Becky Underhill

Digital Workbook

[beckyunderhilldwb]

FINALS

POSTER:

CD COVER:

INLAY:

BACK:

BOOKLET:

VIDEO:

[beckyunderhilldwb]

50 WORDS - artist and demographic

My artist is a composer who composes music for TV and films, particularly horror and crime dramas. They create instrumental sounds to add tension and suspension. The demographic for my artist is horror lovers of any age or gender. Particularly viewers of Murder in the Patisserie film.

[beckyunderhilldwb]

FINAL EVALUATION:

At the beginning of this project I was at a bit of a loss with what I was going to shoot. When we were delivered the brief I assumed straight away that I would have to shoot imagery of people, my worst enemy. I soon came to learn that it could be taken as abstract as I’d like and therefore began to think about the things which I like to shoot - still life and food. 

I began by jotting down the different ideas I had floating around in my head but none of them really stuck other than a dinner party idea, but that style has already been done a million times over. When talking to others someone gave me the idea of how dinner parties never go to plan, and I could do a play on that idea.

When planning for dinner parties going wrong it came into my head that I could do a soundtrack for a film - an album of songs from a film. The more I thought about this idea the more I got into it and the more different ideas came to my head. Once thinking about the types of food I want in my photos and what I want the style of imagery to be it came to me, Murder in the Patisserie. 

I researched more into Patisseries, the type of food they have, how imagery would be shot. I also looked into horror imagery and murder, Murder on the Orient Express was what struck most of my research and idea generating. The mystery, the dramatic effect. 

When it came to the day of shooting I felt very prepared, I managed to get all the pastries I needed and I even had extra just incase things went wrong. The shoot was really fun, it went incredibly well with no hiccups and I was really impressed with the images. I had to narrow down the images twice as I couldn’t settle on final images and there was so many to chose from. 

The video has let me down slightly in this project, I could have done a lot better but I stayed in the safe zone as that is where I felt most comfortable. I did stretch myself slightly when recording the video as I began being completely in the dark with recording and editing videos. I have learnt a lot about Premiere, After Effects and video with this project, which hopefully will help me creatively and professionally in the long run. 

My primary image fits so well within every template, it can work as square, portrait and landscape and even has plenty of space for any text etc that may be needed alongside of it. 

If I was to reshoot this project again I would get help with the video side of the imagery, both the recording and editing. Although I enjoyed doing it myself it would look much more professional if it was done by someone who actually knows what they are doing. I would also ensure I was on top of the workload, keeping Tumblr updated and not letting it slip through my fingers. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

SOCIAL MEDIA TEMPLATES:

ITUNES:

INSTAGRAM:

FACEBOOK:

[beckyunderhilldwb]

CD TEMPLATE

Before I printed the CD I saw how the image would fit within the template:

The image fits perfectly with in the template, there is just enough space around the hole for it to sit nicely. 

I was going to add text but I think it looks good just on it’s own, with the Primary image being printed on it people will straight away associate the disk with the album.  

[beckyunderhilldwb]

IMPROVEMENTS?

Looking back on my project there are a few things I could have done better

- Kept on top of Tumblr work. 

Throughout the project I have been making notes on my laptop but not doing full Tumblr posts, I have had to go back and post all of my notes as proper posts on Tumblr and expand on them. This would have saved me a lot of time and hassle if I had just put them on Tumblr to begin with.

- Video, recorded more!

I could have recorded more content for the video, from different angles and different sets/locations. Although the final video I have got I am happy with, I think it could have been improved on a lot.

[beckyunderhilldwb]

VIDEO

For my promotional video I have recorded a series of clips of pastries being destroyed, I am going to be editing these together in a snappy and dramatic way. Once I have edited them together I am going to send it over to a sound designer to add some dramatic music over it, emphasising more dramatised parts. 

To edit my video I am going to be using Premiere, I have used this briefly in the past but not enough to be fully confident within it. I am going to be using google and YouTube a lot to help me out with how to add effects etc onto my clips. 

To begin with I imported all the clips I have from the shoot into Premiere, I then decided where to cut the clips. 

Some parts of the clips I have repeated to add drama, slowed down or sped up. By doing this it makes it flow much better than if it was all the same speed, it also adds suspense repeating things. I have used many transparent clips to add a short blank screen, again adding some suspense. 

Using a YouTube tutorial I learnt how to add a flickering of lights over some of the clips, adding drama and making it seem a little more horror-like. This was probably the hardest part of editing the video, finding the right balance between a nightclub and lights which are faulty. In the end I found the right balance. 

Using a different tutorial I added some text at the beginning of the video, using After Effects I made it so the letters typed out one by one. By doing this is lengthens out the introduction however, there will be dramatic music overplayed the text, making the viewer feel the suspension and tension building. 

For the end of the video I made a little endscreen in photoshop, just giving information about the album which was being promoted in the video. 

I passed over the video to a Sound Designer who added the music, he ensured that the music was in time with the cuts and also added a bit of an isolated effect when the knife stabs down into the donut at the end. I am really pleased with the way the sound adds depth and detail to the video. 

When doing the video I really stretched myself as I am not a confident cinematographer and I have never really used Premiere to this extend previously but I threw myself into it head first and I think the results are good considering this! 

The only downside to this video is I wished I had used different angles or even different sets/location for the shoot. I think this would have added something so much more extra into the video as it does get a little bit repetitive. 

FINAL VIDEO:

https://youtu.be/ws1rhb2OXvg

[beckyunderhilldwb]

CD PRINTING

One of my biggest worries about this project was how I was going to print on a CD, I looked online at the vinyls you can print on yourself at home and stick onto a CD but I was not too sure about that.

I mentioned it to my boyfriend who works in a post production sound studio and he said they have a machine at work which prints directly on to CDs - life saver!

I sent my image to him and he did some tests which did not go too well -

The first time he tried the colours were looking all funky but that was due to the colour being in CMYK rather than RGB, once that was changed the colours looked good - not perfect but they were good.

[beckyunderhilldwb]

INLAY & PLATTER

I wanted both of these to be very simple, keeping with the colour theme but showing some imagery. 

Although I do like the CD albums which have incredibly simple insides and back cover I also wanted to add some imagery into it. I have kept everything really simple, minimal text and making the background slide in with everything else. I think the background of the platter pulls it all together, I was going to have it a block colour but I think it would look too much and ruin the whole effect of the image. 

At first I was in a bit of a rut as to where I could print off these parts, I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money so I tried printing them at uni and it worked! Although I had to print them off on two separate sheets rather than double sided I still made it work, they fit in the CD case and they look really good. I printed them semi gloss so they fit in well with the front cover, I didn’t want to them to be overly shiny and they would stick out in comparison with the rest. 

I was concerned that the “MURDER in the PATISSERIE” would be out of line once printed but I am really impressed that it fits perfectly. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

BOOKLET PRINTING

The booklet came back and although I had told the company the sizes which I wanted it to be printed it came back slightly too large for a CD case. 

To rectify this I got into contact with the company and they allowed me to have it printed again for free, I just had to pay for the courier delivery. When this version of the booklet arrived it was perfectly sided and fit well in the CD case. 

Once the booklet had arrived in the correct size I was incredibly impressed with it, it feels very high quality and looks really good in my CD case. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

MAKING THE BOOKLET:

I have used the given template to make a booklet, I have dropped the images into it and made them fit as needed.

Looking at this it does not flow fluidly, the front cover is slightly distracting to the rest of the images and the images without a boarder just get a little lost off the page. To correct this I have I made a version with the yellow boarder on all of the images:

I think this works 100% more, the whole booklet has a nice running theme throughout and it’s clear to see they all go well together. 

When I sent this off to print the company I printed with asked for me to use a PDF splitter to cut the template down the middle, I then had to reorder the template so it was in order of pages rather than spreads. Although this was annoying it was really easy to do and I managed to do it very easily. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

POSTER:

For the poster I thought it would be relatively easy to do a straight copy of the CD cover but change the sizing but I was wrong. 

I don’t think this works as well, the OUT NOW! looks out of place and it just does not look how I imagined, it’s not very professional looking and just looks slightly off. I tweaked a few things and made this one:

I think this works a lot better, the word murder is slightly too small to be on it’s own when “in the patisserie” is so long, it works much better this way round. I have also moved the other text so it balanced the image and so there is not something on all sides of the image, by leaving the bottom of the image blank I think it adds empathise and does not make it look so crowded. 

I removed the exclamation! point from OUT NOW as it looked amateur with it. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

CD/BOOKLET FRONT COVER

After considering all the different ways I lay the front cover out this is what I have settled on. I wanted to add empathise on the word MURDER so I made it slightly bigger than any other words. 

The ‘original motion picture soundtrack’ needed to be a bit more of an informative line than something that needed to stand out loads and therefore looks fine small and to one side, it is an after line which is read after the original title. 

I have decided that the yellow and the pink are stable colours throughout this project and I will be using them throughout. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

MAKING THE FRONT COVER:

Now I have the Primary image I can make the front cover, this is going to be the staple for all the other imagery of this project. 

I have played around with several different ways in which I could lay out the cover. I have added a yellow border as it gives the CD cover a bit more of a “graphic” feel, which most albums have. It also adds a nice touch of colour and ties in the yellow of the knife well. As you can see in the top left corner the colour is much nicer, that is the colour I will be going with throughout my branding. 

When making my CD cover, I went onto google and looked at some other film soundtrack CD album covers, just to see what other record labels have done.  

A lot of the albums have “original motion picture soundtrack” on them, which makes sense as that is what the album is. When seeing this I have added that to my own front cover, by adding more text it means that I had another play around with the layout, here are some of the ways which I did the layout:

[beckyunderhilldwb]

PRIMARY IMAGE:

When looking through my images there was one strong image which stood out to be the primary image. This image was the image which I had in my mind since the beginning of the planning stage. That image is this one:

I have chosen this image as I believe it shows “Murder in the Patisserie” well, it shows a pastry, appearing to bleed, with a knife stabbed into it. I also think the colours work amazingly within this image, they all compliment each other perfectly. 

I think this image will fit great in all the different templates we have, all the different crops will work good. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

RETOUCHING:

Many of the images did not need a lot of retouching, I corrected the white balance when the first shot came through the tethering cable to the mac so that was correct from the second the image was transmitted into Capture One. 

The main thing I had to do in post was a bit of cleaning up - removable of spec on the lens, rogue crumbs etc. Other than that there was not a lot of retouching to do, which made the stills side of the imagery so much easier and allowed me to concentrate on the video editing. 

One of the things which was more difficult to retouch was the branding from the knife:

I tried to use the clone tool but this did not work out so well, in the end I used the patch tool and it worked perfectly. 

[beckyunderhilldwb]

IMAGE EDIT:

I have made an edit of some final images, this way I can narrow them down to the final images.

From this selection I have made a final edit of 7 images I will be using:

I have made a rough mock up of where some of the images will sit, this made it so much easier to visualise them as a booklet.