Digipack Design- Inside Left

Both the front and back covers of my design so far have predominantly featured the band. Therefore I feel it is necessary to pay more attention actual concept of our video which we convey the message through. The main theme of the video is mostly "military" based and revolves around the central character, who is an ex-army officer who has committed war crimes in the past and wishes to "Die with dignity" (the final line form the chorus of our song). He does this by disposing of some secret documents which reveal information about his past.

For the inside left fold of the digipack I have decided to go for an image which summarises the main character of the video as well as the central themes surrounding him. For the background I have used an image of the "secret documents" which we took during the filming.



I then cropped the image and added a "sepia tone" effect, this will mean that the colour scheme is consistent with the back cover of the album.



The next stage was to add some more images relating to the character. I found several good images in our production stills:

An image of the Officer standing in front of the fire he burns the documents in:



An image of the Officer "taking aim", the same image also appears in the secret documents as well as the video itself.



An image of the apache helicopter, this consolidates the military theme of the text:



To combine these images with the background I used the "lasso" tool to select them and then paste them onto the other image. Using a layer blending option called "Darken" which fades out certain parts of the layers I have managed to make the boundaries between the different parts of the image almost unnoticeable. I then ran the "desaturate" effect. This has made the particularly vibrant colours such as the bright yellows and reds in the fire blend in more easily:



The image seems to work well although it may still be in need of some more improvements. To help get an idea of how effective the combination of the images I have created for the digipack so far will be I have created a prototype. I used an empty CD case and a template downloaded from: http://www.discwizards.com/cd-dvd-artwork-templates.htm This will also allow us to collect audience feedback with more ease.





I have not yet completed the artwork for the inside right, also there would have been no space for it anyway in the format of CD case used.

Digipack Design- Back Cover

For the back cover of the digipack we have decided to go with a fairly conventional image which pictures the band. The image I have chosen is one of the band walking with their backs turned to the camera which we took at the runway location. Since the band appear at that same location in the video, the inclusion of this image should help to create a more consistent media product overall which fulfills the sole purpose of the text; to promote the band.



I think it is a very good image because the band are the center as the landscape fades into the distance. Since it is already a very good image I have only made a few slight adjustments. Using the program "Paint Shop Pro 8" I added a "Sepia tone" effect which I feel makes the image more refined.

The rest of the editing was done in photoshop however this was mainly used to add the text. For the tracklisting I used the same font which was used for the secret documents, this is another font downloaded online which is known as "1942 typewriter". For my initial draft I have decided to present the digipack in the style of an EP using 3 track names from the album which our song is on. As well as "Dignity", I have also listed, "Breaking Out, Breaking Down" and "Pretty On The Outside" which are two more fairly strong tracks from the album "Fever".

The next 2 features added were two more conventional elements of a digipack, the barcode and the copyright information. For now I have copied the copyright information of the back of the bands 2008 album "Scream, Aim, Fire" changing the date in the process, this should provide a sufficiently accurate representation of what the band would have on the back of an EP. The barcode was rather simply found on Google images, however it certainly looks the part.

Digipack Design- Front Cover

I have now begun work using Photoshop to create the digipack for our single. As discussed in my research the art on a digipack needs to advertise the band as well as the concept which they are trying to put across.

For the front cover of the digipack I initially choose an image of the singer in shadow which was taken in the first band location. I added a sepia tone effect and then the band and song name in a font very similar to that of the bands (called Abbadon):



After some audiance feedback as well as looking at the image in more detail ourselfs we have decided not to use this image; we feel that it does not convey much about the bands message or the single. Additionally size of the text seemed rather out of proportion. For my second draft of the front cover I began with 2 sperate images, one is a production still taken during the filming of the band:



The other was another production still but this time taken while we were filming the bands initials on fire for the introduction.



Using Photoshop I combined these two images by pasting the image of the band over the top of the fire and then using an effect called "Colour Dodge" which was one of the effects listed in the "Blending Options" tab in the layer style menu. I then cropped the image into a square shape to fit the conventional dimensions of a digipack. Finally I added the text, using the same font as before. For the bands name I used black and the song title I used white. The main reason for this was because these colours were clearly visible over the image.



You may also notice that the original image contained Andy filming at the time. have done my best to remove him from the image by selecting his profile and decreasing the RBG values fully making it so that only the background of the image of the fire appears in that section for the image. I may have another look at more ways to mask this although hopefully the silhouette should not be very noticeable for people viewing the cover without expecting it.

The main issue with this album cover is that the top right corner of the image is fairly pixelated and undefined, some other parts of this image also have this issue. We may be able to resolve this problem by changing the options during the applying of the layering effect. Although in the meantime we will also gather some audience feedback to see if anything else needs improving.

First Draft Of Music Video

Our first draft of our music video is now complete and is uploaded to youtube to recieve auidence feedback and comments on what is good, bad, and can be improved.

Here is our first draft:


Please leave some feedback after watching, thank you.

Started Using Wix To Create Band Web Page

For one of our ancillary tasks we have to design a website homepage for our band. We are going to do this using Wix.com, a site which allows you to create your own websites for free.

Wix has lots of pre-made templates that you can use for your own. After looking through many different templates I decided that it would be better to create our own page from scratch as there weren't any templates that I felt had the correct look for the genre and style of music that our music video is.

I started with a plain black background and added a smoke affect overlay. I then took the band's album cover "Fever" (which is the album from which our music video song choice is taken) and added a gradient fade to black to use as a background for the area's where text, links, photos, videos etc will be displayed on the web page.

I then added the Band's logo to the top of the page, this is of the band's name "Bullet For My Valentine" in their signature font. Below is a picture of this work so far.



I will blog more as I finish creating each section of the website.

Using Photoshop.

As well as editing our preliminary task we have also been looking into production techniques for ancillary tasks. Both the webpage and digipack will require photo editing techniques, for this we have chosen to use Adobe Photoshop. We have explored some of the numerous functions of Photoshop by testing it out on a few generic images such as a picture of the earth.

Today we have learn how to use functions such as the various different methods of selecting part of an image the simplest of these is the option allowing you to select a specific shape, the different presets include the simple box and oval shapes. For more specific selections the magic wand tool can be used this selects an area of an image of a similar colour to the chosen pixel. A good feature of this is the ability to change the threshold level which effectively changes the sensitivity of the selection. For example if it is high only pixels exactly the same would be added to the selection and if it is low a great deal of the image is likely to be added.

Another selection tool is the “Lasso” which allows you to select part of an image freehand; this is likely to come in useful in situations where the colour of an image does not change sufficiently. The downside to this function is the fact that it requires a very steady hand to select the edges of even fairly simple shapes and it is easy to slip.

When part of an image is selected it is possible to perform a variety of transformations such as distortions and rotations these can be found in the “Edit” menu. So far we have mainly used these for selections although they can also be used for changing the apparent orientation of a selection; however we have found that using this can cause parts of an image to pixelate so we will have to be careful about not applying distortion type effects too vigorously.

Additionally a selected image can have various effects applied to it, many of these involve editing the RGB balance or the saturation, for example turning the saturation down to its lowest value will make an image appear in its “greyscale” black and white form. Another useful feature is the fact that Photoshop works in layers meaning that a given transformation or effect can be applied to only a single layer of an image, this allows the editor to have much more control over the image being produced. The layers can be toggled between and also viewed as a single image, if the overall image is then saved and re-imported it can even be used as another layer of an even more complex image.

So far we have only scratched the surface when it comes to all the features of Photoshop; however I am sure that once we have a little more experience it will allow us to create some very effective imagery for our digipack and webpage.

Solution to problem with imported footage

Hey guys, as you may have read in the previous post by Matt we had some problems when we imported the footage as the first narrative part was filmed on the different camera meaning the footage was not shot in wide screen. This meant that when we added the footage to the timeline in final cut, there where black bars either side of the footage for the first narrative.

However after experimenting with changing different properties of the footage to fix this problem, we found that when we changed the scale of the footage to 103 instead of the standard 100, final cut would then take this new aspect ratio and fit it to the same size as the wide screen footage from the other camera. We exported a test shot to make sure that it would appear like this in when exported to quick time, and although the footage is stretched (to make wide screen), the stretch is barely noticeable without looking really close, and is not pixelated or distorted in anyway.

Now that we have resolved this problem we can carry on editing of our music video, so far we have just over a minute of footage editing together and synced with the music.

Editing

We have now finished importing our footage and have begun the editing process using Final Cut Pro. It is new to both of us since we used imovie for our previous productions so we are having to learn how to make use of its features as we go. So far we have found it a lot more efficient for dealing with a relatively large project such as a music video. For example the clips can be arranged into individual folders known as "Bins", this has been useful since we have several different narrative strands as well as 2 locations for the band; so we have been able to arrange them.

Another useful feature is the way that the program makes a copy of your clip when you drag it from a folder down to the timeline, this means that it is significantly easier to use more than one section of film from a single film clip since you never have to crop a clip indefinitely. The dual viewing windows are also an effective tool for cutting clips at exactly the right time since they allow us to coordinate the sound in one project with the video in the other.

One setback we have had is that the footage we filmed for part of the narrative with the soldier running through the forest and killing the refugee was filmed on a different camera to the rest of the footage. The majority of the footage was filmed on a camera with a widescreen aspect ratio, whereas the footage from the other camera is much closer to a square. We are going to see if we can find a way to convert it to the right aspect ratio, if not we may have to cut that part of the narrative out entirely. We will have enough footage to replace it however we may have to change the order of things slightly.

Risk Assessment

During the production of our video we had to take into account the potential risks of filming around and preparing the scene with the bands initials in fire. During our filming we made sure to keep away from the flammable liquids used while my Dad who is responsible and has more experience poured them. For the shots of the petrol being poured we actually used a can filled up with water, the difference is almost unnoticeable and this avoided the danger of unnecessarily spilling petrol.



We also made sure to try out our idea for the bands initials on fire with smaller amounts of different flammable liquids to find the safest and most effective. Additionally for some of the filming we made use of the zoom function on the camera, this way we didn’t have to as close to a naked flame; however we didn’t zoom too much since this would have compromised the quality of film.



We also had to careful to keep clear during the scenes with vehicles driving in and to make sure the platforms we used for our high angle shots such as the back of the truck and the first few steps of a ladder were stable and secure.

Beginning of editing

Hi everyone, I decided as I hadn't posted anything in a while i'd just a leave a quick post telling you guys of our progress.
We have now started to import the footage to the Macs at sixth which is taking a bit of time as we have just under 2 hours total footage. Once it is all imported we will sort through and remove any clips that are unusable either due to actor errors or filming errors such as objects visible in the corner of shot that shouldn't be. Once we have gone through and picked out the best footage from our narrative and performance we will beginning editing them using Final Cut Pro.

Filming Part 4

We have now finished the filming for our production and should have enough footage to put together the complete product; especially since we have filled up 2 tapes. Today we filmed the band playing outside at the runway location. The weather was overcast which did not provide the best light possible, however the lighting should be sufficient as well as consistent.



During the filming we used a mixture of handheld and fixed shots to obtain the largest variety of shot types as possible; we even shot with the tripod on the back of a truck to get a good high-angle shot.




We also filmed the torture scene part of the narrative, It was difficult to capture all the shots we wanted since the location only had one good room to use but what we have should be sufficient when combined with the rest of the footage.