GG - Filming complete

We are now confident that we have finished all the filming we need for our music video. We have had to do endless re-shoots and numerous rough cut edits but, this has only helped us make sure we produce the best video we can.

We have taken into account all the audience feedback we received from our class mates and friends. The main changes we have made are; instead of 3 scenarios there are now 5, we will use less of the performance footage and we have improved our framing of shots. 

We have imported all of our shots into Final Cut and now plan to start our final edit. 

GG - Digipak and Mag ad photo's

We have managed to get the photo's for our digipak and magazine ad done. Our idea was to find a swing on its own and in a run down area. After weeks of searching we found one that fit the bill and manage to take some photos.

The plan for our digipak is to have a shot of a person of the swing from the front (front panel) and the same shot from behind (back panel) 

For our magazine ad we plan to use the image to the left whilst adding text and other small images of the digipak. 

All photos were taken by John Gamble: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johngamblesnaps/

4th Rough Cut

Here is our 4th and nearing final rough cut for The Swing Movement - Jigsaw. It contains both performance and narrative. Filmed on a Nikon D300s and edited on Final Cut Pro X.

GG - Evidencing auto focus

During our performance footage we use an auto focus lens, part of the Nikon D300s which we filmed on. Our reasoning for doing this, other than because we liked the effect, was because we wanted to create the image that it is more about the music then the band image. This idea was used a lot for The Pixies work and we wanted to incorporate this idea in with our video. Below there are two videos which evidence other pieces of work which have used this same concept.





From audience feedback we were told to try and eliminate most of the extreme cases of the auto focus. So we did this but kept some of it when we believed it was appropriate. Overall we are very happy with our performance footage and believe it looks good.

GG - Change in narrative

After receiving our audience feedback we have decided to add two more scenario's to our music video. This will bring the overall to five, plus performance. The idea is to have 3 of the 5 scenario's to end in an argument, and 2 to end well. We are going to keep the original three, but film two more.

Our idea is to have the couple walking beside a river hand in hand, they will also feed the ducks etc.. This will be happy memory. Our second new idea is for them both to be having a meal together, for the females birthday. This will build up to an argument after the female glances at the males phone as he is texting someone.

Instead of having all the memory's coming from the photos, we have decided to use objects in the room to create the memory. For example, a birthday card which leads to the memory of the birthday meal. The card will be in a bin, then we will cross cut to the memory.

GG - Editing vid on iMovie

Video Effects

Recently I have been editing the footage that me and Tom have taken on the software iMovie (version 9.0.4). We filmed all of our work on a Nikon D300s with included '720p / 24 fps HD video recording', and then imported it straight into iMovie, we are yet to edit any work on Final Cut but plan to very soon. 


I found editing on iMovie very simple, this may be down to its lack of special effects available but for what we needed, it was perfect! 


I started off by selecting all the clips I wanted from the events section and moved them into the project itself. This was very time consuming due to all the shots having to fit to the audio. In between shots I inserted transitions during selected sections, these were mainly used to show a flashback or a memory. 


Once all the shots were in place, I went about removing all the original audio from the clips, this again was very time consuming. 

Changing the Saturation

As seen in the video I have used three different effects on the clips. For the performance I used the 'Hard Light' video effect. I personally think this effect works really well because it helps disguise the fact we filmed in a basement through making the background image harder to see. For the photo scenes we used a 'Black and Whie' video effect, this helping show it is in the past. Finally I used a 'Dream' video effect for the memories. But I also played around with the saturation which gave the shots more light. 




This is our final edit in iMovie and now we hope to move onto using Final Cut to incorporate the cross cut effect. 

GG - Vodcast Audience Feedback (Rough Cut 3)

 We showed two of our friends our Rough cut 3 and asked them for their honest opinions on what they thought. We have taken note of what they've said and added the changes to our production.

