Research Band Interviews

This is the first piece of research I have carried out so far. Beth and I spent the lesson searching the internet for interviews with bands where the musicians have been labelled 'arrogant'. We particularly wanted to look at Oasis and Razorlight who have a renound reputation of being egotistical to keep our mockumentary characters funny yet realistic.

The first website we found to help in our research was a blog was about the band Oasis,

http://oasisinterviews.blogspot.com/



This contained a number of transcripts taken from various websites, forums and newsgroups about the band. The first quote to stand out was right at the beginning of the blog and was spoken by Noel Gallagher about the Brit Awards. He said, "It can be a colossal night out, but the awards themselves don't really mean anything." This gives the impression that he doesn't care how the public vote, he knows himself he is earning a living and is good at what he does. This is the kind of attitude we would like the band in our short film to have. Another example of arrogance from Noel is seen through the quote, "With the greatest respect to Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Bob Geldof and the Bee Gees, when they got it, their star had waned considerably. We had two number-one singles last year, we're punching our weight with the young kids, we still look good." He shows no respect to the bands he mentioned and still claims to 'look good', admitting the band has lots left to give and there time is nowhere near up. These quotes are taken from the Daily Telegraph on the 8th February 2007.

An interview in STUFF Magazine was the next link on the blog. Rather than the quotes being within an article in the magazine they were shown in the form of question and answer. This is easier to look at whilst researching for our film as the mini interviews will be in the form of a question and answer, one after the other. At the end when asked to sum up his band he replied, "Awesome. Fucking awesome bunch of musicians. Great songwriter. Questionable fucking lead singer, but forget about that—undisputedly one of the top bands of all time. Truly awesome and remarkable." This quote sums up Noel's attitude and arrogance. He oversteps just being confident, turning himself into a big headed, not very likeable person. His personality and characteristics seem similar to that of the band characters we wish to create in our film.



I also did some research on Razorlight front man, Johnny Borrell, regarded as having a very arrogant attitude towards the press he is famous for declarations of his own abilities. I typed a search for Johnny Borrell into Google and the first website to interest me was,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jul/04/3

This website contains an article on the front man. Rather than written up in the format question then answer, the journalist tells us she is in a pub with Johnny and makes bullet points on what is said. One of the bullet points states that 'Johnny Borrell doesn't care whether NME Award voters think Razorlight was the worst album of last year or that he was their Villain of 2006, because "I'm one of the only guys ever to be on the cover of UK Vogue."' This quote shows how far Beth and I can take the interviews with people as Johnny's comment is quite funny yet unbelievable and even disrespectful. We would like to capture this element on our own short mockumentry.



As well as looking at arrogant musicains we are also interested at looking at older bands who take themselves less seriously because one of the bands to enter the competition on our film will be like this. Beth suggested I look at The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Presidents of the United States of America. We started with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.



http://www.nyrock.com/interviews/rhcp_int.htm

The bands unity really comes across here. Not one member stands and takes all of the credit. This is shown in through the quote, ' In a way we're all co-dependent and we know it, but we also trust each other'. This quote contrasts greatly with Noel's view that he is an 'awesome song writer' suggesting that with out him his band would be a flop. They layout of the interview also puts this across as each member of the band has a chance to speak with not one of the musicians predominantly standing out.

The second website I used to look at the attitudes of the band was,

http://www.moderndrummer.com/web_exclusive/900001191/Chad%20Smith

Rather than the whole band however this interview was only with Chad Smith, the drummer in the band. On this website the interview was set out in the form of question then answer, a conventional layout. Although the interview is about him, he drops the other members in, 'Anthony was having a baby, John wanted to do electronic music and Flea wanted to do his thing'. Again, this contrasts to Noel who doesn't mention the names of the rest of his band mates in his interview. Chad's interview is generally less intense and more fun than the Oasis and Razorlight, this is shown through the notes at the start of the speech, '(Laughs)' at the occasional question.

The final band I looked at for interview attitude was PUSA.



The first website I used to read an interview was,

http://www.theredalert.com/features/potusa.php

Thw interview is written within a website article. Only one member of the band (Andrew McKeag) was interviewed here but we are immediatly made aware of how down to earth he is. When the reporter mentions how exicted she is to speak to him, he jokes, "too bad you have to talk to me and not the other guys.” As well as this he jokes on with the reporter when she mentions he has no wikipedia page, he replys, “That’s a good idea. Make me a Wikipedia page! Someone out there do it, please!”. This again shows his fun side and proves he doesn;t take himself too seriously and is able to talk away from the band. The interview is generally less intense and grounded than the interviews I read on Razorlight and Oasis frontman.

Initial Ideas Expanded

This lesson we picked two of the ideas we liked from the spider diagram completed last lesson. Two were enough to choose as we made detailed notes and discussed ideas further. We decided on the spoof style horror film and band mockumentary as both ideas are quite different yet could work really well.

