L.P: Lesson 11th December

I spent today's lesson editing together one of the magazine advertisements. I started by using a still from our video, I used one of the stills with the animation over the characters because it creates that sense of mystery. I started by using the select tool on photoshop and electing the characters, allowing them to become different layers, I then blurred that background layer so that the characters stood out. The next step was adding on the title, when i played the picture on the word had a black background so i had to start by getting rid of this so that the words are just white. I wanted the words to be white so that the animated white lines on the characters would stand out more. Once I had taken away the black I resized the title with the transformation tool and placed it up in the left corner, I then used text to add in a title saying 'single out now', 'available on iTunes' and the web address to find snakehips music. I conventionally used lines on either side of the title saying 'single out now' to outline it.

L.P: Lesson 9th December

In todays lesson I edited and I put some of the animated clips onto the timeline, I replaced the ones we already had with our new clips making sure Isaac wasn't looking at the camera as we have decided he won't interact with the camera or the girls in the shots in London, as it's supposed to be his 'dream state'. The animation was my idea because I wasted to represent this dream world visually, I was inspired by disclosure, which links to the genre of dance music and a feeling of mystery. I was also inspired by Bombay Bicycle Club's music video to 'Carry Me'. 

I also edited the ending, by changing the order and also making some of the clips a longer cutting rate as the music becomes really slow, and he's back to the 'unhappy' scenes. Also, it's the 'big reveal' where we show the gold over his face linking Isaac to the dancers, meaning that the shots need to be longer so that this can be understood.

Group: Roughcut and Feedback

> The lipsyncing should not be at the beginning because the audience should feel distant from him at this point.
> The beginning shots seem out of place because he is at the edge of the roof and then he is walking away from the edge and then back at the edge.
> The narrative is slightly unclear.
> The London shots are not clear that they are in his mind. They need to be more fantastical.
> On the rooftop it would be a good transition if we juxtapose shots of him closing his eyes on the rooftop and then he opens his eyes in London.
> The colour is too bright in London it needs to be richer.
> The ending shot could be one of him walking away from the edge so the conclusion is he walks away.

D.B: Digipak Progress Update

We had a discussion today about which aspects of the digipak mock ups we wanted to keep in the final edit.

In the second digipak edit we loved the fact that the outside was brightly colourful and then when the CD disk was opened it would be black and white/gold. The dance music genre and the feeling of the track is initially happy and is used to invoke joy therefore the initial appearance should match this. However, we have portrayed something deeper beneath the appearance of happiness and therefore the inside of the digipak could be black and white inside to visually demonstrate this.

 

 

From the third digipak mock we want to take the Gold Snakehips Remix text that is written across the bottom of the front cover.

 



 

From the first digipak mock up we created we absolutely loved the front and back covers and I think we will use them in the final edit. The front cover is very conventional of Snakehips' meta narrative of their previous digipaks.

 



 

This is an idea of what the final edit will look like

 

D.B: 28th November Lesson Update

Despite not having a lesson today I managed to go up to Tech during 1st Period, Lunch and afterschool so that we could meet our group's deadline for getting the rough cut done.

We were successful in meeting this deadline and although we are aware of many changes that are needed, we are on track to finishing the video by next Friday.

I cut together the ending of the track where Isaac is back on the rooftop. We wanted to repeat some shots from the beginning to create a recognition of how cyclical his emotions are so I copy and pasted the shot of the close up silhouette of his hand. I placed another shot after this one followed by the reveal shot of his hand showing the bracelet on his wrist. By juxtaposing the beginning shot of his hand with the reveal shot of the bracelet it links the 2 narratives of London and the rooftop.

The ending shot of the track is absolutely perfect and we will definitely keep it in. I copy and pasted the back tracking shot of Isaac facing away from the camera and compressed the time so that it fit with the fading out of the track. I then added a fade to black effect and increased the time it faded out so that as the track slowly faded out the clip slowly tracked away from Isaac and faded out also.

I cut the clips of the dancers and placed them on video 2 of the visual timeline above the clip of the track of Isaac picking up the bracelet. I decreased the opacity of the shot so that the clip underneath would show through. The cutting rate of the dancers is very fast so that the audience isn't completely sure of what they are seeing. This was necessary to blend in the full clip of the dancers because otherwise it seems out of place and like a mistake.

