Researching

Alternative Rock

History of Alternative Rock

Alternative rock goes all the way back to the 1970's, in 1976 there were a few newly formed bands such as; The Cramps, The Cure, The Fall and U2. Through to the 1980's many more alternative rock bands were formed, many of the bands either split up or are still out there but are not very well known. In the 1980's one of the best bands R.E.M started making their start into alternative rock, in the 1980's most of the fans of R.E.M were college students, as they got a lot of air time on college radio stations. R.E.M's success came in 1990 when alternative rock started becoming popular with everyone. 
Amber

The Origins of Alternative Rock

Alternative Rock emerged in the 1980's. It became widely popular in the 1990's with popularization of such bands as Nirvana, Hole, and Smashing Pumpkins.
Alternative Rock has lots of  sub genres-
Independent music.
Grunge
Brit pop
Gothic rock
Indie pop

Alt rock became widely popular and originated from some of these places-
Athens, Georgia – Illinois – Manchester, England – Massachusetts – Seattle, Washington

1990's popularization-Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chilly Peppers, Hole, and Smashing Pumpkins.

Nirvana led the way for alternative rock, with songs like "smells like teen spirt". Off their hugely influencetle second album Nevermind.

Because of Nirvanas popularity Alternative rock suddenly became mainstream, and other Alt rock bands began to be noticed as well.

Unfortunatley at the end of the 90's alternative rock declined because Kurt Cobain, Nirvanas front man died and Pearl Jam had a lawsuit against Ticketmaster.

Thankfully at the beginning of the 21st century new Alternative Rock bands appeared-
Linkin Park, Muse, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Killers, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Starting a new Alternative rock era.

Sophie


Fashion

Alternative fashion is ment to be very different from any mainstream clothing, how ever alot of it has crept in to the media which now everyone wheres such as skinny jeans and converse.
It can consit of having brightly coloured hair with a choppy hair cut, make up with mad colours or very heavy with black and pale skin is essntsional. Converse and Doc Martens are very different how ever it slips the the different genre with in the genre itself. A lot of the older ones will get tattoos of skulls, swallows and mad ideas.
This look came from back when rock and punk started with the old style tight jeans and band tops. It has nearly always stuck with rock as the proper rocker look and then to morden day they have slightly changed with teh different new genres.
Its slowly changing to be a mainstream clothing for some as Vintage things are in.
Leanne

Networking Sites

http://www.facebook.com/paramore
The Facebook page was made about 22nd April 2008, so the page has been able to run for nearly 3 years and has over 12,000,000 fans. They are known world wide with a lot of fans that are not speaking english on their page from all over. They have a few haters over facebook and who want everyone to know about it, such as 'Paramore are RUBBISH' how ever they do not get so big as the Paramores offical site.
A lot of people on facebook really like the band will put Paramore in their names such as 'Alice Paramore Hunt'.
There is a lot of prolems of people prendting to be hayley williams on facebook and causing arguements which bands people from the site. This is also happening to other band members.http://www.youmeatsix.co.uk/
You Me At Six page looks like http://www.paramore.net/ as they are very silmiar in music. Their logos are differnent but the ellements of them are same. They both go on tour together sometimes around the world. YM@6 page is very vintage looking with the game boy as a video dock. They update their site quite often to keep their fans updated with everything going on with them like this newst blog entry,


Most people who are a really big fan of them will go on their site regually and will post to them through social networking sites as well saying how much they love them or they thought they were great at a gig. 

http://www.myspace.com/

Myspace started off a great place for a lot of bands such as All Time Low http://www.myspace.com/alltimelow
Alot of bands will have myspace as its free for having and would do small gigs around there area/country and then when they started getting more itersted by the public they then develope a proper site like paramore

You Me At Six up your Facebook profile

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 | No Comments

Leanne

TV and Films

Alternative Rock & Roll Years - Three part TV series.  Host of show was Deborah Harry (Blondie). Documentary telling the story of pop culture traced across the globe, from rock n' roll of india and hong kong.

Almost Famous - Film in 2000. Starring Cameron Crowe. Cameron Crowe looks back on his time as a teenage journalist. William Miller is hired by Rolling Stones Magazine to tour with and write about an up and coming band Stillwater.

Last Day's- Film in 2005. Michael Pitt. A Seattle set rock and roll drama based on Kurt Cobain's last days.

Empire Records- Film in 1995. All the characters in this film look like alternative rockers. Some dark clothing, broody, converses/ dark sneekers, baggy clothes.

Brothers of the Head- 2005. Siamese twins get picked in the 1970's by a music producer who transforms them into a rock n' roll act.

Sophie

Magazines

Alternative Rock can be found in magazines such as;
AP (Alternative Press)
Kerrang
Q
NME (New Music Express)
Rolling Stones
All

Sophie


Club Nights & Gigs


 In Cambridge there a few local pubs which hold live music nights, one of them is The Portland Arms.
The Portland Arms is a popular pub and is very popular when the live music nights are on, not all of the live bands are Rock but the majority is. You can go on their website and look on the calender to what bands are playing and when, it also has the genre of the band next to the bands name so you know its the right genre of music for you.

Another one of the local pubs that has live music nights is The Man On The Moon. Same as The Portland Arms a mixture of genres of music is played there it's not all rock but the majority is. The Man On The Moon I would say is more popular for the music scene, a lot of young people play their gigs their. 

In London there are quite a few night clubs that put rock nights on, the night club : The Borderline is very popular for is music events and is well known for it's Alternative Rock night. There's a venue in London which is called Fighting Cocks it's a rock and live night venue, which has a jukebox in the club and Guitar Hero on the Wii for the customers to play for free. 

A pub also in London called Filthy McNastys, it is described as a Rock'n'Roll pub with heart. It holds live music events just like The Man On The Moon and The Portland arms.

Amber



Labels

There are quite a few brands that are associated with the Alternative Rock genre, the big brands which are most popular would probably be Converse and Vans. The Converse brand has been around for many years, since 1908. Converse wasn't associated with the rock genre until 1948, before that Converse was supplying army servicemen and pilots in world war 2 with boots, and rubber protective suits. Then in 1948 Rock'n'Roll came into the music world, it was a movement looking for a uniform, Rock'n'Roll had found the leather jacket, blue denim jeans and high top sneakers. Also around this time also using high top sneakers was The National Basketball Association. In 1968 Converse footwear got a make over and you could now buy them in different colours, and they had changed the material to suede and added a logo which was the big bold star on the side of the high top. Even though Converse high tops were designed for basketball players, they attracted the rockers and skaters and they are still buying them now. 

Also associated with the Rock'n'Roll genre is a website: http://www.bluebanana.com/

Blue Banana is a website were you can buy emo clothing, alternative clothing, hell bunny clothing and dresses. There is a huge variety of clothing and accessories, the website is set up very clearly and is easy to find your way around. There are drop down menu's so you can choose what you want sort of clothing you want and it will take you to the page.

Above is the women's drop down menu, as you can see everything is in categories; Clothing, piercing, footwear, accessories and brands. So there is a large variety to choose from. There's a tab for Festivals and on the drop down menu there is everything you will need to attend a festival. For example you can but inflatable beds, tents, wellies, backpacks/bags, chairs and seats and anything else you could think of.

You can also buy official band t-shits, hoodie's, accessories and band posters. 

Amber

Activities & Lifestyle

The activities and the lifestyle of Alternative rock bands are all different, no band is the same so therefore they display all different types of behaviour and you can't just say they all live the same lifestyle. While many rock bands display partying and acting irresponsible and immature in their music videos, for example Blink 182 and Sum41. 

Many other bands may have a more serious prospect on their music, they may be singing about political matters or love or things going on in their life at the time. There is also bands who write songs that are very angry and aggressive, the songs that come across as angry or aggressive are usually about the past, or even the present time. What I am trying to say is that you can't pin point one life style on a certain genre, in that genre there are sub-genres which are all different, everyone has a different view on the world and different bands show it in different ways. 

Amber

Album Cover Of

Micheal Jacksons Thriller

The reason for my choice of album to remake is firstly because I like the song Thriller, and also I thought I would of been able to create something that represented it really well. While I was watching the video for Thriller I got the idea of making the album cover dark and quite scary, as the video is set at night time I thought that the cover should connect with the video so I made it look like it is night time by using black as the background and using a moon brush on photoshop. In the video there are zombies which come alive, and then start dancing with Micheal Jackson, as the zombie's are a big part in this video I thought I would make the zombies the centre of attention, so I downloaded some zombie brushes and found a suitable one for the cover. My design is completely different to the original, the original has a picture of Micheal Jackson on the front just posing. 

Club Flyer's

Club Flyers I Have Found:

This flyer is for The Black Hole Club, it is a rock club which organises certain events. I picked this flyer because I think it stands out and it draws you into the flyer. I'm not sure why the monster is used but it makes you look back twice at it. 

This flyer is for a club called Ronchi dei Legionari which is a rock club, the flyer is very dark, using the colours black for the background represents the genre of music that will be played on the night of the event. The name of the band is in red and I think the other word in red is another band I'm not quite sure. I think the flyer connects with the event as they have took the genre and the style of the band into consideration and have made a informative flyer, all the information is in white, and they have evanfront. put the headlining band on the front.

Record Company Logos

BareFoot Records

In today's lesson we are looking at record companies logos, we have used the Internet to either look for a specific logo we know or searched for a random record companies logo. The first logo I found which stood out to me was BAREFOOT Records, BAREFOOT records was set up in 2006 by Hakon Berre and his friend Ole Jonas Storli who live in Denmark. The record company was set up so they could release: Trios Barefoot's debut-CD, but then went on to releasing 10 more records from 2006 to 2009. The record label is built up as a democratic company, so all the musicians involved help out promoting each other. This works really well for the record company as it costs less with everyone helping promote each other, which means they don't need a big budget. 

This logo caught my eye as it's simple and connects with the name of the record company.

Cordless Recordings

Cordless recordings is actually owned by Warner Music Group, the label was founded by Jak Holzman who also founded Electra Records and Nonesuch Records. In 2007 Warner Music Group's Rykodisc formed an alliance with Cordless Recordings, the alliance was meant to make Rykodisk more popular in the digital media space. I picked this logo as I think it's a clever design, it's the symbol for: ON. Like on a laptop/computer, mobile phones and game consoles, but they have rotated it 90 degree's clockwise. They haven't used too many colours which I think makes it effective. 

Transmission

Transmission is an independent record label it was set up by a British progressive rock band called Porcupine Tree in 2003. It's based in Stockholm in Sweden. I found this logo on Google images, and when I clicked on the picture to go to the link it didn't take me to the record label website it took me to a blog where I found out that it's the name of the band on the logo. I think the logo stands out and would make you look twice at it, if you look closely the porcupine is wearing headphones it looks like, but it also looks like and upside down magnifying glass. I also think it works well in black and white and wouldn't look as good in colour, it also relates to the band.

My Logo

This is my logo I created using Photoshop. I used a grey background so that the image would stand out more, and i used a spider web brush to create the spider web, when I first used the brush it was very faint and you couldn't see it properly so I just overlayed the same brush to make it stand out more. The spider is a brush as well and I had to do the same as it was quite faint but i didn't have to overlay it as many times only about 3 I think. I think that my logo will stand out and people would be interested in it.

Cut Counting

Of Ellie Gouldings cover of "Your Song"

 

I counted how many cuts there were in this one video and counted 124 CUTS

Blogs

http://institutionsandaudiences.posterous.com


http://tvdrama.posterous.com


http://level3musicvideo.posterous.com/

Evaluation

Of Finished Opening Sequence

Questions & Activities

Question/Activity One: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
Here is my Photoshop file of my 9 distinct key frames:

 The aspects me and Sophie have considered in our distinct key frames are: Title of film, Setting/Location, Props, Camera and Editing, Title Font and style, Story and how the opening sets it up and How characters are introduced. 
For the Title of the film, we used a student from our class as the actor and he is holding a pocket watch, and on the back of the pocket watch is the title, edited in on Final Cut. We used the pocket watch as a prop for this title as we think it gives the audience an idea of what the film may include.
 Setting and Location has been probably a main aspect to include in our title sequence, our re-make of The Sorcerers is based in a college, so we have the Production Designer credit this is text on a college sign we created by taking a picture of Long Road College sign and editing it in Photoshop. For a characters credit we have used one of our classmates as an actor and he's sitting behind a laptop in a classroom, so this gives the idea of a college too. Another character is introduced while she is writing her name on the college toilet mirror.
We have used Props in nearly every credit, my favourite is the Original Music By credit, we have opened up a MacBook and layed out some music sheet we created on the keyboard with a half written composition, we have used a few props such as: a pen, a cup, board markers and a memory stick.
 For Camera and Editing, we have used a lot of zooming, close-ups and mid-shots, we have also used an over the shoulder shot which is for our last credit.
The Title Font and Style is different for every credit. As we have used props it is what sort of text you would expect to see on say a music sheet or on a certificate.  




Question/Activity Two: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I Have chosen the main character in our re-make of The Sorcerers to compare to a similar character. The character I am going to be comparing Alexi to is Tom Chambers who plays Max Tyler in BBC 1's Drama series of Waterloo Road. He used to be head master of Waterloo Road school, he was very serious and strict. In appearance I think that if Alexi done his hair like Tom he would look similar. Character wise, we have made our main character very professional and quite scary, Max in Waterloo Road is the same but I think he may be more intimidating. In our re-make we are going to make Dr Montague the bad guy, to make him powerful and Max on Waterloo Road plays that sort of guy to certain people.




Question/Activity Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?





For this activity we had to do some researching before we could get started, we had a few questions which were like guidelines, a few were: What does a production company do?, What the distributors do or who they are? Where do they get the money from to fund their films? etc. Me and Sophie started looking up films that were similar to The Sorcerers, we then looked at who the production company was who supported them and things like that, we then went onto researching into their company and that's how we started with our re-searching. After researching we had to write a script, so we had 3/4 main points and me and Sophie divided them between us, I wrote the script for what i was going to say and Sophie done the same. When we put it all together, it didn't make sense, we then started to work together and read it through, what we wanted to add in on the script we wrote on a post it note and stuck it to the paper where we wanted to say it. 
Recording the voice over was the hardest part of the whole process, we recorded it so many times. It was coming up to the end of the day and we were recording one last voice over, when i suddenly got the hiccups during talking, me and Sophie decided we would do it the next day as we couldn't carry on. Finally we got the voice over right. the last thing to do was to export it as a MP3 and to import it into final cut. I had a few difficulties with final cut as my media went offline, so before i could import the voice over I had to reconnect the media. After reconnecting the media there was one thing left to do which is to put the voice over in the correct place for timing reasons.


Question/Activity Four: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Me and Sophie have made a spider diagram and have listed all the things we think someone would be like who would watch the film The Sorcerers, the categories are, Shops they may shop for cloths in, TV what sort of programmes they may watch, Films- they may watch, Clothing- they may wear, Bands- they may listen too and finally Spare Time- what they may do in their spare time. In the Shops group we have listed: Cult, Grindstore.com, Drop Dead and Loud.com, all these stores or websites sell clothes that are quite grungy, baggy, sometimes casual.

For the TV group we could only find one programme related to The Sorcerers

Next is the Films group, in this group we have: A Clockwork Orange, Jennifer's Body and The Faculty. Two of these films are based in a school, the same as our remake of the opening sequence of The Sorcerers.

The Clothing category sort of ties in with the shops, but we have listed what we would think someone in our audience would wear: Baggy jeans maybe faded, maybe quoted t-shirts and casual hoodies. It's not Gothic, and it's not chav, just casual.

The Bands we think our audience may listen to are: Marilyn Manson and Rage Against the Machine, Marilyn Manson is quite heavy music and Rage against the machine is opposite, maybe they don't stick to one genre. As The Sorcerers isn't really much of a horror me and Sophie found it quite funny.

The last category is the Spare time, we thought the person would maybe: Draw/Sketch, Play computer games and maybe enjoy reading books.

This is our spider diagram.

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My idea of someone who would watch our film

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Question/Activity Five: How did you attract/address your audience?

Question/Activity Six: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project? 

While constructing this project we used a few technology programs, we used Photoshop, Final Cut, Garage Band, iMovie and iPhoto, and also we have updated our blogs nearly everyday. As I was in Level Two Creative and Media last year I didn't have too many problems with Final Cut or Photoshop. But I have learnt a lot about Final Cut, we wanted to add motion to some of the still credit shots, so I tried using the motion key frame on Final Cut to add a zooming in affect to the still picture, I got so frustrated and confused it just wouldn't do what I wanted it to, it would either zoom in at the wrong time or would start zoomed in, I had to re-do it so many times I can't evan remember, In the end i admitted defeat and Dave came and helped me, and now I know how to create a successful key motion frame, I am very proud of myself for then going onto adding more key motion frames to some of the shots and getting them right. 

As we were constantly uploading footage from the camera or still pictures from the still camera we had to learn how to manage iPhoto and iMovie, iPhoto isn't so bad but iMovie was a disaster at first, you cant just plug it in and it all loads up, you have to have the power pack plugged into the camera for it to work on your laptop and then you have to get iMovie up and then find the camera on there. Because most people were just using any camera if you imported all then you would get everyone else's footage as well as yours, which is very confusing, at the end of the project i think the whole class are experts on iMovie. 

Question/Activity Seven: Looking back at your preliminary exercise, What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? 

Looking back on the preliminary exercise we done back in November, I feel as though i have learnt a lot about the position of where the camera should be in certain shot for example the 180 degree rule. When I'm watching TV I'm looking out for it all the time and notice when they mess it up. In our two minute opening sequence we have used a number of different shots, we used a few mid-shots, using the camera we zoomed into a close up a few times, we also used an over the shoulder shot which was used for our last credit. Editing in Final Cut is an extremely stressful progress, you have to be patient, and not rush, if you rush you end up confusing yourself and generally everything will go wrong. The biggest problem most people had was their media going offline on Final Cut, this is because we were going from B102 laptops to G19 laptops and we had to transfer all the video from our memory sticks, and sometimes it somehow gets lost and then you have to go film that bit all over again. Also in Final Cut you can use it too add movement/motion to the video or still shot, in a few of our shots where they may have been a bit jumpy from where we've hand held the camera for a shot we have had to take a still picture of the last few seconds of a shot and then slotted it into the timeline next to the video, at the end we have used the still shot to zoom in using Final Cut. 

In this still we have had to take a still picture and edit onto it using Final Cut, the reason we had to take a still picture for a this particular shot is because we hand held the camera as the shot was a Panning Up shot from Stephens legs to the laptop where the characters credit appears, as we were panning up it was a bit jump and trying to keep it still while concentrating on the laptop is hard so we just had to edit it on Final cut. 

We didn't get to use the 180 degree rule as we didn't include any dialogue into our sequence we have about 3 or 4 words in the whole two minutes, looking back now I think we should of included more dialogue as we could of used more shot types. We also didn't use the Match on Action shot type or the shot/reverse shot, as we didn't have more than one character in a scene so couldn't use the Shot/Reverse shot. 

Long Shot....                                                                                                    Mid-Shot....

Over The Shoulder Shot....