Editing For The Final Video

After editing the footage we had taken the first time around, we realised that we needed to film the last couple of scenes again as we weren't happy with the quality of them, because we were rushing to film everything before we lost the daylight and to get rid of a stranger who had come over to us. Thankfully Sarah managed to film the shots that we needed yesterday afternoon, meaning that we could edit the last bits today. The shots were aligned really well with our previous footage, something we weren't sure if we could achieve easily and the weather was also very similar to our previous filming, meaning that the film didn't look too different from the rest of the video. Once we had finished editing we showed our finished product to Mrs Hammond, who helped us to improve our video by pointing out bits where the shots jumped quite noticeably, but however, this left us with 4 seconds missing once we had finished again. To counteract this, we had to slow down some of the footage where we thought Joe was maybe walking too fast compared to the rest of the video and that way we managed to gain back enough time for the video to be synchronized with the audio. We also edited the still image of Joe a bit, to help the focus remain more on Joe's face rather than other aspects around him.

Overall, our editing went smoothly and both of us are very happy with our finished product as we feel it is much better than our draft version, through our filming and editing alike.

Final Video Draft

This is our completed final draft. Liana and myself are happy with how our video has turned out and although we have a few more cuts than we had planned we think it works well.

The quality of the video severely dropped after uploading it from iMovie onto a disk. I had hoped the quality would be much better on Youtube, especially in HD, but I think it still seems a little blurry. On iMovie the footage is incredibly crisp so I'm not too sure what's going on! However, if need be we can always burn the video onto a DVD in different settings to make the image more clearer and better quality.

Editing the Still

For the 3rd last shot we had storyboarded an ariel photograph of our artist. In our draft, though the photo was portrait instead of landscape the picture worked really well. The one I took of Joe was unfortunately not as effect, but using photoshop we altered it to sharpen the image and get rid of other elements in the photo that could have been a distraction from the artist and decided it would work in the video.

Finalising!

Yesterday I finished filming the last few shots. Unfortunately my timing was off and I missed the party 'cannons', thankfully we had the smaller silver ones and they worked just as well! I added these new sections into our iMovie project. I then focused on correcting the lip-syncing and during our media lesson Liana and I removed any jumps and made sure all our footage was correct and long enough.

Props for Today

These are the props that we have purchased for the last bits of filming that I'm going to be doing today. We have two of the larger party popper things incase one doesn't actually work like before. I would ideally like to use these as they'll obviously make more of an impact with a larger amount of confetti. As a final backup though we have a packet of normal party popers, the same style that we used in our draft, so if the 'cannons' don't work again Joe can hold a few of those, as more will be more impresive.

Slight Adjustment

Due to the BTEC pantomime Joe is busy this afternoon and we have rescheduled the filming for tomorrow instead. Hopefully we'll be able to film everything to our satisfaction, especially as I have printed screen shots to allow us to precisely line Joe up to where he was before. We'll then have Thursday evening and Friday to finish off the editting and hand our final in for the deadline!

Editing Progress

We have now edited all the footage we recorded last wednesday. Everything fits together well, the lip syncing and the guitar playing have improved greatly from our draft and we're extremely happy with it. The main issues are from around scene 24 were Oliver is walking backwards, especially when he lies down and the party popper scene. We plan to re-film these after school tomorrow, allowing us time to edit everything together and get everything correct for the deadline of Friday. We're going to buy at least two of the 'party cannons' so that we can try the first before filming so we know how it works, and we'll also get a back up of just normal party poppers if they don't work again.

Final Shot Problems

This is a compilation of all the attempts at letting of the 'party cannon' Joe had. As you can see it just didn't happen and then a stranger came and broke it so it would never happen. We have some good shots of him about to pull it which may allow us to edit something confetti looking onto the footage, which we will look into. If this isn't possible we will re-film this small section, which hopefully won't be too hard and this time will have back ups if the prop fails again!

Costume Changes

The last word I had on Oliver's costume was that he was going to wear a checked shirt, skinny jeans, a plain jacket (or coat) and boots or brogues. We kept quite closely to this but having met Joe on multiple occasions and been impressed with his own style we allowed him to pick his own clothes from these guide lines. As it reflects the relaxed attitude of the song and the rest of the visuals we were happy with Joe's decision to wear a motif t-shirt, also it went with his other clothes much more and allowed a more subtle look. As Dr. Martens are such an iconic shoe and have a huge connection with rock and indie bands their addition into our video will greatly improve the over all impression Oliver makes on the target audience. The monotone colour scheme reflects not only the slow, almost 'depressed' song but also the dark location. By adding accesories such as hats new focal points are created, making the look a litte bit different. Also that style of hat is really popular and fashionable right now!

Liana played the waitress again and we kept to our ideal outfit of very plain clothing. She wore white trousers and a grey cardigan, which I felt was close to that of a waitress and it mad her look a bit and drab and miserable.
I wore what I had suggested after our draft. I felt a balck lace dress would be much more relevant and fashionable and it works well against Joe's outfit, but to inject some colour and femininity I accesorised with a purple bow.
Our 'flower' girl was originally supposed to wear a tweed jacket and a scarf but we had decided that we'd like her to wear a coat like Oliver is. She infact had a yellow duffle coat, though the wrong colour is a slight reference to Submarine. Much like Dr. Martens a duffle coat is an extremely iconic item and I think it fits well with the indie look.

Filming Complete

As Liana said we got all our filming done on Wednesday (16th November). We filmed in consecutive order, as we had planned, which has been a huge improvement and extremely beneficial during editing. 

These two location shots show the 'cafe' scene. As you can see we have kept the main props the same. however to create a better mise en scene we introduced props such as a checked table clothe, cutlery and condiments to give the traditional cafe look. We altered the food choice from badly made porridge to an improvised full English breakfast, using the fillings from 'brunch' sandwiches. I feel this works much better as it's more obviously breakfast and its the traditional meal in the style of cafe we have recreated.

Also pictured is the equipment we used to record. We made use of my Canon DSLR's high definition video recorder for the draft and this final recording. However due to the problems with shaky footage in our draft, regardless of the fact we used a tripod, we found a much more sufficient tripod which correct fitted the attachment on my camera and provided us with a lot more features to help with filming. 

Two other main props we altered we the rose and the party poppers. We changed the colour of the rose from white to a dark shade of pink. I feel the colour injection will make a much greater impact when the footage is together as a lot of the features are quite monotone. The final scene is to had Oliver sit up and let of a party popper, I had thought we would be using a larger one but as we couldn't find one for the draft we just used 4 regular ones. For the final however we found a party shop in Lutterworth that had a party 'cannon', exactly what we had been looking for originally. This however was faulty. 

Editing

Thankfully all the filming went well yesterday, as Hayley was dropped off with the rest of our props and we managed to talk to Joe about times and places. We managed to film all the shots except for the very last one as the party cannon we bought was faulty and broke when Joe tried to pull it. We also filmed all the shots before the sky became too dark, which means that all our shots are clearer. We decided that we'd try and edited the footage we have first before filming again, to see if we need to re film any parts of our video, or shoot any extra parts. Hopefully we should begin our editing today and find that we are happy with our footage from yesterday.

Filming Today

It's looking quite grey and misty at the minute but according to iPhone's hourly weather forecast it'll brighten up at around 10, I sincerely hope this is true!

One of our cast is convieniently 'ill' today and isn't willing to be in for 2 hours to film but hopefully another friend can step in and help us with the role. With Hayley being away our main line of communication with Joe is down, as he seems to avoid technology, but this shouldn't pose too much of a problem we'll just have to wait in places we hope he'll be!

Photo Editing

Having selected a photograph of a Beetle at the Stanford Hall VW show, which I thought was appropriate as a 'vintage' image, I knew I would need to edit the background so the Beetle is the only subject and focus in the picture. The people in the photograph make it look extremely messy and even after cropping it to the square size of the bottom picture they were still visible. 

To combat this and improve the photograph I used Photoshop Elements' Clone Stamp Tool. This allows you to select an area of the image that has the correct texture and paint it onto your designated area. I recreated the stone path so that that part was continuous and then decided to make all of the top of the photo grass so that the car looked as though it was part in front of an empty field. When I was happy the grass looked realistic and natural I put a filter over the image to get a retro look, which can be seen in the digipak.

Further Cover Research

The Arctic Monkeys' digipak for their most recent album is extremely simplistic, because of this it has come quite iconic. However it only features their album name, another controversial feature that has famed the album. As another affiliate of Alex Turner the band's cover is extremely relevant to our artist.

Shooting Development

Having communicated with our new artist actor Joe we have planned to film our final draft on Wednesday afternoon. We haven't recieved our draft feedback yet but we plan to film the final in the same location in Lutterworth as we did before, as it's convient and it's the type of outside location we want. Last time we filmed everything in just under three hours. We had to wait for props and we also had problems because it was the first time we'd ever filmed anything this long and our actor had some problems getting the rythme and lyrics right. Now we've experienced these problems we can avoid them in the future and hopefully reduce the amount of time we wasted. This is vital as now it's more wintery sunset is even earlier. The wether for Wednesday is looking promising at the minute!

Final Actor Change

We are finally happy with our choice for the artist. Having our original choice drop out on us and our back up not quite working in our video, was not ideal. However we have spoken to a friend in drama about the perfect replacement. I know I said this after our first change but it's true this time. Joe is actually 18, he's actually indie, he's attractive and he's a BTEC drama student so he'll be able act well and not look uncomfortable on camera. Also he can sing and play the guitar!

Final Magazine Advert

Final Digipak

Front Cover Photograph

I kept with the same image idea of my Kodak 177x Instamatic Camera centred in the page with the album title above it. Having only the album title on the cover is extremely unstereotypical, as buyers who may not be familiar with the artist won't know who it's by. However this worked well. A big influence for this choice was the Submarine album by Alex Turner which Piledriver Waltz originally came from. This cover doesn't feature Alex Turner's name and nor does the spine. 

Inside Photographs

The first image I chose for the inside pages was one of a vintage maroon Volkswagen Beetle. I took this photograph at the Stanford Hall annual VW show. I feel this image is closely relevant to the camera I have used as the cover image. Both vintage cameras and VWs are cult cool, meaning they are likely to appeal to an indie audience.

After removing the background making the Beetle the only focus of the image, I altered the colour of the photo with a filter to make it look as though it was taken on a film camera, like my Instamatic. This created a stronger link between the two images. I created this affect on  http://pixlr.com/o-matic/, a webpage based on the Pixlr-o-matic iPhone app.

The next image I chose was one I took last for my AS coursework. This photograph is extremely versatile and I feel works well against the Beetle and within the whole album. Using an image of a girl is a common convention. It also continues will the representation in our video of Oliver being a player.

I cropped the image to the same size I did the Beetle and then applied the same filter to give the retro, film camera appearance. This will mean the inside will match and look symmetrical, creating the most atheistically pleasing layout.

Although I had originally planned to use images of our artist in the inside of my digipak, after conducting research into many of the booklets and inside pages of albums of the same genre I found many don't actually include the artist. My prime example in The Vaccines' debut album What Did You Expect From The Vaccines. The whole booklet features one image per page of completely irrelevant themes and subjects. The symmetrical placement is another feature I admire and have incorporated in my digipak. The colouring of the pictures look as though they have also been taken on a film camera.

 

Final Digipak

This is my final draft of the digipak. I have kept with the same idea on the front and developed the inside pages to link to the era suggested by the camera.

Final Magazine Advert

This is my final draft for the album magazine advert. I have made some vital changes to make sure it looks as professional and realistic as possible.

First Draft Video Feedback

Some of the feedback we received from our media teachers was as follows:

• wobbly camerawork - this was due to our camera not fitting properly on the tripod we borrowed, so to counteract this we are using one of our own tripods.
• guitar playing - our artist didn't look real when he was playing the guitar, but we have changed our actor to someone else who can already play the guitar and will consequently be able to play it convincingly.
• closer shots - some of our shots were too far from our artist, such as our beginning and end shots, so we will move the shot closer to our actor to gain more detail. It will also mean that our shots are better framed, which was another problem we had.
• no zooming - our use of the zoom out in our video wasn't liked as it wasn't used very often so we will try to use it more or cut it out.
• awkward dancing - the dancing in the first draft was thought to look awkward, possibly because our actor didn't know what he was doing.
• costume change - it was suggested that when our artist changes his jacket that the second jacket should be obviously different from the first otherwise the action seems pointless.
• party poppers - although the idea was liked, the way we carried out the action needs to be changed to gain the full effect.
• lip syncing - the lip syncing of our actor wasn't very convincing as he didn't know the song and therefore found it hard to get the words and rhythm right.
• the waitress - the clothes that were worn by the actress didn't make it obvious that they were supposed to be a waitress, so next time we will only wear black and white clothes.

Ancillary Feedback

Digipak Draft
The draft of my digipak got 5 out of 10, which works out at a level 2. The idea is 'promising' with an effective front, back and left cover. All of the problems on the outside pages are purely that I've not included some elements, such as a barcode, the artist name and a record company logo. I also need to remove the track numbers. These elements can easily be added but I will have to do some research into, which record company I will use. On the inside pages there were a few problems with the images And frame I have used. The colours I have made the images are very dark which greatly contrasts will the camera I have used on the front cover. Being a camera from the 70s the images should reflect this retro camera. A suggestion I've been given is to use either of the iPhone apps Hipstamatic or Instagram to manipulate the colours, both of which I have.

Magazine Advert Draft
This got 9/10, which is a level 4. The main issue with this was the layout and how I was spacing the objects on the page. This can be easily combatted for my final piece by opening the grid on Photoshop to allow me to line up all the elements. Another issue was that, again, I haven't included a record company logo. When I have decided on a record company I can add this on to the page, conventionally they are placed at the bottom.

Digipak Draft Feedback

Moll commented on my draft digipak saying: 'I like the similar images used on the inside of the digipak, it looks neat and obviously symmetrical with a change of detail that would attract attention. The block font looks good, maybe on the very back at the bottom of the track list, have some small print so it looks more 'real'? Just an idea :)'


This feedback is very positive commending the my layout and typography, which was the main focus of my digipak. I think Moll's idea of adding small print to the back cover is really good as it will give  more genuine look to the cover. I will place this text alongside my chosen record company logo.

Other Covers

Both these album covers have the artists face hidden, or turned away from the camera, which is an element I included in my digipak. Although it doesn't show the artists face, you still have an idea about who the artist is and it creates an ambiguous feel to the cover and consequently, makes the whole product more interesting.

Peer Feedback For Digipak

'I like the continuous font used, it's clear and bold. There's a lot of colour used which I like a lot, but as I think of 'Peaceful People' I think of a softer more pastel coloured scheme. I like the landscape type shots used. Is there an image you're using on the disc tray part? Maybe just annotate that if you haven't already. Looks really good! :) '


The feedback I received for my digipak draft I was really pleased with, as my idea was well received. The font was easy and clear to read and continuous throughout the whole digipak, an aspect that was liked by our target audience. For my colour scheme it was suggested that I use more softer colours to coincide with the idea of peace, so I will try and incorporate pastel colours, probably on the inside of my digipak. For the disk tray, I haven't decided whether I will use an image or put my credits there, so this is something I will have to consider.

Record Company

Peer Feedback For Video

'I think that the quality of the footage is really good, more effective when the background is more blurred, such as the footage around 1:40, which looks really professional, especially with the slight hand held camera. The effects of the colours look really effective, I think you should incorporate more of that so that there's a continuity maybe. I think that constructive criticismwise, you should try and match up the lip syncing a bit tighter, also, the slight jump cuts between similar shots could maybe be more continuous or change the location? I think that the video has a really good raw quality, and after tightening it up a bit, would look brill.'


'Firstly, I think that the artist fits the song a lot more when he's just wearing the shirt and tie- The hoodie looks a little bit too scruffy! I also like the pink/green effects as it make sit look interesting- however I do agree with maybe changing the artist as Sam just doesn't fit with the genre so much. I like the shots that he walks across without the camera panning too much- it makes it look very professional, and him looking into the camera quite a lot really works. As long as the editing is maybe a bit more fluent and flowing this is reeeeeeally good!'

Overall the feedback we received in the comments was really positive, as people liked our idea and the effects we used in the video. The way the artist acts in the video was also praised, so we will keep that element when we re film. The blurred backgrounds were also thought to look professional as were the shots were the artist walks along without the camera panning a lot, so we will definitely consider these shots when we film our final video. We have been advised to change our artist and improve on the lip syncing - something which we were already considering, as the artist in the video was only a temporary. Another piece of advise we received was that our editing needs to be more fluent and tighter, something that was a problem because of the way we filmed our shots, which we have already thought about when editing our draft and have considered ways of which we can stop this for our final video. We will also set up our location earlier than we did before, so we won't have to wait for our props to be delivered and therefore will have more filming time, which is crucial because we won't have as much daylight as we did for our draft.

Filming Schedule

We're planning to get all our filming done during next week, leaving us an extra week between the filming and the deadline, in case we need to re film any parts of the video, or if our artists isn't available during next week.

Record Label

The record label I have decided to use for my digipak is Polydor Records which is a German company, but is located in the UK and its parent company is Universal Music Group. Some of the artists signed by Polydor are: Duffy, Snow Patrol, James Morrison, Weezer and Kate Nash.  I have decided to use this company because it has a variety of artists and I like the diversity. It is also a well known company containing well known artists, which would make our artist seem more professional if he is part of the company.

Draft Thoughts

The draft video for our music video didn't turn out as we had hoped it would, mainly due to lack of time. Here are some ideas that I think need to be addressed:

• The artist needs to be changed as the artist we used as a replacement, didn't work out very well as he didn't know the song, so found it hard to lip sync in time and didn't know how to play the guitar, which meant his playing didn't look very convincing.
• We need to have more filming for the beginning part where the artist walks, as we didn't have enough and therefore we had to try and make up the time with different clips.
• I think that the waitress needs to be the actual actor we wanted, but who wasn't available, because the clothes wearing in the draft didn't look right, consequently not portraying the character very well.
• We also had some problems with keeping the same shot, as we moved around a lot to always have the artist in the shot, so when we film we will keep the camera in the same place and sort out where the artist will walk so he is always in the shot.
• The tripod was also quite difficult to work with, so next time we will use a tripod of our own which is for still cameras rather than video cameras.
• The filming should also be done in sequence, so it is easier to understand where the artist should be and where we finished filming.
• The artist should not be able to move from the spot which we finished filming the shot, because otherwise it is difficult to have them standing in the exact same spot again.
• Finally, we should play the song whilst we are filming, which we did sometimes during the draft, as it helps everyone to know how long things last for and is useful for the artist when he lip syncs.