Final Cut Feedback

To get feedback for our final cut, the whole year group watched our video and made notes on it, and we posted the video to social networking sites to see what our friends thought. They told us what aspects they liked and also things that could have been done better.
 

Overall, the feedback from our final cut was very positive. People mainly commented on the range of camera angles and shots we used to portray the band. Some comments included:

• Edited well to the beat and good lip syncing
• Good close ups and shots of the instruments
• Good eye contact from lead singer
• Effective transitions
• Good use of extreme close up on the lips
• Good variety of shots of all band members
• Good camera movement

The negative comments people had were mainly about the change in lighting in some shots as a few appeared darker with a high contrast.

Final Cut

Secrets - Final Cut from Jamie WGSB on Vimeo.

This is the final cut of our music video after making improvements after feedback. The main changes included better lighting on the singer, shots with the singer looking directly into the camera more, and more varied shots of the instruments. We also managed to incorporate a music station logo and a text box at the beginning and end of the video stating the song name and artist.

Final Cut Construction

After we had filmed again following the feedback from our rough cut, we had to edit our rough cut and insert the new shots we had taken. Based on the rough cut feedback, we took more shots with better lighting, more shots of the lead singer looking into the camera, a new opening to the video, an extreme close up of the singer’s lips, and more energetic shots during the chorus.

The editing of the video was much easier this time around because it was a simple case of taking out any shots we did not like and replacing them with the better ones we had filmed. Some shots were replaced so that we had more shots of the lead singer looking into the camera, and some shots were replaced so that the lighting was clearer. You can see in the images the same point in the rough cut and final cut but the different shot we chose for the final cut. 

 

We imported the footage from the camera and added the new clips to the sequence bin. Using the in and out points, we selected the new clips we wanted from the footage. Once we had found the clip we wanted to replace, we deleted it from the track and filled its gap with the new clip. We then made sure the clip was in time by adjusting it slightly on the timeline and making it in sync with the music.

We decided that we wanted to add a new piece of imagery to our video during the instrumental at 2:00. We had filmed a light coming on and decided to use this as a transition between two clips. We put the clip of the light bulb on the track above the original sequence, and this allowed two clips to overlap each other. The clip of the light bulb was then edited as we changed its opacity, meaning you could see the clip of the drum behind it during the transition.

The final things we added to the video were the MTV logo and the small text box in the bottom left corner that shows the song name and artist at the beginning and end of the video. To see how we added the MTV logo, click here. To add the text box, we had to keyframe a green box to pop up at the beginning of the song and then black text would fade on to it. We created a green rectangle using the colours from the MTV website, and then used the image and wireframe tool to adjust the size of the rectangle we wanted. At the beginning of the video, the rectangle was positioned off the screen, and then a keyframe was added. We allowed the video to play for 3 seconds then moved the rectangle onto the screen and made it full sized. We then added another keyframe. This meant that the box would now move onto the screen after 3 seconds on its own. After 8 seconds we moved the box off the screen and added another keyframe, so the box would then move off the screen again. The next stage was to add text and position it in line with the green box. We added a fade in and out to the text and the text box was finished.

Digipak Ideas

After brainstorming ideas, Elliot began to make some drafts of the front cover of our digipak. I also drew up a plan of the entire digipak and kept it consistent with Elliot's ideas, using similar images such as the doves and clouds.

The original idea we had was the black background with doves. Elliot made this by creating a cloudy effect and then downloading a brush for doves. After selecting some doves he added a blur and a glow to them to give them a different effect. He then created some subtle rays of light coming through the clouds as this kept the theme of secrets and confession.

He experimented with the dove idea in some other designs, for example the candle cover and the cello idea.

We all liked these ideas, however we did notice that the candle did not feature in our video and this would not create consistency across our platforms, and also the cello covers look like they are intended for classical genres.

The last point was to choose our font for the digipak. This font would also feature in our magazine advert as this would keep the coherancy. We chose the font Headline from DaFont.com, and felt this font worked well with our designs. It suggested a mix of formality and informality with its blocky text. It also fitted well with previous fonts used by One Republic.

One Republic - Digipak Logo's and Styles

Elliot began looking at the existing One Republic digipaks and whether they had any similarities. Each of the albums have a different font used on the front covers, as you can see from the image on the left. The albums also do not display a band logo allowing us a freedom when designing our own digipak. Despite this, there are many similarities between the fonts, as they all use black, white and browns as a distinct colour scheme. The fonts are all formal which reflects the band as a whole, as throughout their music videos they are seen wearing formal clothing. This style further promotes the band's image. In some cases, the same fonts are used for both the name of the band and the album title, but the difference is indicated by a change of colour.

The album artwork is generally abstract as you can see in the image on the right. 'Waking Up' uses paint splatters as an album artwork, and 'Dreaming Out Loud' uses a silhouette of a tree on a blue starry background. This album cover is the only one that appears to have some relevance to the title of the album, as dreaming is commonly associated with stars and night.

'Apologize' is one album cover that shows the band as a whole, where you can see they are dressed formally and the structure of the image gives an indication of the members of the band. The lead singer is presented at the front, and the remaining band members are situated behind him, showing his importance and role in the band. If we use an image of our band as a whole we would need to pay attention to how we set up the image like this.

