Friday 31 March 2017

Podcast 23



SR

This is our 23rd weekly podcast. This week we focused on media theories for our written exam and started planning our evaluation questions. Bronwen worked on getting the digipack done, whereas Kristian worked on trying to include the newsfeed on our website by downloading several templates. I created rough cut 16, which should be a final cut next week. Next week, we will also film for our evaluation questions and we intend to have a final version of our entire package including digipack, video and website. 

Thursday 30 March 2017

SR: Production Schedule UPDATE 12

This is Production Schedule Update 12, which I created. In this production schedule I added several  dates for rough cut 14, 15 and 16 and I changed the date for the final cut to the 4th of April.



Wednesday 29 March 2017

SR: Rough Cut 16: Throne

This is rough cut 16, in which I worked on the fast paced sequence when the first beat drops. I put the narrative in black and white because it focused too much on the shot, since it was so much brighter than the other shots used. The next cut will be a definite final cut, since our audience feedback from our teacher was that everything was good except for the fast paced sequence in which I should make the takes longer rather than 4 miliseconds and I should take out the dark shot of the wood running sequence, because it made it look as if I had cut it to black in final cut.

Friday 24 March 2017

Audience Feedback 11: Rough Cut 15: Throne

This is some audience feedback that we got for our rough cut 15. The video was said to be pretty much done and our teacher argued that all that still needs to be looked into is the fast paced sequence. Also, another student said that in the fast paced sequence one shot was standing out too much, which might be because of the difference in lighting of the dark performance and the bright narrative.


Thursday 23 March 2017

SR: Rough Cut 15: Throne

This is rough cut 15 that I edited after having gotten audience feedback from our teacher. In this version I have tried to achieve good instruments verisimilitude. Also, I have focused on the points my teacher mentioned in the audience feedback such as removing the layer behind the flickering effect and trying to layer the pool shot onto other shots. However, the pool take was too short and so I couldn't put it over 5 shots. Therefore I decided to put it in as a separate shot and not layer it.

Wednesday 22 March 2017

SR: Reflection on Narrative Shoot 3

Kristian and I filmed some more narrative scenes, after having gotten audience feedback that our narrativewas a bit thin, because we didn't have enough scenes of our two character's so that our audience could get to know them. 

Overall it went really well, we wanted to include some more scenes of them being happy together, which we did by filming some scenes of them cooking together and smearing cream on each other's faces. It was quite hard to film, because the actor's autmatically moved out of frame, which meant that we had to film 3 scenes in total and they had  but in the end we managed.


Also, we wanted to film some scenes, where our female protagonist burns the pictures of her and her "boyfriend", because we thought that the slap scenes weren't enough, since it is only a few seconds long and we wanted there to be more emphasis on the breaking up and the negative side of their relationship, since we thought it would also link better with the dark metal genre.
However, one problem that we experienced was that we were not able to film the burning pictures  and the cooking scenes at the same day, because it became dark quite early and we had to film the footage of the burning pictures outside, so that our female protagonist could throw them onto the concrete. Also, we had to print out the pictures first, which took some time.

For the polaroid pictures, we asked our two actors to take some selfies of themselves with out phone after, which we printed them out as the sterotypical polaroid picture. We chose polaroids because we would be able to attract a young female audience, due to the resurgance of polaroid pictures lately. 

Tuesday 21 March 2017

Audience Feedback 10: Throne Rough Cut 14

This is some feedback I got for the rough cut 14 from our teacher. If these are done, then the next one should be the final cut. 

remove flickering effect on the fast paced sequence
1.16 the fist seems a bit too much, try to layer with something else where he is not singing
1.20 try and put the cream fight in slow-mo and keep the pool shot layered until 1.26 
1.35 reverse the shot of the singer jumping and the singer running 
1.44 cross-cut the shot of the layered guitarist

SR: Production Schedule UPDATE 11

This is production schedule update 11 in, which nearly all our tasks are now complete, except the final cut. One change is that I have added a date (24th of March), of when the Final Cut should be done. 


SR: Rough Cut 14: Throne

This is rough cut 14 in, which I included the footage of our female protagonist burning some pictures of her and the male protagonist. I think the next cut will be our final cut.

