Within the band, we have undergone a lot of work in preparation for our upcoming EP. This includes organizing what we will be doing each week leading up to the deadline, undergoing creating mood boards, etc. I will go into further detail about our ongoing planning.
Within the first week, we needed to have a straightforward plan for what we wanted to do for our FMP. This started with getting together to create different plans, we did this by creating three different schedules. All of us are assigned to different roles, one for social media, one for making the music videos, and the other overall schedule. Below is one schedule that will be more helpful to me and Fin who are in charge of creating the music videos. We will be creating two and as it is quite a big project, we needed to create a clear plan to follow. Therefore me and Fin are in charge of creating the mood boards and finding inspiration for music videos that we would like to use for inspiration. Then we need to advertise and work alongside Izzy and Josh with putting small teasers of our videos on social media platforms to get our audiences excited. At the end, we will record the success of the music videos, such as the amount of views that have watched the videos and the amount of likes on social media.
Additionally, this plan is only just a guide, as it's expected that we may go over a bit on time with recording the songs. But it is important that we stay professional and be the most productive when we can. It is difficult within the easter holidays to do recordings, but instead, we will turn our main focus on researching why are music videos important. and the aesthetics we would like to achieve. I think the most challenging part would be editing to videos as well as finding ideas for what to do, as we do not want to overcomplicate what we want to as we do not have a lot of time. But on the other hand, if we start to feel like we can not achieve two music videos then we will draw our focus on one instead.
Additionally, we have not done as much planning as we should have done in the first week of starting our FMP and we needed to start making arrangements. In the last week before Easter, we wanted to make some arrangements with our music videos. Therefore we went to speak to Prim who is a TV and film teacher about booking some dates to use the professional TV studios. Therefore, we have made some arrangements for when we go back to college which is positive forward planning. The dates that are available for our usage come to only two at the moment, which means we would have to make the most of each session, because we are using another department's equipment, we will need to be respectful. Making the music videos will be the most challenging, as we all don't have much experience with creating high-quality videos. I have probably the most experience, as I did film studies at A levels and I know my way around lighting and angle placements that I think will work out best. Overall this was the beginning of our first FMP week, we have not done as much planning as we should have done, regarding recording the songs on the EP and arranging recording time as other pupils will need to use the rooms as well. The planning process is still ongoing, such as planning our logo and cover art which we collaborating with Harry Rawlings. This planning will be mainly made in the Ester holidays, as while we are at school we want to do as much practical as we can together.
This is our last week before the Easter holidays, as we have already started recording our songs and have successfully almost finished being in the studios. During this week there was not much planing taking place, as we were all delving in to finish some recoridngs off before Easter. We all knew these recordings would take a while, therefore we used as many recoridg sessions we could in order to be up to s good point. Overall in the Easter break, planning will take place in order we are o top of our game when we go back to college. Even though it will be difficult for all of us to meet up in the holidays, therefore we do a lot of planning and discussions on social media about what we want to achieve.
Also, on the last day there was some forward planning with the music videos. I was not present on the last day, but the guys told me that there was a TV studnet who would be interested in helping us for the vidoes. This was really positive news and we would be able to contact them after Easter.
Within the Easter Holidays, we had the Friday off college and this was a great opportunity to start talking about our cover art and logo design. We are with Josh's brother Harry Rawlings, who will be doing the art work. Both Fin and Izzy have been the main designers with creating the cover art and have done the communication on snapchat for the rest of us to be involved with. Fin designed the cover art that we can give to Harry as a reference, as well as characters and colours to use. We found that the Easter Holidays would be a good time to focus on our research and artwork as we will not be able to meet up as often as in college.
This image shows one of the drafts that Fin has created by hand and then shared on snapchat for the rest of us to look at. We all really liked this idea and it was a rough sketch that we would give to Harry. There was a lot of discussion about the images we wanted to include in the cover art. This means that we wanted to incorporate different elements of the songs in the art work, such as the broken heart image symbolises our track Wounded Heart. Fin got very experimental the colour palettes, in order to give a finalised version of what we want to Harry. This was really successful, as we were quite to agree on what to send to Harry.
Advertising our EP is very crucial, as we want to attract as many listener as we can. This means that our social media needs to be active, as well as having entertaining content to post. Originally we wanted to announce our EP to our followers on different social media platforms. We found the perfect opportunity to for this when we are all together, but because of schedule clashes we are not able to do this. I was the only one who was able to meet up with the others, so we wanted to come up with another idea instead. Which was to pretend that I am facetiming the others and then say to me "Freya have you heard about our upcoming gig?, it is our EP release gig" and then I will be reacting to it. This would have been a humorous way to tell our followers, but this idea did not end up happening. Therefore we have unsuccessfully been able to actually announce the exciting project of releasing an EP.
Our upcoming gig will take place at Bomba on May 8th, which will be our official EP release day, where all of our tracks will be successfully recorded and distributed on different platforms such as Spotify. This is an exciting announcement and that we are able to be performing in front of an audience is thrilling. It is important that we get the right advertisement, reaching multiple target audiences. Lydia has created posters, so that we can distribute them around Exeter as well as putting them up online.
As well as Izzy posting this TikTok, which expands the amount of people who may consider coming to the gig.
Another part of pre-production, other then recording and creating social media content, would be creating the music videos. We have already started the filming process with the music videos, but there are some key pre-production elements that need to be considered. This area of our FMP is led by myself and Fin, I have already started looking at music video research, such as why they are significant and why people like watching them. As well as people we have had help from. The beginning starts with a plan and timeline. As a group we have sat down together to discuss ideas and locations. On of them being the TV studios in college. This studio has high quality cameras which we can have access too and get some really good shots of us playing. As well as another location is Kyran's field, where we can make the video look enjoyable and that we are having fun which is the main idea of the song 'Get Busy'. Also in the pre-production o the music videos, would be the change in plan as originally we were going to be doing two music videos, but found that making one would mean we ca put all of our focus on working hard on one instead of multiple. Overall this is what we have so far done for the pre-production of the music video, as well as me and Fin working together to come up with angle ideas as well as colour palettes of the lighting and maybe props.
After we have successfully recorded the video, we will then work together with Izzy and Josh who are leading the social media content with teasing the video. Surprising our followers with a video we had fun creating. Therefore, this is the beginning process of making the music video.