Evaluation

this is the link for my evaluation on Prezi

http://prezi.com/kilnlmp3uves/g324-evaluation-wouldnt-it-be-nice-the-beach-boys/

Final Video

This is my video on the YouTube channel. Follow this link straight to the video, i hope you enjoy it.

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

Ricky Lawrence

Final Website

This is my final website

http://michaelsleftshoe.wix.com/the-beach-boys

I am happy with my final site and i feel tha it went well. i stuck with the yellow background as i feel it works the beach theme and has a warm summery feel to it. The 4 links along the top of the page are all active and are all working pages. Across these 4 pages i have;

• information on the band
• exclusive band member information
• tour dates
• background stories
• picture gallery full of photos
• and a contact page

please take the time to navigate on the pages.

Ricky Lawrence

Final Digi-Pak

This is my final Digi-Pak

This is the final copy of my Digi-Pak i decided to use the style that i created myself on photoshop, i feel that this design is quite effective as it clearly is a beach pattern and this was better than any photos that i have from previous holidays which i had taken myself. It was a shame that i couldn't use a beach photo but obviously as i cant use a photo which i didnt actually take myself and also due to environmental limitations i wouldn't be able to capture the perfect photo if i tried. I have included a lyric book to this Digi-Pak as this is always an effective little add-on as it makes it just that little bit more interactive for the consumer as they will know all the lyrics to all of the songs.

Ricky Lawrence

The website

This is the link for my website, will take you straight to my site. Use the simple navigation across the top to select through different pages.

http://michaelsleftshoe.wix.com/the-beach-boys

Ricky Lawrence

Just an idea?

During our own time at home, one of the group members happened to see the Coldplay music video for Paradise, and shared it with us with their idea. There is a scene in the video where the elephant is holding cardboard with writing on it saying 'para-para-paradise' in time with the lyrics.

We took inspiration from this and decided that we could put that into our video, we wouldnt do it to go in time with lyrics but we used it as a photo to be used for either digi-pak's or websites.

As you can see each band member has a differnt board saying a differnt part of the band name, then we were sat in order so the boards would read 'The Beach Boys'. I think that this would be quite a strong photo to use as a front cover on the digi-pak or a main photo on the website, it would just require some editing and then it could be used.

Ricky Lawrence

What are you wearing?

These are the photos of the other band members outfits, as you can see they both wore jumpers and trousers too so we looked similar but not the same. Although we wore different clothes i still feel that it looks good that there is a difference in each outfit as it makes each member induvidual.

Ricky Lawrence

What am i wearing?

This is the outfit that i decided on to wear for the photo's of our band, i feel that it looks smart, but it doesnt look TOO smart and directed as there is no blazer and the other band memebers would be wearing similar clothes but not identical. It was good in the end that we decided to wear smart clothes as this meant that i wouldnt have to worry about wearing clothes that were too modern for the band and looking completely different to the other band members.

Ricky Lawrence

Sophie's outfit for the video

this is just a casusl outfit chosen by Sophie it shows how it was just a normal day out for the couple and that it should look like just a spontaneous filim of their day. The coat was wore as it is late on in the year and the weather may not have been great. As you can see from the picture of the weather that it wasnt great so it was appropiate to bring a coat too.

Ricky Lawrence

Nice outfit

For the music video i decided to wear just casual clothing so i wore a plain black t shirt, and jeans, this emphasises that i (the boy in the video) am young and that i dont really pay much atention to what i am wearing, also the style i wore and the particular way i wore the jeans and trainers was seen on The Only Way Is Essex so this also emphasises that i am young as i am being inspired by what i have seen on the T.V shows.

Ricky Lawrence

The use & merging of other images

For some of our photo's it was just impossible for us to have taken them, e.g. i wanted a shot of a festival crowd but taken from the view from on stage, obviously we would never be able to recreate this so i had to take the photo off of the internet, but then i would edit my photos (which we had taken ourselves) into or onto the photo making them the main point and the internet picture would just be used for the photo background.

Ricky Lawrence

Are you copying me?

As a group we come to the decision that we would be happy to share images and use the same images if we had to, for the site we could have the same photos, for the Digi-Pak we could have the same photos too but we would have preferred it if we didn't have the same photo's for the same things, e.g. matching photo's and matching front covers. We felt that as we were all a part of the photo's and a part of taking the photo's that we should all be able to use them. Although we were using the same photo's we have all edited them differntly, and we took a lot of photo's so we were able to mix it up a bit between eachother too as we may all like different ones.

Ricky Lawrence

What is the Mac doing?

Throughout the whole process, my group has faced many of problems to do with our Mac working efficiently. To start with we faced problems such as the laptop just not working properly it kept shutting down occassionally, then iMovie was playing up, when were editing our clips from our filming they would be corrupt when it come to play back and it would just switch to a black screen, eventually we thought we had overcome this but then we had saved the video and opened it up when we returned to it the same problem was just occuring again, and this repeated to happen all of the time but with different clips. The next problem to occur was one when we had started our video editing again to try and overcome the last problem, and then in an unnexpected event the power cable got pulled out of our laptop meaning that the whole machine shut down because out laptop wouldnt not work without the cable as the battery was fried. In the end we decided that we could upload our video to YouTube after editing it all but before saving it, it took forever to do and then once we had done it we watched it back and the problems had occured again, and the resolution and quality of the video was considerably less than what it was on the machine its self.

Ricky Lawrence

Where's the song?

On my website there is one thing that i have missed out which i really wanted to put on it, and that was a soundtrack for background music, the song i had chose for this was Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys, but for an un-aparent reason this wouldn't work so i could not do this. I feel that not only would the song have given the website an edge compared to others it would have made it more appealing to an audience, and also it would have made the site that bit more professional but this feature would not work for me so i couldnt carry this out.

Ricky Lawrence

My website

For my website i decided to still use a sort of beach themed colour code, i have a Blue background surrounding the page, the main window in the middle is a yellow Background and then i just have any writing or images over the top of that.

For my front page i decided to keep it fairly simple and not go over the top as personally it winds me up when a page is over loaded with things as you end up clicking on things by accident. I have a band photo in the middle of the page, and the the bands name and a little quote, then on the following page which is the Gallery, i have all shots of the band that we had taken all along a slide show effect, then there is the The Band page, this is just a page about the band showing new information, un known information about the band members, and the story behind The Beach Boys, then my last page is the Contact Us page, this just has a form where fans would be able to contact the band, and they would see the mail and could reply.

Ricky Lawrence

Starting my website

For producing my website i will be using Wix, it is an online service which allows to completely create your own website. You can either start from blank and completely desgin yourself a website or you can look through a wide range of well ordered templates and choose one and then just edit it.

I decided to go with the 2nd option and edit a template, i got my template from the Music & Entertainment heading within the templates page, i will completely change this around, changing things like; fonts, colours, patterns, photos, pages (adding or removing them). This is the template i chose.

Ricky Lawrence

Some examples of our band photo's

These are some example of the images we took where Sophie would have given us strict poses and positions to be in, as you can see these photos look professional and you can tell that someone one has directed the band where to be and what to do. I like these photo's but at the same time i do also like the look of the natural photo where the photographer just takes photo's whilst we are doing our own thing.

These are two of the photo's we took with the 'natural' effect. In one of them we are playing around on the keyboard whilst singing just being together as a band having a practice, this would be good to use as viewers would see how the band is more than just a band and that they are friends. The other photo is taken as a back stage photo before the go out to perform.

We also decided that we could take photos of the band and then edit them onto new backgrounds such as concert crowds, bill boards, posters, etc.. so these photos were just taken in the school corriders and against walls without any Mise-en-scene really taken into consideration.

Ricky Lawrence

Band photo's

For our band photo's we obviously had a wide range of options/styles/conventions to use or follow, we decided that we would take plenty of different photos which would give us a range of different images to choose from when it come to producing our websites, also this would mean that there may be the chance of different group members liking the look of different images which could lead to us not all using the same photo's.

We discussed the issue of using the same pictures and we dont mind the fact if we use the same photo's as there will still be some different ones used and our websites will differ from eachothers as we are all making our own one, and we may also edit photo's differently.

We decided we could take photo's of the band as if they were on a photo shoot, so they weould all be set up in positions and doing certain poses, the photographer (Sophie Harten) would decide on those positions and poses. We could also take photo's of the band in an 'unexpected/natural' way, we could have them singing on stage and get some action photos, or we could get some photo's of them as if they were just together playing around singing and playing on the instruments.

Ricky Lawrence

Draft Digi-Pak's

When designing my Digi-Pak i need to make sure that the one i finally use is the one that i feel 100% certain that i want to use and i am happy with. I need to take into consideration the fact that i cannot use photos taken by other people from the internet so if i have no pictures of my own available to be used i will have to use Photoshop and create a colour pattern that matches The Beach Boys and falls into the beach category, and also at the same will be atentnion grabbing.

Here are just 2 examples of drafts i have done, i like them both but the problem being with one of them is the fact that i did not take the photo, that makes that photo of my use as i am not allowed to use it. The one that i hae created myself using Photoshop clearly represents a beach, and the colour pattern shows the sea, the waves breaking, and the sand, another good point of this is the fact that it would straight away stand out to the consumers and would catch their eye and make them look at it.

Ricky Lawrence

Creating my Digi-Pak

As part of our coursework we need to create a promo digi-pak for the bands album/single, whilst doing this i am planning to stick to original ideas, i will use a beach based photo as a bacvkground or i will use beach colours for the background creating a warm feel as well as grabbing the consumers atention at the same time. I will use a Italic font as this matches previous albums and i feel that this is the best suited for the band, e.g if i was doing a rock band i would use bold font to make a statment with all corners on it instead of curved letters. 

This shows when i was looking at the selcetion of italic curved fonts whilst trying to make my decision, i like all of them but obviously i can only choose one. In the end i decided to go with Harlow Italic, when using this i will make it bold so it looks like bubble writing and will clearly stand out on the front of the digi-pak cover.

Ricky Lawrence

Looking at previous Beach Boys albums

This was done purely for inspiration, these are some previous examples of Beack Boys albums, cleary as you would expect they have a beach theme, whether is a beach landscape photo, or surf boards, or sun set, this is good as this gives me a clear path to follow when i am designing my digi pak.

I made the chouce that with my digi pak i will have to use colours such as yellows and oranges as they are related with heat so they are warm colours like the sun set. I will be taking time to look through my own old personal photos for nay beach landscape shots or i can try and use Photoshop if i need to in order to completely desing a image or colour pattern.

 

Ricky Lawrence

London Zoo

After queuing we had got our tickets and had got into London Zoo

We got straight into the zoo and had a look at one of these maps and then planned our day.

after looking at this we decided that our best option would have just been to start at one point of the zoo and to then go around the zoo making our way through all of the enclosures seeing all of the animals and getting all of the filming done that we wished to have done. Scattered all around the zoo were these maps so we could make sure we were heading in the right direction as we were making our way around and that we werent missing any of the attractions or events that were on E.G. the penguin show. 

Overall the zoo was a successful day for filming, we filmed in nearly all of the different animal areas so this gave more than enough different clips to choose from when it came to us editing our video.

The only thing that could have been changed about the day was out of our power, and this would have been that the animals would have been more lively as quite a few of them were just laying around and not doing much, but this wasnt too much of an issue as the focus on the filming was me and Sophie being the couple.

Ricky Lawrence

Bike hire

After walking around Regents Park for quite a bit we decided that out best option would be to ask a member of staff for guidance towards to the bike hire, he pointed us in the right direction and we were on our way. Although we had to go out of the park to get the bikes it turned out that they were conveniently quite close. The first bike point that we got to only had one bike left in it and the machine for it was broken so we then had to ask somebody else and go find another bike point. When we eventually got our bikes it cost us £1.00 for hire which allowed you to have them for as long as you want up to 30 minutes, if you were to go over that allocated time then further prices would be added. Fortunately we only need the bikes for a short period so we got them and headed back to the park to get some filming done.

Ricky Lawrence

Regents Park

As a group we decided that we didnt want to limit ourselves to doing all of our filming in one environment, as a result of this we then went onto Regents Park, conviniently it was only around the corner from London Zoo but we still had a fair bit of travelling to do as where we wanted to film was at the other end of the park. We felt that by filiming in the park it would emphasise the couple being together and being out on a day out to London. In the park we wished to film scenes of the couple just walking around having fun, riding on the Bikes through the park, having leaf fights, having picnics, and riding across the lakes in a Padlow, we decided to start making our way towards the bike hire and film anything of the couple together on our way.

Ricky Lawrence

The Days Weather & Travel Cards

Today we decied to go up to London in order for us to get the majority of our filming done. Although the weather wasn't great it was in fact the best day of the week on the weather forecast so this made us decide to go today before the weather had any real opportunity of it getting worse.

In order for us to get up to London we would have to take the train but as we were planning to go arouns London on the bikes, go to the Zoo and go into one of the parks we decided that out best option would just be to buy a travel card which would allow us to travel around London all day.

Ricky Lawrence

Storyboard

this is the written story board for our video, this is all the shots throughout the video and the write up and description for all of them.

there was a copy made up consisting of images and pictures also with a write up and description but it is dated and ideas were changed so it isnt up to the date with all the latest ideas.

Ricky Lawrence

Our Survey

Ricky Lawrence

Our survey's results
we asked our survey to many different people of all different; ages, sex's, cultures, backgrounds, lifestyles so we could get a broad range of different results from people and to see how they felt and what they felt about the song. From doing this it helped us gain an insight into what sort or age group and target group of consumers that we would be aiming towards when doing the video. This is a key piece of research as essentially it would allow us to develop an idea of video style that we would be using as we would want it to stand out to the target market.

Alot of the results were saying that people understood that the song was an up-beat happy song with a fast tempo so we would to create a video which fits this style and for example we wouldnt have clips of people being sad or down as it wouldnt work with the lyrics and the tune. Aswell as happy people also thought that it was a song about love and a young couple so straight away this has given us an idea to work around.

unfortunately i cannot upload the video clips of the surveys being carried out.
Ricky Lawrence

The original Song, Video & Lyrics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwTv62EcUsk

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was never ending
Wouldn't it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldnt do
We could be married
And then wed be happy

Wouldn't it be nice

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Wouldn't it be nice

Ricky Lawrence

What do i make of the lyrics?

After listening the video over and over again in my group we decided that the video was telling a story about a young couple wishing that they were older "wouldn't it be nice if we were older,........ and wouldn't it be nice to live together" and "when we could say goodnight and stay together" so because of this view that we had on the video we decided to do our video telling a story about a young couple who are completely in love together, and then maybe go to them being older towards the end of the video, all the way through the song it is up beat and a happy tone so it will be full of happy scenes to match the music.

Ricky Lawrence

Watching the original video

After deciding which song we would like to do for this task we felt as if we should watch the video over a couple of times to see how they went about creating a video for it and what purpose/meaning their video had and what story it told.

From watching the video as listening to the lyrics properly we feel that the song is alot about friendship, the video seems to show they are a group of friends maybe growing old together and staying close. This lead us to deciding how to do our video, we are staying with the friendship story as well but ours is based on a bioy/girl friendship which is in fact a relationship, and will film all of our clips emphasising that so that the audience can feel/see the same story as we did.

As a result of watching the video there was a lot of awareness raised within our group about just how many differnt camera angles are used and how many differnt short clips there are. This was good for us to see as otherwise we may have just took it a doss and not put the effort in that we really needed to and the video would have looked really un-professional.

These are some screen shots from the video showing all different camera angles, and different clips varying from the band singing.

Ricky Lawrence

Ted swede

This is my Ted Swede

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHnZYe4XGB8

This wasnt a very successful video as it just wasnt well planned, wasnt well filmed, and it wasnt taken particularly seriously, but a good point coming from that is that i can watch it and see how if you do not take it seriously then the video looks awful, and i can see how i have to improve and that how much of a difference good editing can make.

This gives me a drive to make this music video good, and if the music video will only be good if i put the effort in.

Ricky Lawrence

Previous work

This is a video of previous work that i completed in year 12 at AS level. This task was set so it could be used a practice for lip syncing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxda7mUI5uI&list=UUzCuzU6TJVKZ_Khku1FndtQ&index=9&feature=plcp

From this task i noticed the sheer importance of the quality of the lip sync, if the lip syncing is bad then the video looks out of time and completely un-professional so this needs to be a key focus of ours when we are filming this. Also from filming this we realised how little planning we had done and that we felt a bit lost when it come to filming as we had no structure to follow, so when we are going to film we need to know clearly; what we are going to do, where we are going to do it and when we would do it so this then means that we will get on with it and wont have any difficulties.

We also need to consider Mise En Scene because from this video you can see that we are all wearing bags still and the location is just on a cycle track around the town. This adds a negative effect onto the video as professional vidoes are taken seriously and this just seems as more of a fool around. So for our new video this means in order for our video to look professional and look like it is serious and is meaning full we will need to plan what we will be wearing on the day so we wont have any issues (carrying bags) and we will use a number of different locations and a number of different scenes.

Ricky Lawrence

What is iMovie?

When we had been set this task, i had some background knowledge on using iMovie as i had used for my Ted video, and for my FRIENDS video the year before, but i didnt get really too involved i just helped out with little things, and had no where near enough knowledge to produce a whole music video. Because this time i took the opportunity to watch as many iMovie tutorials that i could and this made my iMovie knowledge grow a lot so i was ready to edit all my clips and make the video.

iMovie Tutorial

Ricky Lawrence

Mood board

Once we had made our final choice of song which we would be doing i put together a mood board of The Beach Boys and the all different bands that are similar to them from the same year, and moving all the way up to this year now. By doing this is will help me get an idea of bands use, wear in the photo's and music videos so i could use this to guide and help me, and it would also give me a good overall idea of a starting point for my video so i would have something to work from and then develop my ideas around.

Ricky Lawrence

Permission please?

As a group we had to send an email to The Beach Boys and the record label that they are signed to to ask for permission so we were able to use their song in our video and songs names on the site and digi-pak and their band name all over our work.

These are the screen shots of the emails that were sent.

Ricky Lawrence

Our song choice

The song we have chosen to do is 'The Beach Boys - Wouldnt it be nice' this is an up beat happy song so the music video would have to be quite fast showing happy scenes and clips.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L--cqAI3IUI 

This is the song and the original video, the video shows a frienship group and with the lyrics being used "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long, and wouldn't it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belong" we feel that a young couples love scene would be releveant and would work with the lyrics, it can be seen a couple together when they are young and the lyrics are talking them being together when they are older and how "wouln't it be nice".

From this we then went on to do a braintstorm in our group to discuss all our different idea's for filming and then finalising which ones we would wish to do.


















This image shows the planning for how we are going to film the music video and what we are going to film, All Sophie's points were in PINK, Maxwell's were in BLUE & Mine were in GREEN. The points which we have put bubbles around are ones which me are more likely to do and will focus on. Each member of the group will book a ticket for them selves for when we go to London Zoo to prevent unnessecay queueing so we can get in before the mad rush so we can get our filimg done. As you can see the band hasnt been finalised yet but we will not wait around wasting think thinking, we will get this sorted a.s.a.p

Ricky Lawrence

Similar artists

once our final decision of band was certain we then took a look at similar artists and their videos and pictures from concerts they had performed to get an idea of props they used and outfits they wore. Two of the bands we took a look at were Westlife and Take That, two very successful boy bands who we would like to get inspiration from for our clips on stage for our video.



Take That

Take That took an approach at their concert to wear all matching suits so they looked the same and you could clearly see that they were part of a band. Although this does look professional and very smart i personally feel that it looks a bit too fake and un natural.

 Westlife

From seeing images of westlife's concerts/tours we noticed that they had taken a differnt approach towards their outfits, eas person was wearing a different outfit, this is good as it looks slightly more natural and that they may have decided to wear what they wanted too.

from doing this research as a group we decided that to be wearing different clothes was good as it made it look more natural and gave eachother induviduality, however we still decided to be wearing smart clothing as we felt it looks better than casual clothes.

Final Choice: Smart clothing but each person wearing different

Ricky Lawrence