Research Into Target Audience - Initial Research

Revised: Digipak Research

To begin planning my Digipak i researched other artists albums who had a similar genre to that of The Wild Wolves. Initially i mainly looked to the front covers of the albums (as they are usually the first impression, and the back-cover/inside relates to the front) and found some pictures that i have posted below. I thought that by looking at a group of front covers by similar artists, I could establish and utilise any generic conventions seen in their album pictures.

This first CD cover belongs to James Morrison's first album, Undiscovered. James Morrison's music is little like The Wild Wolves, as it is more Indie-Pop than Indie-Folk, however he supports the Indie-Folk/Pop image with his soulful Indie music. This album cover is a simple image of him, the artist, marketing him to his new audience. The space in the picture includes his name and the album name, and there is a lighting effect/lens flare from the top right corner behind the artists head.

This next album cover belongs to Florence & The Machine - a relatively new "big" Indie band that has risen quickly in popularity. This album cover prominently focuses on the image of the lead singer (Florence) and the title of the album, "Lungs", with the text and the added imagery of a paid of lungs hanging from her neck like a necklace. This shows the bands Indie genre by developing a unique and interesting album cover whilst still focusing on the band - a marketing requirement.

The above 2 pictures (Jamie Cullum, Bob Marley) sport the artists face taking up the majority (and nearly the whole) of the mise-en-scene. This clearly shows the marketing aspect to the album, and also how important the image (and style) of the artist is. Each album cover has it's own unique feel to it, with Cullum's being cast purple and Marley's emphasising the warm colours (representative of Folk music).

Paolo Nutini's work is more colourful than the other productions (with Cullum's being just one flow of purple). Nutini also displays the animation side in his productions, which relate to his one animated music video and his genre (with animation and Indie becoming more strongly linked). These album covers above show his sense of his own music (colourful) and focus on how he is portrayed to the audience - animated, friendly, holding a guitar...

An image of the artist is shown in all of the above album covers - telling me that for a successfully Indie album cover, I must focus the mise-en-scene directly upon the artist, whether this is a large shot of the artists face, or a recurring image of the artist as seen in Nutini's "these streets" album cover.

Another recurring idea throughout the productions is the unique addition to the digipak - and the relation it has with a music video produced by the artist. This tells me that to make the digipak as attractive as possible, I should make a connection between the imagery on my digipak, and the imagery in my music video, to encode a personal flare of the artist into the print productions. This has given me a wide variety of ideas regarding the animation in our music video, which can be a strong link between productions, and a strong unique factor to my digipak.

Disney President: Simba

Simba (The Lion King)

Simba, the King, son of the late King Mufasa, is a perfect candidate for the President of Disney. Simba already knows and holds great responsibility; leading his tribe, being a father, and having to look after his multiple friends from hunters, bigger animals, or power-hungry relatives (such as his Uncle, Scar).
A Disney President needs to have these qualities. Leadership, compassion and bravery are a must have. The elected Disney President needs to be able to progress with new ideas to promote the company and keep it successful. They also need to be a quick thinker, and develop fair and effective solution. Simba is able to provide all of these, as his experience as a Prince cub and his experience as a King and a loving Father has allowed him to utilise these skills.
Simba's life has not always been smooth, but he is consistent throughout his life of his passion, love and success. Simba is able to make friends with just about anyone (including a Warthog and a Meerkat) and this, combined with his fatherly skills, allows him to lead in a fair and just way.
However, as Simba is a King, this provides him with the opposite skills, of leading the way of survival, and doing what is best for everyone in the long run. This is an exeptional skill for a Disney President, as he will be able to lead a just and long running company, increasing and supporting its popularity.

The Disney President will probably need to be comfortable in the spotlight. Simba is used to this! He has appeared in multiple films and has given special appearances on TV shows (through which he has shown what a good animator he is), showing his connection and passion to the film/TV industry - a good factor for a competitor of a media industry president.
If all of this wasn't enough, Simba is a lion. Lions are known to be brave and logical, two important skills of leadership. He won't be afraid to take risks to keep the company successful, and he will be able to think logically and clearly to develop a solution for any problem.

By the end of this extremely strong campaign for Simba, you should be prepared to vote for Simba, as this would be a vote for success. If that hasn't convinced you, just think, Simba is a talking lion! That would certainly promote Disney to the world - having a brave, strong lion with the gift of human speech!

Goodwin's Music Video Analysis

Andrew Goodwin developed a useful way to analyse music videos, which has proved to be a useful reference point for our own music video analyses. (while writing in "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" - Routledge 1992)


Genre Characteristics
The video should demonstrate genre characteristics, so visual aspects that are suitable to what sort of music that is going with it. For example, a stage performance for a rock video, but then a dance routine with singing for a boy/girl band.

Lyric & Visual Relationship
There is usually a relationship between the two, either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting, to strengthen the song and the music video (so maybe audiences remember/like it more).

Music & Visual Relationship
Similar to the genre characteristics, as visuals connect with the music, and also similar to above, as they can be illustrative (guitar with a guitar solo), amplifying or again, contradicting (for example, Blink 182 is a rock band but made a music video that looked like a boy band, for contradicting humor).

Visual styles
For example, bands and their record labels will need close ups of the artist to sell the artist, or the artist may develop motifs which can recur across their other music videos and other work.

Notion of Looking
Reference to this notion of looking, for example, screens within screens/telescopes, etc.

Voyeuristic Treatment of the Female Body
Nowadays this is obvious in R'n'B music videos or rapping music videos, to demonstrate their wealth/luck and how women want them because of their musical skills.

Intertextual Reference
These references could be to films or even TV programmes with which the music is associated, for example music videos showing film clips are usually in the soundtrack to the film, so the two medias can advertise each other simultaneously.

Research Into Newer Ideas for Music Video

As we are changing our ideas for the real life section of the music video, I have decided to do some research into what sort of generic mise-en-scene features are usually found in Folk-Indie music videos, and if our newer ideas (posted previously) match or mirror these features. The artists in the pictures supporting this research are The Kooks, The View, Paolo Nutini and James Morrison. These artists all have a similar style of music, and they all have strong musical links to the Indie-Folk/Rock/Pop category.

Firstly, wood/neutral settings do seem to pop up within this genre of music videos, including the fore mentioned bands. The "simple" setting is a popular feature to the mise-en-scene in these videos, shown in the photographs below of James Morrison, The Kooks and Paolo Nutini. James Morrison is featured at a beach, with high cliffs. Although this is beautiful, it is also very simplistic, as his video features him walking along this beach, however we see barely any of the beach (as we see more of him). The Kooks pictures are featured in a blank room, and outside the Eiffel tower. The blank room has its obvious simplicities, however the Eiffel tower setting is less so. The way these bands use the setting is ideal, as the camera focus is on them, having the background fuzzy and out of focus. This gets the audience to concentrate on the artist more, as well as including an attractive mise-en-scene.

The next few pictures (including The View, James Morrison and The Kooks) show the artists singing in the mise-en-scene, towards (but not directly at) the camera. This is an extremely popular feature to Indie genres for music videos, as it gives the artist a chance to show off their talent. However, these video clips aren't usually from live performances but from staged-live performances for the camera, for example, James Morrison's picture below where he is playing in the middle of a busy street (perhaps London). The uses of the miming to their own song doesn't have a preference to whether they use a microphone or not. In the pictures below, The View and The Kooks are both using one, however James Morrison is not. This seems to be an option, but the microphone promotes the "live" performance aspect. However, a microphone is used in settings where its suitable, for example The Kooks' and The Views recording stuido look-a-likes, however James Morrisons busy street wouldn't be suitable, perhaps meaning we should not try to use a microphone in the middle of our woodland setting.

The next feature is the instruments. Some of the above pictures have already shown instruments being used wherever the singing is used, and this is usually the case. The following pictures furthur support this notion, with Paolo Nutini, The View and The Kooks. These artists have clearly used their musical abilities to promote the band through their music video (as well as in their songs). As mentioned above, the bands seem to use singing as a popular aspect to their videos, and the use of instruments from the main band member, and the rest of the band (usually situated behind the main member). This promotes the image of the band AS a band, marketing them as a whole to the audiences who consume their videos. As we cannot use a whole band, we are just using an actor for the main band member, which is also popular in this genre (however usually, there are shots of the other members). After looking at alot of videos, we decided we will definately be using a musical prop for the video, to promote the musical image of the artist through the video.

