Band name

Whilst thinking about the design and look of our digipaks, it is also important to make them look as realistic as possible. As a group we got together and sat around and thought of possible band names.

Though we are basing our band brand around Kings of Leon, it is important to come up with a different name for the band. We had tried using random name generators on various websites before but none of these names suggested got taken much notice of as we did not feel they were good enough. We came up with a short list of band names and eventually decided on "The Mags".

We considered this option before but not seriously. It was only until we looked further into bands similar to our genre and realised that many exsisting bands in this genre have a name involving 'The ....'. For example The Who, The Cure, The Clash..

The Cure's DVD cover with footage of them headlining 9 European music festivals in the summer of 2005.

So our decided band name was 'The Mags', and with a track list sorted, this is bound to speed up the process of designing our digipaks as we have content to involve within it now.

Track list

We needed a tracklist to make our digipak look as realistic as possible so we decided to use a random name generator. We sat round each writing a word and folding the paper over and passing it around. For instance an adjective, followed by a noun, verb.. etc. The first song title that came from this generator was The Crazy Crow Sleeps In The Magenta Theatre. We all thought this was a bit too long to be put on our digipak and wasn't the typical song you would expect to see on an artists cd from this genre. It seemed far too random and a bit too long. Another name we came up with from this generator was "The Idiosyncratic Bassoon Drowns The Magnificent Cactus". We decided that the name generator was giving us titles that were simply just too long, so we thought it would be a good idea to shorten these titles and take some words out to make their own titles.

Our list of chosen track songs are as follows:

1. Mag
2. Geilz
3. To Somebody
4. Cactus
5. Holy Leggings
6. Idiosyncracy
7. Proclaimation
8. Atonomy
9. Damaged
10. Magnolia
11. She
12. Magnetism
13. Check It Out
14. Molly's Mullet
15. Femme!

Filming day 2

In our music video we had planned to contain some performance shots, so we got together a band and got straight to it.

We all gave a helping hand in bringing in the equipment and helping set up the stage. We carefully considered our mise-en-scene and decided a plain stage would be boring so we decided to get some props together from the art room.

We played the song out loud from an iphone out of one of the amps on the stage so we are able to hear it when editing and so the band stayed in time with one another. Seeing as the main people on instruments in our band (Josh on drums & Ben on guitar) actually play for a band, they played along to the song too which made the timing all very accurate.

Once we figured out how to turn the stage lights on, filming went smoothly and we managed to gain some really effective shots. One shot we all like in particular includes a shot of Josh on the drums, and Tom's (the lead singer) shadow moving around in the curtain due to the way we set the lighting.

Filming

On 11.01.11 we began filming various shots for our music video at Molly's house. We began by filming some simple shots of Charlotte (the main character in our coursework). We got some shots of her putting her make up on whilst looking directly at the camera as if it is a mirror. We thought about the mise-en-scene of our music video and so we made sure her makeup was dark with red lips, this could hint towards her wanting to seduce the vocalist in the music video. Her clothes that she is wearing also put an emphasis on femininity.

Once we had gained these shots we wanted to film Charlotte lying on the floor surrounded by a pile of magazine and newspaper cuttings with random hand drawn images all laid beneath her. By having the strange images on the floor it could suggest the fact she is an odd obsessive fan that draws photos of the people she is obsessed with.





The filming ran smoothly and we were positive about the outcome. We also improvised when we were filming managing to think of some new shot ideas. We have already edited two examples of stop motion that we improvised on the day, one of a bass guitar with kiss marks all over it, and the drawings and the photos of men piled up on top of each other. The bass guitar will be a significant part of our music video, as there is a line that says 'She stole my Karma.' We will film a shot of her stealing the guitar with the kisses all over it to show her obsession.

Stop Motion with paper:



Stop Motion with guitar:

Digipak research

Here are some examples of album covers from bands of a similar genre to Kings of Leon:



Foo Fighters: This album cover shows how random a band from this genres album can be. The image on the front of this album cover doesn't particularly relate to the band. This differs from the typical images you would see on the album cover of an artist from the pop genre.



Kasabian: This is also a good example of a typical band from this genre. It has the band pictured on the front cover. In music videos of bands from this genre there is often performance elements involved showing the members of the band involved.

Here are some more examples of other bands from a similar genre:

Libertines - Up The Bracket:



Primal Scream - Screamdelica

Digipak

A digipak is a recently introduced book-style paperboard with one (or more) plastic trays capable of holding a CD or Dvd attatched inside. Digipaks are being brought in rather than the old style plastic cd cases.

Here is an example of a digipak: