Ancillary Task Progress

Here are some screen grabs from the improvements and progress that we have made on our Ancillary tasks over the past couple of weeks. The first screen grab is an edit that we created using PicMonkey, we had to crop out the previous background of the photograph, fill it in with baby pink and then at the hearts on top using the Bokeh effect. The second screen grab is the inside of our CD cover, we decided to use the image of my flowery shirt because it reinforces the genre and stereotypically, our target audience would be fashion conscious. The flower is also a reminder of the genre and the fact that flowers are natural and girly are representations that we want to adhere to within our album and especially our Feels So Good music video. The third screen grab was of an image that we decided not to use on our CD cover because it was too similar to our advertisement and the editing was not professional enough. The fourth screen grab is of our advertisement. To edit our advertisement, we used the brightness and contrast tool on Photoshop, we also had to think about the colour and the font that we used for our advertisement because it had to stand out, but it also had to be very contributing to the fact that we are advertising a girl band. The final screen grab is of the front cover of our CD cover. This is our strongest piece of ancillary work so far because all of the colours match and blend in with one another. We also had to think very carefully about the names of the songs on the rest of the album, our record label, and again the colours and fonts that we were using. I feel that our front album cover is particularly strong because of all these reasons. All of these screen grabs show our progress in the standard of work that we have created over the past two weeks. 

Construction: Day Ten

Today we worked on the ancillary tasks for our music video project which includes a digipak and and advertisement. We started with the digipak where we had to use Photoshop and measure out the dimensions that were needed for it to be the correct size of a real digipak. We then had to decide on photographs for the front cover (seen on the right) and for the song listings (seen in the middle). We made these choices because of the three girls lying on the floor looking upwards at where the songs are listed (in the clouds), however, we are still undecided at what is to go on the left of our first digipak. We then went on to decide on the typeface and the positioning of the text, this is important because the digipak must look as professional as possible. We downloaded several fonts from DaFont and used different fonts for the band name, album name and the song listings. We chose to do this because we want to make our digipak as 'un-static' as possible. We also thought that it was important that our song listings and album name were in clear, bold fonts that the potential audience would be able to read quickly and easily. 

Furthermore, we also want to incorporate the concept of our music video into our digipak and eventually our advertisement. This is focusing on bright and blocky colours that catch the audiences attention and reinforcing the unity of the girl band which is also important to our target audience (which is younger girls who see friendship as important). When completed, we want our digipak to be professional because it is important that the band that we have created would actually have potential within the music industry.

First Draft Music Video

Construction: Day Nine

Today, our group decided to re-shoot the green screens that we are going to be using throughout the video as our performance shots. To do this we had to independently set up the green screens in our media classroom, thinking about the lighting, framing and the creases (which were an issue last time). We done all this in reply to our feedback which suggested that the shots in our first draft video were very 'static' and we should include more close ups. When actually filming, which we can see a photograph of Amie doing underneath, we had to ensure that our lip synching was in perfect timing even more than before, because of the fact that the shots are now close up. Furthermore, as we can also see below, there are various shadows behind Amie when we were filming which were due to the placement of the lights, however, after uploading our footage we discovered that these can easily eliminated on Premiere Pro when we add the block colours that we want using the Ultra Key and then playing around with the saturation of the frame.

Construction: Day Eight

 

We have faced a number of technical issues when editing our music video. One of these issues has been with the green screens because there are visible creases in the background that have proven very difficult to remove. Our group tried using the Sixteen Point Garbage Matte, but it didn't work out well for our background, so we decided to remove the effect and go ahead with re-shooting our green-screen shots to get rid of creases in the background.

However, our group did use ProcAmp to modify the colour of the background for all of the clips. In Libby's green-screen, the creases in the background have gone, thanks to playing with the brightness, contrast and saturation of the ProcAmp effect. This is a more vibrant, brighter colour, that catches the viewers attention even more than before. It also adheres to our genre and links back to the concept that we had before we even starting filming, which was 'bright and blocky colours'.

As we can see above, there are visible creases and shadows in Maddie's shot (with the green background), but no visible creases in my shot (with the blue background) nor Amie's shot with the orange background.

These other clips look a lot more vibrant now than before, thanks to the ProcAmp effect, by playing around with the brightness, contrast and saturation. This manages to disguise the gloomy weather on a typical November afternoon in London. We chose to increase the vibrancy of these colours in particular because they are very conventional of the pop genre. We have incorporated this all into the narrative of the video which highlights the three girls having the perfect day.

Construction: Day Seven

We have been continued to edit over the course of this week. We also completed our first draft and received feedback from our peers which allowed us to understand further what we need to do to improve. We decided that we didn't have a wide enough range of shot types. For example, you can see in the bottom photograph that we have continuous long shots running through the video and we can see in the top photograph that we also have enough mid shots, so we need to work on different angles and close ups. We also decided (after looking back on various conventional pop videos similar to the one that we are trying to create) that we do not cut our clips quick enough during the entire duration of the video (see Move by Little Mix below) so in order to work on this we have been cutting clips and moving them around, whilst ensuring that they are still in sync to make the video faster paced and more exciting. This is seen in the middle photograph above. Finally, we have also decided to include more narrative in our work. This will mean shooting more cutaways which will give the audience the opportunity to understand the girls individual personalities. 

 

Construction: Day Six

This is a zoomed in section of the editing process that we have been going through on Premiere Pro. The blue clip on the top line is the clip of my green screen and the pink clip underneath is the colour that we have inserted to replace the green in the green screen. The green clip right at the bottom is the soundtrack to our music video that runs all the way through. 

During the course of the week, we have been continuing to edit using Premiere Pro, this has taught me various skills that will be valuable throughout the A2 course such as how to sync up the music to the actions on screen, how to cut clips and how to add a block colour behind us performing in front of the green screens (which is shown above in the second photograph). We have encountered several minor problems whilst editing such as clips last such as the music not syncing correctly and not having enough footage for when we got towards the end of the video, however, we have documented this and have already decided what to improve in our second draft.