LOCATION RECCE
Knowing that I wanted to film in a natural setting, I started considering different locations that I felt would work well for my video. With the main character of my video, Jonny, I went to a small wood in my local area to try taking some quick test shots to assess whether or not that location would work for me.
Although I quite liked the location, there wasn't much to work with. Because it was simply a wooded area, there were no paths, benches or any other on location props that I could incorporate into my video. I knew that I definitely still wanted to have trees as a main part of my video as I especially like how the trees look at this time of year without any leaves, so I decided that in order to have both trees and other pre-existing props, I would be much better off filming my video in a park.
CHARACTER PROFILES
JONNY AKA "JONATHAN GRAY"
The main character in my video will be Jonathan Gray, the album artist and the boy featured on my improved magazine advertisement and inside digipak. The reason I chose this name was simply because it is my chosen actor's actual name and I felt that a longer first name and shorter second name looked effective on my print work.
I chose Jonny to be in my video as he relates closely to my target audience in several ways;
MYSELF AKA "THE GIRLFRIEND/SOON-TO-BE EX"
As my storyboards will explain, I didn't want to involve the female very much in the video, as I wanted it to revolve around the male character. Because of this, I decided that it would be MUCH easier and convenient to use myself as the female character. All of my proposed shots that involved the girl were to be filmed using a tripod, meaning that I could set up the shot, press record and then run into the shot and simply cut off the beginning of the clip when I came to edit.
The reason that I have chosen song/location/genre is because I think of myself as being a part of that Indie/Alternative group, and I feel that the way I dress/look reflects this. I don't wear a lot of make up, my hair is natural (slightly dip-dyed after this photo was taken - popular with my target audience) and I plan to dress in a way that makes my target genre obvious, and doesn't become confused with other genres.
The main character in my video will be Jonathan Gray, the album artist and the boy featured on my improved magazine advertisement and inside digipak. The reason I chose this name was simply because it is my chosen actor's actual name and I felt that a longer first name and shorter second name looked effective on my print work.
I chose Jonny to be in my video as he relates closely to my target audience in several ways;
- He obviously embodies the 'Indie/Alternative' style, ensuring that my target audience can relate to the main character of my video in terms of clothing/hairstyle.
- He is a guitarist/writer in an Alternative band formally called 'We Beat The System' and recently re-named 'CHILD', so he could understand my concept easily and give his own input from his musical background.
- He is attractive, appealing to the female population of my target audience.
- He is 19, an age which falls in the middle of the age range of my target audience. He isn't too old as to not appeal to the prospective younger audience, and isn't too young as to not be taken seriously by older audience members.
Basically, I feel that he 'looks the part', and because he is my boyfriend, I can easily work around our college/work schedules to find time that we can use to film. I can also really rely on him, which I may not have been able to do if I was using a friend.
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| The image used on the inside of my digipak |
MYSELF AKA "THE GIRLFRIEND/SOON-TO-BE EX"
As my storyboards will explain, I didn't want to involve the female very much in the video, as I wanted it to revolve around the male character. Because of this, I decided that it would be MUCH easier and convenient to use myself as the female character. All of my proposed shots that involved the girl were to be filmed using a tripod, meaning that I could set up the shot, press record and then run into the shot and simply cut off the beginning of the clip when I came to edit.
The reason that I have chosen song/location/genre is because I think of myself as being a part of that Indie/Alternative group, and I feel that the way I dress/look reflects this. I don't wear a lot of make up, my hair is natural (slightly dip-dyed after this photo was taken - popular with my target audience) and I plan to dress in a way that makes my target genre obvious, and doesn't become confused with other genres.
INSPIRATIONAL TEXTS - video
Here are a few examples of music videos that I feel relate closely to my choice of song and approach to my video. There are various aspects of each video which I am inspired by and hope to learn from/encapsulate in my video such as camera and editing techniques, locations and lighting.
This is one of my favourite songs, originally by The xx, covered by Birdy. The video for this song is very much like what I have proposed to create for 'Please Let Me Go', my chosen track, although I do not intend to copy it.
As I mentioned in my last post, I have chosen a very natural location, such as a park or a forest so this video is very helpful for me to see how I could make best use of this location. Furthermore, the lighting in the video is also quite similar to how I want to light my video however the 'feel' of my chosen song requires a ever so slightly lighter atmosphere. Clips in this video such as 0:20 shows how something as simple as walking can be given emotion by being slowed down slightly, which is a technique I plan to use in the editing of my video. I also want to use the slow motion effect on the scenes in which the narrating character will actually mouth the lyrics.
Another part of this video that I like and would like to incorporate into my video is the part when Birdy holds her hand up towards the sun, blocking out the light and letting it shine through her fingers. I think that this would be effective in a scene where my two characters could be touching hands in the air and the let go of each other with the sun shining between the hands, or something along those lines.
Birdy - Shelter
As I mentioned in my last post, I have chosen a very natural location, such as a park or a forest so this video is very helpful for me to see how I could make best use of this location. Furthermore, the lighting in the video is also quite similar to how I want to light my video however the 'feel' of my chosen song requires a ever so slightly lighter atmosphere. Clips in this video such as 0:20 shows how something as simple as walking can be given emotion by being slowed down slightly, which is a technique I plan to use in the editing of my video. I also want to use the slow motion effect on the scenes in which the narrating character will actually mouth the lyrics.
Another part of this video that I like and would like to incorporate into my video is the part when Birdy holds her hand up towards the sun, blocking out the light and letting it shine through her fingers. I think that this would be effective in a scene where my two characters could be touching hands in the air and the let go of each other with the sun shining between the hands, or something along those lines.
Ellie Goulding - Guns and Horses
This video, like Shelter is also set in a forest however it is inspirational in different ways than the previous video. Artists have to be careful not to over-act and make their lyrics cheesy, which I feel Ellie Goulding has done. Some of the hand gestures she makes, along with the zombie solider dancers make the video as a whole quite cringe-worthy, which I feel a video revolving around a romantic narrative has the possibility of being. Therefore this video has shown me some of the "don'ts" that I need to be aware of when directing my characters.
'So the lion fell in love with the lamb...' - Twilight
This clip is from the movie Twilight and is the clip where they say one of the most famous quotes from the film. It is a very romantic scene in its own way, and is quite climatic as all of the previous scenes have been leading up to this moment where Bella reveals she knows Edward is a vampire. The costume choices and lighting choices of my video reminded me of Twilight and also the location as it is similar to this scene. When I watched it on YouTube there was a particular part of the clip which I thought would be really effective for my video. It is at 2:22 and shows Bella backed up against a large tree with Edwards arms imprisoning her, and gradually him releasing her in a defeated manor, which ties in well with the narrative of my video.
INITIAL LOCATION/LIGHTING IDEAS
The location that I have chosen for my video is a forest, or a area with lots of trees. This is because of the natural feel that I think the song has, and a forest is somewhere I picture it to be set when listening. As well as the trees, I want to perhaps find a location that has some other items in it like a bench or a broken down wall etc. If I only have my characters walking around a forest, they won't have anything to interact with, so these items would be ideal.
MANAGING MY TIME
In order to make sure I stick to my schedule, I created myself a diary in the form of a calendar for February. This will really help me to map out my time and what I need to do, as I found that I spent far too long on certain aspects of my print work, which wasted time and limited me when it came to handing in work.
I know that I don't have any knowledge of Premiere Pro (the software I will be using to create my video) therefore I need to allocate specific slots in which I can have a play around and get to know the software so that I'm not going in blind when I come to edit my actual footage.
I know that I don't have any knowledge of Premiere Pro (the software I will be using to create my video) therefore I need to allocate specific slots in which I can have a play around and get to know the software so that I'm not going in blind when I come to edit my actual footage.
STARTING MY VIDEO
Now that both pieces of print work were finished, I could start the main task which in my case is a music video. As I had previously mentioned in some of my earlier posts, the song that I have chosen is 'Please Let Me Go' by Charlie Simpson, which is a slow love/break up song that features a repeated guitar melody and strong, meaningful lyrics.
I already had a few initial ideas in mind but before starting any planning I wanted to seek inspiration from existing music videos and film clips. This would ensure that my video had enough solid research and planning behind it before I started to film, as going in blind would probably result in amateur footage and wasted time, which I can't afford to do.
I already had a few initial ideas in mind but before starting any planning I wanted to seek inspiration from existing music videos and film clips. This would ensure that my video had enough solid research and planning behind it before I started to film, as going in blind would probably result in amateur footage and wasted time, which I can't afford to do.
FINAL MAGAZINE ADVERT
This is my final magazine advertisement for my album 'Let Me Go' by Jonathan Gray. Although it's plain, I am really pleased with it, as this is definitely the look that I was going for. The type of song and the image that I wanted to create for my album artist encourages this type of played down advertisement, that isn't in your face like an ad from a Pop or RnB artist might be. However, I do feel that I maybe could have included something else to make it more interesting, but I'm not entirely sure on what that could have been.
Using the same wallpaper image but making it slightly more transparent ensures that the magazine advertisement and the CD cover are similar, creating a strong, consistent advertising campaign for my artist, that will ultimately result in my target audience being drawn to the imagery and colour scheme and buying the album.
ADVERTISEMENT PROGRESSIONS
RELEASE DATE
The date that the album is being released is one of the more important pieces of information as it ensures that your audience know exactly when the album is coming out and can go and buy it. As a first try, to keep things easy and to save thinking of a date I simply used my own birthday; 17th May 2013. Originally, I thought I wanted to display the date in a numerical format as you can see to the right, however I felt that this just didn't suit my concept, so I changed it to a word format. I decided to make the date a bit less specific to intrigue the reader and make them wonder when it is actually coming out. I took away the day and left it to the month and the year, changing the month from May to October. I did this for a number of reasons;
- 'May' is too short - I felt that such a short word followed by the longer 2013 looked out of balance, so I knew that I needed to use a longer month.
- May is in spring/summer which encourages the assumption of good weather and a general happy feeling that it's nearly summer (especially for my teenage audience who spend the whole year counting down to the summer holidays.) My video concept is the complete opposite to the feeling that May brings: it's set in autumn, the end of the summer and the marker that the warm weather is over for another year; the location provides a miserable colour scheme; the characters will be wearing coats and scarves; and the storyline is about a break up of a relationship.
Because of these factors, I came to the conclusion that 'October' would be a much more fitting month as it's in autumn, is associated with the start of the cold weather and provides the weather and overall 'look' that I want for my video.
TRACK STICKER
I found that when I added the image of the CD cover and the release date, the image as a whole was still quite sparse and had a lot of unnecessary white space. To combat this I decided that I would make a 'sell sticker' that would outline a key feature of the advert but not just appear as another piece of text. Using the murky green that I had previously used for the border around my front album cover, I created a vector circle on Photoshop and a smaller white outline of the circle to break up the image and create its own border. I chose to use Times New Roman for the font on the sticker as Nueva Std is more suited to upper case letters, and didn't work as effectively on lower case.
This sticker is very similar to one that you might find on the front of a CD cover. Its purpose is to tell prospective buyers some of the tracks that are included on the album that have previously been released as singles and may have had commercial success. Telling them this will let them know that this is the long awaited album from the artist of those singles, making them more likely to buy it knowing their favourite songs are featured. Obviously I have included the name of the actual song that my video is on, along with the '&' symbol and another shorter name to ensure that the whole thing was equally weighted as to not look messy.
Obviously, the main feature of the magazine advertisement is the CD that it's aiming to promote, so I definitely wanted to include an image of it. This was the reason that I included the wallpaper at the top of the ad, as it ties it in with the CD cover and creates a strong image that has a consistent colour scheme and obvious target audience, opposed to a bright pink and yellow colour scheme that would appeal to Pop music fans.
"OCTOBER 2013"
TRACK STICKER
This sticker is very similar to one that you might find on the front of a CD cover. Its purpose is to tell prospective buyers some of the tracks that are included on the album that have previously been released as singles and may have had commercial success. Telling them this will let them know that this is the long awaited album from the artist of those singles, making them more likely to buy it knowing their favourite songs are featured. Obviously I have included the name of the actual song that my video is on, along with the '&' symbol and another shorter name to ensure that the whole thing was equally weighted as to not look messy.
WEBSITES
From studying pre-exisiting magazine advertisements for CDs, I found that another convention was incluidng a web address on the ad. This was usually for the artist so that readers could access their website and learn more about them. There was also a web address included for the record label on many of the magazine advertisements, therefore I decided to include both on mine.
CD COVER
STARTING MY MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT
Now that my CD cover is completely finished, I can start work on my magazine advertisement. I couldn't really produce this before my CD cover as I wanted to see how that turned out, and whether or not my wallpaper idea was successful (which I have decided I think it was). Furthermore, most magazine advertisements for music albums actually have an image of the album, which I couldn't add until the cover was finished.
I knew that I needed to make it look similar to the CD cover to keep them in consistency and create a solid image for the artist. So, as I have previously mentioned, I decided that I wanted to incorporate the same wallpaper image and the same ripping technique. To start with, I used the plain cream background with a relatively high noise level which was sized to fit a CD cover. I simply placed the image onto an A4 Photoshop document and duplicated the layer until it covered the canvas. This gave me the foundation on which to build my magazine advertisement, as using such a plain colour once again gave me free reign in regards to my colour scheme/use of patterns.
I then had to decide where I wanted to place the ripped wallpaper. At first I wanted to place it running down the side of the image, however I realised that this would massively restrict the layout, because in order to get the full effect of the pattern, it would have to occupy almost half of the page. I therefore decided to place the wallpaper along the top of the image, so I opened the original EDITED wallpaper image and used the same ripped brush tools to crop the image down to size.
The image above shows the section of pattern that I chose to use, as I feel that it shows the must interesting part of the pattern and also gives a bit more diversity as one side of is a lot less weighted than the other. After this, I copied and pasted the 'scratches' layer from my CD cover Photoshop document that I created using the noise tool. This simply added the same vintage look that I achieved with my CD cover. Having the pattern this bold would have definitely taken away from the focal point of the CD cover image, therefore I decided to make the pattern at the top considerably less noticeable by reducing the opacity of that layer. I reduced it to 42% which made it much less of a focal point, and ensured that when I added the CD cover image, that would be the most prominent aspect of the page.
I knew that I needed to make it look similar to the CD cover to keep them in consistency and create a solid image for the artist. So, as I have previously mentioned, I decided that I wanted to incorporate the same wallpaper image and the same ripping technique. To start with, I used the plain cream background with a relatively high noise level which was sized to fit a CD cover. I simply placed the image onto an A4 Photoshop document and duplicated the layer until it covered the canvas. This gave me the foundation on which to build my magazine advertisement, as using such a plain colour once again gave me free reign in regards to my colour scheme/use of patterns.
I then had to decide where I wanted to place the ripped wallpaper. At first I wanted to place it running down the side of the image, however I realised that this would massively restrict the layout, because in order to get the full effect of the pattern, it would have to occupy almost half of the page. I therefore decided to place the wallpaper along the top of the image, so I opened the original EDITED wallpaper image and used the same ripped brush tools to crop the image down to size.
Obviously this still takes up a considerable amount of the page, so to combat this lack of space I decided that I would place my main heading either in front or behind the transparent wallpaper. To keep in consistency with my CD cover, I had planned on using the same font, Nueva Std in the same purple/black colour. A typical convention of a magazine advertisement for an album is to have the main sell line saying something along the lines of "brand new album" or "the new album". 'Brand new' just didn't suit my theme or genre, as I feel it is a very shouty and 'out there' statement, which in my opinion would be way more suited to a Pop or RnB album. With this in mind, I decided to go with 'the new album', as it is a little more subtle than 'brand new', but still gets the point across successfully. I created the title using the text tool, however I found that the letters themselves were too wide, resulting in the text having to be restricted to a smaller point size. To overcome this, I used the transformation tools to elongate the text vertically, making the letters thinner and taller, allowing me to increase the point size and make it a lot bigger and therefore a lot easier to read. After all, this had to be one of the first things that the reader should look at so that they understand what the page is advertising.
Because the wallpaper pattern is a dark blue/purple against a lighter contrasting background, on the bigger areas of pattern there are thinner light areas where the background comes through the pattern which I realised created quite a nice effect when the transparent image was placed on top of the text. It looked plain and a little boring when placed on top of the pattern, therefore I decided to keep it behind:
INSPIRATIONAL TEXTS - magazine ads
The next part of my brief was to create a magazine advertisement for the CD cover, so I had a look on the internet and in some of my music magazines for examples of advertisements that I could take inspiration from. I tried to keep them within my chosen genre of Alternative/Indie, or chose them because they had similarities to my ideas or simply because I liked the layout/font/images.
Florence + the Machine - 'Lungs'
The first ad I found was for 'Lungs' by Florence + the Machine's, who are a band that can be categorised as being 'indie rock'. The colour scheme is obviously very similar to my own, using a lot of green and very natural tones. This magazine advertisement doesn't actually feature an obvious small image of the album itself, as the main image used on the ad is the image that is used on the cover. I don't think that I want to use an image of my album artist for the magazine advertisement, as I want to somehow incorporate the same wallpaper image as I have used on the CD cover to keep them in consistency. It obviously includes all of the conventions of an album advertisement; the artist name, album name, the date the album will be released and also the artist website.
Kasabian - 'Empire'
This ad belongs to the band Kasabian, which is advertising their album 'Empire'. Like the previous ad, this one also uses the image from the CD cover as the main image, simply extending the background colour to fit the A4 dimensions to make it look like a larger image. This album includes all of the conventions detailed in the last paragraph, however this ad also includes reviews from well known music magazines (from the Indie/Alternative genre) such as Q and NME. These are typically magazines that my target audience would read, so I could consider including reviews from these names to further appeal to the music taste of my target audience.
Marina & the Diamonds - 'The Family Jewels'
This advertisement is actually promoting both an album and a single. The image at the bottom shows the latest single from the artist that is featured on the album ('The Family Jewels'). As you can see, the background uses a similar vintage wallpaper theme as my CD cover has. As mentioned, I want to try and incorporate this wallpaper image into my magazine ad, so this shows me how to use both the wallpaper and an image of my artist effectively, if I choose to. Unlike the previous two ads, this one incorporates a main image and an image of the actual CD cover, which is something that I wanted to do with my ad. It has been kept in consistency by using the same font and loose colour scheme, whereby the text is pint on the image of the cover, and there is a slight pink tint to the cheeks of the artist in the main image. This ensures that the smaller image of the album cover stands out but doesn't clash, and still retains the general 'image' for the whole advertisement campaign.
The first ad I found was for 'Lungs' by Florence + the Machine's, who are a band that can be categorised as being 'indie rock'. The colour scheme is obviously very similar to my own, using a lot of green and very natural tones. This magazine advertisement doesn't actually feature an obvious small image of the album itself, as the main image used on the ad is the image that is used on the cover. I don't think that I want to use an image of my album artist for the magazine advertisement, as I want to somehow incorporate the same wallpaper image as I have used on the CD cover to keep them in consistency. It obviously includes all of the conventions of an album advertisement; the artist name, album name, the date the album will be released and also the artist website.
This ad belongs to the band Kasabian, which is advertising their album 'Empire'. Like the previous ad, this one also uses the image from the CD cover as the main image, simply extending the background colour to fit the A4 dimensions to make it look like a larger image. This album includes all of the conventions detailed in the last paragraph, however this ad also includes reviews from well known music magazines (from the Indie/Alternative genre) such as Q and NME. These are typically magazines that my target audience would read, so I could consider including reviews from these names to further appeal to the music taste of my target audience.
This advertisement is actually promoting both an album and a single. The image at the bottom shows the latest single from the artist that is featured on the album ('The Family Jewels'). As you can see, the background uses a similar vintage wallpaper theme as my CD cover has. As mentioned, I want to try and incorporate this wallpaper image into my magazine ad, so this shows me how to use both the wallpaper and an image of my artist effectively, if I choose to. Unlike the previous two ads, this one incorporates a main image and an image of the actual CD cover, which is something that I wanted to do with my ad. It has been kept in consistency by using the same font and loose colour scheme, whereby the text is pint on the image of the cover, and there is a slight pink tint to the cheeks of the artist in the main image. This ensures that the smaller image of the album cover stands out but doesn't clash, and still retains the general 'image' for the whole advertisement campaign.
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