Working with photoshop

I was quite fortunate to have already had some experience with Photoshop so finding my way was quite easy. It is a very wide and intuitive program with a lot of options for fine tuning and editing images.

I worked primarily on the magazine advert with other group members.

This was the chosen background for our magazine add. I added this, and then proceeded to edit the levels and colour of the image to create the desired effect.

This was the tool I used for changing the contrast and brightness. It can be applied to an entire piece of work, rather than affecting a singular layer. I like to use this as apposed to editing specific layers because it allows me to apply changes I have made to new layers with little effort.

I used a solid colour layer which I then overlayed on the background to give the image more warmth. I then played around with the opacity of the layer.

We decided to use the image of the bike submersed in leaves, however, because the image itself was separate from the one we wanted to use as the background, this presented a slight problem.

I wanted to maintain the submersed look of the bike and with limited time did what I believed to be the best thing to create this effect. I cut the image of the bike out using the polygonal lasso tool, leaving a slight margin of the surrounding leaves. I then used a partially transparent eraser tool with the fader brush to smooth out the edges of the image. I then resized and dragged the image into the chosen area and used 'hard light', blending it into the background and subsequently merging darker tones of the image with the background.

Digi-pack

This is our Digi-pack cover.

Magazine Ad

We used a basic shot of leaves that had fallen in autumn and then using Photoshop added a picture of a bike to link back to the album cover.

Finishing off album media

Today is the deadline for our digipack and magazine ad, so we will be focusing all our efforts on polishing everything off.
For the magazine ad, we are organising where all the text will go, as well as colours and fonts that will optimise visibility. This is difficult as for certain things, the text can't be too big, and colours that stand out in comparison to the leaves are few. Placement of text is a challenge too, we have to put a lot of consideration into what makes the most informative and resonant advertisement. One more problem we had was to name several magazines and pretend to quote their reviews of our album - We settled with Q and Mojo magazine.
The digipack is also tricky today, as we're trying to perform some sneaky editing to make it look as though there is a whiskey bottle laying in the leaves. The Jack Daniels label will be left on, and we will discuss this later in our evaluation.

Adding to our social network presence, we've made a twitter account. On our magazine ad, we will be directing people to our pages on facebook and twitter.

Ahren has done some colour correction on the images for the digipack, as well as added the record label's logo.

We are done.

Working with photoshop

So far working with Photoshop has definately been a steep learning curve, however we are lucky to have Ahren working with us, as he is the most experienced with this software.
We have used photoshop to work on the digipack and magazine ad, so far I have found it most useful to manipulate things like colour and shape of images, as well as organise them in certain ways. We plan to fix up the colours on our album cover as soon as they're all organised too, perhaps adding different colours to the three panels in the middle. Another plan we have is to encorporate a picture of a Jack Daniels bottle with the layer of leaves, fading one into the other and creating an effect to suggest that the bottle is laying in the leaves. Ahren also suggested doing the same with a bicyle for the magazine ad.
The most difficult thing has been formatting and re-shaping pictures, as I haven't yet learned the function of all the tools nescessary for this task.

Digi-Pack so far

Our digipack so far has its most basic imagery. For these, our original idea was to have un-labelled bottles of alchohol laying in fallen autumn leaves, but we ended up using mine and James's bicycles. I feel the bicycles achieve displaying a different side to our band that we like to play upon, which is the indy style we adopt. We took them into the woods and kicked wet leaves over them, then took photos of them from various angles and distances with a HR camera, which gave a really nice look.
We then put the pictures onto photoshop and fitted them into the digipack template. I like how it looks so far, as the three inside panels have half of a big bike picture, but split up and rearranged. The back of the digipack will be the same backdrop of leaves that we will use for the magazine ad, as the song list will be put over it, and we don't want anything distracting behind the text.

Magazine Ad so far

I thought that our magazine ad should remain simplistic yet stylised, which for us meant having a themed backround with bold lettering dominating the page, there should also be no subject within the backround. We decided on having the backround a picture of ivy and leaves on the ground in the nearby woods. making a nice and simple pattern, with bright yet rustic looking colours of orange, red and brown, I think this is especially good as it fits in the band's persona of being more down to earth and toned-down.
We're going to use a bold font for the ad that will cover most of the page. As well as song, album and band name, we will also display quotes from magazine critiques and ratings for an authentic look.

Finishing Digi-Pack

We got a template for our digi-pack ad then using photoshop we added and edited photos we tok of bikes in a woodland setting with leaves around it. We then added the technical information and other aspects that have to be on a digi-pack. We had problems deciding where all the information should be shown and which photos were most effective in the template. To get over this we tried many different layouts before deciding on the what was most effective. We made sure the record label was well shown on the digi pack as this is a must have on a professional digi pack as record labels demand their label is Shown a lot through the digi pack. Below is the finished digi pack.

Final cut video

This is our final cut of our music video

Magazine Advert idea:

I think we will aim to make the Magazine Advert as simple and informative as we can. We will probably give a brief description of the band then followed by a description of what is being sold, for example, "with their groundbreaking smash-hit single, 'Aint No Party'".

A small photo will probably be on the right, which would feature the front cover of the album or a photo of the band to give the audience the basics of the band or make potential buyers aware of what the album/band looks like.

Underneath all of this will probably be reviews and critics comments like "5 stars - Q Magazine" or "One of the best albums of this decade - Kerrang!" to let our target audience know of common opinions on the album so far and what professional critics and reviewers think of it.

Rough Cut - Things to do:

Color Correction:

After submitting our Rough Cut, we soon found that Color Correction is actually very helpful and can be useful in a variety of very different scenarios.
For example, we used Color Correction to vary the party shots and the morning shots.
We have shots which are designed to portray the feeling of the star after waking up after a party in the morning, therefore, we came tot he conclusion that the shots should be tinted slightly blue to give an impression of the cold, quiet and messy setting.
It is also a suitable color to represent the headache or fragility that the star may be feeling during the morning after the party.
We also made the shots of the party and evening a slightly warmer orange, to make the viewer feel happier and portray the feeling that it's a good, friendly environment to be in, this means the audience can identify with the part more because they are happy to be in the company of their friends enjoying a drink.
 Using this Color Correction will also help the viewers distinguish between the two different times that feature in our video, if we hadn't made it clear with Mise-en-Scene or general character acting.

Lip Syncing:

We also found that in certain parts of our video, our lip syncing was way off, so we immediately worked on fixing that as we felt that this was the most important thing that we should work on fixing.
Lip syncing is crucial because it is partly responsible for how the viewer immerses in the video, if the lip syncing is off and it looks out of time and/or choppy, the viewer will be confused and is less likely to enjoy the video as much as they would if the star actually looked as if he was singing/performing to the letter.

Digipack images

For our Digipack, we are going to try and bring as much attention to the band members as we can because then it will be easier for our target audience to associate themselves with us and therefore the listeners will be a lot more interested in our music and band overall.

We are going to be quite casually dressed, for example jeans and a t-shirt. This is a simple but effective way of identifying with your listeners as it shows them that the band is not pretentious or that they do not think they are better than their listeners because they are 'famous'.

Jeans and a t-shirt are what most people wear casually so we give off the impression of being laid back and relaxed, therefore, this will lead to our readers identifying more with the band members & band because they are calm, relaxed and easy-going.

Our Digipack will probably feature an image of us walking down a path or road with our backs turned to the camera with arms over each others shoulders. This is to show our audience that we are more like a group of good friends making music rather than a band with no real connection to each other.

A few of our Digipack images will feature bottles of alcohol such as Jack Daniels, this is to show the audience that we are all about having a fun and the good times in life with the sort of  "live for the moment" attitude which the majority of our target audience can relate with.

Suggested Band Names/Ideas

We often felt that the band name was the last thing on our priorities, but as our attentions turned to the Digipack & Magazine Advert, we soon realized that we needed to have a band name soon.

We had noticed that a lot of indie pop-rock bands had names which focused more on the music itself, or whatever the music would be played on.

Originally, we had the idea of 'Hi-Fi' but we decided shortly after that it would be strange to have a band named after a piece of technological equipment, so we played around with 'Hi-Fi' and several more ideas had appeared:


> Hi-Fi

> Lo-Fi

> Low Feedback

We decided to go with the name of 'Lo-Feedback' because it was easy to say and quite easily rolled off the tongue.
Personally, I feel that most bands should aim to have their band name simple and easy to remember, as this will help them with advertising and as a result, help to increase sales.

