Photos for Digipack/Poster

 

These are several still images that i have taken to use on my digipack and poster as part of the promotion package for my artist. I have decided to use the artist dressed in red grey and blue as these are the key colour themes throught my video and therefore will immediatley tell the audience that they are linked to each other. In this image, Joe is looking up to represent the idea of being lost in his life and looking up 'to the heavens' to seek advice from his girlfriend that he has recently lost. By taking the shot at an upwards angle it shows the sky in the background behind Joe. This is something i decided to do so that it portrays the ideas more clearly that Joe also wants to join his girlfriend up in the sky/heaven.

The colour theme red represents the death, love and desire aspect themes of my video.

The colour grey represents how the artist in the video's life is now empty and hollow without his girlfriend around to help him through life and support him.

The coulour blue represents the 'ghostly' presence of his girlfriend, and also the fact that the sky and constellations are a key theme within the song and the narrative of the video.

 

I particularly like this image of the sun as it is almost symbolising the fact that the artists girlfriend was the light in his life. This image also gives off the impression that she is now in the sky looking down on him. Another theme of the video that this image supports is that Joe is constanltly searching for the constellations (stars - which only appear at night) to help him through the difficult times, as he feels as though they connect him to his girlfriend, so by showing an image of the bright sunshine and daylight it shows that at this point of time he couldn't feel further away from her.

These 2 images on the bridge are effective as they show that the artist/character from the video is searching high and low to find ways to re-connect with his girlfriend again. It also links to the theme within the video of Joe crossing over to death and leaving his life behind. The thick grey clouds in the background are sybolic of the fact that there is disturbance in the artists life and tell the audienece immediatley by one glance that something bad may happen. If i were to use these images on my promotion packages i would have to ensure to edit the brightness and contrast of them so that these aspects of the image can be clearly portrayed.

This image shows more clearly Joe looking up, and seeking the advice from his girlfriend. I have taken this image so that the clouds behind Joe represent his anger and confusion, and the clear blue area of the sky where he is looking up to represent the fact that when he finds motivation from his girlfriend things become more clear, and happier for him within his life.

 

This is an image i won't be using on my promotion packs as i believe that it isn't something the audience can connect with in a way that they can with the other images. Conventionally the artist is usually looking at the camera to draw the audience in and make them feel a part of it- however my resoning for having Joe with an upwards focus is because the theme of searching for the spirit of his girlfriend is a constituent feature of my video that i believe should be portrayed at all points to get the point accross clearly. This image howeve shows joe turned away and the audience can't even see his face, which blocks them out from his emotions and what is going on in his mind which is the main reson why i believe i shouldn't use it on the advertiseing poster for the album, and also the digipack.

Music Video Draft One:

This is my first draft that I have created for my music video. It contains the time lapse from night to day at the begining which i have previously posted about, and also the shots of Charlie that i have managed to complete. The shoot with Charlie was done twice, once on a grey background and once on a red background which is explained in my previouse blogpost, you can see from this edit of the video that through the use of the editing suite i have overlayed the two miming shots together to create a ghost like screen picture to achive displaying the theme of life vs. death.
There are a lot of blank gaps within my video that need filling with the narrative/montage shots that are yet to be filmed when the weather picks up because the locations that i want to film in are outside.

Relevant Digipack/Advertisement Examples

Bring Me The Horizon - There Is A Hell Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is A Heaven Lets Keep It A Secret.

This is the digipack for hardcore rock band Bring Me The Horizon. The band target a similar audience to Enter Shikari- therefore looking at their digipacks of how they draw that audience in and catch their attention is something that i need to do so that i have a more clear understanding of what else on the market today and what the sales of my CD are up against. By doing this it ensures that i am targeting my audience in the correct way also and are engaging the audience with my album at first sight with something they can either relate to or are interested in.
The images i have found of their digipack contain a 'split personality' style about them. This is something i particularly like as it shows the audience the emotions conveyed and the key themes that will be apparent in the music on the album. Because i have multiple themes within my video i believe it would be a good idea to use a similar effect- and due to it being targeted at a similar audience i know that it would be a succesfull way to promote my digipack to my audience. A way i could do this without copying BMTH digipack could be through the use of colours, as colour theme is a constituent feature in my video and therefore it will need to also be as important on the digipack and the advertisment to create links between the two. This is something i need to explore further.