I also looked into the use of a wolf, which surprisingly was quite popular over many genres. In James Morrisons video "You can't stop the rain" (Stills shown below), there are shots of real life wolves (which unfortunately, we are unable to use) shown in a similar setting to the artist. There isn't a wholly main concept based around the wolves in either the lyrics or the video, however it does make the video more interesting to watch. This shows that although the use of a wolf is a popular concept, we need to use it correctly to make it successful.

Revised Animation for Music Video Ideas

After finishing shooting our animation and watching it back post-edit, our teachers gave us some valuable criticisms and advice.
For starters, the animation was too slow moving to fit in with the fast-paced song we had chosen. We ended up re-editing and speeding up the pace of our animation to see if the pace of the mise-en-scene matched the tempo of the song. This helped alot, as we decided it looked much more interesting and we could add many more exciting visuals, making the animation and the music video better to watch.
Another point was that the animation was rather "boring" in a sense. This was mainly because the animation was mainly shot as a long shot or medium shot, with no interesting variation or change. Over the past week we came up with newer ideas to integrate into the animation, and captures close-ups, extreme long-shots, and medium close-ups of the wolf in the animation, providing a good variation making it easier to watch and much less boring.

Revised Ideas for Digipak

As we have changed our ideas for the music video, including actor ideas, setting ideas, and a new plot, I decided I needed to update and improve my Digipak ideas.
This has included using the new actor, and ideas of strong links between the visuals in the music video, and the pictures for the Digipak.
I am planning to edit the photos, to make them look surreal to fit in with the theme of the animation in our music video. I plan to do this by using an editing tool I discovered on Microsoft Word, that transforms an image to "Black and White" (not grey scale) showing high contrast and creating an effect similar to our shadow puppetry. I believe this will market the artist still, but create an interesting mise-en-scene that will attract consumers.
I also want to include various shots of the artist (the actor, Tamas, posing as the artist) to keep with marketing the image of the band. I am planning to use similar generic costumes to the one used in our music video.
I have also been advised to link the music video and Digipak in more than just the ways I have fore mentioned. This could be done by using screen-shots of our music video, then editing/tweaking them so they fit in with the Digipak. I plan to use this idea for some of my covers. For example, I could use an image from the video for the back-cover, and then add text to it for the song names and small-print, creating an interesting image that links subtly to the music video, keeping a consistent mise-en-scene throughout my productions.

Revised ideas for Real Life section of Music Video

After filming recently with 6 actors for the film, we uploaded the footage to find it uninteresting and dull. We have decided to change the storyboarding of the real life extract of the music video to include less actors (1 boy and possible one girl). As the main target audience of this song appears to be gender neutral, we thought by having a male singer in the band, we could appeal to females sexually, and to the males with the characters style/talent.

Furthermore, we decided to also include instruments (acoustic guitar for the male lead) as this will relate to the song track strongly, and strengthen the genre within the mise-en-scene, as most indie/modern-folk bands include their instruments within their music videos, such as The Kooks or The View.

The male actor will be:
1. Tamas Dalmay.

And the possible female actress will be (if used):
1. Caroline Gooch.

These actors are reliable and suitable for the role, making them easy to work with to get the best footage possible for the scenes we have thought of. Also, the clothes needed to suit the band and to appeal to our target audience (who like boutique shops, TopShop and H&M) go well with these actors, and they already have most of the suitable costumes planned out in a previous post.

We have also decided to shoot most/all of our shots in a green-land or wooded area, as this mise-en-scene will link strongly to the animation parts of the video, as this depicts a wooded area with trees and woodland animals. It also can focus on mainly the artist and the instrument, which will help promote the image of the artist that we are marketing with this music video (also, similar bands as The Kooks etc, have videos in neutral places that aren't glamorous, and some even have scenes in woods, showing its a generic factor to these sort of videos).

Another additional thought process we had was to include a picture or representation of a wolf into the music video (outside of the animation) to create a stronger link between the 2 sections of our film. We thought that a wolf outfit could be interesting, for the band member/s to meet him as if he had come out of the animated woods into real woods, similar to an initial idea we had with the 6 band members. However, this proved difficult as we could not find a wolf outfit that wasn't gruesome for halloween, and we thought it may look overly silly and amateur.
We then came up with the mask idea, and integrating it with the band member/s. At first, the mask was going to be put on another actor, like the outfit would have, but then we thought that adding a mask to our actor, tamas, whilst he was playing the guitar or singing, could suggest that he was the wolf, and that he was in the animation world but came out and is turning human with the song and as the song progressed. This would be an effective and easy way to link the 2 sections of our film and we thoroughly liked the outcome after filming.