Representation in our music video

Here we have a long shot of the bands, with the lead singer centrally framed. Our band is composed entirely of male members. This is conforming to the stereotype or idea that rock music is just for men, which in some ways, has become normative. The members also have tattoos and are wearing neutral or dark colours which reinforces their masculinity. We wanted to have this all male band in order to attract an audience as stereotypes sell easily. However, we have a non-objectified female character in the narrative of our music video. She is seen as strong and independent (as she slaps the lead singer). The female character is wearing minimal makeup and has long hair which, allthough not overly dramatic, is still a normative representation

Saturday 18 March 2017

SR: Production Schedule UPDATE 10

This is update 10 of our production schedule, which shows that we filmed the narrative scenes and created rough cut 13, but will film more narrative scenes of burning pictures on Tuesday the  21st of March and upload rough cut 14 with this new footage


Friday 17 March 2017

KO: PROPS: Polaroid Pictures


After they break up we wanted the female protagonist to burn some photos that where taken when they where together. We wanted to burn Polaroid pictures as this was more fitting for a couple stereotype. We got the actors to take selfies using an iPhone 6 which we filmed them doing. Then to get the Polaroid pictures we printed them out using a Bluetooth Polaroid Zip Instant Printer.

SR: Rough Cut 13: Throne

This is rough cut 13, in which we included the new narrative footage that we filmed on Thursdsay the 16th of March, as stated in Production Schedule UPDATE 9. Besides the new narrative there are no major changes to it and we will film our female protagonist burning the pictures on Tuesday the 21st of March as stated in Production Schedule UPDATE 10.


Podcast 21



KO

Podcast 22

This is our 22nd weekly podcast. This week I edited together our rough cut 15 and we got audience feedback for it. Also, we filmed some more narrative with our female protagonist burning the pictures of her and our male protagonist Wayne. And I included this in our music video. Also, we focused on getting our social media accounts done, so I created some more posts and Kristian will try and include this social media on our website next week so that our website will be done as well. Next week we will all be working on Evaluation Questions and Bronwen will work on getting the digipack done, and I will try and get a final cut done.



SR

DIGIPAK: Front Cover Final Version



This is the final version of the front cover.

Below you can see a vodcast, which I created, in which I explain how I created the final version in Adobe Photoshop. I edited the vodcast using Final Cut Pro X on our Mac's in school. While working in Photoshop, I took screenshots along the way, using cmd alt and 4 so I could select and control exactly what I was taking screenshots of.


I used my phone to record the audio for this, imported it into final cut and layered it over the images. I chose to do a vodcast rather than screen record as I plan to do a couple more screen recordings when doing either the back cover or inner panels.







Wednesday 15 March 2017

SR: Production Schedule: UPDATE 9

This is the 9th update of the production schedule, which I created. It includes the tasks that we have completed so far, and the ones which are still to be completed. I always like to use color coding since it gives me a great overview of what still needs to be done. 
After last time it has changed quite a bit. First of all we have changed the name of our rough cut 1 draft 1, draft 2, draft 3 etc. to seperate rough cuts, now being called rough cut 1, rough cut 2 etc. 

Secondly, we need to film more narrative footage still, so we have put that into the production schedule as well for Thursday the 16th of March. Due to this the date of the final cut (17 March) might now be 21st of March instead. 

Besides that rough cut 10, 11 and 12 were completed on time. 

SR: Website: New Merchandise!


Today I created a new T-Shirt for our website. At the beginning when we wanted to create Throne we wanted to include a wolf in our music video. However, we quickly discovered that it would be really hard to do and therefore I decided to add one on the T-Shirt with the lyrics "You can throw me to the wolves", as a reference to the lyrics.
The wolf I got from tumblr from someone who had drawn it. I thought it was the ideal picture because it was combined with grey and blue colors compared to loads of other wolves that were drawn in pencil or with pink reddish color.


Below you can see a timelapse of how I created it.



This is a screen recording I did, while creating the T-Shirt, it was also a fundamental Tutorial of how to use the basic tools of Photoshop.

Tuesday 14 March 2017

SR: Rough Cut 12: Throne

This is the 12th rough cut of our music video Throne. In this video I have changed a few slight things such as layering a shot behind the fast paced sequence from 53 seconds onwards. Also, I have added a black and white effect on all of the narrative footage.
This could be a final cut, however the narrative is a bit thin and therefore we will be filming more on Thursday as I will also state in production schedule UPDATE 9.

Monday 13 March 2017

DIGIPAK: Back Cover 2

This is a new idea and design of the digipack, since my teacher argued that the digipack draft 1, was a bit clumsy compared to the front cover, which I definitely agree with. I decided to try out using smoke that features in our music video.  I also added the track list, record label and barcode, which you can see in the timelapse below. I recorded the audio on my phone as I find the quality comes out better that recording it from a laptop.








