Feedback

Today in class we all looked at each others digipaks to comment on what they should improve on and what we liked about it. 

After sitting down and reading the comments, I corrected what they picked up on, it helped to have criticism from other class members as they knew what to look for and as our audience they knew what they wanted to see. 

Editing the final video

Today we put the finishing touches to our music video, we made the narrative easier to understand and also corrected the syncing issues.

More hands make light work so whilst Katie worked on the syncing problems, I began to work on the titles.

I wanted to make them shocking and enticing, so I put them on a black background so that the white really stood out. This title was placed with the getting ready scenes.

I started to consider the options for the titles that we could have and would work. I thought about the feedback we had received for the narrative side of things and people had found it hard to understand, so I came up with the idea of an opening title saying 'Once Upon a Time' this gives a really good feel to the video, and links in with the narrative as it is very happy and fairytale like at the beginning.

 But by the time you get to the end of the video, the circumstances are very different. At the end of a fairytale you get the generic ' and they lived happily ever after' I put a twist on this by leaving out 'happily' giving our audience a blunt finish, but also a slight cliffhanger, as it doesn't state what happens next between them.

This is under the control tab when creating titles, this is where I arranged where I wanted the title on the screen and chose the sizes.

When I arranged the titles, they looked too still and dull for the beat of our chosen track, so I decided to exaggerate the titles, I did this by cutting the title segment into three or four pieces, I then went into the motion controls for each one and scaled it bigger, moved it up slightly or down, this gave a great distorted effect. I also put the filter 'Bad Film' onto it as the jitter of it makes it look exaggerated and distorted, leaving a rock and roll feel, which links to our image.

Narrative.

When we set up the Facebook page for our band so that we could receive feedback, the main point that was raised was that people thought the narrative was too quick and they found it hard to grasp the concept of the story. So I thought up some ideas, and one idea I had seen in a music video by one of my favourite bands, Asking Alexandria and its the music video for their song 'To the Stage' and what they had done was added titles in some points of their narrative, for dialogue, and also to bring the audience into the present events. I though this idea would work well our music video.

This is at the beginning of the Asking Alexandria music video. It then takes us to what happened previously to what we just saw. The font is rock and roll. 

They use it again a bit further on, but this time as dialogue. This entices the audience more as it's so shocking, and with the following '...' gives us the chance to make assumptions that something may go wrong.

This is the basic idea for what we want it to say, it will be placed just after the shots of myself getting ready to go out. 

I then started to consider fonts that were just as shocking as the ones used in the 'To the Stage' video. 

 I went on to dafont.com to have a look at some of their fonts in the 'Horror' and 'Distorted' categories. We saw loads that we liked but these were our top four. 
We then had an idea to use the font that we used for our digipak, which is the top screenshot. We thought this would link our video and digipak together more.

Feedback for the rough cut video.

Before the christmas break, we finished the rough cut of our music video, we then had to market it to our target audience, so we could get appropriate feedback and make any changes when we returned in January.

We decided to market it on the social networking site 'Facebook' we created a bandpage and uploaded the video to the profile, we then shared it with all of our friends so that they could watch and comment, we also got them to like the page, as this is one of the ways many bands use to sell their band.

This was the main bandpage, as we didn't have a finished Digipak, we couldn't use it as the profile picture, so we stuck with the name and uploaded a photo of 'Amber Skies' just so the audience had something to look at, instead of it looking bland.






These are the comments left on the video link we posted, all the criticism posted was constructive and helped us out alot.
We read through all of the comments and and saw that we did have a couple of things to improve on, and both were mentioned more than once. The first thing was that the audience found it hard to understand what was going on in our narrative, as it cut too fast and it didn't explain what was going on with the couple. The second thing was that towards the end, our drummer was slightly out of sync. We thanked everyone that commented, and assured them that their comments would be fixed.





Our priority is to fix the issues we have in the music video in time for our final deadline in a couple of days.

Digipak Developed Ideas.

This was the original photo that I took, for the back of the digipak.
 I arranged it outside so that it looked abstract and fitted in with our image.

I experimented with different techniques of editing
like contrast and exposure, and also added a black and white effect
but only colouring some of the image in.

We felt like the image we had come up with was too basic, we wanted
it to look professional, so after experimenting with photoshop, I came up with this.
I put a black and white effect over it with glowing edges and also experimented with the saturation.
When it came to the text I rotated it and put the Opacity down.
After I had done this I put surface blur over the top of it, so the text looks like it is actually in the bottle.

Effects Influences

Before I started putting filters over the music video I looked at some existing videos within the same genre to see what kind of effects are conventional for our genre. These are some of the videos that I found. I thought that these were good examples to give me inspiration as the kind of filters are consistent across all of the videos and these are the kind of filters that I had in mind to go over my own music video.

Making the website

Before I started the construction of the website, I watched a tutorial video on how to make a website using Wix.com. It was very helpful and explained how to use the website, I also went back to this video if I found there was anything I didn't know how to do.

Filming the Narrative 19/11/11

Today we went to Eynsford Castle where I filmed some of the narrative footage. We got all of the shots we needed and are pleased with how it looks so far. The scenes we shot were the beginning of our narrative and the arguement scenes.

Filming the performance 24/11/11

Today we shot all of the performance footage at The Mick Jagger Centre in Dartford. We managed to get all of the footage that we needed and it went really well.

Group Meeting - 22/11/11

In todays group meeting Sophie and I finalised our plans for the performance location and also worked on the digipak and website designs. We have started making the website on wix and have improved our digipak design by looking at different influences for the photos of the band and looking at other digipak's in the same genre. 

Band shoot influences

 These are some of the influences that we are using for our band shoot. The band featured is Asking Alexandria, and the top two photos are mainly for the background/location we have in mind for our shoot. 
We feel that the last two photos really captures the image  that we want for the band, and also shoes the ideal outfits for the shoot. Like ripped jeans and leather jackets etc, highlighting the rock and roll image we want to give them.

Group meeting - 21/11/11

Today we captured all of the narrative shots, that we completed over the weekend at Eynsford Castle, onto final cut. We also started editing them and putting them in the correct place on the track. 

Shot Experiments

Inspiration for some of our scenes

Location Back Up Plan

As we may not be able to film our performance at our original location we have had to find another location for the performance side of our music video. We have contacted The Mick Jagger Centre in Dartford and are currently waiting to hear back from them.  

Website Analysis

I decided to analyse Katy Perry's website because I thought it was a good example of the things that need to be included on our own website and because the advertising of the music video for her new single were made obvious throughout the whole website.

I chose to analyse You Me At Six's website because the band is in the same genre as our own and the website has a good example of getting the band's image across in the website.

Website Research and Ideas

I decided to do a brainstorm of ideas of what to include on our website and also what I want on what pages. I also thought of some ideas for the image and theme of the website and how I want it to link in with the band's image.

I have also looked at other artist's websites and took note of the layout and what pages they have. These are some of the websites that I looked at.

Digipak analysis

Digipak Research

I started to look at digipaks so that we knew what we was doing for ours and how we could do it, also starting to think about possible designs for our one. 


Current Digipaks:

This helped me understand what a digipak was and how it was produced. This started to get me thinking about possible ideas for our own.

Brainstorming for our own digipak:

I started off by making a brainstorm, considering everything like the image we have made for our band, the point we are trying to put across and I was also trying to incorporate the bands name and other significant symbols.

 It then lead me to design this, it was a rough sketch of what I had in mind. We have the bands name above it, and then two worlds colliding, which was my incorporation of the bands name. Then just underneath we have two hands holding both worlds wearing rings, which is significant of the video.

After developing my idea further, this is what I came up with, instead of two worlds colliding it is two rings and in the middle or behind them we will photoshop in a galaxy so it seems that the rings are representing two worlds, which is very symbolic of our video.

Fonts:

 This is their original font/logo for their first album and their latest E.P. 


We like the style of it but one of the conditions of myself and Katie using their song, was that we didn't use their bands name in it, so we have come up with a new one, 'Amber Skies'

 Myself and Katie really like most of them but our favourites have to be the top three. Once we have sorted and designed our digipak cover properly, we will start to consider which font looks best and then pick one.