Final Digipak

Working Progress

My digipak is at it's final stages, and almost completed.

Final Advert

Feedback

I placed one of my final print pieces on facebook, to gain some audience feedback.

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Here is some of the feedback I recieved:-

After reading the last comment, I then did realise that I had a spelling error, so it is very useful to have others check over it and evaluate. This has now been corrected.

Research

I have uploaded some of my images onto facebook to get some audience feedback

Idea

I saw this video whilst watching telly, I quite liked the torn pieces idea, it could be something we could think about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PTDv_szmL0

Magazine Article Research

These are some magazine articles that I have found on google, to just get a vague idea of the information that I need to include and the key features that should think about.

I love the simplicity of this advert, the bold sepia image and the simple title of the band and album in the centre, which really draws your eye in.

The colour scheme on here is great, and really connotes the band name. Its a really quirky example due to its creative drawn image which is really complex in some areas, but a simple in others.

Photoshoot

I went into our city center to do another shoot for my digipak. Taking inspiration from our test-shoot for the video, I took still images of cars and lights, and either moved the camera or waited for cars to pass, whilst the shutter speed was very slow, causing the light to stream.

I then used adobe photoshop to edit my photographs. Such as adjusting the brightness and contrast.

Magazine Article Research

I started by literally typing 'magazine articles' into google and found a really interesting image that has inspired me to think about combining a drawn image with a photograph.

Basic Time Management

This is out time management table, they are things we need to think about, do and stick to in the time period that we have set.

Research

I read an article on the internet about how to capture light in photography

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-capture-motion-blur-in-photography

I knew most of the details but needed some reassurance that I would be doing the right thing.

Technology:- My targets for this week

I have thought about the areas that I need to work and improve on in technology to make sure the project is done to my best ability:-

I want to experiment with the Editing Suite and work out how to use Clip transitions/effects/layering

I need to experiment with the combination of Adobe flash and Premier and the Allowances that it gives me.

We need to look at certain areas of our filming that we are not sure how to approach such as stop motion and match on action/graphic match areas.

Because we have found an advert with an effect that we would like to try and re-create:-

(the video does not have an embed code)

http://www.youtube.com/user/orange?v=8SNmDop1z08&feature=pyv&ad=4612110832&kw=orange%20wednesday

Creativity

Sir ken Robinson expresses his attitude toward creativity and gives us his opinion on how creativity is formed.

He says that young children will take a chance and if they 'don't know, they'll give it a go' and they are not 'frightened to be wrong' and essentially be imaginative with what they do or say if they have miss-understood it, I do agree with this to an extent, I believe that children under a certain age haven't had enough life experience or influence to be swayed by a concept, but I also think that they copy things, such as older brothers and sisters, they will copy their movements or behaviours because they are their main 'influence' or role model. As for students in education, we are much more aware of everything around us, and are more likely to branch from one base inspiration that has been seen/found/heard/touched/tasted in our lives. And we are more likely to aspire to create a different version of that idea or better it. I think we are definitely prone to be more afraid of being wrong because through education we are pretty much shown how to do everything in one way or another, and we initially think that that must be 'the right way' because we are being told, we are afraid of pushing boundaries or stepping outside the box because it is such a rarity.

My creativity:-

To begin with my initial ideas for the digipak stemmed from our research for our mood-board, where we found an abstract image of lighting and then also video test-shoot, and the streams of light that the cars were creating as we photographed. I moved on to think about different lighting such as natural lighting or street-lighting/car headlights or fire.

This made me want to experiment with light streams and continuous image across each side of my digipak, and deciding on colours and imagery to create a house theme like these :-

I then did a small test-shoot with fire to see how easy it was to photograph and capture:-

I found that I simply needed to adjust the shutter speed and aperture when photographing fire to get the desired effect.

This week I also used programs called Adobe flash and Premier Pro to try out a different way to storyboard. I first drew a small animation on adobe flash the outputted it do premier pro to create the small video and allow me to edit it

Print Idea

After experimenting with lighting for our music video, I had the idea of doing this for my print work, a continuous stream of light through each side of the digipak. I will do some experiements to see how this works.

I'd also love for there to be a large element of photography, so i will do some basic test shoots to see which works best.

The Beatles

This is a video that we were introduced to during our media trip in London.

It has a very childish, haphazard nature about it, and we thought it was such an original idea for a video. This video has helped us with ideas and inspired us to consider things for our video such as, low and high angle shots. Also the idea that we could speed up clips, came from this video, it also adds quite a comic haphazard effect. We also love the location, the low angle shot of the building they come out from makes it look particularly industrial and urban, and also the spiral staircase. We could use this for our video.

Our test Shoot

This is the test shoot that we did for our pitch, to experiment with what we could create using a still camera. We stood on the City Walls Road bridge and took still images of the traffic on a low shutter speed, so that the lights from cars became strips of light down the road. We then used Windows movie Maker to combined these images to create a moving traffic clip.

The Pitch

We had to pitch our ideas to the rest of class. We had to communicate as best we could, the type of things we wanted to include and the basic concept of our video. This included a moodboard of ideas:

Pitch

View more presentations from Stephanie Franklin.

Digipak Research

Cultural Studies Approach

In our lessons we look The cultural studies approach, it was developed within the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. It is an attempt to understand how the media might be powerful and influence all audiences and the effects of media texts but also sees the audiences as ACTIVE, which contrasts highly with the effects model. The audiences have to be active to understand how to text is affecting them and so they can gather their 'Preferred Reading', 'Negotiated Reading' or 'oppositional reading'. A preferred reading would be accepting the text and agreeing fully with its meaning. An oppositional reading would be the complete opposite and someone would completely disagree with all the texts meanings and concepts. Whereas, a Negotiated reading accepts the concepts and meanings but they look at it in another light and find another area of it.

Resarch

Redundant and Entropic

Redundant:-
Something that is-

Expected

Predictable

Unoriginal

Entropic:-

Something that is-

Unexpected

Unplanned

Original

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We studied some pictures to help us understand the words Redundant and Entropic and gain better knowledge of the differences between them.

For example:-

The left image is a redundant image of a policeman, we expect this and represents typically what we recognise as a police officer. Whereas the right image, is a more entropic representation, we do not expect them to look like this, and it is not something we are used to.

Video Skills Audit

The 5 skills I have chosen to develop are :-

Researching-

I will research further into my chosen genres, so I can get the best possible outcome. I will always record and log the information I find, so that I remember it and keep myself organised. I will always refer back to my research, so that nothing becomes out of place and is constantly backed up by research. I will look outside media for inspiration, so that my goals can broaden and I don't get trapped with one idea.

Organisation and Logs-

I will always keep notes on things I do, to help ease organisation skills. I will make sure others know what they need to be doing by noting down timetables and lists. I will make sure I have easy contact with all others in my group, so that i have constant communication

Using Premier with other programs-

My knowledge of premier with other programs is very limited. I only just know how to use premier, let alone with other programmes. I do not know how to include still images into my sequence, I don't know what CDEX is is and I do not know to combine Photoshop with Premier. I intend to learn as much as I can about this Programme, to achieve the best possible results.

SFX-

Similarly, my knowledge of Premier is very low and I am only semi- confident with some techniques such as creating some audio and transition effects.

Originality and Creativity-

My inspiration comes from everyday things such as people, surroundings, objects, conversations and then I see if I can make it one step better or different. I do explore my initial ideas, to see if I can make it more advanced and interesting, so it then gives me one solid idea. Sometimes I do stick with one idea, in all confidence and forget to explore other ideas. Which is something I need to work on.

Post-Production: Digital Technology

How did your editing go? What would have helped you edit more effectively?

I found this process very time consuming and I think that if we had had better knowledge of the program, it would have been a lot better. It was difficult to make a smooth job when we didn't know some of the tools to use. It was fun selecting all the various clips and putting them together, it was in this section of post-production that we realised some of the mistakes in filming, especially some of the durations of clips.

