Vlog

Vlog on:

• Footage
• Editing
• Interviews

Editing Final Footage

Today Seher and I edited some of the footage we got from the other weekend! We added in black titles which we will replace with footage next lesson. Here it all is so far:

(Stops at 0.55 seconds)

Filming vlog

After a hectic week last week and a hectic weekend I have finally managed to find a spare minute to upload the vlog we recorded after our filming. 

 

In the vlog we:

• Discuss where we filmed
• Introduced Lucy and Ryan
• What we have left to do
• How the filming went
• Editing

Photos from the filming

It's been a bit of a busy week with university interviews and starting my new job, but I've finally managed to find a minute to post the photos from the filming! We finally managed to arrange a day my sister could make and Ryan could make so last Saturday we tried to get as much filming done as possible. We recorded the majority of the indoor scene at my house, much to my parents distaste as we had to move around all of the furniture. Then after lunch we moved onto Edmonton Cemetery to record the short scene there. We've decided that, in terms of narrative, our character lost a family member which is why God is looking over her and why she has turned to drugs!

God in his chair

The chest of draws

The props

Lucy after being attacked with eyeshadow 

Lucy's arm, also post eyeshadow

The 'setup'

From a different angle...

Seher filming the birds eye shot whilst I attempted to hold the tripod still

Digipak planning and research

As one of the ancillary tasks we have been asked to produce a digipak for our band's album. A digipak is made of cardboard that is usually printed with art or photos that represent the band in some way. The outside of the digipak is designed so that it can be folded in two halves that are separated by a sort of spine in the middle. The inside could hold a number of different panels (usually only up to eight), it also holds a plastic tray for the CD to fit into. Some of the benefits of using a digipak over a plastic jewel case are:

1. Because it's cardboard it wont snap and fall apart
2. It can be made from recycled cardboard which means issues with sustainability won't be a problem
3. Even the plastic CD holder can be made from cardboard instead of plastic

Some of the disadvantages are:

1. It could rip and fall apart
2. If it gets wet it could become soggy and rip
3. The cardboard would show more signs of wear than a plastic jewel case

However, the disadvantages can be overcome by simply coating the cardboard in a very thin layer of plastic film, which would result in the cardboard becoming waterproof -to some extent.

An example of a blank digipak

I think it would be sensible to only include the front cover, back cover, inside cover and CD holder in my digipak rather than having any extra panels inside as the CD isn't a limited edition album and doesn't contain more than one disk. I have been looking at examples of digipaks from bands in the indie/alternative rock genre and here are some of them:

Boy & Bear - Harlequin Dream

This digipak features a drawing rather than the usual photo you would see on the front cover of an album. The font size used for the band name and album title is quite small when compared to the size of the album but due to the fact the font is in a dark colour it stands out well against the light sky and our eye is immediately drawn to it. A harlequin is a type of clown that could be seen at the circus, this may be why the album art of a fun fair/circus.

James Vincent McMorrow - Early in the Morning

This album cover features a photo containing what many people would deem to be 'drab' colours. However, the photo is quite artsy as it has a narrow depth of field and the edges are quite dark. McMorrow is from a small coastal town in Ireland called Malahide, the photo on the album cover was possibly taken on the beach of the artist's home town so it does have a relevance to the artist's brand image. The font size used is larger to that on the 'Boy & Bear' album and it stands out very well against the light sky as the font is dark and bold.

Daughter - The Wild Youth EP

The photo used on this album relates very well to the name of the album due to the fact that the people photographed are two children and they both have what looks like tigers or wild animals painted on their face, they are the 'wild youth'. The children stand out very well against the dark/plain background, this could be something I may incorporate into my digipak. The font, although fairly small, also stands out quite well because it is white on a black background. 

From my research I can see that similar bands to mine tend to use photographs as a main element on their album covers. The font is usually quite small and either very light, very dark or bold so that it stands out against the other elements on the album cover. When planning my digipak I will certainly consider using a photo and the small text on a dark or light background as I think they're very useful in helping the artist to convey their band's image.

 Digipaks will sometimes feature a 'parental advisory explicit content' sticker (see image below). This sticker or label is attached to content to allow parents to know that the songs on the album contain lyrics featuring:

• strong language 
• references to violence or physical/mental abuse
• lyrics promoting sexualised behaviour
• discriminatory language i.e racist, homophobic or misogynistic
• lyrics glamourising dangerous or criminal behaviour which could encourage others to partake in it

Some digipaks may also contain a logo produced by the band, this is so that fans can see the logo and recognise that that particular album is produced by the band. Some iconic band logos are:

The Rolling Stones band logo

Nirvana logo

The Who logo

These three logos are so iconic because they were featured on the backdrop of the stage each band played on. As each band grew in popularity across the world, so did their logo. People would buy merchandise featuring the logo rather that an album cover. Ultimately a band's logo becomes their brand as most people wouldn't recognise the faces of the band members, but they would almost instantly recognise their logo.

