Magazine Cover (uncomplete)

Magazine cover

Here my representations of the psychedelic genre formed into a magazine. Looking at the design I have added one of my key images a brain, this is representing a hallucinogenic image, a design you might find on a sheet of LSD. This is giving off an appealing factor towards my target audience as well as the big puddle of water at the bottom connoting with my title ‘one drip’.

On the right side of my magazine cover I have added genre related topics such as ‘Bestival’ which is a sort of indie, rock and psy-trance festival. As well as related bands that have similar influence to my conventions such as Flaming Lips and my own band Cat Frequency.

I’ve all so added a ‘love not war’ protest. Psychedelia wasn’t just about ‘losing yourself’ but all so about morals and opinions and being ‘green’. This mention of the advert connotes with my psychedelia genre.

Avatars

‘The avatar’s function is as a representation of the user within the online environment. As such, the user instils the avatar with qualities they want to project into that environment.’ - implications of the sentence has allowed for the element of creating a sub-human, for example games such as World of Warcraft allow for the user to design his own personal ‘avatar’ there he can decide the race and class and customise it to suit his needs and project those into that environment. Following on, we may say Avatars are a form of language they operate as a sign system that can be read in semiotic terms. Not only are you creating your own new avatar with weapons that wouldn’t exist within reality you all so establish a personal form of communication with other avatars. For example it maybe the language you use or key in emotions such as smiley faces to identify who you are and establish some form of existence in that ‘world’.

Within that world or computer game, whatever it maybe the avatar is a visual representation of the user that enables participation within the online environment. As such, it is a social tool. We could say that Facebook is a visual representation of that user, i.e. you add in your favourite music, pictures and make status about what’s going on within your life which leads to enable some form of participation with other users using the same server. You have the ability to leave a comment or ‘like’ someone status, making communication within their profile. Saying that, the avatar you may create could necessarily not be a visual presentation of the real you. Avatars that take the forms of profile pictures (like on Facebook and MySpace) are like wearing your best clothes to non-uniform day at school: users want to present certain aspects of their personality (real, imagined or aspirational) to the society they interact with. You have the ability to change who you are, maybe elaborate on certain aspects of your personality to stand out and in away make a new identity.
At the same time, it provides a distancing device that turns person (user) into character (avatar). It is a fictionalising tool that creates a new reality. The symbol of the avatar (signifier) points to the signified (the user), creating a sign. Isn’t the purpose of the avatar to establish the real you? Or is it to be someone you couldn’t be? Avatars often revel in the gap between the signifier and the signified: Users enjoy creating avatars that are not like themselves, so that there is a big difference between signifier (avatar) and signified (user). Not all avatars are just computer game characters or social networking websites; an avatar acts as a calling card/ telephone number/ identification card etc, allowing other to find the user/avatar. We have access to the avatar via, mobiles and contacts, people publish their telephone number on Facebook and to find that avatar requires trailing through those other avatars such as their Facebook. Dannah Boyd says ‘Teens often fabricate key identifying information like name, age, and location to protect themselves’ – by this he means we can change our information, we can hide our identity and in away make ourselves oblivious.
We have to establish what is an avatar? It comes in many forms, from a computer character that is nothing unlike the user to a form of a different character providing a real ecological representation of that user. But yet we have the ability to customise who we are, we can change factors of our personality and make certain aspects stand out more, we have the ability to change who we are. This can be done through pictures or profile pictures or even the way other people communicate towards you. I wouldn’t necessarily follow that the avatar is a visual representation of the user, but instead a visual representation of what that user wants to be.

Costume and Props

When filming at the Archive we use a plain white shirt for our actor as he was playing the role of a employee who stumbles upon the film reel of Al Hubbard. The white shirt is a smart, yet simple design and with the sleeves rolled up it doesn't stand out to much but blends in well with the overall video.

Once again some simple black trousers look well with a plain white shirt, it gives our actor a formal look and shows that he works there, it simple and blends in well with the film.

Black shoes alongside with the white shirt and black trousers once again gives of a formal appeal. We chose this certain pair of shoes as it gives of a 'tapping' sound when he walks along the corridor to add some sound effect to our video.

A brown leather satchal is ideal for sneaking our film reel inside, it's dated and not modern and gives a much better affect than say a modern 'addidas' bag.

The project was one of the key elements when filming inside the archive as this is were our actor places the reel of Al Hubbard and the story commences.

This is the film reel telling the life of Al Hubbard which is one of the key elemetns when telling the story of Al Hubbard.

Shooting Schedule

Analysis of the audiences

Black Moth Super Rainbow

Formed in Pittsburgh, USA, Black Moth Super Rainbow is well known for their distinctive experimental sound. There are many hidden genres of sound within their music, it is hard to define just what kind of music they really are, they range from folk, to elements of the psychedelic sound to electronic.

Once again Black Moth Super Rainbow target audience are similar to those of The Doors, a new generation of psychedelic hippy trippy people. Except this time they’ve attracted a new target audience, they’ve bought the younger generation of people, people my age out of the shadows and into the light. People make a connection to their music, but it’s not just the sound they play but the in depth meaning to each song they play. Younger Generation of people seem to be making more of an interaction to new songs out their, instead of just listening to the music, they relate to the artist and find out about history of the band.

Our production can learn a lot from this band, maybe we could bring in a new type of audience? Instead of aiming for one genre of people, why not that one genre of people of different ages, old and young.

This is some of Black Moth Super Rainbow artwork. Looking at the image we can see the sort of genre the artist is and what the picture is trying to connote. The psychedelia appeal really attracts my attention to the sort of thing I want to create for my digipak. The abstract imagery used, the man with a tree for a head shows what impression the artist is giving off. Underneath we have a sub-title ‘Falling Through A Field’ – this is their name of the album but a name that also makes you think about their album cover, what do they mean? This is the sort of affect I want to achieve for my own digipak. I want my audience to discuss my album, find out different meanings for themselves.

What I like so much about this piece of artwork is that its simplistic, you got a long shot, with the person in the middle and a very simple environment. What they’ve done to make it stand out and hit their genre is to use filter affects and to alternate the colours and cut images. They also follow a colour pattern within their titles, different fonts but both black so they blend in with the artwork. A technique that I would like to follow on through my digipak.

Another album artwork by the artist I was interested in was their album ‘dandelion gum’.

Here Black Moth Super Rainbow have utilized the colours and blended them in to create a psychedelia pattern. What I enjoy about their artwork is that each album is so different to each other but if you notice there band title; they are always the same throughout, a certain pattern done deliberate. However I wasn’t look for colour in my digipak, I want to create a binary opposition effect, black on white or white on black. This is because my album cover has a very simplistic affect, I feel like using colour may make the psychedelia genre look typical and ‘cheesy’.

Black Mother Super Rainbow has provided me with new ideas and inspirations. Ideas to the sort of imagery I’m going to use and ideas for titles and sub-titles as well as conventions to how I can connote to the psychedelia genre.

Analysis of the audiences

The Doors

Formed in 1965, The Doors were one of the most controversial bands in the 60’s; creating a new sub-genre to ‘rock’ and releasing their number one hit ‘light my fire’. The genius, poetic lyrics in the song were written by vocalist Jim Morrison, other members of the band were keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and Guitarist Robby Krieger.

The doors attracted many people to their new twist on rock, bringing in new fans across America and globally. Their usual type of audience would be the sort of ‘hippy trippy’ kind of people, people who have a deep interest into psychedelia and were taking an interest in the ‘acid craze’. Jim Morrison interacted with his audience through the art of music and through his lyrics, people could relate to what he was saying although at the time their conscious was most likely altered through substances and just felt like they were making a connection to his songs such as ‘break on through to the other side’.

Morrision and The Doors performed many live gigs, from tours to clubs to big stage performance and would often jump in with the crowd starting train lines and getting the audience moving. He would speak out loud, making communication to the audience as a whole and in return they would be screaming back asking for more, more, more!

The Doors have been a big help with my planning as I really want to establish that connection with my target audience, I don’t want them to just watch the video but I want them to really think about what they are watching and we have stuck secluded messages throughout the video such as ‘you’re the future’ to achieve this kind of relationship.

This is one of The Doors album artwork, a performance shot. The artwork is very different to that of Black Moth Super Rainbow. To some extent it’s harder to define what sort of genre of music they are, however The Doors being such a recognisable band the majority of people know who they are which allows them to follow on a different album artwork.

As my music video doesn’t really have a band, it shows signs of band performance but together I could really bring a band shot to my album cover. However this artwork has provided me with ideas to how I could lay out my album cover and what sort of fonts to use to make it more appealing towards my audience.

One of their most recognisable tracks is ‘The End’ this song was also placed in the film ‘Apocalypse now’. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0) The ideologies this present is in the song title ‘The End’. This song is more of a ‘come down’ song, the idea that every plan has to end or connoting with the film the idea war is over. The End has a wider counter-cultural stance than the other songs, its something that is recognising across the world. Apocalypse now promotes that recognition, appealing to a wider fan base.

The audience The Doors attract is less specific to other bands; it began with just local crowds that were interested in their genre of music. Young people who help create the revolution back in the day, the people that dared to experiment and try new substances. The doors have then spread on through word of mouth and television to bigger younger crowds. The Doors wasn’t always liked by the older generation of that time, they didn’t like the controversy they bought to the stage, their ‘attitude’. They were famous, rebellious and it was exactly what the younger generation of the era liked about them.

Filming the opening at the Archive

StoryBoard

Storyboard Analysis

After constructing our storyboard, we ended up changing what we wanted and went for different angles in production. This was because when it came to shooting on location we conjured new inventive ideas. For example our opening shot would have been a close up of our actor’s feet but when it came to filming it ended up being shaky and unprofessional. We came up with an alternative plan to do a long shot in the style of a CCTV camera. This really emphasised the narrow, long corridor and made our shot look far more creative and more genre related.

During production we were often restricted by our environment on location. Sometimes there would be walls or bookcases blocking our way or we could get the angle we wanted. There may have not been enough distance to get the long shot we wanted. So we had to use initiative and improvise on the spot the alternatives. We had a group of three and our casting actors which allowed us for more brain power to come up with alternative routes to filming.

As we went through our production we were constantly coming up with new ideas and although we kept the concept of our storyboard when it came down to editing we really felt like we hadn’t hit the psychedelic genre. This was mended by mashing up shots, in some areas of our video we had the mad hatters in the introduction, and this was also mainly to take away the slow paced and long timing of shots in our video to really make it a music video.

The storyboard however laid a foundation for what was going to happen in our video and gave us connotations to the angles we wanted to use. Not only that but it bought organisation skills into play because we had a storyboard we didn’t end up going on location with no idea of what to do. We got there and we had a visual image of what we aimed to do that needed to be digitally filmed.

East Anglian Film Archive (Written Work)

East Anglian Film Archive

The opening scene of our video starts in the East Anglian Film Archive, here we set the setting and mise-en-scene for what is about to become the story of Al Hubbard. The Opening shot is introduced by a worker, doing his daily job, organising and tidying film reels making sure they’re all stacked on the correct shelf. During his shift he stumbles upon a film reel, one that is unique, stands out, almost calling his name, through his curiosity he decides to play the reel. The reel then projects onto the screen and the mystery unravels as Captain Al Hubbard begins to take place.

The location shots are perfect for our opening scene, on the images you can see shelves stacked up with old film reels trailing down the room. They all so told us that they still have old equipment from the 90’s to give our film that more old fashion loo instead of a new technological appeal. One of my favourite images is the old rustic looking box. We plan to pop the Al Hubbard Archive in the box to give it that dusty appeal which will add to the mise-en-scene of our twisted psychedelic genre.

East Anglian Film Archive Location Shots

 

 

Blind Melon - No Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYlAwvz8uwc&ob=av2e (No Embed)

Blind Melon are a neo-psychedelic American ‘rock’ band that started up in 1989, they’re best known for their hit ‘no rain’ released in 1993. The group enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 90’s from their neo-psychedelic take on alternative rock. The music video no rain uses conventions such as band performance throughout the video, we see the band play on an open sunny grass video giving a sort of live performance but yet on the side is a narrative structure telling a story of a girl that isn’t accepted for her dream and instead is mocked and laughed at.

