Thursday, 6 May 2010

Evaluation

Our task for this project was to produce a music video, digipak and poster promoting an unsigned band that would be appealing to our target audience. Our band was called ‘Glasscopy’, I am friends with all the members of the band, and the guitarist is a family member, this made getting the band quite a simple task as they were more than happy to help on our media project.
Before we went straight into making and producing the video, we researched other bands and how they promoted their albums, cds and what there music videos looked like, analysing different camera shots and angles and testing out what would be the best way to shoot the band, actor and actress in our video. Our storyline involved a male who misses his loved one, so we made sure close ups were used so you could clearly see the expression on his face.

My digipak challenges the conventions of others out there as the front and back cover are very basic, not even making it clear which band it is. Because of this I would make sure that if the band were to produce any more products, that they would use the front and back cover design as a kind of trademark logo, this would enable fans to easily pick out which products were ‘glasscopys’. As well as this, if the cd was sold in music stores, it would be in alphabetical order, meaning that fans of the band would know where to go and people who are not fans of the band may pick it cd up due to just being intrigued.

My digipak and poster linked together quite well because I made sure I used the same design, easily linking the two products and associating them with each other. Making it easier for the audience to pick out which products belonged to the band, rather than having completely different designs with different colours on fonts, which would break the continuity and make the band seem unorganised.
Making our video we predominantly used final cut pro on the Macs, this enabled us to accurately edit our video to how we desired, cutting in different parts of footage to make our narrative story flow, and to have the band footage to match up the song, to make it look more professional and real. As we progressed through the video making, we got more confident with the software and how to use it; this enabled us to have the video completed to a more professional looking standard and gave me the confidence to be able to use the same software again.

I think the video could have been made better if more lighting had been used indoors, and if we had more footage of our actor and actress in various other places. We had to cut down a small parts of the songs due to the fact the intro was extremely long and we figured we would not have enough footage to last right the way through the whole song.

I used various types of media such as facebook and youtube to gain some audience feedback, as well asking peers, teachers and family their opinions. This enabled me to chance certain designs, for instance on my digipak I used a cityscape design and was originally going to have bright colours in the back ground, but after gaining feedback i got told it would make a more prominent piece if it stayed bold in just black and white.

In this project I knew how to use quite a lot of the software such as photoshop, this was because of last years foundation portfolio, that project enabled me to gain more knowledge and skill in using software, which helped me edit some of my designs to get a better quality poster. As well as that it taught me how to correctly use camera shots, for instance, how to have the right space of head room in a shot. The foundation portfolio also taught me how to use blogger, as I never had done before, so this time round I was very confident in using it and knew exactly how to use it correctly with no issues, for example, I knew that all images had to be converted to jpeg before going on the blog, which is something I learnt from the last project .

Tuesday, 4 May 2010

Filming Timeline & Call sheet

Filming Timetable

September Week 1 (14th) - analysing music videos, find band & song

September week 2 (21st) – come up with video ideas, storylines and themes

September/October week 3 (28th) - research locations, actors & actress, dates of band practices

October week 4 (5th) - finalising visual imagery which pairs with lyrics

October week 5 & 6 (12th) - create storyboard including lyrics, camera shots and angles

October week 7 (26th) – Organising filming timings, making sure everyone is free on the same date. (the band & me, jade and amador)

November Week 8 (starting 2nd)- Organising for filming (booking equipment, locations, actors and finalising dates/ timings)

November Week 9 (starting 9th)- Outdoor location filming

November Week 10 & 11 (starting 16th)- Indoor location filming & fair filming

December week 12, 13, 14 (starting 1st) - editing. practice on the software. figure out if anything needs to be re-filmed

December week 15 & 16- half term- arrange a date for actor and actress to re-schedual. one shoot needed better lighting

January week 18 to 21 (starting 4th) edit video.

February week 22 to 24 ( starting 1st) Audience feedback and making adjustments to video using this feedback


In December week 12 & 13, we had to arrange a date where the actor and actress were free, as we needed more footage as we realised we didn't have enough for the whole video.
We got this other footage successfully.


Call sheet


This is to make filming run more smoothly































Making the video.

Treatment

This treatment will help us whilst filming our video, it will act as a rough guide so we know what to film for each section.


















As well as this, we have drawn up a rough storyboard, this will help us when filming on what shots we need to take


Finished Poster & Digipak

This is my finished poster design, I have stuck to my design idea quite well, i just changed some parts which were initially going to be white, to grey, this is because it looked better and it made the the poster flow more, i also added some shadowing to the writing, making it look more like a poster, and giving it some depth.





This is my finished digipak idea, i hand drew the artwork on it, as i am more confident drawing that way. Its a simple design that matches with the poster design, keeping continuity, and it has a running theme of a city throughout it.

Research & Planning- poster ideas

POSTER IDEAS.


Here are some of my designs for magazine poster ideas, promoting Glasscopy








This one is a city scape, which would be almost identical to the front cover of my chosen digipak design, it has all the relevent information such as the band name and album name, along with the release date, as well as being artistic and easy to look at.






This second idea has the same drawing of the streetlight as my chosen digipak design, therefore would keep continuity through the different media.






This design is the only one which would feature a picture of the band, as well as having all the relevant information and sticking to the colour scheme, however it does not follow the same design theme as my chosen digipak, so i'm not going to use this one. As well as this, getting the glass effect on photoshop was quite difficult, and i could not get any real glass like this to take photos of, to use.

Out of all these, i'm going to use the second idea, this is because it fits in very well with my chosen digipak design, and i think the street light is a clever way to display the writing included in the poster, it also sticks to the colout theme of the bands myspace, using greys, blacks and oranges.

Research & Planning -Digipak idea

DIGIPAK IDEA



This is my second design for a digipak, it would be a 6 panelled design, with a city theme to it, the front and back cover would be a city scape design with the colour scheme flipping on each side. The colour scheme would be kept simple with black, white and greys, this fits in well with their myspace design and keeps continuity throughout.
I have gone for this idea because its quite artistic and individual, similar to alot of alternative bands out there.
To present the track list, which would be on the inner sleeve, i would keep to the theme of the city by having a street light and the tracks listed in the 'light' of it. This would break the conventions of a regular cd cover, and make it quite interesting.






Here are some rough sketches for the street light idea, i chose to do an older style lamp, as they are a lot more artistic and more interesting to look at.









This is the finished street light idea, Its hand drawn because i am more confident drawing things by hand, rather than using photoshop



These are some small testers i made, originally i was going to have bright colours in the background of the cityscape. I tested these out in chalk, watercolour and felt tip pen. I then decided that having it in just black and white would stand out more.

The first two boxes on the left are deciding what i should use for the black part of my design, the first is pen and the second is paint, i chose the paint because it was a darker blank and gave the paper a neater finish than with the felt tip pens, which bled onto the paper, making the lines less defined


Research & Planning - Digipak ideas



DIGIPAK IDEA



This is one design for a digipak idea, its a simple 4 panelled design in which most of the information given is seemingly shown through some smashed glass. I came up with this idea because the bands name is 'Glasscopy' therefore decided to use the 'glass' element of their name.
It would have a thick, scruffy border around the edge of it all to add more depth to it, and keep to the rugged design
Top Left Panel- here i would have a picture of the band in black and white, with information about them underneath such as what there names are and which instruments they play, as well as their myspace and facebook address' for promotion.
Top Right Panel- The Cd would go here, with an effect of glass cracking coming out from the center, which is viewable when you take the Cd out of its case.
Bottom Left Panel- This would be the Front cover. It would be a simple design of a sheet of glass, with the name of the band viewable from behing the smashed glass, and the album name 'After Thoughts' scratched onto the front of the glass.

Bottom Right Panel- This would be the back cover, It would have most of the 'smashed glass' on it, displaying the track list and barcode.