Final Music Video

Click here to access our final music video.

Evaluation

In what ways did your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our research we found that artists of the electronic/ambient genre a lot of the time simply did not have pop promos for their songs, so we decided to challenge this and make one for our artist! Those that did have music videos tended to have concept based music videos compared with narrative or performance based – we again decided to challenge this and go with a narrative based pop promo. An example of this was Four Tet’s video for “Hands” – it is meant as an accompaniment for the music and not a video in its own right, they want their music to be the talking point and not the music video. Of course we didn’t just want the video to be the talking point and not the music, but we felt that a narrative based video would help to promote our artist and target our audience a lot more effectively. The main convention we challenged was the issue of homosexuality in music videos, it is rare that you see same sex couples in music videos and when you do it is usually glamorised and just to to cause a stir to get media publicity for the artist, so we decided to have our couple as two women but film it no differently than if we were filming a heterosexual couple, to encourage acceptance and diversity.

We liked the use of colour in videos of this genre, which give a bright and almost psychedelic feel sometimes, and developed this in our pop promo when thinking about the Mise en Scene (so we had the bright, colourful bar scenes etc). We also developed some ideas on the use of timelapse that we’d seen in several pop promos of the electronic genre, such as Four Tet’s “She Moves She” which features timelapse of a train traveling, and the concept of time seemed to appear a lot in music videos of this genre.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When making our music video, cd cover and magazine advert, we had to remember that the brief was to make a music promotional package – not just 3 totally separate pieces. Keeping this in mind, the main linking themes we chose between the pieces that were represented are time, movement and the contrast between nature and urban environments. For example, we had timelapsed shots of traffic on a road in our music video, and then this linked to our cd cover and magazine advert with photographs of a road with traffic in, but with the shutter speeds slowed down to give a long exposure effect where you cant see the cars but just the lights from when they go past. This highlighted the linking theme of movement and energy in each of the pieces.

All three pieces had quite an artistic, modern stylish feel to them, because of the close attention we paid to the colours that featured in the video and in the print ads. The bar scene especially showed this, and the long shot I used when filming really helped to show all the mixture of colours and warm tones in the scene, like the below screenshot shows:

The representations we created were realism, that the audience could relate to. In our music video two young attractive homosexual women are represented, they are shown as being educated, middle class and flirtatious – we created this representation to show that it doesn’t have to be just your average man and women fancying each other as you see 99% of the time in mainstream music videos. In the CD cover, Lawrence King is represented as a young mysterious, anonymous male, who is standing outside a middle class suburban house, indicating that he himself is middle class and educated, like the women in the music video. This again helps to draw the pieces together, however looking back I think it really would of helped if either Lawrence King appeared in the music video, or the two women were shown on the print ads, as this would of helped really link them together as being a promotional package rather than three separate pieces.

What did you learn from your audience feedback?

Music video:

In our primary research, we found out that 75% of respondents to the questionnaire liked to see a music video with a narrative, compared with a performance or concept based video. Based on this, we made our music video with a strong narrative, and received a lot of positive feedback from the class about how it was clear to follow and the fact we had done it with flashbacks at the start of the day came across clearly, and that we focused enough on the two women to make it obvious who the story was about.

The main point I learnt, especially with me being the cinematographer, was that a video full of different shot sizes and types really helps to keep the audience engaged throughout, particularly when you use some experimental cinematography like I decided to do when I filmed some shots in the bar with the camera behind a chair made of metal mesh, giving an interesting voyeuristic effect.



The class appreciated that generally throughout the whole music video the shots were well framed, and the panning shots were smooth, giving the video an overall professional finish. I learnt that by paying careful attention to the shots you are filming and making sure they are correct, then you can end up with a film that doesn’t look amateurish.

Another area that received lots of positive praise from our class as well as Lawrence himself, was the fast motion traffic scenes. The class mentioned that it was in time with the tempo of the music, and similarly Lawrence said that the speed of the timelapse pace suited the track well.

Criticisms of our video included the fact that some of the bedroom scenes were too dark. This could have been overcome if we had paid more careful attention to the lighting in the room at the time of filming, and the level of exposure on the camera, something that I will spend more time making sure is at the correct level if we film in the future. A final criticism from the class was the lack of representation of an artist in the video, and that it would helped aide the promotion of Lawrence King by having him included in the video. This I do agree with and in hindsight having the artist in the music video would have been a good way to promote him, as well as to link our video more closely with the print adverts, which featured him (albeit in an anonymous form).

CD Cover:

The interesting use of typography on the front of the CD Cover where the words "Lawrence" "King" and "Night" have been combined was reacted very positively to by the class, and they felt that by putting the word "Night" (the album name) in white it made it stand out clearly and was easy to read. I was pleased that the class picked up on the fact that the warm colours of the sunset used corrosponded with the warm colours of the music video (especially the bar scenes) and this again reinforced to me that people appreciate making a link between the different pieced in the promotional package and so it is good to have them linking together with a common theme.

The class really liked the fact that we represented Lawrence King in the inside cover, and the fact that he was standing outside a typical 1960’s semi-detached house, as a few members of the class lived in houses similar to that themselves which goes to show that it can be a good thing to try and represent your audience in the video that they watch so that they can relate to being in the persons world.

Magazine Advert:

One slight criticism our audience mentioned was that perhaps some of the writing on the magazine advert could have been in a different colour to make it a little clearer to read. We could have overcome this by doing lots of different versions of the advert, changing the text colour on each one then see which one is easier to read.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the project, I have learnt about many different types of technology and software, some I had come across before and some I had never previously used. During the research stage of the project, I watched many different pop promos on the video website YouTube to gain and idea of the codes and conventions of music videos for different genres of music. I also viewed some music videos that students had made for their A2 Media Studies coursework on YouTube which was a good way to gain inspiration and see how they had responded to the brief we were given. I used the photo sharing website Flickr, as well as Google Images to research print adverts that different artist had used to promote themselves (CD Covers, magazine adverts, posters, flyers etc). I also scanned some images into my computer using a Canon scanner, of print adverts that I’d found in magazines, then uploaded them to my blog.

In the planning stage of the project, I set up this blog to display my research, planning and evaluation, using Blogger which I have found to be an excellent blog making website as it is simple to use and yet my blog still looks professional. As I was cinematographer in the group, I used the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to refresh my memory on the different rules and guidelines of film-making, such at the Rule of Thirds and the 180 degree rule. We used the social networking website Facebook to send questionnaires to our artist and communicate with him about how we were progressing with making his promotional package.

During production, we filmed using a CANON HV30 DV Camcorder on a VELBON DV-7000 tripod - we did not need a microphone as we didn’t need to record sound. We also used a 100W light in the bedroom scenes. Jessica (our editor) then captured our footage off of the camcorder onto the computer and logged it, and then edited our music video using Adobe Premier Pro, which we found to be of a very high standard but also simple to use. Lastly, we compressed the film into a .WMV (Windows Media Video) file type to make it a smaller file size and thus more accessible on the web. Being the cinematographer of the group (last year I was in charge of the Mise-En-Scene) I found learning to use the camcorder a slight challenge as I had to learn how to control all the different effects, such as exposure, aperture and white balance, but overall it was fairly simple to use after some practice.

To make our CD Cover and magazine advert, we used Adobe Photoshop CS4. I have had experience of using this before (GCSE Art etc) so knew how to use the Layer tools to create an image with multiple images and text items etc, and found that the software allows you to create designs with a very professional look to them. Nicole took the original photographs using a digital SLR camera.

Lawrence King Feedback

We sent Lawrence the a copy of the music video (albeit the one with technical errors) and a copy of the digipack and print ad design. We conducted the following interview over Facebook to get some feedback.

Hi Lawrence, We sent you a rough draft of the video, what do you think about it?

I think its very good! I know you said there were some issues with this version of the video but I got the general feel of it.

What in particular do you like about the video?

I enjoyed the fast motion [time lapse] scenes, I think its suits the pace of the track well. I'm also glad you decided to uphold my anonymity. Also the concept of crossed paths and a relationship forming. Most electronic artist I follow also do something different in their videos, not just a band playing in a pub or girls dancing in aclub like you find in most pop videos.

