The Wombats - "Glitterbug" Album Cover Analysis

This is an analysis for the album cover of the Liverpudlian band The Wombats' upcoming third album, "Glitterbug". The album is said to be about "tumultuous relationship with a fictional woman from Los Angeles". Band frontman Matthew "Murphy" Murphy has stated about the album "That became the main inspiration for most of the songs, this false world that I’d created for myself. As time progressed, I’d go to L.A. more and more, and the idea kept on building. The album’s about the envy and the struggle and the pretence and the worry and the fear that L.A. – and every major city in the world – encompasses.”

In this detailed analysis, I have detailed several contrasts between this album and the previous two albums released by the band, the covers of which I will leave below for you to see if you agree with what I have written.

Vine Footage #1

Today, whilst editing in class, we made Vines of the introduction to our music video to show a small teaser to those involved in the production of the video and our target audience. We are very pleased with how the footage looks so far, with the music in perfect sync with what we have shot, and we are looking forward to continuing editing our first cut.

The Beginning of Editing

Today in class, we began to edit our video. The software that we used to edit was iMovie, a software that I found was quite hard to use but I feel that with practice and time, my skills at using it will improve. Whilst all of us found the editing process a minor struggle at the beginning, Rian was definitely the strongest editor in the group, adapting very quickly to the software.
As we still need to reshoot some footage, we have left certain spaces blank that we have edited our video so far around, with us simply filling in the blanks when the footage is reshot soon.

Filming Session #4

Today, myself, my group-mates Rian and Olivia, and our lead actors Callum and Ellie, shot the majority of shots that we needed to complete the video - leaving us with just 5% left to shoot. The location used was my room, which we made look as messy and unclean as possible.

Filming Session #3

Today, myself, my group-mates Rian and Olivia, and our lead actor Callum finished filming the outdoor shots featuring Callum by himself. This means that we have filmed a good 80% of our video, and our nearing completion. Locations filmed at were Ribble Park, the Subway tunnel near Maghull Square and a bus stop on Moss Lane.

Filming Session #2

Today, myself, my group-mates Rian and Olivia, the musicians playing our band "The Secret Nothings" (Dean, James, Adam, Shaun H and Shaun P), and our saxophonist John shot all musical performance shots needed for our video. The location that this footage was shot on was the assembly stage at our sixth form on an inset day, meaning that there were no other pupils on site. This meant that we would not get hassled whilst shooting our video. Whilst there were originally some technical problems, these problems were overcome very quickly and the rest of the filming ran smoothly, with the entire band following our directions well.

Solving our Location Change

After we found out that we could not use our first choice location of Heebies Jeebies, a club in town, due to scheduling conflicts, my team and I brainstormed to come up with another location. We eventually came to the agreement to ask permission from our head of year and the school technician if we could use the school stage, which we believe could look professional if we rearrange it. Additionally, we solved costume and prop issues, such as my friend Kieran allowing us to use his saxophone for the saxophone solo in our song. Down below is the conversation that we had to discuss these changes:

Filming Session #1

Today, myself, my group-mates Rian and Olivia, and our lead actor Callum, began filming our music video after a troubled start in our production. We ended up shooting the majority of outdoor shots needed featuring Callum needed in the video, with filming taking place in our town at Brook Road and the Summerhill bridge. Enclosed below is a picture of our lead actor Callum cycling to location and myself using the camera that we are using for filming.

Finished Storyboard

Who is playing our Female Lead?

The person who will be playing the female protagonist in our music video will be my good friend Ellie Dodd. The reason that we have chosen Ellie to portray the character is that she has acted in many different productions before, meaning that she has the experience that we need for the video. She can also exude the personality of the character and the emotions that the character goes through during the music video impeccably, helping to make our final product the best that it can possibly be. Finally, she has the dress sense commonly found for this genre in our research, making our final product look like an authentic indie rock music video.

Who is playing our Male Lead?

The person who will be playing the male protagonist in our music video is our friend Callum Birchall. The reason that we have chosen Callum to play the lead is that we believe he will give the best possible performance in the role. The role requires the actor to be determined, romantic, and innocent with a silent anger - which we believe Callum can emote with his performance. As well as this, Callum has the dress sense similar to ones commonly found in our research, helping our final product look like an authentic indie rock music video.

Who are playing The Secret Nothings?

Now that we have all of our casting sorted for our music video, I will be making a few blog posts detailing who we cast for the main parts and why.

To play our band The Secret Nothings, we asked a local band, The Spares (made up of Dean Carne, James Carne, Shaun Hough, Adam Bond, and Shaun Pearson), if they would portray the band in our music video to which they agreed. The reason that we chose these guys to appear in the video is because they are already a real band with extensive musical knowledge, meaning that their performance in the video will be incredibly natural and help our final product look as professional and real as possible. Another reason that we chose them is because they have physical looks and dress senses that are similar to conventions found within our genre in our research, helping our final music video to fit in very well with the indie rock genre. Finally, the band themselves are very easy to get on with and cope under direction very well, meaning that their portrayal of the band will be exactly what we want.

List of Actors

Male Lead - Callum Birchall
Female Lead - Ellie Dodd
The Secret Nothings - The Spares (Dean Carne, James Carne, Shaun Hough, Adam Bond)
Saxophone Player - John Hatton

Extras - Jack Topping, Sam Hewitt

Further Casting Call for Female Lead and Response

We got a few responses back for our casting call for the female lead in our music video on Twitter. However, we wanted to make sure we had more than one option so I posted this casting call on my Facebook. We got a response back from my friend Ellie Dodd who we were intrigued by and, after considering all of the options, we cast her as the role.

 



Casting Call for Female Lead in Music Video

As the girl meant to play the female lead in our music video has been forced to dropped out because of other commitments, we need a new actress. We put out a casting call asking for girls that we know or that are in our area can contact us if they want to take part. I will update on the results.

Shooting List

Enclosed in this blog post is a list of everything that our group feels we will need upon shooting our music video in half-term. As we are yet to find out everybody's free schedules, this is the filming plan from 24th of October to 2nd of November.

The Start of our Storyboard

In today's lesson, our group sat down and began to brainstorm ideas for our music video - effectively beginning our first storyboard.

Whilst we have only focused on the first 26 seconds of the music video, our group has already managed to agree on the importance of the narrative, performance and mix of in the music video. We have decided to film the performance in colour, and the narrative in black and white, and we already have locations for both the performance (Heebie Jeebies) and the narrative (Bold Street). As a result, that gives us the opportunity to decide and experiment with shot ideas, such as close-ups on both the band and actors, and different angled shots.

As well as this, we have come up with many shots that mirror the lyrics of the song perfectly - such as having our protagonist run through Bold Street to "rushing in a small town". All of our group got ideas across, and we all listened to and communicated our ideas to each other respectfully and positively. For the rest of the week, we will be focusing on finishing our storyboard and making it the best that it possibly can be

Merchandise

In order to make our band feel more authentic, as well as adding to the promotion of our band's music video and digipak, our group has decided to make some merchandise for our band. Our research into various indie rock bands online promotion has shown that bands may rely on merchandise to generate profit as revenue on purchasing the song digitally receives less than merchandising and also runs out after how ever many years. As a result, merchandise gives the band the opportunity to garner more profit as they can continuously release new items that can be bought physically (at concerts/gigs or in shops) or digitally (on their website).

The Hoosiers - Website Analysis

Ed Sheeran - + Digipak Analysis

Having analysed the album cover for Ed Sheeran's album '+', in my previous blog post, I will analyse the rest of the digipak in this post.