Evaluation - Part 1, The Brief

The brief we were working to was:

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
- A website homepage of the band:
- A digipak for the album's releases (option picked)
- A magazine advertisement for the digipak (option picked)


The artist we picked was 50 LEAVES, who were an indie band from Manchester, made up of four young men. However, they have now split up. We found this band on http://www.unsigned.com/ and then emailed the band on the contact address we found on their unsigned.com page to gain permission to use the band for our work.


50 leaves song 'Man on Fire' was not the song I had originally chosen to complete my brief with. I had chosen FRANK LEDAY'S song 'In This Life' which was the song I had created a POWERPOINT pitch on, to show the type of aspects I would include in my music video for the artist. However, after discussing my PowerPoint with my partner, we felt that it may be more accessible to create a video for a young indie band, as finding actors of a young age, with a indie style to them, would be less difficult than finding an actor similar to Frank Leday. This was because Frank Leday has a country style and is around 45.
My partner an I also felt that we could be more creative with the music video, digipak and music video if we used 50 leaves as the tone of the song allowed us to play around with how emotionally or upbeat we wanted the music video to be.

(Production) - Reflection blog week 14

This week:
The deadline for all three texts was this week, so my partner and I worked hard to add the finishing touches to our work to make it stand out, but still fit the conventions of either a music video, magazine advert or digipak.

Music video:
My partner and I had completed most of our MUSIC VIDEO for 50 leaves song 'Man on Fire' last week. So this week we have been adding final touches, e.g. adding the charity synergy to all three texts.

Charity synergy:
We decided to use the more simple design that we had created for the CHARITY SYNERGY. As we wanted our music video to stand only without the synergy we added a shot at the end of our work to connote that the band collaborated with Samaritans on the video.

Magazine advert:

- My partner and I decided to add a yellow colour to our stars as we felt this fit the conventions of a magazine advert better, compared to white stars.

- We also added a blur outline to the text to make it stand out more from the multicoloured picture behind it.

To the magazine advert my partner and I removed the HMV logo and made the other logos bigger. We thought this best because using the HMV logo may connote to our audience that we are incorporated with HMV, which is not the case.  We also changed the style of how we placed our main text, deciding to have the text more to the right of the advert. We feel this works best as the writing still stands out, but now takes less away from the main image. My partner and I have added the Samaritans to all three texts, to carry the message on from the music video.

My partner and I added a green border to the magazine advert to give the advert a bold outline, whilst still connoting the naturalistic, relaxed feel of the band.

To the picture of the advert my partner and I played around with the contrast and brightness to see how we could make the picture stand out more and, as in all three of the texts we wanted to establish lighting as an important aspect of the bands style, we wanted to make sure that the shading and brightness from the sun reflections contrasted against each other. Alongside this, of course, we knew that the band members still needed to stand out against the location. We thought that a good way to do this was to pick certain features of the band members and try to emphasis these features, like we did in the music video and digipak. For example, the girl band member is wearing Doc Marten, a feature we used in both our digipak and music video, so we made sure that when we played around with the contrast of the image we could still make out the show type. Also we wanted to make sure that both guitarist's hair stood out. For example. in the music video the sun shines through the make guitarist curly hair in an over-the-shoulder shot, adding to the lighting aspect, so we wanted to carry this through all three texts.

Digipak:

The final edit of our DIGIPAK  just need a few changes to it this week to make it fit                                                                                                                                                                My partner and I changed the picture on the CD side of our digipak, as we felt that this picture connected more with the band than the picture of just the location.

the conventions of a music video and stand out. 

Like with the magazine advert, my partner and I added the Samaritans logo to the digipak. We also added  ore detail to the thank you message to give the bands audience a better understanding of what Samaritans is and does. Alongside this we put Samaritans logo and contact details, to push through the charities message and connote to the audiencee that this is a charity that 50 Leaves is totally behind. To make the message stand out, my pattern and I turned around the contrast of the picture. The image on this side of the digipak is also the image we used for our magazine advert, as we felt by using the same picture it would help connote all three texts and make the bands style clear tot the audience.

Discs:

My partner and I created the CD and DVDs for the digipak this week and we feel that they are OK, but not brilliant. My partner and I wanted to make the discs for the digipak quite simple, as not to take a way from the designs of the digipak itself. We happy with the look of the discs, for the time we had left ourselves to create them. However, my partner and I feel that if we add given ourselves some more time concentrating on this aspect of our digipak, it could have been a bit better.