Specifically - what are the tools and devices used editing that you felt were particularly useful?

I found the capture tool very useful, also the speed-duration tool, cropping tool and fading tool. They helped me to select clips and manipulate then to how i wanted them to appear and be organised.

This is the final outcome of the task.

Production

What did you learn during this production task?

I learned how to become more of a team leader in this task, because organising and informing lots of cast members is extremely difficult, especially if our organisation wasn't fantastic. I assisted in the technical team and so I learned how to story board and make filming schedules for each day.

How did the shoot go? What went wrong? What do you need to do make sure these things don’t happen again?

The shoot went reasonably well, I think it could have been improved by making sure all the cast members were fully informed. We asked for access to a classroom and got ourselves a setting, and it was a great room. There were a few blips when filming, such as leaving the camera on, and of course the bloopers from the cast. We also forgot to clear everyone out of each shot so that there were no random people, and so in one clip we have me sitting at the computer sorting something out, when I wasn't supposed to be in the shot! Doing my photography course at college too, also helped me to gain a slightly more wider knowledge of the camera and camera shots, but it was just putting them into action which was difficult!

Next time, we will make sure that we are fully aware of everyone, and make sure everyone knows where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to be doing.

Production- Digital Technology

How did your knowledge of production technology develop? (Cameras, edit suites, use of Youtube, blogging etc.)

My knowledge developed just enough for me to realise the work involved in producing such things, I learned a couple of new things and how to use different technologies such as Adobe Premier Pro. I knew how to plug in the camera and retain the video but I then learned how to capture frames and clips from our filmed piece, and how to organise them so that they were easier to work with. I also gained a wider knowledge of how to work with the cameras, when filming. As one of the technical team, we were in charge of filming and organisation of each day, so I gained more team leader skills too. However, as some of it was very new to me, such as making filming schedules and actually filming, it became slightly chaotic sometimes, so this is something I wish to improve in next year. Knowing basic skills such as how to put the tape to the camera, how to turn it on, and how to watch playback was a good start for me and it soon developed into slightly more complicated things such as how to hold the camera and camera shots like hand-held and low angle.

What sort of technology skills would you like to develop during the A2 year?

I would like to gain a lot more knowledge on how to work with Adobe Premier Pro because editing is quite a tedious job, but I think it would become much more fast paced and enjoyable if I knew more about the program.

Research and Planning

After coming back from our summer exams, we had to do two tasks. These were

learning to Lip sync, by selecting a song, learning the words , and filming ourselves

singing it. Then using Adobe Premier Pro, cutting our sound, and placing the song on

top,

then timing it all so that we lip synced. We also had to re-create the first 30 seconds or

so,

of a music video. This was a lot harder, we had to story board the original video

first,

then make our own plan of shots and days. We had to select cast members and props

needed.

There was a lot of organisation involved.

Which of the planning tasks was most useful?

The planning tasks included us testing and applying our immediate knowledge, to see how we go on with lip-syncing, filming and editing. They were quite useful , because we came to realise just how difficult it was to lip sync, especially when applying the original track in post-production, getting the timings right was very hard. The most useful was editing the lip syncing with the track, because it gave us more of an idea when we re-made the first few seconds of the music video. We gained a slightly better knowledge on Adobe Premier Pro, but it still wasn't without it's difficulties.

What kinds of planning do you wish you had done more of?

I think we could have done more planning when it came to learning the music and order of the video and keeping all cast members informed of what we were doing, by supplying them with a reasonably detailed storyboard or schedule.

What kinds of planning do you expect to be doing during the A2 year?

Planning needs to be carefully done next year, because that will keep us on track and organised, and everyone will have a better idea of what we are doing. I will take more time on:-

Cast Lists- (who plays what)
Cast Props- (who has what)
What shots on what days

Timings

Story Boarding

Durations of shots

Shooting scripts

Informing cast members on changes and decisions