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Evaluation Question 4

Fourth response.

Evaluation Question 3

Here is my response to the third Evaluation question.

Evaluation Editing

Having to use Windows Movie Maker at home for editing my evaluation vlogs is proving to be the EASIEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE IN MY LIFE, especially when I've been used to using iMovie and such for the past two years!

Its really basic and I only need to be able to cut bits out that are irrelevant and enhance the audio so it suits me just fine!

Question 3 is nearly ready!!

Evaluation Question 2

Here's my response to the second evaluation question:

Evaluation Question 1

Here's my first evaluation question response:

Don't mind me!

This isn't some desperate attempt to get my blog count up by the way.

I've just forgotten my USB and putting screenshots of our film from iMovie from the big iMac to the little one that I'm working on onto my blog seems like the easiest option for me...

Prezi doesn't work on the big iMacs so I must power through and use two. First world problems..

So yeah.

These are the screenshots I need:

                           

                           

                  

                     

FINAL ALBUM COVERRRRRRRR

IT HAS BEEN COMPLETED!!!!!!

Here's the final thing:

The top two are flipped because that's how a template works..

The measurements aren't exact but putting a ruler up to the iMac is very hard and tedious so you all understand what I've done here.

I'm also half way through my first evaluation question, so WHOOP-DE-DOOOO

Last one!

Here's the spine!!

Nothing much to say about this little thing apart from the fact my good ol' font is back again.

Hardest till last!

As you can see in the title, I saved the hardest part of the digipak till last.

The inside right part of my album cover is where the CD goes, like pretty much every other album.

SO.

This is the whole picture of this side of the album:

This is that picture with a big circle in it. (where the CD would go)

                                     

But this picture is kind of irrelevant because my actual CD, although no part of the task, will be the same as it's background... For example:

So the CD would essentially look like this:

                                       

But without the squiggly lines and just general poor photoshopping skills. 

You all understand though.

My Album Poster

Just finished my album poster for the band:

Besides the big picture of our character, the whole theme of my poster is monochrome. I did this to draw attention to the colours in the picture of Rosie. I kept it simple because I think that album posters that have too much going on aren't as effective.

Digiiiiiiiipak!

I appear to be on a roll this morning.

Here's the inside left of my album cover:

I put a little message on the inside cover because many of the albums that I own have a little note where they thanks their families, Jesus and whoever else. It just makes it more real and authentic, which is what I'm going for. The plain picture of the tree just looked a little stupid to be on the inside of an album. The writing, is the same font again, just makes it look awesome.. in my humble opinion.

Also, I used Photoshop to enhance the pink on the tree so its no longer my nemesis. We're more aquaintances now, so the relationship is improving.

Front Cover!!

Here's my front cover for my album.

I went for this one because I love the simplicity of it, which, as you can see, is kinda my thing. I want the focus to be on my character and the colours that constantly surround her.
My other ideas just didn't fit and I like how "arla" goes over Rosie's body in this one - as if she's part of something.

'deep end' is in the middle of a little cloud of powder paint too, which was totally intentional.

Digipak.. Again

I've changed the idea of my digipak. Instead of stressing, I'm just going to get screenshots from our footage and edit it in Photoshop.

Here's my final back of the album cover.

I kept the font that I used on my album poster, so I think I'm going to do the whole thing with this too.

I also put a fake barcode on there too, just to make it seem real.

Album Posters

Here are some album posters that I found and liked whilst researching:

                                            

Kings of Leon; fantastic album cover; simple, effective. But not so fantastic album.

Florence and her good ol' Machine; Not too much going on but the focus IS on her and her 'Lungs'. This is pretty much what I tried to do with mine. Rosie's looking to the side too. Whoops.

Friendly Fires; LOVE the simplicity of it. It reflects them as a band too; just three normal(ish - I've seen them dance at V Fest) guys making sweet music. The font is all the same and in capital letters. I liked that, but for our band I thought it looked too aggressive so I stuck to lower case letters, much to Word's dismay.

As you'll notice, I took the liberty of reviewing my own made up album on behlaf of NME and Q. These two magazines would, should this be real, have been the main two we would have pitched to or whatever. They're indie/alternative music magazines and that's the genre we fit into, so they would have loved us.

Evaluations!

Now that the music video has been completed, it's time to move onto the evaluations. Riveting.

Here's a screengrab of the videos I imported from my phone that we took on the evening of the showcase. (We forgot to charge our camera... We ARE media students, I promise...) =

I shall be editing them soon and putting them into funky presentations for my final evaluations, so look out for them!!

Front Cover Ideas

Here are some of my idea for my front cover of my digipak.

I love the picture and the colours and have definitely decided on my font, which I will continue to use the whole way through. 

Not too sure about which one I'll use yet.

Our Final Music Video

I feel like a proud mother, but here it is:

Media Showcase!

Today is the Media Show Case!!

Our speech has been written, our video is on Foster's Mac and we have our camera ready for our feedback evaluations.

It's show tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!

Research for Digipak!

I've decided to scrap the old digipak idea. I really didn't like it and in a lll honesty, I didn't do enough planning or research for it to come out how I wanted it.

Although I love the 'ARLA' and teacup idea, what I envisioned just didn't end up happening.
It looks so great in my head, but it can't be marked from in there so I'm going to have to change my idea. Which is fine, now that I've been a'Googlin and looking around for some inspiration.

Here are some examples for the front cover that I love:

I love the simplicity of it. I'm going to try and find a shot of Rosie head on or maybe the one of her looking to the side that I got in the morning shoot we did. Then have 'ARLA' somewhere and the name of our album in the corner. I don't like how this is centralised, so I will develop this.

Also, her chin looks weird.

Again, love how simple and elegant this is. Such an iconic album cover, so I won't try and recreate it. I won't do it in black and white because that wouldn't go with the whole colourful thing we have going on, but the simple font in the corner will definitely be taken into consideration.

Again, what's with the chin?!

This is just as great as the above.

Finished!

We've finished the music video!! It's due today, so will post it later today!!

Here's proof its uploading, just in case you doubted us:

We're all really pleased with the end result. It wasn't exactly what we wanted but I for one feel that it's SOOOO much better.


My favourite bit if definitely this bit:

We layered two shots of Rosie twirling and put a pink effect over it to make it look awesome. 

Just because we can.

Track List

I think I'm going to layer this picture over a screenshot from the music video.

I really like the bright colours and how it is indented to the right and not the left like most track lists are.

You can't really see the yellow though, so I may have to change that. Also, it will be transparent so you won't see the white text box that it's in, it will wrap around the picture.

I used Word for this because I'm still unfamiliar with Photoshop. But Word is great, it's never let me down before.

Panic Over

So... I stress too much. Who knew?

The Digipak problem has been resolved; Ms Foster liked the 'A' over the tea cup idea, so I did the rest of the letters and have decided that I'm going to use the big rectangular 'ARLA' picture for my magazine cover. Which will come soon, given that I don't throw another strop.

The first A will be on the front cover, the R on the inside left, the L on the inside right and the second A on the back cover. So as you open it (and flip it, whatever), it spells out the band name.

So, here's the final(ish) thing:

I really don't know whether I like it or not actually. Woah. Mood change while I typed a post. This is definitely a new low.

Even More Digipak Stress

I'm getting really angry now. None of my ideas are working and Photoshop is my nemesis.

This is Photoshop.

On paper/virtual paper, my idea of cutting the "ARLA" picture up, diving it by the letters and then laying over the tea cup picture sounds awesome. If it had worked, I would immediately have 4 squares for my Digipak. But NO. It just looks stupid, as you can see:

I didn't even bother doing the R, L and other A, because I'm just so unsure about it. 

Ms Foster said it isn't about the quality and just the mere fact that I'm adhering to the conventions of a digipak or something. So maybe I'll give this a go? Who knows.

Dinner Scene

The Dinner Scene kind of evolved into the Tea Scene. This goes with the Alice in Wonderland scene more I guess! But none the less, we are done filming!!
Here's some shots I took of the props:

Cups and carrot cake. 

Here's a snippet of the shots we've got. Imagine Ellie Goulding singing over it.

Digipak fun begins...

I'm really struggling with editing my album cover on Adobe Photoshop Cs6. I uploaded the photo that I took on Sunday but the dimensions aren't what the digipak measurements need to be. I'm having to convert inches into centimetres and centimetres into millimetres, which you think wouldn't be a problem.... It is. So yeah, stressy Alice. When we did the mock album cover a few weeks ago, I found it relatively easy, but this is in a whole new realm of Photoshop and it's making me uneasy.

I'm going to have to watch many-a-YouTube tutorial before I go any further. Or, if it gets too hard, I will try a different version of Photoshop or a whole new software. I'm getting a bit worried about this side of the coursework. I guess its my own fault for taking a picture that doesn't fit the measurements but I didn't know at the time and this is the last of the powder paint so unless I order six brand new pots of powdery fun just to do this again, I'm going to have to look for a new idea.

Sad times. 

Mini Vlog!

Here's a mini vlog of Rosie's hair after the Powder Paint scene.. Pretty cool stuff!

Evalutation Q's

These are the four evaluation questions that have to be addressed. I have been taking these into consideration as we have been filming but because we are nearly done with filming and editing is coming along BRILLIANTLY, I shall now be documenting my answers as I go along to show to process:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
  
  
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
  
  
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
  
  
• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Vlog!

Here's a vlog I did on location when we shot the Powder Paint Scene:

Apologies, it was windy and, in all honesty, I wanted to go home. :)

Jump!!

We tried to get Rosie to jump off of the tree trunk so that we could edit it to the beat of the bit where Ellie sings "star-ar-ar-ar".. You know the bit?
Well, it didn't work out... And here's why:

Today!

We all had a fantastic few hours filming in Forty Hall this afternoon. The powder paint looks fantastic and we are going to enhance the colours/edit it so it will look even better
This is the vlog we did afterwards:





Here is a picture I made/took which is a possible album cover idea. I will edit it in PhotoShop and then see how it looks:

Possible album cover?

This is what I looked like after our shoot today!

Scary!

Here's some of the shots we got today:

Filming Day

Today we are off our to Forty Hall with the powder paint:

We are all really excited!

We have decided though that Lucy can't be in the powder paint scene because she is in the dinner scene - she can't be Eliza's sister and then join her in the Wonderland group thing at the end!! More to be posted about this! 

Location for Sunday

We are filming on Sunday the scenes that involve a load of powder paint. Woot.

Me, Athena, Lucy and Rosie will be doing our thaang whilst covered in colourful paint. We will be dancing around, getting some still shots, running, us three taking Rosie to our 'Wonderland Lair' (see above) and etc. We are the Princesses of Random Shots and we shall live up to this title this weekend.

This is us as Princesses of Random Shots.

Names, Names and Names

Band Name:
(drum roll)

ARLA

ARLA becuase Alice, Rosie, Lucy, Athena. Not even remotely interesting or wild.

Album Name:

FIND A WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE WORLD AGAIN

I used the random generator that Pete put on his blog for the practice album cover, but I also picked and manipulated some of the quotes because I'm not that random.

1. Half As You Deserve

2. Newspapers With News

3. Beautiful Things

4. Deep End

5. Random Act

6. No Faith

7. Internet Connection

8. In The Midst

9. Denmark Street

10. Flightless Bird

11. Civil Wars

12. Find A Way To Make Friends With The World Again

DEEP END is the mutual track that we are doing the music video to (It's really Starry Eyed by Ellie Goulding... Tricked you)

The Signifiers and the Signified...

(This post title sounds like a really bad film...)

Anyway.

The signifier in our music video is the jumper that Rosie wears:

And the signified from this is that our character is a figure who seeks a place that she feels normal and free, for example: Wonderland.

Media Language

Here is a fantastic SlideShare presentation on Media Language:

Media Language - semiotics incl Goffman from J Thrasher

Its really going to help me in my research about Digipaks and music videos to help with A2 so I will be doing a vlog about what I have learnt from this in the half term, so watch this space:

Haha, so funny.

Digipak!

This is the template that I will be using for my Digipak! Its the basic four panel one, which is going to be simple but hopefully what I create is imaginative and colourful enough to over look that. I just don't want too much going on.

Material: 300gsm card with a matt varnish. 

Printed in only one colour. 

Spot varnish, lamination and embossing available.

Dimensions (based on standard 4pp digipak): finished size of 139.5mm x 6mmx 125.5mm

I do not want a leaflet in my album, just the raw music but I'm oh so alternative.

Lyrics

I only have one concern with the footage we got yesterday; the lyrics/lip syncing.

Although Rosie learnt all the lyrics and sang them perfectly, we kept starting the song from the beginning every time we shot except for the scene in the 'woods' so that might be hard to sync over the song to make it look like she's singing like Ellie Goulding.

It will take a lot of listening and lip reading to make it fit with the words in the editing process, which can be done, but I am a little worried.

I am sure that we can do it though. I have faith. *Plays 'Faith' by George Michael*

Image of a worried cat.

Filming!

FILMING WAS A SUCCESS!

We went to the Wobbly Bridge (unofficially named by us) by St. Paul's cathedral to get some shots of Rosie walking amongst some randomers.


The plan was to just get Rosie walking through London, but we decided the bridge looked awesome and there would be business people walking with her to make her stand out. The other shots were totally unplanned but our group are known for our random shots. They're always awesome, without sounding like I'm tooting my own horn... No, actually, I am tooting my own horn. Toot.

I got a really wide variety of shots, from her walking towards me on the bridge, then sitting in front of St. Paul's to Rosie walking through a mini-forest thing by the Tate. I got a whole 4 minutes of footage so obviously we'll have to cut it down but at least we have all of these.
I have included some snap shots to show that I'm not lying.

She's such a natural, so it all looks awesome!

Here's a snippet of the clips I got: