RS - Muse's Profile in 2011

2011 was a quiet year for Muse as Band. They had finished touring for "The Resistance" and only had 17 live appearances throughout the year. The reason for this was because they were intending to start recording for most of the year and run the recording into 2012 hoping to finish some time at the start of the year.

 

 

They had intended to have a break for most of the year due to touring/recording pretty much non stop since they first started touring in 1999 and wanted to have a more laid back lifestyle they had desired for so long. The fact that they built their own recording studio for The Resistance and were due to record there again with the following album meant that they could have a more laid back style to it and not have to rush it if they were hiring out a studio like the previous albums.

 

 

NME Awards 2011

 

 

 

The start of the year consisted of a short South American Tour and a few dates in Europe. The awards season began at the start of the year and Muse walked away with a Grammy, an NME Award and an Ivor Novello Award. (See full list of awards here) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Festival 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

The summer brought the Summer Festivals and the main appearences for Muse throughout the year with 6/17 appearences in August. They started off touring the Festivals in the US and then finishing off the summer and the whole year by headlining Reading & Leeds for the second time and being voted the best performance of the two festivals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Recording Studio

 

 

 

 

 

 

The end of a fairly quiet year saw Muse returning to the studio later than expected in the year and announce that the new album wont land until some time in October 2012 a bit later than expected. Not much information about the album has been released as of yet.

ALL - Storyboards

Here are our storyboards that i have scanned in today that confirm our full idea. We still have the flexibility to change around with some ideas but this is the general order of shots and narrative/performance footage. We have filmed a couple of scenes including the ones in the 'Muse Nerds' living room and bedroom and also played around with some shots at the River Wharfe and the skate park. Performance and school footage are in the pipeline for over the Chrismas period and early in January when we return to school. Our Animatic will be completed soon as we have nearly finished editing it on the MAC using iMovie so that will be up soon.

ALL - Sixth Podcast: Animatic + Performance Footage Update

ALL - Deconstruction of Lyrics Sheet

Here is our lyrics sheet which we printed off in our media lesson today. We grouped together and went through the timings of the lyrics with our storyboards and went through an initial plan of whats going to be on screen at certain times in the song.

Lyrics Sheet With Deconstruction

RS - Feedback on our Second Sample Footage

Once we had finished editing our second sample footage for our music video we gave the exported file to our Media Teacher so he could upload it to Youtube. Once it had been uploaded we gathered all the students within the class together around the middle and screened our second sample footage to them. Once the screening had finished we had time to ask them any questions or for them to ask us any questions and this is what we recieved.

• Try not to show the face of the protagonist straight away (to keep narrative enigma)
• Create a CD/DVD print to put onto a blank CD with the name of our track + band on it to show to the audience.
• Try to time to poster "montage" shots with the music
• Instead of having copyrighted material being played on the TV have our performance footage played on it instead.
• Have CU's on the phone so it's easier to read and either speed up the footage or shorten the sequence down a couple of menus to save time
• Having the "Sony" branding in the frame could be seen as a viral advert
• Have the protagnoist using the QR code app on his phone whilst looking at our Digipak we will be making to help promote it.
• Have our magazine advert on one of the pages when the protagonist is reading it
• Make the collage of magazines more subtle not just in a big group on the floor
• Use multi-layering within the video so we can fit more footage into the sequence
• Have photos of the protagonist alone in various locations so it isolates him from everyone even more
• Redo some of the shots with the low-lighting and test on the day to see if lighting is suitable if not then use external light source
• First see the persons face when he puts the magazine down
• Try out with having shots without showing his face at all perhaphs for the entire music video and then get feedback from it all to see if it works!
• Have the protag looking through his wardrobe however the clothes are very unusual and makes him seem more of an outsider to the rest
• Look at Napoleon Dynamite for influence

We also recieved feedback from a past A2 student, Chris Lawrence!

ALL - Sample Footage Number Two

ALL - Fifth Podcast: Inspiration from Film & Music Video

Inspiration from Film & Music Video

Further Influences from Film & Music Videos

ALL - Second Vodcast - Location Scouting

RS - Further Influences From Film and Other Music Videos

The Breakfast Club (1985, John Hughes). This opening sequence is very useful to us due to the location the film is set in. It gives us a better understanding of how we would set up the shots.

Unfortunatley this clip has been mirrored so that it wouldn't be removed from Youtube however it's only the titles that are an issue to read.

 

Here are a few examples of music videos using high school locations within their videos. Most of these music videos are within our genre so it shows that the genre uses this location often and that it creates a good music video.

 

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

 

Pearl Jam - Jeremy

 

 

 

Aerosmith - Livin' On The Edge

 

Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

 

Van Halen - Hot For Teacher

 

Escape the Fate - Situations (An obvious reference to Hot For Teacher but with a twist!)

 

Escape The Fate - Situations from Brad Radke on Vimeo.

 

ALL - Inspiration from Film + Other Music Videos

Today as a group we all looked at the film opening for Trick or Treat (1986, Charles Martin Smith) and we found it very useful as it is very similar to our idea with the main character being seen as distant from the other students at school. We won't use all of the aspects within the Trick or Treat opening such as the nudity and some of the other shots however we do want a similar effect showing the protagonist distant from the others and not fitting in because of him liking a certain band similar to this. We want to use a similar panning technique they use in the bedroom scene where it is moving across all the different bands posters/accessories as it works really well and is achieveable by us. It's like a short montage which we could take inspiration from.

The sequence at the start with the protagonist in his bedroom is useful because of the use of mise en scene within the room. From the music posters to the calendars and even the books on the shelves have references to bands and show what his hobbies/interests are. We want to do a similar thing in our music video so using this as a reference is helpful. 

Here is the entire opening sequence to the film:

We also took inspiration from certain music videos including

• Waking the Demon by Bullet For My Valentine 

• Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus  

• Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day

We only want to use certain aspects from within these music videos so we wont go to the extreams of creating a werewolf etc however we do want to have similar shots like in these videos within our video. We are only taking inspiration from them not copying them.