Inspiration for my digipak and poster

For the original photo of my band for the poster before I had done any editing, I took inspiration from  the front cover of Blossoms's album and images I found of Arctic Monkey's. In both images the band are stood upright, slightly facing in. I think this gives them a sense of power and makes a big impression on the audience. When on a poster I think it will make them stand out become noticeable to the audience. The way they slightly face in gives them an air of importance. I have noticed this is a feature of the indie/indie rock genre.

Inspiration for my digipak and poster

The black and white theme for my digipak and poster has been inspired by bands such as Catfish and the Battlement, Arctic Monkey's and The 1975. Both of Catfish and the Bottlemen's album covers are black and white, as well as many of posters and images of the band. In addition, Arctic Monkey's use the back and white theme on their album covers as well as in their images. Black and white has become very associated with the genre of indie rock and rock. The 1975 followed this theme throughout the production, marketing and performance of their first album. Their album cover is black and white, all images of the band are in black and white, their videos are in black and white and their live performances have black and white colour schemes. This gave me massive inspiration to put my digipak products in black and white. Not only does it suit the genre perfectly, but it also represents what the band are about. Below are some images that gave me inspiration.

Music Video Final Cut

Digipak Poster

Digipak

First cut of video

This is the first cut of our video. We have edited it and looked over it several times to ensure it is all in sync. Having asked classmates and teachers for some audience feedback, we have thought about adding in some old style clips of a party and people getting ready, as this will show the character remembering what her youth was like. We think this will really add to the narrative and make it even more clearer than it is. We might add in small snippets of clips we find on youtube. We don't want to add too much in to disrupt the video we already have, but we need enough to make them not look random.

People have also suggested that we could put a filter on the performance part of the video to give it a different look. We have experimented with many different filters and have come to the conclusion to put a "vintage" filter on them as we think this suits the style of the video and the narrative. It gives the impression that the video is older, and will make it unique and interesting.

Editing the video

The editing process of our video has been going very well, and we are now in the latter stages. Because of the amount of shots we got in the studio, the editing process was much easier than it might have been, because we had a lot of flexibility as to what clips to use and how much performance and narrative we had in it. We also got a very wide range of shots in the studio such as some of the drummer and some of the feet of the singer. This allowed us to fill in any gaps in the song that we didn't have footage for. Without these we would have small areas without any footage to put in, and this would be a problem.

However, there were a lot of challenges we had to face when editing. Editing on the beat proved to be very difficult because the beats of the song were often quite complex and we had to adjust the length of the clips in order for it to be on the beat. We managed to edit to the beat well in the end, although it was challenging.

Another difficulty was making sure the lip syncing was in sync with the song. This was difficult because we had to listen to the audio of the clips and the song at the same time. The lip synching had to be perfect otherwise it looked out of time. Furthermore, when we looked back at the video and realised a part was out of synch, when we changed it this changed the whole video, so we had to go and adjust it.

We have been getting feedback from family members and classmates as to what we can improve on and whether the are any small problems with the video that we have missed.

At the moment we are happy with the edit, although we are going to go back over it to make sure there are no errors that we missed.

Creating digipak poster

To create my digipak poster I chose one of my strongest photos, as this will make my poster the highest quality it can be. To correlate with the theme of my digipak, I put the photo in black and white, as all my other photos are. I then added a photo of smoke on top of the photo and lowered the opacity so that i could see both the smoke and the original photo. I thought that the faces of my my band were covered too much, so i gently rubbed out so of the smoke layer so that their faces are more visible. At this point I still thought that it needed some more work, so I decided to add a background to the photo. I wanted this background to not cover any of the bodies of my band so I used the eraser tool to rub out this layer that was covering the body. This created the look I desired, as the two different layers work well together.

The next stage of creating the poster was to add the features found on digipak posters. This included the album name, artist name, social media logos, and the record label. I downloaded all these images and added them to the bottom of the poster. This makes the poster look very professional and similar to ones found used by actual artists. The text is one of the main aspects of the poster as this tells the reader who the artist is and what the album is called. Because the poster is to promote the album it needs to be noticed by the reader. I need to make sure the text stands out and isn't overpowered by the other visuals on the poster. I have used the font I had chosen originally and am pleased with how it looks as it's very bold and noticeable. I have also experimented with different colours and have considered putting the album name in white, as I am conscious that it might get drowned out if it is the same colour as the other text. So far I am pleased with how it looks, and am going to ask other people what their opinions on it are.

Creating digipak photos

I have been experimenting with my photos for my digipak and applying different edits to them. I have decided to go for a dark theme as this is appropriate for the Rock genre of music. I have put all the photos in black and white and added different layers on to give smokey and cracked effects. I am still experimenting with different designs and styles to find the one that looks the best and most professional, as well as ones that suit the genre of music. I have been adding a layer to my photo and changing the opacity before distorting it in some way to make it unique and put my own spin on it. There has been a lot to consider as I don't want the digipaks to look too over produced, however I do want them to be quite heavily edited so they are unique to my band, and are interesting to an audience. I need to consider the fact that digipaks are made to promote the album and represent the artist. One of the main points of a poster and digipak is too help sell the album, so I need to make the photos interesting enough to catch the eye of customers and make people want to buy the album.  I have been using my friends and family to give me feedback on the photos, such as how to improve them and what they like about them. Once I have done all the editing I am going to add the codes and conventions of digipak and digipak posters such as the album name, artist name, social links and a barcode. I also need to complete the binder of the digipak as this is also important.

Film diary: Filming the new idea

On Saturday we filmed our new narrative and we thought it went pretty well as we managed to get all the footage filmed. As directors we worked well with our actor to capture what we wanted.  We had a few problems with our tripod as it was a bit unstable, and led to us having to film some shots off tripod. Furthermore, as we were filming in small rooms, it did feel quite cramped, and this did limit the shots we could film on several occasions. This has potentially created some problems for us but we will wait until after editing to see what they have come out like. One of the main things we tried to do with this new narrative was making it more clear. We thought we did this well, as we showed the character was getting ready for a night out and looking at a reminder on the blackboard. We think that this idea will turn out better than the original idea as it was more thought through.

Positives from filming:

• We filmed all of our narrative
• We got all of the footage filmed that we wanted
• We have made the narrative as lot more clear
• We got a wide range of shots
• We got masses of footage, giving up maximum freedom when editing

Potential problems of filming:

• Some of our shots were limited because of lack of space
• Dodgy tripod meant we had to film some shots off tripod