Introduction

The subject of my documentary was the ways in which advancements in technology have affected the music industry. I decided to examine this topic through researching what musicians used to have to do to be successful and the things they can do today and how similar or different they are. In order to get multiple perspectives on this topic, my interviewees included a veteran musician, a newer musician, and the co-founders and staff of a live music promotion company. Through interviewing all of these people, I was able to gain a stronger level of insight into the pros and cons of the ways technology has affected music today.

Here's a screenshot of how I made my Intro Video.

Screenshot of After Effects interface

Overall, I’m really proud of all of the work I did for the documentary project over the past four months. I’d never done anything like this before and a lot of the project required me to step out of my comfort zone. This was my first time interviewing anyone and I found that fairly challenging, especially since most of my interviewees were people I’d never met before. Additionally, this was my first time designing the layout of a book. I had a lot of trouble deciding whether the design aspects of my layout worked or not and if they needed to be altered. At the beginning, I was unsure if I was going over the top and adding too much, but then later on, when I started to a feel a little burned out by the project, I felt like I wasn’t adding enough to make the book look nice. I had been told by my readers that it was a little dry and informational, so I wanted to make sure that at least the design wasn’t too basic. If I had to do this project again, I’d probably start with a more focused idea of what I wanted to learn about instead of being indecisive but still jumping into the interviews anyway. I think that if I had a clearer idea this project could have gone a lot more smoothly.

" Wow a quote "
~Dirks McBinkins
This is a somewhat longer quoted text from an interviewee.
~First Last
This is a really longer quoted text from an interviewee. This is a really longer quoted text from an interviewee. This is a really longer quoted text from an interviewee.
~First Last

Book

This is an image of the cover of my book, which, if you click on it, will take you to my book href="#" target="_blank"http://issuu.com/freestyleacademy/docs/book-by-amruta-bhavsar?mode=window&pageNumber=1 ect3/images/bookthumbnail.png" width="456" height="524" alt="thumbnail link to book production" class="floatLeft wrap" id="uniqueID"

The angle I chose to structure my book around was that anyone can make music and get it heard online. The inspirations for the main design element was the sound waves of a recording. I created the main beat pulse in Adobe Illustrator for the Table of Contents, and then made smaller variations of that for some of the other pages. The inspirations for the fonts were that I wanted the theme to be kind of modern and also kind of casual. I chose fonts that were in all caps because that’s just personally what I think looks better, especially for headings. The inspiration for the images was basically just bluish purple things related to music and technology. I even held blue LED lights over some of the objects I took photos of just so that they’d have a cool tone and would look natural if I lowered the temperature.

The layout for Chapter 1 was fairly interesting to put together. At first, I wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to stray away from the traditional way the text in a book is formatted, but then I decided that it would make the dry text more interesting and digestible. The first spread after the chapter heading page was a timeline about all the things that have contributed to the way music is produced today. I chose the colors of the information boxes to match my graphic design element, so I made it sort of a gradient from purple to blue, as all my beat pulse designs were gradients of some sort.

Producing my book is by far one of the most stressful, but also rewarding things I’ve ever had to. My favorite highlight is probably the graphic design of the first chapter and the contents and the photo on the Chapter Three heading spread. My favorite part of this whole process was probably seeing all the pieces come together in the final days of producing the book. The last day when I did my cover was extremely stressful, especially since I had to stay at Freestyle until 11:50 PM to finish, but it was incredibly satisfying when I was finally done with something I spent months on.

Gallery

  • Guitar sound hole and strings
  • Guitar headstock
  • Nu-Ricks
  • Left to right: Sharon Yee, Mariah Villa, Shawn Tran
  • Sharon and Shawn hard at work
  • Nick Ulleseit (left) and Brian Ricks (right)
  • Jim Bruno
  • Reign LaFreniere
  • Reign looking off into the distance
  • Outdoor stage at Reign's school
  • Phone open to an Instagram post about a concert on top of a piano keyboard
  • View from the back of the pit at the EDEN concert
  • Microphone on the stage of the EDEN concert
  • Microphone from Freestyle's studio
  • Piano keyboard
  • Piano keys
Guitar sound hole and strings1 Guitar headstock2 Nu-Ricks3 Left to right: Sharon Yee, Mariah Villa, Shawn Tran4 Sharon and Shawn hard at work5 Nick Ulleseit (left) and Brian Ricks (right)6 Jim Bruno7 Reign LaFreniere8 Reign looking off into the distance9 Outdoor stage at Reign's school10 Phone open to an Instagram post about a concert on top of a piano keyboard11 View from the back of the pit at the EDEN concert12 Microphone on the stage of the EDEN concert13 Microphone from Freestyle's studio14 Piano keyboard15 Piano keys16

Bios

Brian Ricks and Nick Ulleseit

Brian Ricks and Nick Ulleseit

Shawn Tran, Mariah Villa, and Sharon Yee

Shawn Tran, Mariah Villa, and Sharon Yee

Reign LaFreniere

Reign LaFreniere

Jim Bruno

Jim Bruno
About Nick Ulleseit and Brian Ricks
Brian Ricks and Nick Ulleseit are the co-founders of Nu-Ricks, an independent live music company which works to provide hip hop artists with a better way to get shows. Nu-Ricks gives clients the opportunity to open for larger artists and perform in front of much bigger audiences than they could get on their own, and also give them a way to make money for their performance, which is something many other promoters don’t offer new artists. You can find their website here, and all of their social media is @nuricksllc.
About Shawn Tran, Mariah Villa, and Sharon Yee
Mariah Villa and Sharon Yee are marketing interns at Nu-Ricks and find leads for opening acts, and Shawn Tran is the booking agent, which means that he calls local artists to get them on shows. Shawn also produces music, and you can find all the songs he's worked on here.
About Reign LaFreniere
Reign LaFreniere is a senior at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and a rock, blues, and folk musician. After a blues event at school, he realized he wanted to learn how to play guitar and started writing his own songs, learning piano as well in the process. His only real form of vocal training was from choir at school but is still incredibly talented. You can find his Instagram account here and as of May 22, his music will be out on iTunes, Spotify, etc.
About Jim Bruno
Jim Bruno is a teacher at Foothill College and an Americana musician. He's been making music for many years and so has a lot of experience and knowledge about the ways in which the industry has shifted and changed. You can find his music on his website, which is located here.