Update [Jan 15th]

Due to the weather conditions we had lost a lot of precious time for filming our footage and also taking our still shots for the digipak. However we have finally been able to get back on track as when we are not able to filmd we have been planning our digipak design and taking indoor shots for both music video and our ancillary tasks. Alongside that we have spent any time during our lessons in the last week filming our narrative and performance shots. We have replaced the idea of shooting the artists performing in the park with him performing in the recording studio. We have been able to get all of this footage as well as our outdoor narrative shots. We also spent today taking still shots of our artist for our album digipak. As we have already planned the design of five of our sides of the digipak we have been able to take all our still shots and are now able to start editing. By our next lesson (monday the 18th) we will have completed all of our filming and our still shots. This will allow us to begin editing the music video and our images for the digipak. All our research has also been completed and therefore we can now concentrate on our editing.

Below is a brief list of things that each member of the group has been doing in the last few weeks and is going to be doing over the next week:

Filming in corporation park - Jess and Zulaikha
Filming in music studio - Matt
Filming in Jess's Home - Jess and Zulaikha
Filming outdoor narrative - Matt
Digital Images of outdoor snow shots - Zulaikha
Digital Images of indoor artists shots - Zulaikha and Jess
Directing on Set and pre planning- Full Group
Practice editing images and footage that we have had already taken - Full Group
Research - Full Group
Film Footage editing - Full group - We will all be editing parts of the footage and working on it as a group
Digital Images of trees for back cover - Zulaikha
Digipak front cover - Full Group
Digipak back cover - Full group (Autumn Trees on either side)

Digipak panel 3 editing- Jess (Image of the Artist Conor)

Digipak panel 4 editing - Zulaikha (Artist and Jess holding hands walking in the snow, with their footsteps behind)

Digipak panel 5 editing- Matt (guitar with leaf background
Digipak panal 6 editing- Carla (Forest Trees)

Dimentions of a DigiPak (Research)

DigiPaks can have 4, 6, 8 or more panels.
Inside the DigiPaks there is usually photographs of the artist or object(s) that link to the song(s) or used during the filming.
Some DigiPaks contain lyrics and information about why the songs were produced and their inspiration, sometimes you can get background information (almost like a mini biography) of the artist or the band, how they came about music and why they continued to make the CD, etc.

We will be using 6 panel DigiPak so we can include Photographs and Information of the artist.
Below is an example of a 6 panel DigiPak and a template:

When it comes to making the DigiPak we need to make sure the quality of the photographs are very good to obtain a professional look to the product. This can be achieve this by using good quality paper and Ink also making sure the image being used isn't blotchy or pixelated.

Practice using Photoshop

Last year i did a video based production and therefore have no previous experience in using photoshop and photo editing programmes. Others in my group however do have knowledge about how to work the programme and have had experience using photoshop even though they some of them also did video based production last year. For this reason i decided to get a few images and play around with them to see what effects i can do and how to do these. However i did not use photoshop as i do not have access to photoshop at home. I used a programme called Paint.Net which is considered to be very similar to photoshop. I felt that although this is not photoshop i will stil be able to gain some knowledge on how to create certain effects and how to even fo some of the more basic things. Therefore this will give me an opportunity to enhance my techniques and learn how to do things as i go along.

Our group has already come up with an idea for our front cover and we will soon be uploading a mock up design of our digipak. I decided to try and put together the front cover by using Paint.Net just to see how i would come across doing this.


I used the two images below to create the 3rd image. I will explain a few pointers below about how i did this.

Our initial idea is something along the lines of what you can see above (however this is only a practice that i did and there were some effects that we are going to try and create in our final design that i have not yet been able to conquer).
I did not have any images of a person standing on a hillside with a balloon in his hand and therefore decided to take two seperate images and merge them into one final image. In our actual design for our cover we will be using an image of our artist shot in such a scene and therefore will not need to put together the two images.
I firstly edited the picture of the girl holding the baloon in Paint.Net. I removed all the background and coloured the remaining in area in black so that it looks like a shilouette. However the girl in the image is wearing a hat and is also not an image of the girl head to toe. Therefore i had to draw the rest of the body and also had to erase some areas to create a figure like shape. I then had to create another layer with the hillside background and change it so that it is an overlay. This image i changed into a black and white tone which was very simple. I then cut the figure and pasted it onto the black and white hillside background. However it was slightly challenging to change the size of the figure without distorting the shape as it appeared that the pixels altered the shape making it look slightly strange. This left the final thing to do which was changin the colour of the balloon. However when i filled in the balloon in the orange colour it looked very odd as it was a very blunt image of the balloon. To make it look more realistic i used 'gassian blur' to slightly blur out the colour so it looks like a slightly more softened shape.
Although this may not seem like much skill and may not seem like alot of affects have been created i feel that for the first time of using Paint.Net i have been able to create a good image. I feel that i will be able to improve my skills now that i have basic knowledge on how to use photo editing programmes. I do realise however the image looks slightly 'cartoonish' and i will work on trying to improve my editing skills to making the image look more realistic.

Branding - Ancillary Tasks

As part of our research we have already published a post on branding as you may have already seen. We have already explained the importance of branding and how it is achieved. In this post we are going to explain how we are going to create our brand image.

As mentioned before branding is all about creating an image that creates an impression that consumers like and people can link to a particular line of products. For this reason there must be a consistent theme and brand image through the line of products in order to link them together. The image the brand is trying to promote and show should be shown in all of the products and the same message should be given. However there are many similar products on the market and for this reason it is necessary that this certain line of products, this brand, stands out and is different to compared to all the rivalling products. Once this image in manipulated and has been created it will allow the consumer to see the value and potential in the products. Therefore it is necessary that we create an image that attracts our indie audience and is able to connect with them. We must be able to portray our indie genre yet bring something new to the market that is slightly different to everything else. The fact that the artist we are promoting is also a up and coming new artist it is necessary that we are able to create a brand image that will bring about a large audience. One of the key elements to creating a successful brand is to keep consistency across the range of product promoted at any one time across the world.

To create a consistent brand image our theme is going to be the weather ad in his main song ‘talking about the weather’. This is the song we have created a music video for. In the music video there are several outdoor shots which we have shot to show in which you can see the snow and autumn leave etc. The song is actually about the artists love for his girlfriend however he has used the weather as a symbol of his affection towards her. For this reason we are also going to use this weather / outdoor nature scene in our album cover and magazine advert so we are able to a create a consistent theme. As well as the nature/weather theme we are also going to try and keep the indie image and an indie theme in order to represent our genre. So we will be aiming to use creative and different types of album art as indie art is often very artistic. This will allow audiences to identify the products linked to our music video. We are also going to use the same fonts throughout our album cover and magazine advert as it sets a consistent brand image. It allows our products to be identified as a brand and as a line of products.

It is necessary that we keep this image and theme consistent throughout our products so that the audience are able to identify the products and link the products together. The brand image is what allows our indie audience to identify the artist and distinguish its quality and uniqueness from other products on the market.

Mood Board - Indie Album Covers

I thought it would be a good idea to put together a mood board/collage of famous Indie album covers. Displayed above are the album covers of some of the most famous Indie bands/artists.

As you can see that the album covers of one artist or group has a similar theme and image. They tend to use a certain type of art. For e.g. stereophonics tend to do a very simple cover but it makes it effective through the use of colours. The colours are enhanced to look brighter and more vivid. The killers on the other hand use a very simple but and mellow toned background. The killers also use the same font and colour to produce a consistent brand image. Kasabian use very dark and shadowy colours. They use a lot of shadowy and dull images along with the contrast of red and blue. It shows that in indie art there is no one set type of art that is created and used, it is very unique and different to other indie products on the market. However each artist has a consistent theme and image that are portrayed in their videos and other promotional merchandise.

By looking at album covers we have realised that indie art is always creative and diverse. Generally they tend to have out of the ordinary yet interesting ideas. Indie art often consists of a vibrant imagination. As you can see from the above mood board\collage ever cover is exclusive from one another and to not have a template which is universally followed by all indie artists. Often very simple, the simplicity of the image must be noted as it is very artistic through the way the image is shot and edited. The colour grading and affects used make the image eye catching. The photography used is very symbolic and paint the artists message within your mind. It is through the images and colours that the audience connect to the artist. Not many indie albums have an image of the artist on the main cover, However when the artist is shown on the cover they are shown in a glorious and imperious manner.

The font primarily used in indie genre is block like and imposing yet it is also very simple, this is to make it stand out from the background. The norm of the background is generally contrasting between dark and bright colours; as identifiable from the mood board\collage above can see there is a lot of use of blue, orange, and black.

We are also going to try and create something that is unique and will also consist of a contrast between dark and light colours. However consistently through our products we will try to keep a certain theme and are going to try and portray a certain image to the audience.

Digipak - dimensions and ideas

We looked up the basic dimensions of a digipak so that we were aware of the sizes and space we are working with. However we were not aware that we will be creating a 6 sided digipak so we will be updating this post with dimensions for a 6sided digipak and a mock up of what a 6 sided digipak consists of.

Below are also a few different ideas that we have put together that we could possibly use in our digipak. The first two digipak ideas are ideas that go with the theme of our song and have been created in order to keep a flow of the same brand image.

At the moment these are only ideas that we have come up with but as a group we will all be putting our ideas together and creating a mock up design of our product.

Weather Issues

Majority of our music video was based outdoors and was initially going to be filmed in coporation park. The performance as well as narrative sections were based in our local park as the track we are using is ‘talking about the weather’. Therefore as you can see from our storyboard and synopsis our filming was going to be based in the park where we are using a lot of nature sites and a lot of outdoor scenes where we can show the weather. We were hoping to set a autumn type of scene where we are able to capture many shots of when the autumn red leaves are flying around etc.

However due to the severe weather and snow we have not been able to do this. The weather has significantly affected our project as we have no been able to film according to our schedules. The schedules and deadlines we had set for our group have had to be changed several times as we have no had the appropriate nor safe weather to film in. due to the snow blizzards over Christmas it prevented us from getting out of our homes and meeting up as a group to film at corporation park. We did at one point make our way to corporation park however after several minutes of filming the weather began to affect us. We felt that it was a great health hazard as our artists hands began to turn blue because of the cold. Therefore we decided it would be in our best interest to not continue filming and produce a new idea to overcome the issue of the weather

To overcome this we decided to try and come up with ideas of filming indoors. So we came up with the idea that we will film our artist performing in the music recording studio. We had access to this in our college and gained permission to film here. We filmed several shots from different angles and lengths of connor performing on his guitar. We felt that it was necessary to change our initial idea as it would not be possible to film outdoors and this may have an impact on our overall project. We were very lucky to have also had access to the recording studio as if we were not able to get permission it would minimise the chances of completing our music video. We also had the idea of trying to film the artist performing next to a window and looking outside at the weather. We have also filmed this as it will allow us to have more footage and be more creative with our final product.

We also yet still need to film the narrative part of the music video. Once again because of the weather we have not been able to do this. To overcome this we were hoping to film all of our narrative today but because of the heavy snow college has been closed and therefore cannot do this. However we do have parts of the narrative already film. We are hoping to film shots of the narrative outdoors however as it very cold we are going to try and spend as little time as possible outdoors. We are hoping to get a combination of outdoor and indoor shots so that the visuals still mirror the lyrics.