Meeting

So our meeting today is all about figuring out where we are with all our footage and how we are going to move forward with our project. So we have decided we are definitely going to film some more by the end of these 2 weeks so that we have a lot more footage to edit and get in to our final draft. 

We really need to finish the final footage for our instrument close ups by the end of this week and hopefully get that section edited and put into our storyboard in iMovie. This should give us a big chunk of film to have towards our final video.

We are also organising our second shoot towards the postcard section of the video. We already have some previous footage from our first shoot but we need some more to finish that feature off. This should be fairly easy to film and we dont need any special costumes and props other than the postcards. We only need to organise the location and actors for the film. 

We are also planning to shoot during our trip to Greece. We are visiting a music school in which we hope to gather some more footage towards the postcard section and even musical instruments that they have. 

This should give us enough footage to almost finish our music video. The only scene we have left to film is the section in New Brighton were we hope to film our actors along the beach during the evening, possibly singing the song. 

Creating Draft Shots

To get an idea of what shots we want to do at our upcoming video shoot we decided to do a few draft shots so that we'd be more prepared and so that we can block our video abit more and get an idea of what clip we want where.

Here are a few screen shots of examples of the video shoot. I have changed the brightness of each of the clips so the contrast is much higher between the colours and i also applied a black and white effect which mades the contrast stand out alot more and we will hopefully apply this to the actual footage to create a more dramatic effect. 

Upcoming film shoot

Our next upcoming video shoot will be the close up of the musical instruments. In terms of timescale and how easy it will be to organise it will be the smallest as we dont need all the instruments in one place and we dont need all the actors at once.

Things to organise:

• Time and date to film in the music practice rooms ( agree time with the music department )
• Organise actors/musicians to be at shoot
• Book out the camera for the same time as we have the practice rooms

Next Film Shoots

1) For our next film shoot we want to re-shoot some of the old footage we have of the postcards for the chorus. This will enable us to improve upon the guide we have already filmed. We need to do this in order to have lyrics on screen for the chorus part which we think will add to the video and allow the audience to follow along with the song. 

2) We also need to film our scene in New Brighton which will tell the story more as it will be later in the evening so its dark and we can have silhouette shots infront of the ocean and the beach. This will break up parts of our band scene so that the audience is more entertained. 

3) Close up of the instruments to show more musicality. We think this will show more of the music side of the video. 

Magazine Advertisement

For my magazine add i need 3 catchy quotes to go on the front as reviews from magazines. This comes from my initial sketch and i wanted to improve upon my idea. I decided to pick 3 well known magazines/newspapers to be a reliable and trustworthy source. I chose these as The Guardian, a well known newspaper brand which would expand the audience, NME, a well known music magazine brand which would target our main audience, and Q another music magazine but is more expensive an a luxury product. 

Here are some ideas for quotes

• 'Best Album of the year!'
• 'Best Debut Album of 2014'
• 'Great Band, Better Songs'
• 'Great Band, Great Songs'
• 'New, Incredible Music'
• 'Brilliant Album'
• New, Inventive Music

My Completed Digipak

Here is my finished digipak with all the panels combined.

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.