Conventional Posters

We decided to have another look at album posters to see the conventions of them. This debut album poster was found in a music magazine. This posters album artist is Willy Mason which is clearly labelled at the top of the magazine poster. The background colour used for this poster is a light white colour which makes the image on the left and the red writing on the right stand out. The font style on the name of the artist is in a serif font which makes the audience automatically think that this poster would suit a upper class person. Some of the main features which are on this poster are the date when it is released, a website which is of the artist in this case Willy Mason, the album name and the main song with the album for this case 'Perfection'.

Another idea for Digipak

This is another initial design for the digipak. We have decided to make a variety of different ideas so we can choose the one which we think will suit the music video and the song the best. In this digipak there is the three band members their which will be on the fron cover and as you turn over the page you wil have the same stance and people just from the back of their heads. I liked this idea as it shows the playful side of the music. And on the back of the digipak i have put the main singer on his own with the lyrics 'I sell popcorn' at the top because this is part od the song which also has the main song of the album and the one we will be making a music video for. On the right side in side i have left it blank as we thought that we could just use a black or white background to make the CD stand out more.

Gantt Chart

We thought about creating a Gantt chart so we can work around that to get the different parts of the coursework done for the handin, this also allows us to book in advance, for example when filming we could book the threate out without needing to no when we will be ready to film.

Initial idea for Poster

In this initial idea of our poster for our album we thought that it is moderately ok but will need to be improved if we where going to use this for the actual poster because it is missing a few key information which keeps to the conventions of poster for example information which we will need to add to the final poster are a record label which we will be designing our selves, this poster will also need a date when the album will be released, also websites linking to the band and other record labels, we will also need links to webpages on social networking sites like facebook and twitter and then we will need to say somewhere on the poster that the album will be featuring the single 'Popcorn' as this is the song which we will be making a music video for.
In this inital design there will be the three band members on the fron which will have the band name going across the page. We have chose this size of poster so that this would fit in a general music magazine like Q. We want the three band members there to look as if they don't know what they are doing there, we got this inspiration from the magazine advert for 'Rizzle Kicks'. One part of this advert which I think could have been changed is the background because I feel that the black makes the whole advert look plain. We could change this by using some landscape as the background which would work well with the band members their. We could do this by taking a picture of the band members in front of a green screen so we can keep changing the background to see which looks the best, then we will use that.

Next Recording Session

Our next recording session will be on Tuesday 24th January at 3o'clock after college for one hour and thirty minutes. We chose this because we wanted a time which everyone could come to and also so we aren't bothered by any other people in the college. For our next recording we will need to keep all the costumes the same so when the whole music video is clipped together the continuity doesn't go. We will also need to get one of the music technicians to come down and but the lights right for us and and we will need to move all the furniture out of the way which will leave us about a hour and fifteen minutes left.

Initial Design for digipak

This is a scan of the inital design of the digipak we will be creating for the music video. We choose a simple four tear design as we wanted the digipak to be simple but effective. The front cover have the name of the band and the song will be the name of the Album. On the back page their will be a joker playing card which relates to the name of the band which will also added the 10 pence coin there as well. To make this whole digipak relate to the Popcorn theme we used the popcorn pieces all ofver the album, and we have added a Popcorn box to the front cover.  

I like this idea but we will be designing more so we have a combination to choose from. We will be doing this because I feel that the more idea we have the better chance we can see which of the ideas are the best.

Colour Correction

After we had filmed the first shots of the performance side of the music video we found out that the footage didn't feel like a real concert as the colours in the shots were dull. So we changed the colours using the inspector tool on the iMovie program, we did this by changing the different sections until we were happy with the finished outcome. This would be copied to all of the shots s they all look the same. The different sections are Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Red Gain, Green Gain, Blue Gain and then there is a white point which can be changed to give the effect of a different colour on the footage.

1st Session of Recording

In our first session of recording we started with moving the tables from the front of the threate to the sides so when filming you couldn't see anything which wasn't supposed to be in the shot. Then I went to the music department to ask for someone to adjust the lights in the threate to look like a proper music concert. The colours of lights we used were blue and red, we used these colours because these colours are easy to manipulate using the iMovie program on the Macs.

As we was filming we had a laptop which was connected to the audio cable which is connected to the speakers around the threate. We did this for two reasons which were to make sure the drummer and guitarist know what they will have to mimic in the song, and the other reason was so that when re-watching the clips and cutting them together we know what part of the music video is where.

The final shots of some of the performance music video are alright but we will need to touch the shots up using some of the software on the iMovie program.

Making of the Cardboard Guitar

As this is a very playful song we decided to use a different way of showing this by using varied instruments instead of the real thing, For example here we are making the card board cut out guitar which I feel, sticks to the joyfulness of the song without straying off making the music video look budgeted.

Another reason which we used these types of instruments was that are search for musicians could be increased to nearly anybody who could keep up with the beat of our song.

The instruments we decided to use where a comb which is for the singer of the group, four cooking pots which will be put together to look like a drum set and a card board cut out guitar which is for the guitarist of the group. The pots and comb will be easy to collect as i already have these objects but for the guitar there will be a bit more effort which will be needed to go into the designing and making.

To start with I found a picture of a guitar on the internet and used that as a template which I based this guitar around. Then I used a stanley knife and a cutting board to cut around the template of the design which left a basic outline. This was all we were going to do but decided that the guiat looked flat so we decided to add two stripes of cardboard where the guitarist would strum the cords which gave it a more three dimensional feeling.

Preparing for our filming for the music video

We now have to start and find people for the three different instruments we were going to have a band which we asked for from the music department but that was before we had the idea of using playful instruments like the cooking pots for the drums. So then we decided to go with three of our friends which we knew, were able to film when we wanted.

We used Brendan as the singer as he didn’t mind doing the singing parts of the music video. As he is the singer we decided that it would be best to use a comb instead of a real microphone because it adds to the playfulness of the song.

We used Josh as the guitarist as he looked the part when holding the guitar which means a lot in a music video like this one. As we intended to keep to the playfulness of the song we used a card board cut out guitar instead of a real electric guitar.

We used Rowan as the drummer as he had the most experience with even messing around with the drums as he actually does music. We wanted the most experienced person with drums to play them as it can be hard to match up the beat with the drums when editing it together at the end. As we intended to keep with the playfulness of the song we decided to have cooking pots instead of a real drum set.

Ideas for final piece

As we were progressing through are animatic storyboard, we were still thinking about different ways the mise en scene could change the way the audience listen and think about this piece of music. One idea which we had was the conventional instruments for example a real guitars and instruments. But as this song is upbeat and joyful we thought that these types of instruments wouldn’t keep to the conventional joyful music so we had another idea which would be where we had playful instruments for example a cardboard cut out guitar.

Having instruments which aren’t real makes the music video flow better because this means that it doesn’t matter if the person playing the instruments isn’t good at it as this will add to the playfulness of the song.

We also decided to film the performance parts of the music video in the threate at our collage as this gives a believable concert feel to the music video.

Another idea we had to give our performance parts of our music video a concert feel is to have a first person starting for example a real person entering the concert and sitting down which I feel will make the audience watching the music video feel like they are actually there making the music video feel more personal to them.