19T14:13:00.000+00:00

I really support Harley's efforts on mise en scene and i think he's more or less hit the nail on the head. The pictures he has chosen are really good ones, but i think they should have some sort obvious flaw in the picture to show that they are conspiracies rather than just posters of remembrance e.g.

I think annotated pictures like this give much more effect and would clue our viewers in a lot better. With writing or obvious connotations of conspiracy. these are the kinds of things which would turn our mise on scene from poor to excellent. Obviously these would not look like actual posters, but rather home printed pictures. they could be accompanied by Illuminati related movie posters, e.g. posters for films such as Illuminati, angels and demons etc.

New storyboard is go

2010-11-16T12:15:00.000+00:00

Me and Harley just visited Mr Smith who confirmed that the storyboard was dramatically improved and showed a lot more hope in creating a successful music video, with it's simpler shots and settings and it's more hopeful looking performance shots. Also he said that for an overnight project Harley was especially efficient with his work, which shown very promising potential. Following this Harley will soon upload a photo of the new storyboard to the blog, and that will in turn be followed by an animatic. i also intend to do a post on mise en scene, as this is one of the main problems with our plot based side of the video.

Total reboot

2010-11-15T22:57:00.000+00:00

after deducting all of the information and feedback earlier today, Mr smith suggested, amongst other things, me and Harley should shoulder some of the more important stuff in the making of the video. the Video has been given a very low mark, due to lacking of shots and being drastically unclear. heeding Mr smiths advice me and Harley have began to put together what we think may turn the project around and show it in a new lite, however retaining the defining qualities of it's storyline.

Some of the main things were picking up on for our failure last time are lack of organisation (big time) as we were sometimes when filming saying for example "OK then we'll just film what we can here, get a variety of shots and then we'll pull something out of it afterwards", which is now clearly not good enough - our storyboard is there for a reason and we need to stick to it with total accuracy. Also, an animatic would be nice. Which brings me on to my next point: Some of us are taking to much responsibility; this is a team for a reason, and the tasks need to be shared out equally - taking as much responsibility as possible doesn't generate marks for yourself, it brings the entire group down because of lack of fulfilment. This isn't a dig at anyone, but we all need to stop making promises we cannot keep because it doesn't do us any favours, just makes us fall down in key areas.

Also, we need a decent amount of space and props, and we have to be certain that we are using the best available location for our filming before we go there to do it, as this has been the downfall of our band scene filming, and has therefore cost us a big chunk of marks. we now have a good idea of where we are filming this, however we have suffered because of poor organisation for our first draft. we all need to agree on an area which is sufficient and has the necessary qualities to fulfill the requirements of the scene we are shooting. Which leads me to the next point: Mise en scene needs to be immaculate, anything less isn't good enough. the scenes of the protagonist didn't have the right mise en scene, neither did the bedroom or the suburbs of braunstone. the best mise en scene in the video was probably the subway and the CCTV shot, as they both connote the right messages e.g. enclosed short spaces, cloudy and gloomy, being watched etc. the bedroom scene could have been massively successfull if our mise en scene was bang on, e.g. without any knowledge of what we were going for, viewers wouldn't have been able to tell that our protagonist was who he was and was looking for the truth, e.g. no projects or posters visible in the bedroom. This is one area i intend to focus on, to take the strain off of the group and because i think i have quite an eye for mise en scene and some good ideas which connote to the symbolism of our video.
We also need a better storyboard this time, as last time ours was to sketchy and slightly inaccurate. also, Mr smith warned us it was lacking in speed and shot variety, but we did not have time to change this, so we were filming on impulse rather than keeping to a decent set storyboard. Also, it would result in a bad animatic, if we had one. All of the things i have written about seem to be the main downfalls of this group, and we have already started to fix what we can by taking even amounts of responsibility, and me and Harley have began to take on the storyboard, and i intend to make a start on the animatic by the end of today hopefully.

Poster ideas

2010-11-10T09:12:00.000+00:00

The following posters have effects which i think we should use, for the eerie effect they give off would potentially follow our theme and support our iconography:

This poster gives the band members more identity and makes them look like something more than us, like they are empowered with something. For our band, they are singing about the uprising of the Illuminati to control the world, and they clearly know something that the audience does not, meaning this empowered effect could fit our band really well. Also, the song "uprising" is sung from the perspective of a protester amongst some kind of rebellion. You can hear this from lines such as "they will not control us" e.g. "they" meaning the Illuminati, will not control "us", the rebellion, almost like Crystal lake are leading the rebellion against the Illuminati. This would also work with an empowering effect to show they are leaders amongst lesser people, such as levitation.

There isn't that much to say about this one, but i like the effect that is given by the deep blues gives. it gives a feel of mystery and uncleanness, rather than the black and white in the killers poster which suggests everything is either one thing or another and straight forward. I think the clouds in this poster would go particularly well with crystal lake because it suggests mystery, and in particularly the earth is shrouded by the cloud, which to me seems almost perfectly in sync with our bands iconography. even though we wouldn't be able to do it to such a great standard, i believe we could possibly create something similar to an acceptable degree.

For our poster, it is likely to have some sort of Illuminati mention on it, so below I've shown some of the symbolism i think would go best with the poster, as well as my opinions on it:

This is the biggest Illuminati symbol out there, and is easily the most well known, after films such as angels and demons featured it. This is a powerful piece of symbolism, and should at least reach out to our target audience, as is our goal.

This symbol is less popular, as it is actually the freemasons symbol, who are often suspected to be in joining with the illuminati by beleivers, which obviously offends them. even though we could use this on the poster just for the sake of bigger fans, i dont think we should because if the audience is unaware of the conspiricies at the level we have studied them then it will make very little sense to them.

Having taken into account all of the studying we have done and all of the symbolism we have been using, i think we are better to use the all seeing eye symbol, because of the people who are less aware of the conspiracy would not recognize the significance of the masons symbol. The all seeing eye is a symbol that clues in a lot more even on veiwers who have less of an understanding of the illuminati because of films such as angels and demons, the da vinci code, and other forms of media such as gaming etc. Also, the all seeing eye has another advantage: we are creating a music video designed for mass international veiwing. one of the main areas of veiwing the original music video for uprising is the USA (information sourced from the chart below, from youtube):

The darker areas of the graph are the places in the world where the most veiws are being made, clearly the USA. The all seeing eye, is pictured on the American dollar bill, which means it will still represent goverement to some of this audience. Therefore, the all seeing eye is the best symbol we could use.

Draft (in low quality unfortunately)

2010-11-05T18:22:00.000+00:00

Note that any blank spaces will be filled with band shots, and any un-colour corrected scenes will be corrected for the final.

Vlog no 1

2010-11-01T21:49:00.001+00:00

Post production

2010-11-01T14:41:00.000+00:00

Aidan has now brought his laptop into school with Sony Vegas on it. we have not started to edit the footage into a music video, but Aidan is fitting effects to all of the clips ready for when we come to edit it into shape. so far Vegas is proving to be well worth it, showing much stronger capabilities than Imovie, and the effects of the software are much more effective in scenes such as the CCTV shot and various others. hopefully the software will allow us to really create the right feel for the video e.g. contrast changes etc. also when using Imovie slowing down and speeding up effects can be very sensitive, and hopefully Vegas will prove better than this, if anything needs doing. One scene in particular which i favour with it's added effects is the CCTV scene in which the agent, Harley, appears behind our protagonist. The way in which this is done, is by adding an effect to the original clip towards the end of it where the CCTV shot starts to blur (an effect which is used often). the same effect is then used on the take of Harley stood behind jack, where it starts to blur to show that he is there, then it goes back to the effect into the original clip without Harley. Vegas made this a lot easier to do than Imovie with it's effects. also we had to edit and upload the Vlogs, one of which is now on the blog. Vegas made this easier and more efficient than it would have been to use Imovie. Once this is all edited and handed for our first draft, we will be going over it to look at what needs doing over and improving, and then we start storyboarding the new shots for our improved product.

chase scene

2010-10-30T18:35:00.000+01:00

looking for inspiration for our chase scene, I've come across the videos below. i chose these videos as last year i wanted to have a chase scene in my film opening, and it proved harder than i had thought. I think one of the biggest reasons for this, wasn't because of the lack of equipment or inexperienced filming, but rather because of lack of planning, which is why i will be looking closely at inspirational scenes. the videos below are much above what i believe we can achieve, but we can still make a more basic version by studying the way they are done:

here is the final story board for our chase which was developed by harley

locations shots for modified chase scene

2010-10-28T14:59:00.000+01:00

okay, to sum up, we have now been told twice that we cannot use the police equipment outside of school and it's becoming clear that there is only one way were going to be able to do this, which is in school. Even though Aidan suggested that thereis no way we can film in school, me and harley took the liberty in our frees yesterday to try and figure out how we could maybe make it work, and to do so we need the least academic looking area of the school. we took a camera and photographed areas that had the potential to be apart of the scene:

prop problems!