Digi Pack and Mag add ideas and images

We've decided to take a relatively simplistic approach to our theme, as we feel that the best way to represent our star persona is as such. As mentioned in previous posts, our star persona relates more to modern youth culture than that of a binge drinker.

From an early stage of production we agreed that images of bycicles suit our star persona. They can be aplied universally to most age groups and, to me, have stong connotations with growing up and exploration, something which I believe matches the theme of youth in our star persona. We also Like the use of leaves because it connotes maturity and also adds warm colour to the image.

Effect of social media on the star persona

We set up a social media page for the band to imitate what other bands do to advertise themselves and keep in touch with their fans. This means that the fans stay interested in what the band is doing and means that when they release their new album or single the fans are more likely to be interested in buying it. The effect it will have on our star persona is that the star will seem more accessible to fans and will show that he is not 'better' than them. It will make him seem more modern and friendly and will help reinforce our image of a down to earth type person.
The use of social media will help the star to show what he is about if he is political or has views on a issue the use of social media could help him get his point across and if he is materialistic he can show others what brands he is interested in and try to build an image of what he thinks looks good and what he think you should buy.
The fact that this is a band page links to the genre of music that the star belongs he is not a solo artist and the band will all get a share of the fame he is the center of attention in that he will get the close up shots and will try to be the focal point of the fans attention but as he gets more famous and attention the band in general will get more attention unlike a solo artist. It is important then that the social media aspect of the band reflects the whole band and not just the star.

Low-fi band page

We created a band page to show how bands use social media to attract and keep fans interested as well as advertising new products and songs. We used the band page to create an event of the new album being released. This is what most bands do now to keep in touch with their fans constantly and keep up a group of loyal followers who will help spread word of the band by word of mouth.

Planning for Digi-Pack

On monday we will be creating the album cover for our project. To do this, we will be going out at day into the woods on the college grounds and taking pictures with various things such as bottles. I thought this would be a good idea as we would be using the sullen, earthy look of the autumn ground, with all the foliage, as well as the ideas of rock n roll associated with bottles of alchohol.

Homework for Wednesday 28th November

You need to have an attempt at two of the evaluation questions by next week. I apologise for not going through this in lesson today but any start you can make with this will benefit you. The FINAL DEADLINE FOR EVALUATION IS 14TH DECEMBER so the sooner you start the better. I would like to see something significant from you next week for FOR QUESTIONS 1 AND 4 ONLY. See text in red below for extra guidance with this homework.

Word Count should be approximately 400-500 words per question (excluding question 3 which is in video form)

G324 Evaluation Tasks.

 

Below are the 4 questions you need to answer for your coursework Evaluation. The task for Question 3 should be done in your group. The other tasks are individual. When you have completed the tasks post all 4 onto the same post and tag it with YOUR NAME.

 Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks (you cannot annotate ancillary tasks just yet obviously). Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point. Explain which conventions you followed/challenged and how/why? Use Goodwin's 6 points as a guide here.   

 Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Task: Create a Prezi which makes clear links between your 3 products.

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.

 Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content ie. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid. For homework for wednesday, you need to write the script for this and try to collect relevant screen grab images. Choose 3 technologies that you used and explain how you used them or you can 

Organisation of our group - Facebook

To make it easier to organize and accumulate our ideas as a group, we have created a group on facebook dedicated to Q2-29. I think this will be useful to us as it will also be an easy reminder to complete blog posts and trade ideas outside of lesson. The first thing I have done with the group is to organize how we will achieve the standard amount of blog posts, and set up an event for when the deadline is.

organizing photo shoot via facebook

Using our face-book group we have started to organize when and how we are going to take photos for the digi-pack and ideas. This is because we are trying to make the most of lesson time and make more decisions outside lesson.

Digi-pack

Ideas for Digi-pack photos

• Shots of empty bottles in gritty locations (drink that clashes with location) 
• Band shots 
• instruments
• star shots (close ups) 

examples of digi-packs

This is Orson's bright idea album cover. It has a simplistic style with the silhouette on a simple back round that bursts with warm colours. The simple style is effective it's bright and it stands out a lot, making it eye catching. The birds may be symbolic of freedom or a free spirit, something which their music may represent and/or endorse.
We could use this simplistic style for the same effect, however we may also tone it down with darker and more humble colours and themes to keep with the band and star persona.

This album cover for the Killers' 'Sawdust' represents some of the ideas we had that conflict with Orson's brighter images. It shows a very rural and darker setting, with the humble colours and themes I mentioned before. I think this represents the Indy image well. 

Ideas for magazine cover

Here is an idea for the layout for the magazine cover with the bad name in bold and the album name larger than anything else.  This makes them stand out and will be the focus of the consumers attention as they flick through the magazine. This is important because it makes it effective as an advert and will raise awareness about the band.
The reviews are important because they make it look like a advert and try to sell the band and album to the consumer.

Editing performance footage

Recently we have been adding our new performance shots to the final cut edit. This performance involves Edgar the Star, a guitarist and a drummer. These shots are more active with lots of movement and action in the shot.
looking at our previous performance shots we have we decided that they were to long and didn't represent the pace of the song well enough and the feel of the performance wasn't right. However we did like many parts of it so we decided to incorperate the new footage instead of replacing the old performance. We added the new performance in key areas that we felt needed more cuts and movement including the solo which before just didn't gel well with the audio because the footage has a acoustic guitar and the song involves a electric the new shots however work very well with lots of cuts and a solo on a electric guitar.
Incorporated fades and other effects to make the video look more dynamic. Without the fades all our cuts were the same and this would look unexciting throughout the entire footage. The fade is at the end and at the beginning of the footage to add some variety to the shots.

album name

here are some of our ideas for the album name

• insert album name here
• semperfi
• simplify
• full leather jacket
• banana hammock
• aint no album
• the hangover
• listen up
• beeriod
• man-flu
• deck chair
• mac 
• blue water
• if you were only here
• if you were here
• ahhhh fudge nuggets

Out of these album name ideas we choose full leather jacket as our album name

Colour correction

Directions we're taking for light and colour correction are ones that would enhance the intended feeling of shots and also help to differentiate between periods of time.

The ideas discussed so far have been using a light blue tint on morning narrative scenes, a warm orange or red on party narrative scenes and intensified whites on performance shots:

Morning scenes: The light blue- perhaps with the aid of some desaturation- would help to create the sense of a cold uncomfortable morning after a night of drinking

Ending of our music video

While editing our final cut we got to the ending of our music video where it cuts from a performance to the narrative of our star sitting down before a final half a second of performance. However we couldn't decide wether a fade would be an effective way of ending the video and if it is where to put it. One argument is that the ending looked cinematic and the fade would take away from that. The ending with edgar wrapping up the performance looked upbeat and lighthearted and could well fit in with the rest of the video. However a fade would work well with the last beat of the song which fades away and the video could link to this like in Godwins points that the audio and video must link.

Group Decisions during lesson time

We decided that we should have a lot of performance because we didn't want to make the video too heavy on narrative otherwise it's more of a film that a music video. However, we didn't want to make it too heavy on performance either otherwise it'd be harder for the viewer to keep track of what's going on during the video and the viewer would find it harder to immerse him/her self or to identify with the characters within the video.

Editing of the rough cut to final cut

Below is our rough cut.


To make this better and to change it to a final cut we will:

• add a new performance
• change the order of some shots like the dolly to a establishing shot
• change the length of some shots like performance at the end which is long and without many cuts
• remove some shakiness by editing the frame
• colour correct some shots to make them look darker at night 
• add our group number
• slow the flashbacks down to make them look different to help the consumer realize it is a flashback

Lighting of the star in the perfomance

The lighting of the star helps the audience realize how we should look at them. A well lit person will stand our and the consumer will pay attention to them and a less well lit person will get less attention. The lighting of Edgar our star is done well in the performance i feel. This is because the light is behind him and when he moves his head it gives a very good cinematic effect and makes him look visually interesting. I showed this effect to several people who all agree that it draws attention to the star and helps them associate with him.

The lighting of the band is important because they shouldn't be as well lit as the star but should still look visually interesting and continue the cinematic feel of the video. We did this by lighting the band from the front and side but using the back light solely on Edgar  This means that the room looks lit and not jarring with lots of light on one person and darkness around him but still the star looks the most interesting and attracts the most attention.

We used some lights on the guitar to add a reflection of light in the performance piece to add a interesting effect in the close up shot. We did not light it to much or it would not match the other shots but enough to get a clear reflection of the light.

