Day 21

          Today, I have made some changes on the music video. I synced in the second part of the Chorus clips which now looks better. On the previous cut, I realised that the lip sync were out of sync. I also added a couple edits on the "hi...hi...hi..." part of the Chorus, separating the clips and add some Fade to Black transition. Moreover, I realised on the last part of the Bridge, the scene where it's overlaid with the confetti clips doesn't match in colour since the confetti were in blue colour. With that, I decrease the saturation and turn it into grey colour which matched better with the colour scheme of that Bridge scene part. And lastly, I found some unused clips that would fit the last part of the Pre-Chorus, and I edited it by applying split-screen which made it look more interesting.

Day 20

          In the afternoon, we managed to produce our 2nd cut of our music video. The new clips filmed days before were edited, and I managed to construct the 1st and 2nd part of the Chorus. Moreover, I've added more short cuts of clips and match it with the beat to make it more engaging. A lot of improvements have been made since the last cut, and we only need to sort out the last part of the music video before coming back to it to make final touches such as editing the transitions part.

          This evening, I have finished all of my digipak covers. I have come up with this design; however, I am still not quite sure if it matched my poster and the music video. I used as many pictures of the actor as I can to make it more personal, although it didn't come out the way I wanted it to be. The third outside over on the far left was quite hard to create as I tried to edit on picture to be sort of 'artsy' but I failed. Here is the design that I come up with:

Day 19

          This afternoon, I went back to Hollywood Bowl to do extra shooting for our music video as there were more lip sync clips needed for Pre-Chorus 2. We were struggling a little while filming as there were so many people walking around, which restricts us to move freely. Also, our actor couldn't act naturally as she had a little confidence problem during filming. I had to change the shot plan in order for us to get the footage that we want. We decided to stop after a short while since we thought we had enough. In addition, we can't really do much filming as there were too many people around. In the end, we reviewed the clips and they turned out to be good.

          Later in the evening, after filming at the Hollywood Bowl, I did another filming for the Bridge part of the song. The concept was very simple; actor sitting down on a chair under a spotlight and wears dark clothing. I used the video light to create the spotlight effect and a mono-pod to set the camera placement.

          During filming, I had ideas that came through my mind on using different kind of lighting, as in moving around the light to add more variation rather than only having it static. With that, I tried a couple things and I like the effect it gives. My camera was on Auto setting, so it automatically adjusts every setting which could be annoying sometimes as it changes how the clip looks. In my case, it changes how the lighting looks on camera. Despite that, the filming went well and I am quite pleased with how the clips turned out after reviewing them. I also tried to add another clip with sprinkled confetti which I could use to fill up spaces in the music video.

Day 18

          This evening, I went to film the UV confetti scene for the last part of the music video. However, before that, I made the confetti because we haven't got any. I painted white paper stripes with UV paint just to add more colours and cut them to little pieces. I didn't film our actor with the confetti; I only film confetti being sprinkled. I did have a plan to use our actor dancing around whilst being sprinkled with confetti, but it got cancelled because the actor couldn't do it.

          I had a couple ideas before filming this scene, although I only tried a couple of things. It was not that exciting, but I like how the clips turned out. I was thinking of overlaying them with the Chorus clips, or use it for transition.

Day 17

         This evening, I went down to Cribbs Causeway again to film for the Pre-Chorus 1 scene. We sort of put this plan aside as we thought it's not necessary, and we decided to wait until the editing is done to see if we need more footage. As it turns out that more footage is needed, I planned this shoot with the actor. The footage was very good and we are very happy with it as it has strong lip syncing.

          This footage is going to be combined and matched with the footage from the UV performance clips. I really like this idea as it adds more variation to the music video. I think it will create a nice transition in between different location and environment which could help raise the audience interest.

Day 16

          Here I have our first cut of our music video. We decided to upload the first cut after constructing the whole music video. It doesn't take long to do as the shot during filming was planned very well. We did get quite confused of what to include as the transition part and the little flash clip to break up the shots. There are scenes still needed to be filmed to fill in the gaps that we have, and also the other scenes as we don't have enough footage. We would like to put more variation and lip sync into the Chorus part since it looks little stale with just the dancing clips.

Day 15

          We all went down to Hollywood Bowl in the afternoon to film the bowling scene. I booked the VIP lane since we thought it's better and there are slightly more privacy. Unfortunately, this filming wasn't planned thoroughly, so we were sort of planning on set which takes up filming time. During filming, we got carried on with the game and did less filming. In the end, we did get some footage but there wasn't enough. We filmed our actor playing bowling, lip syncing, and also some recording of the surroundings.

          After finished with the game, we went to the small games area and record some more lip sync. We only did one lyric line in there, which is not enough. I didn't think about it as we forgot about doing more of it.

          Lastly, we filmed around the arcade area where there are loads of flashing lights which suits our theme. During filming, I was focused more on narrative than performance, so we didn't do any lip sync scene. We used the coin machine and tried other machines, but it didn't work quite well, in my opinion. Other than that, I recorded the machines with its flashing lights which would be good for filling up spaces and transitions.

          I can say that today's filming went well, even though it wasn't planned thoroughly and we missed a couple of things. We would definitely need to do another shoot in Hollywood Bowl, especially around the arcade area. After reviewing the clips, we thought that there is more footage needed, including lip sync clips. We are planning on doing another shooting in a week's time. However, it's going to be during holiday, which means that there is a possibility of the place to be quite busy.

Day 14

          This afternoon, I went and talk to the art teacher and asked if they have a metal shaping wire and a fixing wire that we could have for our props. Fortunately, they have a couple metres of modelling wire which we could use.

          There are variations of the wires sizes and thickness which could be used in different ways. We are going to use the thicker ones for the structure of the writing, and use clear tape and duct tape to attach the light to the wire.

          In the evening, I tried to shape the wire into this writing 'Chasing Highs' and attach the light into it. It was a time consuming process since was quite tricky to shape the wire and keep it still because it's quite bendy. It was harder to attach the light to the wire because the light is quite thick, hence why it's hard to bend it tight.

          All in all, it turned out to be very good and we're pleased on how it turned out. We are planning on using this prop in one of our performance scenes.

Day 13

          Tonight, I went down to Cribbs Causeway, and filmed Verse 1 scene. We have been planning to do this scene. The result turns out to be really good, and we are satisfied with them.

          The other day I checked out the location and came up with a plan on where and how to film the Verse 1 scene. However, the plan changed as we filmed tonight, since I thought our actor can't walk on the water stream, turns out she can. in my opinion, this made the clips composition look better.

          In our storyboard - shot list, we were supposed to film the Verse 1 and Pre-Chorus 1 scene at the same location. I was hoping for today's filming could cover both scenes, however we couldn't. With that, we would have to find some other time to go back and film the rest of the clips we need in Cribbs Causeway. I was thinking, as we have very little time left, I would like to do this soon; Sunday evening or Tuesday evening.

Day 12

          During class, we had someone coming from 'Label1'', an independent television production company that works with many other big television companies, and they were talking about what their job is, how they do their job - how they record/film, explaining about their equipment and how to get job in this industry.

          The talk was very engaging. They gave tips about filming, including the use different camera angles and how to edit - which inspired us. After the talk, the class get a chance to talk to the crews in small groups and ask as many questions, as well as taking a look at their equipment for better understanding on how to use it and how it works. They use Sony Fs7 Mark 1 camera to film and we got the chance to hold their camera, ask questions about it and the experience I had was amazing.

          On the evening, I spare some time to come down to Hollywood Bowl to ask permission for filming inside. Sam has sent an email, but apparently they are not responding after 3 days, and we can't waste any more time to wait. Fortunately, Hollywood Bowl said yes to us being able to film inside, as long as we tell the reception that we are going to do filming.

          With this, we are planning on filming in this location on the 10th of December which is on a Sunday, and we thought it would be a good day too since it won't be busy around the evening.