2010-10-27T09:15:00.000+01:00

For two separate scenes of our music video we needed some very specific costume and props, namely police riot gear. the gear which we need is mentioned in a previous post, with pictures. i went to a friend of mine who is in the police and said he would attempt to get me the equipment we needed or the closest to it that was available. he realised that all of the equipment he would take out would have the number on it registered to him when he took it out, and he wanted to check that we were okay to use the equipment for filming without breaking any of his job rules, so he spoke to the boss at professional standards department, and they told him that we would not be able to film this in a public place with professional equipment, especially if it was going onto the Internet, even for educational purposes. faced with this problem we all together cancelled the filming for Tuesday and started to think about how we were going to make shift a police uniform. Me and Harley tried to arrange make shifting a uniform out of common pieces of clothing, but we didn't think it would look good enough, and we wanted to meet a better standard. I told Mr Smith about the problem and possible hiring a costume from a costume hire shop, and he said he might be able to find a nightstick and a stab vest for us, which was a big relief. Earlier today Mr Smith told us he will get us the equipment asked for by tomorrow, which will be a big help. we intend to film the scenes from yesterday tomorrow in the same area as the subway scene. The scenes we need to film are: Jack running into the officer, the officer arresting/beating Jack, the officer beating another man (for the mind erase video).

Police costume

2010-10-25T14:01:00.001+01:00

for some scenes which are currently unfilmed, we need specific costume if we are going to get the correct feel for it. this consists of riot gear, or as it stands, the closest we can get to riot gear. i have volunteered to retrieve this equipment, as i know a police officer who said he could provide equipment for me last year in media AS. hopefully, we can get some form of riot gear such as stab vests, batons and possibly a riot helmet. the helmet isn't promised but hopefully we may get one. i think a helmet would really polish off the look quite Nicley, and it would give the impression that officer isn't just your average copper, showing he is more important and more exceeding in ability, however it also shows with the rest of the equipment that the police and therefore government are on the side of or subordinated to the Illuminati/agents. here is a picture of the general kind of equipment we are hoping to use to create the look of our agent:

even though we are not referencing it, a look which we would like to include with the general attributes of the police officer is that of the riot officers in foo fighters video of the record "the pretender" giving us a look to fashion our police officer around.

Walking shots and potential argument scene

2010-10-13T10:22:00.000+01:00

this is a shot from The Verve's bittersweet symphony promotional video. the protagonist is walking down the street bumping into people and vacantly ignoring them whilst they look in disgust.

in that scene, a woman follows and shouts to him, but he continues to walk and blatantly ignore her, not even looking to acknowledge her. this is an idea we could use for our video, since the protagonist knows something is so wrong but has had his memory erased, meaning he cannot identify the problem. the idea that he is so disturbed by a missing piece of information is what drives the protagonists characteristics, and he is so confused he refuses to acknowledge anything outside of his thoughts. the problem with a shot like this is that we are already on a tight schedule, and it would be harder to film in many respects. However, we are intent on having someone turn around and shout and make a fuss when the protagonist bumps into them, but they will just fade into the background rather than play a larger part like the woman in the clip.

general research

2010-10-10T18:19:00.000+01:00

quite sometime ago Harley and Aiden suggested i looked more deeply into the conspiracy theories on which our video is being created, since they seem to know more on the subject than me. since I've finally found some time to do this I'm going to search through the web to find the various strands of Illuminati beliefs to give the team some solid ground to work from, and hopefully we can refer to this post for any information needed. i intend to source a lot of my information from the following website, since it seems the best around: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread20281/pg1
Like any conspiracy theory, Illuminati are highly speculated upon and the idea of a potential new world order is ridiculed by the vast majority. The website above is a timeline, listing all events to do with the Illuminati/ Freemasons. starting from the very bottom of the list, the organisation supposedly started in the 1700's, and is put on the web page as "Illuminati/Freemasons", the two have been supposedly linked in conspiracy theories for a long time. the name of the Illuminati is derived from bearers of the light, and supposedly the name also came from "Lucifer". the organisation was supposedly started by Adam Weishaupt and Jesuit Priest, along with the Freemasons.

Through the 1700 and 1800's the Freemasons and Illuminati spread their routes and adopted many other organisations such as the Rothschild's, aside from this there is very little activity or development up to the early 1900's where most events are relatively unimportant to our video. events such as the wall street crash of 1929 was supposedly caused by the Illuminati along with other worldwide economic depressions, showing how the Illuminati are linked to famous events taking place since their supposed creation.

