FINAL VIDEO;

ANGELICA, SOPHIE & LIAM - 'SHADOWS' FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

I: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1'Haunted by your eyes' This sequence quite clearly shows that the performer is haunted by her own eyes which were revealed earlier on in the video which happens during the verse 'Haunted by your eyes'. Whilst our performer is spinning around the eyes pop out and fade away again in different parts of this, but obviously the girl is oblivious to this due to her spinning around.

2Representing: This image is to show how the record company would like her to be portrayed. A fashionable, young girl with a light sounding performance but with a secret dark meaning underneath it all.

3Music Genre: This shot uses a natural mise-en-scene and the performer holding on to a tree. This represents the light hearted genre of the music which has a peaceful, relaxing feel to it. It shows how the music influences the video and the artist's positioning next to the tree.

4Inter textual Reference: These shots in the glasshouse type of structure were influenced by Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland when she eats the 'Eat Me' cakes which turns her gigantic inside of the White Rabbit's house. The mise-en-scene with the wig and 19th century style clothing is also influenced by this classic tale. The positioning of the performer with her singing upwards gives the sense of her looking around full of curiosity aswell as the way she is standing, gives us the sense of her being too big for the structure.

5Camerawork:This shot shows the use of thirds within the frame. In fact, this is my favourite shot throughout the video, mostly because of the rule of thirds and the choreography of our performer.

6Lighting- Throughout our video we only used the natural light provided because we wanted our video to have a quite an earthy, peaceful feel, although with the darker side too. You can also see the tree branches shadows on her face and body, aswell as the rest of the tree, which can also relate to the song's title and lyrics.

7Mise-En-Scene: This shot shows good use of the mise-en-scene because you can clearly see the makeup(this shot gets closer during the video), costume and the location's natural 'props'. As you can see she is standing outside a Church and leaning on to the edge of a wall with a few graves in the background aswell as the architecture of the rusted down church. It was also sundown at the time of filming so the lighting is quite purple and darker compared to the rest.

8music video references: I can relate this shot to a couple of music videos I have witnessed in the past. The old film reel is often, but rarely used in a couple of music videos, aswell as the darkness, flashy lighting within the sequence. Also, the eyes popping up throughout this sequence remind me of an effect they would use in an old horror film, EG/Dracula.

9This is another shot which reminds me of the generics of a music video; Having the performer perform behind a see-through object. This objective is seen in a lot of music videos, mostly a wired fence. The material she's standing behind is a piece of netting which was around the glasshouse structure which we use throughout the video.


Now here is a nine frame of professional music videos:


1Lady Gaga- Telephone This scene has the performer wearing a hat made out of a telephone aswell as talking on a telephone aswell, her makeup also matches the colouring and her hair contrasts. This represents the song's title and lyrics, aswell as having a choreographed dance in the background.

2Au Revoir Simone- Fallen Snow This shot shows the performer in earthy scenery and quite a playful nature, which can show how the record label would want to represent the band.

3N-Dubz- Playing with Fire As you can see, the performers are dressed in quite 'gangsta' clothing aswell as standing outside a stereotypical British scenery aswell as making movements like a rap style video would. The Female in the video is also portrayed as a glamourous girl, which is typical for this genre of music.

4Rammstein- Sonne Obviously, the inter textual reference within this music video is Snow White and the Seven Dwalves, like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland(which we referenced) it's a classic fairytale with quite a dark side which has been portrayed throughout this video.

5Nirvana- Heart Shaped Box Arguably one of the best music videos of all time. This shot is merely held for a few seconds before moving to a side view. The birds eye view for this works well because you can see the lighting about to open in and the layout of the mise-en-scene before going down for a normal look. It also reveals a 'hidden' message with the cross and how the band are dressed in bright clothing whilst by someones supposedly death bed.

6The Horrors- Sheena is a Parasite The video starts of quite dark with hardly any lighting, then moves on to the actress in the middle with a bright strobe light over her, and the singer just by her side almost in the spotlight too. This shows that the main object of the video is the actress and not the band.

7Number One Enemy- Daisy Dares You This video basically just consists of referencing Alice in Wonderland, however I really like this brief shot with the performer underneath the gigantic cupcake. It's a good use of prop and also unusual too.

8Vermillion- Slipknot This is a video which partly influenced our own with the movements used.

9 Again is Au Revoir Simone's Fallen Snow video. I used this image because it reminds me a lot of the beginning of Alice in Wonderland where she is listening to the story. It is also a generic music video position for that type of genre.

II: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Purple line is to split the two parts.

The first part of my 'collage' is the imagery from my digipak aswell as stills which can relate to this. The main reference for this part is Alice in Wonderland, as for the digipak I was deeply influenced by the art and feel of the classic novel and used props which would represent the story and a light colouring. The stills from my video which are in this section also relate to the classic tale, the girl is wondering around looking curiously at the setting and looks very small compared to the tree she is searching around. The second is representing the chapter where Alice gets stuck in the White Rabbit's house because she's too big after eating an 'Eat Me' cake. As you can see the girl looks trapped and seems too big for the structure. These parts of the video are also a lot lighter than the rest. The Clock at the bottom is representing the time which is a main influence in Lewis Carroll's classic, because it is a church tower clock, time itself has made an impact on the way it looks and has made it rusted.

The typography I used for the main title, Shadows is from dafont.com and was under the calligraphy section. In photoshop I then edited the font by using the smudge tool to make it look more realistic and hand written, the main objective of this was to make it look like a child has written this, to go with the whole Alice in Wonderland theme of my digipak.

Here is the font I used. Because of the image I used for the front cover, I felt it was best to place the title at the top on to the white of the book and kept the font colour black for a more authentic look.

I then placed the band's title in the bottom right hand corner and chose a colour which matches the ribbon in the picture and then I used this typography throughout the whole digipak and poster. I'm afraid the typography I used throughout my digipak has now been removed from dafont.com.

On the back cover I placed the font around the pocketwatch and made it all link together continuously I also made the typography get bigger when it went down the page.

I placed the record label and barcode along the other side of the back cover, bottom right.

In side, I decided to leave it blank and leave a flap where the booklet would come out of.

The bonus features section has the font go around the cup in the imagery.

The second part is all the screengrabs that connect to the advert I created. I wanted the advert and digipak to be completely different from eachother and the advert representing the video's artwork instead, even though I took a lot of photography for my digipak.
The advert has a dark sense to it, but with the typography used it gives it more of an antique feel, the same I used throughout my digipak.

The screengrabs relate to this imagery because they're dark and mostly set within the church setting, although one is inside the barn with heavy, rusty machinery in the background.
The first image is one found during the middle eight sequence in my video, this relates to the advert because of the mise-en-scene and also because she is happy but has the ghostly trail behind her which gives the sense of insecurity.

The second is of her in our abandoned barn location. This is quite dark and she is in her normal state, which is completely different to the one in the poster. Like stated before, she's sitting infront of the machinery which gives a sense of darkness and antique feel.

Third is the first lyric shot used in the video of her standing by the church wall, clutching on to it as she sings, as if she might fall off any second. This again, gives a sense of insecurity and the mise-en-scene with the graves and Church's architecture aswell as costume strongly relates to the advert.

Fourth is the shot which reveals the artist's face. She is standing by the church again but this time under the clock used to represent Alice in Wonderland. The colouring of the architecture is brown from all the rain which has attacked the church over the years and is a lot darker to the rest of the place of worship. You can strongly see her hair, makeup and costume in this screengrab which mainly relates to the stereotypical illustration of Alice, with the long blond hair and a cute little bow within her hair aswell as a 19th century dress.

The fifth image which is next to the advert is an image just before the adverts poster imagery was created. She is sitting in the exact same spot as the poster's, except she's standing in that and has the exact same mise-en-scene too.

The poster has added effects, an old film grain to give the effect of well, an old film grain, and also a pinkish tint to relate to the digipak in a unnoticeable way.

III: What have you learned from your audience feedback?;

Here is a tagcrowd of the most used words throughout the feedback I received for our final piece.
The feedback we've got back for this is short but has quite an impact. A few have said it looks and has aspects of a professional music video and that the performance and effects work very well. They also really like the ghostly trail effect, although a few have still said the spinning goes on for too long. The main problem with this is because we wanted to have it continuously through the middle eight of the track and had underestimated how long this part actually is.

Here is the feedback from proffesional film maker Ben Gee. I used Wordle to create this tag cloud which is just full of what he said about our video. He said it's very proffessional looking and the aspects and effects work well overall.