Day 11

          Tonight, I tried one of our props that's just arrived; the neon lights. They are 5 metres long, which I thought will be more than enough to do the writing "Chasing Highs". We are still not sure how big we want the writing to be, although we can adjust the size as we like.

          The lights are powered by 2 AA batteries, and it lights up pretty well. I really like how it looks. They also have different flashing mode which is interesting. The combination of the colour pink and green would definitely work well together.

Day 10

          This evening, I have arranged to film the performance scene with our actor. I have all of the equipment, although, there are a couple of props that we would like to use that are still not available. Despite that, we carry on filming and the clips turn out to be a success.

          At first, after reviewing the first clips, I noticed that the UV paint didn't come out as bright as I expected.

         With that, I thought I'd move the light closer to the actor and see if the UV paint gives out more. It turns out that it works better with the light being closer to the actor, so I decided to move the light. However, because the cable was a little short, it can only reach to the camera but it still works.

         Something I noticed when I placed the light near the camera facing upwards is it gives out a washed out effect which I don't like. So I placed it near the camera but facing toward the actor. When doing a close up shot, I can also spot dots or specs of dust on the actor's face which is quite annoying.

          Throughout the filming process, it was quite hard to keep the UV light close to the camera since my setup wasn't very good. This was my setup:

          In the end, I managed to get enough footage using different shots and different angles and we were quite pleased by the result.

Day 9

          Today, in class, I received some feedbacks for my poster.

          After receiving these feedbacks, it helped me to improve my poster as I realised a couple of things that is not quite right. I have agreed to do some small changes and keep the one that I like.

Day 8

          In this afternoon, we thought about another location for our filming around Cribbs Causeway. We were looking for a place that has bright lights and we came up with Hollywood Bowl to be the best one. They have an arcade area with lots of flashy lights, as well as laser and UV lighting around the bowling lane. They also have a VIP lane, which provides private lane and fancy seats and bowling pins. During that afternoon, we decided to email them and wait for their response. The estimated time for the reply would be 3 days.

Day 7

          As I need to do another photo shoot for the digipak covers, and I am slightly running out of ideas, I decided to do the poster since it has similar elements as the front digipak cover. This poster took quite a while to produce, especially when deciding what text to include.

         At first, I followed the same layout as the front digipak cover. However, as I gradually put some more work into it, I started to add more things which, in my opinion, made the presentation of the poster a lot more exciting. During arrangements, I thought of trying and adding a couple of things, such as the yellow boxes under the texts for the digipak cover. This might not be necessary since my idea is to keep the digipak covers looking simple, and by adding these it may result in the digipak covers to look a little 'too much'.

          After a couple attempts to shoot around Clifton Suspension Bridge, we realised that the locations we've planned are quite difficult to get to, especially to film in such a limited time. This requires a thorough planning beforehand. Not only that, transport and everyone's availability becomes an issue as well, because to get there, we'll need to catch the bus as I don't drive. Despite that, my partner offered to drive all of us to the location to film, but filming were mostly scheduled during the weekends which doesn't match my partner's available schedule. Moreover, we couldn't do film during weekdays as our actor has their own schedule and is focusing more on school. With that, we thought of re-planning the film location where all of us could access easily.

          In this evening, I had a spare time to go down to Cribbs Causeway, checking if we can use that location instead of Bristol Harbour Side and Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Day 6

          Today, I started on my digipak covers. I have planned the layout, with all the colours and rough idea of the images I'd like to put on the digipak cover.

          I already done a shoot for the outside covers for the digipak, so I decided to finish those covers first and come back to it later since I need to do another shoot for the inside cover.

          During the editing process for the front cover, I experimented with the tools in Photoshop and I made a lucky mistake. I used the Magic Wand Tool, erased some parts of the image of the artist's accidentally, and it turns out to be a cool edit. It creates a unique outline which doesn't make the picture look simple and sort of boring in a way because of the simple plain background. This is the front cover:

          I moved on to the second cover, which is the track list cover. I thought this would be easier to do, however, after putting everything together according to the plan, the cover looks boring and I don't like how it turns out. I tried to keep the simple theme, but it didn't quite work for this cover. 