Notes on Mise en Scene - Costume - #2

For the costume, we decided to make the stars dress casually, this makes them a lot easier to identify with and makes the song seem a lot more lifelike and real.
It also doesn't make the band seem arrogant or extravagant in posh or expensive clothing. They are just made to look like normal people which means that viewers/listeners can immerse a lot more into our video and identify themselves more with the members.

Notes on Mise en Scene - Lighting - #1

Lighting:

We decided that lighting is a very key part in our production as we needed to try to represent the 'life of a party'. Having decided that natural sunlight is too unreliable because when it comes to do the day we want to film it may not even be sunny so our entire production (in terms of Lighting) would be foiled. Also, natural light is a lot harder to manipulate as we'd rather manipulate light around our production than change our production around the light.
In our performance shots, the people within the shot are normally illuminated by our lighting and they are normally in the background, this gives the video a kind of uplifting and positive sense to it because it's all bright and the people in the shot are a lot more defined when the light is shining behind them and personally.

I asked a few people about what they thought of our lighting being behind the performers and they said that it really helped them identify with them and were finding themselves a lot more immersed in the song.

Therefore, in our actual production, we used the following artificial light sources:

• 2x Studio Lights
• 1x Small lamp

Mise en scene

Narrative master shot
In this we gave attention to the subtler things, such as placement of certain objects, or the certain casualties of a night of heavy drinking. The house is littered with empty vessels of alcohol, as well as band members disguised as various different people unconscious and unmoving.

Second performance
One thing that makes the second performance shot significantly better than the first, is our attention to mise en scene. What you will see around the shot, are things that would actually be used in a performance, such as amplifiers, recording equipment and miscellaneous electrical paraphernalia.

Lighting/Colour correction

Both lighting and colour correction are used to manipulate the atmosphere and basic apparel of a shot, which is what we need to represent a difference in temporal setting, i.e: Party - The next morning. For our narrative, we got lucky with the weather, being a noticeably bright day, so the use of sunlight gave a more authentic morning feeling. For the party shots, we had to block off all extraneous light sources and use only floods with red gel filters. However, we felt that this wasn't enough, so we used colour correction to increase the redness and saturation of each party shot.

We also plan to do the same with our second performance, as all we have are strong white lights and nothing else, however I don't expect it will be so heavy, as we don't want to give the impression that it is within the same time as the narrative's flashbacks. I don't think we will use colour correction on the first performance shot, as the sunlight along with the flood light in the background creates a nice light toned atmosphere. If we do use colour correction, it will be to decrease saturation and/or increase whites.
Lighting in the second performance was a little more focused around eliminating all shadows upon ourselves, and using every light at our disposal to point at mine and Jack's face.

Rough cut feedback

Brad Stearn long road media student
 i liked the shot where he stands up and begins to move because it look cinematic and smooth. I liked the lighting during the performance especially when the star moved in front of the light it gave him a good back light. There performance looked upbeat and convincing especially as the guitarist doesn't actually play guitar in real life. I liked the movement throughout the video. The narrative of him waling around the house i liked the overall shot type it look cinematic. The ending last minute with the long shot lasted to long and needs more cuts which could be cutaways of the fretboard or close-ups of the guitar or try and add more narrative. i liked the tripod microphone (was a good idea at the time...).

Second performance editing

Today we focused on editing the second performance shot into the main project. Some of the few problems that arose with this was integrating this fairly with the original performance was making it look legitimate with two separate performances and keeping the piece looking smooth and rhythmic, without placing too many different shots too close together. We kept the original performance because we agreed that some parts of the song are simply performed better within it, such as lip syncing and interaction with the camera. We used the second performance for instrument heavy sections, where we could actually show off believable playing and instruments, as opposed to an acoustic guitar playing an obviously electric solo, or myself singing into the camera tripod as though it was a microphone. Editing was also tricky, because we were taking parts from what was a 4 minute shot, meaning we had to find the parts we wanted to use by looking through the whole video. Once we found what we wanted, we had to move the clip onto the sequence, delete the audio of the clip and synchronise it by lip-reading. Considering our unorthodox methods, I'm very satisfied with our progress so far, and am enjoying the challenge of getting everything down and making an interesting video out of it.