Rough Cut 3 - Performance and Narrative

Here is my third rough cut of The Swing Movement with their song Jigsaw. It has been filmed on a Nikon D300s with an manual focus lens. Edited on iMovie by George. 

GG - Things to be done

We are fast approaching the deadline day for all work to be handed up. Me and Tom have looked at what needs to be done and have made a plan.

• The Digipak needs finalising, all we need is an image of a swing form the front and back then we can get finishing our digipak. Tom will be mainly working on this. 
• After a few drafts for the magazine ad we need to create a final version, I have a good idea of what I want it to look like and will hopefully have it done by the end of next week. 

(All research for the digipak and magazine ads has been done, it is just a matter of finishing them off)

• We need to shoot one more scenario showing more conflict between the couple on screen. 
• Do a rough cut on final cut, not just iMovie, here  we can use cross fading shots etc.. 

Now we have got a plan I believe we can get all the work finished off. 

GG - Attracting to our target audience

In this post I am going to look at how in our third rough cut, we have used locations, clothing, actions etc..  to help appeal to our primary target audience of 15-24.

With the narrative being based around a relationship, it is around this age where romance starts playing a big role in someones life. People experience break-ups and can relate to the experience viewed on screen. This also helps us appeal to our secondary audience, females, through the use of a 'rom-com' like genre being used. One of the clothing codes we decided on was for the female to be wearing a red jacket in the first scenario. After playing around with colouring and layering whilst editing, I managed to make the jacket significantly stand out. The idea was to make it signify romance and love, thus further linking it to our secondary audience.

We filming both our actors, I asked them to act as if I wasn't there, then I went around filming them from a range of different angles. This makes the shots more believable, as if they are closely connected to one another.  

We used two actors for the narrative within this age gap, although as you can see we try to avoid showing to much of them on screen to help create a narrative enigma. 

Overall, I believe that we have managed to attracting our target audience well. There is still work that needs to be done whilst editing but after that I believe our main/primary target audience will be ableto ralte closely to the video. 

GG - Filming plan

Me and Tom have decided to re-shoot our narrative storyline on Monday 13th Feb. Because this is during half term we will be able to shoot all day giving us plenty of time to perfect our chosen shots. We will then have all week to edit it on imovie then bring it into school on wednesday or thursday to finish off the editing on final cut. We hope that we will finish all of our filming during half term and then we can hopefully have a near to finished product.

Here is a link to a blog post of what we are going to film: http://geogamm111.blogspot.com/2012/01/tw-new-narrative-plan.html

TW - Digipak- Booklet 3 Shot

A possible idea we are thinking about for the digipak booklet is to merge shots within shots, so that each band member has essentially one photo dedicated to them in which they are performing and posing. This can be done by cropping them out of other photos, and simply reducing the opacity of the image, so they appear transparent when seen in the final image.

Using photoshop to crop the images out

Possible outcome for booklet photo

GG - Digipak work

Here are some images I have done for our digipak. We plan to put them into photoshop and then using the 'opacity' tool put each member of the bands face over the instrument they play. 

GG - Magazine Ad - The Swing Movement (Practice)

Here is one of my practice attempts at making a magazine ad. I completed it on word put plan to do the final one of photoshop.

TW - Viral Ad Campaign

TW - Viral Ad Campaign

Initial draft

For our advertisement task, I decided to take a viral route for one of our ads, as 

viral marketing

 has become increasingly popular and it's use is now profound in today's media.
Our viral ad, uses a QR code that can be scanned from smart phones, and the scan 

will take you to a youtube link,  that shows the performance cut of the song, 'Jigsaw'. 

This is because the performance draft has been competed, so we can showcase it in

 it's entirety before we incorporate our narrative shots.

Designing the Ad, I decided to take a route opened up from the name of the song,

 and use a Jigsaw piece. I used a jigsaw puzzle template, then left some pieces that

 were needed as white, with the remaining pieces in black, seemingly not there. I then 

added the track title, and the band name, as you can see, over a black background, in 

white, so that it appeared white on black on white, in terms of layering. This however 

looked too basic, and was neither complex enough to be magazine ad, nor simple 

enough to be an interesting viral ad.

I then changed my idea, and used the one jigsaw piece, and instead of any words, i placed simply the QR code

 in the jigsaw piece, with the black background highlighting the white jigsaw piece.

The jigsaw track name remains, and the QR code provides people to instantly scan, as the ad is very hard to 

depict without using it. The basic black and white colour scheme draws the eye, and if needed, the background 

could even change to other colours, and perhaps have the same shot 4 times in a window style.

Completed viral ad

Big 3

http://www.newworldliberty.com/newsarticle/3-“-big-3”-music-industry-and-global-order-things

GG - Final digipak idea

After plenty of planning and research I have decided on a final idea for our digipak. We show use of ICT skills and links to our genre.

We have decided to have to outer and two inner panels. On the inner panels we are having a disk tray with an image behind it on one side, and a sleeve with a booklet in it on the other.

For both our front outside panel we have decided to have an image of a person sat on a swing in a derelict area. We will then apply a blurred image effect with 5 different layers. (See image) We will also have the band name and album name on the front.

We plan to also have this on the back panel as well, although it will be a revered image from the back, we will include the same effect. We will include a list of songs, copyright proof and a record label image as well. With both of these images we will also play around with colour, putting in different tints of colour to add to the effect.

On the two inside panels we have decided to have four main images spread on the right hand side panel. These images will be of each band member, but we will play with the opacity and insert images of the instruments they play, and a face of the band member who plays the image. We will then have an inside sleeve which will have a jigsaw image on front with band information included inside the booklet. On the left hand side of the booklet we will have a disk holder with the CD, there will be a jigsaw image behind this.

Rough Cut 2 - Performance and Narrative

Here is our 2nd full rough cut, however this includes both narrative and performance. Edited on iMovie by George and all filmed on a Nikon D300s.

TW - Magazine Ad Analysis 1 - Artic Monkeys - Humbug Ad

I have chosen to analyze this advert as it is by The Artic Monkeys, which

 is one of the bands that George and I have taken influence from, with 

George even analyzing one of their digipak's for our research.

The band is very much alternative rock, with a hint of indie and other genres. It would be fair to say that rock is the wider aspect of their music, but when narrowed down 

it does fall into the alternative category. This particular advertisement has

 been featured across Europe for their album Humbug, and was created 

by DebutArt.

As you can see, the advert is quite bold and vivid in it's colour scene, 

although it does have a washed type feature to it which causes it to lose 

some of the vibrance and make the colours seem less eccentric.
The background is orange, and is fading from top to bottom. This is met 

by the colours of the words used on the ad, as 'Humbug', is most clear in 

colour, whilst '24 August 2009' is faded and is closer matched to the colour

 of the background, due to the fade effect.
The middle of the ad shows a band logo, possibly used exclusively for this 

album, and has the band name stenciled into the middle. The logo appears 

to be 2 faces, back to back, joined by what could be their hair, or a 

representation of collaborative minds in relation to creating the album.

The fact that the band name is used in a stencil effect, attracts attention to both the logo and the band name 

immediately, causing the reader to read the rest of the info, which is only small pieces of information, likely to 

remain in the audience's mind so they remember the advert and the info easily.

Whilst this magazine ad is fairly simple, it does the job and could be modeled or replicated if we chose to complete

 2 magazine ads, this being used as influence on the more simple of the 2 ads we would create.

GG - Magazine Ad Analysis 2 - Biffy Clyro

I have chosen to analyse a magazine ad for 'Biffy Clyro'. His music is of an alternative rock genre and he has had many big hit songs. The genre, 'alternative' is a worldwide genre meaning the ad needs to attract to a large audience.

As you can see this ad is very basic, it lacks some of the main codes and conventions I have recently blogged about. However, it is very powerful in the way it uses the bold colour blue which is the prominent colour. This colour could signify calmness however the image reflects on a more viscous aspect, relating to the alternative rock genre.

Your eyes are instantly attracted to the text 'Biffy Clyro' through the use of a different colour in comparison to the rest of the texts. This is used well to promote his new album through when people are flicking through the magazine, the name of the artist is obvious. The realise date is clear through the use of a bold and large text, this is also used to promote the album name.

Although the magazine ad is fairly simple, we could use it when making our second design for another magazine genre pacific. Because the imagery and text doesn't fully emphasis's the genre of the band.

GG - Magazine Ad Analysis 3 - Mumford & Sons

My second deconstruction of a magazine ad is for the band 'Mumford & Sons'. The band are seen to have a country/indie genre, this close to the song we have chosen.

Instantly we can see a difference to my previous post of 'Biffy Clyro' through the use of colour. The main background colour 'black' is less bold and signifies darkness and misery, this is a opposite to my previous deconstruction. However, the colours of the four images provide much more attention, they draw your eyes too the ad. They have an old/blurred effect on them making them more interesting to look at.

We see the use of bold texts to portray the band/album name at the top of the page. The colour white works well with the background colour making it easy to read. As the texts gets lower down the page it becomes smaller, this could possibly be because it has less meaning.

When creating our final magazine ad we will take ideas from all four of our deconstructions. The basic steps we will follow are; band/album name at the top of page, band image central, text at the bottom (release date, record labels etc...)

Link to band information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumford_and_Sons

TW - Magazine Ad Analysis 4 - Hard Fi

This magazine ad is for Hard Fi's album, entitled Once Upon A Time In 

The West. The album was released almost 5 years ago, therefore is a

 fairly recent advertisement, and will likely use conventions that are still 

true to the alternative genre of advertisements.


This advertisement is especially helpful because it has one central 

drawing point, much like our planned advertisement. The drawing point

 for this particular ad is the use of a commonly used statement on the 

internet when an image is unable to load, except it would simply say 

'Image Not Available'. This is a reflection of the advancement of media 

and technology in our society, especially the use of the internet, where

 that sentence can be found.

Below the simple yet attracting statement, is the band name, album 

title and release date, all in black, which is contrast to the white colour 

of the main sentence. These words are in lower font, and centered, 

similar to the main sentence.

Underneath this they have in a less bold font, a popular track they have

 released as a selling point for people who appreciate their music, and 

further below that, there is a web link to the band's website, integrating other aspects of internet advancements, with 

the production company logo in the bottom right, to make it visible, yet less eye catching than the desired aspects of

 the advertisement.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard for our video, which is what we aim to replicate in terms of how shots are ordered. The narrative has since changed but this was the plan for the original idea. It will be composed into an animatic tomorrow.

TW - New Narrative Plan

(to be filmed on monday 13th Feb)

As we have received critical feedback to our narrative aspect, I have now devised a new story-line that sees the plot 

enhanced. We now plan to use 4 small scenes, not 2 which means obviously there is now more of a story to tell.

The 1st sequence is the couple on a walk, enjoying each others company, there can be fade-type cutting used 

of them walking to being sat on a bench, showing time has elapsed yet still filming in exactly the same frame. 

The couple can also be feeding ducks as this is common around ilkley river, which is a location we are likely to use.

The second sequence will be the couple sat on the sofa, watching TV, in a sped up shot of them just sat there

together in each other's company. The sped up shot allows us to show how much time has gone by with them 

just sat together. This shot will be cross cut with a transparent view of the couple arguing, and the camera circling 

them with fast paced shots. This shows that not everything is ok in the relationship and provides some narrative 

in the sense the audience has doubts about if the relationship will work out.

In the 3rd scenario we see them both moping around, unhappily and the possible use of drinking to connote 

depression, along with the gloomy setting. The male lead will try to call the girl in an attempt to sort things out 

after their fight, but she will read the caller ID and decide to not answer and simply let it ring.

