Work Progress update.

Above are some screenshots that demonstrate the progress I have made over the week. In the case of the final image, I cut down the text to make it fit more with the somewhat basic nature of real adverts- sparse in text, with only the essential details displayed.

The major missing element here is, naturally, photographs. I have some still images from the second filming session that I had taken by accident, but may work well for the digipak (assuming they are of decent quality). I will, however, need to arrange a photoshoot to provide proper images to use, either during the christmas holiday or soon afterwards.

Font tests

These are the fonts I looked at for usage in my ancillary work. I have decided on the fonts I wish o use today, and have worked them into my print advert.

Photoshoot preparation: Locations

There are a few locations around Town that may be useful for the photoshoot. Ideally, I would like urban environments for the background for at least some, such as brick walls (old and modern) and car parks, perhaps the local marketplace. There is also a car park overlooking a impressive view of the surrounding area,with a low wall. I could use some shots of this area, perhaps with the band members looking out at the scenery.

Photoshoot preparation: Costumes

The Genre of Music is Indie Rock, and the lyrics focus on a group of people, likely males of a similar age to the band members, getting drunk on a night out. This suggests that outfits for the performers should be contemporary, and recognizable as an example of typical clothing for such individuals (late teenagers/young adults, associated with some negative stereotypes such as excessive drinking).

This means articles of clothing such as jeans, hoodies, etc.

Beginning Ancillary tasks

This week marks the start of my work on ancillary tasks. To begin with, I have decided to focus on the print advert.

I am using Adobe Photoshop for the acillary tasks. The print advert I am designing is:

• 9.4 centimetres wide
• 13.15 cm high

These measurements came from a quarter page (exc.marigns) advert in MOJO magazine, which I found earlier with a ruler..

On a side-note, my work Partner Tom was the one to design the Wyson logo for the video, so I am unable to use it for these tasks. He has also lost the original document, so cannot tell me the fonts he used, whether for the band logo or the video’s title.

I will post a summation of my work's progress at the end of the week.

digipak + print advert mockups

Digipak Research

There are a couple of different types of digipak, which can be more-or-less split into two groups. The first stores any discs inside the panels of the packaging, so that every surface can be used for artwork. The second is the opposite, using on of the panels to present the disk similar to a standard CD case.

Style 1: Gorillaz 2001-2011 singles collection

This is an example of the first style. The music disk is secreted inside the packaging, and there is a foldout poster also included. Every panel of the digipak is completely filled with colourful images of the Gorillaz characters, in the iconic style. This takes the place of regular photos, due to the Gorillaz being fictional cartoons, and so these images of the characters reinforce the fictional star image instead of photographs. The Gorrillaz are depicted in various outfits, but the overall style is comparable to previous depictions of them, thus maintaining continuity. This montage-like design is rather unique, giving the product an element of entropy.

The back of the digipak has a listing of all the tracks and bonus content included. It also has a barcode, as well as publishing details.


Style 2

This is an example of the second digipak style I identified. Overall, it is much plainer than the Gorillaz digipak. Here, the panels are mainly red in coulor, with some black images on most panels.  Some panels are overlaid with text, which alternates between red and yellow colouring. The yellow is also found on the disk and insert booklet, ensuring that these items stand out. Here, the disk is held on one of the panels, in a manner comparable to regular disc cases. As with the first digipak, the track list is printed on the back, along with various details relating to copyrights and the product's publication. The overal design is fairly redundant, being a somewhat standard example of 'music disc casing'.

Visual Style for Print Work

I am going to use a mixture of monochrome and full colour images, which reflects the music video's aesthetics. I will take further inspiration from similar print work, such as the promotional material of Arctic Monkeys. The monochrome coloring will extend to the band logo, but not much beyond that- I do not want the entire Digipak to be monochromatic, and the same goes for the print advert. The CD images, print advert, and roughly half the Digipak panels will be in full colour.

As I have mentioned, the monochrome colour scheme is already present in the genre, which indicates a certain degree of popularity. Therefore, the monochrome images will hopefully help
make the print work appealing to the target audience.



An example of an Arctic
Monkeys image.

Final video editing

We are making a few final tweaks to the video, mostly relating to stylising it. We have put the performance sections in monochrome to help create continuity between the various performance shots. This also helps in building up a coherent house style to use with the ancillary tasks. We have also altered the lighting in a few shots- the wake-up scene should now seem to have much harsher lighting, emphasizing the idea of a hangover. The scenes outside the pub after entering it are now tinted a warmer yellow colour, connotating the idea of  pleasant drunkenness. I think that the video is finally complete, and I expect that we will soon be uploading a final cut.

Additionally,  I have started my research and planning for the upcoming ancillary tasks. this will be uploaded ovr the next week or so as I complete it.

Analysis of Print Adverts

This is an advert for the Coldplay album Mylo Xyloto, released 2011. The date listed is for the international release. This is present as the purpose of the poster is, naturally, to promote the product. The text also mentions ITunes, referencing a digital distribution platform which makes distribution of the product easy.

The poster is extremely colourful, a feature which immediately draws attention to the poster. There is no overt meaning or symbolism to the image as a whole, though the images of graffiti do connote a sense of 'street' or the city. This in fact refers to part of the narrative told through the album's songs, particularly a phenomenon comparable to graffiti called 'sparks'. The vaguely mushroom cloud-shaped explosion in the centre of the image is likely another reference to this narrative.

This is a poster for AM, an album released by Arctic Monkeys in 2013. The poster, in keeping with the band's brand image, is incredibly minimalist, exclusively black and white. Apart from the release information, the poster merely features a stylised sound-wave image and the band logo. This is in keeping with previous band productions- many promotional images of the musicians themselves are in monotone, as is their official website. This minimalist, monotone format is very fitting for the bands established branding.

Rough Cut Feedback

1. During one of the later performance scenes, the clip lasts a significantly longer time period than anything prior. Does this ruin the realistic music video effect? If so, how could we improve this?
2. Does the editing match the beat throughout, or are there areas for improvement? If so, time-stamps would be useful.
   To what extent does our video retain an authentic and entertaining appearance?
3. Is there anything you feel we should add (filters, transitions, etc.)?
4. Is the mise-en-scene continuous, and does it have enough variety? Does it fit the genre?
5. Do we have a good variety of camera work, angles, and framing? If not, what should we add?

Roughcut feedback from mjwilcox

Some extra feedback:

Rough cut complete!

Following the second filming session, a rough cut of the video has finally been completed. we are fairly happy with how it is at the moment, but naturally we are going to be looking for some feedback. We are aiming to gather this feedback by next Tuesday, so that we can spend next week fine-tuning the video to a final product we will be happy with. There is a slight scheduling issue that we will need to take note of, however; this week was supposed to be the final week of editing, but as this is being pushed over to next week, this means that the ancillary tasks will have tighter time constraints for completion.

Second filming session

We had a second filming session yesterday (Sunday). Unlike the previous session, I was the only media group member who could make it, so I did the entirety of the filming. This time, I focussed on Performance, taking long shots of the entire song from several angles in the bridge location. I also filmed a few parts for the opening, and re-did the pup scenes at bass-player Milo's house- hopefully, this second version of those scenes will look much better on screen.

Genre Theory

Genre Theory from mjwilcox

Editing continuing

Editing has continued. I am frustrated with the footage, as we are missing too much performance footage at present to make anywhere near a 50/50 split between performance and narrative. We are aiming to have another filming session on sunday 22nd, which should hopefully help with this. There is no performance at the start of the video, which I now realise is quite dissimilar from most real music videos. Hopefully, this can be addressed on the filming day. It would render our shotlists inaccurate (again), but by this point the video has gone through so many changes from what was originally imagined I can't see any reason why one more would be unacceptable.

filming and editing begun

We recorded plenty of footage at the weekend. We split camera duties between the pair of us, and we referred to our shotlist constantly. We did, however, make some spontaneous changes to the plan. Unfortunately, due to complications with the other people involved, we had to relocate the entire shoot to a small village near Craven Arms, home to one of the performers. There was a pub present, albeit rundown and abandoned, which we have used for some exterious shots. Personally, I feel the location as it appears on film resembles nothing like a pub, and looks more like a random abandoned building. Hopefully, we will be able to reshoot those scenes in a more appropriate location at some point.

Following the shot, today we were able to finally begin work on editing the footage into a music video. By the end of the shoot it was very dark outside, and we found out that this has rendered several of our performance shots unusable due to the low visibility.

Update- time issues and related setbacks

About two weeks before half term, one of our group members abrubtly decided to leave the course without letting any of us know. We consequently waited on him for a week, as he was our primary link to the band/actors for the video and was supposedly doing work, before he finally told us that he had left the course. Being left in the lurch like that set our schedule back. Conflicting schedules had already conspired to prevent much of our potential filming time form being usable, and it has now gotten to the point where we simply are unable to film inside the Blue Boar pub due to the time constraints involved. As such, we are now rewriting the shot list and story to exclude these shots, and will be utilising an outdoor park bench to shoot similar scenes.

On the upside, we have finally reached a point where we can complete much of our filming. This sunday has been tentatively scheduled as a filming day, meaning that this project will finally be able to gain traction again.

Testing shots

This was a test shot in a side-street, mostly looking to see how it looked on camera. The street itself was too narrow at this point- this was taken from the opposite wall, and the resulting image places the wall too close for some mid-shots.The wall domintaes the entire screen, and the pavement can only be seen by angling the camera for a high shot.

This test shot was taken further on down the alleyway. here, the alleyway is much more suitable, allowing for a mid-shots of the actors in the scenes shot here. There is also a lampost, which we were hoping to use for ambient light in the performance sections.

                

This shot was taken outside the blue boar, as a test run of shot 7. The tracking was a bit jumpy here, mostly due to inexperience in keeping the actor central.

This was another test of shot 7, this time zooming in at the end. We decided that it this would not be appropriate in the end, and also felt that the zoom would be too hard to prevent from going too far.

music permission