Extra Footage

On Tuesday evening I took out a camera, tripod and light so that I could get some more shots of the girl playing with the dolls house so that it would fit with the footage inside the house. 

This was quite an awkward shoot to set up as I had to borrow the dolls house again and organize when the young girl, Kester would be available to film with. However once sorted I got the shots required just to bring the narrative of the video together. 

- Rebecca

Final Editing

 

In yesterday's lesson ( Weds 22nd ) me and Katie did the last bits of editing and some finishing touches as well as adding in the bits of footage of the dolls house.

As well as this, we improved the photo-frame moving clown scene by moving it more inline with the frame so it doesn't move out of place.

We got another group and Leanne, our teacher to watch the video and no one spotted anything that needed to be changed however we will keep returning to it so we can be certain. 

-Rebecca and Katie

Website progress

Today whilst looking at the final website design, we came to the conclusion that the format is very similar to a poster. So, to fix this we decided to create a background to go on either side of the template. This way it will make the website look less like a poster. This is what we have created today, although we are going to make a few touches, we would like to add more pictures from the photo shoot that we did. Here's what we've got so far. -

-Sophie

Video Peer Assessment

Also in today's lesson we had to do a peer assessment. This is the feedback we got:

Overall creativity - Excellent 

Holding a shot steady, where appropriate - Excellent

Framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate - Excellent

Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate - Excellent

Shooting material appropriate for a music video - Excellent

Mise-en-scene appropriate for a music video - Excellent

Editing making the meaning apparent to the viewer - Excellent

Varied shot transitions, captions and other effects that are appropriate - Good 

Matching sound with images and editing the music - Good

Overall the music video so far is - Excellent

The group also made some comments which were that a caption over a part in the video is a bit slow because of the clip in between and that it is a bit bright when Tony lifts a cover up, revealing a clown. 

We will now continue editing and consider these comments. 

-Rebecca, Sophie and Katie

Today's Lesson

Today we came in early and edited for a good four hours so we got a lot done. We put it in a lot of shots of the band as clowns towards the end where the music builds up mixed in with the long shot of Tony with the fast movement of people behind him to show the chaos.  We also started to put effects on shots from Tony's perspective as well as on some of the instruments in the clown chaos at the end. To make it even stranger we used clips from the green screen of the clown to bring back elements already used in the film which all helps to build up to the climax of the video. 


The photo above is a shot of how the instrument looked after we put the swap Red and Blue effect on which we believe looks good and works well with the timing of the music. 


Becca and Katie

Website Design final

Today we have just about finished the website design, maybe to make a few touches. We aim to have the video on the page somewhere, at the bottom but as we have not yet completed that we cannot add that as yet. Here's a snapshot of the design.

- Sophie.

Editing the Music Video-

Today we have progressed with editing, we are now near to the end, all we need to do is add some effects to where tony's character is seeing things differently, to make it seem more 'trippy'. Here is a snapshot of our work today-

-Sophie, Rebecca & Katie. 

Today's Lesson - Monday 6th

As well as continuing with editing the video we carried on designing the insides of the didpack. This is the design so far for the CD and inside of the digipack. We decided to stick to the newspaper and clown theme as it has run throughout with the video and the front cover. However this time we have included pictures of the band as clowns to give across the indie feel. We also put the song titles on the CD round the edges because it looks more interesting.

We may mess around a bit more with this design.

-Rebecca

Album Cover and Back

As it snowed and college was closed, we decided to all meet up and work on the album design. This is the nearly finished album front and back design for our chosen song. It has differed from the previous designs as the front with the windows on the house is more central and we have made the text more circus like. On the back we have put the song titles on the newspaper and included all the relevant information for the band and company Domino Records which is also on the back of previous Arctic Monkeys albums.

The only changes we will make now is to make the title on the front a bit more evan so it looks neater.

- Rebecca

Today's lesson- editing the music video

Here's a snapshot of our progression from today's lesson, whilst working on the video. We have now successfully edited the first 30 seconds of the music video. And are now working on putting the rest together.