The first feedback for our pitch:

As you can see, the main inter textual references popped up the most, Alice in Wonderland and Snow White. The feedback we got for our initial idea, our treatment and pitch was very positive and people liking the ideas we had come up with for the video but also wondering how it was possible to re-create and where about we would shoot the video.
The changes we made from our original pitch were:
We didn't use a shadow figure, however the ghostly trail gives the sense of this
We could not use a suitable stop-motion effect, even though the trail was conceived with what we did find.
There was no rabbit


Here is the feedback from our rough cut:

The most negative feedback we got for our roughcut was about the spinning going on too long.
The most positive was about the use of shots, our lipsync and the costume used throughout the rough cut's footage.
For the spinning, we added the ghost effect over the top and also did a cut away of our performer standing by the church. After the lyrical verse during the middle eight we also added the girl's eyes over the top for a creepy effect, making the audience unclear of what's going on.

Here is a screengrab of the spinning sequence before we added the effects.


And here it is again with the added effects.

Another change we made was when she's walking(during the cut aways) we would add this trail effect again to give the video even more of a creepy atmosphere.

IV: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This image is to show all the mac equipment we had used, found on the internet too.

The images above are ones of me using the equipment provided for this task- Tripod, Sony HDV 1080i Camera, headphones, the mac desktops and final cut express.

If you enlarge the images you will see that I am using stopmotion blur on the video. This was the effect I used to create the ghostly trail throughout our video. For this I cut out the section I wanted to be this effect and sped it up to 300 whilst adding the effect to make it seem even more spooky.

Contacting the Band- Part II;

I have just sent an email back to Au Revoir Simone's manager, Rod, with a link connecting to our finished video and also asking if it is possible for feedback on our video too.



Here is a screengrab of the email:

Feedback;

Well I really liked the shots where it ghosted forward a bit then went back to how it was; I think it worked really well. I also think that the choice of Fran as the actress for your music video worked really well and she suited the role she played.Something I would have done differently would have been how you differentiated between the two versions of Fran. I think I would have made the contrast higher so it was easier to tell the difference between the two.That said I'm glad you didn't go overboard on the film grain effect as I think that could ruined it.... See moreI also really liked the shot of her eyes although I did think it went on for just a bit too long.Overall it's a very good piece and something you should be proud of.

WOOWWWWWW!!!! awesome peformance and love the use of the church!! GOOD WORK!

Nice camera angles, lots of locations. Spinning goes on for too long. Trails effect good

like the old tape footage effect.

I like the effect, and the costume.nice editing, but i think you could of shot a lot more cut aways because it gets a bit repetitive after a while, not sure about the amount of spinning.

the old film effect works really well and the ghostly feel works well too. edited very well

This video is amazing!

Feedback from Ben Gee;

very good start with tilts, nice effects throughout, seems professional, like a real music video; cuts very good, suits music well, constant old film effect is very good, shadow idea suits it well; eyes in background very good; very high standard- similar to Latymer. fantastic for a two month project; nice ending

Performer's Feedback;

I sent a facebook message to the performer in our video, Fran, which featured the embedded video from vimeo.

Everywhere- The final pieces;

Here is Sven's version of Everywhere

Everywhere final sven from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

I find that my performance is weak, but overall I find that this video is edited very well and enjoy the way Sven reveals the painting.
I do however find that the bit at the end has a very weak performance, and I apoligize for this.


Elliott's

ELLIOTT - 'EVERYWHERE' FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

I will write about his video

Professional video that just doesn't work;

My boyfriend forces me to watch scuzz with him, but I came across an interesting video:

As you can see, they obviously wanted an old filmreel effect during parts of the video(like us), but the problem is, like Nick stated to me whilst going through effects, theirs are too digital, they mix the broken filmreel with bad signal style effect and it just doesn't work. They also have a creepy girl in the video , but again this sequence is all in sepia and has broken film, but when she dissapears it's a digital effect added on.
Another problem I find with this is that when they are in the house location, you can tell how small the set is, and I hate noticing this in professional videos, unless it is purposely done, however if it is then it's not too clear for the audience.
For the band's performance they have used a similar location to us, a barn, however it is a lot more clear in their video than ours.
(Apoligies to Yasmin who loves The Blackout)

Setting up of Digipak photoshoot;

With the book and one of the two pocket watches.

Setting up the backing and props within the frame.

As you can see, the room I took the photographs in has a pinkish colouring, this reflected on to the photos(set without flash) and I found that this gave it an interesting, warm feel to the images.