Ancillary Texts Ideas

My video is based around wooded areas, Train tracks and outdoor situations. I believe that it is important to link my ancillary texts to this and also keep them relevant to the audience that i am targeting. Here are some images that I will use as inspiration and a starting point for my texts:

These images stick to a theme of either red- to symbolise danger, Blue to symoblise the stars, the constellations within the song or the dreamlike state of the narrative within my video. These are 2 choices that i will explore for the digipack and the magazine advert of which i am going to produce along side my video as promotional work for it.

Ancillary Text Font Ideas:

I looked at existing albums in the rock and alternative rock genre to see what fonts they used and how the placing and structure of the writing was effective for use on that partcular text:

 

 

These are some of the albums that i looked at, and one thing they all have in common is that the title of each album is all written in capital which is something that i will take into account and use on my ancillary texts so that the audience can link my texts with other rock and rock alternative albums easily. All these albums use different fonts that are either bold or stand out from the text and catch your eye- either due to the use of colour of because of the font itself- for example to My Chemical Romance one is very linear and harsh, in comparison to the smooth edged and angles of the Nickleback font- which is effective as it helps the text break away from the plain grey background and catch your eye as an audience.

 

I looked onto 'DAFONT.COM' for inspiration on different font choices- these are some i particulary found appropriate for my ancillary texts:

These fonts are similar in ways to the ones in the examples above, and i particularly like the first one as i can make it bold and with my artist name only being short i will be able to stretch it as a banner accross the top centre of the ancillary texts. Because this is a simple font with no distracting pattern to it- i will have it in a light red colour which is symbolic of the love and death themes within my video to make it stand out and catch the audeince's attention.

 

 

 

Editing Day 1 Footage:

Begining Editing: (28-11-2012)
The image to the left shows Charlie who is doing the performance element of my music video. I have chosen charlie as he fits in with my target audience due to him being the same age and has a similar sort of look. Charlie has an earring- and as i have established in my audience research many people who are my target audience are attracted to piercings and tattoo's.
I have dressed charlie in a plain top and black hoodie so that he can stand out against the red projection over his face. The plain costume also ensures that the audience's eye isnt drawn away from the lip syncing which is importnat to the ares of the vidoe of which it's shown.
I have filmed Charlie in a medium close up so that you can see his mouth syncing in time with the song when these shots are shown- as audience feedback tells me that viewers believe the performance element is very importnat to the overall outcome of the video.
I filmed the performance elements in the theatre of Wyke- where i was able to put a red coverage on the projector in order to put it onto Charlie to symbolise the song and video is based around the themes of love and danger. I then uploaded the clips that i filmed (on the 27th-11-12) onto one of the editing machines and began renaming the clips so that i knew which was which. I also filmed all the red performance shots in grey (as shown below) which is symbolic of the stars and constellations sung about and shown in my video. I will then either merge the two together in the video- or just use one colour. This is something i need to decide when i am editing later on.

Thursday 6th December:
Today I spent my lesson on the editing suite. I have already uploaded the clips onto the software that i am using to create my video- so this lesson i made a start on fitting the lip syncing elements of the video to the song so that it fitted in with it. Ihave never edited before and therefore i needed to learn how to do this. All that needed doing was to cut the clip by dragging the length of the video to the place you want it to start and end in order to create a clip of the right length. I then found the point in the song where that specific clip fit and dragged and dropped it onto it. Once this had been done i turned the sound off from the clips that i had filmed so that the only audio the audience will hear is the soundtrack that is being lip synced to.

Tuesday 11th/Wednesday 12th December:
As i haven't begun filming my other shots for the video yet due to timing and availability i have begun editing the shots that are already uploaded onto the editing suite. Over these past couple of days i have altered the brightness and contrast in order to make  the opening time lapse more bright and clear to show i better time difference and also changed the opacity. Because i filmed 2 seperate elements of the performance- one with a grey light and one with a red light i have overlayed them with each other on the editing suite and turned down the opacity on each of them to create a ghost like image for the performance element. This is relevant to my music video as the main male character is trying to find ways to be able to communicate and contact the female he is in love with- that we later find out is dead. The ghost like performance element relates to this as the only way the main male character can be reunited with her is to kill himself also- which he does at the end of the video. The red and grey/black lighting of the performance element symbolises the danger and passion in the video which is why i have also brightened up this shots to highlight and exsentuate this.