We did not know how to end our film, and came up with a few ideas of the actor going back into animation, or just a fading walk away. However, the end of our song ends on a strong beat, so we wanted a strong ending that went with that beat so the visuals linked impressively with the audio. Our final decision was to have our actor Tamas waking up from the sequence of animation and real life, cross fading the wolf mask over his face. This would connote his waking up, and that the music video had been a fantacy. We also wanted to show that he wasn't just dreaming of it, that he was an artist, so we included him getting up, picking up his guitar and leaving the room with a band member (played by myself). This was a good ending because we will be able to synchronise the door shut/slam with the end beat of the song, creating a linked ending between them.

Initial Digipak/Magazine Advert Ideas

During filming one weekend, i decided to take a few photos of our actors as the band, as it was the opportune moment. I decided to go with a playful look, as the music and band are hardly a serious-photoshoot type of band, as the folk music is mainly about having fun and enjoying what you do. Below are 3 of the photographs i took, with the edited versions of them below the originals:

This first picture depicts the band as close friends (as do the other 2). The edited version has heightened contrast and saturation, with a similar level of brightness. This has made the picture warmer, and given it a "glow" to make it look like summer (instead of the original cold picture), to fit in with what we originally shot for the music video.

These 2 pictures have similar editing techniques, as i have changed the contrast, brightness and saturation for all 3, giving them all the warmer look (however for the last picture, i lowered the brightness a little to bring out more of the contrast change).

However, as we have now changed our actor for the music video, i am changing these photographs. The Digipak will market the bands image as well as the music, so using the same actor for the artist in our music video and on my Digipak is vital.

Textual Analysis of a Music Video, First Draft

Blitzen Trapper - Furr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmBgxP56R1I

Music Industry Research - Final Production

Investigation Part 1:


Investigation Part 2:


Investigation Part 3:


Investigation Part 4:

Initial Ideas & Planning for Digiak - Back Cover

Over the past few weeks my partner and I have been getting ready to shoot, and shooting the animation part of the film.

The animation we are using gave me an idea for my Digipak for the band. I wanted to include some factors of the music video to the Digipak, so that they were related visually.

During a lunchtime I set up the OHP we are using in our pod off our media classroom, and fiddled around with the cut-outs we had prepared for our film.

I thought that arranging the cut-outs in a specific way would creat an interesting and attractive back cover of the Digipak, with some plain space in the picture to list the songs on the CD.

I took a few photos that i will be editing and cutting to see if this was a good idea. I liked the end result however I will have to edit the pictures and crop them to make them fit. I will be doing this, plus deciding on how to present the front of the Digipak, over the next week or so.

Some of the picturesI took (unedited at the moment) are shown below andi will be putting the rest up later:

The 2 pictures relate strongly to our animation theme, which i plan to utilise throughout my Digipak, on the front, back and inside covers.

Stop Animation Experiment 4

We decided to try out a different way to display the title of the song "Moon Song" on screen. We cut out lots of little shapes of leaves and placed them on the OHP so that they looked like they were hanging from the tree. Then we took continuous pictures whilst changing the positions of the leaves, making them fall off as if blown in the wind, then forming the title of the song by moving into position. Below is the video that came from the pictures we took, which we are very proud of.
We thought that this was quite effective as it fitted in with the theme of the woodland style that we are starting our music video with.



However, recently we have changed our plans on this, and will not be using this technique to display the name of the song, as it doesn't fit in well with the transition from black background to white (light) background that we need.
We have decided to try to make it look as though we have zoomed in after showing "The Wild Wolves" with the moon in the sky and the stars, and then when we zoom out, it shows the title of the song, also in star form so it looks continuous from the band name. It is however, going to be stars forming the words "Moon Song" but this will be on what looks like a parchment, held by birds, so when the shot zooms out, the sky is now the light, and the parchment and stars is made by the shadow. This creates a smooth transition that we will practice as if it is the final try, and if it goes well we will probably use it unless we can develop on it and make it better.

