Magazine cover

After researching some magazine covers for ideas we really like the magazine advert for 'Friendly Fires'.




And we feel that for our advert we would like to have a photograph on the background, followed by a picture of the band, or in this case the artist in the foreground with the writing at the top of the advert.

Also, with the idea taken from this advert, we like the quote underneath the band title , so we feel that we may use this when creating our magazine advert.

Covers

For our magazine cover we decided we would have the photographs taken from the book which our girl was using in the video of her artwork as we feel there were effective. We are also going to try and put a photograph of the girl on top of this, or a screen shot of the video.After taking photographs of the artwork we were not sure how they would turn out, but after uploading them to photoshop we feel that they were a success.

Digipaks

We have been looking on the internet for examples of digipaks and here are a few that we liked.

This is one by 'Oasis' that we liked as we feel that it has a nice colour scheme and the pictures and general design fits well to the music.









We found a 6 panel digipak which we liked the idea of because it gives oppertunity to put more information and more pictures into the digipak.

For our Digipack we need to either create a track list or find Amsterdam's track list. We choose to find Amsterdam's track list and use this. We found out that the album which the song we done our music video on 'Glorious day' is called 'The Journey'. On this album there are 13 tracks these are:
1. Intro
2. Takin' on the world
3. Glorious day
4. Nostalgia
5. The Journey (Full version)
6. You're a phoney
7. The gangster
8. Love phenomenon
9. Does this train stop on merseyside?
10. John
11. Joe's kiss
12. The emmigrant
13. A curse
We will use this track list on the back of our Digipack.

Finishing the project

We have now finished the video part of the project, we feel that overall it was successful even thought it was very different to our original idea and we did not use much of the original footage which we filmed.

Our original ideas consisted of the girl , Emily , walking up a hill and singing the lyrics to the song. After filming this footage we were advised that this may be uninteresting to the viewer, so we then filmed some more footage of the girl walking around Cambridge, which involved her walking around shops, and going to get a cup of coffee.










After filming this footage we thought that, this also would not keep the viewer entertained so we went to kettles yard gallery and filmed her drawing the pieces of art into a sketchbook. We felt that this was effective and worked well in contrast to the other footage. Another advantage of filming at the gallery is that it shows what the girl does in her spare time, which is different to the sterotpyical teenage life of getting a coffee in 'starbucks' as the previous footage had implied.

Finishing Effects

When editting our final footage, we decided not to change all of the footage into black and white. We decided only to change the footage where Emily is walking on the road into black and white, this is because we feel that if we change the whole project into black and white with one colour, it will reduce the effectiveness.

Instead of doing the effect for each individual clip, we did the whole process for one clip, and we then clicked on the clip, then clicked copy, and clicked onto the new clip where we wanted the effect to be and clicked Paste attributes.

Effects

As mentioned in a previous blog , in parts of our video the sky in the background is too dark for the video. When we watched the video back and found this, we were not too sure that there would be a simple way around it. After exploring the settings on Final Cut, we;

• Clicked on the piece of footage which we wanted to lighten

we then:

• clicked on effects(at the top)
  
• clicked on video filters
• clicked on 'colour correction'
• clicked on 'colour corrector'

then we moved the bar up and down to get it to how we wanted it to look.Which has changed the colour of the sky from



to








We feel that this has been successful and it works much better than the left hand side screen grab, we will be putting this effect on the rest of the clips which are this dark.

Review Of Kettles Yard Footage

Today we watched back the footage which we filmed Friday 6th November for the first time. Our opinions on the footage which we captured is that there are good points and bad points.

A positive point is that there was good lighting in the gallery which we went to, this helped in our video as lighting is a problem which we have had in the past ( the light at the end of our video being too dark).
A negative point however, is that there is too many clips which are too similar to eachother, such as in these three screen grabs, although very different they are also quite similar.

We feel though, that the footage which we captured on Friday November 6th was successful, fits in well with the rest of the video , and looks much better than the previous footage which we had.(as shown below)

Kettles Yard Filming

We went to Kettles yard gallery to film for our music video, when we got there we were met by a lady who showed us around the gallery and told us the rules and regulations behind filming in the public gallery.

Whilst filming we had to be careful of the photographs/ pictures around us when we were using the tripod, as they are valuable pieces of art. Also whilst filming we had to try hard not to get our reflections in the shot when we were filming, we solved this by getting the camera at the right angle.

We felt that we had a variety of shots, we included some over the shoulder shots, some close up shots, and some long shots, we felt that each of these were effective in their own ways.

The filming for us , was a success , this is a VERY good thing as it was the last day we could do any filming ! We got some clips of Emily drawing the pieces of art which we felt was effective as this showed what she does in her spare time! :)

Filming

Tomorrow on 6th November 09 we are planning to go out and do some more filming. We are planning to do this at 9am at Kettles yard near castle hill. We telephoned them to find out if it was possible for us to do filming here as it is a public gallery. The lady who we spoke to on the phone said that this was fine as long as we attended when it was not public opening hours.

By filming at this place, we are hoping to capture Emily drawing some of the art pieces around the gallery, this is to show that she does something else outside of the stereotypical student life( getting a coffee from Starbucks etc.). This also adds another element to the music video, which is something different to her just walking around.. we feel as though this adds an `artistic` element to the video.

Editing

We fell as though lots of things are going well in our editing, however we also feel as though somethings aren't going as well as planned.

Things that are going well:
1.We have managed to get Emily's lips moving in time to the song lyrics. This is important as it makes it more believable to the audience that Emily is singing the words. At times this was difficult and took alot of time however once we got the hang of it we found it easier. Having the background track from filming also helped to make lip syncing alot easier.
2. Near the beginning of the song "were crazy" is sung. During this part Emily is walking along a street. At this specific part she looks to her right hand side and her eyes looks to her right hand side. We feel this is effective as it shows she has a bit of craziness about her.

Things that aren't going well:
1. In the chorus Emily is walking along a street singing. Everything is in black and white except her jacket. This was effect was put on through editing. However the red is also on Emily's lips. This is something we need to try and change.

Editting Time

We felt as though we need some extra time, outside of lessons to finish editting our project.
The times that we are going to dedicate to our project is today, November 4th from 12.25-

If this is not enough time for editing we will be editting tuesday evening from 4.10-8pm.These extra sessions will be as well as our three weekly lessons. We are hoping that this will be enough time for us to edit our video.

filming problems

As we were filming in public places we had to be awawre of where we were and were not allowed to film. When filming in `Starbucks` we thought that we would need permission to film here so we asked a member of staff if this was acceptable, he told us that we were allowed as long as we filmed in the corner of the room quietly, ade sure that we did not disrupt anyone, and made sure that we did not film anybody who did nto give their consent to be in our video.

The filming in starbucks was overall successful.

The other problem we had was that we were filming in the Grand Arcade when a security guard came along and told us that we couldn`t film there, but as we began to pack our things away, he told us that it would be okay for us to film there as long as we did not get any shops in any of our shots.

Filming.. Again!

We went out filming today (November 3rd) as we needed to film the parts which were not of a high enough standard for our music video. We only filmed small cutaways for the video which we may use to `cover up` footage which was not very successful, in our roughcut.

The cutaways had to be of what our performer would be doing in her spare time so after much discussion we thought we would film a cafe or a coffee shop, we then decided on `Starbucks Coffee`. The other places we decided to film were in the local shopping centre, the `Grand Arcade`, and then we used public toilets to film our performer applying make up to her face, as this is something that , in her opinion she does regularly.

Feedback

The rest of the media group gave us some feedback on our roughcut

The overall view from the group is that we could improve by;

• Having a variety of shots
• Make the transitions sharper
• Make the shots less shakey
• Make it less dark at the end

We should change;

• The variety of shots
• 'The beginning'
• Give the other character something to do or not include him

What we still have to do;

• Cutaways
• More editting
• More Performance
• Re-do with strong light

The strengths of our music video were;

• Lipsynching is good
• Good effects
• Good use of locations
• Original
• Performer did a good job
• Black& White and One colour looks good.

We are pleased with the feedback from the group, and we will be trying to improve on the negative points that have been brought up about our roughcut video.Although on some of the points it is quite difficult to do so, for example with the points about it being dark towards the end it is hard to find a time where we can all film and it is still light as the clocks have been put back now so it gets darker earlier, and we finish college at 4.10pm.
However we will try to film in any frees that we have.

What Needs To Be Done?

After watching our roughcut we decided that there are many things that we need to do in making it into our final video here are some ideas that we have had.

We feel that there are some parts of the video where our performer looks convincing, but there are some bits where unfortunately, she either forgets the words or does not look convincing. So, to fix this we are hoping to re-film these parts, most of these scenes are highlighted in our blog post " Unsuccessful shots".

A problem that we had whilst filming, which could also occur again if we re-film parts, and lose track of time is that it got dark quickly, and due to the fact that we were busy filming, we did not notice how dark it had got until we watched over our footage again. We can try to avoid this by going to our location earlier, thereore catching more daylight in our shots, and less darkness.

The problems we could have with this though is being able to find a day/ time that all of us( group & performers) are free to film, due to having very different college timetables.We are going to film most of Emily`s parts either on a Monday(when we finish college at 3.25) or a Thursday morning, when the earliest one of us starts college is 10.50am. Unfortunately Tom can not make these times so we will have to film at the same time we did last time, but due to Tom only having a small part in our video we will be able to get his filming done on a Friday afternoon at around 4.30pm-5.00pm.
This week is half term, so we will not be able to film this week, we will however, be able to film the week afterwards, on Monday 2nd and Friday 6th November.

Blog

After a small feedback session from our media teacher, on the blogs he told us that we have the "best blog" in our class. Obviously we are very pleased with this comment, as we have put in a lot of hard work, and a lot of our spare time.
We hope to be able to keep up this standard in both the blogs, and the video.
Although it has seemed difficult at times, we now feel as though it is paying off!


This was a quick overview of our blog, and the blog posts that we have done.

Email

We e-mailed the band again via http://www.myspace.com/
as we wanted to know what they thought about our blog! We also wanted to know what they thought about the final project!
Here is the e-mail that we sent to them

" Hi again , we have produced our video, however at the moment it is just a roughcut. The final piece will be posted on our blog when it is finished which should be around November 12th 2009. The link to see how our project has gone, and the roughcut is http://www.blogger.com/home?pli=1
we are group 52.
We would greatly appreciate it if you could give us some feedback on this, and let us know how we have done in your opinion! Thank you! Natasha & Abbie x"


We are hoping that the band will contact us with their view on our video,whether this be compliments, or constructive criticism.

Unsuccessful shots

Although we feel that our project went well,after producing and reviewing the roughcut of our project , we feel that there are some shots that did not go as well as we had initially thought;

This is the main shot that we feel did not go as well as it could have, this is because our performer forgot the words, but tried to improvise, resulting in her looking very confused!(as shown in the photograph). Due to the fact that, at this point it was beginning to get dark, we thought that this shot had gone well enough, and we could cover it again at a different location.Unfortunately due to being rushed, and having to fit in the rest of the song as well , we did not have time to re-film this part of the song, at this location or another.We will however, be re-filming this part for our final piece.

This is another shot that we feel did not go too well, we think this because our performer is looking to the side, which we think implies that she feels nervous, or scared about doing this video for us. We will be re-filming this bit, so that our performer does not look as awkward as she does in this shot.

Best Shots From Filming

We like this shot as it is close to her face, and you can see her mouth clearly moving to the lyrics, we feel this is effective because it is necessary for the audience to believe that the performer is singing the song , and in time to the track.

We also like this shot as shortly after this she puts her hand across the camera on the word 'edge',wearing work clothes, then pulls her hand away, reappearing wearing a red jacket, and a dress(trying to show that she is getting ready for the weekend to begin, and for work to end).Although we had to film these shots over about 20 minutes, the way that we have editted them to fit together it looks as though we have filmed it straight away.




We also really liked this shot, this is the ending to our video whereby the two performers are standing at the top of the hill, close together with the building in the background brightly lit up and at the very end of the video the camera moves up pointing at the sky.We feel that this is effective because the song is called 'Glorious Day', and we feel that it is showing that she has had a brilliant day, everything has turned out the way she has planned, and that now(in this shot) it is the end of her 'Glorious Day, but a very good ending :)


This was the final shot of the video !