Here is the finished Timelapse:


Saturday 11 March 2017

Audience Feedback 9: Throne Rough Cut 10

Today, we had a special session in school, where we were able to show our newest rough cut to our teacher. I showed my latest version, which is rough cut 10 and got the following feedback:

  • Add some narrative scenes into the fast paced sequence in the middle of the track when the beat drops 
  • The layering of the band member in the happy couple scene at 1.15 minutes looks of, try to use a green screen shot instead of the performance shot from the woods for both layering shots
  • The protagonist should fall into the pool at 1.20 instead of 1.19 so that it is 100% cut to the beat
  • 1.27 minute when he beats his arm in the air should not come back up again during the same shot maybe later by splitting up the pool scene 
  • 1.38 layering behind the guy maybe band or narrative/ pool shot?
  • 1.41 again layering something different e.g. pool shot
  • 1.33 different shot the second time he stands with arms looking like cross e.g. pool OR slow-mo running
  • 2.09 balloons - take away balloons and put in pool shot
  • use the water take more than once in the slow sequence
  • dream effect is too much maybe try sepia/black white
  • connotation he is drowning he is dying and he is drowning in his own memories
  • more bass shot of drums
  • crosscutting of drum shots

SR: Rough Cut 11: Throne

This is the rough cut 11, which I edited after having gotten the feedback from our teacher on rough cut 10. I believe that rough cut 12 or 13 will be the final cut.

SR/BV: DIGIPAK: Complete Digipak Version 1

This is the first draft for our complete digipak. Bronwen used a digipak template that she found online and copied it into photoshop. 

The feedback we got was that the front cover (hand), was good, but that the back looked quite clumsy in comparison to the hand, so Bronwen should change it. We thought we would then do a back cover with smoke, which I have done a post on. 

The feedback from my teacher on the inner pannels was that the image doesn't look like one flowing image, so it would be better to have a single flowing image. He suggested we use a shot of the male protagonist when he is in the water, just so the picture isn't so bare, or maybe layer a band photo onto the pool shot. 



Bronwen created the spine using this template rather than in a separate document. The spine was mainly inspired by the spine for "The Resistance" by Muse. She created that the spine was running from the front cover. This was because the main three examples that we looked at had this feature. She felt that it would also flow better from front to back rather than the other way around. She didn't add the logo onto the spine, as i features on the front cover and she thought the name of the band would be enough for the spine. Our spine is also very thin, since we only have 2 inner panels. Digipaks with 3 inner panels would usually have a larger and thicker spine

Friday 10 March 2017

Audience Feedback 8: Throne Rough Cut 9

This is some audience feedback that we got for out rough cut 9. It was posted on March 3rd, but we asked the Year 10 students to give us feedback the Friday the week after again, because it is good practice for them as well moving on to their IGCSE's.

Podcast 20



KO

DIGIPAK: Final Back Cover

This is the final design for the back cover of our digipak. I discuss what small details and changes were made on this blogpost. 


SR/BV: DIGIPAK: Back Cover Details

There are several things that have to be on the back cover and spine of the digipacks. These include the record label, the copyright symbol, the track list, the barcode, a QR code and even if necessary a parental advisory explicit content symbol.


Bronwen found a website called barcode generator, where she could create a barcode and a QR code. This was very useful since she was able to create a QR code that would immediately link to our website, when scanned on a smartphone for example. The website also allowed her to type in what she wanted under the barcode, so she typed the usual random numbers in that are under a barcode and added 4 big letters B, M, T, and H for Bring Me The Horizon, which gives it a little extra something, since it becomes more individualised to our own band. 




SR/BV: DIGIPAK: Inner Pannels Draft 1

This is the picture that we wanted to have as our inner panels in the digipak. Many of our viewers of the music video also liked this shot, since it is just very special due to the natural appearance of the bubbles and the waves. Also, I added an effect on all the pool scenes called Tint, in Final Cut Pro X, so that it wouldn't look as baby blue as the normal pool.


DIGIPAK: Back Cover: Smoke


For the back cover, I wanted to include a smoke like effect. I did this because there are a couple of scenes in our video that have this effect. I tried it out with some different colours, turning down the saturation still to get a more muted tone.

I did not like the way that the other colours turned out so I decided to go for grey, because the darker more neutral colours fit better with our genre and the conventions of rock. 



Thursday 9 March 2017

DIGIPAK: Back Cover

After having looked at this example by the band Muse, I decided to try and create something similar. I liked the blurry, black and white look of this picture. Inspired by this, I decided to layer a photo of the band over an image of Luxembourg city. I think that this will give a nostalgic feel to the album, which fits well as it is a compilation album and there are some old songs on it. Have their hometown in the background will give connotations of home and safety which the audience could relate to, especially If they come from the same city.
EDIT:
Here is the final digipak back cover draft 1. I quite like the way this turned out and I think that it is quite similar to the Muse one.
However, when comparing it to the front cover I did, it really takes away from the simplicity of that. Therefore, I will create a second draft and take a more simplistic approach.

Wednesday 8 March 2017

SR: Rough Cut 10: Throne

In this rough cut 10 I have changed quite a lot of small details but also some big ones.



Firstly I have layered some shots onto the narrative part where our couple is still happy. These shots on the left both had really good opportunity for layering, because there was a lot of empty space in the frame. I think the layering is better in the second shot than in the first one, because there is more movement in the first shot, which makes the layering look a bit off and therefore I will probably try to use another shot also to evidence some more shot variety

However, if we get audience feedback saying that these shots are good, I will leave them the way they are now. 








Another change to Rough Cut 9 is that I have put the fast paced sequence that was at the end of the music video when the beat dropped, I have put that in the middle of the music video instead after a beat drops there, because I thought it looked more fitting. Than towards the end I added some more fast paced editing of shots cutting to the beat, which is one of the 6 features of a music video (Andrew Goodwin Theory) and I think it works really well.



via GIPHY

I have tried to achieve full lip-syncing verismilitude in this draft, because that was argued in the audience feedback that it wasn't synced enough. Since, it is one of the common conventions of a music video and one of the first things the audience notices is if it is not in sync.

SR/BV: DIGIPACK: Back Cover: Research

For the back cover, we did some research, looking at several back covers from different bands including Artic Monkey, the 1975 and Bring Me The Horizon themselves. 
Doing research about this is necessary, so that I could create a good digipack that achieves versimilitude, and that I would know where to put every little detail such as the barcode, the record label, the tracks and the other CD details. 

The one example from BMTH's "That's the Spirit", as you can see it on your left included 11 tracks, the barcode at the top and the record label and copyright details at the bottom. Since our digipak is going to include all of their best tracks so far, we are going to use tracks from each of their 5 albums. The thing that would make the most sense would be to use the songs that have the best hits. We are also going to create our own names for some tracks and invent new tracks, because fans will then be more likely to buy the album. Old albums with old tracks have already been used, so we should make the digipak as if we are trying to access the market with a new album, that fans would buy.  

We thought that this back cover is a bit too simplistic, because it is just black. Since we are using colored smoke in the music video we might want to include some either colored smoke or some grey/white colored smoke. Bronwen might also try to use some color effects on the smoke, which I will be doing another post on. 

Tuesday 7 March 2017

KO: DIGIPAK: Inspiration (hand)

For our digipak we looked at other band in all genres for inspiration. I thought that the CD cover for Kaleos A/B could look good. The cover is of an x-ray of the 4 band members hands.


This also reminded me of a movie cover for "Identity" (2003) where you have a hand print and each of the fingers is a character in the movie.
Some ideas we could do for this is having one hand in the front with the logo of the band in the middle of the palm and have the faces of each band members on the end of each finger. We could get the hand print from scanning a hand and printing it out and the rest could be done on Photoshop.

Monday 6 March 2017

DIGIPAK: Inner Panels Final

This is the final Draft of the inner panels.

I am happy with the result as I think that it:

-Fits well with the metal core genre

-Ties in very well with the rest of the digipak (front and Back Panels)

-Attractive to our target audience


I created this, like the rest of the digipak, using Adobe Photoshop CS5.
I took this pink smoke effect  ( this can be seen on the screen recording for when I made the back cover as I used the same image) from our music video and removed the lead singer from it using the eraser tool. I duplicated the layer a couple of times and then re scaled it and transformed it in order to fill in some gaps.

I also decreased the saturation a lot so that it would fit better.


Sunday 5 March 2017

DIGIPAK: Inner Pannels Draft 2

For this draft, I decided to remove the background of this band image.


I used the eraser tool and had to manually cut around the band members as because the background was too complicated, the magic eraser tool did not work.

I put it onto a black background which fit really well with the front panel. However, it looks a bit dull.

I will do another draft but try to add a filter as I think this will add more interest.


Saturday 4 March 2017

DIGIPAK: Inner Panels Draft 4

I have attempted to layer an image onto the band photo.

I chose this one of water as I thought it would look effective.

I changed the opacity of the water image, and layered it over the band photo.

However, I think that this looked far too random and out of place.

Friday 3 March 2017

Audience Feedback 7: Throne Rough Cut 8

For this particular cut we got feedback from several Year10 students, which you can see in the video below and we also got one of the Y13 students to look at the video (one of the band members/guitarist, to be exact) who saw the video for the first time.



These are some of the points they mentioned:
  • Age range 15/16-19/20
  • more effects that are darker 
  • more close-ups of the singer are needed
  • preferred reading anchored very well (Stuart Hall
  • secondary audience could be younger and the color would make the video appeal to both genders
  • Achieves verisimiltude because of the tattoos and the good lip-syncing  
  • Different colors are good because it gives a good contrast (binary opposition) to the darkness
  • clearer narrative - more couple shots 
  • Achieved verisimilitude through costumes of the band (matching clothes)
  • It was interesting during the entire video so I wanted to keep watching. 
  • Good special effects - Dream, made it look like a memory
The Year 13 student gave the following feedback:
  • music always synced well with the video 
  • When the beat dropped the footage went a bit faster, which signified the drop well/ when the song went slower the editing was past a bit slower 
  • good narrative footage, well played by the actors 
  • green screen was good, the background was really good with the colors because we put color powder/ink to life by using a green screen instead. 
  • Good use of technology. 
  • Overall really good video. 

Audience Feedback 6: Throne Rough Cut 6

This is some audience feedback that I got from 2 year 12 students. One of them was Emilie who is the female protagonist, which was very interesting since I wanted to hear what she thought of the result of all of the hours spent on filming.

SR: Production Schedule UPDATE 8

This is the 8th update of the production schedule I created. It includes the tasks that we have completed so far, and the ones which are still to be completed. I always like to use color coding since it gives me a great overview of what still needs to be done. 

After last time it hasn't changed much, except for the fact that I have added the final dates up until the final cut of our music video. 


KO: Reflection on Narrative 2

I filmed some more narrative with the 2 main character. When I was filming I took a few things into consideration one of them being where the sun was shining. I didn't want the sun to be facing the camera as this would create a few problem such as their faces would be dark as the sun would blind the camera. I also wanted to film in the sun rather then in the shade as this is supposed to be a happy memory and filming in the shade would give the opposite effect.



I also deliberately filmed hand held shots as this is not only common in narrative filming but this would also create verisimilitude at is feels more personal. But I had to be careful not to have to much camera shack as this would break verisimilitude by looking unprofessional and in some cases could make the viewer fell nauseous.


We also decided to film a diegetic ending where the main actor is sitting on the bus listening to the music, looking out the window and the female protagonist from the narrative walks past the bus window. This gives the audience a bit of narrative enigma as it makes the audience wonder if he was dreaming the the whole thing or if he actually is in the band and its a fragmented narrative as the beginning of their relationship starts at the end of the video.

SR: Rough Cut 7: Throne

This is our rough cut 7 in, which I put in the new footage that Kristian filmed on narrative and moving the other narrative part where the couple fights towards the end of the video. Also, I have tried to play a bit around with editing for the last beat drop and will evidence to full result in draft 4

SR: Rough Cut 8: Throne

This is the rough cut 8 in, which I focused on getting the final beat drop done with editing, by crosscutting it to 4 milliseconds with 4 different shots and then adding in the drums color powder scene in between. A challenge was to get it completely synced to the song and also sync the moment the drummer hits the drum to the beat. 

KO: Rough Cut 9: Throne

This is the full version of the video in which I created the last 15 seconds up until the lead singer taking his headphones out of his ears in the bus scene.
I came up with this idea of the bus scene, since I though it would be a nice way to end the video.


Podcast 19



SR


This week, we focused a lot on getting a final version of our music video done so that we would next week be able to correct and work on minor details. Also, Kristian created some more merch which he added to the website, whereas I added quotes from the individual band members and the bibliography to the website. Furthermore, Kristian filmed more narrative, which you can see a post on on his blog. I then added this new narrative footage to the video. Next week we will focus on working on the digipack, working further on evaluation questions and the video, and try to get the website done. Thank you for listening.

DIGIPAK: Inner Panels Draft 3

As the last draft was a bit boring, and I received feedback from a teacher that agreed with this.

I looked up a tutorial on how to add blur to photoshop.

I decided that adding motion blur would be the best idea. I added this at a 70 degree angle.

I did not like this effect as I thought it needed something extra going on, as again it was a bit dull.

I will do a third draft using this image, perhaps using layering with an image from our video