Ancillary drafts on the computer - digipak and magazine advertisement

These are two drafts i have developed on the computer through Photoshop using the the images of who was previously being portrayed as Paramore and who now is posing as the band. They are basic drafts to see how they would look on the computer and mise en scene and the style guide we as a group have developed have not been taken into consideration. 

My first real attempt of developing both ancillary tasks will be shown in a later post.

Ancillary drafts - digipak and magazine advertisement

 Drafts for an advert in a magazine for a new album and a tour

Front and back cover and inside drafts for a digipak, tour DVD 

Ancillary research - magazine advertisement

The second ancillary task I have chose is a magazine advertisement, a tour advert or an advert for a new album. I have chosen two examples of each because I think they are very different ways of doing both a tour advert or a new album advert.

This advert for a tour has a main focus of the bands picture, and name with the details of the tour being in small print at the bottom of the page. It also advertises their new album, taking advantage of their new album to advertise a tour.

This Green Day tour advert show the tour details across the majority of the page, with an image of their latest album cover photo in the background and an image of the band at the top with their logo.

This advert does not show a picture of the album they are talking about or the band and the text is very neutral writing, there is not sign of a band logo.

This new album advert is very simple, with the image being of the new album cover and the text detail over the top.

Developed narrative

We also discussed the depths of our narrative and came up with a developed idea which we all thought was our strongest concept and we also had the support from our teachers. Our developed narrative is the lead vocalist in the band who will still be played by Georgina Kerwin will be late for band practice and we will film her journey around Brick Lane to get to practice. Meanwhile a jealous girl played by Joanna Sibley (me) will be singing in her place at the bands practice. The first half of the song will cut from Georgina singing as she walked to band practice to Joanna (me) singing with her band. When Georgina arrives half way through the song, she will then join her band to show she has won.

Planning - organisation

This is a conversation over the social networking site Facebook between our group discussion preparations for filming in the drama studio. We discussed composition of the band as well as costume and makeup, preparing for the shoot as best we could.

Development of ideas

Following the shooting of our draft music video, we all meet together to talk about what worked and what we would need to change when shooting our final music video, we also discussed narrative, regarding location and when we would shoot it. The end result of this discussion is that some of our original plans for this project were changed. We will shoot our narrative in the location of Brick Lane in London, as it fits the mise en scene of our chosen music genre, rock. This will be done in the Christmas Holiday period. We thoughts that this idea expanded on our previous narrative rather than changing our original narrative we wanted to develop it. 

Ancillary research - digipak

The first ancillary task I have chosen to do is a digipak. A digipak can consist of more than once CD or DVD but its main focus is the extra information displayed in the pack, there is usually a booklet inside containing details of what is on the CD or DVD, if it is an album or tour diary, there maybe extras from the album or lyrics or a message from the artist/artists.

The front cover of the Digipak always has the 4 key elements featured on it, a main image of the artist or band, the name of the artist or band, the name of the tour and where the tour took place.

Draft music video development, photoshoot

These are the photographs we took during our draft music video band shots, this was to help us with composition and working out what looked good in a band photograph. It also meant we could practice with these photographs in our ancillary tasks before we had taken our final photographs.

These photographs are of the band in our draft music video, Georgina Kerwin (vocals) Joanna Sibley (drums) and Paul Healey (guitar)

This is the original photograph

This is after we had edited the photograph by changing the contrast

This is the original photograph

This is after we had edited the photograph by chaining the contrast

This is the original photograph

This is after we had edited the photograph by changing it to black and white and also the contrast

This is the original photograph

This is after we had edited the photograph by changing the contrast

This is the original photograph

This is after we had edited the photograph by changing the contrast

Draft music video with our prep band shots

We booked out the drama studio in our school and all the camera equipment including two video cameras, a stills camera, the jib, the tripod, the dolly and the steady cam as well as collecting all the props we needed such as a microphone for our vocalist, guitar and amp and the drums. We chose this location because we had an idea in our heads of how it would look, our idea was to close all the black curtains so we were filming against a black background, we turned all the lights off in the studio and tried to flood the band with the drama lights so the rest of the shot was dark but it did not turn out as planned. When we realised the band shots weren't going to go as we had hoped we decided to edit it and use it as a prep video to improve our editing skills on Premiere Pro for when we edited our final music video. Below is the draft video we shot just of band shots:

Youtube

For extra evaluation and opinions from people we don't necessarily know we uploaded our draft music video onto Youtube, so people could share their thoughts on what we have done so far. We thought this would be helpful for feedback from other students that are currently studying Media A Level in the process of this piece of work or from those who have already completed the course. As a group we came to the conclusion that uploading our draft music video to Youtube would be a profitable move because through our own experiences of searching through Youtube for previous Media A Level music videos, we have seen a huge amount of feedback on others work. 

Video blog 2 - Camera shots

This is a video of our group practicing different camera shots with the different camera equipment we will use, this allows us to be more prepared when it come to the filming of our music video.

I have listed below the order of each shot that was used in this video blog:

Mid Shot

High-Angle Two Shot using a Handheld-Jib

High-Angle Shot with Reverse Zoom

High-Angle Shot with Tilt Upwards

Full-Shot with Tilt Upwards; an example of Gaze Theory

Track and Pan using a Dolly

Track and Pan using a Dolly

Tracking Shot with Zoom using a Dolly

Over The Shoulder Shot

Pan into an Extreme Close-Up

Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom

Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom

Mid Shot; an example of using the 'Rule of Thirds'

Canted Angle with a Pan left

Video blog 1 - what we have done so far

This is a video blog explaining what we have done so far in the pre production of our music video. This explains, who we will use for our music video (band members and narrative actors, aswell as who will be featured in the photographs for our ancillary tasks.) 



Our Pitch

This is a footage from the pitch we as a group presented to our teachers with our initial ideas for the project, it shows the research we carried out with to get started on the project as well as the development process through to storyboarding and using Adobe Photoshop to design our logo for Paramore. 

Story boarding

Working as a group we started story boarding for our music video Misery Business. This is a very fast up tempo song so we story boarded around 50 shots. This was a sufficient amount for our basic plan of the music video but we know when it comes to editing we should have about 200 shots. This was a very helpful exercise, as throughout the process we were brain storming ideas, adapting the story boards as we went through to get the shots that would make our video as strong as possible. I have scanned in a few of the story boards we have drawn up as well as two images of our group working in the process. From left to right Joanna Sibley (me) Georgina Kerwin, Paul Healey and Hannah Vandervennin taking the photograph.

Production schedule

We set ourselves target dates of when things have to be done by, so we are organised and know that everything that needs to be is done we created a production schedule. By using a production schedule we will be able to create our music video to the best of our abilities, by keeping on track with tasks that have to be done e.g. planning and research, story boarding, pitches, photography, filming, editing.

Band logo

This is the band logo that we will use throughout our project in our ancillary tasks to try and make Paramore a brand. We thought this was an appropriate logo for our band because it was simple yet had an edge to it by adding colour. The colour scheme of grey black and mustard yellow is a strong combination as its not too in your face, allowing the layout of the text to be the main focus of attention. We came up with different colour combinations originally, one being red black and mustard yellow. Even though we as a group liked this colour combination we didn't think it was very oriental as it reflected the colours used by the actual band Paramore.

Ideas for band logo

After we had researched to try and find a font we all liked for our band logo, we started to design band logos around that chosen font on Adobe Photoshop. Here are some of the ideas we came up with before deciding on our band logo that would be used throughout our project and on both of our ancillary tasks. This is the simplest logo out of all the designs, the only depth to it is the stroke shadow that is used. We came to the conclusion in the end as a group we thought it was too simple for the band image we were trying to create.

Research for front and band logo

Part of our project is to create two ancillary tasks, i have chosen to create an advert in a magazine to promote a new album and a tour DVD for the band we have chosen to re-create a music video on. For both of these ancillary tasks i would need to identify our band with a logo. We looked at different bands from the same genre as Paramore which is rock. You can see the band logos we researched below:

After we looked at band logos we then went on to look at what front we could use for our Paramore text, our fonts would need to be consistent throughout so that we could develop a Paramore 'brand'. As a group we can up with potential fonts that we could use for our Paramore logo, and our main text through our ancillary tasks. The fonts we decided on are shown below with a text next to each, we chose these because we thought they fitted to the rock genre and it was a unanimous decision throughout the group on the chosen fonts. The fonts we chose are Agency FB and Orator STD. Agency FB will be the font we use for all of our headings and for the band logo and Orator STD will be used the content on our ancillary tasks and other small print.

Song Choice

After having done our pitch and sharing our ideas with both peers and teachers, we came to the decision that Misery Business by Paramore would be the best song for us. As it is a faster more up tempo song than The Only Exception and will need twice as many shots throughout the video, challenging us, helping us to achieve the highest mark possible.

Starting our main task

We started our advanced portfolio by brain storming our ideas for different genres onto mood boards; we focused on rock, indie, pop and R N B.  We came to the decision that we had more ideas for rock and it was the preferred genre within the group so we developed our ideas from this. 

Through process of elimination we decided on about ten of our favourite songs, then printed off the lyrics for each song and tried to come up with a narrative for each. We finally decided on two songs by Paramore as our preferred narratives, the only exception which is a slower more serious narrative and misery business, which is a faster less serious narrative. We went into more depth researching these songs, getting screen shots of the original videos and extending in more detail on our narratives for each song. We aim to ask our peers which video they like the best.

Open day video

We had to create a video for the open day at our school, so we were familiar with the cameras and the equipment as well as Premier Pro the editing programme that we will be using. It helped me learn how to sync music to our video, cutting videos as well as how to do different transitions on the software for our main task.

My first post

This blog was set up so that everything can be documented through the development of my G324 Advanced Portfolio task.

We are in groups of four in my group is Georgina Kerwin, Paul Healey and Hannah Vandervennin, these are all people I feel comfortable with and feel I work well with. We chose the task of a promotional package for a release of an album, for which we will create a music video, and each of us will create two ancillary tasks, we have each decided on the digipak of a tour dvd and an advert in a magazine. We will research different genres to find the song we will use, as well as looking at codes and conventions of a music video.

Style guide

Its important to create a style guide when creating a media product so you can insure that you are consistent throughout, with elements such as font and writing style, colour schemes and the layout of products. Using a style guide you can refer back to and follow all the same style elements of your product, ensuring consistency so that you can develop your media product into a brand. As a group we looked into the font, writing style, colour schemes and layout of products from Paramore as a band, we found that reds, oranges and mustard yellows were constant through out Paramore as a brand. We wanted to incorporate an element of the real Paramore into our brand as well as being original, so we used the mustard yellow as one of the colours in our brand.