analysis of digipaks

digipak ideas

when creating a digipak/album cover i decided to use photoshop as it is the best for creating texts and formats.i decided to follow the blue theme of our artist and make sure it linked in with the genre of the music.

when choosing a font i decided i want create a digital theme which makes the digipak look like a file you would see on a computer,I think this theme is suitable as in 2014 everything music wise is online and virtual hence the pkaur blue 'e' spelt with a 3

Mock up of Advert

Mock up of digipak

Do' and Dont's of Ancillary production

experimenting with photoshop

Analysing three digipaks

In today's lesson we have been looking at some functions of digipaks and i have been researching on the Internet different digipaks. Bellow i have analysed 3 different digipaks made for  different artists.

Class Feedback on music video

  

Analysing previous student work

Ancilliary work brief

Now we have finished our music video we will now begin our ancilliary work which involves which the production of the ancilliary texts. Individually we will make a digipak for the album which is connected to the music video and the adverisement for the release of the digipak.
We will have to research digipaks that have already been made and were successful. We will also show the planning and construction involved in making it.
To make our digipak we will be using Photoshop for the design element and Quark for the layout and production. We will be given templates to help us with measurements and we can either use A5 or A4 for our advertisements depending on the image we are going for. 

print work

In todays lesson we were briefed on the digipak and advertisement we had to do for our music video,we will be working and producing these over the next 5 weeks.the digipak and advertisement are vital in the process of the project as the visual element is as equally important as the song itself

Analysing Previous students work

Ancillary Work Brief

After finishing the making of my music video i am now learning about how i will make a digipak pack for the album, also a advertisement page to inform my audience of the release of my digipak.

I will be using photoshop to construct images to put on my digipak and advertisement additionally i will also be using a software called Quark which will help me add texts onto the the images i make in Photoshop as Mary told us that Photoshop was not a good software to write text in.

After briefly speaking about functions that go into digipaks, i will be including things such as barcodes, legal stamps, website, price etc. I will also make sure that the digipak and advertisement flow well together making sure i use the same text throughout both productions. I am aiming to make the images on the inner and out panels of the digipak continue over both panels or have a background that continues over both panels.

Reflection on my blogging progress

I need to catch up on blogging very much as have not got many at all right now but this not because i have simply not wanted to but because i have have many problems when it has come to the blogger website. I had tried many times to log in and but had failed miserably. I tried at home and in the library to log in but it rejected me. i then went up to the IT tech and even he could not log in at the time. I then spoke to the teacher but there was nothing they could do then last lesson i finally got everything sorted so have only had a few days to do as many blogs as i could. I am not behind because of lack of work ethic, i have just had many difficulties up until this point.

i have been looking at a sheet we were given a sheet with many different technologies to use on my blog

Reflection On Progress

Deadline Day Editing

deadline day editing

Evaluation of lip sync tutorial

Thursday 4th December: Editing

As most of our group had lessons in the morning, none of us could come in and edit our music video. However, I had two meetings after lunch that finished pretty quickly which allowed me to come to the editing suite to check on our work and see what needs improving on based on the feedback from Dan, our media teacher. 

Comments from Dan on Wednesday 3rd December:

- We have a variety of colourful shots that work well together.

- Our lip sync seems to be done effectively and well timed.

- We've currently edited on the beat after every 4 seconds, we could improve this by speeding up the editing when the beat kicks in which is often the chorus.

- Some of our shots are still and there is a lack of movement, use more of the shots where there is camera movement.  

What have we done since then?

- We've listened to the song carefully and decided where the pace of the editing should change by slowing down or speeding up (Using markers on Final Cut Pro). We have marked our faster paced moments in the song on the chorus and on the instrumental, and have marked the slower paced moments on the very few seconds just before the instrumental. 

- We've added more shots that include movement which is highly effective as it is an upbeat song that requires a lot of movement so that the audience doesn't get bored. 

Today:

Jaya and I are going to continue to edit the rest of our video that we have only cut and not yet edited, make sure the footage is rendered, make sure all the clips we want to use are added and ensure that everything is in sync. by the end of today's editing session, we hope to have edited everything and have everything place so that when we come in tomorrow we can add the finishing touches and continue blogging through the process.

Deadline Day:

Deadline day is Friday 5th December, which is tomorrow. 

