Footage Cont.

We've been continuing to edit the footage today. We've added in the 'headbutt' shots and some more CU's of George singing.
We've finished the second verse and just going into the last minute or so of the song so we don't have that much left to do.

Steph & Lorna & George

Peer Evaluation

We asked some of our peers to view and evaluate our music video. They also gave feedback on any attributes which they found particularly pleasing and on anything they think we could improve.
Generally our peers thought the lip-syncing was very good, and they really liked our idea with the guinea pigs, they also recommended that we speed up the pace of editing to fit with better with the music. We have taken their comments on board and will now continue to edit the video with shorter lengths of clips, so the video will run at a slightly faster pace, which is important in a video of this genre.

Posted by Lorna.

Evaluating footage from yesterday's shoot

Lorna: Yesterday's shoot went well and I think we have all the footage we need. Some shots were good...

and some some were ever so slightly terrifying.

We re-shot George's singing shots from a variety of angles and had him looking towards the camera more this time. The narrative is also complete and we can start adding in the clips as soon as we've split them and cropped them to more manageable lengths.

Steph - I wasn't able to go with Lorna and George for the second shoot due to work commitments but I've watched all the footage they got and I'm very proud of them :).

Digipak FINISHED!

Here is the digipak together as a final piece. Image 1 - the front cover and the back. Image 2 - the inside sleeve and the cd itself.

Changes from original design:

The front and back - I originally designed to have some trees with posters on them saying 'Where's Laura?' on each individual tree. I changed this because we realised as a group we want to put the bands image on the front - showing the audience who they are. We still have the forest background which we wanted as it had become a theme for all three aspects of the project (video, web-page and CD pack). While editing the the back I abandoned the footprint idea I originally thought would look good because when I started to create the footprints I felt they didn't look convincing enough.
The background for the front and back works better then I thought it would. I enhanced the misty effect by using the dodge tool on photoshop, I added extra 'mist' over the band as I had to cut and paste them onto the front, so by adding the extra mist they blend better with the background. On the back I added more of the 'mist' behind the text to make it stand out against the background but also after trying shapes behind the text, it worked better with the text overall.

The inside and the CD - The question mark and the text in the CD have pretty much stayed as I designed apart from the position and colour. The question mark was going to be a red colour to help it contrast against the black and white text theme however after many group discussions and a poll on the blog we changed it to black and white. The inside sleeve originally had an image of the band but after a few changes the image went on the front (as you can see from the image above). So then the inside sleeve was pretty much blank as neither of us could think of anything to put there so it didn't look so blank. I suggested we put the lyrics of the song as I have some CD's of my own which feature the lyrics on the inside sleeve so I tried this ( see previous post). This idea seemed to be liked by the rest of the group (Lorna and George) so we've decided to go with it.
The background is a low angle image looking up at trees of the location in which we've shot the video. The white sky contrast beautifully with the black silhouettes of the trees and I feel goes really well as part of a forest theme.


- By Steph.


I am very pleased with our final CD cover, especially the misty effect on the front & back sleeve (which was my ever so brilliant idea... unless you don't like it, then it's all George's fault...)
I'm also happy with the barcode that Steph created on photoshop, as it makes the cover seem rather professional. We had some trouble deciding on colours and fonts early on, but I think we  made a good final decision using the playful styling of 'earwig factory' (downloaded from 'dafont.com') as the band logo. Using black and white for the logo is bold, simple but effective and would be versatile for use on other wombat related merchandise.

- By Lorna.

Weather-errr

We looked up the weather forecast for this week and it's expected for mild snow to fall from thursday onwards so that means we can't film this saturday as we had hoped, but myself and george are going to attempt to film tomorrow afternoon in the hope of finding a replacement  for 'wombat girl' who's scenes are still left un-filmed. We have decided to re-shoot some of George's singing shots also.

- Posted by Lorna.

The Front Cover - Nearly finished!

This is the front of the digipack. I've added a shadow on the 'Party in a Forest' text on the front; added more fog behind the text on the back; added a barcode to the bottom right hand corner of the back; changed the colour of the spine and added some more copyright writing on the back.

The image on the front cover works really well overall; because they're looking up, it makes me think they are loooking up at the text above them but it also looks like a good band photo.

I really like the look of this final(ish) design, the information we want to put on this is all one - may need to tweak the copyright information on the back but this is a minor thing.

So this is basically done!

Steph

Inside Digipak

These are all screen shots I took after putting the lyrics and same shapes on the left hand side of the inside of the CD.

I started with black and white(both fonts and then the shapes colour) as we're going with a general black and white theme. However I felt that we'd used a lot of black and white and wanted the lyrics to stand out a bit more on the inside so I tried some different colours.

