Research of Digipak: Poses

When researching into different digipaks, I noticed that the image used on the front and throughout still showed the artists personality, but a more glamorous and proffesional looking image was used. They were also close up shots or mid shots, which I think is to give an idea of the emotions that are going through the different songs on the album.

For example, if we look at the Kesha album "Animal", she appears much more glamorous and photo ready in the image, but is close up to show the emotion on her face, which is full of attitude just like her songs. She appears to have a lot more makup on and her hair is toned down a bit. This is a good album to look at when we are creating ours, because we are basing a lot of our products on Kesha, so when we come to creating our digipak, this album will be something we will look at.

Some more examples of this are Rihanna, Jessie J and Katy Perry. In all 3 examples, they appear much more made up, but still potray the type of personality they have. For instance, in the Jesse J one, she is pulling a very quirky and eccentric pose which matches her personality perfectly, however, she is made up to appear more glamorous then she may do in her videos by having black lipstick ect.

Digipak Research x 2

To get a better understanding of what is involved with the construction of a digipak- I looked at Rihanna again and one of her Digipaks as I feel it was the best example.

Here is an image of what it looks like:

By looking at this digipak, I can clearly see the type of thing that we are supposed to do for our one. Some of the following things I noticed were:

• There is a colour theme throughout the whole Digipak. The main colours are red, pink and an additional colour such as a light brown or a light green.
• There always seems to be an image of the person on the front cover; which is close up, so that the person looking at the album can easily distinguish who it is.
• The name of the artist and the name of the artist and album is on the front.
• The inside of the Digipak has an additional image of the artist which links or is similar to the image that is on the front.
• The CD is quite simple, but once again has some relevance to the rest of the Digipak.
• There is the same font used throughout which makes sure that there is clear continuity.

Therefore, during the construction of our Digipak, I shall take into consideration all of these different points to ensure that the Digipak is effective and looks good.

Digipak Research

To get an idea of what type of theme me and my group wanted to go for, for both of our ancillary tasks, me and sarah looked at a vareity of artists which fit in with the same type of Genre as ours. The ones that seem to keep popping up were Kesha and Rihanna, as in their videos they usually present a crazy and "off the rails" vibe. Their songs are a mixture of pop/R&B/indie, which means that their style fits in with our genre, which is quite indie.

PART ONE

Here we looked at a few of Kesha's magazine adverts/ album covers. We really liked both of these ideas, because in the first two pictures she looks wild and untamed, which is exactly what our protagonist character is like in our music video. We also liked how the photograph was taken really close up, which allows us to see she may have a wild and rebellious attitude- therefore with our photographs we may also try and create a feeling similar to this. The bottom picture was the one we liked best, as it is split into two photographs which represent a difference in behaviour or a split personality. Our protagonist character is seen in our video being rebellious and out of control, but also being calm and loving- so this photograph would be an excellent image to base ours round. We would go with a similar idea to this, but have one side of her looking distressed and rampant, and then the other side looking calm and collected.

PART TWO

Next, we looked at a variety of Rihanna images and covers. These are similar to the Kesha ones, as they potray attitude and hint that she is rebellious, because in most of the photographs she is smoking. Quite a few of these images are also close up which allow us to see the type of emotion she is portraying more clearly. The photograph in the top right is a little different as it is a medium long shot, however this gives you an idea of what the location is like, and consequently gives you more information on what the person is like and what type of song it may be. We can also see through these images that there is a constant theme throughout most of her advertising. She has the recognisiable "R" at some place on the image, and she is usually smoking. This is useful, as it gives the viewer something to be able to recognise who it is more quickly and also assosicate her products.

Editing: Problems Encountered

Whilst editing our film, we come across a variety of problems due to our unfamiliarity with the programme adobe premiere. It was quite difficult to use at times, so it took us a while to learn how to use it. Some of the problems we encountered were:

• Getting the correct speed of the clips for the music.
• Cutting the soundtrack
• Not being able to hear the song when trying to edit.
• There was a serious error with the programme one day, which meant we could not do anything.
• We had constant problems with there being lack of space on our users for all our different clips. 

Getting the correct speed of the clips for the music.

It was very hard to try and get the speed of the clip to the perfect speed, so that it fit with the song. We had many attempts of either moving the speed up and down to try and get it to the perfect speed. However, once we had figured out what the ideal speed was, it was much easier to edit all the other clips, because we could base them all on the first one. 

Cutting the Soundtrack

When we originally started to cut our clips, we had the problem of cutting the soundtrack too. We did not realise that we had been doing this until a little while in, therefore the soundtrack was chopped up everywhere. This meant we had to start all over again and find out how to make this did not happen. We realised we had to right click on the clip and then press "Unlink Audio and Video."

Not being able to hear the song when trying to edit

Another problem we encountered, was that there were issues with our computer or the programme which meant that we could not hear any sound. This limited our editing time, because we could not work out where we were suppose to place the clips, because they go with certain bits of the music. This also meant that we could not know the speed of them either. After a while the problem was fixed, so we could hear where the clips had to be.

Error with the programme

During one of our days of editing, the programme had a serious error, which meant we could not use the programme for more then 10 seconds. We had to have an IT Technician in, to try and solve the proble- which took quite a lot of the lesson. This once again limited the amount of time we had on trying to make the video look perfect.

Lack of space on our users

The last problem we came across with the editing, was that our computers could not hold all the film we had created. This was a constant problem, because it meant we had to keep deleting things of our users that we need just to keep adding and editing the fim. However, we realised this was going to be a continuous error so we asked the IT Technician to increase our user space- which he did.

