Magazine Advertisement

Talent Release Forms

Talent Release  Forms

Brief: This shows the talent release forms we asked the actors to sign before shooting which legally allow us to use them (in our footage) in the music video.

Location Permission:

 

Before filming at Camden Town, we Emailed Camden council to see whether we was allowed to film there. When looking on their website, we noticed that the council charge for filming in the town centre. Therefore I emailed them asking about the prices and seeing as we were student if we were entitled to any form of discount. I had an email back from Vince Pol, stating that we were allowed, that he liked our idea and that we had to pay a small discounted fee.  

 

 

Costume Post 2

Costume Post 2

Brief: This second costume post documents the connotations of the costumes we chose in our music video that were not covered in the first video.

Album Cover - Back Panel

Album Cover - Back Panel Creation

After the completion of our music video, we were also given the task to create an album cover to accompany it.

Creation of the back Panel:

To first Create the Back Panel of our album cover, you first had to make sure the dimensions of the document were accurate to the size of a real album cover. We made sure that the Width and Height were exactly 4.75 inches both ways as these are the dimensions for a real album cover.

 

After I had created the new project with the correct dimensions, I quickly created a word document to create the two lines that fragment the back of the album cover. I click on insert and the click on the line to create one.

I then copied the line over to the Photoshop Document and positioned it into the bottom left corner. I also copied it into the top right hand corner so we know where the refraction will take place.

I then added a Bar-code in the bottom right corner, a 'Compact Disc Digital Audio' logo and a Copyright logo in the bottom left corner followed a caption reserving all rights of the music on the album to the artists. By doing this, it gives our Album cover a more authentic and real to life look and also creates a professional look as well.   

I then wrote out the songs that would 'be' on our music video. But before this, I went onto Dafont.com (which is a free font downloading website) to find a suitable font for our album cover. After getting to the homepage I typed in 'Futurist' in the search bar and decided on a font called 'Futurist Fixed'. From them i downloaded the font and added it to the font list that is already on the Mac.

After I had downloaded the font, I wrote out the different songs that were on our bands album. We felt the spacing and lettering of the font was ideal for an indie album cover and suited the futuristic and fragmented look we was going for. 

Finally, I placed the band name and album name above the songs that are in the album. As the last part of the band name 'Cardinal Rabbits' went across the fragmentation line, I converted the text to a 'Smart Object' by right clicking the layer that the text was placed in and clicking on 'Convert to Smart Object', this allowed me to edit the text as if it was a picture. I then cut the part of the word 'Rabbits' that crossed the line and placed it over the other side of the line, but as the line represented fragmentation I positioned the other part of the word just above the original to give it the fragmented look we set as our theme which would run throughout our album cover.  

 

Below is the finished version for the back of the album cover I created:

 

 

 

Album Cover - Drummer Panel

Album Cover - Drummer Panel

Brief:  This post explains and shows the creative process taken in the construction of the drummer panel of the CD cover.

Instead of using Photoshop CS6 - which was available on the school Apple Macs, I used an open-source software I was very familiar with due to using it frequently in the past.

First of all, a background was made by first making a grey to black gradient from the top left hand corner to the bottom right. Grey lines were then implemented  using a grey shade from the middle of the gradient so that lines closer to the top left would appear darker than the background and lines closer to the bottom right would appear lighter than the background.

A new image file was then created at the size 4.75inch x 4.75inch as after some research, we determined with was the size of an average CD cover. The background we created was then scaled to this size on the new image file.

 

The previously taken picture of our drummer (portrayed by Charles Frost) was then carefully cut out to remove the background.

This image was then added to our main image file, the contrast and saturation was edited slightly then this entire image was compressed and exported as one version of our Drummer Panel.

A second version was also made in which we continued are previous established theme of optics and refraction. In this version, one of the lines in the background was brought into the foreground and the image of the drummer was cut into two, which did not match up perfectly.

 

Changes

Changes

Brief: This video goes through a few of the changes we made to our sequence after the initial plan but before we started shooting.

Album Cover Design (Drawing)

This is the album cover that I have hand drawn. I followed a studio types theme and also influences of the main band member and the ties that he wears during the music video. I chose this as I thought it would be an easy theme to portray throughout the different panels of the album cover and one that they audience could easily understand. 