Stop-Animation (Research & Information)

Stop animation (also known as stop-motion or frame-by-frame) is a popular animation technique that makes a inanimate object appear to move on its own. The object is moved small amounts between individual photo grams, creating the illusion of movement when the pictures are pieced together and played as a continuous sequence.
This is my favorite animation technique because of the interesting way it is made, and i am excited to use it on our own music video production.

The most widely known stop animation made, is usually with clay figures (clay-animation) and a famous example of this would be the "Wallace and Gromit" movies or episodes.

Recently Caroline and I attended a film festival at the forum in Norwich, which has a selection of animations, and some BAFTA animations. One of these BAFTA's was "Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death". The trailer shown below:



These Wallace and Gromit animations have always interested me, and a few years ago in Art classes we made our own clay animations to go with a song of our choice.
The animations take an extremely long time to create, as each second of the short films or the feature length (by Nick Park) takes 24 individual photo frames. The short films are about 20 to 30 minutes long, meaning that overall a maximum of 43200 pictures are shot for each short film made, and each picture has a minimal amount of movement to the previous one in the series, making the end film run smoothly. Reports from the animators have shown that they take about 30 frames a day, making just over a second of footage each day of shooting, as between each photograph they have to carefully change the position of everything in the shot by a tiny amount, including the figures in the foreground, and any background motion happening along with the main characters. The feature film they have made, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" took them 5 years to create, showing how much time and effort goes into these animations.

Another type of film shown at the film festival was stop-animation using drawings, which was smoothly shot and i was amazed by it. It included a drawing of a girl (that developed later into 3 or more girls) dancing and moving across the page. I think a camera must have been set up over the page, and the drawing of the girl was shot in one frame, then some of the picture rubbed out and moved for the next frame, as we could see where the picture had been rubbed out, which left a grey smudge that looked like an effective shadow.

These animations that we saw showed us how much hard work we will have to put into our animation, and after recently shooting the introduction to the music video, we have prepared ourselves for how much time is needed to shoot short lengths of footage. However, even though its hard work, its extremely fun and we are enjoying making the animation, and hope that it will all fit together when we edit it, creating a great stop-animation mixed with shadow puppetry.

Revised: Costumes for Actors

We were thinking we'd keep the style of our actors pretty much the same as the actual band, as on their website there are a few live photos and photoshoot photos that we have looked at. These have helped us decide on what sort of thing the actors should wear as the band. The clothes are all along the lines of the genre of the music, indie/folk clothes, as most genre's of music are also a style of fashion.

These lists may not be copmletely spot on when we come to filming, but they are a general outline of what will be there, as some actors may mix and match from the others, and wear similar things.

However, these clothes will all fit the genre, and are all owned by the actors we have picked, as we picked them for their style and how they would look as part of the band. The specified costumes below reflect those of similar Indie bands such as The Kooks, or those featured in Blitzen Trapper's "Furr" music video. They have a strong sense of genre, and are featured in TopShop and seen on many "Indie kids" on TV and in the street. The costumes are typical of an Indie music video (The Kooks, The View, Paolo Nutini) and therefore will be suitable for our own production.

Female 1
Denim/Coloured (maybe patterned) dress that finishes around the knee.

(Patterned scarf)

Plain pump shoes.

Plain/patterned light coloured cardigan.

Female 2
Tight fit jacket/cardigan.

High-waisted skirt/shorts.

Patterned/Light coloured leggins.

Patterned/Plain Tee.

Pumps/Indie Trainers.

Male 1
Trilby hat.

Skinny Jeans.

Checkered Shirt.

(Cardigan)

Plimsole Shoes.

Male 2
Wolf Tee.

Denim Shirt.

Skinny Jeans.

Plimsole Shoes/Small Trainers.

Male 3
Larger-Checkers Shirt.

Tight Jacket.

Skinny Jeans/Shorts.

Smart Shoes.

Male 4

Plain Tee.

Tight Cardigan.
Checkered Shorts.

Small Trainers.

Individual Responsibilities

Roxanna Barry (me)
1. Cutting out the imagery for shadow puppetry after Caroline draws them.
2. Taking the photos of each part of the action, after each movement by Caroline, i will then take the picture, making sure the camera is in the same place/right angle.
3. Finding suitable actors.
4. Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
5. Taking pictures of the real life locations to be used.

