Production | Music Video

Final Magazine Advert

Final Digipak

6 Fold Digipak Net

Week 12 Blog

This week is the penultimate week before digipak and magazine advert deadlines, so i spent most of my time finalising and getting feedback to finally complete our added items. 

At the start of the week i got feedback from my piers in relation to the magazine advert, the feedback i got was constructive and they said that the layout needed to be changed because it seemed more like an magazine cover rather than an advert. So i moved about quotes and realised i needed the digipak to be in the magazine advert e.g. a screen shot of it to show what the consumers are buying.

This is what our magazine advert looked like at the start of the week but i have now made changes and it looks more presentable, and more like a advert I done this by showing the digipak in the bottom left corner to show what the consumers are buying, it also shows consistency that both of the items match.

Record Label Banner For Digipak

Week 11 Blog

This week i mainly spent time making additional photoshop items such as production logo and record label logo, i done this to make our production more professional, and i also needed a record label logo on our digipak.

When making the production logo, i wanted it to fit in with our street London theme, so the background was a brick wall and the font of the title was graffiti, which relates to our video which had shots of New Cross which had plenty of graffiti.

This week I also adpated the the other items such as digipak and magazine advert, last week the digipak's photo's were all from the new cross photoshoot, after feedback i thought it would be best to screen shot images from our music video to complete parts of our digipak.

20th November Call Sheet

12th November Call Sheet

5th November Call Sheet

3rd November Call Sheet

Production logo

Template of 6Part Digipak

Final Magazine Advert Template

Week 10 Blog

The productivity during this week was split between Noor and I. She handled all the editing whilst working parallel, I took responsibility for the digipak and the magazine advert.

This week my main ogendure was to work on the templates of the digipak and magazine advert, every stage of the production I ask constructive feedback from my teachers, once they give their opinion i make changes depending on what they said. During this week we went to New Cross to complete the rest of our filming and we also produced a photoshoot there, because most of the digipak and the main image on the magazine advert involves having them pictures. So once had them pictures I implemented them into our items.

This was the first template of our digipak i included all the photo's of the photoshoot in New Cross once we gain other images from the music video i will add them in for continuity.

 These two magazines adverts are contrasting this is what it was like at the start of the week, but now with the edition of new photo's I was able to make it more contemporary with our artist theme.

FEEDBACK

During this week on Friday we received class feedback on the progress of our music video. We gained mainly positive feedback, but because there was such little there in regards to content, it was difficult for people to explain and be specific with their suggestion and opinion. I plan to ask for their insight again later during this following week, once I start using the footage from New Cross, London. 


Positive: 

• Good range of shots and accurate filming.
• Good camera movement and framing.
• Cutting to the beat has been carried out well.
• The idea of Sam ducking down and then coming back up again is creative.
• Use of location makes it visually appealing.
• The costume change works well with the style of the video. 

Suggestions/Weaknesses:

• The lip syncing needs to be timed better.
• More shots are needed.
• The pace of editing feels a little slow in comparison to the song.
• The narrative isn't fully clear. Is the artist a part of the narrative or separate? 
• More facial expressions from Sam.
• Camera movement too fast, the pans need to be slower.

After receiving all the feedback, I have planned to film the guitar shots with no movement to give the viewer a 'visual break' from all the constant panning. The aims for next week is to edit accurately and make Sam's lip movement match the song, to film the very last shots with Rajiv's guitarist, to edit chronologically and lastly to start adding more shots to the beginning of the video.

Street Photoshoot

Magazine Template

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Week 6 Blog

This past week myself and Noor created an inaccurate Digipak template and booked ourselves in for a photo shoot session in the media room studio. We had to create an inaccurate example of our Digipak. Due to the fact that we haven't filmed in those locations, we have used previous images from my Independent and further research into mise-en-scene. Once after we have filmed we will create another rough template of how we want our digipak and magazine advert to look, then we will begin to complete our final ancillary products. The pictures we have taken during this week will be edited as soon as we come back to school on the 31st of October. 
Whilst I create the final Digipak and Magazine advert in Photoshop, Noor will use Final Cut Pro to edit what we have filmed so far. We will work together at the same time on both projects so we can have each others opinion and consent whilst making a particular decision it will also mean we will be efficient and get more of our tasks done. 

During the photo shoot this week we had a problem, but nothing serious we did not overcome. The problem was dealing with the shadows created by me and all the lights. Majority of the time my partner Noor spent trying to reduce as much shadow as possible, until we came to the conclusion that we can use photoshop to edit the prominent shadows out of the pictures. 

An issue we ended up facing was how we were unable to use the photo shoot pictures for the rough template of our final Digipak or Magazine advert. This does not slow us down as we still have our initial hand drawn template to use as guidance, but it does put us at a slight disadvantage. We were helpless in the matter because we had planned to film and take more pictures during the half term holidays, and our entire marketing scheme for our ancillary products relies on the pictures from the 'London Filming' days, which we have not tackled just yet. 

This following week we have our half term holidays, where Noor and I plan to film the majority of our narrative section in the shooting script.We have planned to film for three days, one day we will cover the narrative between Soraya and Talha(Pictured), one day will cover all the shots of me in Hainault forest and hopefully if there are no difficulties and Harry Maxwell is free, we will cover his shots in Hainault forest as well of him playing the guitar (This can be done in the same day we film me but to be on the safe side we have set another day aside for him.)

Harry Maxwell suits the look we are going for as well because he has a casual indie style to him which suits what we're aiming for.

Week 7 Blog

This past week has been half term and so far this has been the week with the most problems encountered. The targets from last week were not completely met. The plans for this week were that we complete the majority of the shooting script and film as much as possible. We divided the filming into two days- the 27th of October and the 28th of October. We had the intentions of filming in hainault forest and also complete all the London shots in central near the Thames. 


My availability was also limited on this day, meaning it would be pointless for my partner to attempt filming if we would not be able to record anything. The following day unfortunately one of the actors, Talha, cancelled due to some family problems.


Due to my unavailability Noor took it upon herself to film with Soraya. She was only able to film six shots all together because there were hardly any moments in the shot list where Soraya would be by herself. We were disapointed as we was unable to film the desired amount of shots this week. My partner Noor tried her best to communicate and get responses from all the actors needed, but unfortunately they were either very sparse in response or did not reply at all. Guitarist, Harry has not responded through any new media communication or any social networking sites so we may need to recruit a new giutarist.

This following week my targets are:
To finish the shots we intented to do over the half term 
To contact Talha and see if he will be able to help with the music production.
To complete anything I may have overlooked in my own time and upload.

Week 8 Blog

We planned to film on the 1st of November, 2nd of November and the 3rd of November to cover shots of me in Hainault Forest, Studio shots and flashbacks that our narrative male has with his girlfriend. We obtained all the shots from Hainault that we needed, although due to the difficulty of finding a guitarist willing to film, we were unable to record any guitar playing at the forest. We had to reconsider where we would film the guitarist playing because of the accessibility of getting to Hainault forest.

During the filming at Hainault forest, we had to change a few shots, such as me walking up a hill, lip syncing at the same time. We replaced this shot with me sitting on the hill with my legs folded up to his chest just as i had sat in our photo shoot. This was done because the outcome of the shots whilst walking up the hill were resulting too shaky and completely unusable; we thought about the photo shoot we had done earlier and what positions he had been photographed in, so we could later match the same picture with his position in the forest, to have a faint line of continuity between the digipak and Music video. 

Before Saturday 5th of November, we had not covered a large portion of the locations listed in our shooting script. Me and my partner are very keen on using all the locations planned to represent the artist, however we feared that we may need to change a few of the planned locations. 

This week development with the digipak and magazine advert has been progressing along with every filming session. I have been editing the ancillary products during lessons, to which my partner gave her input and opinion. At the moment we only have rough templates because we need to complete the final 'metal door' shoot. Our byproducts revolve around pictures which need to be taken in front of the graffiti wall we planned to shoot in front of. We would have done this during the school week, however the location is in new cross; as it is so far, we have been unable to film there on weekdays and have planned to film next week Saturday. 

