Things i have learnt from this cources (fig 3.c)

In the AS part of the course I built a website for a charity called P.A.A.C.T. during this task I learnt many things that helped me complete the A2 part of the course.

· Colour theory – this is the idea which tells us which colours go well together, for example Red and Green or yellow and purple, I used this to decide which colours I would use to make the final products look professional.

· Photo angles – this is the theory which suggests the connotations of different shot types, for example a low angel shot shows the focus of the shot as being powerful while as an opposite a high angel shot shows the focused as being over powered, I used this to show chose the shots for my film and my Digi-Pac and advert to convey meaning through the shots I used, for example I used shots over the actor to show that he was depressed.

· Composition – this is the theory which suggests ways to lay a shot out or where to put informational text on a image to make it look professional, probably the most used of these on adverts is the rule of thirds where the page is split into thirds, more importantly in to a one third to two third ratio, for example one third of text and two of images. I used many different shot compositions throughout the film, but mainly used the rule of thirds on the advert and on some of the shots on the Digi-Pac, most obviously on the back of the Pac, I used this as I found most of the adverts and Digi-Pac’s I studied used the rule of thirds.

· Identifying the audience – in the AS part of the course identifying my audience was fairly simple, as P.A.A.C.T. stands for parents and autistic children together, the target audience is in the name, to find a target audience for this years work was harder I had to look carefully at a number of similar songs to find out what the target audience was.

· Importance of codes and conventions – with my website last year I learnt that in that type of media the conventions should be kept as it is a new one and people aren’t use to it yet, with the three tasks I did this year I learnt that certain cods and conventions can be broken for to increase the affect on the user, for example on the Digi-Pac cover I broke the code and convention of having the singer or band on the cover.

Feed back, (fig 3.a)

This is a selection of feedback I got on my tasks, this is the feedback information that I used to alter my film, these two were collected over a email and face book.

“Hi Joe,
I was very impressed with the concept of the video - using a 'then and now' technique with the singer and his younger self and I thought the use of B&W and colour to highlight this were effective. The clever use of techniques such as reversing the film when people were coming through the Stonebow heightened the feeling of alienation and disjuncture but were not distracting in any way.
Cutting from the singer to to the actor to illustrate the words of the song was a great idea as it meant no need for subtitles with such as complex story. I thought some parts were a little too literal (the gutter sequence for example).

All in all, I was impressed by the quality of the ideas and of the techniques used.
Alan Watkins-Groves”

“I think your music video featured a good variety of camera angles and shots in it, with good use of special effects used which linked in with the music really well. The clips seemed to show the story really well and looked good when the video kept going back to show the singer. I think the ending also was very good how it was done, showing that the boy in the video was actually something the singer seemed to be singing about himself.
Overall, the video was well edited, very good and professional and told the story of the song quite well.
If there was anything I had to complain about, it's that some of the clips seemed to of been shown too long, e.g. it should of moved on to the next clip a bit sooner. Although apart from that (which is my personal preferences opinion) I think the video was really good and of professional standard.”

I also had these other comments which where seen in my evaluation.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• Firstly I showed all three products to a music lover he liked all three products and said “all three parts fit together and they all fit the theme of the song and its style”
  I then showed it to the singer, he said “All three products fit together, the only problem I have with any of them is that the film is slightly out of sync with the song.” After this I re synced the song and the film.
• Finally I showed it to a focus group, the total feedback from the group was positive with only a few easily correctable faults which I sorted out.
• From the audience feedback I learnt that I had successfully achieved my goal of making the film meet the genre and the advert and CD cover meet the film in the courses of style.

Evaluation (Fig 3)

These are the notes I made to help me with this evaluation:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• My three media products have used the forms and conventions of their products as starting points and developed from there. My film used the convention of having a grizzled singer performing the song, which is the conventions of what the genre of music obeys, my film also falls in to the convention of having filters on the film to make them look older e.g. black and white and sepia with a noise effect added on. My film brakes the conventions in two ways firstly instead of having the main character as the singer or having the singer in the back ground whilst the action takes place, our action and singer are completely separate with the only link being that at the end of the film the actor slowly fades in to being the singer. The second way that my film brakes conventions is by some of the effects, typical effects in folk/indie videos are simple fades between shots in my video we have used this effect but in a couple of places I have also used time effects on my video that cause time to go faster and slower, I have also added noise filters over all the shots to make disrupt the image again this is something that is braking the conventions of the music video as I have a stronger noise filter over the singer which makes him harder to see, this bakes the convention of being able to see the singer clearly.
• My CD cover meets the connotations of the genre by not putting the singer on the front or back cover, I how ever put the singer on the inside cover which slightly brakes the convention. There is a convention that the front cover should have very little to do with the video, I kept this convention by the only thing on linking the film and the cover is the fact that I have similar effects on each media. I keep the convention of how my Advert and CD cover keeping the same style as each other.
  
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• The Film feeds the other projects, gives them some starting points,
• The other projects have moved away from film
• Similar effects on each project
• All used same starting point the song
• Shot was entail going to be a shot from the film
  
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• Firstly I showed all three products to a music lover he liked all three products and said “all three parts fit together and they all fit the theme of the song and its style”
  I then showed it to the singer, he said “All three products fit together, the only problem I have with any of them is that the film is slightly out of sync with the song.” After this I re synced the song and the film.
• Finally I showed it to a focus group, the total feedback from the group was positive with only a few easily correctable faults which I sorted out.
• From the audience feedback I learnt that I had successfully achieved my goal of making the film meet the genre and the advert and CD cover meet the film in the courses of style.
  
• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• For the research for all the tasks I used the media product of the internet, I used sites like YouTube, daily motion and yahoo music video to find the videos I researched and analysed, I used Google to find the CD covers and the magazines.
• I used an iMac and the program Final cut pro to edit my film, to see how I did this check out Fig 2.d on my blog,
• To make the CD cover and the Magazine advert I used Photoshop on a PC, to see how check out my blog posts, 2.a and 2.b

Film Development (fig 2.d)

Before we filmed we made these notes on how to use a camera:

· Book camera

· Also given a tape – my responsibility – kept to end of editing

· Put tape in camera – press eject button – put tape in right way round in – and close the mechanism with the button - Close the case

· Camera needs to be fully charged – press the green button and flick to camera – remove lens cap with switch

· Re wind tape by setting camera to play and rewind

· Red dot means recording make sure not recoding every thing

· Don’t rewind tape on as it will lose the time code – and will take forever to up load

· Recoding – press record – count down ten seconds – stop counting out loud at 4 and mouth it – after scene wait a couple of seconds to make sure it’s done

· Don’t zoom - move closer

· Rewind at the end

· Return camera by date agreed

We started doing work on the film by actually filming the shots we would need. The first thing we filmed was the musician, we set up the shots using a tripod and we used some extra lights to brighten the shots. We started by filming a long shot of our musician, this was our base shot that we would sync up with the song, we had the musician play the song all the way through for this shot. Next we rearranged the camera for a straight up close up, we then slightly adjusted the lights, then again filmed the entire song through. Next we filmed a side on shot of the musician face, again we adjusted the lights and again we filmed the entire song. The last two shot of the musician where close ups of his hands, one strumming and one playing the cords, for each of these we used the same lighting for each shot, as the musician was growing tied at this time we only shot a short section of the song around a verse as we can reuse the shots.

The next day we filmed the actor and the main body of the video. We started, as said in the schedule, meeting the actor at the drill hall, we arrived a little early to double check we were allowed the Bar we then set up the lights and met our actor, I was playing the other roll in the scene so we set up the establishing shot and filmed it, next we filmed a close up of the actors face, moving the lights to show his face, we then moved the light and shot the close ups of my face. We then moved to our next location which you can see in Fig 2.c, we started by shooting the long shot of our actor on the bench, before then shooting the two shots we would overlay to create the ghostly sequence, we had to do this twice as the first time we filmed I was the only person who set off when all the filming time, next we filmed the close up of the actors eyes before moving to the band stand and filming the actor move his head and a POV pan, these last two shots were not in the initial plans and where shot if we needed any other shots for the video. We didn’t set the lights up for this shot as we were outside and there was nowhere to plug them in.

Next we went to the stone bow and filmed the shots there, these didn’t turn out to well as people kept walking in front of the camera so we relocated to the cathedral and filmed there. These where all setup exactly the same as only the actor moves the camera stays still. Again we didn’t use the lights as we were outside. The next shots were also outside so we didn’t use the lights we, shot most of these shots from the other side of the road for safety, for each shot we set up the camera and then cued the actors. The last shots we filmed where inside so again we set the lights up, and filmed them we had the actor maintain the same position for all of the shots and we moved around him. The last thing we filmed was the final shot of the film with the actor lowering his head towards the camera, this corresponded with the last shot we had of the singer.