Jaya and I will be coming in early tomorrow morning to get a computer in the editing suite to finalise our work. I don't have lesson on Fridays, so I can thoroughly work on my media work. 

Reflecting on blogging

Reviewing the Blogging

 

I have blogged a lot more this year as I was responsible for a lot of the group blog post in my group whilst my other members of my group worked on the editing of our music video. I have been frequently blogging speaking about what we have been doing each lesson as well as out of lesson time, I have tried my best to keep all our blogging up to date by ticking each post off the blogging check list as I complete them.

I have tried my best to keep to the blogging check list as good as I can and have also been doing extra post that are not on the actual checklist.

I have used Emaze for the first time as it was free and easy assessable website to use for presenting a slide show presentation. The layout of the website was very clear and had all the functions labelled.

EMAZE LAYOUT



 Whilst blogging I have found it difficult to find website that present photo slide shows. Photo bucket seems to be the only website available that allows me to post pictures on a flowing slideshow.

 

I have attempted to use Flickr but have found it very difficult and inconvenient to use as it has to be downloaded to the mac through the apple store. Therefore I was not able to use the site as the macs would not allow me to download the app to the computer without being a administration.  

Costume, settings and props

Before we had started filming the group discussed and agreed on what we wanted our artist and video to look like. We wanted her to be current and modern as the son we had chosen was fairly new and very popular.
Costume: we decided on urban dance wear, casual but stylish.

setting:

Like the costume and my hair as the synergy, we wanted the settings to be very colourful and for the focus to the main singer.

a park

graffiti wall

white wall with coloured lighting

props: we decided that the artist would not hold any props but that there would be random shots of objects to create a motif throughout the video

laura mulvey's theory

3rd december editing.

In this lesson me and Shannon continued editing while the rest of the group blogged. We continued and finished cutting the shots to the beat. We then made decisions on how we wanted the video to look. We took out and added shot s to make the video visually interesting and added another base track. this took extremely long as the clips kept needing be rendered as they where showing in different quality overtime. this may have been the computer we were using at the time as it showed up differently on every computer we used. We hd to decide what went where and for how long. put all the markers in time of the beat. dan told us to add dynamic to the video when the drums got faster which was a helpful tip but tricky as it meant the clips had to be cut in a different way to the rest of the video and also finding clips that fit the lyrics and instrumental at that time in the some was hard. This was all while the video had to keep being rendered which took a big amount of our time away. 

We wanted to continue editing through the afternoon so i went back to the editing room before lunch was over but when I got there all the computers where full so Shannon and I had to go into the normal classroom which was unfortunate as the computers in there are a lot slower which meant overtime i moved the line of shots we had to wait for all the other shots to loads as well which was annoying. I the afternoon we continued deleting and adding shots. We then came to a part of the some when the tempo slows down and the tune is carried by a trumpet. We wanted to edit to the beat of the trumpet to add pace to our editing but this was hard as the beat was completely different to the original. We then discovered that you could change the colour of the marker but only once it had already been put in which was tedious as we had to listen for the trumpet tune then mark it then go back and change the colour of the markers in order to cut it correctly so that we could then edit to that tune instead of the original beat. We had just started to cut the first few trumpet beats when we ran out of time. at this point we saved it to return to the next morning. 

2nd december

On Tuesday after all my lessons I went to the editing room and plunged in my hard drive. I was then called away by a teacher and when I came back began to edit. 10minutes later I was told to leave as they had to lock up the room. During this time i had cut 1/8 of the song but had no choice but to leave so still had not really done any editing to satisfy myself.

editing 1st december

On Monday we had our lesson at the end of the day. As I had not been in the previous lesson I wanted to come back to a structured ruff cut of our music video. Unfortunately I was told that my group had faced some problems and that all the base tracks I had placed previous were now out of sync to the song. This meant that everything had to be deleted and the editing process had to basically be started all over again. This was an extremely unfortunate time to endure difficulties as we had to upload a riff cut to our blog. Because nothing was cut the whole video that was uploaded showed the top base track which was just a shot of lips singing to the song. I decided it would be best for the group to open up a whole new project and start a fresh. This was helpful because there was no other clips to clash or corrupt the base tracks. One of the base tracks kept playing pixilated so i had to ask for help on how to fix that. That process took up a lot of time. After I had fit all the lip syncing the lesson was over but I had decide to stay longer as there was more editing to be done. I left my items in the classroom so that our computer was available to use and after leaving the room and re-entering to edit i was told that the editing room was to be closed which meant no extra editing could be done. 

Overview of filming the music video

Overall I think that making a music video was much harder then it appeared as there is a lot of work that needs to be put into the making of the video.
Whilst planning, filming and editing the video I learnt many new skills throughout the process. I did not know that music videos had base tracks and how important the base tracks were to music videos, I found that by filming lots of base tracks in different angled shot as well as different locations it helped extremely during our editing process on final cut pro. This is because when we edited in final cut pro we put all our base tracks on the time line and put markers on all the place that we wanted to cut, this then made it easy to put two of the base tracks together so as the music video is played it would show the lyrics being continued from one location to another without any gaps between the lyrics.
If I could go back I would of made our group film much more base tracks in many more locations or at low and high angle shots as I think that it would of gave us a much broader range of clips to edited into our music video.

Some of the things that I think worked really well in our music video was the use of the spotlight and colour lighting that me Jaya and Shannon used when filming in the drama studio dark room. We used this locations as we thought it was a very nice setting to film base tracks because we could make use of the clear white walls as back grounds to film in front of.



The spot light worked really well in the dark room as we was able to dim it creating different effects through the camera. We also used it to play around making shadows against the wall we made shapes such as a heart and bird, this looked really good on the camera so we decided to keep it as extra footage that could be used in our video.
Although the spotlight was a success I found it very dangerous as it got really hot quickly which made it difficult to move around and change the light intensity. we decided to let it cool down every few minutes and turn it off when we wasn't using it so it could cool, this resulted in the filming session taking longer then expected to film.

The colour lighting bars that we borrowed from the drama depart was very easy to use and very effective. We used them also in the drama dark room.

 

 

The effects the colour lighting bars made looked really nice on the camera, especially when I filmed Jaya making a wave motion with her arm and hand against it.

We did have a few minor problems when using the coloured lighting as we found that the lights it self was not bright enough for the camera to see Jaya, but this was easily fixed as I decided that we should also use the spotlight with the coloured lighting to make the setting much brighter. Once I had done This we could clearly see Jaya in the camera as well as keeping the coloured lighting in the background.

 

Overall I think the clips that we filmed in the drama studio was the most successful filming session as we were able to film a range of different clips such as 3 base tracks, the re-filming of the nail varnish and shoe also Shannon and Jaya applying make up.

I think it was so successful due to the success of the dark room and the lighting used (spotlight and colour lighting).



 

editing 3rd dec

Rough cut teacher review

Review from Dan (media teacher)

In todays lesson we have received some feedback on Dan about rough cut video.

Here are some of the positives things he pointed out to use:

• Our music video has a wide range of colourful shots that worked successfully together.

• The lip sync was well timed and done very effective.

• We have made use of our motif successful by filming objects in a row throughout the video.

Some improvement he suggested are listed below:

• We could improve the editing through speeding it up in time with the fast paced beat, as currently we have been editing to every 4 seconds.

• Use a wider range of shots that have much more movement in them as there is a shortage of movement in the current shots we have used.

• Think about adding some effects over the clips using the final cut pro tools.

Acting on Dan's Review

After listening to Dan's review we have acted on some of the improvement points he said and put them in to action here are some of the improvements we have made.

• We have re looked over all our footage and found ones that we have not used that had a lot of movement in them and have now added them to the video. It has made the video look much better as the movement clips go well with the face base beat of the song keeping our audience interested in the music video.

• We sat down and had a very close listen to the song so we could improve the editing pace to the beat making it slower and faster using the final cut pro software. We marked out the fast paced parts of the song that occurs during the chorus and instrumental, and also used markers to mark out where the pace slows what happens just before the instrumental.

Editing Problems

Why We Didn't Use The Footage From The 11th November?

 Here are some shots we took on the 11th Novemeber. We tried using a different camera but when we looked back at the shots, the quality was far from what we expected. Therefore, we went back to using the college camera and did some completely different shots that we think are far better and will look good once the edit is complete.

Pictures:

 (1) Bird Eye shot of group of girls picking up make up. (2) Jaya and Daniel holding the camera steady to get a panning shot of picking up shoes out of the frame. (3) Close Up of Daniel filming Faye do her hair and Jaya holding the Mirror to ensure Faye knew what she was doing. (4) Dimmed lighting, Close up and panning shot of Jaya pouring drinks into glasses whilst Daniel filmed.

Photographs taken by: Shannon Logan.

feedback on rough cut

Reviewing rough cut

After reviewing and evaluating our rough cut edit it appears that some of our clips are not in time with the lip sync. Therefore we are discussing ways in which we can make improve this to make it flow better.
We found our use motif was very successful (shot glasses, picking up shoes) and the repetitive panning shots brings something unique to the music video.

Video Rough Cut

No extra filming

Why we didn't do extra filming?

We have decided to not film more clips in locations around London. We came to this conclusion once looking over all the footage we have already and felt that we have enough clips to edit into our music video.

Instead we are thinking about adding effects and transitions over the clips in final cut pro. Whilst looking at different effects on final cut pro, one in particular caught my eye it was called 'Day into night' I think this effect would look good over some of our current clips as it gives a night partying feel to the clip making it appear in a lower light.

 

This picture is of the effect being used in final cut pro, it has made the clip look like it is much latter in the day when in fact it was taken in the morning.  

 

Possible Dark/Night filming

Night Filming

To go with the song title 'Waiting all night' we have been discusing film some night time clips to put at the the end of the music video. We think ending the musi video in night time would flow well with our music video as it shows the night time has finally come and our artist now no longer has to 'wait all night'.

We are thinking about filming in colourful places in london at night as we have very colourful clips throughout our music video.

Reasearching places we could film in we have found some possible locations:

• Westminster london eye 

• London china town

  •  london 02 

  •  Wembley stadium  

     

     

Over view of editing

How To Promote Our Artist And Song

How do we plan to promote our song?

It is essential that we create an album cover, posters and magazine cover or an article that incorporates our artists brand image and what she represents and her style of music.

This will help attract her target audience and draw attention to the song. Therefore we plan to show her blue/green hair, her bright coloured clothing, her hair will be styled the same way it has been throughout the video, either a nightlife background or coloured lighting for a background. 

All of these things we have included in our video so they link to one another and it promotes our song.

It wouldn't make sense for us to have an album cover, poster or potential magazine cover with dark clothing in black and white as that does not relate to our artist. 

What ideas do we have to promote our artist and song?

We plan to have various magazine covers that look a lot like the Billboard magazine covers that feature various musical performers. 
Magazine Covers are often given to performers who are current and popular as the editors of the magazine know that readers and fans will want to read about their idols.
Our artist, who we named 'PKaur Blue', is youthful and up and coming. This means that the magazine article and cover will feature things that relate specifically to the artist as people won't know a lot about them. 

               

This means that we will have shots that make her hair colour stand out.
As Jaya has dyed her hair another shade of blue, it will become apparent to the audience why our artist is named PKaur Blue and that she favours the colour blue. Little details like that will allow the audience to feel a bond and connection with their favourite artist. 

Throughout the video, we have continually used bright clothing and patterned clothing. Therefore our audience would expect that to feature in the magazine. 


 



In a typical magazine featuring a singer or a band. The performer or performers are often quoted on the things they like and their love life secrets. This keeps the artist apparent and interesting as the general public love a bit of gossip from celebrities as it makes them feel as if they are not so different to those who are famous. 

Possible Extra Filming

As we are not going to have our artist available for the coming days, the rest of the group are planning to film shots of different locations around the college that will fit in nice with our music video. We were planning on filming a wide range of different random location shots to fill in the gaps when the artist is not singing.
Some locations we may film are: Angel market, Angel station, friend street or possibly the canal.

Editing 24th november

Today we are editing the new shots we took last week into our rought cut edit.
Reviewing the shots we took last week using the strobe lighting, we thought that they were very successful as all the images were clear and once edited in will make our music video a lot more professional and successful.
In final cut we are try to match the clips to the beat changing each clip on the beat, so the video will run smoove. We are also trying to get the timing of the lip singing in sync with the backing track.

My skill development

During my AS year my blogging was very successful as I was able to use a wide range of different mixed media when blogging.
I was able to use the skills I learnt in my AS year when blogging this year. I am now able to use a even wider range of presentation sites, whereas in the AS year I mostly used prezi.

This year I used a spot light when filming and a much broader range of props. The spotlight was a major advantage as it has a very nice effect whilst filming. Additionally I also used the mic on the camera much more as we needed to pic up the sound of our artist singing, on first uses I found it difficult to pick up the correct sounds that we needed as the camera picked up a lot of the background noises. After filming with it regularly I was able to find a way in which we can clearly hear the vocals of our artist.
 

Reflection on progress

Reflecting on my progress

 

This year I have found the course much more challenging as there is a lot more group work with shorter deadlines.

 

I think I am at a good level but in order to achieve the grade I want I need to add more blog then that of the checklist. To do this I could blog 5-6 time throughout the week in order to keep my blog work up to date.

Filming 19th november

Our filming session today was very good as we was able to some base tracks.
Also we were able to act on our review of our previous clips that were of poor quality and re-filmed the clips using the college camera.
During this filming session we made the most of our spot light and filmed in a dark room in order to make the main focus on our artist.

What went well was the strobe lighting that we had as a background. It helped to create a atmosphere and brought the clip to life.

 

 

Feedback On Footage.

Feedback and New Ideas.

When we looked at the new footage, the quality was not what we expected and the lighting was poor because there was too much natural day light covering our artists face in the shots.

As a result, we decided to compare this footage and our old footage and came to the decision, along with the help of our media teacher Mary, that we were better off editing our very first set of footage.

I think the ideas of our second set of filming was good but we weren't prepared for the lighting in the background and the bad quality.

This means we need to film more shots using a lot colour which works well with our artists brand image.

Due to lack of timing, and our rough cut is due next week, we are going to film in the photography room on the plain white wall and local streets and parks to get as much footage as we can.

We plan to film a lot more base tracks and location shots so that we have a lot more choice of footage to edit. As we only have about 4/5 base tracks.

We had the idea to film several shots in the photography room of different coloured nail varnishes, different coloured shoes, different coloured drinks, different coloured sweets, different coloured jewellery etc. 

We know that the lighting will be a lot better in the photography room as they have professional lighting in the room and we have lights from the media department. 

Because we are filming some in college, it saves time travelling which means we have more time to film our base tracks as our song is 4 minutes and 40 seconds long. 

Do more panning shots of:

 

filming revisions

       filming revisions

for our next filming session we need to change everything we have done so far,we have to do this due to the quality of the alternative camera not being as good as the college camera which we have been restricted from using.Also a couple more base tracks and shots of scenery.

plans for wednesday: Re film all base tracks

                                   get a variation of different shots
                                 
                                  new camera angles
                               
                                  different filming locations
                 

Reviewing our footage

Reviewing/Editing out footage

After reviewing our clips on our editing session, I noticed a lot of the clips where not filmed in good enough condition due to using a different camera.

We established the footage the where good and separated them from the poor quality ones. I decided that we should re-film some of our shots using the college camera on Wednesday 19th. I have wrote a list of the things that we need to re-film and the props that we will need to bring in.

 

Whilst editing I also noticed a lot of the shots where shaky due to the uneven surface in which they were filmed. With these shaky clips we planned to use slow motion edits as the lighting was very good despite the shaky camera.



album cover ideas

 

Using a online album cover maker, I attempted to make some possible album cover for our single waiting all night by P-Kaur Blue.

To give the covers a more professional look I decided to include some common logos that are usually on album covers e.g. parental advisory and o legal stamp.

When making the album covers I thought it was vital that our artist name and the name of the song was clearly therefor I wrote it in a big font so fans will be able to notice our artist clearly amongst others. 



Above is one possible album cover we may use. On this cover I focused mainly on our artist blue hair as this is what she will be known for and straight away fans will know it is P-Kaur's album without even having to read the title. additionally I also wrote in blue in order to keep with the theme as I thought this baby blue colour worked well against a black background.

This cover was slightly different as our artist name was much more larger and noticeable on the cover. I decided to use a image of a blue rose and blue lipstick as I thought it was a power image against a black background. This also focused on the colour blue which a synergy for our artist.

This is a image showing how I edited the image through a online website. What worked well was the colour of the hair against a white background, these to colours bring a very bright fresh look on the cover and this is how we want out artist to be viewed by our target audience.

This Album I think was successful but had a few problems as the text did not work well against the background which meant it was difficult to read. What worked well was the black and white effect with the petals being in the colour blue, this really stood out and gave the cover a very professional feel.



Reflection post 11th november