Evaluation Q4: How did you use digital media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evalution stages of your work?

Evaluation Q4 on Prezi

Evaluation Q3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Final Product: Music video uploaded to youtube

Here is our finished music video embedded from youtube...

Final Product: Music Video Finished!

Me and my partner (Sebastian Baudains) recently finished our music video for the song Where You Should Be by the producer Skream. After hours of work both filming and then editing the sequence I can say that I am thoroughly pleased at how it has turned out.
After some research on how to keep as much of the quality as possible, we exported the finished piece of work from Final Cut Pro to the desktop and if possible I will be hosting the sequence online and will post it on this blog.

Final Product: Poster

Digipak - Poster

Shown above is a poster that me and my partner have produced to promote both our music video and the CD design that we have produced. I am pleased with the poster as it has ongoing themes seen in the creation of both my CD case and our music video. This is the true as we took the image used in the poster directly from our music video purposely so that onlookers would be able to make the link between them. We also used the same font when writing the text 'Skream!' and 'Where You Should Be ft. Sam Frank' as we did on are CD cover for that same reason. The reason why we chose the image used is as we thought it is appealing to look at and tells a story to an onlooker.

Final Product: CD Inside cover




Digipak - Inside cover of CD case

 



Digipak - Complete CD cover

Shown above if the image that we are using for are inside cover for are CD. It is the same image we are using for our poster just without text overlayed. This image will be shown in the inside cover when opening the CD case.

Final Product: CD back cover

Digipak - CD Back Cover

To make the back of our CD cover we used a combination of 2 stills taken from our music video. The main image seen in the background was a still taken from footage which shows the motorway late at night. We then overlayed an image of the DJ seen in our music video and decreased its opacity and placed it at the bottom right of the cover. The For the text 'Tempa Records' we used the font of Helvetica Neue Heavy Italic which continued the theme as it is same text used on the front cover. We decreased the opacity for both the words 'Tempa' and 'Records' although less so on 'Tempa'. We felt that white was a good colour for the text to be in as it contrasted with the dark background and is therefore easy to see and eye catching. We added the barcode to show where it would go in theory if this CD were to be sold in shops.

Shown on the left is the back of one of the CD cover I analysed. One idea that we took from this cover was positioning of the text vertically along the left hand side. Apart from that we were not inspired by any other simular products as we used images that we had produced ourselves and edited them through experimenting and seeing what we thought looked good.

Final Product: CD Front cover

Digipak - CD Front Cover

This is an image of the front cover of the CD cover that me and my partner have produced using adobe photoshop. The image is a still taken from our music video and was then colour balanced and brightened to give it the greener glow that can be seen in the image. The main font (called Helvetica Neue Heavy Italic) we used was inspired by the font  that was used on skreams first album and has somewhat been related to him. We also applied tighter tracking to the text which is where the letter spacing is moved closer together. After some discussion we felt the it was neseccary to use this font as it is associated with Skream and would therefore appeal to are target audience although we also made changes to the way that this font was used. For example we positioned it verticaly along the right side of the cover which was an idea inspired from the two CD covers I have previously analysed which both showed all or part of their title aligned verticaly. These are shown below:

We also made all of the text slightly 'see through' by editing the opacity of the layers on photoshop. For the text that reads 'Where You Should Be ft. Sam Frank' we made the decision that we did not want to use the same large and bold font we used for the text of 'Skream!' as we felt that it would be to over the top and fill up too much space on the CD cover. Also, we wanted the text 'Skream!' to be the first thing that an onlooker saw so it was necessery for it to be larger.
Overall, I am pleased with how our CD front cover as I feel it fits with our target audience and is also aesthetically pleasing.

Construction: Finished ancillary task!

Me and my partner recently finished both are CD cover (includes back, front and an inside cover) and also a poster which advertises the release of the single that we are producing a music video for. We produced both of these pieces of work using the graphics editing program adobe photoshop. Me and partner are pleased with how this project has gone and in the following posts I will show images of both are finish poster and CD cover and will also discuss how my previous research (analysing other album artwork and posters) on the subject helped me and partner in producing ours.

Construction: Digipak Initial images without text (back cover)

To produce the back cover image we took a still from are footage which showed the motorway and then over layed it with an image that we took from a sequence from are footage that showed Sam Sawtell DJing. We then turned the image of Sam Sawtell so that it was greyscale. The next step involved using using the magic wand tool to cut the image so it only showed Sam Sawtell. We then merged both of these images and desized the image of the DJ, moved it to the bottom right of the project, and finally decreased the opacity to make it slightly see through.

Me and my partner will now continue are work by inputting text on to both the front and back covers.

Construction: Digipak Initial images without text (front cover)

Recently me and my partner started working on our CD cover. We feel that so far we have produced an effective back and front cover. We have yet to input text on to these covers and they probably also need colour balancing. All of the images used so far we have taken from the footage that we are using to produce our music video. We have then edited the images (ie. turning an image into grey scale) and colour balanced them a little. Here are our initial artworks for the front and back covers.

To produce the image for our front cover we took a still from a sequence we are using right near the beginning of the sequence. We then made the image slightly more greeny using the colour balance tool. I feel this enhanced the image aesthetically.

Research: Skream Poster

This is a poster I found which advertisers an event that Skream is playing at. The effects of the blues and reds used on this picture looks good and I believe could be replicated in photoshop. Using the magic wand tool I believe you would be a able to highlight the diffrent shades in the face and then change them to light blue, dark blue, red and white. I will discuss this idea with my partner and also so further research on how we could possibly replicate this effect.

Research: CD cover 'Outside the Box'

This album artwork is from the same artist that we are making our music video for and is therefore a similar product.
Here are the front and back covers from the album by Skream called Outside The Box:

The album artwork is simple although effective. For example, the use of the opacity (see through) of the blue box on the front cover. This not only does this looks good, but it also makes the whole artwork more interesting as at first it may look like a solid box but if looked closely, the mans face is visible. Techniques like this will also be easy to implement when me and partner use photoshop to produce are CD cover.

Another thing I like about the CD artwork is the simplicity of much of it. On the back cover only a coloured box is used with the text overlayed. This shows that that CD covers do not always need to be complicated with much editing done to them to be pleasing to look at.

The fact that the title of the album is shown vertically in the top left of the front cover as opposed to the expected horizontal text design shows the unconventionality of the artwork. I will talk to my partner about presenting the our album title in this way as I think it would compliment our design.

Research: CD cover 'London Calling'

Here is a peice of album artwork that is from a totally different genre of music than that I am producing a digital package for:

The album 'London Calling' by 'The Clash' is considered as an iconic album cover and there are ideas from this that I would like to incorporate into my CD cover.
For example the title layout along the left hand side and the bottom of the cover could be Incorporated into my CD cover. And also the use of the colours used pink and green. These colours are eye catching which is often the desired effect of a CD cover as it can attract customers. The sans-serif style font used in this album artwork is also interesting.
But the thing I like most about this artwork is the photo that is used. The photo shows the bass player Paul Simonon smashing his instrument against the stage as The Clash played in New York in 1979. The image tells a story to the onlooker. I hope to succeed this when making our CD cover by using images from our music video footage.

Research: Ancillery task CD cover

Recently me and my partner have had discussions about producing a CD cover for for the song that we are making a music video from. This will be part of a digital package that we are making for the song. Me and my partner decided it would be benificial if we were to do research of both simular and unsimular CD covers. This will hopefully inspire us when making our CD cover. I will post these following this post.

Construction: Editing Levels

Me and my partner undertook the task of editing the levels to manipulate what the footage looked like. Many of the shots were left unchanged but the ones that we felt were either too dark of too light we manipulated the image through changing many of the variables shown in the picture below. The quality of many of the shots were improved and it seems that it was a necessary to this.

Construction: Audio Waveform

Whilst we have been editing our footage for a music video we have often found it difficult to edit our footage in time to the audio track. After some research on the Internet, I discovered the you could enable the audio waveform to be visible in the time line on Final Cut Pro by going to Sequence, Settings and the then by highlighting 'Show Audio Waveform'. This has been extremely useful whilst editing as as it has made it much easier to cut from one shot to another in sync to the track. The audio waveform shows the changes in the dynamics of the track.