Next we started the editing the film these notes on how we made the film:

· Open final cut pro,

· Create a file with full name – save in to students file,

· Quit final cut pro (open from documents from now on)

· Plug camera in then go to file login capture,

· A window opens – press play go to capture now,

· Press the escape key – switch camera off – close the window – footage is in the untitled folder in the film tags – save the project,

· Import music – open the bridge application – go to computer – open music holding device – copy track and paste in to my folder –remove device and close bridge,

· Import the music through – file, input, files – choose the track - now in final cut,

· Take audio directly in right at the bottom about track 7-8 – then lock it so that the track can’t be damaged,

· Sync the lead singer – take the singer sections and paste them in to video one bar –when in sync take the audio off,

· Move the sections of film from the imported film and place them on the time line, make sure these are also synced up to the song if they need to be,

· After all shots are in place add the effects to the film

This is how we did our editing for our film there were a few notable changes from our initial plan:

We changed a few things from the initial plans, the main thing we changed was the sequences were we would have a lot of shots overlapping each other, as we couldn’t make it fit time it needed to and the layering of the film didn’t look to good, so we put each shot after each other and had them fade together. We also added some shots of the actor and musician at the end to keep the pace going and so it wasn’t just one long shot. We showed it to the teacher and he gave us a few simple changes of adding a few new shots to keep the pace going. We also added some more shots of the singer and actors to make the cuts faster and more like a real music video.

Schedule Sheet (Fig 2.c)

This was done by both Me and Caroline:

Actors:

Phil Russell - Singer

Adam - Singers character

Allen Watkins-Groves - The Dead

Joel Watkins-Grove - Oxford Companion/The Dead

Caroline Smalley - The Dead

Camera Equipment and Lighting:

Digital camera

Tripod

Spotlights X2

Camera Men/Women:

Caroline Smalley

Joel Watkins-Groves

Props:

Wooden cross

Pill bottle

Thou Shalt Not board

Halo

Prison board

Apple

Tea/Coffee

Book

Costume:

Adam - formal yet slightly scruffy looking - hoody, t-shirt and jeans, white trainers.

Phil Russell - formal, but slightly depressed. Grey t-shirt and grey jeans.

Joel Watkins-Groves - formal. Blue shirt, black coat, black jeans, black shoes.

Allen Watkins-Groves - formal. Blue jacket, blue jeans, black shoes

Caroline Smalley - formal. Brown coat, black bag, blue jeans, white top/shirt.

Drivers:

Allen Watkins-Groves

Liz Watkins-Groves

Lighting:

Joel Watkins-Groves

Caroline Smalley

Allen Watkins-Groves

Filming times:

Friday 20th November 2009 - 5.00pm - travel to Phil’s house 7.00pm

- 10.10 film in Phil’s office

Saturday 21^st November 2009 - 8.30am - travel to the Drill hall

- 8.45am - set up lighting and props

- 9.00am - 9.25am - film at the Drill Hall

- 9.30am - travel to park

- 9.40-9.55am - film in park

- 10.00am - tea break

- 10.25am - 10.35am - film at the Stonebow using props

- 10.40am - travel to Cathedral

- 11.00am - 11.30am - film at the Cathedral

- 11.35am - 12.00pm - lunch

- 12.05pm - travel to Joel’s

- 12.20pm - 12.30pm - film down empty street

- 12.40pm - 1.00pm - film in Joel’s house

Editors:

Joel Watkins-Groves

Caroline Smalley

Editing Times:

Monday 23^rd November 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - transfer from camera to computer

Monday 30^th November 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - Sync film and audio tracks

Monday 07^th December 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - first scene/verse edit

Monday 14^th December 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - first scene/verse edit

Monday 21^st December 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - second scene/verse edit

Monday 28^th December 2009 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - third scene/verse edit

Monday 04^th January 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - fourth scene/verse edit

Monday 11^th January 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - check and final edit

Monday 18^th January 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - add black and white filter

Monday 25^th January 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - add sepia filter

Monday 01^st February 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - add other effects

Monday 01^st February 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - check and change any scenes/verses

Thursday 04^th February 2020 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - check and change any scenes/verses

Monday 08^th February 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - check and change any scenes/verses

Monday 15^th February 2010 - 11.50am - 1.00pm - check and change any scenes/verses

Storyboard Artists:

Caroline Smalley

Joel Watkins Groves

Magazine Advert Development (Fig 2.b)

After I built my Digi-Pac cover I started work on my magazine advert. Again I used photoshop to make my advert. I took the photos from the same photo shoot that I used to make my CD cover, so I had the same problems as I have listed in my CD Development (Fig 2.a) this problem being not having an actor and having to find a new one on short notice.

To start this project I opened a Photoshop document the size of a A4 page, I then opened the photo and selected the section I wanted from the photo, I imported this into my first document and resized it to be slightly larger than the canvas so that the image obeyed a rule of three with the figure being in the bottom third. Once I had the photo in place I began darkening the image using the brightness tool, I lowered the lighting levels and upped the contrast so even though the image was darker all the shapes would stand out, as the image had been brighter than the one I used on the CD cover I didn’t need to alter the colour of the actors skin.

With the image how I wanted it I opened the CD document and took the words “Phil Russell” and “Oxford companion” put them on to the Advert, I did this so that the words would have the same formation as on the CD cover, I resized the words and positioned them away from the edge in a way that looked visually pleasing. I then wrote the final pieces of text I needed, this text is a selling point for the CD, it gives information to show how the CD is special and different, after I had put all the text on to the Document I added a drop shadow to it to make it stand out from the advert.

Next I imported the CD front cover on to the Advert, I resized it to be smaller and positioned it, I did this so that a potential buyer of the CD would know what it looked like, beneath the image I wrote the words “available from” and again I added a drop shadow to it, beneath these words I put the HMV and the Amazon logos so that potential buyers would nowhere to get it from, this was something that I picked up from my research in to adverts. Finally I added the live stock records as they are the company that produced the CD they would be on the advert for legal reasons again this is something I noticed from my research.

Here is the final product:

Digi-Pac Cover (Fig 2.a)

I created my digi-pac on Photoshop, I took my photos myself using an actor, I wanted to take photos of the actor from my music video but he wasn’t available so I requested the help of another actor. I took the photos of him around the drill hall, the hardest shot to take was the one I used for the front cover, this is because the shots were taken on the road and I had to take them quickly. Apart from this there were no problems in the photo shoot. After taking the photos I uploaded them into Photoshop. I based the shots on the ones I was going to use from the film, however I couldn’t use shots from the film as turning them into images made them too low quality to work with.

I opened up the template, which separated each section of the cover, and started with the front cover. I took the photo and cropped it to show what I wanted it too I then resized the image to fill the section group. I then darkened the image so that it would look more like a folk CD cover, I then brought out his hands using the skin highlighter tool, I also lightened his hair slightly to bring it out. I removed the colour from a man in the backgrounds hoody using the colour correction tool, it was bright blue and stood out too much from the back ground. Next I created the back cover, again I started by darkening the image, this time I think it worked really well as it brought the grass out. next I used the skin corrector to bring out the skin, I had a slight problem in the fact that the face and hands wouldn’t go to the same level of colour, one would look bleached out or far too red whenever I tried to use the tool, so I separated the face and hands before correcting the colour. I finished off this picture by brining the hair out slightly, by selecting it then bighting the area.

Next I moved on to the inside images, I started by making the image that will appear behind the CD, I took a image taken on location when filming the musician of his arm playing the guitar. Once again I cropped and resized this image to make it fit the needed area. I then duplicated the image and made the top layer black and white, leaving the one beneath in colour, I then removed the guitar from the top image so that the colour version showed through; I then touched up any areas I had gone in to around the guitar making them black and white again. I then had to rotate the image so that it was the right way round so when folded it was the right way up. Next I found another photo I had taken of the musician at a earlier date, he was standing on a plain back ground, I cropped the image to be very close around the singer to remove a picture frame that was in the photo. I used the colour selection tool to take the background colour, and make a square the size and shape of the area I was placing the image. I flipped the image of the singer and positioned it before reducing the opacity on the photo to make him appear ghostly on the image.

With all the images created I moved on to editing the text. I decided that the main text would be in font style Garamond, I chose this font because it is the font that has been on many of the oxford companion book covers, to this extent I also used the layer out the title “oxford companion” out in the same way as it is on the oxford companion of music for the front cover and spine. On the back cover I have two titles one for the song and one for the video these being the two things that where appearing in the CD. The one bit of text I had a problem with where the lyrics, the entail way I placed them went over the photo of the singer in the inside cover, I easily repositioned the lyrics and the two lines that where going over his face had a brake in the middle so I was able to cut these lines in half. I used the font Pristina for the artists name on the front cover and spine.

After I had done all this I had to create my company logo and the copywriter text. I started by using the shape tool to make a banner then I made a white circle with the shape tool and added some black splotches to make it look like cow hide, finally I added the name of the company, Livestock records, I then used the skew tool to alter the shape of the text and the banner to make them fit together. I used Arial to create the official text as this is the font used to for the official text on other CD covers.

Here is the finished product: