Promoting the Music video

Compared to other members of our group, I have very limited resources when trying to show our music video, as I use similar sites to Chloe, but I can talk about how we used Youtube to hold our video. As the most popular site for sharing video's, it seemed like the most reasonable thing to when confronted with how we should promote it. By placing our music video on the site, it is open to millions of other viewers who could be experiencing or know exactly the sort of talent that is out there, and give us some decent feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa2eU4gvoY0

To promote the video further, I took Chloe example of using Deviantart as I have my own account and promoted her journal link through my favourites so that other people could see it against my favourited artwork. This way, instead of just sending it as a journal post, people are able to see it through other artwork, so it would probably be more accessible.



















http://otherbuttonjones.deviantart.com/

Final Poster idea.

After looking through certain styles, and changing around the image of over CD cover, we realised we should try a different technique, by using the actual album cover as the whole poster. So, following a more professional image, we fiddled around with Photoshop and ended up with a decent attempt:

To make it look more appealing, I photoshoped a little bit of the window to make it bigger, changing the quirky font and making it seem more natural. Now we had space to add the advertisements (excluding Kerrang as after a discussion, we realised they are more focused more on metal and not exactly indie like we were trying to portray, so swapped it for NME.) Staying with the same colours, this helped to keep a similar theme running, as we didn't want to make the poster look too 'out-there'. Re-adding Itunes, Twitter and Facebook to finally create a more effective poster. The Feedback this time was a lot more positive, and we decided to keep with this as our final product as we had finally met the target audience.

The DTP work- Poster idea's and finished product.

Using the CD as a way to start the design, we established the dark colours theme, not wanting to use too many strong colours as a) It would look ridiculous and b) It wouldn't fit in with the same theme as we have trying to promote. Establishing such a style, we used black, white and red to stick to conventions and developed a black background with different coloured texts.

Thinking about certain Magazine's that would want to advertise the album, we ran through a list of suitable candidates,  finally choosing:

After picking the Magazine/Sites we imagined would give decent reviews for our album, we would edit on to the poster the social networking and advertising companies who are popular in the music industry, picking the three main companies:

We were going to use Myspace, but since it's popularity has dropped considerably over the years, we wondered if this would be the wisest mood, so we stuck to what we had originally planned.

Asking for feedback, it became apparent rather quickly that whilst the information of the poster was a good element, the poster itself looked very much as if it was made by students, and didn't have a very professional quality about it. So we set to work trying to create a much more stylized piece, and came up with this idea:

We wanted a particular style with this one, and it didn't exactly work as the headlight's were being rather awkward on photoshop, and would only allow us one, thus making the effect useless.

Other ideas that we toyed with our shown below, but for various reasons, like miss matched colours and contradicting styles, we decided to go no further than these inital ideas.

 

Storyboarding- The Narrative and Peformance

For the Narrative we decided to stick with a similar style and theme of the original video, but changing elements to represent a different story and not exactly copying the original idea. The idea for our narrative was to show a woman who had been mistreated by a man she had met in a bar, whilst the band is an influence around the bar parts, The woman is shown to be very much depressed and as a response, roams around the streets and town with no ambition or goal with what to do next. To display our ideas, I was asked to draw out a rough narrative to illustrate what was going on.

Here's the animatic of the final version of our storyboard:
(PUT IT HEREEEE.)

In edition to the narrative, we started the performance storyboard too. Knowing that we would need the style of the angles to be a certain way for our video, I watched a number of different music videos to try and adapt a theme for the video throughout, that ranged from radio-head to Arctic monkey's. The usual camera shots of  CU and Midshot's would all be featured, as they are what's to be expected, and the harsh zooms also would be shown  as they create a sense of cramped, claustrophobic atmosphere that I feel would be present in a music video of our particular theme (The song's subject.)

Performance storyboard here:
(HERRRRRRRRRRRE.)

The First filming session- Performance footage.

Promotional Package- The digipack

In order to complete our promotion of the Music video, as a group we would have to develop and produce a digipack for the band and a poster that would be suitable for a magazine advertisement.

