Final Logo

Logo Development

I decided to try some new ideas for my logo as the ones that I have previously made have been developed on powerpoint. Therefore, I wanted to see if Photoshop could improve my logo. Above are some of my products and out of these, I prefer the top two because I think simplicity looks much more professional. In these designs, I chose a simple font and put the name in lower case letters which I like the look of. For the second one, the areas that are grey will be white and they are only grey to show up. This will look engaging on my digipak and poster and I can already picture it on my designs. One thing that is certain is my logo with the triangle and square and this likely to feature on a few panel of the digipak as it will be easy and to include. Overall, this task has brought me closer to my final design and has helped me think about how this will be integrated into my digipak productions. 

Digipak Inside Panel Development

Now that I have the images that I took on the camera available, I have started to edit my digipak and think of ideas to include. Today, I focused on panel 3 which will be viewed when the digipak is opened. This features a close up of Ryan and below, I have been experimenting possible ideas that I have previously looked at, particularly in my 'digipak inspiration' presentation...

I developed this image as follows. 1) Copied the image. 2) Put the one on top in black and white. 3) Erased the pupil of the eye out to leave the coloured eye behind.

I then thought about introducing smashed glass to fit in with the lyrics of the song we are producing the video for. I found an image on the internet and pasted it into Photoshop...

...I then used the magic eraser tool to remove the black background. After that, I positioned the layer above the coloured copy and below the black and white copy.

This technique was one that I looked at on Beck's 'Dreams' single cover where simple animated objects were positioned on a black and white image. I found each of the shapes online and simply filled them in with one solid colour. I also included my logo in the bottom right-hand corner to see what it would look like and I simply copy and pasted it from my computer and sharpened the edges with the sharpener tool.

Out of the three productions, it is difficult for me to pick my favourite. I believe that they could all be improved and edited to look even more professional although I think this is a good start on my digipak. Before I go any further, I need to establish what my theme is going to be and how I am going to produce it as if the panels don't link or have any connection with each other, the audience may misinterpret the genre or brand. This short Photoshop task has almost definitely concluded that all the images that feature on my digipak are going to be in black and white because it looks a lot more professional and works well when something colourful features, as shown in the panes I have produced above. Overall, I am happy with the start I have made on my digipak and I need to make sure that I come to a conclusion on my theme and also start to think about the poster as well.

Feedback from latest cut

What we have learnt:
In today's lesson, we asked a group of five people including our teacher to look at our latest cut to suggest things to improve and adjust. The image above vaguely displays their thoughts and I would say that the most important thing that the group pointed out was that the cuts needed to happen on the beat and not in random places or in-between a lyric. This is something that we have picked up on ourselves and will be altered during our next lesson. During our jump cut sections, the panel also inquired about a possible longer jump to each cut. At the moment, our intro includes clips that seem to repeat and this has been changed in a separate video and needs to be copied in. Also, the build-up to the chorus includes cuts that don't really jump at all where we have a long enough shot to jump more substantially. Overall, this quick feedback session has helped us massively because the group pointed out both things that we already knew needed to be improved, and things that we hadn't spotted ourselves. During our next lesson on Friday, we will go over each of the things pointed out by our audience and correct or improve them.

Editing (28th Nov)

chorus section from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

In todays lesson, we focused again on a smaller section of the video. I am happy with the outcome and believe that so far this is the best edited part of the video so far. For instance, the cuts sync perfectly with the beat of the song. The video above shows the small section of the video and we think that the quick cuts would aid the build up to the chorus and add tempo to the song. In addition to this section, we placed some of the clips later in the video to give us a clearer idea of the crosscutting between the two characters in our narrative. We have placed the car scenes in different sections of the video and will surround these clips with other narrative and performance clips.