I used a similar technique earlier on in the video as well because whilst watching the video our narrative wasn't very clear and the 2 scenes didn't seem to connect. Overlaying seems to be working to link them together because now they seem present in their effect with each other.


I placed the dancer shots that Laurel edited together in the blank space of the timeline during the conceptual part of the track. Some of the shots needed to be trimmed to fit the space and because the track slowed down at the end of the conceptual part I time stretched the last clip to be slow motion. We don't want this part to just be the dancers but we have not edited the green-screen kaleidoscope shots yet so we placed them here in order to finish the rough cut.]

There were a few clips, for example the one where the dancers disappear from Isaac and jump cut at an increasing cutting rate, that I had to drag and drop so that they were more in time with the music.

Before exporting the rough-cut we rendered the video and watched it through to look for any last minute changes or accidental placing of discarded clips. I moved the workbar area to the end of the track and then exported the clip to MPEG with a resolution of ... We will put the exported clip onto YouTube and the blog next week.

A.M:28th November Lesson Update

D.B: 27th November Lesson Update

After watching our rough cut so far I have realise that we have gotten slightly off plan and have been too focused with getting clips onto the timeline to the point where the narrative has been slightly lost.

I edited the part of the video where the lyrics go:
"Through crystal balls I don't see no-one else, else
No I don't see"

I added in the ELS where Isaac walks to the edge of the car park because I thought the shot would slow the pace down dramatically from the contrast in pace of the music because the audience would suddenly have a distance from the main character to give time for reminiscence and consideration of the narrative.

This meant that some of the other shots didn't make sense in terms of their order. I rearranged them into a more relevant order and then time stretched some of the clips to fit with the cutting rate that went in time to the relevant beats of the music.

There is a shot of Isaac blowing out smoke and, in order to keep the pace of the music slow whilst keeping with the conventions of the genre and keeping the video visually interesting, I cut some parts of the shot up and reversed them. I then copy and pasted the reversed shot and re-reversed it back to normal in time with the music. Stretching, compressing and reversing means that we have to rendering the videos which is fairly time consuming.

A.M: Digipack mocks

L.P: 27th November lesson update

Me and Alex continued editing the footage with the dancers disappearing from Isaac's mind, we decided they would gradually disappear and then he would be standing lost without them as if they have slowly disappeared from his mind. We therefore edited the shorts so that at first, both the dancers were standing next to Isaac looking sad and then they slowly start to disappear, with the shots being 8 frames with Amy and 8 frames with Livvy, and then 7 frames with Amy and 7 frames with Livvy and then 6, then 5, 4, 3, and then 2 which repeated a few times and finally they completely disappear.

I also edited the footage we shot in our pac at TWGGS using flashing lights for the dancers to dance in front of, highlighting their shadows. I edited it so that the clips were a fast cutting rate to the fast pace of the music, the lyrics have finished at this point in the song and it get's really dancey therefore we have placed these clips there.

A.M 27th November Lesson Update

 

In todays lesson I edited together a sequence where the two dancers appear and disappear. I did this by dragging a clip of our main character and two dancers onto the timeline. Then I layered to other clips over the top of the footage. One clip was cropped to block out one dancer and the other clip was cropped to block out the other dancer. I then cut the clips accordingly to make the dancers appear and disappear. At first the cutting rate is slow and then it starts to speed up. The fasts frame is at 2 frames.

I also continued designing digipacks on GIMP 2.8

A.M: 26th November Lesson Update

In todays lesson I continued to edit together the rough cut of our video.

Firstly I organised all of the clips we wanted to be in the chorus. I selected our footage which we had shot in london and dragged them into a rough order.

I then started to cut all of the clips to the beat of the song and then ordered them exactly by dragging them onto the timeline. I made the cutting rate of the clips in the chorus fast to contrast with the slower cutting rate at the start of the video.

I edited on a transition to the first clip of the chorus to make an impact and signify the start of the chorus.

Finally we decided as a group to get rid of the text we wanted to use at the start of the chorus as we felt all it did we slow down the cutting rate of the footage.

D.B: Lesson 26th November

Before the lesson, me and Alex came to edit in first period because we both had a free. 

The current time indicator of the entirety of our footage is just under an hour and for the whole of the free i went through each clip we had and cut the very best bits that we would use and grouped them together nearer the audio of the clip where we were finely editing our final video. Wherever necessary i deleted clips we didn't need in order to tidy up the timeline. 

[get screenshot of whole timeline of the end of the work bar area]

By only having the very best parts of our footage in one place it is much easier to drag and drop them over the audio of our track and decide exactly where we want each shot to go. I wasn't completely focused on cutting the clips perfectly in time with the music because my aim is to get a rough cut done by the end of the week.

In a previous lesson I had edited some text over a few clips that visually showed the lyrics of  the song that were being mentioned in time with the audio. We decided that this technique was not visually intriguing enough for us to repeat it throughout the video and therefore in a brash but necessary decision we decided to delete it completely. 

There is a section of the visual timeline that cuts very quickly between a clip of one of our dancers putting their hands in the air with another clip place on top of the other dancer doing the same thing on the other side of the screen. By highlighting the best section of this edited footage I grouped all clips together so that whenever we drag and dropped them the timing of the clips would not be effected.

L.P: Lesson 26th November

I completed the prezi telling us information on our Digi-pak

L.P: 13th and 17th November shoot evaluation

D.B: 13th and 17th November Shoot Evaluation

PAC - November 13th:
This was a very quick shoot that only took 20 minutes.

> I took

PAC - November 17th:

D.B: Lesson 25th November

It was Laurel's turn to edit this lesson so i took it upon myself to fix some of the posts that have been suggested needed changing by the teachers. Every lesson it is important that one of us is in charge with making sure the blog is at an acceptable standard and if it is not then making to do lists for everyone to refer back to.

I added written feedback that was given to us about our first 50 second rough cut and typed up about the shoot we had on the 17th because we forgot to do it previously. There were some spelling errors in some of the titles as well so I checked all of them to make sure that they were acceptable. 

A.M: 13th and 17th November Shoot Responses

On the 13th November we went to our schools drama block to shoot
 the girls lights,

On the 17th November we went to the drama block to film our main character

A.M: Lesson 25th Novemeber

In todays lesson the 25th November I edited together the shots of our main character in front of the greenscreen. I used final cut pro X editing software to do so. I used the keyer effect to get rid of the green screen. I changed the amount of blend and edge blur etc until I got the desired effect. Next I cropped the rest of the shot. I then overlayed the clips of the kaleidoscope shots onto the keyed shots. 

It produced a very professional looking footage. I then went through all the footage and selected the best parts ready to put into the timeline with the rest of the footage.

L.P: 25th November lesson update

 

I spent this lesson editing our music video. I edited the shots with the dancers disappearing from Isaac's mind and therefore his happiness is disappearing too, as the dancers represent his happiness. We have decided to have them staring at Isaac and looking unhappy, which is a contrast to their happy laughing faces previously in the music video. They start slowly flashing and disappearing, inspired by Bombay Bicycle Club's music video to Carry Me, we use this technique in another part of the music video as well. I used the clips of just Amy standing on the left side of Isaac and other clips of just Livvy standing on the right side of Isaac, I layer them over each other and made the cutting rate really fast on the visual timeline. I cut the clips so that they were only 2 frames before it would cut to the other girl standing next to Isaac, I had to really zoom into the timeline in order to do this as I was using a really small number of frames.

 

Once the dancers disappear, Isaac finds a gold bracelet on the floor and puts it on, this bracelet is used to connect the juxtaposed narratives of the unhappy scenes on the rooftop and the happy scenes with the dancers in London. We have used a close-up of this bracelet on Isaac's wrist to make this connection for the audience. 

D.B: Ideas for adverts

I went on the websites of the magazines that we decided we would advertise in, in order to research how they promoted the artists they featured. In order to create an advertisement individually specified for the magazine we needed to know the magazines conventions.

Mixmag:

Attack magazine:

EDM magazine:

Maxumi:
doesn't really use adverts sometimes has the artist

I Voice:
They put the singles cover on for new releases

usually features the artist on the reviews

Magnetic:
Also only really uses the single cover

Group: Screen shots

We have decided that we would like the front cover of the single to be blurred because this is very much like Snakehips' previous digipak work. We have been through the footage we have from London and screenshotted all of the still we think could use as the image. We have found some that would be perfect for the front cover:

Some of them would be perfect for the inside cover because it isn't dramatic or captivating enough to be used on the front but is still aesthetically pleasing and matches the meta narrative: