Friday, 8 February 2013

Message to Moderator

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Lauren Hodge and this is my blog for my G324 Media Portfolio. On my blog you will find our groups music video, along with our ancillary texts, the planning that we used for the construction of our video, as well as evaluation. I worked as part of a group of four, so we shared tasks amongst us. I did a lot of the analysis tasks and helped other group members where necessary.

The page tabs on my blog should make navigating my blog easier, with everything being under the right stage of the project. The research also contains the work of the other group members, as well as the links to their blogs. Our blogs are styled to fit with the genre, using a group photo of the band as our background.

Thank you for reading the message, and I hope you enjoy the work we have created. 

Sincerely,

Lauren.

Final Evaluation Question 4



Above is the Final Evaluation for Question 4.

Creation of Advert


Creation of Advert

When creating the advert I began by opening a blank Photoshop Document in an A4 size. I then pasted an image from our photo shoot onto the blank background and used the Magic Wand tool and the Eraser tool in order to remove the background. I increased the brightness and lowered the saturation in order to give a better contrast to the photograph and allow it to appear more clearly against a dark background.


Following this, I inserted a background that I located on Google Images. I chose this background as it was brightly coloured whilst still retaining dark tones and the pattern gave it a dark, grunge effect. I added this background by creating a duplicate of the original background, as well as a new layer. I pasted the chosen image onto the new layer, which I sandwiched between the original and duplicate layer, before I used the Magic Wand tool and the Eraser to remove the white background and tidy up the edges of the image of the band. I then chose the font 'Angry Nerds' and installed it onto the computer so that I could insert the band's name at the top of the advert. I used a white font so that the title would stand out against the dark background.


Following this I added three sets of 5 stars and inserted magazine titles below them that are relevant to our genre, in order to add a sense of authenticity to our advert. To do this, I pasted each set onto a duplicate layer and removed the black background from around the white stars. I used the Horizontal Text tool to insert the magazine names and used the font 'Helvetica' in white in order to give it a simple feel and to keep a consistent colour scheme throughout the advert. Following this, I inserted the title of the album and it's release date in the font 'Reklame Script', which added a sense of variety to the fonts used within the advert but also helped to tie everything together.


I then pasted the logo into the bottom left corner of the image and cropped it so that it appeared smaller. Following this, I used a QR code generator in order to create a code that would link to the bands website for our poster. After  creating the code, I took a screen grab of it and pasted that into the right hand corner. To make the poster appear more professional, I also included a link to the band's Facebook page and their Twitter name using the Helvetica font in white once again.


To complete our advert, I moved the text and ratings down somewhat and cropped it so that the image fit together more efficiently, rather than there being a large blank space in between the image of the band and the titles.

Video Analysis of Our Final Cut


Video Analysis Of Our Final Cut

We styled our music video in a way that would fit the genre, by using similar mise on scene, locations, performance, etc. For example, our actors had long hair, leather jackets, band shirts, etc, to look like glam rock stars, but with a modern twist, in order to appeal to both the original fans of the genre, who like the traditional glam rock style, as well as newer fans and the youth of today. This is matched by the way that the actors presented themselves, being upbeat and positive, seemingly enjoying life without caring about the consequences, another trait typical of youths and rock stars, which increased our audience demographic. 

Most glam rock videos feature a lot of random scenes, that hold little narrative, which we tried to incorporate into our video, while having something of a story in the background of the video. The random scenes occurred mainly in the local park, Ward Jackson, due to the vast amounts of natural high key lighting, and pleasant seeming landscape. This makes the video seem happy, and have a positive atmosphere to appeal to the audience, which we believe fits in the happy sounding nature of the song, as it seems to be wrote largely in the major key. 

we tried to incorporate a mixture of shots, varying landscape shots with close ups of the band and extreme close ups of instruments being played. this gives the video some variety, and therefore more interest. we also changed our locations, so not only including park footage, but that of the studio in order to have live band performances, which is a typical feature of most rock videos. we believe our actors were convincing due to all of them being real musicians, so their guitar and bass playing was accurate, with many people commenting about how it is well timed and effective. People also commented that they believed that the lip sync was also very well timed, with there being a lot of focus on it during the low key lighting scenes, which added to the variety of the video.

The main effects that we used during the video was fades, as it was a subtle effect that didn't become over bearing, as many music videos don't have any effects at all. We also included a cut zoom for the guitar solo, to add emphasis to the skill of the guitarists, and show that we payed attention to the thought beats. we also showed that we payed attention to the thought beats by focusing the start of many shots with an instrument, such as when the music kicks in we have a shot of a heavy bass strum, which works well to again show focus on to the music, as well as the camera shots. we believe that our video runs smoothly showing an effective use of final cut with nothing being over bearing, with no black screens or jumpy footage.

The narrative to our video is fairly subtle, although we tried to incorporate the lyrics by having literal interpretation. The story line features a girl who becomes infatuated with the lead singer of the band, and her feelings become stronger and more apparent as the song goes on, so "You're really growing on me", and the increase of shots between the two shows "Or are you really growing on me?" from the lead singers perspective. However, it is revealed that the lead singer has feelings for another member of the band, a male, who he skips away with "into the sunset" at the end of the video, showing a more typical romance ending. However, this is probably different to how most of the audience would expect it to end, as most people would have expected the boy and girl to get together, but it is revealed to be something of a love triangle. This questions the generic traditions of a relationship, with the girl not getting the guy, but the guys getting each other. This was in an attempt to appeal to anyone who has ever had any sort of relationship trouble, such as love triangles and un-returned feelings.

We believe our video is quite successful as it has received largely positive feedback with regards to the video being fun and up beat, due to its randomness and appeal to the audience, while still trying to portray a positive message, with a serious underlaying thought. We had subtle editing and smooth running footage and convincing actors and live performances, with enough mise en scene to appeal to all loves glam rock.

Final Evaluation Questions 1, 2, 3



Above is the Final Evaluation of Questions one, two and threee.

Thursday, 7 February 2013

Creation of DigiPak



Creation of Digipak

When creating our Digipak I began by first editing the photographs of the band. I first removed the original background so that the background was left plain. I then created a duplicate layer and a new layer which I sandwiched between the original layer and the duplicate. Onto my new layer I pasted the background that was used in our advert and used the colour replacement tool in order to change the colour depending on the band member (William = Blue, Nazz = Pink and Northey = Orange). I then used the eraser tool on the duplicate layer in order to bring the edited background to the forefront. I did this easily by using the Magic Wand Tool to select the white section of the image and then used the eraser to remove it without removing any of the image of the band member. I then used the eraser tool on it's own to tidy up the edges of the image so that there were no white patches left and to allow the image to fit better with the background. I then brightened the image up and de-saturated it slightly to give it a more grunge-y feel and finally included the Dry Brush filter (altering the brush size and brush detail) in order to give the image a more matte appearance.

 
Following this, I saved each image of the band as a JPEG file and arranged it onto a Digipak draft in order to gain the correct placement of each image. To create the front cover, images of the band were layered over each other and then faded so that they appeared as background images and the main image of the band fighting was in the foreground. The band's name was then placed at the top in a black font so that it would stand out against the background images. We used the same font from the advert so that consistency was present throughout our products. This was then placed onto the Digipak and I began to create the back of the digipak. To create this, I used the same background as the band photographs but this time I changed the colour to black. I then used the Horizontal Text tool to add the tracks (which were chosen by everyone in the group) as well as the Copyright Information at the bottom, which we used examples of other Digipaks to compile. I then added our logo to the bottom left corner and added a barcode which I found on Google Images to the bottom right corner of the image in order to give our Digipak a more professional appearance. To create the disk space I used the same background again - this time entirely purple - and created a new layer, pasting the inside of a CD case and altered the opacity so that it looked as though there was a plastic cover over the background. Finally, I added spines to the Digipak which I simply coloured in black using the paintbrush tool and added the name of the the band and the album using the font Helvetica in white. I originally used the Horizontal text tool in order to write these but then rotated them and lined them up with the spine of the Digipak.

Test Footage



This is the test footage from when we began filming our music video, which consists of general test shots, landscape shots and out takes. This again keeps up with the humorous theme that we tried to incorporate throughout our project, with several funny scenes and high key lighting. We also tried to follow the glam rock style by including "Love Gun" by KISS as the track in the back ground, keeping in with the genre, but using a different band to add some more interest and prevent our work from  becoming too repetitive by featuring only The Darkness.

Final logo



After creating the video we decided that our original logo was too busy and detailed; it looked out of place on the digipak and the brown tones didn't work well for our 'Glam Rock' genre. The logo was created by taking ideas from the original logo but changing it to create a more simple image - this was done so it was easy to remember and linked better with our band. It consists of a silhouette of a human skull with a punk hair style. Due to our music being described as dark and heavy, black and dark red seemed to be the most appropriate colours. Logos are meant to be individual and catchy and I think that this image ticks both of those boxes. 

Creation of draft logo


1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

When creating the Record Label Logo I began by drawing it out on paper as I thought that this would make it more original and personal. I then scanned it into the computer and loaded it up in photoshop (1). 
Following this, I outlined the image in order to make it bolder, so that it would stand out and to also neaten up any smudged or scratchy pencil lines. (2)
Next, I used the paint bucket tool to colour in the logo and picked bright reds and oranges for the fire and a bright yellow for the inside of the record so that the colours stood out against the black outlines. (3)
I then began to alter the saturation, colour balance and shadows/highlights in order to give the logo a darker, more grunge-y effect to represent our genre. Once I was happy with the balance of colours and the brightness/darkness used I decided to add a filter and applied the Plastic Wrap filter to give our logo a more 3D effect. (4)
Once I was happy with the levels applied in the filter, I used the Burn tool in order to apply individual shadows and shading in order to add to the 3D effect that was applied when I added the filter. (5)

Costume Mood Board



Above is our mood board that helped us put our actors costumes together so that they looked natural and did not clash.

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Font Samples




For the advert and the Digipak I browsed on dafont.com in order to find suitable fonts for our products. The fonts I finally chose were 'Angry Nerds' and 'Reklame Script' as I thought that these were the most appropriate; both are bold, unique and easy to read.  I chose Angry Nerds as the main font as I think that it fits the genre with it's bold spiky style, it also adds a fun element to our ancillary products which is a theme that we have continued throughout the production of our video and final products. I chose Reklame Script as a secondary font for the smaller righting on our advert as it was clear to read but still added a unique, interesting element to the text on the poster. 

Audience Research Summary