#a2 production

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Watch "Ultra Naté, Angelica Ross, Mila Jam, A2 - Fierce (Official Music Video)" on YouTube

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Welcome to my blog!

Through out this years Music video production I have put a vast amount of important post on my blog and each has helped me to develop and improve upon my finial media production for A2, as there is a large amount of information on my page, here are the clicks to certain sections to help you find what you are looking for earlier, enjoy!

These are the links to each stage leading up to the final Music video and analytic texts in chronological order: Research, Planning, Production, and Evaluation.

https://eviewatkinsmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2-research 

https://eviewatkinsmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2-planning  

https://eviewatkinsmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2-production

https://eviewatkinsmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2-evaluation

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The changes we made for our final cut!

In this vidoe we see two clips of the being shot and the end, the frist vidoe is the original begining shot and as you can see its more jerky where as in the...

In this vidoe we see two clips of the being shot and the end, the frist vidoe is the original begining shot and as you can see its more jerky where as in the sencond one we have chaced the duration of the time making it look smoother. Then we see two diffrent endings, our first ending hadnt got the feedback we wanted and seem unporfessional so we changed it to a staright cut before the camera movement. 

For the first part of the video, we found that the opening shots were jolting, due to the quality of the tripod. This is our process of how I edited this footage to make it look smooth and professional. The first clip shows the original, where the camera jolts and slows. For the first attempt, i used premier pro to edit the clips and speed up certain sections of the clip that had slowed down, so that it ended up the same length. However, this was just too fiddly and there was no way that I could edit each part and it still fit the pace of the song. For this reason, I took the clip to After Effects and used the warp stabilizer tool to make it smoother, where the result is shown in the last clip. This resulted in the clip being slightly zoomed in, but looks much smoother and more professional. This is the clip that we have edited in to replace the initial shot for our final edit.

The first one shows the original ending that we had included in our first cut, however we found that this ending looked a bit messy, as the camera makes certain jolting movements, so we wanted to play around with the different ways we could conclude our video. As the camera fades after the window is shut, it exposes to almost white, so I thought that we could try fading from this into white. For this I used the Dip to white tool in the first clip. I also wanted to try it without the window closing at the end, as i feel that the three girls through the rectangle space is a very powerful ending image. You can see this with the fade to white in the second clip. However, after fading both into white, I decided that it did not look as professional as we had wanted.

For this reason, I deleted the whole last part of the video, where the shutter closes and the ending would be just the three girls. This, I thought was a massive improvement, but found that the shot ended fairly quickly and there was no further usable footage of the shot to add to the end, so i reversed the shot in various places and pasted it in between other normal ones to lengthen the shot at the end and make sure that it does not make obvious cuts and jolts. This is the ending we will use in our final cut.

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My Digipak in 3D

To see what my digipak would look like in real lift i decided to print it out and make it 3D,  this helped me to see the digipak like the audience would and to see if it would as effective in 3D and also to see how it compares to other CD digipaks i have in my house and of course to check if it was all composed in the right way, meaning the layout and also if they images looked effective being next to each other or if it was too much. it also helped as now I can understand how an member of the public may perceive it and see how far it would appeal to our target audience. I think it looks good, it’ s very bright as i intended it to be and if i was walking round in a shop it would definitely catch my eye. the layout was good and also the inside panels worked well together and the font and writing was clear and bold enough to read which was one of the things i was worried about. I was like the white colour of my font as it stood out to me and also thought the colour scheme word so over all I'm very happy, one thing i would change would be the positioning of the song names and the back as they weren't in the middle and also next time i may add less flowers and just keep the green plants to make it more simple and to tone it down.

I like how the red and blue work together and also how there is a clear theme with both having the same plants on i think the font for the songs work well with my illustrations and i like the added detail with Lorde name on the side making it clear she’s the artist.

the inside is very bright and full of colour which i like and all the different colours really compliment one another! Also the front cover looks really nice i like the flowers with connect it to the other panels and also the back where the songs are.

