Ancillary Tasks - Photography

Tuesday is fine for both people I am planning on photograph so all photography should be done by the end of tomorrow. I have decided that I don't need the photography studio and instead will shoot outdoors to get the sky as a background as this will interlink better with my music video. This way I can also get some silhouette shots which will also link back to my video.
For the main CD cover image of Luke, I will try out different backgrounds, eg sky/plain wall, to see what works best.

Ancillary Tasks - CD Cover Photography

I will need to get my actors, Luke and Emily, together for a little photo shoot for my CD digipak ancillary task. I will need close up images of Luke for the Front and back cover as well as profile shots of both actors for the inside sleeve.
I have suggested this coming Tuesday, as this is when I am free and able to get access to the photography studio and specialist lighting. I am now waiting for them to get back to me and confirm if they are both available for this date.

Ancillary Task - CD Pack Planning

For my ancillary task imagery, I want to create a very graphic design style image as the majority of the imagery for CD covers my band, Young Guns, have used are in this style. I have found an online tutorial on the Computer Arts website, which I love the look of. I think it will be a bit of a challenge, although I have knowledge of Photoshop I have never tried to do something like this before.
The image above shows what I will be trying to recreate. However, I will make the images inside of the face more relevant by using imagery relevant to my music video, such as clouds, rain and guitars. Below is a sketched out plan of what I'd like my CD packaging as a whole to look like, including the front & back cover, inside sleeve and CD design.

Ancillary Task - Digipak & Poster research

This is the promotional music video for Enter Shikari's new album 'A Flash Of Colour'. Below, I have also pictures the the CD packaging with all images inside the pack being shown (front back inside sleeve etc) as well as their most recent tour poster with support band (who I am producing this for) Young Guns. I have looked at how all of these three element of their promotional package have interlinked with one another. The packaging of the CD case has a triangle theme throughout where the shape is seen in different locations; some abstract, others real such as a forest. The video is similar to this as the triangle appears numerous times, also abstract and in real situation (on screen in the news desk scene). The packaging has elements of continuity across a number of pages, as seen on image two of the inside sleeve where the triangle is in a field and the front and back cover. This CD pack doesn't contain any lyrics on the inside sleeve but just a variety of images.
The poster, however, doesn't make similar links. Instead it uses the colours black and red to interlink with the CD packaging. They have used an off setting effect on the title of the band 'Enter Shikari' which mimic old style television, an effect which appears in the music video. These are very subtle hints but I think that they are trying to promote their live performance more than the CD itself by having the live image across the top third. 

Editing - Final Rough Cut

This is my final rough cut before the final version of my music video. I have added rain into the storm cloud shots by using After Effects CS5 and masking a video inside the shape of the Young Guns logo as my establishing shot. I have changed a few shots around and improved on little imperfections and I'm now awaiting feedback to really improve for my final piece.

Ancillary Task - Video Inspiration

My ancillary tasks (CD digipak and a poster/advert) need to be related to each other and my video. I have watched my current edit of my music video to look through all my footage again and have taken screenshots which can be used to give me inspiration as to what themes and types of imagery I could use throughout my set of tasks. 

The first image is of the establishing shot of my music video which I found quite powerful with the contrast of weather between the background and the logo. I feel like the logo of the band is quite and icon symbol to their identity. The rain of the background instantly connects and refers to the title of the song and the sunset of the logo shows a contrast which opposes the background, suggesting change.
I like the use of layering in image two, I think that I could use the idea of overlaying the clouds in my video over a portrait of some sort. This reflects with the theme of my video as this imagery is used throughout my music video, making a clear link between the promotional pack.
I like the silhouetting that I have used in my video and think it would work quite nicely for the inside sleeves where a silhouette could be placed to one side and the lyrics next to it. It gives a colourful yet plain background of a sunset which wouldn't be too cluttered and messy for text to be overlaid on top. I would have a silhouette of the male and female characters  for the double page of my inside booklet.
Again, silhouetting has occurred in image four however the sunset takes over the image. This could be used on the back cover to show track listing as well as artist information and copyright/barcode information. It's a very plain image that would suit having text over it and could contrast with a rain image which could be placed on the front cover, showing change.

Editing - After Effects

Having access to After Effects at home, I decided to try out adding in some rain to my first cloud shot. I followed some tutorials on the internet as I have never used this programme before. I used the 'CC Rain' effect already available to me in AE CS5. I played around with the settings to something that suited and looked fairly realistic. I also changed the blending mode to 'Overlay' as this blended the rain into the clouds and darkened them more than the 'Normal' setting did where the rain looked very fake and out of place. With the low quality of this clip on Youtube, only allowing me to view at 360p, I'm not sure whether or not to use it in my final piece. Obviously, I'll need to experiment more to get the settings right and play around for the whole of my video but I think if mastered it could be a nice touch.

I would add this effect to all of the storm cloud clips. There are three in total in my music video currently, the establishing shot from around 0-3 seconds, one in the middle from 58 seconds to 1 minute and near the end at 3:45 to 3:46. This would make my video link more to the song lyrics and currently I have no footage of rain, only clouds. 

Research - Mask Editing

Having noticed that a lot of the recent Young Guns music videos have used their logo in them, I felt that to make my own video really look like a video they would use I could add this in in some way. The idea I have come up with is to create a mask so that another video would appear to be playing inside the logo's shape. I would do this in the establishing shot of my video, the storm clouds. I could play a video of the sunset or a clearing sky inside the log to show a clear contrast. Above, is a video I have found on Youtube which explains exactly how I can do this. I have access to Photoshop so this shouldn't be too difficult to do and would add a great personal touch of the band to my music video.

Research - Young Guns New Video

Young Guns - 'Bones'


This is the new video from Young Guns, called Bones. It is the second single from the new album which will be released in February and has the same name as the album. It follows quite a dark colour scheme and is split into performance and narrative. The Young guns logo also appears in the form of a tattoo on the girls hand as a close up in the middle of the video. This has appeared quite a lot in their recent videos. Their is also imagery at the end of the video which resembles their album cover. I have show it below through screenshots, it appears that the girls in the video are mimicking this pose and these shots are held in slow motion to make it appear like weightlessness and floating in the air.

Research - Rough Cut Audience Feedback

After completing my rough cut, I decided to post my video onto the social networking site 'Facebook' to see what peoples reaction would be to it. I received quite a positive reaction to it with over 20 likes and positive comments which I am very happy with. These likes were very evenly split between female (12) and male (11) and all of these were in the age range of 15-19 which is my target audience. However, as this was video was only viewable to people who were friends with me I thought that I needed to broaden my audience research a bit more to get a fairer and more accurate analysis.

I decided to post the video onto the official Young Guns Facebook page to see if I could get any reaction to my video there. I knew that this page gets quite a lot of posts and comments from fans and in the end it got a few likes, two from fans and 2 from the bands street teams/other fan pages.
My rough cut video has managed to get 160+ views in less than 48 hours which I am quite proud of seeing as I have only shared it to my Facebook friends. I decided to look at the statistics to see details about the ages of viewers and where they come from etc. I found out that the majority of views have been from females in the age range 18-24 and I have had views from mainly the UK (as expected) but also some from Portugal. I searched the video into Youtubes search bar and found out that it is the second top video to come up if 'young guns there will be rain' is searched, meaning anyone who searches this can clearly see and click on my video if they wish to view it.

Editing - Rough Cut

Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of my A2 Coursework production. I am very happy with how things have turned out such as the time lapse shots and how I have managed to use all of my clips without having to reshoot of film extra footage. Unfortunately, Youtube appears to have lowered the quality of the video, making it look quite jumpy and slow. It looks slightly better and less jumpy played at 480p. This may be able to be worked around my compressing the file size, as it is quite large at present which may be the issue. I have chosen to abandon the idea of the video being in black and white as some of the colours, such as the sunsets and the orange guitar have come out amazing and it would be a shame to cover this up.

Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome so far and will get some audience feedback to help me decide if there are any changes to make before I finalise this piece.

Editing - Markers

During editing, I found that using the marker tool was extremely helpful to me. I used markers a lot in editing to mark out certain beats and points in which to cut a clip or where to match lip syncing. I found it a really simple way in making sure that everything was perfectly in time and to the beat of the music. I also used this tool when playing and watching clips in the Slug as I was able to mark out useful parts of the clip or parts that were unusable to that could cut away and leave what I needed, especially as some of my clips were quite long and my issue with rendering takes a lot of time away from me. Hopefully, everything is now in time and effectively cut so it looks more like a music video rather than narrative with music playing over the top.

Editing: Narrative shots

I have started to edit together parts of my narrative as well as having put together the introductory part of the song before lyrics. The first chorus of my song shows the narrative where the character of younger Luke appears to be sending a message in a bottle, reflecting the lyrics. This then cuts to a pan back to the character of older Luke replacing his place, suggesting even though this character has grown up he still has the same habits/life. I then cut to a shot of Emily's character finding the bottle and reading the message inside, establishing the story. However, this was quite predictable and the obvious thing to do so I switched this for a clip of Emily running away from the stream which makes the audience question and engage to find out what she is running from. I moved the clips of her finding the message to the instrumental during the middle section of the song which explains why her character is running. The idea was that she knew this was a trait of his throughout his childhood so realised and went to find him.

Editing - Timings

As I've begun to edit together and start watching my edited footage back, I feel that some of the timings I had suggested on my storyboard were a little too long. A lot of the first shots I had planned for the beginning of my song were about 6 seconds long each. Watching this back, now edited together, I feel that this is very long to hold the clip and looks like each clip drags on so I will have to make some changes to this. Overall, editing is going well and I aim to have a rough cut of my music video shortly.