If I had more time...(Music Video Edition)

If I had more time on editing our music video, these are the changes I would've made:

*Make the film burn out at the end, I tried this on Friday but it just didn't seem to work.
*Add more architecture of the barn
*Filmed the point of view of the character
*Perhaps added more effects to make it seem more spooky
*Added the sound that Vinyl makes when you put it on at the beginning and then when it burns out(reel or vinyl) at the ending
*Added the details of the song name, band, record label and industry at the beginning or end of the video

Even though I am very pleased with our end result.

Old Style effect;

This is a screengrab of the editing progress, adding the CGM effect Nick kindly downloaded for us.
It was our final day, the deadline. All we had to do was just put the cut aways in place and add effects to the whole video. We added more stop motion blur to parts of the video to keep the spooky theme and also made it all old style effect to give it more of an edge.
I was telling Steve at the end of the day that the fact our video is only in DV but it really adds to the whole feel and effect of our music video as a whole.

Watching it back aswell, with the sort of effects we used also makes it seem old, because the eyes bit really remind me of 1950's style CGI, like you would see in a classic Dracula film.

Overall, I am really pleased with the way our video has turned out, it's almost exactly how I ever imagined it to be like and I can't wait to see the rest of our classes finished pieces too, I find that they are all great in their own way- Hannah's group is bright and really suits the song itself, aswell as brilliant lighting and costume.
Christina's of course, used the same song as us but even though they did this, our videos are completely different. We both used Alice in Wonderland as a reference for our videos but, as ours is very dark and is relating to the darker side of the lyrics, theirs is all bright and cheerful with a happy performer and lovely mise en scene.
Yasmin's is such a happy song with a basic style video, except it's really not, the way they have edited it in beat with the song and lyrics and also the camera moves work very well throughout the video. The 'bloopers' montage at the end also makes it feel more real and cheery too, aswell as a nice natural set up.
Max's has a good story and set up and the effect works well with the genre of the song. I also really like the busker theme and Tom's bland, serious performance works brilliantly with the part he is playing in the whole bank sequence. Max's acting also makes the video much more clearer too.

I honestly think that our class has produced brilliant work and some of the best student music videos I have seen, because most of them just fail to be honest and you can tell what age bracket and educational level they are at, but I find that all of ours are very high and we all have great promise for the future.

If I had more time...

If we were given extra time to do our digipak and poster, here are the improvements I'd make:

First off, I would create the whole booklet using the other photographs I took, because there were loads.
I would've made my draft of a real digipak too, using an actual digipak design CD case I already own.
Create a few extra bonuses and stickers to put on my digipak and in the booklet

For the poster:
Put quote marks around the quote!
Improved the font work and what the poster actually says
Put an image of the actual digipak on the poster
The band's website and record label

Final Digipak;

Here is a screengrab of me editing my digipak and poster together using photoshop.
I used the images I took on the Nikon of the Alice in Wonderland themed objects. I didn't feel it was necessary to manipilate the images, just place them in position and add the text.
I used the template we used a while back whilst making examples. This really helped me know where to place the images.

Here are my end results;

The Front Cover and back.
The front is of the pocket watch with the bookmark of the book going round the top of the watch.
The album's title is made in the style of a child's writing, due to the main theme of the album design is fairytales, mostly Alice in Wonderland and Snow White. I used the newer pocket watch because it is readable and brighter, aswell as having a chain.
The font for the bands name is in a retro style, french font and the colour relates to the ribbon and cover of the book. I continued this font throughout the digipak.
The middle is a different font but the same colour and has the O in shadows a full colour.
The back consists of a page with the white rabbit in the background blurred, and the older, darker stop watch in the foreground. I made the text the same as the band's name on the front cover, and also joined the song names up together as I have always been a fan of this on CD's. The text goes around the pocketwatch and I also included the record label and barcode.


The Insides of the CD case, which would be made from cardboard. The first is of the opening page, which behind includes the booklet with lyrics and imagery of the band and more of the album design style. Next to it is the CD featuring all the recorded tracks. The CD's design continues on from the background image of the apple and stop watch.
The one underneath is of a image which includes what can be found on the bonus Blu-Ray or DVD Disc(Depending on which the audience bought). I made the text fit around the teacup with one of the text sideways.
The one next to it is of the disc, which again, continues on from the background image.
This whole section would fold out.


