Research & Planning - Live Performance

When talking to people on Last FM, an online music site, my parter came across someone who knew of the band, and passed on a link. This is a video recorded by a fan at a recent Scarlet Pills gig, 2 minutes in they begin playing their song "Headlights" which we are using for our project. This is a useful video as it can give us insight into dress sense, and stage movement for the band.

Health & Safety

Time Plan

As the filming project began not long after Christmas, me and my partner thought it best to organise our shoots as soon as possible setting; dates, times and locations to everyone involved ensuring they were available. We also set two backup dates to reduce any stress from unseen problems, and informed everyone as soon as possible, giving them plenty of time in advance. This is the e-mail I sent out to our actors and prop providers. As can be seen, I included a clear breakdown of the dates, times and locations as well as including a brief summary of the goals and who/what would be required. At the bottom I also included a short note on dress code, making sure that everything was covered and as close to our ideals as possible. In addition to this e-mail, I sent two other e-mails to both the music shop locations outlining our proposed logistics, and also our stage/performance area since these two locations were not accessible via facebook.

• On the first day back at college we have planned to do the music shop scene, only three of the actors will be in this scene. As this is a tuesday i finish college early and we have organised with our actors about when their frees are as to not disturn lessons. We plan to do this either between 11:30/13:50, 12:50/13:50 or 12:50/15:10.
• The 5th will be when we film the performance aspect of our music video. This will take place on the stage of a school. This will be from 16:00/18:00.
• On the 7th, we are planning to do the bedroom scene, where our singer will be an angsty teenager and throw stuff about. This will be in Kidderminster, so we have taken into account journey times and when lessons end. Hopefully, this will be between 3:00 till 4:00
• The 8th will hopefully be our final filming day. These scenes will be where the singer is walking around the suburbs and where all performers are hanging around indoors. Times are unknown.
• We have left days free for possible need to reschedule, those are on the 12th and 15th leaving plenty of time just in case things don't go as planned.

Test Videos

Here I have begun testing methods and cutting in preparation for my video work. As I don't have a video camera or video editing software, I had to use my phone camera, and when the cut was required, to pause the recording and resume when required. These first two videos are to practise the door cuts, where one member walks from one room to another through a door. This is a method that will be used three or four times in the video, and so must be perfected and realistic. The first out of the two videos is meant for when the band leaves the living room and goes to the music shop. This is different to the standard room to room cuts because the camera begins at a very low angle, focusing on a foreground object. This could have been a tricky shot due to the change in angles from one scene to the other although I feel it worked well. 

This next test is a standard version of the room to room cut, using the same camera angle and height through both scenes. Again I feel this practise video worked well, creating a realistic and smooth cut even without in depth editing.

Here I attempted the head rotation cut, where the camera revolves around the head, and the cut takes place when the screen is covered by the back of their head. Although this worked very well in both practice and theory, the simplicity of my equipment let me down. As the lighting was different outside than inside, the shade on the back of the head differed creating a clear and not seamless cut. The other problem was that my speeds on revolution did not match, therefore seemed jerky and again, not smooth and seamless. With the correct editing software and camera I believe this will be a successful transition. 

Location

While at one of my locations I took a panoramic video to give a better idea of dimensions, room layout and general style. This will be an ideal location for the living room scenes, with the band on the sofa and chair, the tv in the corner to watch (there will only be one TV at the time) and the door on the other side of the room to exit through. To accompany this location video I have various photographs to give a bit more detail.

This is another of the locations for the music video, playing the part of the street scenes, where the singer walks and finds the hit and run victim. This location is idea, since it is the dead end of an estate style road so there will be little traffic, and it is beside one of my friends houses, this allows us to use their mains for the lighting kit. Despite this, an unavoidable problem which immediately comes to light under current circumstances is the unexpected arrival of snow, which is likely to stick around till after our filming deadline.

Currently I have been unable to collect images or videos of our other locations although I have visited them and deem them appropriate for the video both in style and accessibility.

Digipak, Advert & CD's

This is my latest version of the digipak design containing all my own photos and the same proposed layout as my mock up version due to its success. As can be seen, it is a fairly striking cover through the vibrant perspective lights, while maintaining an atmosphere of grunge and darkness. This in essence sums up their genre of punk/pop/rock quite well by the contrasting combinations of these vibrant to dark colour schemes. Because of the perspective lines of light on the cover, I kept the layout as balanced and central as possible to keep it aesthetically pleasing. Within the cover and reverse layout I ensured I included key information such as disclaimers, the fact it is contains bonus DVD footage and other law required information. These lines continued on the reverse of the CD, although this time I decided the layout must be justified left, in order for the image to be clear. This image has a direct correlation with the front image, as if we are looking at the same scene through two varying perspectives.

