CO - Digipak's relationship to video and original images

I created the digipak's designs with the same idea that I'd had with the magazine ad, and that was to create a recurring theme through all three media texts. The main idea I wanted is that of the location and surrounding area that we shot; this involves Ilkley moor, stills from the wood where we shot our video and other varying areas of greenery. Our original plan was to shoot at the 12 Apostles on Ilkley Moor, but this soon became problematic as we could not get the equipment up there, especially in the snowy conditions we had.


Still, we used an image of the 12 apostles anyway because of the foreboding and isolated appearance of it, and also due to the aspect of intertextuality it had with Stonehenge, i.e the Spinal Tap-esque feel, but not as tongue-in-cheek.We used quite a lot of pictures from this area, and used Adobe Photoshop to edit them subtly, I decided to go with black and white undertone.










Another shot we used, for the back panel.

This is the front cover; featuring a forest
canopy, edited with instagram.

The 12 apostles credits section background. 

CO - Magazine Ad - relationship to video & original images

When I was creating the magazine advert for our group, I thought it should have a strong theme that echoes through both the advert's layout and also links in with our music video, forming a sort of contextuality through both media texts. I had done a series of drafts before the final one was completed, and those also related to the video, and included pictures, stills and more, but the backgrounds needed work and were not prominent and detailed enough.


Here are the original images that I took for the advert's background. I created these by lying my guitar down in the grass and covering my arm in food-colouring (the colouring was blue, so I had to make the image black and white instead) to give the impression of a bloodied band member, a theme obviously recurring throughout the whole music video.

The final image used for the advert.

One of the runner-up ideas, I liked the torch
aspect on this one.

CO - Digipak's relationship to video and original images

P. R. Brown is a graphic designer, photographer, and music video director. As well as being well known for directing music videos he is also known well for designing album covers. Some of the album covers he has designed are for Mötley Crüe, Korn, Godsmack and Marilyn Manson. However he has directed music videos in a range of ranges. Bands he has directed music videos for include Bullet For My Valentine, My Chemical Romance, The Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot and many more.




His full filmography follows

• 2012
• "Cross country" - Mack
• "McShake" - McDonalds
• "Giants" - American Idol/Ford
• "Hats off to the bull" - Chevelle
• "Comin Around" - Josh Thompson
• "Angels & Stars" - Eric Turner featuring Lupe Fiasco and Tinie Tempah
• 2011
• "HELL in HANDBASKET LIVE DVD'" - Meat Loaf
• "Face to the floor'" - Chevelle
• "Gimme all your lovin'" - Filter
• "Electric Eye" - As I Lay Dying
• "The Ghost" - The Hot Gates
• "Not Again" - Staind
• "Dance Without You" - Skylar Grey
• "C'mon" - B'z
• "Ate o Fim" - Madame Saatan
• "Respira" - Madame Saatan
• "Walking Dead Man" - Black Tide
• "That Fire" - Black Tide
• "Fireflies" - Ford/American Idol
• "Be yourself" - Ford/American Idol
• "World" - Ford/American Idol
• "All this beauty" - Ford/American Idol
• "Badass" - Saliva
• "The world" - Ford/American Idol
• "Don't wanna lie" - B'z
• "Lies of the Beautiful People" - Sixx A.M.2010
• 
  
• "Blackline Commercial" - Harley Davidson
• "XM@quot; - Corey Taylor
• "SING" - My Chemical Romance
• "Digital (Did You Tell)" - Stone Sour
• "Nowhere" - Murderdolls
• "Hesitate" - Stone Sour
• "Issues" - Escape the Fate
• "Say You'll Haunt Me" - Stone Sour
• "My Dark Place Alone" - Murderdolls
• "Half of My Heart" - John Mayer
• "Believe" - American Idol/Ford
• "Frozen Moment" - American Idol/Ford
• "All Night Long" - Buckcherry
• "Kung Fu Fighting" - American Idol/Ford
• "Our Time Now" - American Idol/Ford
• "Your Betrayal" - Bullet for My Valentine
• "The Last Fight" - Bullet for My Valentine
• "Tonight" - Dommin2009
• 
  
• "Tattoos & Tequila" - Vince Neil
• "Snuff" - Slipknot (co-directed with Shawn Crahan)
• "Letter from a Thief" - Chevelle
• "Hazardous" - Vanessa Amorosi
• "Doesn't Mean Anything" - Alicia Keys
• "Break" - Three Days Grace
• "Smash the Control Machine" - Otep
• "Let Down" - Dead By Sunrise
• "Crawl Back In" - Dead By Sunrise
• "Still Unbroken" - Lynyrd Skynyrd
• "One Day" - Matisyahu
• "Move Along" - American Idol - Ford commercial
• "Energy" - American Idol - Ford commercial
• "Mixed Up" - American Idol - Ford commercial
• "Pocket Full of Sunshine" - American Idol - Ford commercial
• "We Will Rock You" - American Idol - Ford commercial
• "Chocolate Box" - Prince featuring Q-Tip
• "Crimson and Clover" - Prince
• "Sulfur" - Slipknot
• "The Letter" feat. Vanessa Amorosi - Hoobastank (co-directed with Jess Carfield)
• "Crüe Fest Live DVD" - Mötley Crüe/Buckcherry/Papa Roach/Trapt
• "White Trash Circus" - Mötley Crüe2008
• 
  
• "My Turn" - Hoobastank
• "Dead Memories" - Slipknot
• "Another Way to Die" (theme from Quantum of Solace) - Alicia Keys and Jack White
• "Elephants" - Rachael Yamagata
• "Crüefest Live DVD" - Mötley Crüe
• "Mutherfucker of the Year" - Mötley Crüe
• "Tomorrow" - Sixx:A.M.
• "Psychosocial" - Slipknot
• "Who's Going Home with You Tonight?" - Trapt
• "Five Star Band" - Mead commercial
• "Saints of Los Angeles" - Mötley Crüe
• "Pray for Me" - Sixx:A.M.
• "The Stone" - Ashes Divide
• "Hollywood's Not America" - Ferras
• "The Step and the Walk" - The Duke Spirit
• "Great Divide" - Hanson2007
• 
  
• "Accidents Can Happen" - Sixx:A.M.
• "Confrontation" - Otep
• "Amazing" - Seal
• "Breed" - Otep
• "Almost Easy" - Avenged Sevenfold
• "That's the Way (My Love Is)" - Smashing Pumpkins
• "Over You" - Daughtry
• "1973" - James Blunt
• "My World" - Emigrate
• "New York City" - Emigrate
• "Life Is Beautiful" - Sixx:A.M.
• "Tarantula" - Smashing Pumpkins
• "Sweet Sacrifice" - Evanescence
• "Cry Over Me" - Meat Loaf
• "February Song" - Josh Groban2006
• 
  
• "Ghost Flowers" - Otep
• "Different Than You" - The Exies
• "Oh! Gravity." - Switchfoot
• "Crazy Bitch" (2nd version) - Buckcherry
• "Next 2 You" - Buckcherry
• "Wanna Love U Girl (Remix Feat. Busta Rhymes & Pharrell)" - Robin Thicke
• "Let Love In" - Goo Goo Dolls
• "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" - Meat Loaf
• "Original Fire" - Audioslave
• "Outrageous" - Paul Simon
• "30/30-150" - Stone Sour
• "Stay with You" - Goo Goo Dolls
• "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" - Evans Blue
• "Promise (You and Me)" - Reamonn
• "Marching Bands of Manhattan" - Death Cab for Cutie2005
• 
  
• "King Without a Crown" - Matisyahu
• "Something Inside of Me" - Wicked Wisdom
• "Ugly" - Sevendust
• "Where Do You Draw the Line?" - From Autumn to Ashes
• "Brother" - Dark New Day
• "I'm the One" - Static X
• "Same Old Situation" - Mötley Crüe
• "Sick Love Song" - Mötley Crüe
• "I Walked With a Zombie" - Wednesday 13
• "Walking Shade" - Billy Corgan2004
• 
  
• "If I Die Tomorrow" - Mötley Crüe
• "Lilacs and Lolita" - From Autumn to Ashes
• "Warhead" - Otep
• "Buried Alive" - Otep
• "Shut the Fuck Up" - Brides of Destruction
• "Lost Without Each Other" - Hanson2003
• 
  
• "The Only" - Static X
• "Remember" - Presence
• "Brick By Brick" - Grade 8
• "Transdermal Celebration" - Ween
• "I Could Care Less" - DevilDriver2002
• 
  
• "Milligram Smile" - From Autumn to Ashes
• "Build Your Cages" - Pulse Ultra
• "Dead in Hollywood" - Murderdolls
• "Anger Rising" - Jerry Cantrell
• "My Last Serenade" - Killswitch Engage

SB - Relationship of Artists to Genre

Miss May I

Metalcore is a very formulaic genre with many bands falling under the same sound. This is very typical of bands who fall under the Rise Records label, they're often ridiculed and parodied because of the similar musical style and influences and the majority of them sound very 'cut and paste' examples of bands like this are Attack Attack!, Miss May I and Make me Famous. These bands stick to the formulaic conventions of the genre heavily and don't really try to differ from the conventions, and follow all the rules, such as incorporating multiple breakdowns, dischords, clean vocal passages and dowtuned riffs.

The Devil Wears Prada

However there are bands who challenge the rules and can still be classed as a metalcore band. Examples of this are The Devil Wears Prada, letlive (to a certain extent) and Underoath. These bands are seen as changing the genre and often disregarding some of the common conventions. The Devil Wears Prada are famous for starting off like a typical Rise Records band. (regarded as the first band to start that trend off) They quickly left Rise Records and joined Ferret who are a more hardcore orientated label and started to incorporate more of the hardcore elements in their music. Gradually over time the band has got heavier and heavier while other bands (normally on Rise Records) have got less heavy and started to become what TDWP started out being. letlive. are a band that have incorporated many genres into their music they can be labelled as hardcore or metalcore but really they oppose genre and don't want to be caught under the same net as typical metalcore bands.

CO - Role of Audience Feedback

As we near the end of our production stage of our music video, we can safely say as a collective that audience feedback has been an extremely important and significant part of the creation of the video. Without it, we would not know what to expect from a wide demographic or a second target audience, let alone a first one, and each session of feedback has helped us strengthen both our performance and our narrative as we worked on it. The audience feedback ranged from smaller points such as "This person could be wearing this instead of this to create a better mis-en-scene" etc. to much larger points such as "I recommend you film in an entirely different location", both of which we took into account and used to help better our production. Similarly to that we also took into account more technical aspects, such as improvements that could be made using Final Cut Express, and also utilizing parts from its large palette of effects to incorporate the use of new media technologies into our music video.

CO - Using Final Cut Express

As a way of incorporating the use of new media technologies, classes this year and the year beforehand have heavily advocated the use of Final Cut Express, a variant of Apple's hugely successful Final Cut Pro. This rather fantastic utility allows users to import footage in a variety of formats including .xml, .mov, .mp4 and many more and use a whole host of different tools, appliances and devices to edit whatever you want. We all thought that the use of Final Cut Express helped us extensively throughout the video's creation, and still is. It was of course a huge step up to being restricted to iMovie '08, which was the program that a majority of us used last year for our film openings, as we got to use so many more features; notable examples on our video include (or will include when we're done with it) various "hot colour" tints such as deep red and sepia, glows, fades, possible dazzles, the earthquake effect (which obviously shakes a chosen focal point to simulate a tremor) and a lot of fade in/fade out/cross dissolve transitions. However, the main effect that we used in FCE was the use of the bezier brightness and contrast slider, where we darkened and lightened shots we needed, which we couldn't do before. To summarise, the use of Final Cut Express has greatly helped Sublime Transcendence achieve all we wanted by using effects and precision within the post-production stages of our video.

CO - Representation of Gender in our Video

To begin with, it would be important to note that our video roughly features the gender-based conventions of most metalcore/metal, as the most predominant feature is the fully male lineup of Sunburnt In December. Most bands of the genre have this gendered approach, such as August Burns Red, The Devil Wears Prada, The Acacia Strain, Periphery and more, just off the top of my head. Going against this convention however, are bands such as Kittie, Arch Enemy, Aliases, Eyes Set to Kill, iwrestledabearonce! and more all feature female

Leah from ALIASES, a prog-
ressive metalcore band, a subgenre near
our own one, defying the convention
of all metalcore bands having all-male members.

vocalists or members. We realised that we had the all-male set that the target audience for our genre would recognise, yet within our actual video's narrative, we tried to break away from convention a little bit, because of the reason that it is often a final girl/scream queen that is obviously chased by an unseen being, inhuman or other, and all of us in Sublime Transcendence agreed it was a good idea to have an all-male cast, not just for practicalities, but so we could link it well to the performance whilst forming a binary opposite to the more conventional female leads.

All - Feedback For Latest Rough Cut

Today we got the following feedback:
Cross dissolve from the shot of the band members walking into the distance to the shot leading to the band.
In the lead to the band being shown include more diegetic sound
Or remove the first section (the narrative introduction) and have the shot leading up to the band as the first shot
The narrative aspects need to be earlier
Need to think more carefully on the transitions used and how long
Change the line "Guys just going for a piss"
Animate shots therefore allowing for zooming in shots, especially for the vocalist
Smooth down the audio instead of dropping it harshly when there are lines in the narrative
Cut back to the performance aspect and cut the shot where two band members fall.

CO - Using Final Cut Express

As a way of incorporating the use of new media technologies, classes this year and the year beforehand have heavily advocated the use of Final Cut Express, a variant of Apple's hugely successful Final Cut Pro. This rather fantastic utility allows users to import footage in a variety of formats including .xml, .mov, .mp4 and many more and use a whole host of different tools, appliances and devices to edit whatever you want. We all thought that the use of Final Cut Express helped us extensively throughout the video's creation, and still is. It was of course a huge step up to being restricted to iMovie '08, which was the program that a majority of us used last year for our film openings, as we got to use so many more features; notable examples on our video include (or will include when we're done with it) various "hot colour" tints such as deep red and sepia, glows, fades, possible dazzles, the earthquake effect (which obviously shakes a chosen focal point to simulate a tremor) and a lot of fade in/fade out/cross dissolve transitions. However, the main effect that we used in FCE was the use of the bezier brightness and contrast slider, where we darkened and lightened shots we needed, which we couldn't do before. To summarise, the use of Final Cut Express has greatly helped Sublime Transcendence achieve all we wanted by using effects and precision within the post-production stages of our video.