Magazine Advertisement

I have already created a draft paper version of what i hope my magazine advertisement will look like but i wanted to do some further research into how i could build upon these initial ideas and see what conventional magazine advertisements look like.

Here are a few examples of different adverts:

 As you can see this advert includes the album artwork, as most do. It also inlcudes some of the most famous songs and the record label which represent the artist.

 This one is slightly different as they have basically used the whole of the album cover in the poster. It includes the release date, the artist and album names. This one also includes the artist label.

This one again is a blown up version of the album artwork which makes the album instantly recogniseable. It includes the release date and where to buy it.

 Conventions to use:

• Album artwork incorporated
• Release date
• Famous songs on the album
• Where to buy
• Record label icon

Final Digipak Panel

The final panel to finish before my digipak's completion is the CD panel. I wanted to do a simple CD itself so it could contrast against the patterns on the different panels.

I also wanted it to match the spines on the CD case itself so they wouldn't look out of place. I have also put the song list on the CD itself which i have seen on a few style models i have looked at.

Monday Meeting

In our monday meeting we discussed our next steps and how we're going to keep progressing with our video and filming. As kyle has started editing the opening scene of our music video we are happy to continue on filming and have decided that our next step is to film close ups of the band members.

This is fairly straight forward as we know the shots we want to produce and they are going to be quite artistic and unusual to add some flair to our video. This will be organised in a few weeks to enable us to continue moving forward. Until then we are still able to continue post-production and creating anxilary tasks.

Steps to next film shoot:

• Continue with anxilary tasks( Magazine Ad)
• Get in contact with the Music department and organise a time and date we will be able to shoot.
• Get in contact with the musicians/actors and inform them of the current situation and how we will be needing them in the upcoming weeks

Keeping in touch

As we have quite sporadic time tables and we don't come together in school that often, besides media lessons we have decided to set up a Facebook group message where we can have discussions about what is going to happen in the commencing weeks and talk about filming and getting actors ready. This has been extremely useful and we are able to keep in touch constantly and we are able to help each other out if needed. 

Editing

Now i have begun to edit parts of the video we have filmed to try and begin the post production process, this will contribute to the end product were me, Max and Kyle will put forward our best finished scenes and combine them to create the best video we can.

For now we have 2 or 3 more scenes to shoot, not including one re-shoot of the postcard scene.

First scene to be shot :

• Close ups of all the instruments being played to allow for more angles in the editing process

Second Scene(s):

• Miscellaneous scenes such as skyline, driving scene etc to fill film space and to create a better overall story.

Re-shoot:

• As our first shoot of the postcards didnt turn out quite as we planned and as we want the shots to be closer we have decided to shoot these again. 

Review of second film

Our second shoot went a lot better and we got some really good shots to work with. Firstly we decided to not use the tripod and do all the filming free hand which makes it more casual and free flowing. We also wanted to do close up shots so we could maybe use them as an insert shots. 

Here are some screen shots from our second shoot:

As you can see these shots are a lot more close up and show the postcards off well. We will film some more shots like this so that we have more film to work with when it comes to our post production. 

Digipak Continuation

Here are the rest of the pages for the digipak. I have taken inspiration from the album name itself and a new album that has recently come out called Asymmetry by Mallory Knox as this album uses lyrics on all of their digipak panels rather than images which i really liked.

The other inspiration was the band name itself "People & Things" this was really interesting to me as i wanted to take people and trace a hand gesture of some sort and put it onto one of the panels and i wanted to do  a group of everyday objects that we used and make them into different graphics. 

Here are the pages i created.

As you can see with all the pages so far i have used the same pattern in the background to keep a common theme in the digipak in its entirety. 

Digipak Back Cover

The back cover of a digipak is a bit more complicated to do, as all the legal information is printed on there such as the record label, the artists manager, music label. For this information i used several style models in order to re-create this aspect of the digipak. 

Here are two style models i used in the creation of my digipak. as you can see they both have information on the back about their label, music company etc.

And i have re-created this information on the back on my digipak, as well as the song list, the bands name, the album name, barcode and the Irwin Media Logo. 

I have also used the same background as the front cover to give the band an identity so its easily recognisable.

Here are the sony and def jam records logo's i used in my digipak

Film shoot prep

Here are the preparation photographs from out video shoot earlier this week. 

As you can see there is an example of our costume and actor we wanted to see in the video next you can see two of the final set up. This was set up quite easily as we had permission to use the stands in the drama studio which we just put together as they were already at the location, there was also the musical instruments and amps. This was slightly more difficult as we had to lend the moving trolly from the caretaker(which we had arranged before hand) go upto the music department and set up all the equipment on the trolly and transport that upto the drama studio via the elevator.

Video Shoot Review

Our first main shoot went well and we got plenty of footage to work with but we will definitely need to shoot another music scene to ensure we have enough footage to fill the music video. We firstly did two takes of the entire song even though this didn't go perfectly we got plenty of video to be able to cut some of the parts out, we also got a few extra scenes of just the chorus of the song this way we have more variety of film. 

The next stage we hope to achieve by next week is to get some more close ups of the instruments being played, particularly the drums as we saw a video by Mallory Knox called "Shout at the moon" were they do a lot of close ups of just the instruments being played separately which we really like so decided to incorporate something similar into our film.

Digipak

So i have decided to start on one of the added tasks to go with our music video. This is the digipak i have started creating which is to promote the band which song we have chosen to do in our music video Jack's Mannequin.
I decided to do a six panel digipak so that it would be more than just an average CD case and so i could convey more information on there.

In the template i had found earlier and posted on here there were clear measurement and guidelines to use for my six panel digipak.

So for my digipak i would need

• A front cover showcasing the band and album name.
• A back cover showing all the songs featured on the album, all the legal documentation, from the music label to the recording label.
• A CD case holder and CD cover
• Three extra panels to show a more creative aspect of the album.

Here is my finished front cover

As you can see i have used very bright and vibrant colours this is to get the attention of the audience and make them want to look at the cover and attract them. I have contrasted this colour with clear and pure white to again be more eye catching and to make it stand out more. 

Review of first film

Last week we filmed our first scene, this didn't turn out quite as we expected so we decided to use this as a practice scene to base our actual film shoot off of. As you can see there is a problem with the different heights of the people and how close we were to them. Here are some screen shots of our first shoot.

Looking back on this task we can improve it in several ways, such as making sure the height of the postcards stay the same throughout and continue to use rule of thirds effectively. We can also move the camera a lot closer to them to make it more clear what the postcards are and make it easier for us to edit. 

Changing video plans

Due to some equipment restrictions we have had to change some aspects of our music video shoot. This is nothing major we have just had to find a singer to be the lead vocalist of our band and have a bass and guitar player instead of a pianist. We are now all okay to go ahead with the shoot on Wednesday 12th of November and have ensured that all available equipment and actors are ready and know the song. We have booked out the cameras and tripods to ensure we can shoot our video adequately.

Magazine Advertisement

Another one of the added tasks is to create a magazine advertisement, i had drawn up a quick sketch of what this ad might look like, as you can see i have used the same cover as i had drawn in the digipak sketch and used some well known music magazines which we had research in AS, such as NME, Q and Kerrang which is a typical convention of magazine advertisements as they want people to know how good this album is from reliable sources.

Health & Safety

For our upcoming shoot our most important thing to consider is definitely health and safety. We take this role very seriously and want to act  as professional as we can whilst doing this video shoot. 

When filming there is a lot of things going on in our mind e.g rushing and watching for hazards. Meaning the risk can increase. To ensure we follow health and safety procedures there are three steps we need to process through. 

• Identify all the hazards
• Evaluate the risks
• Identify measures to control the risks

Second Shoot Review

Our second shoot was alot more casual as we didnt need as many actors as we were doing close ups. The shoot overall when well and we got alot of film to use in our music video. 

The most important thing to do now is to make sure that we set an official time and date for our first band shoot. This is a vital part of our film and we need to ensure we plan it sufficiently so that all goes well. We have told and prepared the musicians to be ready by this week so that they know the music and lyrics well enough to perform. 

We have certain tasks we need to ensure are done by tomorrow so that we are ready to go ahead with our shoot.

• Arrange studio time that works for all of us so we can all be there to shoot
• Arrange to borrow music equipment for the allotted time

Following Shoots

We have also organised some other film shoots to be going ahead with within the next few weeks.

Firstly a scene we really want to do is one on the New Brighton prom, this is a great location as it gets lots of light and brightness but also you can see the Liverpool Cityscape in the background which would be a great accompaniment to the shot. 

We would also like to film a second music shoot just to get some extra shots to make the video a lot more interesting, we were thinking an outside shoot as this would be a good contrast to our studio shoot. Locations for this could be our school field as there is lots of open space and is quite bright.