Our second idea is a mockumentary of a band competition. We liked this idea as it is unique and is open to lots of ideas from both me and Beth. We expanded on our idea from last lesson, deciding to carry out mini interviews with smug and catty musicians arguing pathetically. The script will give way to many funny lines which will add to the success of our short film. We could include clips of copy free live performances to give our film a realistic edge. Although we know where we want to go with this idea we are still unsure on the ending, debating whether to end with the winner of the band competition performing, or just a random performance. We made a list of things we need to sort before filming. Top of the list was access to a performance area, preferably a pub type venue. If we can’t film in this type of venue it will be hard for us to carry out our idea. As well as this we have much research to carry out omockumentaryes in general (i.e. The Office) as well as magazine interviews with arrogant bands currently out, allowing us to generate ideas. Again we came up with a contingency plan noting some problems we may be faced with. The first problem we were aware of was the amount of actors we will need to use and the difficulty of getting them all together at the same place at the same time, and being able to actually control them between us. Weather and lighting we decided shouldn't interfere with the filming as we are indoors so lighting can be easily manipulated and obviously the weather outside won't affect us or the equipment inside. Out of the two we are more swayed at the minute towards the mockumentary as we believe if done right and we plan well could leave us with a fantastic piece at the end.

In this lesson we also created a research plan informing us of what research we need to carry out for our actual film and ancillary tasks and the resources (i.e. Internet/DVDs) we will need to do this. We have also mentioned the vital use of quantitative and qualitative primary as well as secondary data to make our research more valid, reliable, representative and personal.

At home I also created a mood board, including colour schemes and poses, which gave me and Beth a burst which we could refer back too when needed. This was done on an A4 piece of paper and I used images from magazines, leaflets and newspapers to fill the page.

Initial Ideas

We spent today's lesson working in our groups to generate as many ideas as possible related to our 5 minute film idea. We decided that the best way to get our ideas down was in the form of a spider diagram so we got a large piece of paper with the words 'Short Film' in the centre and scribbled down whatever came into our heads. Me and Beth produced an A3 sheet each so we would both have our own copy, however worked together to come up with the ideas. A copy each also meant we were able to add ideas outside of the lesson if any popped into our heads. We also spoke with various people from other groups around the room who were happy to expand/give opinions on our initial ideas. Today was a vital stage in the making of our film as it could potentially determine the whole outcome.

We are interested in making a funny short film so used this as a basis for our ideas. Our first idea was a spoof horror with two people out camping in a tent, a boy and girl which give way to clashes. Conventionally they hear a strange noise outside so go to investigate giving way to a number of possible movie quotes. Another idea we liked was a mockumentary focusing on a competition. We liked the idea of creating a mockumentary as we believe the idea is original. We had the idea of a 'battle of the bands' type competition, as well as a one based around ice skating. The mockumentry idea in general gave way to lots of various plot ideas which we liked the sound of and would be fun to create.

We scanned in our work and this is the copy of our initial ideas mind map.

Introductory PowerPoint

We began the unit by creating a PowerPoint in our groups which we had to later present to the class. In the presentation we had to reveal who we were working with and why we chose to work together. I decided to have Beth as my partner for the unit as we are friends so are able to work well together and had experience working together at GCSE & BTECH, coming out with decent grades.

Along with this information, at the start of the lesson we were handed a list of 5 briefs from which we had to pick three to write about describing why we chose them and a few initial ideas. Looking through the list we firstly decided that we liked the look of the first brief, a promotion package for the release of an album along with the bullet points 'cover for release' and 'magazine advertisement'. We stated that we liked the idea of this brief as we haven't had the chance to film with music before and it is a subject we are both interested in. We liked the idea of choosing the alternative genre as we believed it has many creative opportunities. Research would also be quite fun as the subject choice something we are interested in anyway, as well as the fact there is a lot we could look at to generate ideas and annotate. We decided on the cover and advertisement bullet points as again we like the idea of being creative and have past experience from AS level, as well basic knowledge from GSCE media in terms of working the programs we would be using to create them (i.e., Fireworks & Publisher).

The second brief to catch our eye was the promotion package for a new film to include a teaser trailer. We decided on 'film magazine for the front cover' and 'poster for the film' from the three bullet points. We chose this brief because it is very open to a lot of varying ideas. This appeals to us as we are able to generate a number of ideas without much limitation. We again chose the poster and magazine cover as we do like to be creative and past experience of both research and actual production last year would help us greatly.

Our final idea was the 5 minute short film along with the bullet points, 'a poster for the film' and 'magazine review'. We were attracted to this brief again because it is very open, leaving us to come up with a mixture of varying ideas. Beth wants to go into script writing so also thought with would be the perfect opportunity to have a go and see how it turns out as we have not had much experience of this in media so far. The idea of the review appealed to me as I enjoy the writing and my basic skills from GCSE will hopefully be improved through this bullet point. We both like the idea of the poster as we do like to be creative and past experience at GCSE and BTEC will hopefully help and develop our skills further. This is the brief we like the most as we believe that our personal skills will come together well and we will be able to come out with a good piece of work.

The PowerPoint took about 45 minutes to complete and was finished in period one. We then had to present the PowerPoint in period 6 in front of both the teacher and the other students in the class. We talked about some initial ideas we came up with for each of the three briefs and the class were asked which they preferred. They said the 5 minute film, thankfully the one we liked too.