Feedback: digipak and our response

Some of the feedback that we received from our digipak included points such as we needed to consider our CD placement and what would be placed behind the CD, we also needed to consider a background for our tracklist as the one included on our initial design was blank. Lastly, our peers advised us to add spines to our digipak draft in order to resemble it's true form once created.
All of this feedback was helpful as it pushed us to consider some aspects of our digipak that we had not yet thought about, each of these points will help us to create a final product which we are content with.

Feedback: magazine advert and our response

Out of both of our potential ideas, our peers informed us that they preferred our first magazine advert idea as it is more creative and interesting. We agree with the general consensus and have decided to choose our first idea for our magazine advert:

 

Our feedback also included some points that we can change when it comes to creating our final product; one of these points was that the price of the album didn't need to be displayed on our cover.

Another point was that we could add more segments to the collage of facial features, we had already considered adding more so it was positive that our peers agreed; this feedback has helped us to make the decision that we will add further segments to our poster, perhaps splitting our image into 6 or 8 parts.

 

Another feedback point that we received was that it would be nice to see the same collage shown on our magazine cover transferred onto the front cover of our digipak. However, we are reluctant to use the exact same creation for both as we decided that it would be more creative to take the same idea and enhance/develop it further on our digipak, this way, our chosen theme of split personalities would run throughout our work without it being too repetitive. We can also demonstrate our skills further by creating two different collages rather than just copying and pasting the same creation.

 

First draft: digipak

 Potential digipak; our front cover plays on our first magazine cover idea, we decided that we could build on our magazine cover by adding four extra sections and altering the shape of the segments. This way, we are linking both the magazine cover and our digipak together. The front cover of our digipak, like our magazine cover, also represents multiple personalities and identity crisis (linking to our music video), however, we decided to portray this message in a more manic/hectic way by adding further segments of facial features with the aim to display our theme.

 

Our digipak aims to show a girl (the actress in our music video) getting closer and closer to the camera in each shot, so as you unfold the digipak, the girl appears to get closer to the audience; this creates a sort of manic effect which perfectly ties in to our quirk theme of multiple personalities. The girl on our digipak will be captured wearing different makeup and clothes in order to demonstrate the theme of multiple personalities. We have also considered purchasing a wig and different coloured contact lenses in order to really show the difference between the different shots of the girl on our digipak as this will reiterate our theme on a higher level. If the lenses and the wig are not available, we will use photoshop in order to create the effect that the girl's hair/eyes are different colours.

First draft: magazine advert

 

Our first magazine cover idea; this idea stems from the theme that runs throughout our music video of multiple personalities and identity crisis. We tried to represent multiple personalities within this magazine cover by showing different aspects of the same face displaying varying facial expressions. We are going to consider adding more segments in order to make our cover more lively and hectic which will represent the disarray which occurs in the mind of an individual suffering from multiple personality disorder.  We believed that it would be important to link our magazine advert to both our music video and to Lorde's creative style. Our first idea epitomises Lorde's style as an artist; she is known for being quirky, alternative and eccentric, we tried to reflect this in our magazine cover. It was also important to us that our idea be creative and artistic as Lorde is extremely creative throughout her music, her fashion and her appearance.

 

 

 

Our second idea; we derived our inspiration for this cover from Lorde's appearances across various magazine covers. After studying a number of covers which Lorde appeared on, it was clear that Lorde was always the centre of the cover; showing her power, prominence and ultimately ensuring that she is the centre of her audiences attention. We loved this portrayal of Lorde being so dominant and thought that it was important that we manipulated the same idea to be featured on one of our potential magazine covers. Our use of colour shows Lorde's dark and quirky makeup that she typically wears, this also relates to the eccentric, unusual style of Lorde's music.

Album artwork research

Print research - magazine adverts

The rule of thirds

Rule of thirds research

The rule of thirds is a concept within video and film production in which a frame is divided into nine imagery sections. This creates reference points which act as guides for framing the image.
 
Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centring the subject.

Points of interest should occur at 1/3 or 2/3 of the way across rather than being situated at the centre. The photograph thus becomes more balanced.

Final product: homemade dynamite music video

Editing update

We are extremely pleased with our feedback as it has alerted us to some needed changes within our product, this has allowed us to make alterations within our video today, we have fine tuned our video to the beat of our song today and we feel that it really flows with flare and professionalism.

The key changes... the introduction of our product.

initially, our product commenced with a split screen panning across three sets of eyes. All three sets appeared to the viewer all at once, however, we believed that we could really take advantage of the quick beat within the song by introducing each set separately and in time to the music. This way, the viewer is engaged and gripped from the outset, as once the viewer sees just a strip of footage across a full screen, they'll naturally be wondering what will follow.

We also believed that it was important for the lyrics of our song to resemble the content of our music video; relating to Andrew Goodwin's audience theory. Therefore, we reversed this shot of wine being poured and timed it with the line "all the broken glass sparkling".
By relating the lyrics of the song to our video, we are also creating another opportunity for the viewer to engage with our video, as they will subliminally pick up on the link which will aid their viewing enjoyment.

Shortening down scenes such as gossip girl scene...

First cut feedback: second product

Today we received some feedback on the first cut of our product. The feedback was constructive and will help us to decide where to go next with our product.

One of our feedback points was that our music video could be further edited to flow with the beat of the song, our peers told us that we had managed to edit our video to flow nicely with the music but could fine tune our product even further to fit seamlessly with the changes in the music (subtle beat drops, introduction of the chorus etc.)

Another feedback point that we received was that one of our shots lasted too long and thus dragged slightly, this shot was one of two girls from the TV show "gossip girl" walking down the street, we will look to shorten this shot after this feedback as we are aiming to fill our product with lots of short and quick shots in order to fit with the quick, uptempo nature of the song.

Lastly, we were pleased to learn that our peers much preferred our current product to our last music video; this was reassuring as we knew that our efforts to start again from scratch to create a professional and more engaging product had not been for nothing. We are very pleased with our current product and excited to see where else we can go with it in order to improve it further.

Editing update

Today we worked for hours to complete the majority of editing for our new project. We were aware that due to our re-filming, time was of the essence and we needed to complete the editing process before deadlines hit us. Throughout the process of our editing today, we made many changes to our video such as speeding the majority of our footage up in order to fit with the up-tempo nature of the song. After speeding lots of our footage up, we also cut quite a few clips down in order to make them short and snappy; we were aware that everything within our video needed to flow with the song.

Myself and keeley also added four split-screens to our music video; we decided that split-screens would be a theme that could run throughout our product in order to portray the differences within the three characters in our narrative.

Other changes made to our product were things like amplifying/dimming the sound in certain areas of our video. For example, in many shots you could hear background noise and doors slamming, this needed to be removed from our video. On the other hand, we amplified the sound in one of our shots where we wanted the sound for dramatic effect as there was a silence point in the music.