Second performance shot

We've recently finished our second performance shot at Ahren's house. We felt we needed another along with the original because the authenticity of the set and instruments was too questionable in the original. We're still going to keep the original, however only because we feel the lighting and shooting style was better in some respects. 

The set for the second performance was a little more enclosed, and we were stuck for space. However, using lights and being careful about positioning, we made the most of the space and the final piece looks believable. A problem we did have was static camera techniques: Sometimes the lack of movement in the camera would make the performance seem more as though we were performing at a live venue as opposed to for a music video. The way we remedied this was by asking the cameraman to be constantly moving in and out of shots of each band member, focusing on one in particular when a significant role of his came up. We actually have about three takes of the performance, and are going to use all three for the parts that are more effective than the others. 

Lighting is similar to the original performance, however we have eliminated any natural light to keep upmost control. 

The set up consisted of myself filling the role of singer and rhythm guitar, Jack on lead and Ahren on drums. Besides me was a laptop playing the music that we mimed with the lyrics for any reference I might need. Beside the laptop was a desk light shining in my face, eliminating the shadow that covered the other half created by the big flood light behind me. 

Our big light was causing too much glare, dominating the frame and casting myself and other band members into an obscure silhouette. I had forgotten to request those fans that come off the edge to control the light glare, so I improvised with tinfoil and paper!

Feedback

Here is the feedback we got from other groups in the media class. Some of the feedback we got was that the shots were to shaky in some sections of the video. To fix this we will edit the footage with final cut to reduce the shakiness of the shots. Also, certain areas of the performance need to be re-filmed  as the instrument and equipment used are not accurate to the track, detracting from the desired realism of the music video.

turn head right

We will re-shoot some lip syncing to improve the overall quality the performance and try to recreate the lighting effect we created in the previous performance. We will also tweak colour correction and other such visual effects in Final Cut Express, as well as adding appropriate transitions where desired.

Rough cut video

Audience research

Did you like the track?
Lucy: It makes me happy - I like it, it is good.
Johnothan: Not really
Lewis: It's not something I'd normally listen to, but it's not bad.
What type of person would like this track? 
Lucy: Anyone could enjoy this.
Johnothan: 817 people on youtube.
Lewis: Anyone into the indy scene.
What age range would you typically associate with this song?
Lucy: Mid-teens to mid-twenties.
Johnothan: 10-20 years old.
Lewis: Anyone over 12
How would you picture the band/lead?
Lucy: Glam rock mixed with pop.
Johnothan: Hipster.
Lewis: Hipsterish with a bit of pop and rock.
What sort of music would you expect to accompany this track?
Lucy: Stuff like 'Royal Republic'.
Lewis: I don't really know any particular bands who're similar to this - they're not significantly different.
If performance, what type?
Lucy: Local gig, small room with loads of people so it's cramped.
Johnothan: In a car.
Lewis: Private gig at a posh house
If narrative, what sort?
Lucy: House party
Johnothan: Fancy house party
Lewis: An event like at a club or at someone's house

Our work so far, and plans for the future

Our finalised star persona is that of a slightly more down to earth personality. We hadn't based the band or star on anyone in particular, but more based around the indy culture surrounding the music. This involves a less flashy lifestyle than what the conventional stars may have, and keeping to a relatable and friendly attitude. The appearance side of this culture involves slightly less stylish or perhaps old-fashioned clothing, as well as looking somewhat unkempt. This gives the impression that the stars are more like the regular young people who might listen to the music, which is significant as not a lot of popular music has that kind of relateablility with their audience. In terms of the attitude, we try to show a friendly, laid back and possibly lazy looking youth which I feel is relevant to the rest of the indy scene. Our star shows relation to the possibly more introverted majority of the indy culture, by appearing slightly more restrained than his peers, who would sit back in a dignified manner, while everyone else dropped where they stood. However, he also relates to the crazier side of the youth culture, shown drinking in excess and having fun at a raukus party.

The way in which we will ensure continuity between our three products is to keep each image down-to-earth and minimalistic, yet clearly related to youth culture. The way we will do this is to include things that we feel represents the band the best, and at the same time keep within the theme of simplicity. For example, one of our ideas was to have a tatty armchair (like the one in our music video) with maybe a few alchohol bottles surrounding it as the digipack cover, and for the magazine cover, have one of the same bottles as in the video or digipack cover, but perhaps in shards on the floor, or with the band name written on the label. We want to keep a sense of a disorganised and untidy lifestyle, along with the party and drinking culture element, so these ideas fill the role well.

My own first idea for the magazine cover was to have a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey dominating the page, and upon the sticker, have the name of our band and album in the same style as the brand's name. As a group we also had the idea of having for either the magazine or digi-pack, a picture of us four walking in line facing away from the camera. Our idea for the digi-pack was also going to be the picture of the tatty armchair I mentioned before.
In terms of costume, we planned on a very youth orientated, low maintanence style that would be relatable to younger generations, and although it would appear that our style has little thought put into it, there is method in our lack of style, something which one may call a "hipster" style.
Lighting in our main product is dominatly dark red. We found that this is the most effective way of showing a party scene as the shade is dark enough for the obscurity of a party, and at the same time assimilates the kind of atmosphere you would have at one of these parties. We will use lighting a lot to show what tense the scene is in, the party being dimly lit in dark red, and the present brightly lit with the sunlight. This contrast was very useful to us, and easy to show.
Makeup for us wasn't such a big deal, as we weren't exactly acting a KISS concert, nor were we indulging in a lot of close-ups with glamerous appearances. Also, we are all males, and wouldn't portray the stars as men who would usually wear makeup.
We are going to use photoshop to mainly give a darker tone to everything to keep the image of humble and down to earth-ness, as well as add depth to the photos. An example of this I can use is this idea for the magazine cover:

maintianing the image of the star

The star persona is vital to the marketing and selling of the album. The way he is represented will have to be consistent in order to get the image across to consumers. To do this we will have to make the Digi-pack, the magazine advert and the video bring out the qualities we want from the star. This will be done by making sure the clothing and style of the star remains similar in that it will be vintage and materialistic. The angle and the way the camera interacts with the star will be similar this will be done by close ups of the star as well as the rest of the band in the background to make sure that he is shown to be the front man of the group but not a solo artist or performer. The picture on the right is our star persona and this image is similar to the feel we will want for some images in the Digi-pack and advert but with other people standing near to ensure the idea of a band and not a solo artist is given. The clothes and the cigarette give the feel that he is part of the alternative culture. This culture has the sort of consumers that would purchase our album so it is important to make sure they can affiliate with our star.

Shooting day 3: performance

We worked on lighting quite meticulously: most of time was in fact devoted to making the set look effective. We shot our final performance here to replace parts of our second performance this was because we felt we needed some shots of instruments like a electric guitar to make the video look more realistic and also to add more cuts and movement to the last minute of our video.

We used a reflective surface to project light onto certain areas.

We used every available desk light in the house to add more light to the set.



[desk lamp and electric guitar]

We used a studio light to add depth to the shot 

[desk lamp]

We used a total of 8 amps and 2 speakers as props, including two electric guitars and a electric drum kit



We used lights around the walls to create further depth to the scene.

This helped us displace some light which made the lighting more effective when plcaed behind edgar

Audience research

What do you think of the song ?

Mitch- i think its a very upbeat song i think it would work well at a house party
Oliver- i think it should be done at a very big party but i didn't like the song

Who do you think the track is aimed at?

Mitch- young people who like indie style music
Oliver- people who like to party

how would you picture the lead singer?

Mitch- A classic indie person with hipster clothes
Oliver- Not that different to most people nothing really special about them

What age range would you expect from listeners?

Mitch- teens and young 20 year old's
Oliver- 12-20

If there is a narrative what would work well?

Mitch- a party
Oliver- a party

If there is a performance what would work?

Mitch- not a gig more just the band playing and being filmed
Oliver- small pub gig maybe

Lighting techniques

These are some videos i watched to learn about lighting effects and how they can best be used. In these videos one side of the performers face is usually darker than the other this makes the video look more dynamic and interesting. We will do something similar in out music video to the star to make him look more interesting and get the audiences attention. The lights in the background are good contrast and help make the video look better and add depth to the lighting. We will use some smaller lights in the background of our shots to make them have more depth and to bring attention away from the background and towards the star of the music video. We liked the streak filters effect and felt it would add to the idea of the party going on in the house and wile try to involve some streaks into our final piece using the tecnique shown on the free streak filters video.