This is an example of what a page from the booklet would look like. It includes the lyrics to the song Shadows with the apple in the foreground and a blurred out background for where the text goes.


And here is the poster which would feature in magazines etc.
I wanted it to be almost completely different to the album's design and more like the music video we produced. However, I continued using the same fonts as the album.
I know the poster imagery is not as strong as the album's, but I wanted this because the album gives it a sense of mystery and a completely different feel to the video and poster in general, showing they are not just a stereotypical one style band.

1903;

The first ever Alice In Wonderland film.

After watching this, because it's such an old film reel(100+ years), you can tell how broken it is, majorly and bits skip back and forward with the movements, one minute the actor is on one side, then the next, the other, then they would be back again where they started.
I think this gives the video as a whole a really creepy, disturbing feel even though it's just an innocent film which has been wrecked during the years.

I find it fascinating that such an old filmreel has survived all these years and really enjoyed it. It gives a perspective of how they would have viewed Lewis Carroll's classic tale more than ten years after it was published.

Burton's Vision;

Last friday, Christina, Elliott and I all went to see Burton's re-imaging of Alice in Wonderland.

It was very visual and had fantastic CGI effects and also the acting was perfect aswell as the costume and prop designs.

Because it's a Tim Burton film, of course it was a lot darker than Walt Disney's not as successful animation feature length.

Although Burton's wasn't actually 'Alice in Wonderland' it was more of her coming back, like Through the Looking-Glass, it had a whole flashback sequence which involved her adventures the first time round quoting the book, during this was a stop-watch in the corner and going over the main scene.

Tomorrow after completing our digipaks, I am hoping to quickly film my boyfriend's pocket watch(As seen below, skeletal one) with the hands moving, then we will blend this quick sequence over some of the clips in our video.

Photography for Digipak Final;

I have been taking photographs for my digipak using the Nikon DX from college.
I focused on certain objects mostly forward to give it a blur effect for where the text could possibly go.

The mise-en-scene I used included;
*A pink table cloth
*Lewis Caroll's Alice In Wonderland hardback
*An old, red hardback book
*Two pocket watches
*A bright red apple
*Antique teacup and saucer
*An image of John Tenniels original illustration with pink highlighted in parts


Here are a few examples of the images I took;

Poster Help;

On Au Revoir Simone's site, they have downloadable press quotes about the band.
I find this will help me when I come to put a quote on my actual digipak, because it will give me an idea of what the public think of them already.



This also seems to be the only relatively poster I can find of an advertisement of them;

Comparing Digipaks;

The two digipaks that most interested me were Sven and Elliott's.
This is because they are both doing the same song and footage, except their videos are both edited differently and so are their digipaks.

This is Sven's;

I really like this, it reminds me of my favouritest film ever American Psycho and it's marketing.
It gives quite a dark feel to it but also makes it seem like a diary. I actually think this works really well with the style of music Michelle Branch makes, as it is all very pop sounding but has a dark meaning to it. I also really like the layout and how the fonts are used, however the song titles should be a bit lower down on the cover.

Now, here's Elliott's;

As you can see, it is A LOT brighter than Svens and has the whole feel of the music video produced along side it. I like how bright it is but again, they have both used dripping paint, which looks really great in both. The only problem I find it Elliott's is that the front cover's image says 'I'm No Alone' which doesn't actually make sense, I know the image just got cut but perhaps another one might be better. Again, reminds me of my favouritest film ever American Psycho, with the paint dripping on a bright background, which instead of being like the marketing, it's like the opening of the film, where things represent murderous objects or just blood.
I like the fact he has used screengrab images or ones taken on day of shoot for his digipak too.

Overall, these are both obviously not completed so we'll have to wait and see.

Haunted by your eyes;

Today whilst editing our footage together, Sophie and I were quite literally, haunted by her eyes!
We noticed a while back that randomly during the end of the spinning sequence, eyes pop up, we quite like this idea but we did not know where about this was coming from.

We deleted the stop motion effect to see if it was on the clip, but it wasn't, and it wasn't underneath either, so we put the effect back on and deleted the face that kept popping up.
The thing is... it kept coming back! No matter what we did they would still be there and we had no idea why.
To resolve this issue, we just deleted the clip it kept happening on and replaced it with another one of her spinning. This seemed to solve the problem.
Anyway, we did actually want the eyes to be faded and placed over the top of some of the spinning clips, to make it not so long, like said in most of the feedback.
I got Elliott to help with this, to erase the background of her face to just have the eyes popping out, thing is when we first did this we lost her eyelashes when she opened her eyes so we had to re-do it again.