I then choose what Lorna describes as toothpaste blue - but I choose the paler shade so that it wouldn't be that bright. I tried the black and white text  on this colour; the black stood out very well whereas the white is very unreadable, so we didn't choose that one.

Then I tried greens; Lorna suggested after she thought it would be nice to incorporate a green colour to go with the forest theme. I liked this shade of green - it wasn't too bright and wasn't too dark, however George didn't like it. I tried the black and white text on this and both colours stood out as well as each other.

Finally I choose another blue shade, this time a bit darker, but still quite pale. We all like this colour and it works really well with the white font and makes it stand out nicely against the black and white forest background. I think this maybe what we choose for the final design.


Steph

Editing

Today we continued to edit our video and have most of the available clips in place, however without the rest of the footage we are hereby stumped... I tried to keep with the pace of the video by making clips shorter where possible, though some of the walking sequences are a little too slow so we will have to wok around this. As we are yet to film a fair proportion of our shots we may have to tweak our shot list slightly as we are unable to re-shoot with the entire band. As our previous actress let us down last time we may have to find a replacement, and in the most drastic scenario I may have to fill in myself.
-By Lorna.

Questions Questions Questions

I've been editing the digipak again today. On the inside of the cover I had designed a question mark to go on the cd itself. In my original design I thought red would be a good colour to use as it stands out well against the white cd but also give a contrast to the text I wanted to put on it. I asked Lorna what she thought of the red and she thought it was too bold and looked more like something Coca-Cola related.
So I changed it to black to see what it looked like so that it would be in keeping with the black and white text of the rest of the digipak.

Here are my edits:

I feel that the red gives a nice contrast on the CD, making it stand out more. The black does also go with the whole black and white text theme we've chosen but I feel it's too dull and when I changed the opacity of the question mark, it did improve it slightly yet to me it still looks a little dull and boring.

So then after a group discussion, we still couldn't agree. Lorna then suggested that I could use the same type of style as I did for the front cover text, the text being white then having a shadow behind it.

This is what it looked like:

Lorna thought this looked like a button on the CD, I myself quite like it. With out only boldness of colour it still makes the question mark stand out but also keeps it inline with the rest of the digipak. However George still likes the red so we can't all decide on one, so we've made a poll on the left hand side to see what other people think, so hopefully next lesson we will have a decision.


Steph

Editing Continued...

Today we continued to edit the footage we have so far. Luckily, since we missed last week's lessons due to snow our deadline has been extended to 11th January.
As we are yet to film the scenes with our wombat actress there is a gap in the footage, but we've been filling in gaps from there onwards. Towards the end of the lesson our iMovie programme crashed, we didn't lose much but the programme has frozen so we cannot move or edit clips, but we shall be looking into this...

- George and Lorna.

Snow Snow Snow

By this time in the week we've usually posted our update on things we've done - music video, website, digipak etc. However thanks to the weather conditions we're suffering through right now, none of us (Me, Lorna and George) have been able to get to college as it's been shut to carry on developing these ideas.

I'm not sure if college will be open tomorrow - 3rd December - but if it is then we should be able to get some editing done.

Watch this space.

Steph

Sn-oh no!

I just checked wednesday's weather report, because we were thinking of shooting the remaining scenes this week but despite the fact it's going to be pretty cold, there's going to be snow on the ground! This would affect our continuity so we're gona have to wait for the weather to settle again before we can continue shooting. This is a set back but I think we'll just have to focus on editing the footage we've got in the mean time.

Posted by Lorna.

Music Video Editing - Stage One

We have now imported the music track and all of our video footage from last wednesday into IMovie and began the preliminary stages of editing. We have cut down several shots and began the first 30 seconds of the music video. The band shots turned out well from the shoot, however a change in the speed of some of the shots was necessary to fit with the music.

George and Lorna.

Colours Colours Colours...

So with the font sorted I started to mess around with the colour of the font.

I started off simple with black then white:

Also I changed the background of the front cover - which is where this text is going to be - to the same one as the website background as we all like the misty affect in the photo itself.
Both colours stand out and I think it goes will with a simple theme - common of the indie genre.

Next I looked at purple and blue:

They - in my opinion - do stand out and bring some colour to the front of the digipak.

After a discussion with Lorna and George we all agreed we liked the black and white - especially the white as we agreed that seemed to stand out really nicely. They also suggested a shadow affect on the text. So on photo shop I made the font white then created individual black boxes for each letter, so that each would have as it would seem a shadow of their own. This is what I created:

I really like this style of font. The white stands out much more with the black shadows. Lorna and George also agree so I think it's safe to say this is the text for the front cover is about done.

- Steph

NothingYouCouldSay - Digipak Font

I really like this font - NothingYouCouldSay - it's very simple in it's design and I feel it goes well with the forest theme we have. Even with the opacity changed on the inside cover it still works well. Its very easy to read - which is essential to the digipak.

