Ideas for video

When thinking of ideas about how we could so our project, Matt and Tara quite liked the idea of a first preson viewpoint, similar to that used in Peep Show.
Not necessarily for the whole video, but at the beginning we thought it would be quite good to see the person buying a ticket from their perspective, so you see the ticket person, camera looks down hands over the money, camera comes up again. Unfortunately, as we don't have the budget for helmet cams it would be a real pain the try and film that angle with the camera we are using.

My idea was a lot simpler, and was basically to smash together live footage. I think if you are trying to give a video the feel of a live event, you should stay away from lots of moving footage, or, as they have a tendancy to do in live DVD's, have massive cranes moving aroud to get more footage from the air. When Foo Fighters made their 'Live at Wembley' DVD, it consisted of hundreds of close ups and high angle swooping shots, because theatrically, they look good but it doesn't live the feel of the gig at all.
Live videos are supposed to be almost as good as if you were actually there, but the footage you are given from live videos just looks fake. There is no atmosphere, it looks nice and shiny but it doesn't look live. You can get as much footage from above the crowd as you want, but if it's all clean cut it doesn't work.

That's why i like the Beastie Boys 'Awesome i F***ing Shot That' video. It was live DVD where they gave 50 members of the audience who were all in completely different areas of the venue, video cameras and told them to keep it running all night. At the end of the show, they collected the cameras back, edited all the footage together and produced the DVD. As almost all of the footage was shot from within the crowd it looks and feels more like a ilve event. It still cuts a lot so clearly you aren't actually there, butthe cameras are getting bumped around by people in different songs, they are turning when the filmer looks around, the view is obstructed by the one guy in the venue that is taller than you and decides to stand at the front.

Most aspects of going to a show are incorporated as well as possible for a DVD and i tink it really works. That's why for our Fiver promo, i think we should try to use lots of live footage that shows the crowd, but also some just showing the stage and stuff. If we try and concentrate on getting all fancy and technical, i think we will lose the edge that this video needs to maintain interest.

Health and Safety

As with any type of filming, there are many health and safety risks to take into consideration. Obviously, we need to be careful that we don't drop any of the equipment because that could damage us, people around us or break the equipment.

We asked if we could use the cherry picker to get some high angle footage but we weren't allowed incase it moved and lamped someone.

We were at a gig, which inevitably gets very hot and very busy so we need to make sure we have plenty of drink available so you don't dehydrate. This is especially important for people that don't go to many gigs. I would probably be fine, but for someone who hasn't been to as many gigs or isn't used to the atmosphere it could be quite dangerous to go in without any water or anything.

We need to make sure that we don't trip over any cables while wondering around backstage, and make sure that we don't leave any cables laying around for people to trip over.

The floor has a tendancy to get slippery, as people get drinks, don't want them and drop them on the floor. This is a potential hazard if you are walking around as you could slip and hurt yourself.

Filming in the dark could potentially be dangerous as many people aren't used to walking around in the darkness.

Gigs are pretty damn loud, and if you aren't used to it it could be somewhat of a shock. Similarly if you are used to it, continuous exposure to such sound levels could be damaging to your hearing.

Things could fall down, on us such as pylons, lights etc.

When we got to editing, we had to be careful not to spend too long staring at a screen as it is apparently bad for you. Though given how long people our age spend staring at monitors and stuff we're basically immune. Still, we will make sure to take regular breaks so we don't do any damage.

General Notes for promo

The logos for the bands, music companies, and funders should be shown and appropriately credited at the end of the video.

I fyou wan tto make a Fiver logo, go ahead, providing the Junction brand isn't in any way diluted through use of the new logo.

When we go to film to Fiver, we will have to opportunity to interview Gary and Simon while we are there.

It's not Simon's product, we are working with Simon not for him. He will give us his advice on what he thinks should go where, but we can argue out points back at him about why we think our ideas would work better than his.

Ideas

My idea for the Fiver promo was to just slam together a load of live footage and out the information at the end. Obviously there would be a bit more planning to it than that as we would need to consider music and the appropriateness of the footage i would be using. Matt also came up with the idea of just having someone sitting in a room looking around for 10 seconds or so, then looking straight at the camera and simply saying "what?". Then the information about the fiver comes up on the screen. I absolutely adored this idea, as it was stupid enough to appeal to the majority of the target audience, quick enough to keep their attention and bizarre enough to make them question it. If they question it, they will be talking about it, and then they will want to watch it again.

Unfortauntely, we were bought back to Earth when we realised it had absolutely nothing to do with the Fiver, so we sort of used my idea with more thought. Tara came up with the idea of using intereviews with the band, so you could get their reactions from playing the Fiver, as you are more likely to believe someone you have just seen doing something than someone you've never seen before and may well just be being paid to read lines.

The bands are usually found via MySpace. They either e-mail their contact details or some of their music to Gary Brown, who's in charge and he will listen to it and decide who he wants to play each time it's on.

The general playlist for the Fiver is as follows:
The first band will be new, young and could be the first gig they've played, especially to such a large crowd. The reason for this is that many young bands don't really believethey are going to get anywhere without their 'bug break' the Junction believe that if they can give the band a break, it may help them a bit and keep them playing music for longer as most of them aren't going to make it.

The second band will probably be somewhat similar to the first.

The third band on stage would be more popular, maybe having played a few gigs at assorted pubs or clubs, to a much smaller crowd, but have had some sort of experience playing live.

The 4th band on is usually pretty popular online, have a small following and have more experience playing live events to a slightly larger crowd.

If they can get it, the 5th band tends to be a band just balancing on the brink of mainstream. Some of them are signed to a label and have gotten a small bit of airplay on the radio.

Simon Bates

Simon came down from the Junction to talk to us about creating a promotional video for the Fiver. Despite what i think, he says they have plenty of advertising for their events, but they want more people to know about the Fiver as it is one of their favourite things, and they are one of very few places that do anything like it. We were also asked to produce a documentary explaining how the Junction has worked alongside our course and helped us out through bits of it. This includes letting us use Junction 4 for our music videos and the L2 group are doing a Samba workshop at the Junction.

Simon wanted the Fiver promo video to be between 3 and 4 minutes long. I think this is a good length, because if it was any longer people would lose interest, but if it was much shorter i don't think you could show enough to give a really good idea of what the Fiver is like. The documentary, he wanted to be between 5 and 10 minutes in length. As we have the same amount of time to produce the work, i think that will be arguably harder. Certainly, it will be harder to maintain a good level of interest for 10 minutes, especially if the video is just interviews and people talking. At least with the Fiver it is of a live event, so you can keep it interesting by cutting quickly and using music.

There is no archive footage available, so we will have to collect all the footage for the Fiver ourselves, so one day we will have to go down and film the event. Unfortunately, due to health and safety regulations, we cannot use the cherry picker to get a decent shot from above the stage, in case it moves and clouts someone in the head.

The Junction

I decided to use the Junction for several reasons. Firstly, i like the Junction and feel that it would benefit more than any of the other companies from anything we produce. It is also easy to get to, and i have been there and used it's facilities many times before so i already have some prior knowledge about the place before i even go. I have been so several Fiver events, i have seen many bands playing live there (Reel Big Fish pictured) and i have been to some stand up comedy shows. I really think the Junction is a great venue, but doesn't get the attention it deserves.

The Junction also serves as a good example of a local community service because they have been in and around Cambridge for the past 20 years. The key difference between The Junction and other venues in Cambridge such as The Corn Exchange, is that the basis of their funding from the Arts Council allows them to provide a community hire space for the local community. This means people can rent out one of the Junction rooms for drama, society theatre, educational workshops and events such as the Fiver.

The Fiver event is created to help involve the young people in the community into playing shows to a live audience. This event not only gives local bands the chance to play to a larger crowd than they would get anywhere else, but also gives rowdy kids a place to hang out on a Friday night, knowing they are basically safe, but can still have a good time. It stops them going out on the own and causing trouble.

Their decision to allow people aged 16-21 to go see theatre for free means many people will go to events that they would otherwise not go to and find new experiences they would otherwise not get.

Background Information on Fiver

The Junction Fiver is a successful established brand that is gaining credibility as one of the best youth events in Cambridge
Five local young bands at varying stages of development perform in Junction 1 (850 capacity live music venue), tickets cost a Fiver!
The Bands are given a set amount of tickets to sell from which they take £1 per ticket, the more they sell the better they do financially and the more audience there is in the venue
The Fiver aims to encourage and nurture emerging acts and provides a platform for young musicians to work with professional technicians, a top class PA system and exposes them to an audience five times their normal size
The Junction needs to continue to attract new bands in order to keep this brand going and must increase the presence of the event on its own website and amongst social networking sites and forums

Possible Comissions

For this project, we had to research different businesses or companies that might let us to do some work for them. There were several possibilities in or around Cambridge, but many of them wouldn't have worked out half as well as the Junction one did.

Addenbrookes Hospital once asked us to create some posters for them advertising their apprenticeships, however as they asked us to do that and i don't think anyone in the class actually did it, they may be a bit hesitant to rely on us for anything in the future. We didn't exactly show enthusiasm or try particularly hard last time they asked us to do something, why would they give us a second chance? We could produce a video promoting all the new equipment and things they have. Many people don't know how Addenbrookes actually works or how many facilities are actually available inside, there's a lot more than just a hospital. We could create a video showing the different aspects of the building, not necessarily to get more customers, but to show them that if you need to go/take someone to hospital, Addenbrookes is a good choice. I'm not convinced it would work, as i don't think we would be able to keep it interesting and on topic, and the idea is pretty vague.

Shakin' Moos was another possibility, partly because it's new and might give us free milkshakes, but also because they haven't been advertised very well. They have some dude in a milkshake costume wandering around occasionally, handing out flyers and the like, but nothing massive. Their website is alright, but might benefit from some promotional videos or something. Ultimately, it's a small business and there's only so much you can say about it. As it is mainly teenagers that go there, we would need something fast-paced and tense, to keep their attention. Unfortunately, as the place makes milkshakes, there's only so much you can do. Once you've shown the ingredients and a guy walking round in a milkshake costume, you sort of run out of material.

The Cambridge Film Festival could be another possibility, but it's over and not back for another year, even if they did want us to work with them again, we don't have time to wait around for it to start again. The Film Festival is one of the biggest in the UK, so isn't there just to benefit the local community. It's also just not very popular to people our age. I've lived in Cambridgeshire for several years and never even heard about it more than the name. It wasn't until i went to help out that i realized it was actually pretty good. I think they could benefit from a promotional video aimed more at a teen audience, as most of our age group associate the Picturehouse with dodgy low-budget films that aren't as interesting as the blockbusters we're used to.

The Junction would be alright because it is a much better venue than, i think, most people give it credit for. Most people assume as it doesn't hold as many people as say, the Corn Exchange, it isn't as good, which is unfair. I think they could benefit from a video showing just how good events held at the Junction are. We could make a video for the Fiver, showing how you get involved, what you have to do and how it all works. I have no idea how the Fiver gets organised, and i think many bands would like to play it, but just don't know how or what the restrictions are. I think if we made a video for them, we could get the event to be more popular and that could give the Junction that bit more popularity than the Corn Exchange, who don't really do anything like it.



We could make a video for the Corn Exchange, but i don't think they would benefit from it particularly. The Corn Exchange is the live events venue in Cambridge, and people know that. I don't think they really need us to promote them further. People around Cambridge have probably been to at least one event in the Corn Exchange. They know how it works and they know the variety of performances it shows as it has a much bigger budget for advertising and promotion. I think our video would be quite good, as we could feature a popular band or something, but then we'd have to go through masses of red-tape, and ultimately i don't think it would be worth it.

Target Audience

Our target audience for the promo is going to be primarily teenagers. The Fiver is an event aimed at teenagers in bands hoping to get them to try and play some bigger shows to a live audience before they go off to Uni and never speak again. Gender wise, Simon said the event is split about 50/50, so we shouldn't try and appeal to a single gender. If, however, we can attract girls to the event, chances are guys will follow. A fact that doesn't necessarily work the other way round.

It would appear that the majority of people that use the Junction or go to the Fiver and realtively middle class, so we don't need to aim the trailer towards posh people. It would also appear that the majority of people attending the Fiver are white. This means it will probably be easier to promote and held an "Indie Guitar fest" night than a hip-hop evening. I'm not saying that white people won't go to hip hop nights or black people won't go to anything else, but stereotypically that's how it plays out. There are more black rappers than white, and more white Indie guitar people than black ones. Hell, sometimes they mix and match together.

Interaction.

While Interaction may seem very similar to the Commission project, however they key difference is that the Interaction project is more about showing how we can work with different organisations and people, whereas if you are Commissioned to do a piece of work, you are usually given quite a specific job to do, and you do it with no thought of your own.

If the Junction had asked us to make a Promo advertising the fiver, that would have been a commission, however as they only agreed to let us for an educational purpose, it counts as Interaction. Commissioned work is usually for a commercial or advertising purpose, whereas our Interaction project is showing how we can work with other people and progress from College through to Uni and Finally into work.

We have to get all the material ourselves, and work with numerous groups of people. We have to work with the bands, the technicians, the Junction, the people at Bournemouth and obviously the people in our class. We have to interact with all of these people to complete the project.