-Sophie & Katie.

Website Design

In todays lesson we had a go at making the original website design more our own by using a photo from our shoot at the second filming as the background as its dark and mysterious. We got the band name to fit along the hedge but may change the colour, font and caps. 


-Rebecca

Performance Filming Evaluation

On Thursday ( 25th November) we filmed the performance and intro to the music video at my house in the garden. Unfortunately after ringing around and visiting many schools, halls and public spaces, we could not get hold of a hall without it costing a lot of money. Despite this, we really like how the filming worked out as the dark, high contrast light from the garden with the vibrant green grass and hedge has given the footage a more creepy, odd feel which fits the rest of our film. 

Filming in the garden had some difficulties as we filmed at night we needed to light it well. To do this we used two halogenated lights and had extension leads so we could move the lights about. They worked well lighting what we wanted whilst giving everything a nice effect with the black background.

We filmed the band section from lots of different angles and used lots of different close ups of the instruments and singer playing along to the track which we had on in the background. As well a filming the performance section we filmed the short sections at the beginning and end of the video which don't have music. These required the 9 year old girl Kester playing with a dolls house and putting money into a hat which started the bands performance. 

Overall the filming was very successful and we have a lot of footage to chose from and edit with.

- Rebecca

Today's lesson.

Today we just carried on editing the video, and creating the Digi-Pack below is snapshot of how we're doing so far. On an evaluating thought, our media teacher did say that the right hand side of the front cover looks a little off balance, as all the focus is at the window, so we will aim to work on that, and come up with a solution ( this area could be for where the barcode and record label info could be featured.

-Sophie

today's lesson- editing the music video

Today we have progressed with editing the video footage. We've finished certain scenes, and have spaces for  where the performance scenes will go. Here's a screen grab to show our progression;

-Sophie and Katie.

CD Designs Draft 3

Today in lesson, we got the templates for the CD digipaks so we edited or favorite photos from our shoot to fit into the front and back covers.

We chose a similar colour to Arctic Monkeys for the the band name from the album with our chosen song on it.

On the back cover we are going to edit the newspaper so that we can put all the song names on.

-Rebecca

Evaluation of Film Shoot.

Yesterday, we filmed the footage for our first location. Looking back on the shoot, it was very stressful, but we feel accomplished almost all of the footage, that we required to shoot.. we do intend to re-shoot a few scenes, as the lighting/ composition isn't quite right. All throughout the shoot we also took still photos, and before the film shoot we did a camera shoot, to gain the images for the website/Digipack.

-All Group

Change of plans-

So, we've had to change our original ideas and plans, as one of the locations is no longer available. We intend to find another location, with similar features. i/e a stage, and hall. We are going to ask permission to use a theatre in a school, and failing that, the theatre in our college.
Also, the house location has changed to Rebecca's house instead of Sophie's house, as it's easier to get to for the cast. We will post pictures of the new locations, and start shooting this week.
As well as shooting this week, we will do a photo shoot for the CD digipack, and website, so that we can start proper work on those, rather than just drafts, as we are not allowed to use images off of the internet.

- Sophie.

First Draft of CD Image

In today's lesson we had to start the CD images and covers, so this is our first draft of the image to go on the front cover. The back cover will be the same image but darker, and 'at night'.

- Sophie.

Website Design Attempt

This is our second idea for a website to represent Arctic Monkeys in the time they released This House is a Circus.  


The logo at the top is fairly playful to show they can be upbeat and cheerful but it contrasts with the image of the dark circus tent which represents the songs darker nature. The background behind the logo is of moons in daylight which is something we are also incorporating into the CD pack designs by having a circus tent in day and one at night. 


I chose big red writing to show a release of the track we are doing so it catches peoples eye and lets them know as soon as they look at the site.


The boxes are a faint purple as it goes well with black and white and makes things stand out. We will try and keep the home-page fairly clean looking and will probably include:


A latest News Box
A music player
An image of the band 
This House is a Circus video


Underneath the boxes and main space we have five buttons linking to places you can buy their music and social network sites as well as one to the record label they're on 'Domino'.


Overall this is a good guideline to continue our website design with, however the background may change so that it is our own image rather than one found off the internet. 


- Rebecca

WEBSITE DESIGN

DIGIPAK DESIGN

First Idea

Today we created a very basic design of our idea for the website. This will just but the background, and we will think about links, artist name, etc. We hope to use an art tablet, with photoshop to draw better onto photshop, rather than the mouse. It's supposed to be a circus tent, with house features, doors and windows. When we create the final piece, we will take photos of our own windows and doors, so as not to replicate images from the internet.

- Sophie.

DETAILS FOR THE SHOOT

RECEE SHEET FOR THE YOUTH CENTRE

WRITTEN STORYBOARD

Test Shot

This is a picture of Antonio who we will be acting as our main character who wanders around the house. This is a good test shot to show the general image we want to give the Arctic Monkeys of a basic indie kid. He is wearing a blur t-shirt with a shirt on the top which is very typical of a teenage boy which also targets our audience.
-Rebecca

Recee of Hall

These are pictures on the hall that we are going to film the girl with the dolls house and the band in. The stage is where the band will be playing and the rest of the hall is where the girl and dolls house will go. 
This hall is available to us for no cost as it is a youth centre who organize band practices which we will use and get permission to film for. 


-Rebecca 

Costumes

For the clown costumes, in the hall location we were thinking we would have their faces painted (as Rebecca has posted) and obviously dressed as clowns. We know there's a cost issue in buying 5 clown costumes, so we were thinking in getting the band to dress in plain clothes - for the indie genre, jeans and t shirts, but using clown accessories like large bow ties, and wigs and fake water flowers etc. Which we've researched into, and only cost a few pounds each, rather than a whole clown costume. Here's a few examples of the accessories we will hopefully be using.

- Sophie

DigiPak Research

Mark Ronson & the Business Intl - Record Collection

Mark Ronson is a musician and music producer, his style of music currently falls into the pop genre, but it generally more retro dance sort of pop. He collaborates with many vocalists and experiments with lots of different types of music. This album is titled "Record Collection" so, the artwork correlates well with the theme of the album, the front cover shows Mark's face made up of lots of different Record covers, with a cream background. It's an inventive way of just having a portrait of the Artist. The text featured on the cover i.e the album title and Mark Ronson's current alias, also comes in various forms of record styles so the font is different for each album cover on the front cover. This way of showing the front cover puts a new twist on boring album covers, and gives the feel for the album to be a different track each time, which goes with the genre that he is following at the moment. 
The back cover is pretty much the same, featuring the backs of different records. Normally, the track-list would be written in a list on the back of the album, but on this album it's nicely spread out as lists on separate albums, which again, matches the genre of retro pop that the artist is going for. the text is in different fonts, same as the front and looks nicely original. 
On the inside, the actual CD is oddly plain to say the outside is so loud and garish. I assume the CD is plain because that's how records look, plain, black and with a track-list on the front. The font on the CD is plain, and the artist's name looks 70's chic font, bringing the attention to the artist. 
The inside sleeve is in a standard book form like most albums, on the back is more of the record collection featuring most of the tracks on the album. On the inside of the sleeve, you immediately see bright colours and different fonts, which all look equally retro.. from the 70's or 80's. On most of the sides lyrics to the tracks are shown, but in the middle there's a larger collage of the body shot portrait Mark Ronson, using more record collections.
Over all the album is really colourful, and original I like the way that there's collages of the artist used in different ways, it looks seamless. And I like the way that the album title is 'Record Collection', and the whole album artwork is based on different record collections based on the figure of artist. I think we could take inspiration from this album as it looks really retro but really original and modern at the same time. And I think we could think about really linking the album title and the album artwork together, to do something different. As that's what Arctic Monkeys do, they do different things that don't really match the genre they're in, but oddly they still lead and give an example to the rest of the genre. 
-Sophie.