All of the scenarios will begin with the original idea of the male lead looking at the particular scenario in a photo 

album, with the picture leading into the scene. The 4th scene begins like this, in which it gives us another happy

 time with the couple, possibly in a different colour scheme as the other scenarios to show that it was further 

back in the past, before the fight.
The shot will then fade back out into the view of him looking at the photo, and he will then put it in his pocket, 

and slam the photo album shut, possibly even dropping it to the floor with some of the photos dropping out. He 

then runs outside, and the narrative will end with the same shot we used in the rough cut, where the male runs 

up to the girl he was searching for, and it is narrative enigma whether they reconcile or not.

Some feedback to this idea was given by my media teacher, in which he suggested possibly including someone 

taking a photo of the couple, which could be used extremely well in the 4th scenario, as in a reverse of what 

happens previously, when the couple has had their photo taken, it reverts to him looking at that picture, which is 

a different spin on what we were going to do.
He also suggested maybe stamping on some of the images in the photo album, to highlight the male's anger to 

the situation.

GG- The Swing Movement (A brief history)

The band formed in 2004 from the Yorkshire town 'Ilkley'. They are a four piece indie/alternative band with their own distinctive sound of powerful drum beats and strong bass lines. The four members: Ben Walker (Guitar and Vocals), Patrick Wanzala-Ryan (Guitar) , Joe Gamble (Bass) and Kieran Borrett (Drums). 


In there short time of being together the band have managed to play at Leeds Festival, The Cockpit, The Love Apple and many more big venues and festivals, including preforming at a festival in Belgium. They have been signed to Long Island studios in London, who work with such bands as Wild Beasts. Here they created there first album 'Bottom of The Barrel' which they plan to re-record due to the creation of new songs. 'To The Bone' is one of their songs which has been released on itunes and had 100's of purchases in the first week. You can also find them on Spotify. There song 'Jigsaw', which we have selected to use, has been played on Radio1 with one guest saying "this is the best song we have received all week".


They are an up and coming young band who have suffered from the economical fall in the music industry. They are just waiting for the right recorded label to come along and hoping to kick start what should be a very successful career for them all. 

GG - Vodcast of performance footage

Here is a vodcast on the filming and editing of our performance footage of The Swing Movement.

GG - Digipak idea 1

Podcast on Audience feedback/target audience

In this podcast me and Tom take you through our target audience and the feedback gathered together after showing friends our rough cuts.

GG - Music Video has been a success!

Since I shot and edited our first sample scene for our performance footage it has been a big hit. Previous managers and record labels have seen the video and been in contact with the band. This shows the power of youtube, also after receiving over 250 views in a week. The video has also been used to enter the band into a competition to win a chance to support for Graham Coxon on his British tour this April. The video was placed onto his website and you can now vote to give 'The Swing Movement' a chance to perform in Gateshead. It can be seen and done on the following website:
http://toursupport.grahamcoxon.co.uk/share/entry/270

This video is only sample performance footage and we plan to add a love affair narrative to the performance. When all of this is shot we shall give the video to 'The Swing Movement' to help them keep on progressing in the music industry.

The video has been placed below:

GG - Audience Feeback: Preformance footage

After a class viewing of our preformance footage, we had a discussion and looked at all the good and bad aspects of our work. Both me and Tom took notes on what was said:

• Remove the dutch angle that appears in numerus shots, this can be done on final cut.
• Good use of focus adjustment throughout the video, this is done through using a 'Nikon D300's' camera with a lense on it.
• The video was well synced with the audio.
• Too much focus on the lead singer. More shots of other band members.
• More cut away shots of instrument pedals and amps.
• Good use of camera movement throughout the video.
• Possibly include more shots off all band members.

We have found all these points very helpful to work with and we believe they will help us improve our idea. Overall the feeling was that it was a very good first draft of the performance, and once we add narrative, it will work really well.