Digipaks: the current trend

Here i have displayed 6 of the best selling singles at this current time. This first bit of research allowed me to see which aspect was most attractive when targeting an audience.


Rihanna - Whats My Name

lady Gaga - Born this way

Katy Perry - Firework

JLS - Eyes wide shut

Ellie Goulding - Your Song

Adele - Make you feel my love

Similarities from these covers:
- All of these display an image of the artist!
- All singles state the name of the artist and the song title
- Each one has a different colour scheme
- The font has been carefully selected in order to match the song title.

As these alubums are currently top in the pop chart, I though it was essential to adapt our digipak idea taking in aspects of these ideas so that it would fit into the correct market. Although our genre is pop we are in fact a girl band. Below I have displayed examples of digipaks created by pop groups.

Girls Aloud:



Sugarbabes


These three girl groups show many similarities and have helped me to understand the importance of image that should be displayed on a pop group digipak.
All show images of the girl groups themselves with a pretty bland background.
Again both the title of the song and band are in full display.

Ideas for our ancillary task

As our main production is completed our next task is to focus on ancillary task 1 and 2. As a group we chose to create a magazine advert and our own digipak, out all all of the acttions we believed this was the best suited to our music video.

We have already decided on a few ideas for our digipak and magazine:
- Images will be of ourselves
- We will use bright and colourful font
- We won't be relating to the lyrics on our digipak
- We want our ancillary tasks to be bright and eye catching following the genre of pop.

Existing Media Products from The Saturdays:
Usually in the pop genre artists and bands create digipaks and magazines that relate to the lyrics in their single. For our product to look professional we will all be doing individual research and then meet up to brainstorm.




I have included to examples of digipaks fromm The Saturdays which represent the style and look we are going for. As you can see the group have stuck to co-ordinating with eachother which allows the to be perceived as individuals but as one.

An example of The Saturdays relating their images to the lyrics in their song is the advert and images for their single 'Ego.' The song is about a man having a big Ego and below I have included an image showing the girls standing strong against this.



For adverts, The Saturdays have done plenty of promotion. To promote singles the girls took part in the Tampax Pearl advert wearing neutral colours.



Neutral colours have appeard as a hit with The Saturdays and they also used this colour palette to perform on tour.

The 'Final' cut

We had completed our video and would just need to add in a few small details at a later date such as my candidate number and the school center numbers. We had to present our video to the class and teachers again in order to gather some last minute feedback.

Feedback:
We received Strengths and weaknesses in terms of:
- Camerawork
- Mis en scene
- Editing for meaning
- Sound

1. Camerawork skills are strong and evident throughout (for example match on action)
2. The Citizen Kane influence was very effective and we had done well by adapating it into our story line.
3. Our performance and lip syncing was of a good standard
4. The storyline works well with the flashbacks
5. The dialogue scene showed an off balance sound

A quote from class mate Perry Allen... 'masterful'

Editing 3/12/2010

Today we finished our editing!

What we did...
We edited the dining table sequence making each shot around 2 seconds each. As you can see from the screen shots below, the couple gradually get further appart.

In between the table shots there were flash ups of us girls which showed us lip syncing. We also used extra shots of ourselves to fill in the gaps and used dip to white to seperate us from the couple at the table.

As we had lines in the end sequence we used a technique which super imposed us over each other. Here is how it looked:





The shots clearly show how we transitioned into one another and this proved extremely effective. We did this by using four different visual lines when editing along with overlapping and fading to whites.

The editing technique took us a while to figure out but with the help from Miss Grant Muller we were able to make it a success. Here are some images of us editing this sequence:




After days of filming and editing our music video was complete!

Ideas for editing

As a group we created this video in order to practice our editing techniques.(This was done before our main production)

The video displays:
- Reverse play
- Increased speed
- Slow motion

Practicing these skills meant that we were able to incorporate them into our main production. We used reverse play in our fast tempo bit but at this point had already decided it looked to comical and needed to be taken out. In our new anti climax section we used slow motion when the glass falls to the floor and reverse play when it shoots back up.

Day 8 Filming

Date: 30th November

Location: Sophie's house

Time: 11:30am

Today, we re-filmed what we had done the previous week. We checked over the camera and our footage on the scene to ensure there were no problems.

Things we did differently:
- Opened the curtains
- we filmed in white tops (before we had filmed in our black dresses)

Here are the images of us girls in our white tops, we each took it in turns to film:







I have also displayed osme images of Emily and Joe at the dining table:

Plans for the upcoming week

Our deadline is moving closer and we need to re-film. We decided to meet at Sophie's house at 11:30 on 30th Novermber and have allocated editing time on Friday 3rd December. If all goes to plan we will have completed our music video by the end of Friday's lesson.

So what did we do in our editing session?

1. Edited the fallen glass into its correct slot.
We cut the shot down so that the glass came straight into the shot, we also decreased the speed of the glass by 50% so that when it shattered it looked really dramatic. We decided to copy and paste the shot and reverse play it straight after. This gave an interesting difference to our video.



2. Adjusting the flashback shots in the last chorus
We had a shot of Emily leaving the house followed by Joes reaction shot. As a group we believed this did not follow and therefore added in a shot of Joe walking after her before his reaction. This allowed the story to flow.



3. We also tidied up some previous editing
This included re-framing shots and improving our tight editing.

Editing 25/11/10 - A Big Problem!

Today when editing we came across a very big problem in realising the camera had not captured all of our footage! We hoped that something would appear on the tape as we had spent two hours filming us girls, Emily and Joe.

The only shots to appear were the ones of Jodie and myself lip syncing and the fallen glass. Unfortunately the lip syncing shots were unusable and we would have to film again!


Refilming will take place on 30th November 2010

Filming Day 7

Date: 25th November 2010

Time: 2:00pm

Location: Sophie's house (the dining room)

After planning the shots that we needed we managed to accomplish them all. These were:
1. The four montage shots of Emily and Joe at the dining room table
2. Closee Up shots of Jodie lip syncing her two lines that are played in the anti climax section.
3. A close up of both Laura and myself singing closing lines
4. An extreme close up of a glass smashing on the kitchen floor

This is how we set Emily and Joe up:




I filmed from a distance and centred the table...



What worked well?
I believe all shots worked well today especially the close ups of us four girls. Again, we chose a different outfit (of white tops) I think these will appear very affective in between the montage shots.

Problems:
The only problem we faced was the lighting in the dining room, we had to close the curtain because the sun was reflecting onto the camera, alternatively we used the indoor lights which still proved to work quite well.

Storyboard

Jodie Butcher, a member of my team quickly prepared this storyboard in order for us to follow a plan when it comes to filming.

Refilming and professional influences

We sat together as a group and brainstormed some ideas on how to fill in our anti climax section.

We decided on a technique used by Citizen Kane.

There is a sequence in Citizen Kane which shows the differences and separation of a couple at a dining table.



The couple start of by showing their affection at the dining table and gradually move apart...



We decided to use this idea by shorten and adapt it by using a series of four shots. We have decided we will also use other shots in between the dining shots as this will indicate time passing and emphasise on the growing distance of the relationship. By interpreting this sequence into a girl group genre we will use shots of ourselves (as we are the ones who have caused this distance relationship.)

Tasks to accomplish next..

We have planned a re-film of some shots in order to improve our videos quality.

Things that needed changing:
Refilming:
1. We need a few more lip syncing shots as we ran out
2. The anti climax section of the song does not work. As the gap is around 10 seconds long we could include some good quality shots that would show of our camera work.


Adjustments to the editing:
1. Heartbeat sound needs to be added
2. The last chorus needs some changing, this will be done by filming more Joe and Emily sections, the suitcase packing followed by Joe's reaction does not flow smoothly.

Editing 12/11/10

After receiving feedback, we went back to editing and made a few small changes.

What happened today?
We began by completing the song, this enabled us to see what footage we had left and what needed to be changed.
What else did we do?
1. In our pitch we had explained that we wanted all the group to be wearing different coloured heels. This would keep us in a theme but differentiate us by colour. We did this by wearing black dresses with the heels. We hadn't yet used the shots of our shoes so we created a montage and edited them in.


2. We readjusted the sizes of some images. Before we presented our first cut we were aware of the background dog walkers in Jodie's lip syncing shots. This was due to filming in open, public space. We adjusted this by dragging the sides of the image out so that it zoomed in. This allowed a positive outcome and gave Jodie a more professional look with no extras!!

3. We added in extra footage to the chorus, from our feedback we were aware that some shots were too long. By adding in more shots and cutting down others we were able to improve this and the chorus flowed a lot better.

4. When adjusting the size of our dance shots this gave a jumpy outcome, we improved this by adding in a flashback of Emily in the middle of the dance. This made the dance look like it was filmed on separate occasions (a popular theme with pop music videos)

5. We included a shot of us laughing at the end of our video, we decreased the speed by 50% and believed the shot worked really well. We then used a dip to black and dissolved the music. (as it went on for too long)