Editing (27th Nov)

editing example (chorus build up) from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

In today's lesson, we focused on the middle section of our video. We added more narrative clips and focused on editing to the beat of the music. The clip above shows our first attempts on a minor section of the video. I like the constant crosscut between the two parts of the narrative as it helps to build the tension of the other character catching up with him. We have discovered that this can be rather time-consuming, but we have worked out the timings of the beat which makes it a lot easier to place and the clips well. Due to the large size of the file, we cannot upload the full video but we have started to place the narrative clips above the already placed performance and it is beginning to look like a semi-structured music video. We will improve the positioning of the clips section by section so each part is of a high quality.

Digipak Images

Above are all the pictures that were took on the day that we had to delay our narrative filming whilst we had our performance actor, Ryan, with us. These images were taken on a Canon camera but during the shoot I had trouble with the lighting as it was too dark to take images without the flash, meaning that the pictures look as if they have been taken at night. However, they are still good quality and the flash makes Ryan look vibrant. With some work on Photoshop, these images can be advanced to a professional level. I also took some pictures for the digipak on my phone, as seen in a previous blog post, and it seemed to adjust to the lighting better and work more effectively on close ups so images may be used from both devices.

Editing (24th Nov)

Wall Of Glass- 3rd Cut (Narrative Section developed) from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

In today's lesson, we continued to edit the beginning of the video. As previously stated, the amount of cuts (around 60) makes it incredibly difficult to edit. We are taking our time in this section as we feel that if we can nail the precision of the editing it will look incredibly good and make the most of an instrumental start. As the image shows, we continued to swap clips and place them to the beat as much as possible. In our previous attempt, we actually duplicated footage, we removed these clips and hope the clip is now developing well. This should be the most tedious part of the editing, as I feel other elements with be simpler as we can just place narrative over the performance footage. Our next aim is to start introducing our narrative footage into the video and this will be challenging because we will need to think about order and length of shot throughout.

Editing (21st Nov)

Wall Of Glass- 3rd Cut (Narrative Section) from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

Our plan for the first 20 seconds of instrumental was to crosscutting constantly on the beat between the narrative and performance. The pace of this section was extremely fast paced so we thought that if we executed the editing well the video would look very professional. We counted (using a clicker counter app) that the 22 seconds includes a total of 64 constant beats, therefore needing 64 cuts. This would work out as 32 cuts for each the narrative and performance. Additionally, we timed the space between each beat- 0.3 seconds- meaning each clip we placed would have to be this long for the editing to work well on the beat.
Here is the app we used to keep track of the beats and help us count how many cuts were needed...

Below is our attempted crosscut. We do know that there are slight timing issues and several clips seem to be repeated but we think it is a very good start for quite an advanced piece of editing...

I decided the best way to keep a constant 0.3-second gap was using a green screen cutaway- which was copy and pasted when the performance was wanted- as we placed the narrative footage above the rest.

Digipak Inspiration

What I have learnt:

This task has aided me massively in thinking more in-depth about my digipak and poster. I have looked at possible techniques I could use and have also come to conclusion about what panels to use these techniques on. One thing that I noticed during the production of this presentation was that all or most of the background images on the single covers were in black and white. Therefore, I will make sure that all my images used for the digipak and the poster are formatted in black and white because the effects that I looked at stood out and looked much more interesting on a black and white image. Now that I have obtained the images for the digipak tasks and I know what effects I am going to include, I will need to start thinking about how the two will combine together. Consequently, during the week I will aim to practice and play around with the ideas that I have so that my idea is fully developed by the time that I need to produce my final digipak and poster.

Editing (20th Nov)

Wall Of Glass- 2nd Cut (all performance) from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

With all of our footage filmed, our attention has swiftly turned to the editing process of the video. We have already created the first cut which simply includes long cuts from our performance footage to get an idea of how easily matching the videos to the song are and what it generally looked like. In today's double period, we decided to advance our original cut further by splitting up the long clips and introducing a variety of shots. This was important because we need to include as many shots as possible to follow the tempo of the song. This lesson went well because we were both suggesting ideas and places for new clips to go and they could be easily inserted without ruining the lip syncing by simply putting the clip on top of the original timeline. This works because the video highest on the timeline takes priority and thus made the editing process much easier. Above is a screenshot of how this works and an updated version of our video and I believe that it is starting to come together and will look professional with the footage that we filmed yesterday incorporated. Our next focus is sorting out the first section of the video where we are quickly cross-cutting between two long takes, Ryan walking into the studio and Tom walking towards the water edge. This is crucial in the success of our video because it takes place for a long part of the song, it needs to be cut on the beat and it needs to be engaging and hook the viewer. Therefore, editing this to a high standard may take a couple of lessons to get right.

Filming Diary (Narrative - 19th Nov)

We finally filmed our narrative section of the music video today after multiple attempts. We arrived at our filming location at 8:30 am and this was perfect because the sun was up and the lighting was sufficient. As expected, however, we did come across lots of dog walkers because of the nice weather but this didn't really affect our filming because we just waited a few seconds for them to pass. During our filming session that we finished earlier than expected, we filmed much more footage than we needed and included elements that were not on our storyboard and this was effective because this could be included in areas where we are lacking footage. One issue that we experienced today was that our camera would not focus on a phone screen and this was a crucial part of our narrative. Consequently, we resulted back to filming on our iPhones just for this shot and this was much more effective because it picked up the screen a lot better. Below is a video of the footage that I obtained on my phone...

Narrative iPhone Footage from Alex Hall on Vimeo.

Performance Footage (1st Cut)

Wall Of Glass- 1st Attempt from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

Above is our first edited video. I am happy with the outcome as I found is relatively easy to match lip-syncing to the visuals, which will be a good building block for the rest of our video. The cuts are very long and the video in parts may seem very laboured (particularly the first 20 seconds) as this will later be quickly edited on the beat of the music with our narrative footage. In addition, several times the camera is out of focus and the shots are shaky. As we captured so much footage, it has taken me a while to discover which will work best in our final video. The majority of the video above has been taken from one SD Card, so the video will become much faster and the variety of angles should improve dramatically by the next cut. Some key aims for the next cut that we produce are...

• Faster/shorter cuts 
• Remove poor quality footage 
• Add some narrative 
• Wider range of angles- take from other SD Card

Digipak Photo Shoot

...

Click squares for better viewing

The images above are ones that were taken on my phone at the narrative location for my digipak and digipak poster. Because of the awful weather on the 17th of November when we were supposed to film, we decided that it would be a good idea to take images for our digipak whilst we had our performance actor with us. This meant that the trip would have been worthwhile because we would have needed to come back to this location to take these images anyway. I also took a variety of images on the camera that we had with us but we had difficulty sorting out the lighting and resulted back to my iPhone. None of these images have been edited but some have been touched up from my photo gallery on my phone. When you press the button in the top right corner the image becomes clearer and more vibrant making dull images look normal which worked well for some of the ones that I took. Even though we took loads of pictures, there are still two images that need to be taken for my digipak, a bottle smashed/un-smashed and a picture of my actor stood in a doorway, which will be taken at an alternative location.

Filming Schedule (Narrative - 19th)

As displayed in this screenshot, the weather for Sunday is overcast with very little chance of rain. We are going to film at eight o'clock in the morning because Tom has other commitments in the afternoon, we want to avoid any chance of the public interfering with our filming and the lighting should be at its best at this time. Taking these three elements into account, we should be able to film all of our narrative section well and at a high quality with no issues.

Footage From 2nd Shoot

Weds Nov 17th Footage from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

Here is some raw footage from the 16th. Some of the footage is practice shots, which we re-shot straight after, however, it will help us show what shots may need more time invested in than others. We are happy with what we captured and will recreate the shots as similar as possible when we re-film. One particular shot that we were happy with was long tracking shot at the start of the video which looked very natural and professional. The lighting issue becomes noticeable towards the end of the video and gets progressively worse and this is what we need to try to eliminate in our filming on Sunday the 19th.

Filming Diary (Narrative - 16th Nov)

We began filming with good lighting and with the sky clear but about half an hour later the lighting was terrible and it started to rain. We decided, despite having all the equipment and actors, that is was not worth continuing as the footage would be poor quality. Another minor setback we faced was that our previous narrative actor, Joe, decided he no longer wanted to be part of our project. This was incredibly frustrating as all of our previous footage was now useless and we needed to acquire a camera from somewhere else. We decided that both of us would step in and act in our video meaning that we will need to be clever when filming sections where both of us are in the shot. Luckily, we are building up to a confrontation rather than acting it out which means that we only need a couple of shots that should be fairly simple to film. We will re-shoot on Sunday 19th November where the weather is likely to be much better. The images below demonstrate the issues that we had and the one at the bottom is a screenshot from some footage that we filmed on the day. The actor cannot easily be viewed, rain on the lens and the camera itself became an issue and the entire location looked completely different to when we first arrived.

Digipak Practice

For this that was taken at the performance filming day, I have introduced two forms of my logo. Out of the two, I think that the first image works best with the border around the logo as it gives it a cleaner and professional look. However, in the other image, the logo doesn't look as good because it was made on powerpoint. If it was made in photoshop, The white edges would be removed and all the black elements would change to white so that you could see it better and I believe that this would work well. The image itself is one that I had not planned and that was taken in the moment. It links nicely with the genre as Indie posters usually feature people other than the artist and things that made the picture seem normal. For example, in the picture, the camera is set up on a tripod which makes the situation seem spontaneous which is a good effect that I may try and incorporate into my digipak. Overall, this task has helped me think more about what my digipak is going to look like and give me a rough idea of what the logo and images look like together.

Logo Developement

I have decided to develop my logo because of the main reason that my original one was too simple. My first design simply consisted of the text and logo without any border. However, for my new design, I have put a thick black border around the logo and text by using the rectangle tool and created a shadow effect by making a same sized rectangle and positioning it slightly away to give off a shadow. I believe that these additions have made my logo look much better and more professional because it looks much more advanced. However, even though it looks better with the border and shadow, artists from the indie genre rarely have these features on their logos. This could be an issue because it could mislead the audience about the genre of the artist but the genre should be made clear by the font and logo that I chose carefully to link with the genre.

Task 25: Filming and editing schedules for the video and ancillary tasks

What I have learnt:
By making a Calendar for the foreseeable future, I have a clear plan and structure for when I need to complete certain tasks. I will do my best to follow this as much as possible as I need to complete these tasks accordingly to make sure I don't fall behind and turn my attention towards producing a good quality final product. This has also shown me that i will need to take time for my digipak and digipak poster and they need to be of a high standard if I want to achieve a top grade. I have panned accordingly for this by allowing time to thoroughly plan these tasks before I eventually undertake them for real. I have set some deadlines which me help me edit, allocating time to make multiple cuts before we develop our final cut. This is because we can constantly get people to view our latest product enabling us to quickly alter the music video. We will use a Facebook messenger group chat to help us arrange all aspects of the video, including who is bringing specific items and what costume needs to be worn by our actors. Specific dates have been arranged for this but the sooner we contact our actors the better as they are less likely to be busy or have other plans for the day we want to film.

Task 24: Photo Shoot Planning (Ancillary Tasks)

The pictures below are roughly similar to the ones that I will take of my actor in the narrative setting...

Side 1 (Front Cover)

This image has not been edited but it is a rough idea of the image needed to be taken at another location and with a different actor. The real image will be taken at this distance and I will need to ensure that there is light behind the character with little lighting in front of him. If this effect is not fully achieved I will be able to alter the photo in photoshop to exaggerate the light behind him.

Side 2 (CD Page)

This image is a long shot of the surrounding area and this will be replicated at our narrative location, Severn Beach, as the setting is scenic and picturesque. I am unsure whether it should be in black and white at this time but I will decide this when I start the make my digipak for real.

Side 3 (Back Cover)

This image is similar to the one that I will take for my final product. I will take pictures of both smashed and not smashed bottles so that I have a choice of what I want to use. This image would suit a black and white theme and this may be incorporated in the digipak. I chose to feature a bottle in the digipak tasks because it links with the indie genre and would not be seen on a pop digipak, clearly showing to the audience the genre of the music. 

Side 4 (Inside)

I will take both of these pictures again when I am at the narrative location for variation. The close up works well because it reveals the actor clearly. However, the extreme close up of his eye provides me with opportunities to demonstrate my photoshop skills as I could format the image in black and white leaving clour in the eye. This would look professional and would be more engaging than the close-up. I will need to ensure that the lighting is good when this picture is taken to make editing in photoshop easier.

Side 5 (Inside)

This image will be identical to the real thing but the character will be looking at the River Severn and the Severn bridge, interesting backdrops. The actor will also be positioned in the left-hand side of the frame due to the rule of thirds which states that images of objects placed into the centre of the shot are less boring than those that arent.

Side 6 (Inside)

The actor will have his back to the camera as seen in the image above but his head will be slightly turned towards the camera and his eyes will either look straight forward or to the ground to create an edgy feel. The Severn Beach backdrop will still be in the background but not as much because of the close-up nature of the shot.

What I have learnt:

By thoroughly planning how each panel will be created and what images need to be taken, I will be able to easily take these pictures whilst at our second narrative filming attempt. I have particularly taken into account things like lighting and positioning of my actor in the shot as I think that these are crucial elements in the success of my digipak. For example, lighting is likely to be an issue for my front cover image and this needs to be perfect because it is the panel that will be looked at the most. In addition, my actor will never be in the centre of the shot at a level angle in any image which is an important factor because it is likely to engage the audience more. All in all, this thorough planning has put me in a good place to take avariety of images to enable me to experiment on Photoshop before I make my final product.

Practice Shots (Performance)

Practice Shots (Pirate Studios) from Tom Cornock on Vimeo.

Before we started capturing our main footage we practiced in several ways to avoid errors and affecting the quality of our videos. For example, we looked out for...

• Auto Focus/Camera Setting issues 
• Dust on the lens 
• Lighting Issues 
• Quality of our actors lip syncing (offer advice if possible) 
• Testing the similarities between the two cameras

The majority of our clips have no major issues. We slightly adjusted camera setting to improve the lighting but the studio was very well lit so little change was needed. Our actor was also very competent and confident as an actor which sped up the process of tuning minor issues. We adjusted the camera focus settings throughout the shoot (using manual focus as well as also select). This footage was crucial on our filming day because it enabled us to rectify any issues and make sure that everything was in place.

Filming Diary (Performance - Nov 11th)

Today we filmed for the second, this time at a indoor studio location for the performance side of the video. Overall, filming went well. We booked the studio 1-4 and found this the perfect amount of time needed to set the equipment up and film carefully and considerably. I think that we captured a variety of good footage, not facing any major issues along the way. We used two cameras (each equipped with tripods) to gain more footage which will without a doubt improve the outcome of our final product. The only minor issue we had at the shoot was a technical one. One of the camera SD Cards corrupted but all of the footage was saved on the laptop so for the last hour of the shoot we were limited to one camera. We got all of the song lip synced and filmed- on tripod completely and also the majority handheld in separate clips. This should give us plenty of adequate footage to work with. Please see the images above to show the equipment we used and how we set up for filming on the day. We also developed a checklist for the day so that filming went as smoothly as possible...