The filming session on the 5th November revolved around filming the Narrative in London. There were a few issues, such as not being able to use the picnic blanket on the grass; it had been raining during the morning and the weather seemed too dreary and illogical to have a picnic in. Instead, my partner replaced the shots, 52, 53, 54 from the shooting script, of them using a picnic blanket with more mid shots and close ups as well as long shots depicting the mise-en-scene. The dreariness of the day ended up working in favour for us, as the grey weather added to the emotion and depressing effect of the 'rejection shots'.



There were florist shots which we had not covered but we ended up filming them at Liverpool st station. At first we asked permission from the florist at the station who directed us to the national rail office to gain official permission from the manager. We had a 20 minute wait and discussion and eventually gained the permission to film at the station with the condition we do not obstruct any one.

The targets for this week are to complete the shooting script and film on the 12th of November along with beginning to edit and creating the final template for the magazine advert.

Call Sheet 1st November

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Call Sheet 28th October

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Call Sheet 27th October

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Digipak Template

Unfortunately because most of our images on the Digipak are based around an area we have not filmed at yet, we were unable to provide an accurate demonstration as to how the final template will look. However we have filled in a very rough template with a few images which represent our artists brand. 
My partner spoke to me about how i would feel in adding a 'behind the scenes' bonus feature and a 'photo shoot special' onto the Digipak. To demonstrate an outline of what the 'Behind the scenes' feature would be like, she will film and edit a short example in her own time of what it would be like.

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Analyising Mediums | Digipak

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Production | Photoshoot

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Video of Presentation

Video of Focus Group

Week 5 Blog

This week Noor and I experienced filming three of our shots from the shooting script. We encountered several problems during the week but we maintained a level of communication and resolved each situation as it came. 

The first problem was writing the treatment; Noor and I had finished writing it together, but then faced an issue of blogger playing up and deleting the post. So we had to find time to re-write the entire post. Though this was not as time consuming as we already knew what to write, it was difficult to find time because of how our time tables were clashing through the week. We decided to complete the treatment after we finished our shooting scrip as it became our priority in the past week.

We had been struggling with the shooting script due to the detail we were going into, we had decided to plan out how we were going to edit whilst writing the shot list so we do not have to waste any time during our post production stage. This will be useful later on, however for the time being it was quite time consuming and long winded. We spent an estimated amount of three to four hours solely on our shot list, meaning we spent most of the week trying to complete one post. Of course independently we continued with our own work, I completed the analysis of music videos and Noor did further independent research looking for locations within London to film at. My partner managed to find a bridge which had an outlook to the London Eye, Big Ben and a city view of all the buildings. She took a few primary source pictures and looked into how we could film from certain angles. Me and her are happy with the final plan of filming using the mise-en-scene of central london, we feel as though it will give the artist a softer representation. 

Another problem we faced was having to decide our final guitarist. We both looked for some consultation and were told that a guitarist not strumming the guitar properly would be the equivalent of some one not lip syncing correctly. Since we were given the advice, we decided to go back to our very first option of using a boy named Harry Maxwell who has experience with guitars and musical skills. We have asked him to listen to the song and he claimed he would be available to film with us. Unfortunately neither Noor or I know Harry on a personal level, so we are unsure about his reliability in terms of punctuality and enthusiasm; but from the feedback we have gathered about him, we have found that he seems an appropriate candidate for the task. We have very limited options to begin with, not using Harry would be an unwise decision and would lead to more time being wasted in looking for another guitarist.

We filmed for the first time during this week and we made the mistake of not playing the song outloud as well as sam not singing outloud. We only filmed three shots which could be easily refilmed but we will still experiment with using the footage already recorded. We decided to film at all the locations closest to us first, so far we have been to roxy ave and later this week we are making plans to go to hainault forest to shoot a few more guitarist scenes as well as lyrics.

 

Pre production call sheet 1

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Pre-Production Treatment

The artist we have chosen to work for are called 'Balloon Ride fantasy'. It consists of a team of two composers, a guitarist and vocalist who have been creating for a very long while. Their content contains a sense of humour, they write song lyrics based around quirky topics such as zombies, Japanese dream lands and other bizarre themes, sung in catchy tunes. Their representation is unique and different to what we have already seen on the market, they have a strong indie-pop flair to them and Sam and I want to highlight this feature about the band. We want to represent them as very modern young adults who know about whats happening today. We would like to present them to our target audience with a vibe of sarcasm and irony that the current generation is swarmed with due to the Internet. Whilst doing some research, we found images from magazines and artists such as Ed Sheeran and the Kings of Leon who resembled exactly what we would like to portray. 

Our target audience will be between the ages of 15-25, a young generation who have experienced education and 'young love'. The age range involves people who would either be able to relate to the experience as statistics show divorce rate for couples under twenty is 80-85%, or they would be able to sympathise with the main narrative character as they are in a stage of their life where they are most prone to heart break and rejection. The type of activities our target audience would be most involved in would be gigs and celebrity meet ups, people who socialise and have access to meeting new people and learning about new artists through word of mouth. 

The music video we plan to create will have a number of different locations incorporated into it. We have planned the mise-en-scene so we have a variety of shots and places to choose from; allowing us to have a wider selection and prevent ourselves from limitation. We will show a representation of our artist through his background and he starts off being in the streets and ends up being in London, just like our narrative couple. We are going to use a HD camera which will allow us to capture the real colours and brigthness of London. We did not want the video to seem gritty at all so we made the choice of using a HD camera rather than a standard camcorder.

The editing will be snappy and fast, at first we would edit to the bar and then move onto editing to the lyric, then return to editing to the bar. The style we have chose is slightly simillar to that of Rizzle Kicks video 'Down with the Trumpets', we will use clear match-on-action during the begining but then move further in the narrative later on in the song. The pace of the video will also match then emotions of the male character who will propose to his loved one. At first he feels excited and happy, the camera movement will match this as well as the editing. It will be slow and the panning will be gentle with slower cuts, then later as the music speeds up and the male character feels upset and has a break down there will be more cuts rather than camera movement.

The needle and thread that will string our three products, the music video, the magazine advert and the digipak will be a balloon and a garaffiti wall along with a metal door Noor found in her independent research. The balloon will relate back to the album name we created, called "float away". The balloon will be in a few shots and seen toawards the end drifting away to symbolise how things we have now, might "float away" later. Also, the metal door will be used on  the cover of our magazine advert and on the digipak to show a clear link between the sense of location. We aim to portray the genres of indi rock and pop, as the artist has the voice of a mod-indie. The type of audience member we will target to appeal to will be indie and edgy who will find contemporary music most apeasing to their personality.

To film we will use a HD camera to make every shot clear and visually appealing. This will provide a more pleasant visual for the audience to look at. Music videos do not tend to have any grittiness, they are usually shown in good quality even if the scene being shown is depressing or dark urban. We will also be using a still camera or my personal sony digital camera to take pictures, I will also use my camera to make short vlogs of moments of us filming to give a 'behind the scene' look into our work, and how we have progressed. Later on during the post production stage we will use 'Photoshop' to begin creating our digipak and magazine advert, along with 'FinalCut Pro' to edit our music video together.

We plan to film in local area's close to us around the school, many of them are all street locations this will be just the artist on his own, this will also be done first due to the locations being more convenient. We also film in London locations close to the thames, in these locations we will be filming our two narrative actors and the artist, we will also be filming in hainult which will be green locations and the guitarist and the artist will be filmed.

The only permission we needed was from the artist 'Balloon ride fantasy' for their song 'monocle city', they were very cooperative and also sent us the lyrics for their video. They were comfortable with us using their song and making a video to it. We have not had the issue of copyright at any point.

Pre Production Shot list

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Pre Production Feedback through social networking

To make giving feedback a little more interesting and gain as much qualitative research back I created a video briefly explaining what the narrative will revolve around. I have asked people to give me some feedback and their responses were as follows:

Some feedback was more productively helpful than others, I understand this was because I didn't go in to depth about our ideas and how we would carry them out. I should have created a power point perhaps going into an explanation of each area of the music video, discussing mise-en-scene, costume, design and how our ancillary products would fit into the music video to gain more qualitative answers.

From the comments above, 3/4 of the people gave brief answers with no detail. The last comment on the post however gave a response with a little insight regarding story and camera movement. There was the suggestion that we have a montage of all the 'happy moments' the main narrative character had spent with his girlfriend in the past compiled together and shot of the girlfriend walking towards the former partner towards the end. From this particular feedback myself and Sam feel that we should explore the montage idea and plan out how we could arrange it. It would be slightly difficult as we would need the actors to be available to do numerous shots at different locations such as at home, at the park, in london, going to the cinema, in a shopping mall, eating together in a restaurant and having fun at a bowling ally. 

I have already looked into gaining permission for the 'bowling ally' and the 'restaurant' however filming in a shopping mall would be difficult, although we could over come this by filming on the high street where the shops are outside and open to filming. This 'montage idea' could be used as a flash back in the video giving us the opportunity to play around with colours and use grading as well as effects and lighting. 

 This person connotes that the video should be comical, of course the initial plan is to make the video serious and ironic. We will continue to launch our initial idea as although the idea may sound comical the video in itself will be dramatic. The general theme of the band is comical because they explore topics regarding supernatural beings, however we feel it would be appropriate to show a seriousness with in 'monocle city', to reflect a more relatable image to the target audience.

Once again, I feel as though I was not clear enough and should have made my points clearer. For future reference, if myself and sam need detailed feed back with constructive criticism, I will create a power point explaining the themes and ideas we wish to portray.

 In this feedback we were given a lot of advice, with warnings about how love is a very common theme and is done very often. Which is true, but most videos involve the artist or narrative characters falling in love rather than falling out of love. The videos which have had plots about leaving love behind have not been based around marriage, a theme which our video will explore. From this we have started planning more detail into our narrative and have decided a studio based performance by the guitarist would be appropriate and add a visual appeal to the target audience which we will grasp through the theme of rejection and the 'pain' as well as memories that come along with it. 

 The comment above suggests that there should be another appearance of the main female character, and the point made about having her appear once again towards the end is valid. This helps to reinforce the idea of creating a montage of all the happy times celebrated by the couple over the years, what they used to be and what they have become. This allows the video to explore a new angle and insight of the characters feelings. We can have the male character having a mental break down and during this mental break down we can have editing to the beat or to the lyrics "go, go, go." to make it fast pace and visually memorable. Another factor pointed out in the feedback is the effectiveness of the lip syncing, which we will be very careful with. As Sam is going to play the role of 'artist' in our video, he will be sure to have the 'appropriate look and lip movement' whilst we film the artist based performance.

Analysising Mediums | Magazine Adverts

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Analysising Mediums | Music Videos

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Week 4 Blog

This week we finished our flat plans, we decided to have a six fold digipak and made sure that there was a theme through out the mediums, the main theme would be street imagery. In our digipak we included and chose typography that would be used throughout.

The flat plans included the magazine advert as well, after doing research we knew to include quotes from magazines to entice the readers. We also included date and title of the film and when its coming out. We also included a balloon in our typography to tie in with the name of the artist which is 'Balloon Ride Fantasy.' The imagery in our magazine will be the same as is the Green Day album which matched their magazine adverts.

This week we also started our shot list which is a very long process, me and my partner have been taking a long time to complete this due to finding the beats or lyrics which we are going to cut to. Producing our shot list has helped allot it has painted a bigger pitchure in our heads of what its going to look like and it doesnt seem complicated. Doing this has also given us more ideas what we want and how we are going to produce them due to it being clear because its now down in writing.

Also this week we have nearly finished our production schedule, we are deciding to film mostly on Thursdays due to me and my partner having half the day free. Due to a half term coming up i think me and my partner will be filming over the holidays to get the London footage but it does depend on personal preferences. Next week we would've liked to have all our pre-production finished and have our first opening 30 seconds of the video completed