I think for the final design we'll use a combination of Earwig factory for 'The Wombats' to keep inline with the website - so fans would recognise as the logo for the band. Then for the rest of the text so it's able to read we'll use the NothingYouCouldSay font as it's simple and goes well with the design.

-Steph

Levi Brush - Digipak

This font is Levi Brush - one from my font research. I like this font anyway as I like the paint brush affect - gives it a creative feel I think. I changed the opacity of the font on the inside (image two) to see how it would look slightly faded. Lorna thinks the question mark looks like blood and I feel it doesn't really work well in this font. Another negative point about this font is that of the box shape in place of the apostrophe. It just doesn't go well with the rest of the text and makes it stand out unnecessarily.
I don't think we'll use this font because it doesn't go with the idea we want it to.

- Steph

Earwig Factory - Digipak

This is the design I've made using the font - Earwig factory (the same as the website) - on the digipack. At the moment the font is black, so it does get lost in the back ground on the front cover (top image) but I just wanted to see how it would look as a general idea. I've used the same image as the back ground for both but I think the low angle tree shot works better on the inside and we'll use an image of the band for the front cover. The question mark on the CD stands out because it's red, however I feel that it could be a little to bright for the final design.
I like the font as it would it go well with the website as well however I don't think it entirely works on the CD as well as I'd hope.

- Steph

PANDA - a.k.a Bloopers!

Here is the video we've created from all the clips we will not be using for a final music video.

The shoot went well - we got all the band shots we wanted. As the actress didn't turn up we're going to shoot her parts at the weekend hopefully so that all the filming should be done.

-Lorna and Steph

Take Two!

Due to the weather last wednesday - the 16th - we couldn't get all the filming for the video done. So today is take two. George checked the weather yesterday and all should be fine - just a bit cold but we can handle that!
Also with the line-up our bass guitarist had to drop out due to work commitments BUT we found a relpacement very quickly so all is well.
While we're filming we're hoping to get some more shots we could use for the digipak and/or website as well as the blog to show our construction stages.
I feel that we'll get all the filming done today and be able to start editing it all tomorrow afternoon.

-Steph

Guinea Pig Drama

Today we uploaded the guinea pig footage onto iMovie. We wanted to create a sort of 'dream like' effect to make 'the reveal' of our plot clear to the audience. After looking through the effects myself and Steph thought that 'soft glow' created the most dream-like feel. However after some consideration we thought that maybe it wouldn't be clear to the audience how the guinea pigs are relevant to our music video plot.
After making some last minute alterations to our shot list we have decided to input the use of a mirror to emphasize that the girl and the lead singer are animals, by looking through the mirror as opposed to falling into a dream.

-by Lorna.

CD - Development Stages

This is what we've been working on so far on the digipak. We started the inside cover where the CD it self will go.

We've used on of the photos from our photo shoot for the background, used the similar font as the website and added a large red question mark on the CD which follows our initial CD design. 

posted by Steph 

Weather Forecast for Wednesday 24th Novemeber

We have analyzed the weather forecast for tomorrow which should be appropriate for our shoot.

Guinea Pigs on film

Today I went round to my friend's house who has some guinea pigs that we can film for our music video. They're names are Daisy and Blossom and despite the famous saying 'don't work with animals' they were pretty well behaved. I managed to get about a minutes worth of them just on the grass and walking off shot. I've looked back at the footage on the camera and it looks ok, Lorna and George just need to see it now.

Here are our guinea pig stars!

posted by Steph

Website Development

We've added a images from our photo shoot; header with the band members on, the tree back ground, 'behind the scenes' shots and a t-shirt design. 

We also looked at changing the colour of the background to see what it would look like. We went with a earthy green colour

We changed the opacity so that you can see the background coming through. Steph and Lorna initially liked this - I did not agree. After a class poll the majority went with the blue for the background so we are going to stick with the blue.

This is the header I designed for the front page; I photoshopped each band member separately onto the misty tree background. All we need to do next is to add the drum in for the drummer as he currently isn't playing anything.

posted by George

Just a little design...

As part of the home page on the website we put a merchandise link so we designed a t-shirt to go in this!

We've used the same font as the website and our CD cover so it all goes well together. We kept the colouring simple with black and white then we added some wombat paw prints to play on the bands name. 

Steph

Band Photoshoot

Here are a few of the best snaps from today's photoshoot...

The smoky atmosphere in the last woodland shot was achieved by spraying baby powder into the wind. I think this effect is quite eerie and a little mysterious, and could potentially be used in the background of our CD cover.

I did a few quick photoshop experiments using some of the images above, composing the photos in a similar style to how they would appear on the cover of a CD. They doesn't look very professional but they're just rough drafts of how our final composition may look...

Posted by Lorna