On the inside, I kept the house theme of the vibrant lights, and the generally black/white colour scheme. On the inside left panel, I thought it important to include a band image due to this being their début album, and to differ it from the styles on the other panels. In this band image (construction process is explained under "photo shoot" post) I kept the members close together, and to a relatively restricted colour scheme. This was so they fitted easily within the style and to allow the lyrics of the featured track to be written beside them. Because the band image does not have a background too it, but sits on the miscellaneous backdrop, I blended them in with a set of swooping headlights twisting around them. This adds depth to the image and continues the "headlights" theme. Across both of these inside panels, I also used one headlight blur image as suggested in my feedback. This I feel works extremely well and adds a striking element to the design. 

The next element of the digipak design was the CD vinyl. For these I decided having two separate CD's would be better suited; one audio, one DVD. On these disks, I again maintained a common theme of black, white, and a slow shutter speed image of headlights. To differentiate these two disks I altered the design slightly, to correspond with its function a little more. For the audio disk, I used the basic headlights image, and superimposed a mid close up composite band pose. This signifies it is the band itself, and thus the entire album as supposed to just the bonus footage. To merge these two images together in a slightly more realistic way I added a lens flare on the left hand side, where the brightest part of the headlights were. The DVD disk though, was more focused around the featured track and music video "Headlights". To compensate for this I added more lights in a scarlet shade, thus resembling both the band "SCARLET pills" and the track "Headlights". These designs also incorporate the same positioning of law required information, band logo and disk title, number and listing. Overall these simplistic designs fit extremely well with the digipak design and work well to their given function too.

Finally I had to design a magazine advert for the band and their digipak release. Although I did not use the images from the digipak cover, or include an image of the overall cover, this I feel correlates to the product extremely well. The main points of connection between the advert and product, is the colour scheme of black with insert of vibrant blurred lights, use of bold, upper case distorted font and the constant use of the band logo. Within the digipak design, I was careful to include the band logo in bold yet non distracting ways on every panel. This was to tie the advert and product together, and more importantly because they are an upcoming band, thus should be recognised for name not the single digipak cover. The layout to this design is split into three aspects; two halves split down the middle, and a bottom strip banner. The bottom banner in this design is to hold the reviews for the product in a clear manner, while the two halves were more focused on imagery. The left half contains another band image, slightly different from that within the digipak layout, this image is important as it connects the audience with the artist, while the right side boldly displays the band logo, album title, release date and that it is a special edition. To draw more attention to these I have stuck with the font colour theme of white and yellow in a block capital distorted font, and edited them into a suitable yet bold perspective to capture the audiences attention. In the bottom left hand corner of this advert I made sure I included the places where the audience could obtain the product.

As an extra piece, I also mocked up these elements into a package, as if on display. This enabled me to view them as if they were in production. Overall I feel this is a very strong set and work together well, corresponding with each other clearly.

Research & Planning - Production Process

In constructing my digipak, I had to go through several processes to manipulate my images and perfect the design. To begin with I looked at the photo shoots for the band members and began creating my band image, as this was required for the digipak and advert. 

The first stage in this was to find a specific photo I liked, and then cut it out using whatever tool is to preference. For me, the polygonal lasso is best as it gives controlled usage rather than the normal lasso which depends on how steady your mouse control is, and the magnetic lasso which is suitable for beginners but can be problematic when achieving the best quality. I also avoided using the magic wand despite my plain background as it too can lead to a rough edge, and also avoided using the rubber tool as some people do due to its high time consumption and awkward usage.

After this, I inverted the selection field and feathered the edge to compensate for pixely boarders and to aid in blending, I then went through the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and lightness to improve the colour quality and create a range of deeper, richer tones. This was to give the image a slightly glossy look, in mirroring with the headlight blur images and the plain black modern background. When the settings were ideal, I saturated the image slightly so that there was a definite mix between the glossy style, and a slightly more grungy atmosphere, again to be more in keeping with the target audience. These processes were also applied to the slow shutter speed images of the car lights, and resulted in an equally professional and suitable image. 

Next, I used the clone tool to remove any imperfections on the model or photo. As can be seen in the image comparison, I cleaned up his complexion and tightened up his jaw line. This air brushing technique is something that is widely used in graphic editing, creating a more desirable and distinguished model compared to the average society member. This in turn leads to a more professional finish, and takes it away from looking amateur. This process was also applied to other images which needed imperfections removing. 

Next I used the burn tool to spot contrast the images. This created the effect of lighting shadows and also brought deeper, richer colours through especially in the headlight images. After this, I repeated all previous stages on my other images, until I had a set that was ready to be compiled. In the cases of both Rich the guitarist and Hannah the lead vocalist though, I also decided to edit things such as their shirt/hoodie colour, their legs or head. These are relatively simple processes employing skills within the previous stages. 

As can be seen in this breakdown image, I achieved these changes by cutting out the element to be changed and in terms of colours; used the hue/contrast/saturation/brightness/lightness to manipulate it accordingly or added a translucent layer above to screen the image, and in terms of appendage; used the feather tool on specific edges to blend the two elements together subtly. Once this was done, they were ordered and compiled into realistic band poses, suitable for my print work designs.

With the main aspect complete, I looked at fonts I wished to include in my design. The image here is a print screen of my font folder, not all fonts are applicable to this project. When choosing my fonts, I visited Dafont (an online font sharing site, where people can create, upload and download fonts for free) and searched for ones under suitable categories to my design style. The fonts I chose were free to use and appear successful and appropriate in my design, these were then installed into photoshop for me to use.

Here is a breakdown image for my front cover, as can be seen it is made from various specific elements. To allow me to put the car and headlight images behind the legs while above the tarmac ground, I decided it would be best to cut the legs out. This allowed me to freely edit the legs, making them darker to allow for shadow from the headlights, without making the tarmac floor itself darker. On top of this I also added a white boarder, created by painting the trouser boarders white, feathering the insides and reducing the opacity, this created the illusion that the headlights were hitting his legs, and merged both elements of the image together. After this, I introduced shadows for the legs, from the headlights. As they were duel I understood the light would be coming from two separate directions, and thus added two different angles of shadow. Because they were translucent, the areas in which they cross would realistically be darker. Next I added the blurred headlight images. To give them infinite depth, I used both the perspective and skew tool to pull them into the distance along the same horizon/perspective line as the car, avoiding angle continuity errors. After this I added the car image, with brightened headlights thanks to the "lens flare" filer. This car image had to sit perfectly with the current horizon/perspective line and also centrally within the design, to be most effective. Due to this being a friends car, I also thought it best to remove visibility of the registration plate in respect of privacy, and so used a fading black box to cover it. for authenticity, I left a small section visible. This then left me the little jobs of adding the band logo, advisory sticker, and CD title with the notice of bonus features. 

Techniques similar to these were then used to complete the following panels of the product, disks and advert. Overall I feel this resulted in an extremely professional and successful product involving a range of processes all designed to benefit the aesthetics in relation to suitability for both audience and genre. 

Photo Shoots

[Ross]

In our band we had two people who went to the same college, one person who is known for his hectic social life with little time to spare and one person in a different town. This was due to be tricky from the outset but was also a problem that wouldn't be too greater obstacle. In my mock up task, I constructed a temporary band pose from Facebook images, and specific Google images when needed, i.e. some clothing. In total the mock up band pose consisted of 16 separate images, put together to create an extremely custom picture. Although it was tricky to obtain all the separate images, it was only because I hadn't got full character photos, and had to search for suitable images for bodies, legs and feet. Looking past these downsides, I saw that overcoming the issue of our actors varied time schedules and giving us a completely tailored band image could be resolved in having individual photo shoots for each member. In these individual photo shoots we would get the actor to model in a wide range of poses, both with and without props. After this, we would select the images we wanted to use, cut them out and photoshop them together into a complete band pose. This final step was laborious but resulted in high quality images, perfect for our digipak plan.

[Hannah]

To begin with we visited Hannah, as she was furthest away we photographed her on site. This gave us a realistic background location and set the lighting, so in latter shoots we could set up our lighting kit to mimic it. This shoot went extremely well, and produced some fantastic images. Next, I set up a makeshift photo studio in my unfurnished extension by using an old white bed sheet as a backdrop, and set the lights to a similar source and strength to that on Hannah's shoot. Our first shoot with Alex and Ross was good, but later proved to be unusable since the camera was in the wrong angle and height. This meant when stitching them in a scene with Hannah, the perspective was wrong and looked unrealistic. As they were closer to my house, it seemed more reasonable to call them and Rich back for a 2nd shoot. This one went much better and produced some fantastic images.

