Running Into Problems

So... I've run into a few unexpected problems. I've decided to start on the digipak either tomorrow or this upcoming weekend since my dad has Photoshop and can show me how to work it. I feel like Photoshop would be the easiest way to make the whole digitpak and my computer just isn't going to do it. I'm basically done with the website, although I ran into a few problems. The template that I chose has a specific part of it in regards to venues. It's this software/website called Bandwagon and it enters in the upcoming venues of the band that you type in. However, my band isn't set up with them through Facebook or anything so when I type in their name it says they have no upcoming venues (even though they play at the Blue Jean Blues every Wednesday) and there's no way to fix it without going into their Facebook account (which I definitely can't do) so I'm unsure of what to do exactly in regards to that, although I'm planning to just leave it that they have no upcoming venues. Otherwise the website is basically done. The music video is a whole other story. The adapter that my aunt gave me for her Mac laptop won't let my SD card fit into it so I have no way of getting the videos onto the Mac. I got an idea from my sister of putting my SD card into my laptop and uploading the videos onto there and then transferring them to the Mac via email or something. I tried doing that, but for some reason the videos didn't appear on the SD card when I uploaded it to my laptop. Maybe my sister knows how to fix it since she deals with SD cards and computers a lot so I'll ask her when she gets home from Young At Art if she can help me fix it. Now I feel like I'm floundering and don't really know what I'm doing but I'm sure I'll get everything on track and fix it soon enough. The only thing that I'm really really worried about is finishing everything with enough time to answer the AICE reflection questions. My plan is to have everything but those questions done by next Sunday or next Monday.

Getting Everything Set

Yesterday, I went was getting everything prepared and ready for finishing the band's website, starting the video, and starting the digipak. First, I went to my aunt's workplace at Nova Southeastern University to pick up her MacBook so that I can use iMovie to edit the music video, which I'm so grateful for. Now I'll be able to start editing the music video. This brings me to my next topic of the CD. The band actually already has a CD created by their lead singer, which makes it easy for me to get their music. Of course, I'm not using their cover or the look of the CD for my digipak because that  would probably be cheating (and I also kind of don't like how their CD looks, although it does look cool. Just not very band-like and more solo musician-like). Also this means that I can finish up the website, which I plan to finish tonight, since I have the interview and the music that I can upload onto the site. Lastly, I plan to start on the digipak either tonight or tomorrow throughout the day (probably tomorrow since I'm planning to finish the website tonight). For some reason, I feel stuck in this limbo of being at ease, but also incredibly stressed out. It's a weird feeling that I guess comes with being a high schooler who has a big project on her hands. Better get to work.

The Interview

I'm starting this post in class and since I don't have a computer or my SD Card, I'm going to fill out my interview questions paper that I created. I had interviewed the band over the weekend and was able to get a large amount of good information that I can use for their website. My main priorities right now are creating/finishing the band's website and starting to edit the footage that I got. Maybe this weekend or next week I will begin to work on the digipak, but that all depends on how soon I can figure out how to properly use Photoshop or find a website that can assist in creating a full CD.

The Funky Blues Band Interview (With Heidi Rosenbaun and Peter "Fingers" Feld):

Q: Can you introduce yourselves and your role within the band?

A: I'm Heidi Rosenbaun. I'm the band leader, I book the band, I do all the booking and communicating with our fans and sending out email lists and putting on our Facebook page and, basically, all the promoting for the band. Jack Levy is the lead guitarist and also sings lead vocals. He sets up our equipment; he's our sound guy. Dave Youngblood is our lead singer who makes us sound so good and he's responsible for writing our songs, making originals, and arranges the songs. 

Peter "Fingers" Feld, I play the keyboards. I play the piano and I sing unbelievably well and I'm just getting to learn my talent, for years it was dormant and now I'm able to sing and I think I'm the best in the band.

Q: How long have you known each other? How did you meet?

A: Peter Feld and I have known each other for about eighteen years, we've been playing together for that long, and Jack Levy and Dave Youngblood, we met about a year and a half ago.

Q: When did you form your band? 

A: About a year and a half ago, October.

Q: What’s your band’s name? Is there a specific reason that you chose that name?

A: I've had that name for eighteen years because I love funk and I love blues. 

Q: What genre of music do you consider your work to be? Who are your major influences?

A: A mixture of blues and funk. Our major influences are Stevie Ray Vaughn, Robert Cray, James Brown and the Motown funky people. 

Q: What are your songs about?

A: A lot of the songs are originals that Dave has written about his life experiences and we do a lot of covers. Fun blues covers that we think are entertaining for people to listen to.

Q: What image do you think your music conveys?

A: I think our music conveys fun and that people like us because we're an entertaining band and because we don't just play, but also interact with our audience and try to get them involved. There's a lot of chemistry between the musicians. Jack and Dave and Pete all work well together and I think people feed off of that.

Q: What kind of audience are you hoping to reach through your music?

A: Our target audience are mostly 35 and up because those people seem more familiar with the blues. 

Q: Are there any bands that inspire you?

A: A large amount of our friends are in bands down here and they're all really talented so we go out and support them and learn from them. You can hear different styles and there's so much good music that we get to feed off a lot.

Q: Have you performed at any venues? Which ones?

A: This is Joe Baby (Originally Rosey Baby) which we play at pretty regularly. We perform at Blue Jean Blues, which is a premiere blues club in Fort Lauderdale. We used to do a lot of private parties and are available for private parties. We also play at Dania Beach Bar and Grill which is one of our favorite places to play at since it's on the beach. Any place that will hire us.

Q: What are your goals for your music?

A: We're a professional band that is just trying to have fun and give our audience the opportunity to be engaged and have a good time. We get paid to do what we love. We take it day by day.

Filming the Band

Example of a Monochrome styled picture

This whole weekend was spent preparing to film and filming the band at one of their gigs. I was so excited. I stayed out until around twelve in the morning filming and interviewing them at the Rosey Baby in Plantation. The Rosey Baby is a bar and restaurant with an awesome platform type area for a stage and restaurant and then the bar separate from that. Apparently the owners are switching and the bar's name is changing so disregard if you go to see the bar at some point in the future because it won't be called Rosey Baby anymore, but I think instead it'll be Joey Baby or something. Anyway, I got a ton of good footage with my sister's camera and while I was filming I made a really cool discovery. Her camera can change the style(?) of the picture or video, like from normal to sepia or something. I thought it'd be an awesome idea to film most of the music video with the camera set to monochrome because it made everything look black and white and very old-fashioned, like in a real blues band type of atmosphere. I thought it really tied the whole production together (although I did use regular style a few times to show the contrast). Over the next few days, I'm going to be looking through the footage I got, along with the interview, and seeing if I need any more footage as I start to edit. I'm also going to be working on my website now that I have more information about the band and artists themselves.

Shot List

Since I am filming the band this weekend at their gigs, I decided to fill out a basic shot list. Of course this is completely subject to change, but I am mainly creating it so that I have an idea of what I plan to do whilst filming. I believe that it's good to have some form of direction on what I want to film going in so I that I get the shots that I wanted and more. The last thing I want is to have to call the band back, who don't really practice with each other, in order to get the shots that I forgot about. I'm not planning to really create a storyboard because I'm terrible at drawing and don't see that a storyboard is necessary for a performance type music video since it's going to be just them performing, basically.

                                                       MUSIC VIDEO SHOT LIST

Shot Number	Shot Type	Shot Description and Camera Movement	Equipment, Props, Costumes	Location
1	Establishing Shot	Establishing shot of Rosey Baby restaurant sign	Camera Tripod	Outside Rosey Baby Restaurant
2	Long Shot	Long Shot filming the backs of the band members, tracking them as they walk into the restaurant	Camera Tripod Possibly Holding Parts of Instruments (Drum Sticks, etc)	Outside Rosey Baby
3	Mid Shot	Jump cuts to a Mid Shot of each band member’s face as they walk past	Camera Tripod	Going into Rosey Baby
4	Mid Shot and Pan	Cuts to a Panning Mid Shot of a poster of the band’s name	Camera Tripod Band Poster	Inside Rosey Baby
5	Long Shot	Long shot of the band setting up their equipment	Camera Tripod Band Equipment	Inside Rosey Baby
6	Mid Shot	Series of Mid shots of the members setting up their equipment	Camera Tripod Band Equipment	Inside Rosey Baby
7	Over the Shoulder Mid Shot	Over the Shoulder Shots to change up the Mid Shots	Camera Tripod Band Equipment	Inside Rosey Baby
8	Establishing/Long Shot	Establishing Long Shot of the band playing their music	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
9	Close up	Close ups of the Lead singer singing from different angles	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
10	Close ups and Pans	Close ups and Half-Circle Pans of all the band members	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
11	Over the Shoulder Shot	Over the shoulder shot of keyboards being played	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
12	Over the Shoulder Shot	Over the shoulder shot of drums being played	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
13	Close Ups	Series of close ups that show the audience having a good time	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
14	Long Shot	Long Shot of the band finishing their song	Camera Tripod	Inside Rosey Baby
15	Mid Shot	Mid Shot tracking the band’s backs as they exit the restaurant	Camera Tripod	Exiting Rosey Baby

The Website

Yesterday, I had decided that it was time for me to create the website for the band. Now, I know that I don't currently know all that much about the band and its  members, but I am planning my interview with them for this Friday when I film them performing for the music video. The interview will be used mainly as the "About Us" page that most websites have as a way to introduce the company, or in this case band, that the website will be marketing.

As part of the process of choosing the website and creating it, I had to choose between either Wix.com or Weebly.com to use for the domain for the website. I eventually decided on Wix.com because I had used it previously last year for my blogs and it was fairly easy to design and create so I decided to go with what I know which is probably best because even though it's good to experiment with certainn things, it's also good to stick with what you know and improve upon it to make the best possible work that you can.

Yesterday, due to trying to start the website in class, I ran into a certain technical issue that had to do with the technology that I was working on. I really don't enjoy working on IPads because they make me feel cramped and claustraphobic, but it was more so because I was trying to find a good layout for my website that I ended up deciding that I should just do it today on my laptop where I'm most comfortable and can actually see the layout and how it looks.

I found it kind of amusing that I actually had to research some of the things that I was looking through when it came to choosing the layout that I wanted to use. For example, I had no idea what an EPK was until I Googled it and found out that it stands for Electronic Press Kit and is basically a music resume for a band in order to market themselves and their music to their audiences. The layout that I ended up choosing was the EPK Musicians Template because it was clean cut, but edgy, and looked nice and concise compared to some of the others I saw, although it's all based on personal preference. Now I'm ready to begin creating The Funky Blues Band revamped website!

The Funky Blues Band

I have an update that made me so incredibly happy that I almost started dancing around my room. Peter finally got back to me and he told me that him and his band would love to help me out and be a part of my project. His bass player already has all of their songs recorded professionally and all I have to do is choose which song I want to use for the music video. Also, the band is going to be performing this Friday, March 24th, 2017, at a local restuarant/bar. They're going to allow me to film them playing a couple of their songs so that I can choose bits and pieces to use in the music video. I will also be conducting my interview with them on this date and then set to work editing the video right after all of the footage is shot.

As I was doing research on Blues bands and listening to some of the greatest hits of blues band history, I decided to search up The Funky Blues Band (Peter's band) on Google and on Youtube. I was actually able to find their website and a few videos that are recorded of them. They actually sound really, really cool. However, their website isn't that great or easy to navigate so I'm glad that it's part of my project to fix this.

Furthermore, after this extensive research that I could do on the band I decided that I am going to start creating the digipak and website all in this upcoming week. I also plan to storyboard how I want the music video to turn out and make a list of the shots that I plan to utilize whilst filming. I believe that I'm about to get busy, busy, busy and I'm so ready and excited for i