Digipak Research - Alternative Rock Genre

I began some research into the general conventions of digipaks in the alternative rock genre and found some patterns in the way album covers are presented. If the album covers show the band, they usually depict the lead singer at the front of the image. The rest of the band members are behind the lead singer in a photo. The lead singer appears as the front face of the band and is often the most recognised member of the band, so putting them at the forefront of the photo makes the band more recognisable.

From the image of the Stereophonics album cover and the Razorlight cover you can see that both lead singers are at the front of the band members and both are looking out of the image at you. The other band members are looking away or appear less engaged with the viewer. This highlights importance of the lead singer and also allows people to understand the roles of the people in the picture without necessarily knowing who is who.

However I found with the majority of alternative rock digipaks that they often display abstract art or computer generated images. We had already found that the majority of One Republic's album covers feature art rather than an image of the band and this research showed that this was common for the whole genre. The image on the right is an example of the different kinds of album art within the genre, with many posing no specific relevance the title of the album or the name of the band.

Digipak Research

To start putting ideas together for our ancillary tasks, we first needed to look at some existing products. We need to create a digipak for our song, so I looked at some albums of the same genre to our song that I had in my house. The analysis of these will give us a good idea of what to create for our own digipak.

The first album I looked at was American Idiot by Green Day.

The front cover of the album is a piece of artwork rather than an image of the band, and depicts a hand holding a heart shaped grenade. A theme of destruction is presented with the use of simplistic red, white and black colours and a blocky, distorted font. 'Green Day' is the largest text on the front cover followed by 'American Idiot', the album name, in a smaller size but in a red font. The front cover also features a sticker showing the most popular songs that feature on the album, and quotes from magazines and newspapers such as NME, who say the album is 'marvellous, 8/10'. The sticker is a good idea as it draws attention to the most popular songs of the album. If we chose to make a full album rather than a single, this idea would be good as we could make the song we chose to create a video for stand out from the rest of the album.

The inside of the album shows the back of the front cover and the CD case. The inside cover of the album sticks to the same colour scheme as the front cover, and although it does not have any pictures of the band itself, their identity is shown as their names are highlighted in large, red writing and their roles in the band are written beneath in small white writing. Other names listed on the inside cover include the producer, place of recording, additional musicians and guest singers. Behind where the CD would be placed is a simple black background, and this panel of the pack does not feature anything interesting to do with the band.

The back cover of the album, like most, shows the list of songs featuring on the album, and a picture of the pin from the grenade featuring on the front of the album is shown on the back. This creates a sense of coherancy throughout the album. Other aspects featured on the back cover include barcodes, 'Parental Advisory' label, and advertisement for 'greenday.com' and 'repriserecords.com'.

The second album I looked at was the Employment by the Kaiser Chiefs. This album was very similar to American Idiot as a brown, tiled theme is displayed throughout the album and many features of the album design are in the same place.

The Kaiser Chiefs use a similar colour scheme of browns and yellows throughout the album and similar to the Green Day album, the back cover of this album features the song list, barcodes and contributors to the album. 'Kaiserchiefs.co.uk' is also featured on the back of the album in an attempt to link people interested in the Kaiser Chiefs to their website. On the front cover, the usual 'Kaiser Chiefs' font is used and their album name is written in a different, italic font. The front cover also shows a sticker stating 'special edition' and this feature of an album appears to be very common, so we will have to take this into consideration.

Unlike the Green Day album, the inside of the album behind where the CD would be place features a pattern that is coherant throughout the album. The inside cover also shows the names of the songs in the album and a small change in design is shown. The back and inside covers are different to the front cover and CD panel, as they depict lighter colours.

The next album that I looked at was'U218 Singles'.

This album was different to the other two as it focused much more on the band identity with pictures of the band themselves. A black and white colour scheme is used throughout the design and three different pictures of the band feature across three panels of the album. The panel behind the CD is plain black, similar to the Green Day album. Many albums appear to not have any kind of pattern behind the CD, and if they do it is very simplistic.

Digipak Initial Ideas and Mood Board

Since the name of the song we chose was 'Secrets', and we filmed the video in a church, to create a coherence across all of our tasks we decided it would be good to stick with themes of religion, secrets and freedom. We wanted the album to be dark with a small light source, and we looked at a number of albums such as 'Come Closer' by Miles Kane and 'Defamation of Strickland Banks' by Plan B. These two albums both feature a dark setting and a small light source. From the Miles Kane album, we thought that we could possibly use the silhouette idea in front of a church window. From the Plan B album, we thought that our lead singer sitting in a confession box with similar lighting would work well.


We then had the idea of doves and freedom, relating to 'give all my secrets away'. We liked the idea of having white doves flying away on a dark background, and possibly changing the contrast and effects so that the doves glow on a black background. We also added to this idea by thinking of having a cloudy effect on the background, and possibly having a ray of light shining through the clouds.
We then needed to decide what sort of names would be appropriate for our album. Elliot came up with these ideas:

'Letting Go'

'Breaking Free' 

If we decide to make the album a single, then we would be able to name it 'Secrets' after the song.