 

 

 

However we have decided to go with James' storyboard as we all felt as a group that it represented our genre the best an we could add our own interesting touches to the different panels through the idea of fragmentation. We also felt that it would appeal to our target audience more as the abstract theme we are going for is eye catching and slightly D.I.Y looking, which is a common convention for indie rock album covers. 

Album Cover Design (Hand drawn)

Album Cover Design

Brief: This is the initial design I drafted in order to illustrate the ideas I had for our CD cover.

Images 1-3

These images are all close ups of the band members using a wide lens (otherwise known as fish-eye). I feel this lene type will be effective as it is unusual and quirky (similarly to our artists) and is inline with the theme of the album, which is optics and refraction, as the imagines look like they are from the perspective of a convex lens such as a key-hole viewer.

Image 4

This is the front cover of our album, which features all of our artists, two of which are upside down. This is because our theme is light refraction and optics (thus the album name Optik) and the line through the middle with artists on each side illustrates this theme as it seems like a broken mirror of some sort. The band name and album name is also present as is the convention of album covers. The mispelling of the word 'Optik' demonstrates the band's indie and almost rebellious nature. This is because mispellings are usually associating with younger generations who 'do not play by the rules' so to speak.

Image 5

This is the back of the album which features all the tracks of the album, as per convention. This side continues the theme of optics and refraction as it has two mirror lines in the frame.

Image 6

This is a close up of a camera lens which again follows the theme of optics.

Album Cover Research

Giving our Music Video the 'Indie' feel - Draft 3

Once we had finished our second draft, he had to take a step back and reflect on how we gave our music video the indie genre feel and how else we could improve this.

During the process of our third, we found that the colour we had put in when editing the green screen sections were too bright, therefore we changed them from sharp and harsh, such as electric blues and harsh reds, to more 'matte' and calm colours, teals and gentle greens. Also the use of the colour constantly changing and blending into each other gives a more independent and different feel to the video instead of using just a set number of block colours.

We also re-shot to the studio footage on the 1st of December. To give the shots a more independent feel we made sure we included a looser frame to show the props and the background that we had made. We wanted to included the lights trailing out of shot both sides and the addition of the 'homemade studio background' prop create 'do it yourself', home grown and self funded connotations towards the video. We found this was a key element we wanted to portray throughout our music video.

 

Also, we felt that the use of the various types of tape on the drums can help to give a tacky, cheap and rundown feel towards the instruments and can also be used to further emphasise the 'self funded' connotation we wanted to portray. 

Saturation

Saturation

Brief: This video shows how we used saturation to alter the mood and tone of our shots

Storytelling with Saturation

The use of saturation within our piece allowed us to outline the abstract narrative for the audience.

The low saturation at the beginning of the sequence demonstrates to the audience that at this point in the story, the life of the female character is boring and dull. The fact that the saturation increases greatly during the one shot of the band's front-man foreshadows the events that happen later on in the video.

Low saturation is also used during the scene in the city (Camden Town). This is to contrast with the high saturation used in the following field scene. This portrays the idea to the audience that she has transitioned from seeing the world in a dull and boring way to having a much more positive perspective.

The fact that this high saturation remains after the field scene when she returns to the town and later to her house shows that the she has learned a lesson of sorts and now sees the entire world in a more positive way. This gives our narrative a story arch rather than just simply a series of things happening, giving our sequence more meaning and depth for our audience to appreciate.

The first and last shot, as shown above, are framed in exactly the same way. The main difference between them is the saturation being very low in the former and very high in the latter. This technique rounds off the narrative and compares the mood/tone at the beginning of the sequence with that at the end of the sequence.

Green Screen Ultra Key Tutourial

Album Cover Research (Miley Cyrus - Bangerz)

Costume Post 1

Editing Evaluation

One of the corrections we was tasked with after we produced our first draft of our music video was to use colour correction to fix certain shots that we had. Some examples are as seen below.

One section of the music video the we colour corrected was in the shots of the female character running around in the park.

 

The clip above shows our first draft, although there is evidence of colour correction, we did it to show what we wanted to achieve when colour correcting in our second draft. You can see the un-colour corrected shot had plain colours creating dull connotations which isn't what we wanted to portray. Therefore by colour correcting, adding some pinks and oranges and also making existing colours more vibrant to create connotations of excitement, freedom and serenity (as seen below).   

 



 

We also use a combination of colour correction and brightness adjustment to try to fix a series of shots so the brightness of the clips were as equal as we could get. As you can see, some of the lighting with these shot were off, therefore to make them match and to make the sequence flow better, we brightened some shots and darkened others to get them to match each other.

 



  

 

 

Music Video, Draft 2

Editing Effects

Editing Effects

Brief: This video shows the editing effects we added to our footage.

Album Cover Art Research - Indie Rock

Album Cover Art Research - Indie Rock

 Album 1: Bloc Party - Intimacy

Album 2: Kasabian - 48:13

Album 3: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Album Cover Design Ideas

Album Cover 1
One of my initial album cover designs was to have the band name covering the majority of the cover, with a still image of the band members within the letters. This will have a very plain colour scheme outside of the letters, most likely a plain background, and coloured text. However inside of the letters there will be a lot of colour, contrasting the plain cover, along with the artists, allowing us to sell them to the consumers, making the cover more engaging with the audience. 

The mock version I made below is used to demonstrate my idea, and give an impression of what the final version will actually look like. For this I simply used a still image I had of the girl from our music video, and a large font that was able to fit the face in while still allowing the audience to see what it is.

Album Cover 2

The second album cover idea was to have a very conventional cover, with the album name largely shown at the top, with the band members covering the bottom and centre of the cover, giving direct address to the audience.

This draft version below shows my idea; 3 people standing side by side, trying to sell them to consumers. In the real version I would expect them to have a more unique costume,  composition and facials expressions to help them stand out and portray the band image more closely. The background is a plain bright colour, however I added small particle effects to help fill the background and make it look fuller and more lively.

Album Cover 3

We also had the idea of having a tie being the main focus of our album cover, with the band name written in the stripes. This is due to our lead singer wearing a tie around his head, as such a tie would allow the audience to identify and relate the singer to the album cover.

In the draft the name of the band does not curve with the bends in the tie, as such for my real album cover I would have to research how to distort the text to make it look more natural and flow across the creases in the fabric. 

After making the album cover I learned how to make the text flow with the curves of the fabric. This will make the album cover look more professional if we were to use this idea, and nicer to look at.

Animatic Feedback

Animatic Feedback

Brief: We were tasked with asking other group members what they thought about our animatic. We asked them several questions as to whether they felt it fit into our genre and if it portrayed what we were trying to create, and using this information we were able to implement it into our main project.

 

Feedback Reflection

Question 1 - The viewers agreed that the music video does indeed come across as being of the indie/alternative genre.  The felt that the personality of the artists demonstrated this well.
Question 2 - Conventions of the genre that the audience picked up on included the performance of the artists. This involved them playing instruments and singing. Another convention was the costume. The audience felt that the costume worn by the artists was fitting for the indie rock genre.
Question 3 - They stated that the costumes worn by the artists portrayed them as being upbeat and happy. This was due to the positive colours and brightness in the costume used. 
Question 4 - The viewers had various interpretations of the narrative; some things they picked up on were inline with our own interpretation, however some were completely different. This shows that we have successfully replicated the style of videos of our genre, as they tend to have a deeper meaning that can have multiple interpretations - like poetry.
Question 5 - Multiple viewers found the shot on the tube to be interesting. This is likely because they recognise this location from their own lives - therefore this shot allows our audience to successfully recognise with the video and therefore enjoy it.
Question 6 - One viewer felt that a faster pace of shots was required during the later part of the video. We have taken this feedback into consideration and have decided that we will cross-cut between shots in the field and shots in the studio and/or green-screen when in the editing stage to increase the pace of editing.

Music Video, Draft 1

Draft 1

Brief: This is the first draft of our music video, along with a short evaluation of our work thus far.

Positives

• The footage we filmed over half term (all footage that is not in the 'studio' is all up to the high standard we are aiming to achieve with this project. All of the lip syncing is correct, as well as the framing and duration of each and every shot.
• The performances of the characters, notably the band's frontman singer and the female character in the narrative, are excellent - the actors perfectly portray the envisionment we had for these characters.

Negatives

• As of this point, we have not filmed the entirety of our footage. This is due to the inability to film before half term and issues with the availability of our actors.
• Some shots, notably specific ones in the field scene, need to be colour corrected and otherwise edited in order for them to be of the optimum quality and match our envisionment.
• The shots filmed in the 'studio' were not, unfortunately, up to the standards we hoped, due to issues with framing and performance. We plan to reshoot this scene now that we have identified the problem and know how to avoid it.

Music Video Draft One - Evaulation

 

 

 

Above is our first draft of our music video, we are very pleased with the quality of shots and how the short into and outro came out as well (we did this to extend the length of the music video).

 

One element of the music video we are particularly pleased with is the 360 pan shot, 'teleporting' our character from the urban, inner city location to the natural environment, representing her finding her freedom. When we made our first test shot, we wasn't happy with the our come as the cutting between the two locations wasn't consistent enough for liking, therefore when we came to filming it for real, we took great care in where the came when into her back and where I came out of, making sure they were in almost exactly the same place. 

 

Another thing we are extremely happy with is the performance of the two main characters in the narrative. Isaac and Amy, two friend of the group do not do media, but out of a favour they agreed to help us in our music video, with both of the taking both drama and music, we felt with this experience it would help them preform to how we wanted, so we saw no one else who would be better suited for the roles. As you can see throughout the music video, you can see how excellently they played their roles and how well Isaac preform the lip-syning parts of the video       

 

However there are some things that we have identified which we are going to re-edit, re-shoot and add in. For example

 

Our music video is clearly un-complete, the black gaps in our music is where we are going to use shots filmed on the green screen which we haven't actually filmed yet but are planning to after school on Monday the 17th. We are planning to create and use stop go animation in the background of our music video, which we found was a common convention in our genre of music. 

 

Some shots, such as they 'Studio' footage, we felt wasn't to the standard we wanted compared to the other location shots that we had filmed. Also, we felt by re-shooting them, we can work on reducing the amount of shadows we had in certain shot ad we can all also work on the performance of the band members. We are planning on re-shooting these shot on Wednesday the 19th after school. 

 

   

Pop Album Research - Miley Cryus 'Bangerz'

Album Cover Research Video

Album Cover Research

During our research we decided to look up different types of album covers for our genre. As a result we found certain similarities and trends between covers, and decided to make a video to demonstrate the conventions of an indie rock cover. 

Pop Album Analysis

Pop Album Cover - Analysis

Brief: This is an analysis of all the connotations identified from the album cover from the Pop genre. The album is 'Bangerz' by Miley Cyrus

Green Screen Shoot

Green Screen Assembly

The green screen was assembled in order to film the shots we required control over the background for.

One stage of this assembly was putting together the lights in order to achieve multiple light sources to avoid shadow. This was desired as a lack of shadows creates more positive connotations about our artists and tone of video.

We also filmed some initial test shots to ensure no mistakes were made and our footage would be at the highest standard.

Intro and Tube Shooting - Evaluation

Shooting Evaluation Draft 1

Here is some footage that we didn't feel was up to standard for our video, as such we will re-shoot this at a later that. This is an evaluation of the footage to see what I can do to improve next time I go out to film.

These two shots are slightly out of focus. As such it makes the footage look unprofessional and low standard. We will have to re-shoot this, ensuring that the house and the character are both in focus.

After looking back at this footage we was able to notice our reflections in the window. This brings the audience out of the video and lowers the standard of the shot. When re-shooting this scene we will ensure that the other members of cast/crew are away from camera to ensure that the footage is usable.

Camden Town Shoot

Construction Post 3:

During the half-term, the other locations we filmed at was outside Jame house, On the London Underground and Camden Town.

We decided to film an intro for our music video to be played before the music comes in as the actual length of the song was quite short and we wouldn't have had a lot of time to show our media techniques through it. We filmed a short sequence outside James house showing the character leaving her house and making her way to work. Although a lot of the shot we filmed were fine, we did find some that we weren't happy with. For example, the shot below we felt was out of focus a tiny bit and we could find a better position of it. Therefore we re-shot it after during the next shooting day.

                             

We also we filmed on the tube on the way on to Camden town for a cut away we planned to use to show the character traveling to work. We found after that the reflection of me and someone else in the window of the tube, therefore on the way back, we re -shot the same shot so their is minimal reflection in the window which might distract the viewer when watching.   

When we got to Camden, the location we wanted to use was very busy and un-usable. This was surprising because when we went to look for locations, we chose it because it was relativity quite and out of the way. So we decided to look around for a another location and shortly after we found somewhere which wasn't busy so we decided to film their instead.

Nonsuch Park Shoot

Construction Post 2:
During the October half-term, we carried out a number of film shoots to get the majority of our footage for the cutaways and the other sections of the music video. One location we filmed at was Nonsuch Park in Epsom.

At this location, we filmed the last section of our music video, where we see the character free from her urban cage that is suppressing her. James and I filmed various different shot types, some including just the main character and some of the whole band together and separately. 

Also some of the clips will make up some of the cutaways we are going to be having in our music video. When moving on to film with our GO-Pro camera, we quickly realised that it wasn't completely compatible with our fig rig that we was using. Therefore we improvised and tightly taped the attachment to the camera onto the fig rig to make sure it wouldn't move or fall off. We did this as we wanted to film some footage in slow motion and couldn't achieve this with the normal DSLR camera that we had been using.

 

We filming during late afternoon, moving onto late evening whist the sun began to set. We did this to add the warm colours from the sunset to your shots to add a sense of freedom for our character. 

First Studio Shoot

Construction Posts

'Studio' Filming Shoot:

The first filming shoot we did was our make shift 'studio' located in a drama room. Me, James and Harry, built the set up our selves by piercing holes in a white sheet and using ropes to hoist it over and onto a green screen frame and then wrapping Christmas lights around the structure to make the structure more colourful and stand out more. 

Once we finished creating the background structure, we filmed the whole band playing in front of it and we also shoot different cutaways and extra clips of all the band together and different the band members on their own. Once we filmed these shots, we found that due to it being our first shoot, some of the shots were out of focus and others unusable due to shadows of the filmier being seen in the shots, (as you can see from the shots below. Therefore we have decided to re-shoot these different shots to improve the quality of our material when it comes to post production.       

         
            

Studio Shooting - Evaluation

Shooting Evaluation Draft 1

After filming our studio scene, we noticed several problems with the footage when watching  it back. Looking at this we were able to pick up on key problems that we we ran into, and as such we can evaluate the footage and see how we can improve for future shots.

In both of these tracking shots you can clearly see the shadow of the cameraman. This was caused by the lighting set up in the room, and as a result makes the footage unusable as it looks very tacky and unprofessional. To fix this problem we have decided to reshoot these shots in another location with a different lighting setup to avoid shadows across the performer's faces.

The setting of this shows a piece of art hanging on the wall, along with the black curtain we were using running out. This really brings the audience out of the video and as such we will have to reshoot it.

The focus in this shot is slightly off. This means that we will have to reshoot as, although it is only a short segment of our video, it lowers the quality greatly and hurts our final product.

The framing and mise en scene in this shot aren't as we expected. This is due to the shot being framed at a slight angle, giving a large space on one side compared to the other, also we want to make the frame of this shot a lot tighter, cutting out a lot of the empty black space in the background. The mise en scene in this shot is very empty; we will try and add more lights and studio props to give it a more busy and interesting look, whilst also helping to create the impression of this being filmed in a set up studio.

Music Video Analysis (TV On The Radio - Happy Idiot)

Target Audience VoxPop

VoxPop Target Audience Research

Here is a VoxPop I made to gather research into our target audience. I asked them several questions on what they would expect our video to look like, allowing us to base our own video on our target audience's views, as well as helping to fulfil the aspect of the brief of making the video as conventional as possible.

VoxPop Questionare

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule

Our filming sessions outside of school (all except the first two) were completed accordingly to our schedule. The studio shoot (PDH) was filmed on the correct day however this footage will have to be re-shot. The green screen shoot was not filmed on the correct day due to green screen being unavailable therefore we also had to arrange a new time for this. After a series of complications involving actors being busy and equipment being available, we have organised two new days to complete our filming, as shown by our updated schedule below.