[Alex]

Below is a breakdown of two band images I made, and shows how edited aspects are. Here are points on some things I changed;

Hannah wore a denim jacket over the black hoodie, overall I felt the plain black hoodie suited the band style more as it reduced the colour scheme, therefore I photoshoped it to blend with the hoodie.

Hannah has a wide range of useful stances in her photoshoot, although my favourite bodily pose had a leg pose which wasn't as suitable, therefore I photoshopped a more suitable image of her legs in.

Hannah wore brightly coloured floral tights, again I thought this might have been too many colours in the image and therefore saturated them and blended them down with a semi transparent black layer.

Rich wore a black shirt originally, since Hannah and Alex were already wearing a black hoodie, I through that his shirt should be closer in colour to Ross's grey hoodie, therefore edited to a shade of grey ensuring it wasn't exactly like Ross's or it would have blended with his.

[Rich]

In the overall pose Alex's drumsticks couldn't be seen although I liked the stance, therefore I took the drumsticks from a different picture and photoshopped them in.

Ross and Rich had some great photos, and was torn between two stances. In the end I varied them between both band poses although kept the same head for each of them since it had an idea expression.

On all members I edited the contrast, brightness, lightness, saturation and used the burn tool in areas to increase the shadowing and spot mark higher contrast areas. These changes resulted in a highly tailored and ideal set of band images. 

[Band Images]

Other Photos;

The other elements I had to photograph for my design were; the "headlights" of a car and wide stance legs for the cover, the interior of the car for the back cover, as well as a range of headlights/break light images using a slow shutter speed creating the neon line/blurred effect.

Here is a small selection of the car headlight images. As this image was meant to be a rather intimidating and threatening, I took the photos from a low angle to connote power and authority, and used my friends Stag Triumph as the model. I decided this was the best car for the job because of its vintage muscle appearance and duel rally style headlights. This turned out to be perfect and lead to an extremely effective set of images, especially when edited.  

The next set of photographs was for the wide stance legs and interior, this small selection shows the main approaches I took. These photos turned out well, although in the end I photoshopped a more suitable car image in from a previous photo, and photoshopped a different hand in due to the light bleaching. I also decided for continuity it was best not to use a band member/actor as the man in front of the car, therefore put the camera on timer, and used an image of myself. Despite these changes, I was very happy with how well the photo shoot went, managing to collect a wide range of useful images in a relatively short amount of time.

My next challenge was to gather car headlight/break light images using the slow shutter setting. This was something I had never done before, and the only opportunities I had to go out were past peak road usage times. This left me with unpredictable waves of cars, yet still produced some impressive images. As shown in this selection of photos, I captured both headlights and break lights, corresponding with "Scarlet" in the band name, as well as the headlights to link with the featured track. To get these images, I visited several locations at various times to get a good selection and variation of images. I also took photos through the car windscreen when travelling to these locations, to get a more perspective based image as if the lights were all around (as required for the front and back cover). Despite this, I knew I would be able to use the perspective/skew/transform tools on photoshop to create a similar effect with my standard road images. Overall I feel these photos were extremely successful and were very good for a first attempt at the style.

Research & Planning - Preliminary Feedback

This is some feedback given to me about my digipak mock ups, This will be taken into account when designing the revised versions. Unfortunately I wasn't able to collect much feedback through documented facebook comments due to peoples willingness, although the ones I did get have been of great use. I also followed up opinions from some people, all of which were positive and complimented the colour schemes, layout and choice in styles.

Print Work Mock Up

[Digipak]

This is my digipak mock up for Scarlet Pills' hypothetical album "Lights and Sounds" featuring "Headlights" and its corresponding music video. Because this is a mock, I have predominantly used internet and facebook images here, since it was too difficult to organise a mock photo-shoot with all my required actors and as this was a mock, perfect images were not totally necessary as this was purely testing layout and design. Despite this I did create the new band logo from scratch and some photos of individual band members are first hand too. All internet images I did use were fully manipulated to suit my requirements to the point where the little resembled their original state.

Even though this was a mock up I decided to play very close attention to the details of the design and included aspects that one might skim over when designing. As I have designed professional style products such as CD covers and cards before, I am used to including these elements and understand the structure in placement. On the reverse of the case I included elements such as the disclaimer (modified to fit my artist and label), website addresses for both the band and label, the BBFC exemplification logo, DVD video logo, my personal record label logo, and two recent logos appearing on new CDs; NTSC and a flattened globe. I also included the obvious bar code, with subtle detail that each number represents a letter;

18 - R   15 - O   24 - X   20 - T   1 - A   18 - R, which correlates to my personal music label "roxtar media and videos". 