Within the mise-en-scene we have two concepts, one of a dark narrative structure of this girl running around the city trying to find somewhere to escape and the other of her dream world with blind melon performing. This video is much more different to Black Moth Super Rainbow as the lyrics seem to connate more towards the music video. At the start it begins off with the lead singer saying “All I can say is that my life is pretty plain, I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain.” He’s trying to say that there isn’t much to his life and this connate towards the young girl life, her life is simple and all she wants is to be a tap-dancing bee. Yet her simple dream seems to be a reality of laughing and mocking.

The band itself seemed to be represented as this kind of ‘light’ they’re welcoming in open arms and are happy and accept the girl for who she is and her dream without mocking her. The target audience for this kind of video may be the sort of hippy trippy crowd or people that have an open mind and can understand and relate to the young girl.

Lyrics

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain,
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two,
and speak my point of view,
But it's not sane, It's not sane,
I just want some one to say to me,
I'll always be there when you wake,
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today,
So stay with me and I'll have it made,
And I don't understand why I sleep all day,
And I start to complain that there's no rain,
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake,
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape,
escape......escape......escape......
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
ya don't like my point of view,
ya think I'm insane,
Its not sane......it's not sane.

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise

We are using the East Anglian Film archive as a location for our filming, the main reason behind using this specified location is we want one of our characters to come across an old film reel to where they then play on a projector and the story of Al Hubbard begins to make its appearance.

The reason I have chosen Black Moth Super Rainbow is not only because of the psychedelic genre and similarity with concepts but the video itself. Throughout the video the mise-en-scene of the video is a sort of de-saturated, slightly blurred out appearance which is exactly what I want to demonstrate when editing my music video. One technique I could use to achieve this style of editing is to reduce the frame rate which would then cause a sort of flicker throughout the video giving of a sort of old fashion, rustic affect.

This music video has a slight ‘goth’ effect to it, with its use of knives and blood, its not exactly what we’re aiming for in our video but the whole visual and bizarre twist to it, is what we want to identify when producing our video. The target audience are slightly been represented by the cast itself in the video, we’re looking for a sort of hippy trippy audience or maybe a goth scene that would be interesting in the video.

Lyrics

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Born on a day the sun didn't rise
Born in a world without sunshine
You, you're the apple of my eye
Born on a day the sun didn't rise

Mood Board

Posted above is my mood board for my target audience, here I have identified everything my target audience enjoy and their values and morals. I have designed a spider-diagram to show the sort of music they would listen to and festivals they might enjoy going to.

To produce my music video I need to gain an understanding of my target audience so I can capture their attention and keep them glued to the screen. Target audience plays a vital role when producing a music video, I need to do my research so I know what to place into my video that they can relate to as well as enjoy.

My mood board is only a step into my target audience research I need to find out more background information so I can gather more ideas and concept that I can contribute towards my music video. Other methods of research I can do would be to carry out a questionnaire to gain an understanding of what my target audience like and find out more about their interests/hobbies. Websites such as ‘Find my Tribe’ can help me with this as their primary source of information would prove useful and the concept of the website has diverse my ideas into how I can research my target audience.

Explain what find your Tribes implies about the concept of identity in today’s world.

Explain what find your Tribes implies about the concept of identity in today’s world.

Youth Culture is always changing, throughout generations we have seen the youth slowly rebel, slowly become into their own unique person and new waves and revolutions such as the punk explosion have taken over.

Find your tribe is simply implying a certain concept of identity that each individual holds to their own. This identity underlying who they are and what ‘category’ they come under, e.g. mods and rockers. Some say that youth culture and trends have spiralled out of control to where we are changing social and cultural circumstances to mirror Britain’s youth.

Find your tribe is simply implying this concept of identity through a series of questions such as “what’s your favourite magazine” or “what TV shows do you watch” then from the answers you give it works out what tribe your part of. Testing out this site for myself, it said I was a mosher, so from the site there our some problems with it, but the concept of it is excellent.

Maffesoli said that “Today, social existence is conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, organized around the catchwords, brand-names and sound-bites of consumer culture”. Through this statement, Maffesoli is implying that people are what they are and who they are through the figure of speech they use, or the brands of clothes they put on, some people wear skinny jeans, others wear trackies. He also said “Modern tribes are not permanent groups, but shifting and always changing. Membership of these tribes is not permanent”. We’re in an age of where youth culture is constantly training, people are looking for the latest trends, music artists and are constantly back and forth in and out of new tribes, e.g. shifting.

The idea of Pick n’ mix is meaning that people have a choice. Although you are more likely to fall into a certain tribe through your background, how you’ve been bought up, raised and what sort of social friends you have. You still have the choice to decide what tribe you’d want to be in. The concept of Pick n mix is the idea you can be whoever you want but then change your mind and join another tribe. In away its freedom of choice.

This concept of identity differs from the modernist concept of identity as find your tribe finds out who you are instead of your beliefs and moral views. The modernist concept of identity is in away you receiving your identity through the background you come from maybe the social class has an impact on the tribes you fall into. Other ways people may receive their identity would just be through their parents and how the child is raised, they maybe raised with certain morals and rules that make the person who they are. The concept of identity find your tribe offers is more along the lines of trying to find out who you are, what you like, what films you like etc.

Tribes are always shifting and changing, some are stable and others are fixed. We choose who we want to be and others are forced into a category of tribes. We all have multiple identities some of which are fragmented into sub categories. This notion of pick n mix lets us choose who we want to be and yet gives us the option to change are mind, our identity is our own, we’re all individual and the concept of identity in today’s world is not necessarily decided through brand clothing and taste in music but more to the personality of the individual and who they are and their background.

Captain Al Hubbard (History behind the track)

Alfred Matthew Hubbard

August 31st 1901 - 1982

Alfred Matthew Hubbard otherwise known as ‘Captain Al Hubbard’ didn’t leave too much of a trace, most people in fact have probably never heard of Hubbard, he cannot be found in past history books, neither did he leave a diary but, Alfred Matthew Hubbard has quite a story behind his name.

He never had much of an educational background as a youth, he never even made it passed third grade. He told people, that one day he was visited, visited by ‘angels’ who told Hubbard, that he was to build something. According to the director of the institute of Noetic Science, he apparently learnt to trust these visions although Hubbard had absolutely no training in building.

In 1919 guided by these angels, Alfred Matthew Hubbard invented the Hubbard Energy Transformer this was a radioactive battery that could not be explained by any technology. This technology was hidden in an 11” by 4” box, which had powered a ferry for 3 days. Afterwards Hubbard sold out 50% of his patent for £75,000 and nothing more was heard of from the Hubbard Energy Transformer.

After his success from the early 20’s Hubbard moved onto other tasks, he took a job as a Seattle taxi driver and with ship to shore communications in his trunk he would help smuggle in rum smugglers. He eventually got caught by the FBI and was sent to prison for 18 months. After his release he gained awareness by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) for his natural talent in electronics communications. He was pardon for any wrongdoing under the presidential pardon #2676 and became an agent for OSS.

His job at the OSS was considerably dangerous, involving shipping heavy armaments from San Diego to Canada within night time, during the waning hours of World War 2. He escaped this federal trapped and became a Canadian Citizen. Al Hubbard ambition in life was to become a millionaire, he eventually became scientific director of Uranium Corporation of Vancouver, and he owned a 100ft yacht, a fleet of aircrafts and his own Canadian island. Yet he was still miserable, according to resources Matthew Alfred Hubbard was looking for “The meaning of Life”.

In 1968 after Hubbard had tried the psychedelic drug acid he found himself wanting more in life and so came to do more with his life. Hubbard worked for a diversity of institutes, from the Canadian Special Services to the US Justice Department, he was even rumoured to be part of a mind–control project known as MK-ULTRA, but from orders of the CIA all paper documents must be destroyed.

Al Hubbard lived out his life and went travelling all over the world, sharing his experience, through in and out of these adventures he was caught, arrested many times. He would share his visions of the future with other people. Towards the end of his life he found himself broke, realising he couldn’t find the answers to any of his secrets. Al Hubbard eventually died at the age of 81.

“To fathom hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”

Source: http://www.rense.com/general28/dshwo.htm

Treatment

Treatment

We want to excel the psychedelia genre, using abstract visual imagery. Creating a storyline unlike any other music video, by this we want to provoke to our audience what psychedelia is. Whether it’s the idea of stopping time or creating an Alice in Wonderland style video, something along the ideas of Mad Hatters Tea Party perhaps. All this will link with the story of Captain Al Hubbard. This is one that should be told in a different perspective, we’ll replicate Al Hubbard’s history in our video by demonstrating what he did in his life.

To achieve this psychedelic concept we need to use costumes and props to create the mise-en-scene for our music video. We have resources such as local head shop “head in the clouds” they sell a range of gypsy like beads and Egyptian cotton clothing, ideal for our video and to dress up our very own Captain Al Hubbard. To achieve this style of filming we need a storyline that glues the video together but adds a sense of mix and mash to it so we can show our audience what psychedelia really is. Most psychedelic music videos often tends to make no sense to the audience or have very in depth questions that cannot be answered, all though we want to carry out this style we want our video to have more reality to it. We’re opening up our music video in the East Anglian Archive, where one of the employees stumble upon a film reel telling the story of Captain Al Hubbard which will then lead on to our own version of Alice In Wonderland – Mad Hatters Tea party.

Our music video is based on a true story; we’ll be using new codes and conventions elaborated from similar ideas. We aim to use a similar technique to Black Moth Super Rainbow. They use a saturated historical filter throughout their video which provides an old fashion image. In doing this our video will hopefully stand out and capture our target audience attentions, bring out a more appealing factor to our concepts.

Locations

During our many adventures of finding locations to shoot out music video, we came accross this mass opened field, where all there is, is just grass and the hot sun beaming down. This location was found just a few miles of the out skirts of norwich, near Roman Village.

Costume Designs

The Black Keys - Tighten Up

Rock/blues

Looking at this video it's a perfect example of how a simple an idea can be transformed into a video. The idea behind this music video relates to how adults are just like children. The video is based around the concept of two children fighting over a girl, "young love" if you like. But the concept of adults being children comes into play when they break up the fight and both end up falling for the sassy brunette which escalates to a fight between both friends.

Through out the video we see many close ups of the casts faces, this technique has aloud for people to see their emotions and a closer image of their faces. When the camera pans over the children they're represented as small, weak that adults are better than them.

At the end of the video it winds up with the parents both battered and bruised and their kids are looking down at them shaking their heads. This concept has put a twist to this story and it’s turned from a simple black n white story line to something far more complex but yet simple and well mastered.

This simple story line bolds well in the video. This for me has opened up new ideas and options to where I could film my video and just how I could maximise and exploit one location to its full potential.

Kasabian - Processed Beats

Kasabian – Processed Beats

Indie/Rock/Alternative

"Processed Beats is the third fully released single from Kasabian. It was released in 2004 and gained a worthy place of #17 in the UK charts. This is your typical indie song that all those indie kids strive on. The first 5 seconds of the song lure you into thinking that this song will be slow tempo, however as soon as the sixth second dawns the ‘processed beats’ kick in and the bass begins to tease away at your eardrums. The loose strings of the typical Kasabian guitars settle in and Tom Meighan enters with his unique yet beautiful voice dazzling our indie kid senses all over again. Throughout the song inventive drum beats are added alongside some synth to add complexity into the song, yet Kasabian manage to draw it all back in to keep it clear cut and utterly brilliant." - Millie Simpson <3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzEbYDcUtxE - link to music video (No Embed)

Cat Frequency - Captain Al Hubbard

Cat Frequency
Psychedelic / Experimental / Electronica

Captain Al Hubbard by Cat Frequency

Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my Blog