“The Essay may stink to high heaven, but just look at that plan, I mean It’s just lovely”

Critical Reflective Document Plan – Making A Musical Video

Discuss the challenges of the project.

The key skills needed: both organisational, technical and diplomacy as well as the tasks we had to complete to get the completed audio.

• • Introduction: Summerise the challenges of the project
• • Discuss the aims of the project both for the group and the band
• • Initial thoughts hope and dreams of the project.
• • The importance of a creative understanding between the band and the group.
• • The first meeting with the band, the rehearsal at Troubador and the 5 degrees below gig.
• • Discuss the challenges of recording.
• • Include Many Examples
• • The choices we made as co-producers and the effect this had on the music.
• • The importance of extensive research in both subjects. Include excerpts from Barthes, Borwick and Record Production.
• • Examples of inspiration
• • The importance of the music – does it come first with a music video?
• • Refer to the narrative of production – classic record production and the goal of the final product.
• • The content of the website and the marketing plan
• • To what degree were we in control during the process?
• • Supporting Materials.
• • References/Footnotes.
• • Appendice’s
• • Appendix 1: Lesson Notes
• • Appendix 2: Guide to microphones
• • Appendix 3: Editing/Mixing
• • Audio Production Diary
• • Pro Tools Keyboard Shortcuts
• • Bibliography

Still to mention:

the use of photoshoot – chris involvment

the local press

C.R.D. Clarification.

Demonstate your ability to control the process of audio production.

• • Transferable Knowledge
• • Choices you made
• • Informed Choices – Research lessons with Steve, Guest Lectures.
• • Discussed The Process

• • How did you understand the needs of the band?

• Embedd examples – opening the project out.

• Pictures

• Diagrams

• floorplans

Challenges:

Creative Understanding

Choosing A Song

Recording

The setting up of the recording studio, was one of the biggest challenges of the entire project. We booked the recording studio and started prepping the recording. Unfortunately one of our band members had to pull out of the session time at the last minute. This meant in order to meet our original deadline, the pressure was on to get the recording done in time. We managed to book one evening and a whole morning. Steve had said in his lessons that recording the one track should take a day, but we weren’t going to take that chance. Me and Matt asked the band to arrive at 10:00 so we had a clear hour to check. We also managed to set up the studio and run all the cables the night before as well as setting up Perin’s drum kit. The morning of the recording arrived and we asked the band to arrive at 10:00 giving us enough time to check everything was still in place. The band started to turn up by this point we had all our tracks labeled and had double checked all the inputs.

To illustrate this I have produced a floor plan of the various micing positions. Chris Ramsey our photographer also turned up to snap some rehearsal pictures, which show the various mic set-ups as well as the band. Please visit Chris’s Website to see some of his other work.

As getting the rhythm section down is the most important part of any recording process. We were going to concentrate on getting the drum track down. Even though modern recording techniques mean, we could have recorded each part separately, because we had been to the Troubador and filmed the Heathenz at 5 Degrees Below. We knew that a lot of performance and charisma would be lost if we recorded them seperately. Posing this problem to Steve he suggested that by re-amping. We would be able to record the band live as a group and still have clean audio. This would be achieved by using the Pro-tools plug in Amp Farm which emulates various guitar amps and basses. We would then feed this sound back to the band on their headphones using headphone sends. This meant to all intensive purposes they were playing live. The only problem this left us with was, because the plugg in uses TDM hardware plug ins we were unable to mix guitar and bass in the Pro-tools suite. This was fine at the beginning of the editing process when we were dealing with the drum tracks, but more difficult when we started to mix the final track.

Aaron Acted As Our Gaffer On The Session, Which Enabled Us To Be Quite Efficient

The first day turned out to be pretty productive, even our camerman Aaron Triplet turned up with the glide cam and shot some footage of the rehearsal before the recording and well as Chris the photographer. After getting the main tracks down, we got the various harmonies of Mark, Spencer and Perin down as well as re-recording both Spence’s Vocal as the original performance was for the instrument track and was only a guide vocal. After recording Mark’s guitar solo and some other parts we decided to finish for the day and listen to the rough track. We burnt copies for the band as well as ourselves and went home and listened to the rough re-recording minus any Editing, EQ and FX. Planning to turn up the next day which we had booked till 1:30, when we then had a lesson with Steve.

Troubadour is quirky space, located in some sort of old warehouse unit up a flight of stairs it is a hidden treat. Walking up the stairs you are confronted by an assortment of old tech. Old Mics, Reel to Reel machines and a plethora of old instruments. Turning the corner you enter the main live room. A mixture of rugs, chincey lights and more old tech.

We set up a C1000 at the back of the room into a fostex, for archive purposes and set up two cameras to capture the action. One was on a tripod the other was handheld. This was a good opportunity to get a good feel for the band and their chemistry.

Aaron listens to the mix through a door, a technique that he continues to practice every shoot.

The rehearsal went well and was good practice for us and multi-camera filming. Because this was only intended as a rehearsal, we didn’t bring any lights. But Aaron was quick to invent a novel way of lighting up the band for our first amateur photoshoot.

These photos were then used for the setting up of the myspace, facebook etc till we could get a professional photo shoots. It was a great evening and although we came hope exhausted it was a fantastic way to kick off the project.

The audio was used to judge the best songs and the video will be edited into a quick behind the scenes video session with the band including an early performance of Jonny’s Dead.

Arriving at his house, we were led down the garden path to a structure resembling a shed crossed with a garage. Entering what is clearly Nick’s haven, I was struck by the sheer amount of low tech instruments and equipment.

Nicks Studio – Quite Dodgy Photo

Nicks studio is a fantastic place, the building is clearly a  sun trap and unlike many of the dark soulless studios I’ve been too, this one was really refreshing. Slowly the rest of the group arrived and Nick began his discussion. Nick Duffy has always been multi-talented, in the first five minutes of our discussion he hints at various facets of his career. Technically a musician, Nick was once an illustrator professionally. Now it seems Nick spends his time making music, documentaries and anything else that interests him.

As the talk continues, it is clear that Nick is not your average musician. The room is surrounded with most of the technology which we now consider obsolete: cassette decks, turntables, mini-disks and even an old reel to reel machine. None of this tech is relegated to the loft like most peoples.

Taking pride of place in Nick’s Studio is a 12 track Akai recorder, apparently taken as payment from the record companies during the early years as Lilac Times. You would be forgiven for thinking Nick was low tech, this is not the case next to these desks is a pro-tools and final cut set-up.

Nicks Akai MK 20J – 12 Track Recorder

Pressed further Nick explains his choice. You get given less choices, your restricted. You have to make decisions. This is what his mantra seems to be about he continues to say sometimes mistakes are endearing. With Pro-tools you can spend so much time making tiny decisions as because you can see the waveform you make decisions you usually wouldn’t. It makes you concentrate on what a piece sounds like, not the technical qualities of it.

Nick names Lars Van Trier document Dogma 95 and restrictive film competitions like Straight 8 [a competition where you make a short film with one reel, but cannot edit or touch the film and send it off to be developed.] In fact this stripped back approach is completely what Nick and especially the Lilac Time were about. Nick names a recent example of this, when the record company wanted to put out a greatest hits of the Lilac Time they stipulated the cd should have the commercial hit ‘Kiss me with your mouth’ however Nick and the rest of Lilac Time gave them a new version which completely altered the synth pop heavy original. When asked about his recording techniques, Nick says he doesn’t concentrate much on the choice of microphones for his own recording. He chooses a mic which he likes and knows the sound of. Nick names the Shure SM57, A Nyuman and a little Radio Shack Clip Mic he assures us he gets good results with. Giving us a quick introduction to experimental music, Nick mentions John Cage, the 1950′s experimental composer and his track of silence 4:33.

Throughout the talk with Nick he shows us some footage from the recent documentary Memory And Desire made on the band, directed by Douglas Arrowsmith. It clearly shows how different the band were at the time. In fact their sound is now as popular as punch, one of the bands most successfully used tracks ‘Trumpets From Montparnasse’ was written by Nick and has been used recently in Flora Adverts and Documentary ‘Honey Your Killing The Kids’

Much closer to our Music video project, Nick shows us an early Lilac Times video and the timelessness of them. Largely influenced by Derek Jarman, the footage shot on Super 8 is a combination between speed up sky, sped up roads and stop-motion quirkiness.

Finally Nick gets us to experiment with recording the whole group singing different songs as seeing what we get. The group asks about the Wurlitzer in the corner Nick sets it up and the remotely musical among us have a go. Nick says he got it off Free-Cycle and it’s clear he doesn’t like to see anything go to waste.

It seems Nick loves to experiment and not to do the obvious with his recording. If I take anything in particular away from the session, it is the importance of not overusing the equipment we have an not discounting what you believe to be obsolete. Slightly controversial I’m sure your agree when your on a Broadcasting course.

Here’s A Selection Of Lilac Time Videos

Return To Yesterday Video 1988

You’ve Got to Love 1988

Black Velvet 1988

The Girl Who Waves At Trains 1989

Produce A Track Sheet.

Decide on exactly what mics to use as a starting point.

Discuss Techniques.

Produce a breakdown of the songs structure

Provide Lyrics.

Describe and Discuss what we want to achieve with this recording.

Matt

INTRO 8 17
PRE-VERSE 8 17
VERSE 8 17
BRIDGE 8 17
PRE-VERSE 8 17
VERSE 8 17
CHORUS 16 33
BRIDGE 8 17
PRE-VERSE 8 17
VERSE 8 17
CHORUS 16 33
CHORUS (NO GTR) 8 17
GTR SOLO 16 33
OUTRO 4 8

Jonny’s Dead.

Guy who seems fine

Ignored BY and Shunned by others

Video concentrates

Sits in Restraunt waiting to be served. – Poh Nosh

Bus drives past him

Member Profiles:

Videos

Interviews

Press Section

Social Networking

News/Gig Guide

Blog

facebook

Twitter

Links to social networking

contact

What do you see your identity is?

Cookin’ up in the dead of the night
And your heart is is running scared
Push Away All Your Emptiness
But your never gonna make it there

So a girl comes along – tries to get inside
But you just got to pushr away -

terrified you mite fall in love
all you ever know in life is pain.

You got to kill the pain

got to kill the pain yere

Never thought she’d leave you along, but shes gone and she don’t care.

I know organise a gig! Thanks to Mr Stent. Our group organised a gig on Halloween in order to create some more content for the website as well as just to go out and have some fun. The preperations for the gig were quite a challenge.

5 Degrees Below in Falmouth was the venue for the gig. The gear was booked and Aarons girlfriend was persuaded to help us drive the gear to the bar. A quick plan was sketched on the back of a fag packet or similar. For the sound requirements we decided to use two AKG C100′s as left and right overheads patched into a small Berhinger mixer which was then connected to a Fostex digital hard disk recorder. This gave us a good sound for the gig and we were able to patch the Heathenz PA into the mixer as well giving us some good clear vocals as well.

Camerawise we took out three Panasonic P2′s and filmed the gig in a live multi-camera shoot. The tapes would then be imported and matched up so we could virtually direct the shoot. The gig was awesome and the night went really well as our first attempt at videoing live music with a multi-cam set up it was a real education.

Music Video Planning

Concerns

Tom fears student movie.

Ideas.

Aaron to draw up storyboar following today’s discussion

Shadows

Person is reacted to abnormally

Never See person to the end

their a shadow/dark figure

focuses on others reactions

darkened character makes audience uneasy.

Basic Plot Points

A journey

Single Character

Ending In Live Gig Reveal.

Intercut with Band in other location.

Carnival.

Mrs Bradley Mysteries

Torchwood.

20-30′s Travelling Carnival

Freakshow

Horror Show

Dark Comedy

Lots of personal touches

bizarre aminmation

suits the band.

Mirrors

Fire Breathers.

Sword Swallowers

Hall of Mirrors.

Possible Locations:

John Martin – Aaron to Ring John Martin Tomorrow.

Andy To Contact House Of Fear

Prime Inspiration for Mise-en-scene