What would you change about the video?

Probably would have put a few more of those fast motion scenes in there, maybe at a nightclub? And I'd like to have seen the track at its complete length, but I know you had restrictions and all that.

Moving on to the album design and magazine advert, how do you think we did?

REALLY really good, the cover has a nature feel to it but kinda enhanced nature- which i like. In the inside cover and on the ad I like the feeling of speed or moving that you captured. Looks kinda urban aswell. The bloke standing across the road is a nice touch, like its ment to be me, but its not clear enough to really know.

Thanks for your time Lawrence!

Class Feedback Of Our Promotional Package

Having completed our music video and print ads, we screened them to our Media Studies class who gave us lots of valuable feedback and constructive criticism. This information was excellent for finding out what the strengths and weaknesses were of our production and will really help when we evaluate our work.

MUSIC VIDEO

Initial Impressions: Positive Feedback

• Video clearly focused on the main characters, easy to understand who it was we were ment to be watching.
• Time lapsed traffic was in time with the tempo of the music
• Liked the make up shots, giving the effect the camera was a mirror.
• Interesting narrative effect with the "rewind" through the day at the start.

Initial Impressions: Criticism

• Not enough light in the bedroom scenes, too dark.
• Artist not included in the video.
• Too much time lapsed footage, got a bit boring.
• Could of used more shots to keep engaging the audiences interest.

Use of Cinematography

• Liked the use of experimental use of cinematography, particularly the make up shots and the shots through the metal chair in the bar scene.
• Shots well framed and panning shots were smooth.
• Good variety of shot sizes.
• Bedroom shots could of been more detailed?

Use of Mise-En-Scene

• Nice and colourful shots throughout.
• Bar environment looked sophisticated and classy.
• Good use of props - mobile phones etc.
• Characters dressed appropriately throughout.
• Lighting on Nicola in the bedroom scene could of been improved.

Use of Editing

• Shots used worked well with the timing of the music.
• Looked professional, no amateur effects used etc.
  
• Could of included a few more shots in the bar scenes?

Suitability of Visuals to the Music

• Overall, worked well throughout.
• Could of included artist in the video, or perhaps shots of a DJ to make it more performance as well as narrative based.

Response to Brief

• More reference needed to Lawrence King - too distanced.

Production values and Technical Ability

• Effects used were good throughout.
• Some lighting issues, mostly in the bedroom scenes.

Suitability to the Genre of Music

• Ambient music, not too stressful or too much action.
• Made everyday scenes look a bit different.
• Overall, was defiantly suitable to the genre.

Suitability of Creating a Bands/Artist Image (Representation)

• Representations in the video included - nature, movements, relationships, intellectual, perhaps quite middle class?
• No representation of Lawrence King in the video.

Suitability for Target Audience

• Worked well at targeting our audience.

CD COVER AND MAGAZINE ADVERT

Initial Impressions: Positive Feedback

• Clever use of typography.
• Time & nature reflected well (which were strong elements in the music video aswell, helps to bring the 3 pieces together to create a promotional package).
• Suburbia and middle class represented (the house on the inside cover etc) - audience can relate.
• Suitable typefaces used.
• Photo used on inside cover very nice.
• Contrast between nature and urban environments apparent - worked well.

Initial Impressions: Criticism

• Some of the writing on the magazine advert could of been in a different colour to make it a little clearer to read, but no major criticisms overall.

Use of Images

• Linked to music video, mysterious.
• Middle class suburbia.
• Piece's connected as well as contrasted.
• Inside image tinted slightly yellow, nice effect.
• Magazine advert image was abstract, looked very good.

Use of Mise-En-Scene

• Good use of lighting, all the images well lit.
• Lawrence King dressed appropriately in the inside cover image - looked dark and mysterious.
  

Use of Fonts & Typography

• Clever use of "Night".
• Font used was sort of electronic/futuristic/like a typewriter font.

Use of Colour

• All images nice and colourful
• Perhaps more of the writing could of been in white?

Use of Layout & Overall Design

• Successfully created aesthetically pleasing print advert designs that worked effectively.

Production Values & Technical Ability

• Good technique
• Images used were of very high quality/high resolution.
• Demonstrated good photography skills (credit goes to Nicola for the images!) :)

Suitability of Creating a Bands/Artist Image (Representation)

• Lawrence King represented in the inside image of the CD Cover, shown as mysterious and anonymous.

Suitability for Target Audience

• Targeted a young audience with an interest in ambient music well.

Suitability and combination of all 3 promo package elements for Target Audience

• Good overall promotional package, elements followed through (nature vs. urban, movement, time).

Production Meeting 8

The promotional package has been finishes and presented to the class. We gained valuable feedback (see previous entries) and we will all now individually begin to concentrate on our evaluation. Jess has made some last minute edits to the the music video based upon feedback to improve the video further. Unfortunately we have hit some technical errors when trying to compress the video from Final Cut Pro into a Quicktime .Mov file. Our lecturer is looking into these problems and we hope to have a final version of our video up on the blog asap.

Final Print Designs

Nicola has completed the designs for our CD cover:


As well as the completed magazine advert...


I am really pleased with the final designs. Nicola has managed to convey the theme of movement and energy well by use of the long exposure feature on the digital SLR camera the original images were taken with. The typography is easy to read, the right size and overall the three pieces are aesthetically pleasing with a professional look to them (mainly because the images used were of such high quality and high resolution) and they really work well together to help create a promotional package (along with the music video) to help promote Lawrence King.

My Individual Print Designs

For my idea for our album cover, I wanted to go with the theme of the artist being unknown (so no photos of him etc), and also with the theme of having an abstract design, like artists of a similar genre of music to ours have done in the past such as Boards of Canada that I researched previously. Building on this idea, I had the thought of incorporating newspaper clippings of letters to spell out the name "Lawrence King" and maybe the album name, and also perhaps incorporating the themes of traffic and traffic lights that is present in our pop promo, with the time-lapsed cars stopping and starting at traffic lights as the tempo of the music changes.

One thing I was sure of when I started trying out designs for it was that I wanted to have simple, clutter free design, using very high quality images to give a professional and sophisticated look.

Front cover ideas:

The image below is my favorate cover design from the ones I created. The typeface and images I used make it immediatly obvious who's album it is. The photo I took of a red trafficlight (which is internationally recognisable as the colour which means stop), and the newspaper clippings that spell out the word stop, were very large high quality images at about 3000 x 1000 pixels. I then resized these down (whilst constraining the proportions so they remained the right shape) so that they were the right size for the CD cover. This image has multiple layers for each image and text, so it was easy for me to edit a particular object without effecting the whole image. I then used the "stroke" effect (in the Blending Options menu) to give a black outline 2 pixels wide around the image to make it look neat and professional.

Back cover:



If we were to go with my CD Cover design for our final piece and made a magazine cover for it, I would want to have a very similar design to the CD cover, but instead in an A5 size, with a longer quote at the bottom from a music magazine or similar giving praise to Lawrence King or the album, as well as a release date for the album.

Jess's Print Designs

Jess's Entry

As editor I'm pretty busy right now and I don't have too much time to experiment with Photoshop and create a whole digi-pack idea. However, Ive had a few goes creating just a rough album cover. By doing so it means that I am in a better position to support Nicola with the final designs should she need it. Please ignore any borders or mistakes around edges of the design- I saved screenshots in .tiff on the Mac and had to convert them to .jpeg on windows to upload to blogger and this has meant a few errors occurred.

Whilst Nicola and Maya are concentrating on Urban and outdoor shots, I decided to go a little 'crazier'. I shot a series of photographs using nature but tyring to bring in fun elements, after being inspired by Four Tet's album designs. The above picture is a leaf of a rubber plant with strategically place smarties!

Firstly I used the Magic Wand tool on Photoshop to cut out the grey background as it was quite dull. I also decided to flip the leaf as i thought it was more logical for the leaf to be that way around. I put on the text that I would need,- artist name and album name. I use the text bend tool to fit 'From the Earth' around the leaf.

To further progress the design I used the magic want tool and eraser tool to make a better cut-out around the leaf as the 1st edit still had some of the grey background remaining. I also changed the background colour to a subtle cream- many brighter colour didn't work and made it look quite amateur. I decided to move the text onto the leaf and changed the font style as I believe the 2 font styles were too conflicting before. If i were to complete this idea I would look into font styles more and add bar codes, copyrights and promotional stickers etc.

Another design I played around with was just the smarties on their own. I think the concept is eye catching and something that would make you pick the album up- and also remember it. The original photograph was the similar to the finished design but I just had to alter image size and canvas size to make it an appropriate size for the album cover. If I had more time I would have cut the background out- however this proved too problematic when I first tried- and added logos etc.

Nicola's Print Designs

Nicola's Entry

My initial ideas for the digipack were to show the contrast betweet nature and urban life. I took various photos of sunsets and then used photo shop to contrast the colours to make the sunset stand out, for the urban photos i changed the shutter speed on my camera to create the effect of rushing traffic.

Original Image

For this Digipack design i used a computer style font to show the electronica side of the music and i used the sunset picture to show the nature influences that inspire Lawrence.

I decide that night would look good in white and i placed it on the black part of the digipack, i later decided that it didn't look right her so i moved it to fit in with Lawrence's name.

I then tried out a different font to see if this worked better i decided against it as i didn't feel that it worked as well as the original font, i also moved the album name into the artist name and i felt this gave a good look and feel to the digipack.

With this digipack i tried changing the colours to see is they would stand out more and i tried bue and as you can see it blends into the background.

This was my last idea but i still wasn't happy as although i liked the way the album title and artist name are positioned i still felt that the album name need to stand out more. I put the copyright information in white on the black part of the background as it made it stand out and i used white for the song tracks as this went with the style that i was going for and i didn't want to overload the digipack with colours.

Print Ad Ideas

Original Image

I took lots of photos for the print ad and i thought this one may be nice to use as it shows the artist is a anonymous way which fits in with our genre as the artists are usually faceless, this photo also has the rushing traffic which ties in with the themes of your pop promo and didipack.

I decided to use the same font as the digipack to help tie the two together and i used the same arrangement of "Lawrence King" and "night" to again tie the print ad to the digipack. I found that with the text on top of this picture the print ad became to busy and i decided it would be nicer to use a simpler image.

Original Image

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I then found this picture which i thought summed up my idea as it was abstract like other album covers in this genre but it also had the traffic theme that follows through the promo and the digipack. After this i started to change the font colours to see which looked best, black stands out the most in some places for example in the album/artist title some white was need to make it pop. i tried other colours such as bright green to give a computer theme to it and i also tried red to go with the colour of the rushing traffic but they got lost against the background.

As you can see from this example i was trying out different colours and her i was trying our green and i didn't work as it didn't fit in with the print ad at all. i was also experimenting with the text placement here,i knew i wanted the date in the bottom left corner and the album/artist title in the top right corner but i was trying to figure out the best places to put the quotes from magazines and celebrities i wanted them to go along with the traffic but be cause of the colour they didn't fit.

As you can see from this idea, i changed the font to red and this still didn't pop so i decided against this font,

Production Meeting 7

Learning to use Photoshop was frustrating but we eventually discovered that it was a very powerful tool when harnessed properly. Nicola had now complete the first draft of our album cover using both images of nature and city life. We wanted to create a link between the video and the album design and the inclusion of lights and traffics helps with this. The nature image on the front has had the colours altered to appear artificial and more 'electronic'. For the inside image Nicola experimented with exposure time. Using a busy road she increased the exposure time to create the blurring of the lights which give the appearance of fast moving traffic. We are particularly happy with this.

Editing of the pop promo is nearing completion but has hit some errors. A problem with the Macs effected the whole class and resulted in some footage dropping frames or footage becoming jerky and clipped. Unfortunately we do not have the original footage to re-capture to resolve this problem, but as explained it is through no fault of our own. We will try and reduce the damage caused by using alternative footage that is unaffected. Luckily Maya shot quite a few take of the same scenes so we should be able to find some footage that is good to use.

Features of A CD Cover

Here are the features that may be included on a CD Cover:

Front Cover...

Band name
Album/song name
Promotional stickers

Back Cover...

Track listing
Barcode
Web address
Record company name
Trademarks
Digital technology logos

Factors To Consider When Developing Our Print Advert and Album Cover

Title & Typeface
The title often dominates for obvious reasons. But we should also consider the type/style of the typeface and font, and the colours used for it.

• Title or main font and typeface on the text.
• Size(s) of the text • Positioning of the font and typeface
• Type of font and typeface used
• Colour(s) of the typeface(s)
• Any logos or distinctive graphics used

Copy and Anchorage (Written Language)
Tag-lines often accompany adverts or copywriting for products. They may also have acclaim and reviews on albums or products. There might also be a website address so you can find out more about the product.

• Any prominent tags or slogans and your interpretation of these
• What is the layout/format of the text? • Consider MES: Lighting, props, costume, performance.posture, location.
• Image photography. Consider framing, camera angle, shot size, MS, CU etc
• Any intertextuality in the images(s). Borrowings from other media texts.

Representation
Who is featured in the text? Are they well known stars? Are they a key selling point for the text? We should also consider representation of the people featured in the text. Look for archetypes, stereotypes and generic types, and any attempts at realism. Remember who your target audience are and the representations need to appeal to them. Consider age, gender, class, race, and media forms & language used to create representations and the values that are attached to these representations.

Genre
We must consider whether our advert suggests a genre of music, as this will help us to define the target audience of the industry behind the adverts. Also, we should decide how clear the genre is going to be in the text and what generic elements we will use.

Narrative
Will the text contain a suggested storyline, sometimes known as a narrative image, that will draw the audience's interest to the text? Sometimes the text will tease us with questions creating a mystery or an enigma. This image may be backed or aided by a tagline or some copywriting such as "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water."

Institution
The institution behind the band needs to be considered. Are they on a huge label and trying to sell the artist to the widest possible audience or a tiny independent label where the band will have more control?

Ideology
What is the ideology and the messages and values we want to project? This could be the idea of the hero, good versus evil, capitalism, true love, ideas towards the typical family, youth and vibrancy etc. Audience A very important part of developing our print pieces are who our target audience are, and profile them and give reasons for the decisions we make on our target audience. We must think about demographics, socio-economics, VALS, labels, and also our audience size and how we will appeal to them using media language.

Homosexuality in Music Videos

Jessica researched the subject of homosexuality in music videos:

Our narratives centres around Girl A and Girl B who cross paths and begin a relationship. Although we originally intended for the relationship to form between a girl and boy, the availability of actors has meant we had to consider other alternatives. However, this has gave us the opportunity to venture into raising issues through our music video, i.e the acceptability of homosexuality within the music industry. Although socially homosexuality is now widely accepted, its is still not seen often in music videos. I feel the decision to go ahead with this narrative within our music video is in-line with the progressive thinking that I discovered in my research for electronic music videos.

History

In 1981 after the emergence of MTV the popularity and volume of music videos increased drastically. At this time homosexuality in music videos was few and far between. However a growing number of artists sporting the androgynous image such as Annie Lennox and openly gay artists such as Boy George introduced the issue into their music videos. However this did not represent the average homosexual person as the character were often over dramatized.



One exception was Bruce Springsteen. The video above was for his track Tougher than the Rest. Couples are shown kissing throughout the video, with gay and lesbian couples featured alongside heterosexual couples and this projects the correct image of homosexual relationships- no different from all the rest! Many Rock 'n' Roll artists used lesbianism in a derogatory way in the late 80's/90's. Instead of promoting sexual differences positively they were often glorified and for entertainment purposes. Women often shown stripping, kissing and getting intimate featured strongly and a feminist reading of this is that it is purely for a mans entertainment.



The emergence of t.A.T.u (Russian short hand for this girl loves that girl) glamorised lesbianism in a way that some may criticise as not being beneficial to the cause. The above video is for their no.1 hit All The Things She Said and features the romance of 2 girls and kissing throughout. Some praised the video for putting lesbians into the mainstream, and the cinematography of the video- showing girls behind bars etc- accurately portrayed the struggle of lesbian couples. However the video also received a huge backlash as the girls are in school uniform and the fact that the are both heterosexual in real life means that the video was just to entertain the male population. More recently artists such as Lady GaGa have fought for equal rights for homosexual and transgendered couple as displayed in her video for Telephone.