Editing Our Film

After each day of filming we went back to school and attempted to put them together to create the different parts of our music video. We used the progammre adobe premiere which allows us to do things such as:

• Cut clips.
• Fade clips
• Add Sound
• Change the Speed
• And add effects

We started to edit by picking out all the clips that were the best ones and eliminating the ones that had something wrong with them, such as seeing the lights or the acting was bad. On the programme we had to pick "File" and then "Upload" to get all of our filming onto the blog.

We then placed the videos into the timeline in the order we wanted and then the music track so we could begin the editing process. We firstly cut down any of the clips that were too long and showed something that was unecessary. We do this by putting the line curser on the place we want to split and then click on the tool "Split Clip"- which will then put the clip into two different pieces.



Here is what the timeline looks like when about to split a clip.



We then moved onto listening to the music and deciding when and where the clips should be so that they match the music. We continued to cut the clips again if they were too long and we then sped the music up in the appropriate places too add a sense of "Crazy" to the music video, which is the type of theme we are going for. To speed or slow a clip you have to click on the clip you wish to do it do, right click it and then press "Time Stretch" which should then come up with a type of toolbox like this:

In the "Speed" box you need to put in the length of speed that you want it at. We needed this clip to be really fast, therefore we changed the speed to "1,500%"- which was very fast. We have used a lot of this tecniqiue, because the majority of our video has to have a speed change. 

Another thing we had to was unlink the sound from the video, so that we could delete all of the sound from the clips we had filmed and just here the music. We had to do this by right clicking on the clips and then choosing the tool "Unlick audio and video." By pressing this, it ensured that we could delete the sound without deleting the clip also.

 

Equipment

To create a successful music video, we used a variety of equipment that was provided for us by our school. We used:

• Video Camera: We used a canon video camera which could film and take photographs. It was a reasonable quality, so we managed to produce decent looking videos. This was small, easy to charge and easy to transport so it was the perfect camera for the filming we had to do.
• Tripod: The tripod linked with the camera, but was Sony. This was very useful, for when we had to do clips that involved filming for a long time or doing big smooth movements. The height could be altered on it, so it was very useful for when we had to do different camera angles.
• Lights: We had 2 large lights that were very proffesional. They were essenital, as we had to do a lot of filming inside, where the natural light was not good enough. We always positioned them on different sides of the actors to get a balanced light.
• Sheet: We had to use a plain white sheet throughout our filming, as the natural light from outside was sometimes overbearing and created lots of shadows and made the brightness too much. We used the sheet to hold up in front of windows or different areas of the house where the light was coming through. This also made editing easier, because it meant that we did not have to edit out all the shadows.

Lighting

To make our music video clear and to represent certain feelings, me and my group used lighting equipment provided by our school. We mainly used them for the indoor scenes, as the natural light was quite unreliable. With the outdoor scenes, we used the natural light and tried to make it seem a certain colour by camera position and the type of weather.

For example, in Ellie's bedroom- the room was very dark and we needed the camera at different positions, and some of them made it very hard to see her. Therefore, we used the lighting equipment and positioned them at different places around the room to try and make it clearer, but not too bright (see diagram below.)

From my research I noticed that the colour blue was commonly associated with sad lyrics and scenes  in the music videos. Our music music is based around a lot of heartbreak, sadness and mental troubles, so we decided we should have a blue/grey lighting in the scenes where the feeling is exactly this. We had to base this around natural light, so getting this grey/bluey look seemed to work better on rainy/cloudy days.  

As you can see from these two images, the colouring was either a blue colour, or it was a very dull colour that hand hints of grey/blue in it.

Filming: Day 2

LOCATION

EYNSFORD CASTLE

Over the Christmas holidays me, Sarah and Sarah decided to film the end part of our music video which involved being at Eynsford Castle. We needed a variety of different props which we had to use for this scene, such as a cigarette and an alcahol bottle. We also needed a lighter and a photograph of the girl and the boy together, however, we did not have this yet so we improvised and did the filming that we could with what we had.

ISSUES

We had a couple of problems whilst filming these scenes, due to the weather conditions- it was very sunny, but also very windy. The sun was a problem, as when filming in some shots, the sun made it impossible to view her face on the camera, so we had to move around to a couple of places to try and stop this from happening. The wind was an issue, because we needed to light a match to set the photograph on fire. However, the flame went out as soon as we lit it, and we tried many attempts at this using different techniques, but it wasn't happening. Therefore, we decided that we would just have to come back on a day where it is less windy, and we actually have a real photograph to burn.

Copyright Letter

To make sure that there was no copyright problems during the creating of our music video, we decided that we should try and get permission. We did some research to find out who we should email concerning this type of thing, and found out it was "Warner Music Group." So we looked on their website and found who we have to email and then wrote the following email to them:

Dear Warner Music Group

I am a Year 13 student at Wilmington Grammar School for Girls in England. I am writing to request your permission to use one track from Paramore’s album ‘Brand New Eyes’, called ‘Ignorance’. With your permission, along with the three other members of my group, I would like to use this track for my Year 13 Media Studies Coursework, which involves creating a music video with a popular and well-known song.

We will also be producing a digi-pack and magazine advertisement which will include the name of the song. If we receive your permission, this track will be used for educational purposes only and will only be viewed by my media class, teachers and the OCR exam board. However, to upload the music video to our coursework blogs we will require uploading the video to YouTube for a short period of time until the exam board has viewed it.

The artist and the company will be fully recognised throughout the pre-production and the music video and a copyright notice supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required please send full details.

Thank you for your time, we look forward to hearing from you soon,

Sarah Biswell

Zoe Richardson

Charlotte Coe

Sarah Brushett

It has been a while since we sent this email, however, Warner have not emailed us back yet, so we shall continue on with the song we are using, and see if they email back in the near future.