The Incident Criticale

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The incident that, for me was critical came not from music, like it probably aught to for a music student. Instead it came from the music video crafted part of the project. Let me explain.

Pick up a camera, pick out something to shoot, shoot it for about ten minutes and then edit it down to about three minutes is no attitude to music video direction. I'm sure I always knew that but somehow I it all slip in favour of a robot suit. The suit was made of brown cardboard and Matt wore it and talked around like a robot, and that was our entire concept. Like the very costume itself, it had a weak atheistic structure with no brain behind it.

Let me start at the beginning.

I was away when the finer details of the music video were explained as well as for the digital arts lecture in which Tim Dollimore went through the various ways to inexpensively produce a music video so from the very start, I was in the dark. Matt and Jade who were at both lectures had put a string of ideas together involving stop-gap animation (think Aardman) and a sort of hand-puppet realisation of the lyrics to the song. I initially thought it was a bad idea since a lot of the ideas they had involved being outside and if there is one thing I know about making videos on the cheap (and possibly the only thing) is that if you film outside then the uneven natural light makes the film look like a home video. The idea of theirs I really did like was the stop-frame animation and I bargained keeping that if we replaced the hand puppets with a pop-up book that played out the lyrics. My reasoning was that if the world was on paper, we could do it inside under controlled lighting conditions. So I then went about thinking of how I might make a pop-up book. I had never made one before so first things first I went on the net and learned how to make basic pop-up parts. Once I was relatively confident with the engineering involved I took the first lyric of the song and planned a two page, multi-faceted pop-up that could be choreographed to the music. It took about two long days. And there were three more verses and two chorus' more. I gave up pretty sharpish.

It wasn't as if I was giving up on the whole process however, I had a plan. A plan in which I wouldn't spend all my waking hours cutting and gluing. I was going to put Matt in a robot suite, film him messing around the place and then edit it together into a charming, quirky video. So I spent that night making a cardboard robot video. I'm no tailor I admit.

The next day was a Monday and we had to have something to show for Tuesday so we had to work our socks off to have something ready. We raced to college to pick up a camera, anticipating that we would get the camera early and do some rehearing for the dusk/evening shooting schedule I had envisioned. We of course were informed once we got to the technology department that digital cameras were only being allowed out until five o'clock rather than the usual nine thirty the next morning. My idea was shot in the air and we had to show something. We went home with the camera and over a cup of tea decided what we could shoot in the limited time available. Since we only had about four hours and Jade could not get to use any time before three of those were up, we told her not to bother coming and that we would make do with just the two of us. Matt had an idea of going into the woods and filming something like Big-Foot footage. It was ridiculous but it could work, or so we thought.

Without any plan in our minds whatsoever we went into the woods and filmed about half an hour (in the space of a few hours) of Matt as strange, cardboard forest-bot, a Sasqubot if you will. Within moments of returning home and loading our footage up on the computer I think both Matt and I were struck with a heavy dose of reality. Our video footage was awful. Really really rubbish. I would not have it shown at college even with the arbitrary “work in process” disclaimer, this was terrible.

I wasn't quite sure how what we had did had become so terrible, we had been filming for hours and everything that people with cameras usually do. Then it hit me; we hadn't really done any work at all. What I had totally neglected was that the filming process is not a creative process at all, in fact it probably requires the least time of any of the process one has to go through when making a video. We had set aside to film something but speaking in terms of content, we had nothing to film. We had no narrative, not time line, no concept and no sign of any effort. For the Tuesday lecture I explained all this to Rick and to my surprise Matt produced from his bag my pop-up book that I had abandoned. Everyone in the class including Tim and Rick thought the idea was cute and conceptually strong and when I explained that it took ages to do the consensus from the group was “so?”. Them saying that spoke directly at me and made me really think about how I had gone about the video and probably many other projects in the past. It made me think that if something is dauntingly hard to do, it will probably have a better result than something that is easy to do, and it's not as if I'm ever too busy to cut out paper.

That weekend I spent all my time (free or not) making more pop up stuff and even planned a little shooting schedule. Because I had planned it all, the filming took about forty minutes and the editing took about an hour. Hard work had paid off.

So for my critical incident I have to say it was the time I, thought lazy workman ship, made a poor video which in turn taught me to plan, organise and put in the work behind the scenes. In the end it was more fun anyway. 

The last post proper

At around 100 view of our video is, I would say, peaking at the point in which all the people I have contacted have seen it. If I were a performing act, I could expect that for every gig I did that number would increase, then once it had reached a critical point it would become large enough to catch passing internet trade. Like the old you need to have money to make money, to get views, you better have some views brother. 

How do I feel about the end of this lecture series? Lets just say there is no six more weeks of winter for me. I will be there for the 3rd year series held in the Rogers room (I think I might make a plaque) bith brass knobs on (the plaque that is). 