Develop Own Individual Idea for CD Cover & Magazine Advert

My individual idea for our CD cover and magazine advert is to use the theme of cars and traffic lights in an urban area, because timelapse of cars going past on a road and stopping at traffic lights features alot in our pop promo.

We need to consider the look and feel of the whole package and make sure that it is a promotional package and not 3 entirely separate pieces of promotions, and that is why i'd like to have a linking theme of traffic in an urban area featuring in all three pieces. I think it would work well as the movement off the traffic stopping and starting at traffic lights relates to the change in tempo of our song.

I have browsed the photo sharing website flickr.com and gathered a selection of images that are inspiration to the type of image CD Cover I would like to create.

Source - http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/45638349/

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/magdalengreen/336816866/

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11689793@N03/1351332693/

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/45638349/
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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/harrivayrynen/3213509470/

I find this particularly interesting as it connects with Jessica's abstract idea of using sweets such as Smarties or M&Ms on the front cover to perhaps spell out the name "Lawrence King", and perhaps we could incorporate this somehow into it, using a red, yellow and green sweet to represent a traffic light.

Develop Own Individual Idea For Pop Promo

Synopsis

• The contrast between an urban environment and a rural environment
• A woman who lives in the countryside, and we follow her driving through a peaceful rural environment into a city
• A man is shown going about his day to day life in a bustling city in the daytime
• They then meet coincidentally at a location in the evening such as a bar and it indicated that they are attracted to each other
• Theme of traffic in the urban environment
• Theme of nature in countryside

Treatment

• Traffic theme - lights changing from red to green, people crossing busy roads, busy and conjested, timelapsed shots of cars driving along roads
• Theme of nature in countryside - timelapsed shots of clouds, wildlife etc
• Woman in the countryside dressed in stereotypical countryside clothes - tweed, wellies?
• Man in the city dressed in business atire - suit, briefcase etc
• Close ups of their faces as they first see each other to show their immediate reactions (they fancy each other)
• Diagetic sounds from the environment (city/countryside) and enhanced sounds (where you take a sound in the background and make it louder than it actually is) to reinforce to the audience the environment that the characters are in
• Shots timelapsed slightly or slowed down depending on the tempo of the music at different points throughout the track
• Bright, vivid colours in the countryside eg bright green grass, colourful flowers, blue sky (so we will have to pick a nice day to film!)
• Tint the urban environment shots with a slightly blueish tint to give a cold and slightly depressive feel (like they do in the BBC drama "Spooks" set in central London)

Production Meeting 6

Editing is now coming along well and the timeline on Final Cut Pro is now beginning to fill up. Jess has decided to drop the footage of herself on the beach as she doesn't think it fits properly. Her character is shown in a city environment at the beginning of the promo and to show her then suddenly on a beach may prove confusing.

Nicola and Maya are both going to shoot some photographs around town in the next couple of weeks for inspiration for the album cover and advertisement, whilst Jess will focus on more fun nature-ish shots. We have a lesson next week introducing us to Photoshop on the Macs, and we will begin creating some rough ideas. We will all design album covers and advertisements but Nicola will be producing the final piece. We feel that if we all have a go at designing it will help us aid Nicola in producing a great final piece.

Production Meeting 5

Shooting is now complete and Jess is beggining to capture footage and getting to grips with Final Cut Pro. Although we are all excited about having Macs this year it does mean we all have to learn how to use a completely new piece of software. We have decided that Nicola concentrate on the album cover and album advertisment, and Maya will help Jess with the editing.

We were not able to shoot some of the shots on Maya's storyboard due to our conflicting time schedules and accessibilty of locations. We had planned to shoot in a record shop but the only times we were allowed to shoot in there were times when at least one of us were unable to do so. However we are confident that the footage that we do have will prove adequate.

Storyboard

Below is the storyboard for our pop promo, please excuse the fact the drawings get the worse as it goes on!

Mood Board

Below is a mood board which Nicola made for our group, to give us visual inspiration for our pop promo: