A2 Media - Research

The video begins with a whole shot of the band, the band is also mostly sillowhetted at this point. Right at the beginning the whole movement of the band itself is very quick and fast paced, not only this but the edits are very quick as well, the way that the camera almost instantly jumps from the singer to the guitarist to the crowd or the drummer. this is the sort of style and look that me and James are hoping to achieve, by filming multiple shots from many different camera angles in hope to try and be able to jump quickly from one band memeber to another. Also visable is the way the guitarist, singer and bassist are stood together in a ling of three, and they are shot either from the side or from the front to include the drummer as well. It is these types of shots which really set the atmosphere for the video, in the way that they show they band and make it obvious the presence that they have on stage and the presence they have in general in the way that they dominate the stage and know what they are doing and effect that we would like to recreate in our video. Futhermore there are multiple shots of the band "headbanging" which is a common metal theme and so obviously including this is very important. There is combinations between the music and the video whereby when the music appears to slow down a little bit as does the video where it goes into slow motion created a sort of suspended effect. Also at multiple points in the track there are points when the music has a sort of outburst effect at this point this is mirrored in sync with the video itself in that the band might jump or there might be a vast amount of quick cuts etc. Also another feature which is very important regarding the atmosphere of the music to the video is the speed of the edits, most importantly when the music tempo speeds up so does the cuts and edits, but at the beginning when the music is slower it is slower and less cuts. Also another factor seeming common is the way that the singer is focussed on when he is singing and he shot from multiple different angles, giving the idea of multuiple perspectives and the speed created when the camera appears to jump from one angle to another in the shot. Also in the video there are shots of the crowd moshing, which is something that shows the passion the fans have for the music which is very effective in the video itself. the idea of putting a crowd into the video would be something that could be extremely effective in creating the effects of speed to the video. Furthermore the element of excitation is added to the video via many aspects of the scene, mainly the shots of the crowd. In these shots which show us the crowd attending the concert we can see the raw passion the fans have for the band, the way the fans are acting in this promotes the band in itself making it seem like the band can really put on a good show for their audience not only does it promote the band itself showing off their stage athestics and their general presence as a group, it also highlights to the viewer whethere they are the type of person for that music. The quick and fast paced edits and the scenes of the crowd going crazy, the general energy of the band on stage, really cuts the viewrs in two. It cuts the audience from those who enjoy the music and dont, those who would go to a concert for Anthrax and be going crazy in the crowd. In this way the music video allows the audience to define themselves in regards to the music, if they are not a crazy and excited as the people in the video and the crowd then they shouldnt be watching it or listening to the music.

A2 Media - Research

Me and James have begun to look at music videos from the chosen genre now, from the initial videos we have watched we noticed several common elements:

• very fast paced edits, these being used along with the music to create a very quick mood and very fast paced video which works well with the music which itself is very fast paced
• there are a plethora of close-ups used in multiple different angles whereby sometimes it would be close up on the singer, then other times it would be a close up on the guitar player, in particular his guitar
• there is also focus on the musicians and attempts to bring them together in shots or sometimes use of a long shot would include the whole band
• we have also noticed that generally there does not seem to be a story element, the videos tend to instead put massive focus onto the actual band itself rather than a particular story element to it
• there are however cases where this story element is present for example in the "Hanger 18" by Megadeth there were alien, but the focus always came back toward the band

This is just what we have noticed from a few videos however we will post three or four videos each and analyse these in detail looking at the deeper elements of the videos.

A2 Media - Research

Me and James have begun to look into videos and album artwork at the moment we are planning to look at advertisements later on, but here are some of the album covers we have found which we think we can use and take ideas from in order to create our own which fits into the style of the genre:

This album cover from the band Mutant is quite a simplistic one, at least compared to the others, the background idea and the small picture is a good idea for us as it would be a lot easier to do rather than actually producing our own concept art which could prove alot more difficult to create and produce. Also the idea of the band name at the top and the album/EP name at the bottom is something which seems to be very common on the front cover of the album something of which will be quite easy for us to do. Furthermore what is very obvious with tihs album cover is the futuristic feel that is given to it by the colour scheme, looking at this we have established the importance of the colour scheme of which gives it the futuristic feel. We now know when looking at this how powerful the use of colours can be without a doubt we must ensure that with our album cover we think over carefully what colours we want and so considering what effect we want the album cover to have on onlookers. Demonstrated with this is the "sciencey" feel with is adressed through its colours and so we must think whether we want and angry, calm, or neutral feeling to our album.

This album cover taken from Metallica and their album Death Magnetic, this album cover again in comparison to some of the other albums does not consist of massive amounts of artwork, in fact in our research we found that the coffin on the fron was actually a hole leading into the digipack which could perhaps be and idea we could incorporate into our project for our digipack. However overall the album is a good influence for is once again it is not massively complicated and so would be promising for us to be able to do something like this. A difference is the writing being in the middle of the album, this is something different to many of the other albums and obviously influenced by the type of artwork that the album shows. From this album the colour scheme perhaps has a less obvious effect than the prvious, but clearly the colour scheme has been thought of in relation to the actual artwork on the screen being that the white space around the outside is clearly used to draw emphasis upon the piece of artwork situated within the centre of the album. The dark colour scheme is done as a representation of the band itself being a thrash metal band their music is quite dark and so is a representation of what the album actually consists of.

Evile's album cover for their second album Infected Nations is a design which we would like to replicate being that it suits the genre perfectly. However, producing artwork of this level is not anything me and James would be capable of creating, and so it would require us either finding someone who could or commissioning a professional to do it for us. While this would give us a brilliant final piece it may not be the most practical idea for us to go by, being that it would be time consuming and due to the tight deadlines we work to it could mean that producing something this complicated and detailed would not be possible for us. However when looking at this we had the idea of maybe combining this with the other albums maybe getting some artwork on a smaller scale and blurring it out around the edges rather that using the full album. This album shows us again the idea of the band title at the top and album title at the bottom which is something that seems increasing popular in the genre.

This album from Metallica is one that me and James think we could really work with. Rather than actually using the whole album front full of artwork we could use a smaller part of the album and simply place the name and titles at the bottom of the screen in order to fill the cover and make it seem professional. For this we originally had the idea of using a theme of one of the songs and doing basically the same as this album cover as something like that would like to imitate being that it is a more simplistic version of an album cover which would be a lot easier for us to produce, not only this it would allow s to produce something while easier but it would be a lot better than if we tried some really complicated piece that would consume our time and perhaps put us behind on the project.

Slayer's album world painted blood, is another album which would be one of the easier ones to produce due again to it not being massively coated in artwork, and so would not require us to spend copious amounts of time to produce it while still looking very effective and very typical of the genre. This album shows us a new way of placing the titles with the album title behind the name of the band, however this can sometimes make the album title difficult to read and so this may not be a choice that we would consider. However the style of writing in this album would be very good as it is very typically "metal" which would be a good influence for us to base our style of writing on.

A2 Media - Research

After much debate me and James have come to a decision about the type of research we are going to undergo, and we have had many thoughts and ideas about the actual final piece itself these ideas will be posted at a later date. So far we have begun to look at many videos and album covers from the "metal" genre particularly bands that have actually influenced the band "Vortex", of which we are basing our project around. So far we have looked mainly at album covers and a few videos from bands such as Evile, slayer, metallica and Anthrax each of these bands are quite popular and so gives us more material to browse through and look at. We have also began to look at the magazine "Terroizer" a cult metal magazine, in order to try and see what album adverts look like so we can get a good idea of how to produce our and what our advert should look like. Also when we have looked in depth at some of the album covers typical of the genre we have seen that the artwork shown on some of these album covers could be very difficult for us to reproduce and upon further study of the genre we did fine some album artworks that were simpler yet still effective and so this type would be more adequate for us being that neither me or James are particularly specialised in art. Later on we will begin to post amongst both our blogs different albums, posters and music videos that we will most likely take influence from and that we can utilize to make sure that our final piece fits the codes and conventions of the genre

A2 Media

Today we have started the A2 course we have been given the choice of three briefs. From these three briefs there was the choice of creating either a music video, a trailer or a short film each of these with supporting documents such as adverts and posters etc. Out of these three i have chosen the first brief; musical package. This brief consists of creating a music video, a digpack and album cover and a magazine advertisment. On this project i am working with James Burton who has agreed to work on a music video of my choice which also is in his interests whcih is why we have chosen to work together. Already we have a good idea about what we want to do, we have chosen to focus upon a band which I am good friends with all of the band members who have already agreed on allowing us to use them as a focus for this project. The band is a thrash metal band from Durham called Vortex recently they have begun to enjoy alot of success within the region and so have agreed that that can work together with us to produce something beneficial for both parties.