Having looked at the statistics on our video 'The Walls - Miss Alissa' I have been able to breakdown the demographic of the people watching our music video and for the length of time, read the comments and the type of people(age and gender) subscribing to The Walls channel. Currently we have had over 700 views, however this only amounts to 87 minutes watched, suggesting people begin to watch it and after around 1:04 minutes in, they turn it off. We have received 8 likes and no dislikes. This would suggest that our video has not caused a real impact online nor on the scene. This is expected as The Walls are a very new band and need time to develop their own fan-base through more touring and promotion. We had previously identified our primary demographic mainly male (but not such a great disparity) with the majority in the UK, a surprise percentage have come from Japan. So overall despite our statistics looking pretty poor and they are not surprising for a young rock band, who have yet to start their headline tour.
After getting feedback from others on a website, we were told that having the website on one long page, looked unprofessional and poor. Therefore I created a new website which was much more well received. You can view the website by clicking the link below.
“You can have the chops, you can have the songs and you can have the savvy, but if you don’t have an engaging front man, you’ll never be one of the biggest bands in the world, it’s the frontman that drives the band.” This quote emphasises the importance of having a charismatic and energetic front-men and so this is exactly what the lead singer of the Walls really He draws influences and similarities from these rock ‘n’ roll legendary front-men.
Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English singer, songwriter and actor, best known as the lead vocalist and a co-founder of The Rolling Stones. In 1989 Jagger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 into the UK Music Hall of Fame with the Rolling Stones. In 2003 he was knighted for his services to popular music. Mick Jagger is a performance icon and one of rock's greatest front men. His contortionist dance moves and endless supply of energy have made him one of the absolute must-see performers of his, or any, time. His name is associated with such ubiquitous songs as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and what’s best -- he shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
James Douglas "Jim" Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, songwriter and poet best remembered as the lead singer of The Door. Due to Jim’s song writing, wild personality and performances, he is regarded by critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock music history and because of the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and death. In the latter part of the 20th century he was one of the popular culture's most rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing generational gap and youth counterculture. He was also well known for improvising spoken word poetry passages while the band played live. One of his most memorial events was when he sang “Get high…” on the Ed Sullivan live, when told before to change the lyrics. Ray Manzarek (keyboardist of the Doors) said that Morrison "embodied hippie counterculture rebellion..."
Iggy Pop born James Newell Osterberg, Jr.; April 21, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He is the vocalist of influential of 60’s punk band The Stooges, who reunited in 2003, and has been known, for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics. Iggy Pop is probably the wildest frontman in rock history, playing bare-chested in every one of his concerts, Henry Rollins says “it’s as if you released a bull in a china shop” when he’s playing live. The seeds of Pop's stage persona were sown when he saw The Doors perform in 1967 at the University of Michigan and was amazed by the stage antics and antagonism displayed by singer Jim Morrison. Morrison's extreme behaviour, while performing with the Doors, inspired the young Pop to push the boundaries of stage performance. Other influences on Pop's vocals and persona were Mick Jagger and James Brown. One of his most memorial stand antics was when we started smashing The Cures flower pot, which was after his set, and then told the crowd the come up on stage with him whilst bleeding from his stomach.
The Walls lead singer draws influences from other frontmen in rock history, but these three in particular. As shown through their debut music video of Miss Alissa, the frontmen is dancing around and really getting into the bands performance, showing similarities with Mick Jagger’s famous dancing around the stage. The bands values of rebelliousness are shown through the frontman’s emotion when he kicks down the microphone stand, with sheer power and energy. He also could be seen as the leader and most important in the band due to standing at the front of the stage. This is also seen as he will look at and walk towards other band members to incorporate them more. Lastly, the coolness of the band are expressed by the ending of the music video when the lead singer turns around towards the camera laughs and throws is suit jacket over the camera lens.
In our music video we would like to emphasize the idea of having a 1950's TV show by having a television presenter who is rather up-beat, excited and is able to put on a stereotypical American accent. We have cast our media teacher (Mr Wood) but what better way to make a presenter and use two very famous men and combine them to make one man. Ed and Wood coming from the 1948-1971 TV show that Sullivan hosted as well as Mr Ed Wood, famous sci-fi film maker, actor and author.
Ed Sullivan was always known as a quirky TV personality and always managed to project and give himself a recognizable voice. Also you may have noticed that he is wearing a suit which is a key part of our video so we want our presenter to be wearing a normal suit. On the other hand we would like our presenter to keep his surname so Ed Wood is close enough. Furthermore we would preferably like our presenter to be good looking (which he is) so it coheres with Ed Wood's savvy, cool traits... Not only off screen but on screen too.
Overall we would like our nostalgic part of the video to mix in and relate with Ed Sullivan's 1964 show when the Beatles were playing live in-front of an audience of women. Here is the video...
As you can see Ed starts off by presenting the band in a wide shot whilst standing up and with a fairly normal background. He is wearing a dinner suit as if it connotes the evening and that people will be watching the show in-front of the television whilst eating dinner. Ironically this period was a time where tv dinners took a toll for a different lifestyle. He then points and the camera fades into another wide shot of the band about to play 'Twist and Shout'. A lot of zooming occurs as well as footage from a very rowdy and ecstatic audience. There is a lack of variation when it comes to camera angles as those times didn't really expect or even think about having creative angles within the performance. Not to mention they probably didn't have many cameras filming them either, they just wanted to sell themselves by using simple wide shots of the whole band. Therefore we would like to incorporate this but combine it with modern technologies to give it a look that several cameras are being used to film the band. Also we will sell ourselves by using individual shots of each band member so it acts as a debut, thus giving fans a small insight into each and every one of us playing in the band.
I edited our footage on Adobe Premiere Pro using my own computer so I could spend time editing it during my holiday. I first attempted the television beginning in which I inserted a TV dating back to the 50's, however we did want footage of a TV being used in real life but it was too hard to find as the camera in the videos did not stay still. Therefore I added the picture and cropped the screen in which I added the zoomed out footage of the presenter.
In doing this I edited the color of all the footage by adding black and white and added a static grainy effect to make it like an old TV. However I had one problem with the TV shot, I found that it didn't look great in the TV and that zooming into the footage would be too hard and would take too long to do so. Therefore we replaced it with just ordinary static TV footage.
We managed to stitch all our footage together to follow the animatic and timeline which was good and made it better by making zooms on Premiere Pro that were missed out during filming. We managed to find different clips online of Beatlemania which looked perfect to insert into our music video. Also we added different texts into our video such as a retro title for the 'Ed Wood Show' and an MTV style text for the song title. We had one problem which was that the lighting of the theatre was too bright which made the faces hard to see and edit. However it can be said that it was purposely done as technology during those days didn't have the best tweaks in which brightness settings were not present on stage lights. Overall the editing process was very long but successful in achieving a music video that is different from any other media video.
