This slideshow of our best photographs is from our white studio shoot. We only picked photos with the whole band in, so that they all get equal representation. We wanted the images of them holding some instruments. As this is a typical convention for indie-folk bands and explains that it’s their music/ them playing. We chose the 6 best photos, out of over 300 images. Even Though we haven’t used the single shots, we made sure to follow our shot list ideas, in case we needed them. By having two of us photograph on different cameras, we got different lighting and angles. So, as a group, two of us worked the cameras, and one did the directing/ lighting set-up. We agreed that most of the shots for our front cover should have all 3 band members in it. We might include some two shots, as long as it’s not all the same members. Our aim is to advertise all band members as a group/ equals. I think our photoshoot was successful, we gained a good range of images, that we will be able to use.
Contact Sheet or Graphics/illustrations Drafts Ideas:
These are our contact sheets from our shoot in the white studio…
Reflection:
We managed to get a good amount of photos, which means we have more options to choose from. Some of our images are overexposed due to the flash and camera settings. Whereas, we also have some shots that are black or too dark. Luckily, most of our shots have good lighting, and the white studio is a good place to plan and implement/ manipulate how our results turned out. We took a range of closer, longer, and angled shots. We also took some of the band together, then each as an individual. We also took a few two shots. Some of the photos did not have any props so we had the option to use propless photos if we wanted to.
Focus Forward:
The majority of our photos are serious. Which we wanted, but we do want to add a sense of humor/ quirkiness. So we will plan to do this in editing. We will add some more cartoon-like effects. We many also add a filter (like pop art) or change the colours.
For our covers, we had a selection of different ideas. For the mockup front cover, we chose our best, most thought-out idea. Our stars will be dressed smart-casual, looking pleased. We might also have them pose with their instruments for some shots (which isn’t shown in this example). This will display the key meaning that they are hopeless romantics, happy to be experiencing love. We went for this type of appearance because it’s similar to our research on similar bands’ CD covers. The colours are the same and the mise-en-scene connects to our genre. We placed the title of our band’s name, then the album’s name, in the middle of the composition. This is a common convention. We added a small heart, instead of a dot, for the ‘i’ in ‘romantics’. This is another hint at the album’s theme. The name of our album is “lighthouse state of mind” which is a reference to a possible cover location shot, the lighthouse in our music video, and the idea that he wants to be alone with his lover. We think that a lighthouse is a romantic scene (particularly for a date).
Our back cover idea is that we involve the heart sunglasses. These are great props. They’re quirky and add a sense of humour to the love story/ stories. They will be faced with looking out to sea. Like the sight, you can see over the railings at the lighthouse. The back idea is simple, like most indie-folk covers. The colours are soft and neutral for the background, with bright red glasses to add contrast. We think our back cover has a good balance of details and doesn’t look under or overwhelming. It fits the narrative as well as our other front cover design. We involved the crucial aspects for a back cover; a barcode, a record label logo, copyright regulations and some placeholder text for our track titles. We decided the song names would look cool in the lens of the sunglasses (especially since they’re black and would make the text easily legible).
We briefly discussed some ideas for the inside of our CD. We thought we could do a close-up guitar, and spread the landscape across the two pages. We would have it from the strings to the hole of the guitar. This would link to our band’s musical skills since two of them are guitarists.
Possible track title ideas:
Romance never dies
Endlessly in love
Hooked
Hung up
Dandelion Dreamer
Lighthouse state of mind
Stuck on this feeling
Lost in your eyes
Meet under the moonlight
Falling
Sweet torture
Otherside of the door
Focus Forward:
This has been a really useful way for us to plan and share our ideas for our digipak front cover, as a group. We were able to get photos, composition and text ideas. We used some images from Google as inspiration. That we will create ourselves for the real thing. The overall meaning of doing this helps us understand how we will portray our stars, to fit our genre. It has helped us plan what we need to do next, and who is involved. We will make sure to stick to the typical formal and general conventions, however, we may change some of the ideas we’ve produced. As this was a rough, quick idea and we may get better ones as we make it.
This is the slideshow of my digital conventions analysis…
Reflection:
In this slideshow, I individually looked at a professional album’s front and back cover. I wrote about the conventions they use to achieve an effective digipack. A good album cover should include a; masthead, album title, star, image/ artwork, tracklist, bar code, credits (including record label), and copyright information. I captioned each technical convention I could see, and then explained what it achieves. I mentioned the meanings of each aspect and what it suggests to the audience. The most important features are the conventional ones, like portraying the neat, clean, and classical aesthetic typically used by folk bands.
Focus Forward:
This slideshow has helped me figure out what the key conventions of an album cover are. Which will be extremely useful when we create our own. I also know what effect each element has on making a professional piece of work. As a group, we tried to look at different examples of artists’ album covers (within our bands’ genre). The more key conventions we have the better the album will be. We may also add some generic conventions; which are for specific genres (unlike formal ones). I now know what will heavily contribute to and adapt our digipack to make it better.
This is our moodboard of the looks, fonts, styles, charities, social media pages, digipacks, etc… that are relevant to our genre and main character stars. It includes at least 20 photos and captions on the relevant information/ ideas revolving our digipack. We made this as a group and summarized why we added the pictures we did. We looked at what these components had in common with our theme and music video. We looked at the same locations and typefaces that the other album covers used.
Focus Forward:
This padlet moodboard gave us a better understanding of our band as artists of an album, not just the song from our music video. To be able to add the connotations to our images, we needed to research our genre of music. This is good because it gives us more information on what we need to achieve to make it look realistic and professional. By thinking about our audience we were able to imagine how they will perceive our work/ artists. Overall, looking at these inspirations has shown us how to approach the design of our Digipak/ Social Media Page. If I needed to make another music video, I would make another lookbook of some type because it helps display what we need to achieve visually.
This is our google slideshow on our mission statement and package branding…
Reflection:
We looked at our target audience, call to action, who the competition is, unique selling point, and mission statement. We used the website YouGov to get research a band similar to ours. This helped us confirm who our target audience is. We also spoke about different brands that would advertise or sell our artist’s music. We found out that most indie-folk bands have similar conventions in their album covers. Their social media pages also have a lot in common (looks-wise). Our unique selling point is mainly the story between our main characters, and how we use mise-en-scene to portray it. We listed a group of names to choose from so we have more options. It will save us time, instead of trying to plan out album/ band/ song names, when we get to creating the album covers.
Focus Forward:
So after doing this slideshow, we now have more knowledge of what we want to produce and achieve. It’s helped us understand what some professional indie-folk bands make and sell. We will use the bands, we mentioned in this google slides, for our padlet lookbook. This blog post will also help us explain how the elements in our production work together to create a sense of branding. Our mission statement will be used to refer back to when we create some of our social media posts. It also informs our decision-making process and provides clarity of our groups’ thoughts for our digipack. Overall, this research will make our digipack more fitting for our target audience.
This is the final draft of our music video, for the song ‘Ho Hey’ by The Lumineers…
Reflection:
To summarise, we took our feedback from draft 4 and experimented with editing the video with/ without the ideas. We decided that the comments did help make our music video better. Overall, the adjustments we made were minor but very effective. We fixed the timings for the effects, the length of the longer clips, and the colour corrections. We also fixed the slow-mo speed effect on the locker clips, so that it matches the video clip speeds of our other scenes. Finally, we added a couple different transitions. I think this helped make our video look more professional, and run smoother. Our stars fit the conventions and appearances of the genre. I also think our main star’s story/ image is clear. Our music video leads up to him (the nerd) confessing his feelings for her (the popular girl) and them ending up together. Some of his mise-en-scene conveys his nerdy self, for example; the bowtie, braces, and glasses. We used various shot types to keep the viewer’s interest. I think we did very well at editing to the beat. Particularly, when we matched the heart movements and locker door shutting to the music. I also liked the jumps for the last clip (on the bigger, slower, final beats). We did include some shots of our stars lip-syncing the words too. Our star’s ideology was that he wanted an old-school romance. I think we achieved this idea and followed the brief as well as we could.
In the beginning, I wish we had known more about the cameras. We should have taken extra time to ensure we liked our shoots. We should have looked over the images at the end, before finishing the shoot. We could have done test shoots, to test the lighting and focus of the cameras. I wish we all had reminded ourselves how to change, or more importantly check our images weren’t raw files, how we change the exposure, how we focus the lens, and how to steady the tripod correctly. This could have saved us some time when editing the videos.
One significant change I would make to the narrative is that I would have a bigger build-up of the two main characters. I would have given them more interactions. This would help suggest why our main star was so in love. It would imply he never gave up or stopped trying for her. I would also consider giving him some more quirky scenes to give his character more depth and personality.
Finally, I think we got better at preparing as we did more shoots, edits and reflections. I think the most useful bit of organisation we did was make a short, accessible list on our phones. We named what shot we needed, with who, and with what props/ background. This made it easy to look over at the end, so we could tick off what we had done/ what we still needed to do.
We asked a peer to assess our music video, and give us some feedback. They marked what we did as good, bad or ok (on google docs). This gives us a clue on how much improvement certain aspects of our video needs. We got a peer, from a different class, to assess our music video. So we can see what someone, who has seen and made a different video, thinks of our work. Our peers will be doing “preferred reading” (a theory made by Stuart Hall) which means they will decode the media text and representations.
What we did well:
Our zooms into each member of the band looks good,
We got the band/shots to appear on the beat,
Our pans and tracking shot is effective,
The slow-mo we added to try and create depth to the story is good. It varies our shot types,
What we could improve:
We should change the arrangement of the text message. We could make it more clear on who is saying which part,
We still have some shots (particularly of the main singer) that are still too long,
We need to straighten the lighthouse shot,
Add more narrative shots (maybe a new scene in the middle),
Focus forward:
Being given feedback from a random media student (that hasn’t seen our music video before) means we know how our music video is perceived by others’ eyes. These comments are similar to previous ones. They don’t know the improvements we’ve already made on previous drafts either. They also won’t be biased. We will take these comments on board and use them to improve our final draft. I agree with some of their feedback, I think the narrative gets lost (and needs a new scene or story idea). I also think that some clips should be shorter, to match our other predominantly short clips. Overall, these comments are fair and helpful.
We added some of the digital art GIF heart to the first few shots of Jess and Josh in the classroom.
Instead of the shot of Josh cringing at himself, we replaced it with a new shot of Jess. We did this so that the audience gets to see more of her (part of our Specsavers’ feedback was to add more shots of our main characters’ love interest).
We filmed a new locker scene. We had Elise and Jaeden (the main characters’ friends, that are a couple) stand together and chat. This adds to the flower storyline later on.
We also changed the shots we did for the locker slightly. So we have a closer reaction shot of Josh as he gets “rejected”.
We colour correct/ brightened the colours of the park shots. So that all the green scenery behind the band is more saturated (like the other clips in the video).
By filming the message clips again we changed how we did it. We filmed Josh typing the message, and Jess reacting to it. This clears up who’s sending the message.
We also edited the phone message clips, so that a text bubble pops up. This makes the text clearer for the viewers to read.
I colour-corrected some of the clips that were darker and less colourful. Specifically, the low-angle shot of Josh singing and playing the guitar.
We made some bigger colour adjustments to all the lighthouse scenes. We made the tones much warmer, with a hint of pink. The pink gives a romantic vibe to the clips.
We fixed the position of the lighthouse clips so that the horizon is straight. This was a simple fix by rotating the clip and scaling the size up slightly.
Finally, the last change we made was to the final clip. We moved the skip to be in time with the cheering. This makes more sense.
What we will change:
We will change some of the hearts so that they are closer to the beat.
I would like to add some transitions to some of our clips. In particular, the last clips before the changes in time, story, or location.
We may also make some final minor colour corrections if it’s necessary. This will most likely be, lowering the exposure or adding some more saturation.
We still aren’t happy with the locker scene, we want to possibly speed it up. Or change how the opening of the locker looks. This could possibly be fixed by adding a transition.
Whilst rewatching our draft 4, some of our clips might still be too long. So we might try and shorten some of them.
Reflection:
Overall, I think we made a lot of improvements in this draft. I also look it looks a lot better. We now have all the footage we need, so we don’t have to worry about reshooting anything. This means we can now refine and focus on all the small details- ready for our final draft hand-in. We will also get given peer feedback that will help us with editing our final draft. I am happy with how our video is turning out, and how well our team is working together.
This is our feedback from our teacher via screencastify. He gave us some helpful advice and improvements that we can make to our music video. We will take on all the suggestions we have been given, as an outside view/ fresh pair of eyes is very useful.
Targets for development-
We need to colour correct our video clips. Some are too dark and need lighting (like the locker scenes). Then some are too dull and could be much brighter/ more colourful (particularly our performance scenes).
We also need to fix our lighthouse clips so that the horizon is straight. This will be a quick fix by increasing the image by 5% and then rotating it slightly.
In the middle of our music video, we have two performance shots that are too long. We’ve been told this by both Specsavers and Mr Gregson. We will change this by adding some smaller clips to break it up and keep the audience’s interest.
He also suggested we change the timings of our first clips, so that the story starts off more obvious.
For the locker scenes, we could do with having a reaction shot of Josh.
Finally, the last clip has a skip action at the very end. We will change this so that she starts skipping on the cue (when they say hey!).