Location visit (Performance)

From this visit, we realised that the studio would be perfect for our performance stage of the music video. The studio was a good size and didn't look overly glamorous which is perfect for our genre. The room included a drum kit, adjustable lighting, amplifiers, speakers and a mic. All of these items meant that the room looked like a real studio adding quality. Because of how well the room and location looked, we inquired about pricing and found out that it was £30 for three hours which was great value for money because all of the items pictured in the images above are included in the price.

Narrative change

After reviewing the footage of our first attempt at filming our narrative section of the video, we have developed a new storyline. For this, we got inspiration from the lyrics of the song and noticed that karma is referred to a lot. Therefore, our actor will have stolen a valuable item and the video follows both his and the victims' experience until the two characters meet. This is further developed below...

We believe that this narrative will work much better for multiple reasons. It will be more engaged for the audience, there will be opportunities to build tension and play on the narrative, the narrative is clear but some elements can be hidden and a wider variety of shots can be filmed due to the contrasting locations and characters.

Reviewing first shoot

By roughly positioning our performance shots within the song and in chronological order, we have clearly been able to see if the footage fits in well. However, looking back at it, there are some major issues that may cause us to refilm this section...

• The narrative lacks a structure and is not very engaging - The character does very little and we believe this brings the quality of the footage down. As a result of this, we will need to change and develop our narrative section for the grade that we want to achieve.
• The lighting is dull - When planning the video, we thought this would look good but the contrast in lighting between the narrative and performance would be too severe and would look out of place.
• Lack of variety - Most of our shots are taken from the same angle, level with Joe positioned in the center, and this  looks dull. We also use too many mid shots which are a very standard angle and are not very difficult to film.
• Shaky footage - We filmed the early parts of the video using a tripod but didn't really follow this through during the whole filming stage. This reduces the quality of the video because it is noticeable as a viewer and takes the attention away from the action being displayed.

Consequently, we have decided that we need to completely refilm this action of the video because it simply isnt good enough.

Task 23: Creating a Brand/Artist

Task 23: Creating a Brand by Alex Hall

What I have learnt:

This process has enabled me to come to a conclusion on my logo and font and I am happy with the outcome. I have chosen this particular font and logo because of their simplicity which means that they will easy to replicate and memorable for the audience. Also, I spent a lot of time on this aspect of the branding because the artist's name will be likely to be the main focus of the digipak and poster. I have clearly shown in the presentation how I have developed for my initial ideas to my final decision and I am happy with the way that the logo links with the artist's name. My first thought was to incorporate the initials of my artist as this would provide me with the foundations to develop the idea. In the end, I decided that simplicity worked best here and I believe that I developed a professional looking logo. When choosing a logo, I constantly took into consideration the stereotypes of the genre. For example, the triangle shape featured in Bastilles logo and all of the artists I researched usually had bold text in capital letters. Therefore, I have been able to create a strong link with the indie genre which is ideal because the audience will easily be able to recognise the style of music. By completing this task, I have become immersed in my branding and have now started to think about concepts/photoshoots specifically for the digipak.

Contacting Our Actors

Luckily, both of our actors were good friends of ours meaning we could easily contact them which was helpful to us. Also, they both replied in short time which was appreciated because it meant that if there were any issues, we had enough time to solve them. However, both actors were available on the times we suggested and there were no issues.

Joe Cowell (Narrative Actor):

Ryan Tyler (Performance Actor):

Booking The Studio

We have decided to film the second section of our video (Performance) this Saturday. We have chosen this local studio due to easy accessibility and the wide range of items available in the room that we have booked. We will use the equipment provided, but only to add variety to shots. We will not have anyone playing the instruments, e.g. drums as we feel this would look forced as none of our actors can play them and we don't know anyone who can. The only concern may be the lighting. It is important for us to get a good contrast between light and dark to give a high-quality look to our video. We are considering taking additional lighting to support us if needed and we should be able to acquire this from the drama department. However, we will be able to adjust the lighting in the room with the variety of colours available in the customisable LED lighting.

Here are some videos outlining the layout of the room...