This is a digipak:

Something a little more sophisticated than a normal CD, which are usually used for special editions of albums, or promotional LPD's. These sort of designs are a lot more fragile than the usual plastic covering, and can easily be ripped if not careful. As it stands today, a lot more bands are diving into the style of digipacks to help promote other sources, or to create a sense of artistic development.

As a first idea, I drew concept art that would lead to the ideas of how to establish a theme for the band, and to play around with their title to create a different meaning. The idea was to use silhouette's as a 'headlight' projection to form rabbit shapes, or human's represented as rabbits by their shadows. Using a white background, we would shine a powerful torch onto the image, which in itself would create shadows. These elements could be twisted to form artistic styles.

Another idea was to use Fliss's car headlights to shine directly onto the band against a wall, thus creating an actual Rabbit in the Headlights effect. But these stylized ideas were dropped in favour of a more conventional route.

Instead we looked at other Indie artists to find inspiration for a similar design:

Whilst the first style from the Artic Monkey's didn't match the idea we were going for, also including smoking band members, I decided to look out for the grayscale style that would suit Rabbit In The Headlights. Whilst the KC's cover looked rather boring in comparison.  The Killers seemed to be the most interesting, as they suited both our bands style and were still trying to be creative at the same time.

Digipack back cover and ideas.

 Today starting the digipack design, as a group we had to come up with a image we thought was suitable for the Indie theme that represented our group. I had a few pictures at home that I thought would fit this genre, and bringing them in, we decided which ones would suit the direction we were planning to take the covers.

For example these are some of the pictures:

Finally deciding upon a more urban outlook, we picked the street-shot as it seemed to represent the rather grubby feel that you would expect from our song-type and the street's theme of the band.

In Photoshop we got to work editing the image so that we could use it for the back of our CD.

To create the style we used the font Bell Gothic and using different layers to not make the piece look too crowded, we arranged the suitable track names into an order that we found compelling to the eye and would not cause any off-putting features. We also edited the cover with the use of the filter CUT-OUT to give a more stylized feel. Finally adding the usual items we see on everyday CD's like the bar code and the record company, we had finalized our idea for the finished product.

The design of the D&M logo came about after it was decided that the logo needed to be eye-catching, yet more or less simple so we do not distract the attention from the actual subject. As for the fact that this is an independent record company, we had to make it as recognisable as possible, but still held a professional image. 

For the rest of the digipack inserts, we looked at the actual performance footage and capturing certain shots, we applied effects that we believed would suit the theme, all eventually deciding on CUT-OUT as the best style.

Finally deciding on Cut-out, we used much more colourful shots of the footage that would contrast greatly with the rest of the black and white image.

(INCLUDE THESE SHOTS.)

The Music video

 

 

When editing the music video, we came up with the conclusion that certain effects would be useful in creating a much more visual and creative peice. Looking at other video's that we would have liked to imitate for effects alone, it was realised that the effect we were looking for generally couldn't be found in the Indie genre, although a little breach into the pop rock genre gave better results.

Looking through Pinks collection of work, it became apparent that she uses similartechinques like black and whiteto distinguish between scenes and creates a sort of vague atmosphere.

Looking at the Artic monkey's videos, it was decided we would also use the vibrant colours represented in Brianstorm for the more enegetic performance footage. 

In our own video we took these elements aboard and split the video into bright performance footage for the more energetic scenes and black and white for the more quieter scenes and narration.

 

This gave the music video much more varriation, and as we worked out which effects suited our footage, we eventually were able to achieve amuch better look than originally

planned.

The DTP- Front covers.

For Rabbit in the Headlights, the most noticeable theme throughout the whole of the DTP work was the monochrome style used to symbolise the group as an up-and-coming indie band. As a way of trying to be serious in the genre, the effect is now considered as a stereotype amongst the music world, but still creates the right image for the target audience who expect this sort of thing. The other running colours throughout the DTP work is red, which is a stylistic choice. Inside the digipack the colours of the band members represent the bright coloured themes that run through the actual music video. This contrasts the usual dark imagery and gives the album a much more exciting tone, reflecting their music style.

 

Eventually the finished product looked like this:

Keeping in mind the indie image, we slanted the font's to give a sort of quirky feel that would fit with the theme of the band. Still keen to sticking with this sort of style, we proceeded to use this picture as an example for a poster idea to keep the same style going throughout the digipack.