          With that, I gradually add more things that would make it look a little more interesting. I added yellow highlight boxes on the track names; I also add another stripe of hologram on the other side which doesn't make it look empty.

          I really liked how it the outcome turns out. It just looks more interesting even if it is looks too simple.

Day 5

      Today, after school, I did a shoot for my digipak covers with our actor. It was a successful simple photo-shoot. I only brought a green bomber jacket and jeans for the outfit - the actor was already wearing a white school uniform.

          At first, I found that the outfit looked a little boring, until I directed the actor to do the poses I wanted and the shoot turns out quite nice. It was quite hard to get the picture of what I've imagined, or I was just not satisfied with the picture I took. Luckily, after a while, I'm starting to like the pictures and decided to end it.

           Here are some of the pictures I've taken:

Day 4

          On our music video planning, the whole performance scene would have UV light and the actors are going to be painted with UV paint. We were thinking to buy a small party UV light, a UV torch or UV bulb for the lighting, however, they don't give out enough light to light up a dark room.

          With that, I came to the photography teacher, ask if there is any available UV light, and the teacher lend me this UV light which could light up a room since it is quite large and more powerful. I also borrowed the UV paint that is used in this video, from the Photography class as they have a range of props available.

                    Good For You by THBD: https://soundcloud.com/thbdsultan

                    Creative Commons - attribution 3.0 Unported - CC BY                                                                               3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

                   Music promoted by Audio Library: https://youtu.be/-K_YSjqKgvQ

       Since we are unable to use the sixth form drama studio after school without supervision from the school staff, we were thinking of using the photography studio. However, I had a chat with the photography teacher, and he said the room is not dark enough. He proved it by creating a dark environment in the class and tried turning on the UV light. Therefore, he suggested to taking it home and trying it.

           I took the UV light and practice filming with it at home. I thought this practice would be a fail, however, it turned out to be a success. The only problem was there were so many objects in the room visible in the background as I tried the UV light. For the music video, we wanted the room to be plain without any object being visible in the background. Therefore, this could lead to another location planning, although we don't have as much time to do that. We might have to still do it somewhere around the house.

Day 3

          On Monday morning, I decided to go to Bristol to take pictures of our planned filming locations. I went to the Harbour side and to Clifton Suspension Bridge. The purpose of this is to get the idea of how we are going to film and which location or background we want to include. However, since I went there during the morning, we can't really see how dark it will be during the evening because we are planning on shooting around that time to include the lights.

          Here are some of the pictures I've taken:

Day 2

          I ordered a video light that could be mounted on a DSLR camera. This is for the night scene that we planned to film around Bristol area. It was interesting to play around with the light as it comes with 3 different filters that would change the colour of the lighting. The light can be tilted down and up, and it also has different level of light power, which means that it could be brightened or dimmed. I found this to be really handy since we don't know how the lighting outside is going to be.

                                Walk by ikson: http://www.soundcloud.com/ikson

                                Music promoted by Audio Library: https://youtu.be/szEfp07r5Cg

          This practice was a success as now we can see, roughly, on how the light is going to light up the actor's face. This was filmed in a room, and the light has not yet been tried outside. I think it could have a different affect when it's used outside.

Day 1

          Knowing that the firework display event is happening very soon, we decided to plan out the location we are going to film and get in touch with the actors to make sure that they are available.

          There were two venues that we were looking at as they are close by to where we live. Since they are held in different days, we were planning on shooting twice for the firework display scene to make sure that we get all the footage we needed, and in case we need to re-shoot. Unfortunately, the actor couldn't do it on the 3rd of November, which leaves us to shoot on the 4th.

         On the day, 4th Nov, I came down to Thornbury Mundy Playing Fields as the event was held there. We filmed during the bonfire and firework display. We were planning on having a dark black background when shooting the actor's face from the front. However, the lighting was not very good as there was a huge white light at the back to light up the place.

Much footage of the bonfire and firework were taken as we are going to use it as a transition clip.

       I did an experiment on a couple of things whilst filming, which includes me playing around with the zoom and the focus point. It was interesting to see the footage and we liked it so much.

We also liked the shot of the actor's face during bonfire since the fire gives out a really nice warm lighting to her face.

          Unfortunately, I didn't do a lip sync scene in that location and when we edit it, we realised that we need some. Since we can't do a re-shot, we thought through it and came up with another idea which will be the actor singing in a dark room with spotlight in black clothing and simple make-up. This clip would be useful to fill in the gaps that we have on our editing.

The sketch of how the scene is going to look:

Our Filming and Editing Schedules

          Here is our schedule for filming and editing. The dates that are marked with "MV Filming" means that we will be filming, and the same with the ones marked with "Vid Edit". We have planned this through as we wanted to make sure that we get it finished by the due date.

Our Photo Shoot Planning

This is the plan for my ancillary task shoot.

This is the plan for our digipak cover and poster shoot.

What I have learnt

          By planning this in advanced, it gave us an advantage to know the availability of everyone participating in the photo shoot. We have asked our actor for their free time and match it with ours, and that day will be the day when we will be doing the photo shoot. This made me realise that precise information is important. Any additional information such as what we would do when shooting, location, the costumes, lighting and image description is also important to ensure that we are prepared.

Artist Branding

What I have learnt

          During the research for the brand logo, I learnt that there are a lot of different considerations being put when it comes to choosing the right font for artist brand/logo. Depends on if the artist wants to reflect their personality with it, use it as a way to represent something or to contradict their music or theme. Other elements such as the use of colour or the font size could create different impacts on how the audience interpret the artist's brand. Therefore, to create a good and appropriate artist brand, a good planning is required as we need to think about the considerations and how the elements could complement each other.

Ancillary Tasks Planning

What I have learnt

                    From my previous research on digipaks and posters ad, it helped me to think about how I'm going to create my own product, including the elements I want to use, and ensure that I apply the right codes and convection to the genre of this music. By doing this task, it made it easier for me to do the ancillary task as now I have the template I'm going to use. I wanted to make this digipak and poster to be eye-catching, which is why I chose bright colours. The digipak and the poster images will be the same since I know that creates a link between one another - so it doesn't confuse the audience.

Our Video Storyboards and Shot Lists

Storyboard

Updated:

 

 

What I have learnt

          After listing all the shots, it made it easier for us to count how many shots we need to do, how much time we need to spend on one location, and roughly, how long the duration of each shots are. Breaking down each shots was also helpful to see what kind of shot we are going to do, what's going to be filmed, as well as any equipment, props and costumes needed for when we went out filming.

Our Location and Actor Planning

What I have learnt

          By planning out the locations we are going to film beforehand helped us to plan out other things. These includes considering how we are going to get to that location and picturing which part of the location we are going to use for filming. Just to get the rough idea of how the scene is going to look like is really useful as we can then link the entire scene and create our storyboard and shot lists.

          The actors planning also helped us ensuring that they are available for filming and if they suit the role. We don't really want to ask someone who is camera shy to be our actor as the role of our actor requires courage since they are going to be lip syncing in public places. From past projects, we also learnt that working with more than two actors could get a little complicated, especially if they have different schedules. One of the actors can also opt-out as they could have sudden plans that they didn't know about. Luckily, that doesn't happen with our actors, although we do still need to consider improvising if any of those risks happen.

Our Video Fashion and Props Planning

These are our fashion and props inspirations:

          These props and costumes are suitable for our chosen music genre which is pop. In many pop genre music videos, the codes and convention used usually includes casual-smart clothing, colourful costumes and props, other accessories that made the visual presentation more interesting. For our music video, we wanted to do the same, hence why we picked a lot of colourful props and accessories. The accessories we would use to create an image/brand of the artist, and the props we used to set the scene. Also, we are planning on using more colourful things in the performance side of our music video, which believed that the use of colours would create a nice contrast to the narrative as there wouldn't be as much colour.

What I have learnt

          By doing this planning task, it made it easier for us to see what overall props and costumes we need for our music video. We are planning on getting them from Ebay and Amazon since the price is affordable, as well as it's more convenient to save some time. If the product that we ordered doesn't look like how it's supposed to be, or it gets delivered late, we will not waste our time waiting as we would change our original plan to do something else. We don't have a budget at the moment, although, realistically, we probably wouldn't spend more than £100. 

Our Pitch Ideas

What I have learnt

          Our pitch idea describes and illustrates our rough idea of our music video. This helps us to see what equipment, type of clothing and props we needed. This is very effective and important so we can plan out what and when to get the items required. It can also help to us to remind ourselves the theme we are going for as it would be helpful during the filming the whole music video since it would take a while, and there are chances of us forgetting out main planned idea.

Our Video Lyric Analysis

          For this task, we have looked and analysed the meaning behind the lyrics of our chosen song. Moreover, we also put our initial ideas on the performances and narratives we could use for our music video.

What I have learnt

          During this task, we were quite struggling as we don't know how to analyse a lyric from each line before. In music videos, the relation between visual performance and the lyric in is what makes the connection between the audience and the artist. By doing this analysis, it has helped us to get inspired with some ideas of what we want to include in the aspect of our music video's narrative and performance. Some lyrics have a meaning which could be illustrated in the visuals, and this includes using some words to emphasise something, or reflecting/demonstrating the word in the video. We used these idea in our planning, one of them was to apply a slow motion in the clip where the lyric goes "...slow motion".

Our Video Genre Research

          We researched and analysed 3 different music videos that are related to our planned music video genre. We looked at the codes and conventions, and the concept of the video, such as the performance and narrative perspective.

Jessie J - 'Who's Laughing Now'

Dua Lipa - 'New Rules'


Sigala ft. Ella Eyre - 'Came Here For Love'

What I have learnt

          As we researched more music videos with the same genre to the song we've chosen to be doing, it allows us to get the idea of what to use for the codes and convention and the concept idea of our video. It seems that in pop - dance songs, they used a lot of bright colours in clothing, props, and hair & make-up. The locations used are the ones that are related to daily life places, such as school, neighbourhood, houses, and so on. This enables us to plan out what location we are going to use for our music video that is relevant to this type of genre.

          The narrative in most of these music videos we've analysed is very straight forward and easy to interpret for the audience. With this, it gave us an idea of what our narrative will be which has to be something simple. For the technical side of the music video, we know that there are so many varieties of camera angles used with fast paced editing to keep on with the beat. This must be important to be considered for our music video as it is the element that keeps the audience interested watching.

Our Chosen Music Video

15.1

The Video

Chasing Highs

Two a.m., I'm fading in the dark

Like floating in the ocean

People need the poison 

Three a.m., you just touched my hand

And made me lose my focus

I almost didn't notice

And I better know what to do

Who's gonna be the first one to move?

I wanna get closer to you

And I better know what to do

Who's gonna be the first one to move?

I wanna get closer to you

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

We're doing it in slow motion

We're doing it in slow motion

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

You are getting closer in slow motion

I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-hi-highs
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs
You are getting closer in slow motion

Four a.m., almost touching you
Drowning out the noises
In between the voices
Five a.m., there is something more
I caught the look you gave me
Phases going hazy

And I better know what to do

Who's gonna be the first one to move?

I wanna get closer to you

And I better know what to do

Who's gonna be the first one to move?

I wanna get closer to you

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

We're doing it in slow motion

We're doing it in slow motion

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

You are getting closer in slow motion

I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-hi-highs
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs
You are getting closer in slow motion

I stopped counting the hours
Spaces between us getting smaller and smaller
I'm losing the powers
I'm falling higher and higher with you

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

We're doing it in slow motion

We're doing it in slow motion

I was chasing highs

Then I found you

You are getting closer in slow motion

I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs (ooh yeah, ooh yeah)
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-hi-highs (I'm chasing, I'm chasing)
I'm chasing hi-hi-hi-highs (ooh yeah, ooh yeah)
You are getting closer in slow motion

Songwriters: HENRIK MEINKE, PASCAL REINHARDT, JONAS KALISCH, ALEXSEJ VLASENKO, JEREMY CHACON, ALMA MIETTINEN

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

15.2

Email Request

15.3

The Artist

What I have learnt

          This task has allowed me to get to know the artist better and taught me on how to write a formal email. Even though it was a small research, it gave me the idea of the artist background and her journey becoming popular which is quite interesting. The email writing is also beneficial for me to learn as it would be useful in the future.

Thinking of a Concept or Song

          We picked 'Chasing Highs' by Alma because we feel like we can do so much on this music video as the beat is quite fast and it sounds energetic and happy, moreover, many idea's popped into our heads as we think about what we could do with it. The music and the lyric allow us to use narrative and performance.
          However, we didn't choose the other potential music videos; even though it has a quite fast beat with happy vibe - similar to 'Chasing Highs' - we didn't feel quite as inspired when watching them. There are also other factors that affected our music video choice, including ideas such as the sort of location we wanted to use but couldn't get easy access to, limited choice of actors, and the video concept.

What I have learnt

          For this task, we went on looking for inspirations from various music videos with different genres. However, after doing the research, we’ve decided that we are going to do dance/pop music video. Pop music often expresses happy and energetic atmosphere which would help engage audiences' interest, hence why we chose this genre. With that idea in mind, we went on searching and watched many dance/pop music videos which enables us to see the difference within the concept, camera work, editing, and mise en scene. As we came up with some music videos that we thought we could use for our final product, we finally decided to do ‘Chasing Highs’ by ALMA. This video caught our interest because it allows us to do both narrative and performance, and it is quite slow music but have a dynamic energy. During this task, I also have learnt that communication is important as we are constantly changing some ideas, giving opinions and suggestions that could help with the planning.



Advanced Editing Techniques

Here are variations of advanced edit we attempted:

What I have learnt

          From this task I have learnt a lot more on editing. There are various different types of editing that is interesting and some are quite tricky at first. I did all of these editing mostly in Adobe Premier Pro and some in After Effects. It is a little different to what we usually use last year which was iMovie that has a simpler layout, but less features. In the process, I did some research on how to achieve those effects on YouTube and it was very useful. It helped me to learn how to use and get familiarised with the software. The editing does require more time than usual, although with practice and getting familiar with the software; it will be a piece of cake.

          The comment I receive on this task was that this is excellent and is up to a professional standard, especially for the ‘Zoom1.1’ which encourages me to do more. Personally, I don’t think it is up to the professional standard, but we will definitely use some these techniques that suits with our final music video.

Digipak

Front Cover

This is the front cover of the album we made:

Here is the original picture collected from Google images 

Back Cover

This is the back cover of the album we made:

Here is the original picture collected from Google images

What I have learnt

          This second editing practice task has allowed me to understand about the importance of presentation and theme in an album cover. The album cover that we created has a consistent theme which works well, in my opinion. However, we could definitely do some more on the front cover since it seems a little unexciting and characterless, compared to the back cover. We could improve it by using more colours, or using different font which suits best with the theme. Moreover, the blurred effect doesn't look appealing, as it looks confusing. I'd suggest creating a quick plan before creating an album cover, just to ensure that it's clear and well presented as every element works together.

Album Poster

This is the album poster that we made:

Here is the original picture collected from Google images:

What I have learnt

          During the making of this album poster, there are so many dilemmas on which font to use, and where to put them. We spent too much time looking for the suitable font, which in the end we found the one. I suppose this task have enabled us to practice before doing our own poster, as well as it gave us an idea of how much thoughts needed to be put in the process of the making of an album poster. I think the simplistic look of this poster may work, although, it doesn't reflect anything from the name of the album (except the use of pink colour). I suppose it is possible to make this piece better and more engaging by not using black as the background, and also not using a simple font where there are a whole range of variety of fonts. Other than that, I could suggest that when making the poster, do create a plan beforehand to give an idea of how it's going to be, and depending on the genre, do use any colour other than black.