I can and have taken so much from the past weeks, I think I might even break it down and say a little but about how each area has inspired and informed.

Careers.

I don't know why but I always have said "when I'm rich I will...". I can't say I ever had a stratergy to get said wealth but I'm certainly sure it didn't involve working long hours every day for years and years before you get anywhere like so many bands and lower level industry people have to. But you know what, I'm ready for it. I've started to really beleive that although that which you desire might seem really far away, and it always is, the way to get there is to start walking now. And you know what else, I'm not thinking about the rediculous "when I'm rich" senario, I want to work hard and see what I can get done. I'm coming around to the idea that those who create the greatest stuff are creating all the time, not to reach a specific goal. I'm want to be like that. 

I can't imagine I will ever be a portfolio musician, I'm not a good enough performer nor do I really enjoy performing but I would really really love to be a promoter, venue type person or something involving promotion. 

Legal

Self-post your music. Done. 

Visibility

Regularly updated websites and blogs are the king of promotion. I think that blogs are the way forward since you can use them to host content, are simple and very easy to update which is the big thing. Oh and a myspace. And a youtube account. The trick is to be there should somebody want to find out about you. I really love this stuff anyway so to hear that engaging in the ownernism that is blogging is actually good for your vision is great. 

Professionalism

I have a suit. I think that a t-shirt with a tie looks kinda cool. But professionalism is so much more than that; it is being pleasent. Punctuallity is a given but being nice?, who'd have thought it. 

Hard Work

This is the daddy. This is not only doing what needs to be done, and then doing it the next day and the next, it is also making work for yourself. This is the thing that has really stuck with me, that the work that is asked of me isn't half of the work that has to be done. For example, just because I have finished my assignments doesn't mean I shouldn't be writing a new blog, composing, doing piano exercises or writing the next email send-out. Or looking into what possible venues would be right for said event and getting information together. Then getting back-up information together. I have a cool idea that I am going to see through (I hope); make a 'rubber' business plan than I can add things to, but never take away from (i.e miss a personal deadline), this way I will never not have some work to do and hopefully, sometimes too much to do. 

Listen to me planning too much work, blogging, wrapping white blue-tack around my thumb, why I'm halfway there already. In fact, I'm already think about something. Imagine an events organiser for all the lower level venues in a town. Woudn't that be really smart? So I represent maybe the twenty or so smaller Norwich venues that have live music. I'm not sure how I would be paid though. Alas. 

But look Rick, look. I'm thinking. 

Bye. 

After the Rain, I mean the A&R man

as of writing this blog our YouTube view count is somewhere around eighty views. Hardly time to retire I'm afraid. Now is that time in the young music promoters week when they sit back, safe in the knowledge that their job is (for now) over and it's time for the slow burning word of mouth to spread like a wildfire. Who knows, this time tomorrow I might have one hundred views. Think of that with me, one hundred views. 

I know I know, slim pickings in the real world, but I do see exactly what this exercise has tried and to be fair, succeeded in doing. Assuming that Giraffe were a real band, out there touring and promoting ourselves tenasticaly, our viral campaign would really have wings. I'm not really convinced that one can actively create a viral sensation. I mean, I know they happen, but only now and then and they are never (or seem never) to be deliberate. For music promotion the viral option is something to give the 'I want it now' generation something of you they can enjoy at their leisure once they have heard about you. But one thing hasn't fallen by the wayside; you still have to perform live. You need a real fan base before anyone will forward your embedded YouTube videos to their work colleagues. I'm not dissing what we have done over the past month with Rick, it has been the best thing we have done at college this year, but it's best to think of it as a complement to normal ways of getting music heard rather than an alternative. It's digi-ready, it's the fax machine, it's 'thanks for coming to see us and check us out on myspace'. 

Tuesday last we had a guest visit in the shape of a gum chewing black jacket, grey before time who really gave it to us straight in terms of would he as an A&R man listen to our stuff. He said my chorus wasn't grand enough. I understood. Tim liked my video and I don't remember what Grizzly and Joe had to say. I told the guest people about how I went about writing in a style that I wasn't really that well wed to and they seemed rather impressed with how I was able to dip into a style. 

It got me thinking about what music I am wed to. This year I have been composing piano music for my free compositions and did some kind of Nino Rota stuff for the film music project. Last summer I tried to write a musical called Zombie Wedding and stuff it with 80s pop music and am planning another one with a mix of Jerry Herman and more gritty 80s stuff. But none of that is really what I feel like I should be doing. I have no interest in neoclassical piano music or pastiche Jerry Herman or Depeche Mode. I think I thought I wanted to write for musical theatre because I like drama told through song, but it's not really a style of music; just an application of music. 

Neil had an idea that he and I should (for our CEP) work together and see if we could make a go at being a songwriting/demo producing house. It was probably for the first time in ages that I actually was excited about something involving music (writing 10 minute pieces for piano do not inspire me at all, which I am discovering half way through my degree course). I have a feeling that this course has really fired me up. I feel like I'm getting excited about music again. I really want to write pop songs. I really want to go down into the 'shed' and write a song, then walk back up the garden to the garage and record the song, then burn the song onto a CD, put it in an envelope, lick said envelope and then send it off to some sheeny corporate building. I'd love to do that. I certainly am not loving what I thought I should be composing. 

Everything in the Working The Context lecture series has inspired me. In practically every session I was writing down little ideas, like a magpie. I'm sure when I read back those ideas, some might be not so great, some might be Polo wrappers or a discarded spoon, but I'm sure there is enough silver jotted down to keep me writing. 

In bullet point form here is Working The Context (for me). 

• Exist Online
  
• Work very hard
• Be Patient
• Be Charming
• Look Professional 
• Be Visible
• Update

Something that probably is easy to misunderstand is that the music industry, like the plumbing industry or the taxi industry, is run by people. And people are human. People can forget to call you or get pissed off when you send them nineteen emails a day. People can go on holiday for three weeks. People also like a beer now and then and generally like to hear how nice people they have met along the way are getting on. So make contacts and keep people up to date. Send Christmas cards, tattoo their names across your forehead and mention them favourably in blogs. 

Now if you will excuse me, my fondu is just about ready. 

Cheers Rick. 

read on from previous post

I'm not sure if this will work but i am trying to post this blog as a part two to the 'Have you got any cream' blog, so if this is the first blog on the subject of a video on YouTube you have yet read, you might want to read the older post first. Or not and totally trip yourself sideways. Rock on.

    [Oh and the other post has poor spelling]

Now where was I...

Right so anyway we drummed up some visually pleasing content, filmed it with an HD camera, edited it together in iMovieHD (a nice Mac application) and added some subtle video effects. Then Popped it on my new YouTube profile; Giraffe Music. [Youtube.com/GiraffeMusicUK] with a little information about the persons involved and a suitable amount of tagging. That was easy. But now the work begins. 

Next I will have to put up a Giraffe Music (the organisation I have made to represent us musicians) Myspace for the purpose of Working The Context, and maybe even some other promotion things like Facebook pages. I will say though that in the interests of preventing spam and advertising taking over, Facebook is hard to promote music on. It's only really usefull if you already know the band and then seek out their page. 

On the other side of the Working The Context fence, we had a guest speaker in the shape of a lady called Helen Searle who is a top brass music industry lawyer. The main thing she had to say was 'self-address your music to copywrite it' and use formal if not legally-binding 'paper' agreements with everyone you work with. And date them. Always date the paper. 

Have You Got Any Cream?, the Viral is Spreading!

Have You Got Any Cream? The Viral Is Spreading!

Let the viral disease spread 

across the laps of the discerning 

youtube perouser. Two items to 

mention before I get on with the 

blog proper; one being is it me 

or does viral sound rude? The other is why doesn't blogger.com have an 

intergrated spell-checker rather than a check-at-the-end option? People of my 

spelling capacity could do themselves a miscrack under such a regeime.

Anyway you might have noticed 

that at the header of today's 

installment there is a handsome 

window. That, blogfans, is the 

youtube.com video for our music 

project. Only about eight or nine hours ago Jade and Matt and myself filmed the

carefully coreographed documentation/video of the cute pop-up wonderstuff 

that I and a little of Matt had spent this weekend and a little of the previous 

putting together. The idea was 

not mine to go in the direction we

have ended up in, I have to admit,

it was alway's Matt's idea to do

something in which you can see 

the hands moving whatever the contents are, so cudos to him. I can however take

credit for the eyes that open up from the white page while the line "But you would 

have seen me there" is sung and again when the shoe becomes a bird and flies,

I feel the former has a simple, charming power. 

But todays drivvel is not about to whom credit is owed and blah blah, it is the 

common celebration between all free men who have put a video up on youtube, 

shine on you crazy Youtubs. 

Something mental has happend to the formatting on the blog's page so I might 

start on a new blog page...

Blog Four. Or how to fail at musical video making.

So this was the weekend that 'We' the people of our group of three sought out to make an amazing video, the best video in fact, in the whole world even. Sound arrogant?, well we were. We thought we were like the gods of making videos. But don't take my word for it, just read ahead and see how wrong we would become; read on traveller.
My original idea was a cutesy pop-up book that would have an animated feature for each line of duologue, the reasoning being that the amazing spectacle would be a hot seller on the web. As soon as the idea had surfaced you can bet I was down Totnes craft shop (this being last Friday afternoon) buying card and colouring in pens to realise the endeavour. As Stephen Sondheim says; It's not enough to have the vision, it's all about the execution. By which I mean it took AGES to make the first page which would represent just four lines of a song of six verses, and I mean from getting home after going to the shop to going to bed that night ages. Phewey.

I'll admit it, I was flying too close to the sun that evening and I feel, I feel fast and hit the ground hard. More that that we couldn't get a camera out that weekend so not only did we have to do another idea, we couldn't do anything about it until we got a camera on Monday. Days away.
My next idea was getting Matt and Jade, dressing them up as robots and then filming them at dusk, romantically (in Robot form) interpreting literally the narrative in the lyrics of the song. We hit a wall; unfortunately we could only get a camera out until five and Jade could not get to my house until three. This meant that for one we could not film at night and whatever we did, we had Jade for no time once we had dressed her up in tin foil and then loaded our work onto my computer and getting the camera back to college by five. Instead we told Jade not to bother and just filmed Matt in his cardboard robot costume, skateboarding and such. It was rubbish. Absolute dung. We went to class the next day with nothing to show, heads bowed, egos tarnished. Especially Jade.
At class, or support group in our case, we explained our predicament and that our Robot idea bore no fruit at all to which I identified a weak idea that was not planned and limited by time. Matt to my surprise produced my pop-up book and showed it off. Everyone liked the idea and it gave me (and Matt and Jade) a renewed energy to improve it. I already have some more brilliant ideas about how to improve it more. In case I forget after writing this blog I will jot them down now...
Drawing the pop-up book as it it opened!
Colouring in the book as it goes!
(Yorkshire Tea is amazing! I used to like Twinnings but not anymore!)
Involving lights and colour and other, extra-pop-up-ial stuff!
Adding some stop-motion animation!
Letting the camera see the strings (or more accurately seeing the hands)!


To understand what I mean by seeing the hands I am taking inspiration from the opening of Napoleon Dynamite and the really cute stop motion from an artist called erm... Oh I forget but maybe the below link will mention her.
Here is the Napoleon Dynamite opening scene...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjAK-o9W73Q

Here are some amazing if short examples of cute stop-motion art that I would like to use in the music video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8G5AkXdNi4

and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhdKCQfYptg

The tricky second album. I mean blog.

Right. I have been pretty slack about doing a blog, mainly because I have been doing the actual 'working the context' work and my own composition work, oh and having to pop home for a family thing. Before I get up to date I will post a picture of a guy called Alex Lee. <<<<

 Mr Lee is a guitarist and producer based in Bristol. He is very cool and has worked with many a band and toured many a far off land. Big thanks for coming and giving us a talk about promotion, existing as a portfolio musician and the art of production Mr Lee! 

For his second trick (the second half of the day's lecture), he listened to the popular music compositions that we in groups had composed and gave us feedback. I'm not sure if I've even explained this in the blogs so far so I will quickly sum up the last two weeks worth of work that led up to the above situation.  

Rick Rogers is the head honcho for this lecture series called 'Working The Context' in which we as musicians who wish to enjoy an income are taught how to self promote, self produce and basically make a product of ourselves. Rick recognises the impending shift in the music industry that will favour the working musician. At least I think so. 

Anyway, He put us into tidy groups of four and gave us a play list of genres of music and told us to pick a play list (or audience) and write and produce a record for next weeks lecture. Now a non-Dartington student might find that is typical request, 'do something for next week' but we soft bellied, lazy, fat art students are not used to practical deadlines, so we had to cut our twelve hour lie ins short and remember how to play our instruments. As it happens I was put in a group with my house mate and guitarist Matt, Jade the saxophonist who is probably one of the best musicians in our year and some girl who never turned up. We decided pretty readily to do a Radio One play list style song and then went our separate ways to find out what was currently playing on Radio One. 

The list for that week was mostly R&B and dance music so I looked a little further down the list to the b list where there seemed to be a few more guitar based song. It became a toss between the new Greenday toss and a typical Snow Patrol power ballad. My personal feeling about Greenday is that they are more than their bouncy music and even if I could write in their shape; it wouldn't sound like them. So then its Snow Patrol's time to be copied. Its not hard, in fact its really easy because Snow Patrol have a tight formula and I think I quite like what they do. Anywho I wrote a song called 'I Need To See You' and played all the keyboard parts into Logic, including some sweet airy, wispy synth bits to get some magic happening. Matt sang the two vocal parts and played in the guitars and then the next day Jade played some long, breathy sax parts. We had a song. 

Alex Lee and Rick liked our song and really had no comments except that we might tone down the sax. I agree as it happens; sax makes things sound like supermarket instrumentals.