Our Finished Music Video

We have finally finished making our music video, and uploaded it onto YouTube. Here it is!

Finished Digipak (Whole Digipak)

This is our final Digipak. We decided to go with the black and white version as we felt that it would more suit our style of being an alternative rock band.

Finished Magazine Advert!

This is our magazine advert of which we have finished. In order to be able to upload it to blogger, we have had to reduce the image quality significantly in order to get the file size down.

Audience Feedback

After finishing all of our production pieces (music video, digipak and magazine advert), we decided to show all 3 of our productions pieces to 3 of our other classmates in order to get some audience feedback. We wanted to find out what others liked about our productions pieces, and whether we was effective at producing our tasks.

The 7 questions that we asked were:

1. What did you like about our music video?
2. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the pace of editing compared to the beat of the song?
3. How effective is our use of costumes in the music video?
4. How could we have improved our music video?
5. Who do you think the target audience is for our music video?
6. Do you think the combination of the music video, magazine advert and digipak presents our band with a unique image?
7. If you saw the magazine advert and digipak together, would you think that they are for the same album and artist?

This was the feedback that we received. 

Constructing The Digipak

Back Panel of Digipak

The first panel that we decided to work on when producing our digipak was the back panel. For this, we wanted the panel to contain 4 pictures of the back of all the group members heads. We decided on this because it would match the front of the digipak. Originally, we had the idea of having contrasting black and white colours. As you can see, Alanta in the top left corner has a white background, whereas Freddie in the top right corner has a black background. We originally thought this would be a good idea as it would show off our bands image.

After doing this, we decided to have a put a black border to put around the 4 pictures. We would do this so we would have space to put the QR Code and few other bits of information.

However, after reviewing this panel, we found that there was a few colour problems. For example, Alex in the bottom left corner, we felt that it didn't really look right, and it looked too superficial. Also, Freddie's hair was white which was totally false so we decided to alter the colours again. We found the contrast that we wanted as seen on the photo on the right.

We then applied this contrast effect to all 4 pictures on the panel so it kept a consistent feel to the digipak. We felt that this looks much better then the design idea that we had before. After this, we put the names of different songs on the back as this is a typical feature of digipaks. To finish, we wanted to make our back panel look more professional. To do this, we added a barcode of which would be scanned when customers buy the product. Customers could also use a QR Code Reader/Scanner which would take them to the bands website. We then decided to have a copyright logo with the name of a company. We ended the panel with the website of the copyright company.





Front of Digipak 

The next panel we decided to create was the front panel. As the back panel of our digipak contained the back of our heads, we decided that the front of our digipak should show our faces. As you can see from the album cover on the right, we was heavily inspired by the band "No Doubt" with their album "Push and Shove".










We adopted a similar kind of style for our digipak front panel. However, we slightly altered their idea of having a white and black background, and we stuck with having white backgrounds for all 4 pictures. This maintains consistency. We used similar toning settings as in the back panel, but we made the images sharper in order to make us stand out more at which I felt we was successful at.

After we was happy with the how the pictures looked, we then added the same black border around the images. This keeps a consistent feel to the digipak as we also used a black border for the back panel. We was able to use this black border in order to put the artists name at the top, and then put the album name at the bottom.










Inside Panels of Digipak 

After completing the front and back panels of the digipak, we then decided that we should work on the 3 inside panels. For this, we wanted to keep a consistent idea of where we could apply across all 3 panels, instead of having separate ideas on the 3 panels. For this, we decided to fill the whole 3 panels with shots of our band. We have shots of as a group and individual shots of all band members.

We decided to go with this idea as it fits in with the montage idea of which we used in our music video. We also decided to use black borders around each of the pictures as it keeps with our consistency of using black borders in the front and back panels. It also makes our pictures look presentable.

We then decided to edit the pictures so that they were a bit darker which would match the theme of front and back panels of the digipak. After that, we added a CD Impression. This would show where the CD would go. As you can see, we made it slightly transparent so you can still see the pictures behind the impression.


Last Digipak Panel 

The last panel that we had to produce was the panel which shows on the outside, and is between the front panel and the back panel. We noticed from researching other digipaks that this panel never usually had much on it, just because of its placement. As a result of this, we decided to use a very simple idea of having a group picture of the band. We used the same black and white settings that we had used in our back digipak panel. We, again used a black border around this panel in order to achieve consistency. For effect, we then decided to find fonts using www.dafont.com . We wanted to find fonts that looked like signatures so we could add them to this panel so that it had a good purpose. We feel that the fonts that we chose work well, and give the panel a professional signature look.

Finished Digipak (Individual Panels)

Digipak Decision - Black and White or Colour?

Colour 

Black and White

Constructing The Magazine Advert

Before we could create our magazine advert, we had to plan different things that we would use in the advert. The first element that we had to decide on would be the main picture that we would use for our advert. We wanted to create a mood that we are a serious band, but that we have elements of fun in us as well. Also, as we are an alternative rock band, a typical band picture would be the band against the wall, of which we used for our magazine advert. We narrowed our pictures down to 2 of which we liked, but ultimately, decided to use the second picture.







The second element that we decided to plan was the font that we was going to use for the advert. We felt that this would be very important because we have to make sure that we choose a font that is suitable for the style  

of music video that we have already created. We wanted to choose a font which dictates a level of seriousness, but fun at the same time. We used the website "www.dafont.com" in order to find the font that we feel would be most suitable for our video. Screenshots on the left show some of the different fonts that we considered as a group. We would look through many of the different fonts available, and then choose which one we thought was best. We typed in our band name "Remember December" in order to get a preview of what it would look like. After much debating within the group, we finally decided on the font "Bebas Neue" which is the top screenshot. We feel that this font was the most suitable font as it achieves the goals that we needed our font to be, which was to be serious but fun at the same time.

The third element that we had to decide would be what other pictures we could use for our magazine advert. This would show places of where our album would be available to buy and download so that people could actually listen to our album. By doing this, it would make people aware of where they could listen to our album, and it also made our magazine advert look much more professional. We decided to include well known names that people will of heard of before. In the end, we decided to use Spotify and iTunes on our actual advert.










Once we had considered all of the elements that we would need to know before starting the production of our magazine advert, we was then actually able to start creating it. We used Adobe Photoshop for the production of our advert.

 Our first magazine advert production session led to this screenshot on the left. As you can see, we had made a good start to the production of our magazine advert. We decided to use a black background for our advert because of us being an alternative rock band. We also imported our picture into the document and then edited the contrast and brightness of our picture in order to make us into black and white. We are doing this to keep a consistent style, as we are also doing a similar style in our digipak. We also downloaded and imported our font "Bebas Neue" into Photoshop and then used our band name "Remember December" at the top. We also used the album name "Friends With Benefits" with the album release date "19.06.15". We then decided to use a turquoise/green colour as we felt that it stands out against the black background. The final thing that we did was to add a 5 star rating to make our advert seem professional.

Our second magazine advert production session was when we thought about other different things that we could put in our magazine advert. In particular, we thought about different places that we would make our album available. We imported the Spotify logo and the iTunes logo (as seen on the left) and then we used the "Free Transform" option of where we would reduce the size of the logo without making the image contorted.
                                                                                   


This was what our magazine advert looked like after finishing our second production session. As you can see, we had added the logos of iTunes and Spotify into our advert, and we had also added another 5 star logo. We then had put in names of famous music critics who have rated our album 5 stars. We felt that this made our magazine advert look much more professional.

On our third magazine advert production session, we finally had finished the production of our magazine advert. As you can see, we had added a QR code, of where customers could scan the code using a QR code reader and then it would take them to the bands website "www.rememberdecember.co.uk". We then just added the website just below the QR code so that people could go to the website in order to find out more information about our band.

Finishing Our Music Video

Today, we was able to finish the editing of our music video. As a group, we are really happy with the final project and are confident about how successful it has been. The above process shows us exporting our music video out of Adobe Premier Pro.

Rough Cut of Our Music Video

This is the rough cut of our music video. We have almost completed the production of our music video and this shows our progress so far. However, we feel that there is definitely room for improvement so we will be editing a rough cut video by changing a few shots, and adding a few shots in, in order to make our video better.

Editing Update 3

Editing Update 3

With our third editing session, we noticed that one of our guitar performance scenes didn't look right. In order to fix this, we had to re-record a few scenes and then put them into our video in order to make the video look right. In the screenshot above, this is the scene that we re-recorded. We feel that this made our video better, as it made the guitar playing look more realistic. This shot is used at the start of the video, and also we put the song title, and name of the band in the bottom left corner. We repeated this in one of the last shots of the video.

Filming Status/Digipak Planning

After our successful filming trip to London last Wednesday, we believe that we have all the shots necessary that we need to finish our music video. All we have to do now is to edit all of the shots together in order to make our video as good as it can be. We also started thinking about the production of our digipak, and thought about using some of the pictures that we took in London. We feel that we could some of these pictures in our digipak as it would make for a good location, and it could be used to find our target audience of late teens/young adults. Some of the pictures that we took were designed to portray our group as being serious, but also being jokey at the same time. We took some shots of where we was being pretty silly, and some of where we was being very serious while looking at the camera.

Editing Update 2

Editing Update 2

After filming the park scenes, we decided to have our second session of editing. We was able to film scenes which we can use for the montage parts of our song, and also the bits which we are going to use for the storyline. There's one particular piece of editing that we done, of which we as a group was very proud of. There's a part of the song of where there are 32 beats, and we was able to put in 32 different edits. We was very proud of this, and we was able to successfully edit each clip to the beat, and we feel that it drastically improves our video. It also shows our editing skills of being able to edit to the beat well. These 32 clips are useful as well, as they detail the montage scenes that we were aiming to use in this video.

Filming Planning

For our next set of shots, we have planned to go into Central London. We decided to film there because we feel it would our video to be more professional, and would give us a different variety of locations.

We are going to go filming on Wednesday 10th December. We have all planned to meet at Dagenham East station for about midday. We will need to film as much as possible as quickly as possible. This is because it will get dark very quickly, so we will need to make the most of the daylight that we have. We will also need to make sure that we wear suitable clothing, as we will be walking around a lot, and it will most likely be very cold.

 We will travel to Tower Hill from Dagenham East using the District Line. It all depends on how busy the area is, which will depend on the types of shots that we will use. If the area is busy, we won't feel like it would be the best time to film shots. We will then get the train to Embankment of where we will walk round London Eye and Tower Of London. This will make for a good variety of shots which should make our video more professional looking.

Editing Update 1

Editing Update 1

After filming our band performance scenes, we needed to upload the footage that we had recorded onto Adobe Premier Pro. As you can see from the screenshot above, we have started the editing process of our video. We was able to download the song that we had used, and put it into our project and lock it in place. Also, we was able to begin putting our music video together, by putting our band performance scenes and editing them together with the lip syncing so they look professional. However, we still need to film more scenes, such as the park scenes so that we can edit our music video more, so a storyline can be added.

Music Video Animatic

This is the animatic for our music video. We drew on paper rough pictures of the scenes that we expect to film in our real video, and then was able to edit them together in a way that we want our music video to look like. We feel that this will be a good guide to use for when we go filming our real music video.