Once at the venue we were introduced to Dale, a member of staff at the venue who I've met previously at one of the church's events. He escorted us to the Discovery Suite which we will be using, however, the room was already occupied so he could not give us a tour of the site, instead we viewed the room through the glass door, which gave us a reasonable of the size - which is fairly vast.
This was far from ideal as I hoped we'd get an opportunity to fully inspect and size the stage, view the space behind the curtains and the adjacent rooms such as the kitchen for possible storage and preparation locations (as we plan to bring food and PA equipment) before and during the final show.
In addition to this, I also would have liked to do a test of the projector by projecting at least a random image or the video montage I created for mine and Tamara's duet of "Say Something", to evaluate how well it projects and take notes on what works and what doesn't so that I can fully utilise and make the most of the equipment, ensuring the audience can fully view and appreciate the projected visuals. However, I had not brought in a means of playing the video (such as a laptop) - a failure on my part, but one which didn't impact on progress as we couldn't access the room regardless.
The first draft/preview of the video I intend to project for mine and Tamara's duet, "Say Something. For the performance, the audio in the video will be muted:
I did enquire about how one would go about projecting an image or video to which Dale verbally responded that the projector would simply connect to a laptop and project whatever was being displayed on the laptop. This was a big relief as I was concerned that I may need to operate software I was unfamiliar with, which could be time consuming to learn and take my attention and focus from marketing, promoting and rehearsing for the show itself.
Dale did also mention that unfortunately due to another event we won't be able to access the Discovery Suite until 2 hours before the show. This will cut it incredibly close. In order for the night to be a success we will need to devise a detailed plan of who will do what on the day as we not only need chairs set up; but PA equipment, the sofas on stage, purchase food and set up tables for it to be purchased from to name just a few of the tasks.
Back at college, we discussed our job roles and what progress had been made in each department. I brought up my concerns about the virtually non-existant marketing and promotion of the event - which is Dylan and Luke's job role, with my role in marketing actually being the group's Graphic Designer. With the event date drawing near, I proposed the idea of recording a promotional video - which I would produce/edit as graphic designer - to share via social media and send to local media such as The Citizen publication (which our college in addition to Kian and Dylan's band, the Silver Tongue Bandoliers have been featured in before) to build an online buzz thus contributing to the marketing of the final show.
My initial idea was to have a montage of rehearsal clips set to music recorded by us; such as a studio recording of one of the group songs. This would allow us to record the audio and video seperately, splitting the workload, vastly improving sound quality and also creating a much more interesting video than a simple video recording of us singing one of the songs. I was particularly apprehensive about the latter approach considering how uninterested and unappealing everyone appeared to be during the rehearsals I filmed at my house on April 21, 2014, so I thought such a video could wait until we had worked harder on the visual aspects of our performance; such as body language, gestures, eye line, use of the stage and choreography.
A group video posted to our event page and shared by our individual social media pages could potentially be seen by the thousands of friends and followers we have collectively. Also, if all 9 of us shared the same video on Facebook (thus making it more popular), it would likely result in it appearing at the top of our Facebook friends' news feeds making it much more visible and increasing the likelihood of it being watched by many people.
Myself and Luke arranged for the group to use the college music studio from 4:30 p.m.to 5 p.m. to record audio which would play throughout the video, by liasing with our tutors. I then arranged for the group to meet at 4 p.m. to rehearse "Kiss From a Rose", which we decided as a group would be the best choice for the video as it truly personified 'The Lounge' theme and is one of the most popular group songs, having peaked at #4 on the UK Singles Chart in 1995; the most popular being The Stranglers' "Golden Brown" which peaked at #2, twelve years prior.
This rehearsal was essential as we had such a short window of time to get into the studio, set up the instruments and equipment and then record (mixing would have to be done later). By 4:15 p.m. virtually half the group was present; myself, Serena, Tamara, Elica and Luke (the only instrumentalist at this point). Dylan arrived shortly after this time but by 4:30 p.m. Crystal, Kian and Stefan were all still missing which I found incredibly frustrating, especially since Luke and Dylan (both instrumentalists) were not present at the last rehearsal in which we finished the vocal arrangement for "Kiss From a Rose" and so the rehearsal time which I allocated was absolutely vital in ensuring we had a rehearsed performance which we could record to not only a releasable standard but at a level which would entice audiences in very few takes.
Without a rehearsal, I decided I would no longer produce a promotional video on behalf of the group. I was very dissapointed that the entire group could not congregate for an hour and focus solely on rehearsing and recording "Kiss From a Rose" in the college studio - a recording which I would have mixed. Without a group recording, it seemed pointless to me to waste further time recording video clips of the entire group rehearsing if they were not present on the audio of the video - The Lounge is after all going to be a music show and thus the music should be the most critical element of a promotional video for it, especially considering the calibre of talent in the group.
Instead of the non-existant group video, I will share my studio cover of Michelle Williams' "Fire" which I posted in an earlier blog and/or record a live clip or snippet of me rehearsing the song and share it. I encouraged the rest of the group to do the same, so that combined we may come close to or match the impact that a group promotional video possibly would have made.
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