--I planned to film in the Christmas Holidays however all cameras were booked up, therefore filming will resume when we get back in the January term.--

Filming Day 1:

Tuesday 27th November 2012:
I booked the theatre space from 12:40 to 1:40 and used Charlie Banks and Harry Owen to help film the 'performance shots' that are in the video. I wanted to use the theatre as it has a large projector in the room that i could use to ceratre the red lighting over Charlies face when whe was singing. This symbolises danger and love and passion which are the key themes within my video.
Harry helped to do the audio that Charlie had to sing along to which ensured that the time was correct and the lip synching matched up to the song itself.
I filmed all of the shots using a tripod and the HD camera, i chose to film them in medium close up to show the emotion in the performance and to ensure the audience can see Charlie lip syncing.
I had to re shoot several shotsd due to bad timing and getting the lyrics wrong and I also decided to re film them in a grey lighting which is alternate to the prior red one i had shot.
The grey is symbolic of embptyness and lack of feeling in the character within my video's life.

Shot List

Shot Locations

Day-
-Tree’s/Wooded Area.
-Train Station.
-Graveyard.
-Running Down Street.

Night-
-Trees/Wooded Area

Other-
-Theatre

Risk Assessment

Time Lapse For Video

In my music video I want there to be a time lapse showing the transition from night to day. In order to do this I dowloaded a 'Time Lapse' app for the iPhone, the app then takes a picture every 15 - 60 seconds for as long as you need it to in order to create the time lapse video of all the images combined. I decided that as I wanted to show the day turning to night I would film from 3:30pm onwards, and eventually stopped the recording at 5pm when it was dark enough to see a clear difference between the starting and ending point when looking at the images. I wanted the image to look like it was in the POV of someone laid in a forresty area on the floor, therefore that is why i have arrange the Mise En Scene in the way that I have. In order to be able to get the best results with the video- I also had to ensure that the weather was appropriate, as I believe the passing by of the clouds shows a good relation to how much time is going by.

Animatic

Completed Storyboard.

Planning So far (Storyboard)

This image shows how far I am up to with my shots and storyboard. I have finished the video in the shots shown on the image, however I need to refine them and work out how I can use cuts into different camera angles to make the video more appealing to watch. I believe that rhythmic editing is an important aspect of my video as in looking at videos of the same genre many artists have also used this technique- so I need to work out the shot lengths based on this, which I will do by producing an animation of the video so I can see how well my ideas will work. Another thing I need to develop before i shoot my actual video is that this involves no element of performance. This is because I did more extensive research of my target audience after the actual production of my storyboard- I then discovered (as shown in the previous post) that my target audience find the element of performance to be a very important aspect within the video, therefore I will re-draft parts of my storyboard and put the alterations into the animated video plan of the music video that i'm going to produce.

Target Audience Looks

Target Audience:

Deconstruction/Reconstruction of a music video Evaluation.

In seeing our final product we have created which is a recostruction of Ed Sheerans - A Team I believe that we stuck to the original concepts of the video in order to mimick it for our own project. The video originally is a short story- therefore in prducting a 30 second clip from it you cannot tell much and it is very minimal, so for next time I would suggest that as a group we pick something more challenging, the only reason that we couldn't was because we had to use storyboards that we did as research during the summer- and this was the only one that was possible for us to achieve. If we knew during the summer however that the music video's we chose to analyse and storyboard would be the ones that we had to deconstruct and reconstruct for media, i believe that we would have been able to pick something of which we could challenge ourselves but still achieve a well produced video at the end.

As a group, considering we didn't know each other before this task was set, we al got along very well. Character roles within the group were established very quickly and easily which meant we were able to get straght on with our work in order to meet deadlines and make the most of our lesson time. One improvement of the group i would say however is that even though we had specific group roles, i believe we would have benefitted more if we all chipped in and shared ideas throughout- which didnt happen very often and was left to individuals.

Another challenge of the video was also the editing. I personally have no experience at all on the editing suites, and therefore at this point i felt very iscolated from group members who knew what they were doing. We needed to achieve an edit over our shots which created a black and white filter on the video- as i didnt know what i was doing here i feel as though i was left behind, and in order to make sure my music video is of a high standard i need to improve my knowledge of the editing suites!
 

A positive of out video i believe was that we managed to stick as close to the shots in the Ed Sheeran video as possible. This is because of the locations we managed to find, and also the weather conditions that we managed to shoot in were very close to the original video. (As shown in the pictures)
In doing this task i have now realised how long the process of filming is going to take, this helps me as it means that i need to be organised and have a clear time structure of what filming will take place and when, in order to succeed with my own music video. Timing and structure of what to do in lessons is very important as you cannot run behind on things such as this- which is why i am going to make a more clear day to day plan of what will happen and when, when it comes to me producing my own video.

Completed Deconstruction/Reconstruction of a music video:

Codes and Conventions of Alternative Rock Music Video's

Video Diary Entries:

Wednesday 26th September:
Deconstruction and Reconstruction of A Media Text:
Today we had a talkthrough on the project we will be working on over the next week and also got into groups. We were told to get into groups of 5/6 so that everyone would have a role and responsability within the production of the 30 second music video. Our groups is:
Shoot 30 seconds of the 1 minute summer storyboard from someone within the group.
Ohe group and roles are:
Ruby Dearness - Camera
Aimee Bant - Producer
Beth Stansfield West - Editor
Chloe Carroll - Editor
Jodie Gibson - Director
Abbie Hastings - Cast
We also decided to use Jodie's storyboard of Ed Sheeran - A Team to make our 30 second music video.

Friday 28th September:
Today we planned out which 30 seconds of the video we wanted to film and planned out in our group the area's and locations that could be used to mimick the music video. We decided that using a park/large field would be appropriate as this is where the video itself is set. We then decided to go out with the camera to find a suitable location.

We found this location which is in the local area which would be suitable to use in our music video due to the large green open space and tree's which are also seen in several shots of the music video itsself. We decided then to find a location to film a shot. We decided that in this location the perfect shot to film would be the one where the female character pushes a tree branch away from her (00:33 seconds in). 

This is the setting we chose to use for the 'branch moving' shot at 00:33 seconds- the setting mimicks what is shown in the Ed Sheeran video- which can be seen in the image below.

This image shows how we have looked at the music video as well as the storyboard while filming to ensure that we can duplicate the shot in our video. We have also tried to mimick characters through use of costume.

I played the main girl in the music video. We tried to show this through the matching green coat and white top which is what the female in the Ed Sheeran video is wearing. We also decided that a messy hairstyle would work well as it links to the storyline of the girl living on the streets and stuggling to find somewhere to sleep on a night.

After we had established the location, costume and character- also the angles of which the shot needed to be filmed, we began shooting things for the music video itself.

This was during filming where we was all trying to work out the angle the camera should be placed at. This image shows how we all worked well as a group to help recreate the images in the music video and film shots that the audience would look at and instantly relate to the Ed Sheeran video.

After editing (the following week) this is the final shot we ended up with for this part of the video:

Monday(1st) / Tuesday(2nd):

We continued with filming the shots for the reconstruction of the video, we found this a challenge as we had to first of all find locations that were appropriate and matched the images we see in the actual video. I took some images of the locations that we decided to use to show the thought process put into it and why: 

Wednesday 3rd:

Today the weather wasn't appropriate for filming so we decided that in order to still be productive towards the video we would upload the shots we had filmed so far onto the editing suite. I haven't used one of these before and I have no idea of how to work them or what to do in order to edit the shots once they are on the programme on there. In order to progress and improve I need to ensure that i learn the basics so i can begin to teach myself of how to gain more knowledge of the programme. 

Friday 12th:

We decided that while the weather is good enough we should make the most of it to get our final shots for the video. This meant going to the locations of the shots to film these.