Editing

Last week Miss Foster mentioned a method which two of the girls last year used to edit and we thought it would be a good way to undergo our editing too! So, you start of by inserting a blank title into a new project, you then look at the exact length of the song you're using for your music video and change the title length to this exact time. Which, in our case, was 3:03. Seher and I then split the black titles to separate each line, instrumental break and chorus of the song. The reason we have chosen to edit our music video in this way is because we can replace parts of the titles with our footage and we wouldn't have to edit the whole thing in chronological order!

Actors

I have realised that I haven't posted about our choice of actors! We have chosen to use Ryan (as seen in feedback video) as God simply as he is- excuse the cringe factor -my boyfriend so he will be mostly available for filming even if it's short notice due to shooting in certain weather conditions. At first we were a bit dubious at casting Ryan as God because we thought someone more of the dad type age would suit the role. However, seeing as his face would never be shown we decided that this, in the end, wouldn't be so much of an issue. As for the role of the drug addict we're going to use my sister. Seher and I made this decision because my sister is 23 so will look slightly more mature than if we were to cast one of our friends for the role. Also, in my opinion, my sister is a very confident person so I don't think she'd have any sort of issue if there was a camera pointed straight at her face. On another note it's quite handy because she can drive us to locations at the crack of dawn if need be as the London buses aren't the most reliable source of transport! 

Meet Ryan aka 'God'

Meet Lucy (on the left obviously!)

Pete's task

Our media task this week was to complete a task Pete had put on his blog about generating your own album cover:

I was a bit unsure about this after I read that you had to use whatever random pages were that the websites threw at you! However I have really enjoyed completing this task and even ended up making more than one album cover. I was quite confident when using photoshop and photography is one of my chosen A-Level subjects and we are always required to use this program. I have made a sort of step by step guide of how I completed each stage:

My first randomly generated 'band name'

The 'album title'

The 'album art'

This was my first finishing product!

After the simplicity of making the first album cover I then decided to go ahead and make a second one, print screening it as I was going so that I could show you what I did.

1) Firstly, I went onto a conversion site that changed cm to pixels. I knew that the dimensions of an album cover were 12cm x 12cm so this is the measurement I converted

2) Then I created a new canvas size that I could drag the album art image onto

3) This is now the size of the canvas 

4) Then I opened up the image I wanted to use for the album art and selected the whole image with the 'rectangular marquee tool'

5) Following this I used the 'move tool' to drag the image onto the canvas

6) This is now the finished image on the canvas! All that's left to do is add in the text, to do this you select the 'horizontal type tool'

Here are the randomly selected components of my album cover:

The random image on Flickr

The random page on Wikipedia

The random quote

The second album cover 

Filming schedule

We've decided that this Saturday we're going to film some of the scene in my lounge. We're definitely going to be filming the bits with God, but we're still waiting on my sister to see if we'll be able to film the bits of her too! Next Wednesday we're going to St Andrew's Church in Enfield town to film the bit with the window as I wasn't able to get the shot in Belgium, hopefully it will be sunny! The church opens from 9am-3pm so we should be good to go :)

Church window

I went back to the church the next day with my tripod, but unfortunately it was the day I was going home and the church didn't open until 2pm so I'm hoping we'll get the window shot back home! We'd like to ideal film the window scene in one of our town's churches, St Andrews.

The interior of the church

The exterior of the church

Church window location!

The 28th post on the 28th, but I'm not 28... It's my 18th birthday today and I'm partying hard (or not..) in Bruges! So far I think Belgium is a very strange country as everything is extremely neat and everyone rides bikes :S There is a lot of beer and a lot of chocolate here and my main food for the past two days has consisted of chips with mayonnaise and sweet waffles! Just as we were walking back to our hotel tonight I noticed the absolutely humongous church opposite us, I honestly have no idea how I could've missed it. My mum and I decided to venture inside to see if there were any stained glass windows. We were pleasently surprised to see copious amounts of windows in all colours, shapes, sizes and patterns and I managed to get a few pictures! I'm hoping to go back in there tomorrow, with the tripod, to film the intro to our music video! Here it is in all its glory:

Weather

Last week I woke up to a very thick fog outside of my bedroom window, I had to wait for it to lift a bit before I could take any photos that would come out! We wanted there to be a slight bit of fog for when our characters are in the graveyard because it adds a bit of atmosphere to the scene. I have realised that it's going to be really hard to achieve this because the fog usually fully -or almost fully- lifts by about 8.30 in the morning, so we'd have to be out before seven to catch the fog and sunrise at their best. Here are the photos:

Syringes

The syringes arrived yesterday, I was very impressed because I only ordered them on Friday! However my mum has forseen a potential problem... How are we going to dispose of the needles afterwards? I don't want to go striding into my doctor's surgery with used needles in case they think I'm some sort of addict and try and admit me into a program! Mum thinks it's a good idea to go to the school office to explain and to see if they have a medical waste bin they can dispose of them in!

Makeup and research

We've been considering how we're going to do the makeup for our drug addict. When they're at home we want them to be shown with dark circles under their eyes and we want to have some sort of needle scars on their arms. I've been researching makeup like this online and this is what I've found:

A photographer I've found who has created the before/after drugs look

Needle marks

We spent last lesson researching symptoms and tell-tale signs of a heroin addict and we found a great website with loads of helpful information!