We also added fades and a short clip of her by the church wall to stop it dragging on for too long.

Today we also started finding cut away clips to use when she stops singing.
We will continue this on Friday and of course add effects and finish our project.

Digipak;

So far on my digipak I have done one image, this is because the Nikon camera ran out of battery and is now on charge and also some of the props I want to use are unavailable at this time.

But, with the image I do have, I've been trying out different techniques using photoshop on this image. I think this may be an inside album art image as well as the poster. I have been getting feedback off Christina at the same time aswell as help for this work.

I will be asking for the Nikon camera this evening and possibly tomorrows aswell to take the photographs for my digipak.

Continuing editing;

This morning we at Coleridge to work on our music videos.
Of course this time we had the feedback from our peers and one of our lecturers for our rough cut.
Ours was mostly positive, main points were good use of costume, location and camera shots aswell as lip sync, but our negative was that the spinning goes on too long, some shots seem darker/lighter than others, one shot is out of sync. The problem is, the laptops at Long Road make the videos look completely different than the ones at Coleridge. This is annoying because I think most of the videos got comments on how dark or bright their footage is.

Sophie and I continued editing the video, we just continued picking different lip synced shots to put in the lyric sections. We also tried out an effect on final cut express Steve showed me a while a go. The effect is Stop Motion Blur, this makes the moving sections of the image dissolve into eachother giving it a ghost effect and also makes the footage faster, although we still need to alter this sequence by adding other cut aways to it.

We have finished finding the right shots for the lyrics and will continue editing wednesday morning at Coleridge, this time finding all the cut aways to use and due to it being all day, testing and using different effects on our video.
I am starting to feel quite positive about our project and think we may be finished before the deadline.

Feedback for rough Cut

In todays lesson, we all wrote feedback for each groups rough cut video.

Here is what our group got back.


Positive;
Great costumes x5
Variety and great locations x7
The setting works really well with the track
Tension at the beginning with the girl outside the church.
Nice scenes
The spinning works well with the middle eight
Nice Gothic feel
Good use of effects At the time, we hadn't actually used any
Great shots
Good use of the rule of thirds
Very good lipsync and acting x2
The greenhouse style scenes work really well
Moving shots work really well
I like the contrast of the camera panning down the church and then panning up your performer x2
Using the eyes to change costume x2
Church setting is good

Negative;
Some of the shots last too long we have changed this by shortening them down and adding more cut aways
A few clips in the first ten seconds are too bright They're not, the laptops are just weird
More cut aways x2 being done at the moment
Bland shots Which ones?
Spinning shots held too long x7 Yeah, we knew this it was just there to fill up the gaps, we've sorted this out now.
Lipsync out in one shot x3 We've checked over and over again and so has Pete and none of them are, we just think it's vimeo's time delay because I thought this about everyones
Starting her at the end of the path and not showing her walking down it She walks down it now
Barn shots are a bit too dark Again, it's the laptops, they're very bright normally
More lipsyncing is needed We've done this
Use more church shots We didn't have that many to start off with, due to it being very wet and cold, however we have added some more cut aways of it
Add more than just spinning We've added eyes and her by the church now

Rough Cut;

Here is the rough cut of our video, it is obviously not a complete production and has no added effects or all of the footage in the correct place, it's just a rough draft of our video, a rough cut...

Shadows rough Cut Angelica Sophie Liam from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Enjoy the spinning as it goes on forever!

Rough Cut Deadline;

Today is the day that our rough-cuts have to completed and uploaded to Vimeo by the end of the session.

we started earlier today, to get in an extra lesson of editing.

Sophie has been lip-syncing the different segments of footage all morning. I am very pleased she is doing this because it helps when I get my chance after break to experiment with stop-motion style effects and also makes it easier and a lot more quicker when it comes to editing all of the footage to a sequence together.

I am finding that our footage is looking great and has real potential for our music video.

Hopefully after break or later on in this session today I will be able to try out different effects and editing techniques to see which will match our original idea for the video's footage.

We do have a few clips which do not have the music however, but this is because we can use it during the instrumental bits.