 

(Production) - Final magazine advert

(Production) - Final digipak individual shots

FRONT COVER



BACK COVER



INSIDE COVER - RIGHT HAND SIDE

INSIDE COVER - LIGHT HAND SIDE



LEFT IMAGE - AT FIRST OPENING OF DIGIPAK




MIDDLE IMAGE



(Production) - Final digipak design with CD and DVD

This is the CD that will go inside one of the pockets of our digipak. My partner and I are pretty happy with this simple design as we feel it fits the the conventions of a CD design and connects with the digipak and magazine advert. This is because we used a picture that we ScreenGrabbed from our music video and is also one of the pictures on our digipak.

(Production) - More research into ,magazine adverts

My partner and I have been looking into other bands magazine adverts and aspects that are included in them that we may need to include into ours.

This magazine advert by 30 Seconds to mars for their album 'This is War' has many features that we have included in our advert. The picture on theirs is simple compared to ours as they have opted to just use the album cover and we have used an image of our band. I have noticed that they included what live covers the band have done and this is something my partner and I will take into consideration when making our final edit of our magazine advert, as this is something which may make our audience more intrigued to purchase our product.

Also, they have a DVD included in their digipak, which is something my partner and I are including in our digipak, therefore we need to have text on our magazine advert which makes this clear to our audience. This advert from Green Day, includes some aspects that I would like to included in our magazine advert. They have told the audience that the bands hits are included. I will look at how I word certain texts in my magazine advert and try to use words which will draw the audience in more.

(Production) - Man on Fire final edit

(Production) Reflection blog week 13

This week:

My partner and I had a discussion about what we needed to add/change to all three of our texts. We added an EDITING POST to our blogs to show what we were planning to do to our texts.

Details to add to our text:

Over the weeks that we have been producing our texts, I have released that more strong points are working on Fireworks, Photoshop and Paint and adding some details to our texts that make them more authentic and stand out.

For example, this week I had a look at my 'ASPECTS TO ADD' blog post and realised that we still needed to include, e.g. small print details and logos from the albums produces. So, I decided to create all the small details we needed to add, using Fireworks.

Digipak:

For the digipak I saw that we needed to include some more small print details and add some more detail to the message, on the inside of our digipak, so that it incorporated Samaritans into our texts more.

This is a rough edit of the message we would like to include:

We decided that we wanted the message to be short and and to the point but still go with the band's layed back, young style. To do this we decided to use informal language and saying, such as 'Thanks a million.' We also added a smilie face:   :)   to the end of the message to connote the band's style further.

Magazine:

My partner and I are pretty happy with our MAGAZINE ADVERT and are now thinking about aspects we can change or include to connect all three of our texts. We feel that the most important aspect we need to include is the Samaritans logo, to insure that the message runs through all of our texts.

Music video:

To insure that our music video can stand alone without the Samaritans message and still be a strong piece, we decide to not incorporate the charity into the actual video, e.g. having the narrative character ring Samaritans as part of the story line, but instead have the Samaritans logo, slogan and phone number come up on a blank screen after the music video has finished.

Next week:

As our production deadline is next week, my partner and I will carry on working to complete our texts to a high standard and ensuring that all our work so far is up to scratch.

(Production) - Editing our texts

Today my partner and I have some free time and have decided to do some media work. We decided to look at all three of our texts, to see what we needed to change/add to our work and what aspects we liked and wanted to keep.


Music video:
My partner and I have been changing round our time line to make the song fit with the video. For example, we had put the electric guitarist at the beginning of the video, however an electric guitar was not heard in the song until later. To fix this problem we had to crop some of our footage, without pixelating it to much, in order for the scenes to not include the guitarist in them.

Last shot of the music video:
As we wanted to team up with a CHARITY to put the videos message across strongly, we wanted to make the videos last shot a shot of the Samaritans phone number and message. We have used Fireworks to create a few different designs that we could use at the end of the video. We then asked people what they thought of our designs. This include:

What people said:
- Has a stronger effect on its own
- Very simple and gets the point across
- The colours work well together and using it's slogan makes the shot very authentic

What people said:
- I like the way you have connected the picture from the video
- I like the way the picture is from the video but you could see this picture on a stand alone poster fro Samaritans, very clever
- I like the merged affect on the picture as it connects with the dream like feeling you have in your video, yet still goes with the Samaritans shot.





