Friday 29 November 2013

FA: Digipak Rough Cut



Here is my rough cut of the digipak for our music video promotion. As the 'rough cut' title suggests, the images need some work and are unfinished. The font will be the same but in white so it stands out more. I have gone for a black and white theme here, but may make some alterations as I feel that it does not reflect our video completely as we have decided not to use black and white at all in the production.

MJ: Advertisement Rough Cut


In my rough version of the magazine advertisement so far I have added the picture in, which was originally too small to fit the page, but by copying sections of the picture and merging them with the two sides of the picture I have been able to overcome this problem. Originally the two sides did not look right, but by colour grading the sides using the Curves tool on Adobe Photoshop CS3 I have been able to make them look almost part of the picture.

I have also made the forest a brighter, more ethereal, green by cutting Chessie character out whilst using the Curves function to make the greens brighter.

As for the titles, these will not be used for the completed piece, however I quite like the look of this font, as the way that much of the word blends in with the picture gives it a ghostly feel. However I do still prefer the original, as used on the digipak that will fit with the band image.


Group: Second Rough Cut

As we continue to work on our music video production, we have created a second 'rough cut', where we have put the Vignette Effect onto the video. Again, it isn't complete yet and has its flaws which we will be working on during the next week.



Thursday 28 November 2013

Group: Rough Cut

 
When making our rough cut, it was plain to see that we needed to do another shoot to fill up our timeline as we only have about 60% of our footage so far, so we have decided to take another shoot on Friday (29th) of Matt in the woods, and then a performance shoot on Monday (2nd). Apart from having to shoot these other scenes, we feel that since our concept change, we have made some steady progress and are now on our way to confidently finishing in time for our deadline.

MJ: Work Progress

28.11.13

Yesterday Chessie and I spent a combined three hours into the project, attempting to create a rough cut that gives us a basic template of how the video will begin and end, with other shots in the middle. When we had finished we felt much more confident about our project, understanding what needs to be re-filmed or for extra shoots, as well as the amount of footage we have to work on at the moment.

Much of the time was simply spent dropping and dragging clips onto the timeline and editing them there, however when we were more confident with what we had so far we began experimenting with different effects, such as the "Time Stretch" effect, which works very effectively. Also we found some effects in Adobe Premiere Elements don't work in our video, such as the zooming effect.


FA: Work Progress

28.11.13

Today I have been practicing using a Vignette Effect from Photoshop on still images. I have been using a tutorial which I found:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/vignette/

This has been very useful and is extremely easy to understand, as for someone who has barely used Photoshop before, I was able to create the following images.








I still need to practise creating this effect on our video, as I assume it will be harder to do create on a moving image. To create a Vignette Effect on our moving image in Premiere Elements, I have created an effect on Photoshop which has a transparent background, which is then layered as a still onto Premiere. Here is an example of this effect created on Photoshop.









Wednesday 27 November 2013

Group: Project Update

27.11.13

After showing our rough cut, which was much shorter due to lack of time to complete, we carried on working on the music video. We are happy with shots we have and believe that it will take up the 4minutes of the song, however we have been advised that we should do another shoot, which will take place on Friday the 29th November.

We are currently producing a full rough cut, so that we know what is missing or needs to be re-shot. We will be spending a lot of our extra time to get this, and the rest of the project, sorted.

Group: Audience Research - Rough Cut

 
 
Feedback:
  • We have a nice panning shot, however it does  get shaky at some points and so we could do with using AfterEffects to make it much more smooth.
  • At time the light levels changed.
  • The mise-en-scene used is good and fits the style of the track.
  • Some of the shots are too long, and so need cutting.
  • There is a nice use of distance variety, e.g. a mix of long shots and close ups.
  • Some of the performance needs editing as it either is not a necessary part or it does not look like the character is actually singing.
  • The part of the pan in which only the piano can be seen needs to be cut as it is not needed and is out of place.
  • The canted angle is in the wrong place, too long and supposedly too extreme for use within the video.

Monday 25 November 2013

Group: Campaign - Band Image





The brief was to begin producing the advert and digipak, using either our own images or found images. The above show our first efforts, using solely found images (which will be replaced later with our own footage) with the digipak efforts at the top and the advert at the bottom.

We have set out to create a cohesive band image to promote the album through the use of dark imagery and the look of being lost, as shown by the girl in the dark, Alice in Wonderland-like forest, as well as the boy in the digipak who looks like he is lost and searching for something.

The advert is designed to run in Q Magazine, as Q focusses a lot on pop music as well as more indie styles of music, and London Grammar fit into both of those categories.

We chose to design an A4 advertisement as it allows a lot of focus to go into the dark wood, whilst allowing the characters to be shown as small in comparison to the woods but not small enough that they are difficult to see.

The use of visual motifs that will be in our advert and digipak will represent the notion of being lost, for example things are easy to lose in the woods. As well as the pendent that is used in the video and advert represents the past in a bleak manor.

The leading line of the advert is the picture in the centre of the page, leading up to the bands name and then the album name.

The text anchors the images through the way that it is dark in the pictures, representing night to match the title of "Nightcall".



Friday 22 November 2013

FA: Update

For the past few days, myself and Matt have been busy editing the first portion of our shoot, and creating ideas and rough copies of our digipak and advert. Here are a few ideas and first drafts of our digipak.

Tuesday 19 November 2013

Group: Filming

18.11.13

We found that our filming on Monday went extremely well; we were able to produce all of the shots that we feel necessary for the beginning part of our music video and for some filler shots.


Here are some of the clips that we shot for the most part of the first half of the song. They are unedited which means that occasionally a member of the crew may be seen in the background or an object, such as a fan, which will later be corrected in editing.





Thursday 14 November 2013

Group: Major Concept Development

Due to many issues myself and Matt have come across over the past few weeks, we have decided to completely change our music video to a more narrative based video. We sat down and listened to our chosen track and came up with our new concept:

  • The first instrumental part of the song (28 seconds), the female performer is shown playing the piano in a room all alone. The camera tracks around her with a romantic yet edgy atmosphere, lit by spotlights and candles.
  • As the narrative begins, a male is shown in an outside location looking for something unknown to the audience.
  • When the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that he is looking for the same girl who is performing.
  • The girl then appears in the narrative as a ghostly figure, who is guiding the boy towards something in a hurried manner.
  • The narrative will then reflect the lyrics 'I'm going to show you where its dumped' which will eventually lead to the body of the female having been murdered.
  • The end shot will be the boy opening the locket in the female's hand to see a picture of them both.

Friday 8 November 2013

Group: First Shoot Reflection

As planned, last night we filmed some of our music video. We set up in the drama studio at 3.30 and filmed Chessie lip-syncing as our artist. We used large torches as our light source which gave our footage a dark, moody atmosphere which we were trying to create. However, as we had such a dark image, when we uploaded the footage onto the computer to start to edit it, the footage was grainy due to the settings of the camera automatically adjusting to allow more light in.

Our next shoot is Monday 11th November, where we will film Ben, our protagonist.



Thursday 7 November 2013

MJ: Advertisement Ideas

The main plan of the advert is to be fairly basic, with the title of the band and digipak at the top in bold, they are likely to be coloured white in order for it to stand out from the dark background.

The image will be fairly minimalist, with the girl from the video shown in the same dark room as the boy, however there is quite a large distance between them and the girl is seen to be screaming (calling) as he is sat on the floor. To add to the atmosphere and the fact that the word "night" is included, we are going to add an image of the moon, that will cast a dark blue tint over the girl, to show that the boy is a much darker character. This also fits the mood of the song as the song sounds like one that would be played during the night around a camp fire with a group of teenagers camping over the weekend.

FA: Digipak Ideas

Front Cover

  • split screen with our male protagonist on one side with a gloomy expression, and our artist on the other side trying to 'get through' to the boy as if she is the boy's conscience
  • 'London Grammar' in large white letters above the picture
  • 'Nightcall' also in large white letters below the picture, both in the same font, such as this one called 'passion tea' from dafonts.com
  • a picture of a moon above both characters in the middle of the picture, underneath the title of the band which will have a blue tint surrounding it, to represent the 'night' in 'nightcall'


 

Back Cover

  •  a faded or washed out picture of the boy screaming with a dark wash
  • the same white font as on the front cover lists the tracks from the album
  • bar code, and any smallprint needed will be at the bottom of the frame
 
 
 

Group: Animatic

 
 
From looking at the animatic we can immediately see that the shots we had planned to use would not fill up the song time, with large blocks of nothing being present within the animatic. This has made us think harder about what we are going to do to ensure we do have a full music video. One of our ideas is to use projectors to present various POV events from the boy's life, and have him watching and gradually getting closer until the conclusion. Another idea is to have various items that are stereotypical of teenage boys scattered around as the boy is seated in the centre, this would include objects like a watch, headphones, books, magazines and other items of clothing.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Group: Term 1 Review

To meet the upcoming deadline for our music video, digipak and magazine advertisement, myself and Matt need to make sure that our ideas that we have are then shown in the visuals. At the moment, we feel that our ideas will be unable to be seen effectively in our video. Due to this, we have decided that we need to get more organised and work through the song in the drama studio. Therefore:

  • first shoot - 7th November at 3.30pm, filming my character (Chessie) in the drama studio
  • second shoot - 11th November at 3.30pm, filming our protagonist, Ben, in the drama studio
  • third shoot - 14th November at 3.30pm, filming Ben and the background characters, in the drama studio
  • fourth shoot - 16th November at 10am, filming POV shots, in our homes/outside locations