The Illuminati are then blamed for financially backing Hitler for his invasion into Poland in 1939. At this stage the Illuminati are looking like a scapegoat for all bad things since the 1700's onwards. nothing of importance to our video then takes place until 1989 when George bush is elected president of the USA, and he is supposedly a free mason, who are still strongly associated with the Illuminati. before 1989, the Illuminati are Incorporated into many theories about assassinations of world leaders, such as only one man being arrested for the assassination of president Kennedy is found with 5 bullets from separate guns in his body. Also a prime example is the crash of flight KAL 007, the flight which Larry McDonald is on board. the plane supposedly flown over a shortcut which commonly used with low fueled planes, however the flight was high on fuel. it flown into restricted air space, at which point fighter pilots shot warning shots past the cockpit, which went un- acknowledged, so the flight was shot down. all bodies were recovered except for the pilot and co pilot. eye witnesses saw 2 parachutes from the plane. this is a fantastic example of how our video will be portraid as the Illuminati carrying top secret operations without any of the general public being aware.

In 1990, around the start of the gulf war, George bush publically announced the new world order. weather the context of this was twisted or not is constantly debated by believers and sceptics, even though he clearly says the words "new world order".

The new world order is a plan by the Illuminati for a small group of leaders to rule the world, the details of which are vague and irrelevant but may come into play at some point in our video if necessary. several other ideas which come back to the Illuminati are listed and briefly described below:

9/11 conspiracy:

the falling of the twin towers was ten years to the day after George bush publicly said "a new world order" which theorists have obviously picked up on and claimed that is more than just a coincidence. the idea that the towers were actually blown up by the government (controlled by the Illuminati) has many different pieces of evidence, such as the pillars at the bottom of the towers: they were cut at a perfect angle which is usually used in controlled demolition. Another piece of evidence is that supposedly British television announced the falling of one of the buildings 7 minutes before it fell. some people even go as far to say that no plane ever hit the pentagon, and that it disappeared. this because there was only actually one shot that captured the very tip of the plane hitting the pentagon despite it being the most protected building in the entire world. when some plane experts were consulted on the conditions of the crash into the pentagon they said that it would have been impossible for reasons such as: the plane was moving too fast at the time of the crash for it to have come close enough to the ground to hit the building, and because the terrorists who hijacked the plane had been training in a very basic bi plane, and it would be incredibly difficult to fly a Boeing with such accuracy having only trained in a small bi plane, stating that not only would the controls be completely different and massively complex in comparison, and one pilot that was interviewed said that after all his experience flying the Boeing he would not be able to be so accurate. the 9/11 conspiracy also links in with modern day Illuminati signs in commercial areas below.

Illuminati symbols in everyday culture:
despite the Illuminati supposedly being extremely intelligent, there are claimed to be symbols left by them in almost any place you look. a good example to start with is the American dollar bill: the bill has the all seeing eye atop a pyramid, the Illuminati symbol. the dollar bill is also supposed to represent "the order of new ages", alarmingly close to Bushes publicly announced "new world order", obviously setting conspiracy theorists up with a link. also on the 20 dollar bill even more alarmingly and less likely to be a coincidence are pictures of the twin towers on fire, the pentagon on fire. at first this is rejected by almost everyone, but you don't have to look hard to see these pictures, and if the 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 dollar bill are all folded in the seems to be like some sort of prediction or prophecy, since the notes were produced in 1996.

There are other references to the Illuminati in public culture, particularly the media and it's productions. below are just a few examples of Illuminati reference in Hollywood:

obviously the biggest question amongst this is, why would such a clever organisation give themselves away like this? that question does not seemed to have been addressed yet, but its almost certain that if they were responsible for the fall of the twin towers or such an event they would not openly admit or even hint that they were behind it. however, before starting this post i was very sceptical about the possibility of this secret organisation like Aiden, but i have now come to see that Harley did have a point when he mentioned the amount of evidence suggesting this and i firmly believe, mainly due to the dollar bills that there is something going on and there is far to much evidence for it to be a coincidence.
This post has allowed me to carry out my own research to establish and gain deeper understanding on the foundations behind our video, which will be important for me to help in it's production. my knowledge of the subject has now become intensely clearer and it should help with getting a real feel for our video. this post can also help the team for reference to any needed knowledge of the history of the Illuminati. Last minute plot changes could be made in reference to this post, e.g. small references to Illuminati events such as assassinations, disappearances etc.

Video introduction

2010-10-06T10:54:00.001+01:00

In the our video there is going to be a brief introduction before the music actually starts, to break the ice and introduce the narrative of the video. I've posted some videos below to show the way in which this is done professionally:

I inserted the entire video instead of tube chopping it because this way you can see how it works and relates to the rest of the video.