Digipak and Magazine:
My partner and I are happy with our digipak design, however, now we have decided to team up with Samaritans, we need to include Samaritans into all three texts. For example, adding a small note to Samaritans in the Thank You Message on our DIGIPAK. 

(Production) - Reflection blog week 12

This week

This week my partner and I have been continuing to edit our music video. We filmed some extra scenes for the narrative parts of our video, thought about how we could make are video more appealing to our young target audience and discussed how we could use synergy in our video.

Editing:

My partner and I are coming to the final stages of putting all the footage we have chosen for our video onto the Final Cut time line. Also, we are becoming more creative with effects and have begun writing a list of which effects we feel fit best for our style of video/music.

The list includes:
- Additive dissolve
- Cross dissolve
- Non-additive dissolve

(These three are the dissolves we feel work best)

Extra scenes:

My partner and I filmed some extra shots for the narrative scenes of our music video this week. We did so, because we felt that we could include some more emotional shots of our protagonist to help add emotional to the video.

Target audience:

 My partner and I had a discussing about how we could ensure that our music video would attract our TARGET AUDIENCE through our editing style. As we had talked about this in our pre-production stages, for example: what CLOTHES we wants our band members to wear, we felt that we should carry this on through our editing stages to make all aspects of our video fit together well.

My partner and I like the idea of using MONTAGES in our work, as we fell like this is quite a modern and young aspect to add to a music video. We will have a go at creating some different video montages on final cut to see if they work with our video next week.

Synergy:

We have decided that we would like to have some synergy in our music video and we feel that, as we our aiming our video towards a young audience and our protagonist in the video is a victim, we would like to incorporate SAMARITANS - a charity that helps people in distress - into our music video.

(Production) - Montage in the music video

My partner and I have been thinking about ways we can make our music video more young and contemporary. We think that one way we could do this by creating a montage.

Here are the kind of video shots we would use in our montage put in to pictures:

This montage is a still, rough draft of the kind of montage we would like to include in our music video. In our actually montage we would incorporate a background that adds to the verisimilitude of the video and will make the boarder of each picture more blurred, so to connect the pictures together.





We like the idea of adding a montage, also perhaps some other effects to our video, so that we can incorporate more close-ups of our band and connect the narrative and performance scenes together to make the whole music video flow together perfectly.

(Production) - Charity synergy in the music video

My partner and I have been discussing ideas of how to make our music video look realistic and fit music video conventions.
In our INITIAL MUSIC VIDEO the narrative scenes are are prominent and frequent than the performance scenes. Although my partner and I know that, as the band is up coming, we need to make sure that they stand out in their videos, the song we are creating a music video for has quite a sad, lonely tone and we feel that we could work together with different companies to give the song a true meaning. Therefore, we feel that we would like to make sure that the narrative scenes stand out more, for example having several close-ups of our main characters face, than the performance scenes so that the narrative stays in our audiences head. Also, we are only creating one song from the bands album and so if we were able to create several music videos for the band we would ensure that the rest of the videos we produced concentrated on the band and the feel of the band.


Samaritans

As the protagonist in the narrative is a victim of bullying and child abuse, we feel that it may be a good idea to advertise a charity that 'aims to provide emotional support to anyone in distress.' Particular as our TARGET AUDIENCE is teenagers, which are one of the highest age groups to be at risk of suicide.


Similar to X factor's charity single, but a bit less dramatic

Texts:

We would like Samaritans to only really appear in our music video as they will only really be working with them for one song and the other songs will concentrate on the band. Therefore, they most likely will not appear on either our digipak or magazine advert. Although, we may include them in the MESSAGE on the inside of our digipak.

why?

We have decided to do this because my partner and I are both teenagers so the narrative is quite close to our hearts i would say. Also, as we have made our narrative most prominent, we feel that we should give an explanation for this and working together with a charity, we think, helps give an explanation.



My partner and I are in the early stages of discussing this idea and will discuss this some more in our next meeting to see if it will work.

(Production) - Initial edit of Man on Fire music video

(Producion) - Reflection blog week 11

This week:

This week:

This week my partner and I have been continuing to edit our music video and having a look at different effects we can add to the video to make all the shots come together.

Helping each other:

Also this week my class mates and I had a look at each others music videos, to say what we liked about the video and what we thought could be change to make the video look more realistic.
My partner and I were pleased with the feedback we got from our peers, as most of the feedback we got was about the aspects of the video they liked and we feel that the constructive criticism we got will really help us to make are video fits the conventions of a music video and make it more authentic.

Next week:

My partner and I will work to complete adding scenes to the video timeline and will carry on adding effects to the video to make all the shots come together.
This week my partner and I will also have a discussion about what else we need to add or change to the latest designs of are digipak and magazine advert. As my partner and I felt that we gained really helpful feedback about are music video from are peers, we will probably ask are peers for some feedback on are latest designs to help us.

(Production) - Peer feedback for music video

My class and I have been giving feedback to each other on what we liked about each others videos and what we think could be improved.

Filming - Strengths and weaknesses:

(Framing, range of movement, creating meaning):

-The framing and almost all movement is perfect!

- Could use a few more shots

- Shot 00.53.10 is really nice

- Two narratives blend well

- I like the shot at the beginning with the Ipod

- I really like the shot of the sun shining on the singers in the forest

- I like the high angle used of Elise in the toilet

Summary of filming feedback:

Most feedback from this section was positive and my partner I will make sure to add more shots as we to feel that we need to add more shots to our video to ensure it fits the conventions of a music video.

Suggestions of improvement:

- Camera kept steady all the way through video

- Need some more close-ups

- More close-ups of Elise's face to show her expressions

- Think you need more shots of them singing from different angles

- Have a side angle shot of Elise crying in the toilet

Summary of improvements:

Mostly our improvements from this section we're to add more close-ups and to have a bigger variety of shots, which we will take on board.

Editing - Strengths and weaknesses:

(Pace, cutting to the beat, lip-syncing, transitions/effect)

- Pacing and cutting to the beat are extraordinary!

- Good soft fades

- 00.11 has a beautiful fade

- Lip syncing is at points a little off, but they may be due to the editing being incomplete

- The pace of the shot in the beginning is to long, have more cuts in forest

- Lip syncing well cut to shots

- Music starts on point at the beginning

- I like the fade at the beginning

- Toilet fades are really nice

Summary:

Our peers mostly liked the effects and pace of the video, but said that the lip syncing could be timed better.

Suggestions of improvement:

- maybe have Elise faded in the background for longer

- Lip syncing should be improved but I think once the editing is done it will be fine

Summary of improvements:

Fading and lip syncing could be improved.

                                                                                                                                    

Creativity and Conventions:

- The actors look like a real band

- I like the way the opening and end link, it adds to the story

- The lighting and the use of real locations adds to the verisimilitude

- I really like the shot of the singers playing with the leaves as the tempo starts getting faster

- I like how the song slowly comes to an end, the singers start walking down

- I like them throwing leaves to the camera at the end and the boy covers the camera with his hand
Summary: 
Our peers mostly liked the ending of our video.

Suggestions of improvements:

- Re-film Elise being shaken by her dad

- Why is there electric guitar?

- Man on left guitar strumming about to enthusiastically 

- More leaf throwing
Summary of improvements: 
The biggest improvement our peers told us about was the use of an electric guitar and the guitarist being a bit to over enthusiastic. We will change this when we re-film next week.

(Production) - Reflection blog week 10

Editing:

This week my teacher sat down with my partner and I to have a look at how our music video is coming along. We discussed the issue that we may not have enough close-ups in the performance scenes of our videos, e.g. close-ups of the instruments. To fix this my partner and I will, firstly, look through are footage to see how many close-ups we have token and, secondly, if we need to add more, we will film some more footage.

Pictures:

This week I had some trouble with some of the photos on my blog, because they were not showing up properly. My teacher showed me how to fix this though. I had to save the pictures from my blog, upload them on to Photo Bucket and then embed them onto the appropriate blog post. This took me a bit of time, however now I know how to fix this problem if it happens again and so it will take me very little time at all.

Extras for digipak and magazine:

This week, as my partner and I are pretty happy with are digipak and magazine designs, we have been discussing small adjustments we can make to them and extras that will make them stand out just that little bit more.

Magazine advert: For the magazine advert, my partner and I have been discussing how we can change its COLOUR AND CONTRAST to make it stand out more.

Paul Weller digipak from home

Digipak: My partner and I, this week, have begun to add some FEATURES to are digipak, which we fill make the digipak look more authentic. In this, we created some STICKER designs, which we think work quite well. However we still think we can make the final design sticker stand out more, for example, adding colour to the sticker. We have have also had an idea of creating an OUTER LAYER for our digipak, which well have the sticker on it. My partner and I got this idea from some digipaks I had at home and feel that it would be a good addition to our design, will keep the digipak looking new and, therefore, audiences may be more likely to buy a product which will last longer/hold together for longer.