Here is a screengrab of the progress so far;

We have both had a bit of a technical fault with final cut express because it kept needing to render whenever we moved the footage. This was very irritating because it took up to six minutes to render each time! Luckily Nick has sorted this out now and has shown us how to stop this problem, we change the reel time to dynamic, not full which shows the footage a bit less quality but when we want to watch the full thing back again in high, we change it back to full and then wait for it to render at the end, which saves a lot more time.

I am pleased Nick has fixed this fault because it happens to me a lot.

Digipak idea;

Because we were unable to create the book for our video, perhaps the booklet could feature this, I think this might even work better because it could include the whole story with illustrations and might be a good selling point for the digipak.

Another idea is to include a bit of the wig used in the 'Shadows' video in each of the limited edition digipaks. Lady Gaga did this for hers, however this cost £90, also Mindless Self Indulgence did something similar with their latest album, by including a clipping of the vocalist's suit that he wore in one of the videos and also at their concerts.
This is a good selling point for major fans of the performer, but may be not that good for Au Revoir Simone.

What I learnt from others;

From the other digipak ideas I looked at, the font used and style of the whole have been very basic.

They also do not consist of photoshop elements(one of them did).
Only one had produced a poster, however it did not have very good imagery but the wording was excellent and just like you'd see in a glossy magazine.
Most of the digipaks I looked at weren't very interesting and would not draw me in to buy the record(Even though I don't 'Judge a CD by it's cover', it does have an effect on the item as a whole, due to the record needing correct and good imagery and also a clear, understandable font.

I find that if these people would like to use a very plain font, they should just stick to one, plain colour which blends in with the rest of the imagery or stands out just a little bit, not too much.

I haven't had any ideas from what I have seen so far, people seem to go for a 'tree' theme with the Au Revoir Simone track, which is understandable because they have an 'earthy' sound and also their album covers in the past have mostly generated around this. This makes me pleased that I have come up with something completely different than this for that track and have mine based around a peachy, pinky colouring with antique objects and a classic novel, which our video is sort of based around. The editing I am using makes the imagery seem old and gives an edgy feel to it. The song we chose has a classic, light hearted sound to it, but with quite dark lyrics, I hope my digipak shows this in all it's light.

I am going to stick more to the images than that of our performer or band, because personally, I find album art which is more abstract a lot more memorable than those which have the singer/band in every image, however if you had a track like Michelle Branch's, which is very pop, it is the generic idea to consist around the artist and what she looks like, but, I do much prefer those which just have the artist inside the cover or on the back.

Feedback for Digipak ideas;

In Thursday's first lesson, we were all asked to go round and write feedback about one person on each table's digipak drafts.

The feedback I got was;
Composition- style- set up- of materials and texture.

Colour/imagery- sets atsmophere of the music video genre.

Typography- Sketches of blue colour in imagery reflects colour of the font.

Generic conventions- Colour chosen, professional insight used.

Your font seems so randomly placed but I really like the imagery, you should put an effect on your own photos like the one you found on flickr.
Maybe you should re-take your photos from different angles also. Yeah, the font is randomly placed because the image I found on Flickr wasn't very large, but of course I will not be using this for my actual piece.
I am obviously going to re-take the draft photographs at different angles and add the same effect over them aswell. I also have an image of our performer to use for the poster and booklet.

Like the story book theme.
More text. This was only example imagery, and I had yet to add any of the text because I was just going to wait for when I have taken the photographs for this.

Capturing;

Today at Coleridge, I was late to our lesson and had all the tapes!

This was very unfortunate, but as soon as I got in I started capturing both tapes.

I had a bit of trouble with the HD tape, but Elliott helped out and again, the footage was filmed in DV, however I don't find this that bad because our video will consist on lots of edits to make the footage stop-motion style and the movement with the wind on the footage is very stop-motion style, which is a great, natural effect for our video.

We have yet to edit our footage together, but shall be doing this on friday for our draft.

We really need to focus on the editing on friday, but as I keep saying, Steve will help out on this, but I shall be asking Nick aswell to see if he has any ideas.

Now I am off filming for Elliott and Sven again.

Extended;

Monday afternoon, due to not being able to be notified about changes to our timetable, I had set out with my group and our performer to film after tutorial on monday, however the timetable had been changed and tutorial started when we planned to film and a new lesson has been assigned after this.
I was quite annoyed that nobody had told me this, because Fran came in especially to do the filming, and so was did I, because after filming all morning for Sven and Elliott, I felt all ill again.
Anyway, Liam had an exam and Sophie needed her EMA, so Fran and I went off filming on our own and managed to get the rest of the footage completed in time for editing at Coleridge today.

Another thing which annoyed me was ALL of the footage on saturday was filmed on a DV tape! Because I was performing in another groups video on friday I did not get a chance to notice this, so the footage done today is in HD(thank goodness) and of course all the footage I did today is the main stuff we need in our video(The greenhouse thing, wondering around the forest)
Again, it was lovely and sunny, so Fran wasn't too cold in the costume.
I think that possibly this footage is better than what was shot on saturday, which is a shame, but it has more colour and it's in HD.
Obviously I couldn't take any 'proof' pictures because it was just me and the performer. We did find it a bit of a struggle just being us two because the equipment is quite heavy and it was hard moving the speakers around and the camera. I tried to do some hand-held(you can tell I've been near Elliott) and I think it went okay, except the camera is too heavy for me.
Overall, I think me and Fran got some great footage, but the speakers Nick kindly leant us ran out! But we did shoot half an hour's worth of stuff and they did end at just the right time!

Elliott/Sven;

On Friday, I had to perform in Elliott and Sven's music video as the main vocalist. For this we went to the drama room at Coleridge and did a band performance, with Sven, Liam(in my group) and mine and Elliott's friend, Glenn.
I had to quickly learn the lyrics and perform with the mic on a stand.
They only had a set amount of time with the instruments so I hope their footage is what they wished for and wasn't too rushed.

In the afternoon, Elliott and I went and shot some more for his video on the stage of Coleridge, quick, simple costume change and an acoustic guitar. Again, we had to return the instrument on time so we didn't have much time again.

I sat on a stool in the middle of an empty stage and had to fake to play the guitar as well as mime. I forgot how much the strings hurt without a pick but I managed to cope through this.

Monday morning, and it was off shooting again at long road, for the painting scene.

Luckily, it was a very sunny, warm day but that did seem to cause a problem with the exposure on the camera. My group had the same problem on saturday, but for some reason it did no difference.

I was a bit ill today as well and found it difficult, but I really do hope that the footage is all good.

Filming;

Today, we finally(!) did some footage for our video.
We went out to Bottisham to film in the barn there like said on our opening plans for the video.
We got there at about 1pm and spent until 4.30pm filming in Bottisham all together.
The first parts we got are of Fran without the costume, inside and around the barn, for this we used two abandoned barns and also a tree for her to lay on.

I did the filming whilst Liam was in control of the music and Sophie and I both directed Fran, our performer.
My boyfriend, Alex, also helped out too, by seeking more locations for us to shoot in and being a props man helping us carry all the props and equipment around the village.

We had a quick costume change after doing all this and went back to Alex's for some refreshments too aswell as changing the costume and taking a break after two and a half hours of shooting.




After the change of costume, we started to go off to a graveyard nearby, then it started to rain! Luckily, I had an umbrella so we held that over the camera whilst filming to protect the equipment.
When we got to the graveyard, there was about five grave stones, so we had to make do with the small space we had with these in. As it was raining, I was a bit worried about our performer, but she said it was all okay because she had the wig on.
We shot around the church too, we did a quick shot of the tower clock because it was very Alice in Wonderland style, and all together the church is very old and quite wrecked looking.


During all of this, the tape started to run out, so we had to very quickly just film key bits of the song then stop and start during non versus.
This was VERY irritating, because we had a lot more to do, we had used up all 32 minutes of our tape, Alex said that this is because it is an HD camera and that takes up more memory, but if we had known this in advance I think we would've asked for two tapes over this weekend.

We're all free again on monday afternoon so we shall shoot what we wished to do anyway and find another location aswell to make up for our loss of footage today.

Watching the tape back, I am very pleased with our costume footage, and think that maybe we should've shot her in the costume sooner, but getting to the barn location was horrendous, so I guess we couldn't.
We'll get Fran to wear the costume again on monday.
Also, Alex had some garden ornaments of forest animals, so perhaps he could bring these on monday and we could have a Snow White style shot of her sitting on the grass with them surrounding her.

Makeup;

These photos are examples of what the makeup might look like(excuse my terrible face).
I tried on two pairs of different eyelashes to see which would work better- feathers or mega long lashes.

The feathers were a lot more better to actually see and move around with, however the long ones weren't very confident.