I also added a short piece of text on the CD tray, behind the CD giving more brief information such as album title, genre, label, producer, editor, year and again the band website. This is placed behind the CD so when it is taken out, the viewer's attention is directly taken to it. On the inside left panel of the digipak I decided an entire band image was required to give a strong link between them and the album itself, next to this image I put the lyric sheet of the featured music video song "Headlights" as a further feature piece. As this design had to represent both the band and their work, as well as keeping strong connotations and themes with the featured video I decided there should be two links that could alter. Firstly I chose a title which suited both aspects, "Lights and Sounds". This linked with the car crash theme, as well as the "sounds" of the artists other work. Visually I then split the album into two themes, the band and bright lights. This is to suit the disk designs, the full audio disk displaying the band, and the dvd with a slow shutter speed photo of headlights. In the digipak design I then tried to merge these two elements tastefully while also showing the band logo as much as possible (since this is an unknown upcoming band). On the inside left panel I used a whole band image in relatively high glossy contrast, to suit the blurred headlights image behind (same as on disk 2), where on the covers I used just one character unrelated to the band to avoid them becoming too repetitive, imprisoned within walls of blurred lights, staring at car headlights. This gave redundant relevance to the featured song "Headlights" while keeping an air of entropy to the rest of the album, linked only by the album title. I also compiled a list of all their 2010 releases and ordered them into a play list which I felt flowed both in titles and sound, this brings the product closer to a professional feel. Overall I feel this mock up is extremely successful and should be far better in the final design. 

[Advert]

This is my magazine advert, which I decided to do in a standard dimension so it can be scaled between landscape A5, A6 and even A7 which are some of the most common sizes. Even though this contains few elements of the digipak cover, they relate well together with the common theme of burred lights, the band logo and the clear title "Lights and Sounds". I decided to do them somewhat differently as in designing I didn't want 

the band on the cover, because I felt they should be shown on the inner left panel. This was to allow a slightly entropic cover to draw interest from the audience, and to refrain from overusing the band image. On this advert though I felt it important that the band should be shown, and therefore had to connect these two print pieces together with the elements of text and colour themes such as the logo, album title, blurred lights and theme of orange black and white. To make these aspects stand out I made the band logo very big and angled, spreading off the page connoting a rebellious style. I also angled and added perspective to the album title below the band name to draw attention and connote a very active feel. At the bottom of this advert I included two reviews from leading music magazines for authenticity with corresponding star rating. I also included the release date and another copy of the relevant website addresses as these are important details for the advert, for the release date I followed the angle and style of the album title, to draw attention and keep it in style with the design. For the band photo, I did not have a collective image and so had to form one of my own through photoshop, this band image includes 16 various elements compiled together to create a suitable and aesthetically pleasing pose. Overall I feel this is another successful design, and positively promotes both CD and band. 

Research & Planning - Adverts

This is a small selection of album adds within the genre style my artist fits into scanned from my partners collections of music magazines. From all the adverts, landscape A5 appears to be the best with a simple combination of imagery and text to a basic colour scheme. The key aspects I have noticed these three designs contains are;

• The band name in logo form
• An image of the band, or corresponding to them/the product
• The record label
• A website address for the band
• Reviews from music magazines or critics
• Where the product is available from
• When the product is available from

Surprisingly, there isn't always an image of the CD cover to aid the customer in purchase, even so these are elements that I should include in my layout to result in a professional and realistic design.

Scarlet Pills Logo Design

The first logo here is the original Scarlet Pills logo, a decorative script font using a skull as the "a" in turquoise with a thick black outline. I was not overly keen on this logo, and set about designing a new one for my digipak and advert. As can be seen, I began by looking at a wide range of fonts from Dafont, under categories such as "Script" "Brush" and "Eroded/Distorted/Destroy", this started me off with a range of styles which I could mix together for a new stylish logo. After playing with these fonts I came up with a short list of possible logos, as displayed here. Most of these logos contain a mix of two or more fonts to avoid them being too close to "type up" logos. I also drew over some fonts in a spray paint style to make them look distressed and rebellious, this style worked well with some logos adding further interest. In this short list I tried to incorporate various different styles but kept to a black and white theme as I felt this best suited the band and also makes early development a lot easier. My favourite designs out of all of these are the bottom two since they use both a formal styled calligraphic font mix, miscellaneous swirls and a rough brush font style too, all of which combine to make a very suitable logo for the band.