Next week:

Editing music video:
My partner and I will continue and finish our initial edit for to our music video next week. My partner and I have already finished cropping all the shots we would look to use, so next week we can get on with putting all the pictures on the time line. This may take us a bit of time as we must make sure that in the performance scenes, where the band is singing, synchronizes with the singing in the song.



Magazine advert: 
Next week my partner will play around with the contract and brightness of our final magazine advert picture to see if we can make the picture pop more and contract against the white text.

 



Digipak:
As my partner and I are quite happy with our latest digipak design, we will concentrate on making final adjustments to it and making sure that it fits the usual conventions of a digipak, as well as making it stand out from other digipaks at the same time.

(Production) - Magazine picture adjustments

Final digipak picture

Picture:
Although this is our final digipak design, my partner and I feel there is still some adjustment we can do to make the picture stand out more. Next week we will play around with the contract and brightness of the picture to see if we can make the picture pop more and contract against the white text.

Text change

Text:

My partner and I have started to play around with different effects on Fireworks to make the text stand out more. We found that buy adding a white glow around the text, it stood out more in front of the image.













Symbols:

Alongside the Blackberry pin picture that we added early in production, my partner and I decided to add a HMV symbol and an ITunes symbol to the magazine advert. We feel that this makes the advert look more like a real advert, as we have looked back on our previous work, on MAGAZINE ANALYSIS, and found that these aspects were included in most magazine adverts.

(Production) - Second sticker for digipak

My partner and I added our second STICKER design to are digipak, replacing our first design. My partner and I like this sticker more than our first sticker, however we would still like to improve upon our design.

(Production) Final picture for magazine advert

Final picture:

My partner and I have looked through all of our initial designs, in order to help us decide which picture we want to use for our final magazine advert design. 

We looked at our magazine advert:

- FLAT PLAN

- INITIAL IDEAS 2

- MORE INITIAL IDEAS

- RECCI IMAGES

Final image

We have decided to use the above picture and layout for our final magazine advert. We choose this picture as we feel it gives an uplifting feel to the band and ensures the audience that the band's music does not all sound quite sad and emotional, like 'Man on Fire' does. Although this is our favourite picture and we feel it connotes the fun, young style we want for the band, we feel we could still improve it. 

Changes/additions to our final design:

- Quote from magazine about the band, e.g. 'BEST UPCOMING BAND OF 2011'

- Brightness and contrast of the photo, to make it stand out more

- HMV logo

We will only add these aspects, however, if they look right and does not make the magazine advert look to over crowded.

(Production) - Digipak sticker and outer layer

I found this digipak at home and my partner and I feel that a digipak plastic cover, similar to Paul Weller's one, would make a great addition to are final digipak. Paul's Weller's digipak plastic cover includes small text that says 'DELUXE EDITION' and the sticker is on the plastic cover, rather than the digipak itself. My partner and I like the idea of having a plastic cover on our digipak and, like Weller's digipak, having our digipak made out of cardboard, as we feel this helps give our band a more independent feel to it.

(Production) - Digipak with added features

Digipak with thank you message

Digipak with thank you message and sticker

My partner and I have decided to include a message from the band to thank everyone who helped to create the band's texts and everyone who has supported the band by buying their texts. We tried to make the message quite personal with sentences like "You rocked it!" to connote the young style of the band and make the audience feel as though they are talking directly to them.

The STICKER may partner and I created is also included in this version of our digipak, (second photo). My partner and I feel that the sticker helps the digipak fit the usual conventions of a digipak and provides necessary information for the audience very quickly.

My partner and I are happy with the improvements we have done to our digipak, however we know there are still small adjustments we can make to insure it looks authentic. For example, slightly adjusting the picture contrast to make it stand out more and adding colour to the sticker.

(Production) - More initial designs for the magazine advert

My partner and I have created some more designs for our magazine. 

We played around with the main image, changing it several times to choose the most appropriate picture for our magazine advert. My partner and I's person favourite is the image on the left and this image is probably the image we will use in our final magazine advert design. However, we do feel that the we could improve on the contrast of the image for our final design.
My partner and I added the blackberry pin sign, a Kerrang magazine advert and a Facebook URL for the band to make the magazine to make it suit our young target audience better. My partner and I choose to include the Kerrang rating as we feel that, by using a large company, that owns it's own magazine and radio station, our audience may be influenced to buy the album. Also, we felt this because the type of music Kerrang supports is similar to our own band's style of music.