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Digipak Editing

For my digipak pack i wanted to create a piece of work that would reflect the themes with in the music video and show a clear link between both analytic texts and the video   

I wanted to use a lot of colour though out as this would show a clear link to the video, i got inspiration through shots such as the London shots where the there were bright red houses with blue doors etc. I felt that because i have used illustrator for my digipak i have a unique and edgy brand identity that bought in the concept for art in to the pop genre which was unusual and would appeal to more people bringing in a large audience. As i still wanted to follow the conventions for other pop digipaks that all used a different shoot rather then just one music video images and having the artist on the cover using direct address to connect with their audiences, so I did all three of these conventions to make it fit in with real media texts. 

Front Cover 

For this photo i put the artist name in large bold writing and the top similar to other real media texts, and also having the album name at the bottom in the same font. I used the same ‘Old English’ font on both the digipak and advert as i found that many other artist such as Rihanna tend to use the same font too build on their brand identity and also be easily recognised by her fans. I then made the main singer sit in a ‘masculine’ pose with her legs crossed on the bed and hand on her hand, this is different to real media text as they use more appealing poses, close ups or the singers face or making them look elegant relating to the ‘male maze’ theory etc but for me i wanted to carry on from our video to subvert stereotypes, so by making her sit like this helps to support the theme, i also did this by the costume i used, I made her wear a blue track suit as this can been seen as a more manly outfit with is emphasised by using the blue filter on top. To connect this photo with my other images by adding illustrated flowers. 

back cover 

The back cover has a bold block colour of light blue to match with my cover photo were i used a blue filter, but they both still look every different. I have added pink and red flowers as this stands out from the background and connects with the illustrations in the inside panels. To make it fit in with real media i put key information such as the song names on the back in the same font and also added a bar code, the company logo and a copyright message down at the bottom.

Inside panels 

when making these I made them all have the same style for example the flowers are the same and plants and also the characters look the same in each one but with a different colour scheme. i did one of all three girls showing that they are  a team referring back to the title of the song we did, i used different shades of pink in this one as it complimented the green plants and made the black features stand out in comparison. I then did two other images with the two characters separately. The one of the main singer is very bold as all the shades of blue build on top of each other adding different textures within the image. i then used white for her face and body making her stand out from the dark blue used and also enhancing her facial features. The next one i did was myself i used a backing colour of red with a pink outfit with help grab by passers attention as both colours are very vivid and vibrant with is what i wanted to achieve. I made sure they all linked in with one another by adding similar features though out them all, or example i used the green plants in the red one then again in the pink one of all three, then from the blue illustration of the main singer i used the shading affect with transparent colours cutting thought the image.   

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Digipak Advert Editing

I wanted a advert that would stand out and look different for real media texts but also following the same conventions for having quotes or five stars, having information about the data its out and where to find it etc. and also i did use certain aspects for real media when deciding what photo would look best. I used direct address as it would made to audience feel more connected and also add intimacy with in the advert as help as enticing her audience in. Once I chosen what image i wanted to use i import it to Photoshop cropped it to the right size making it longer then my square album cover as it was for a magazine. The image didn’t need a lot of editing as it was already what i wanted but I did change the lighting levels to make it seem brighter but as it was already well lit by the natural lighting for the photoshoot i didn’t increase it too much or it would ruin the effect i wanted my photo the have. As i had a blue filter i felt it help connect to the video as we breaking down certain stereotypes that woman have, and as pink is seen as a ‘girly’ colour and blue is more masculine i thought by using this ‘cool blue’ filter over the top of my already blue image would intensify it and give a deeper meaning to the advert. For the image I placed Izzie centre frame allowing the focus and attraction to be on her and also had her whole body in the image making her look bolder and grabbing the attention for by passers. I also then place my camera lower giving her the power making the audience have to look up at her in the image and also i made sure that you could see the walls of the room behind as this made the audience feel like there are there in the room with her add a 3D affect to the image.

I used an all white room as this linked in with our video with the locations of and all pink room and the block colour houses. As our video had a lot of bright colour to help connect them I used a cool blue filter on Photoshop, it was vital to make all the media context link together not just to create a narrative but also to establish the brand identity. The magazine cover was in the same room as the album cover to keep the continuity they were just in different positions one was a lower angle and had more length to look more like a magazine cover, the other I took in a  straight angle and has the artist centre frame. I also made her wear a coordinated light blue outfit as it helped make her face and hair stand out and become more noticeable.    

Once I was happy with the image after using tools such as blur and re-touch to make izzies face very smooth and pale making it stand out and enhancing the blue colour by adding a filter and then changing the vibrancy level of the photo and then increasing the light, I then had to chose my font. Having chosen the colour and style of my  illustrating and what my real photos of the artist were going to be on my digipack and my magazine advert. I next had to choose a suitable font that would represent the genre and artist but also being one that its clear to read and will stand out to the audience and stand out from the photos themselves. After researching different pop artists I soon saw a pattern with each one and how similar they were, they all had a bold, straight and spaced out font. This is where i thought I would really bring in my brand identity by making the font slightly different. i kept the idea of having a spaced out font covering the whole length of the photo but I chose to use ‘Old English’ as this font was uncommon and had the Gothic twist I wanted to add. It worked well with the block colours of my illustrations and the blue photos I took. Having the same font across all ancillary text creates a continuity that links each one together. Here are some fonts i looked at using on my advert: the first one is  Felix Titling,

Mutant Academy DC BB 

I wasn't so keen on these fonts as they didn't stand out to me and looked to simple and similar to other adverts that had been done so when i found ‘old English’ i knew i wanted it. I also added the key information to make it look like real media such as the iTunes logo and the data it will be released. As well as this i follow real media conventions by placing the artist name at the big in a bold font.

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Using Illustrator for my Digipak

At first i wasn't going to use illustrator in my digipak as i had some good photos from my shot day with the main singer, but i thought were wanted enough colour within the photos to link in with the video so i started but just adding some blue colours one to a photo of Izzie, i did like it but it didn't look every professional and though if i was going to used editing on top of photo i should add more and go full so that's when i thought to use illustrator to re create some photos, as you can see the editing of the blue lines wasn't every noticeable. 

  using the latest versions of illustrator is very well set out making it easy to use, I had use it before making my digipak to draw and add designs over photos but had never made some thing just from the pencil tool, lucky i had a Wacom board which allowed me to be very accurate when making the images and also made it earlier to draw making them look more professional and could be seen as real media, it also allowed me to zoom in from the board which meant i could focus on detail and that all the lines were connected so when i added my colour with would be block colours.

Here is an image of the same Wacom I used.

first i clicked on the pencil tool then decided how smooth i wanted the lines to look i changed this by moving the fidelity slider which allows you to easy control the smoothness of your paths moving it to the left will give you more accurate lines which is something i wanted to give my work a polished feel but also moving it to the right would allow the lines to be very smooth with very few point, i went for the smooth path as this looked nicer and worked better with all the curved segments that I needed to use in my pictures such as the flowers etc.

Here is the image i made for Izzie, I took a screen shot of a part in the video of Izzie that i wanted to re create which was the footage of her in my grandmas house with the sun lighting up the room giving a nice frame around Izzie i wanted to use this as there were lots of flowers in the footage so as i was going to ass some anyway it help link in the two pieces. Once my outline was done i experimented with the colours

As i wanted to use blue on this image i used a lot of different shades to make it look more effective and interesting, i tried the colour green as in the clip she has a green top on but it didn't work as well with my other illustrations and didn't look nice with the blue background so then i tried an all green image but i still didn't like it more then the blue so went back to using blue shades i then used a slightly transparent blue on top of the flowers this was really nice as it added more layers to the image and also added different textures to the drawing.

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Digipak Plan and Digipak Advert Plan

After looking at many different digipaks I have a rough idea of how i wanted to do, to organise my ideas i started by making a mind map with all the different colours used in the video, to help me know what mis-en-scene i wanted to use to go with my illustrations. I wanted to made it stand out so i thought of using blod colours such as red and blue, but i also wanted it to connent and link in with one other so i thought that having green plant and flowers though out even on the cover photo on top of the real photograph will help to do this. As i knew what kind of thing i wanted i then did a paln on paper to see how the layout looked and where i such place certain ones such as the inside panels or back panels etc.

I also added what colours I would use so when it came down to doing the illustrations i knew what i was aiming for, or eles i would have been doing them for ages trying out the possible colour choice.

I thought that it was also very important to have a Digipak advert plan too, as this allowed me to place information and see where it looks most effective and also it allowed me to already know what needs to go on my advert in terms of information allowing me more time to edit the image and experiment with different fonts.