Caroline Gooch
1. Drawing outlines for the animation shadow puppetry (as she does art and is a good illustrater)
2. Movement (picture by picture - small movements) of the puppets/cut-outs for the stop animation, changing it after each frame.
3. Finding suitable actors.
4. Own storyboards, evaluation and commentary on pictures/experiments.
5. Taking pictures of the experiments for our animation.



(More to come)

Possible Actors

We are still searching for actors, and asking if they would be OK with being in our film, but below is a list of the ideas we have for possible members of the band (there are 6 members - 2 girls and 4 boys):

1. Jessica Allen
2. Elizabeth Greengrass
3. Jakob Montagu-Shaw
4. Matt Beaumont (?)
5. Will Wynne (?)
6. Jack Mullane
7. Oliver Kirby (?)
8. Johnny Allen

The ones with (?) are the people we still need to ask to be in the film, but as we have 7 people in mind and only need 6, hopefully we will have enough people.

Shooting Scedule

- After school in media edit room (animation)
- Any of Ms Barton's media lessons that we choose to do our animation in
- After school outside of school (real life part)
- Wednesday, Period 4, Week 1
- Thursday Periods 1 & 2, Week 2

We can only do our animation at school as we are using a windowless room off of a media room.

Meeting Schedule

- Wednesday, Period 4, Week 1
- Thursday, Periods 1 & 2, Week 2
- Most lunchtimes
- After school in media rooms


Also we plan during some media lessons where allowed.

Stop Animation Experiment 3 (3 times)

This first video was our third and final experiment of stop animation. We used the cut out shapes of the wolf and tree's we had made, along with some leaf shapes for added effect, to create the continuous motion shown below. However,as you can see, there were certain pictures in the video with hands in, which was a big problem. This was accidental and would obviously be more carefully avoided. This video is the closest thing we have made so far that looks like what the finished product will probably look like. This is because we decided to add in the wolf shape, and the tree's with the small detail of the leaves falling in the background, behind the main action of the wolf. These small details to the tree's and other aspects of the wood are what we are hoping to add to the animation, to make it that extra bit interesting for the audience.

The next video is the same as above, however we cut out the 3 pictures that contained a hand shadow in the picture. This didn't really affect the quality of the video, and didn't make it too jumpy, which is good in case any mistakes were made. However hopefully if we spot a mistake with hands in the final thing we can easily take another picture there and then, and replace the bad picture with the good one. We didn't do that this time as we didn't have much time to take the pictures, and was only a trial run, however deleting certain pictures also seems successful.




This final video is the same again, however we noticed how the leaf and the wolf's movement may be too fast, so we made the video slower by lengthening the time of frames each picture was shown for. This technique could be very useful for getting the animation in time with the music, so its not too fast or too slow for the track. It also helps it create a more natural feel to the otherwise make-believe world the wolf is in, and we may use this to our advantage in the end production.

Stop Animation Experiment 2

The below video shows our second experiment, showing the shadows of leaf shapes we cut out, moving round the screen using stop animation, as if they were playing follow the leader. (An owl does come up at one point, as whilst trying this out we were practicing cutting out other animal shapes and seeing what they looked like on the OHP.)
We tried this idea because we were thinking of having the leaf shapes coming on in this fashion, and moving round the scren to form the title ofthe song, "Moon Song", however this is only an idea at the moment, as we are still thinking of ways to show the title, as we have to think about the change in the sky colour, as it is black when it starts with "The Wild Wolves" but is white when we get to the wood part of the animation with the wolf.

Stop Animation Experiment 1

The below video shows the first try of our stop animation. We cut out a tree shape and some leaf shapes and moved them on the OHP as we took shot after shot with Caroline's camera. We thought we'd keep it simple, and so just shot leaves falling off a tree, but in shadow. This will be what we are doing when it comes to the final shooting, however we will take alot more pictures, so it runs more smoothly.

Locations, Props and Tecchnical Requirements

Locations:

Obviously, some of the music video won't really have a location, as we will shoot it in a dark room with the OHP, and the scene will be a forest.

For the real life part of the film, we want to shoot it somewhere attractive, similar to the forest in our animation. This is because the wolf has come from this animated forest and we want to match the place he goes into to the animated world he exits.
The pictures below show my garden, which has a few forest like bits, where we could go into the tree's with the actors. It also has an opening where the wolf could seem to come out of, as it could be the passage to the shadow land.

We also thought the street outside my house could be useful for the rea life scene, as with the right camera shots with the band it could look quite artistic.

Props:

We are using paper/card, scissors and compasses for the stop-animation part, as it creates the shadows well, and is simple to use.

We will be using the OHP shown below to project the cut outs onto a wall, creating the shadows so we are able to take photos of the wall for the stop-animation.

We are hoping to find a friend who owns or knows someone who owns a husky dog, so in the "real world" part of the film, when the wolf goes from the shadow land to our world, we have a wolf-like dog to take part in the film. However, if we cannot find one we have other ideas, like using the camera as the wolf's eyes.

Technical Requirements:

1. OHP (Overhead Projector)
2. Camera to take pictures for the stop animation
3. Video recorder for the real life part of the film
4. Tripod to balance the camera so our stop animation works

Animation plans for the music video!

Below are 3 pictures of our developing imagery of the wood scene. This includes the autumn trees, grass, woodland creatures (+ the bird + squirrel), the Wolf and some signifiers of the genre of music the song is, such as a banjo, saxophone or guitar.
This is just a phone camera picture, and the end product will be more sharp and a wholly better image.
We will be using stop-animation to create the first animated part, by taking photographs, moving an object (the wolf) then taking another picture, and finally piecing it together to make it into movement. Once we have finished that we can carry on with shooting the real-life part of the film, shown in the storyboards in an earlier post.

Visual Practice 4 - OHP Genius try out

The below 2 photos are of the cut outs we have drawn and scissored out, which when placed onto the OHP create shadows that then piece in the picture of the woodland forest we are aiming for. We drew on sugarpaper and cut out shapes of tree's, a wolf, toadstools, birds and other various woodland related things. We also cut out a saxophone (showed below in purple) and a trilby hat, that we can place in the woods as subtle signifyers of the folk/indie/ska genre we have with our music video.

The below picture is what the above cut out tree's look like when on the OHP, projected onto the wall. You may see the small leaf on one of the upper brances, as we wanted to see if we could add leaves to the tree as a nice effect. Caroline also cut out some extra paper and placed it on the tree, on the lower brance, which when projected looks amazingly like a nest.
We are very proud of this form of shadow puppetry as it has allowed us to create a simple -to-use and effective form of animation.

This picture shows the name of the band "The Wild Wolves" with the moon as the "o" in the word "Wolves". We have also added a tree below, for the forest effect as this is meant to be the sky above the forest, with little stars dotted around. We created this in a similar way as the above picture, however with the opposide use of the paper. We cut out a piece of sandpaper to fit the size of the OHP screen, and used compasses to poke holes in the paper, forming the band name in the sky. We then poked random holes around this title to create the star effect, and cut a bigger hole for the "o" so it looks like the moon. We also cut up from the bottom of the paper, to create a tree like cut out from the paper, so it looks like a glowing tree, with dots of leaves around (these also made with compasses).

This next picture is the same as above, however we tried the idea of the tree coming out from the side of the paper, to see if it looked better or more effective, also so we could smoothly move the shot down and the tree could disappear, whereas the above one the tree would just be cut off. This was thought helpful as we could have easily brought up the name of the song, however now (25/09/09) we have an updated idea of how to get to the title name and woods, which is mentioned in a later blog post.

This is the picture of the title of the song, "Moon Song", which like the above picture, is formed from holes in the paper appearing as stars, and a "glowing" tree. We were trying this out because we thought we should display the title of the song in a similar fashion to the artists name. We thought we could pan down (or make it seem like the camera is panning down, by moving the paper cut outs upwards and out of the camera's vision) from the artist name to the song name, and then cut to the woods with some clever transition.

This is the wood scene (following 2 photos), created by cut out sugar paper, and a cut out of a wolf. Overlapping these with a grassy bottom, creates a nice woodland scene into which we can interpret generic signifiers such as trilby hats, musical instruments or other woodland creatures for visual effect. The 2nd picture includes a squirrel and a bird, as we tried to cut out creatures that would look like what they are meant to on the OHP, which proved difficult.

The below picture shows the OHP we are using, whilst it is turned on with a tree and some grass on it. The picture shows the one peice of equipment we are mainly using to make our animation all it can be.