Diary Entry 23

Today we all began to plan for the advert and digipack after completing and exporting our finished rough cut.  Charlotte and Abbie went out to film audience feedback on the album cover drafts, which they will then edit in tomorrows lesson, as well as taking on board the advice given. Charlotte S and Matthew began to draw out advert designs which can later be scanned into Photoshop to develop further. Overall, we feel as a group, that we are coming together and are ready in preparation for the next draft.

Deadline - Rough Cut

We finished our rough cut of the video yesterday before the deadline day. This pleased us as we feel like we have become more organised as a group. We have already planned re-shoots for the scenes we aren't happy with, in the holidays  as well as over the weekend. This way we can get all filming done and plenty of time to edit. Today we are going to draw up some drafts of a advert which will help us kick start the final cut.

Album Artwork Draft

Today was partly spend creating a cover for the cd, however these are just draft as we haven't got a photograph of our performer that we can place on the case yet. We have our top favourites, but Charlotte and Abbie will be getting feedback from our audience tomorrow, helping us decide which one to use. We created them on Photoshop, incorporating the logo we previously created, making it easier for us to experiment with positioning and fonts. 

Diary Entry 22

We are continuing to edit our footage as well as convert our most recent footage filmed last night. We have shot our end scene and more running clips. We feel like we are almost ready for the deadline, but we will be finished editing. After placing all the clips in the correct order, we will then go on to to add transitions and effects. 

To match the performance and the narrative, we have changed the lighting so that they are both a duller, grey colouring, matching the mood and message of the song. As for transitions and other effects, we want our video to include dissolves and fades to both black and white. 

Logo Development Video

This is a short video of a number of people giving us feedback on our shortlist of logos we wanted to use. We gave them a number of logos and then from that they gave us feedback on what they liked about each logo and what could be improved. They also told us what features of some made them better logos than others we had.

Diary Entry 21

Tonight we are editing a lot of our footage from filming over the weekend as it took too long got convert in our lesson. This has often led us to converting before the lesson, however we did not have time. We are also filming later, which should complete all of our footage for the rough draft. 

Plans For the DigiPack & Advert

We decided that with the rough cut deadline coming up, we should start planning our digi pack and     advert. We will be using InDesign and have already decided on a basic idea for our album artwork. Like similar artists we have analysed, we decided the artwork would follow a certain structure. However we will make a moc up of a few different ideas and get feedback from our audience to choose the best.

Digi Pack Criteria:

- Location: Basic background, perhaps on a vintage style chair, near a window

- Costuming: Same costuming from the performance, as well as the same performer

- Hair & Makeup: Hair down, minimal makeup

- Lighting: Not too harsh, soft lighting

Diary Entry 20

Today we converted and edited our performance footage as well our new scenes for narrative. We will continue to edit after school tonight, until around 6 o'clock when we are filming our night running scene. This scene has been left until last as we wanted to film all major chunks of footage before this scene, which is specifically at night.

After this final scene, we will have completed all of our footage for the rough draft. However for our final draft we are considering changing our main character for narrative as we want the performance and narrative side to be more of the same style.

Diary Entry 19

This weekend we have successfully filmed all performance scenes and extra narrative scenes. We decided, after watching old footage back, that we would re shoot narrative, where our character is weighing and measuring themselves. This was due to the fact that the costuming didn't look right, as tighter clothing eg. a vest top instead of a jumper, was more realistic. As well as this, after researching anorexia and shots we could film ourselves, the new footage seemed better suited to our aim. 

We are happy with our performance shots, with after more organisation materialised into what we wanted. Not only did we enjoy filming them, as we all joined in singing, we achieved the camera angles and movement we wanted. After looking at our previous footage, we decided that more movement was needed to keep the stationary performance interesting. We filmed long shots of the song being played in a host of different angles and used the same parts but with movement and focus pulls.

Diary Entry 18

Today we are filming all of our performance scene, ready to edit on Monday. We decided to video the whole song through but at many different angles, giving us more choice when editing. After analysing more performance, we have changed our location to a friends house, which is more appropriate. 

Another thing we looked into more today, was typical behavior of someone suffering from the illness. Although all of us know someone who has faced the anorexia, we thought it would useful to look into it more. This will not only make it easier to be tactful with the subject, but also more realistic. 

Performance Analysis

Alicia Keys - Fallin': To help us in our performance footage, we looked at 3 different videos from female artists who predominantly use piano and singing performance. Firstly we looked at Alicia Keys early video ‘Fallin’. From this we found that the performance was in some sort house/living area which is sparsely decorated. This draws all attention to the singer and the piano. We particularly like the effect of the grand piano in the centre of the room. What we also noticed was the range of different shots on the piano.  Close ups of the hands playing and shots of interesting parts of the piano are used to make it more interesting and draw attention to the professionalism to the performance. The shot begins as a master, showcasing Keys and the piano in the centre of the room. It then goes on to zoom in on her singing, switching to a close up as she begins the song. On the pause where she isn’t singing, a 2 second shot of her playing the piano is introduced, showing the audience what is expected in editing. When singing she looks down, then looks up into the camera at key lines, ‘you’ and ‘blue’, as if she is singing to her boyfriend rather than the audience. Extreme close ups are used, typically to show emotion, something useful for us as we are creating a video on an emotional topic. These are particularly used when she is singing high notes, giving a more intense emotion across to the audience. 

Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles: We decided it would be useful to look at a completely different kind of song with a female performer on piano to give us more variety in ideas, in this case 'A Thousand Miles' by Vanessa Carlton. This particular video interestingly shows the performer throughout the video; however she is also within the narrative, journeying through a variety of scenes with the piano. This video shows the performer playing in a more passionate way with more movement in performance; this adds a sense of passion to the song. We like this idea as it really shows the emotion from the singer, something we need to achieve. Another aspect we liked was the complete range of camera angles and shots used. This keeps the video interesting, instead of one continuous shot. Many of the angles we had already incorporated into our animatic, however it was still useful to see them used in a professional video. For example, we particularly like a bird eye view shot of her and the piano, as well a close ups of her playing the keys. These close ups added a clarity to the video, as on the softer notes with no vocals, the audience a concentrate on the music alone. Extreme close ups on the face are also used, like Alicia Keys video. I think these would be a good shot for us to really expose the emotion within the song. We didn't think the locations of this video would be completely appropriate for our video, not to mention unpractical. Despite this, it is cleverly made, finishing in the garage that it began in, giving a definite conclusion to the narrative/performance. 

Birdy - 1901: The next video we looked at was Birdy’s, '1901'. After previously analyzing the entirety of the video, we then focused on the performance. The video is done on a handheld camera, which is too shaky for the scenes we want to create, however they have a good performance side. Filmed in some sort of music shot, the room has a vintage feel to it, crammed with assorted instruments and old-fashioned furniture. This adds a sense of old-worldly grandness to the shot. This inspired us to change our location for performance. We previously wanted to film in the school hall with a grand piano. However, we decided after this video, we could create a similar effect at a friend’s house. The location has large windows and vintage furniture, as well as the key element of a piano. Birdy’s video has many over the shoulder shots which play with the focus in the shot. The camera does focus on her, but blurs some sort of decoration between the performer and the camera, as if the audience is actually there. We see from close ups of her hands playing that she is fluent with the song, giving the video a professional reliability.

Piano Chords

We decided to help us be more organized, we would give the chords for the piano performance to our performer. After research we came across a simple diagram, which explained the chords were broken up into 4 parts and repeated over the whole song. This is extremely helpful as it will quick enough to learn for a practised piano players making our video more realistic.

Diary Entry 17

Today we have realised that we probably haven't been organised enough when handling performance scenes. Although we found a suitable performer we didn't organise specific details that are nesscary for a good performance, for example we didn't check if she knew the song well. We can take notes from this when completing our final draft, in making our production more effective and organised.

Diary Entry 16

Today we will continue to edit our footage shot Monday and Tuesday. We plan to to film tomorrow, where we hope to get all of or most of our performance footage. We found a suitable performer who plays the piano and has a very different look to our narrative character, keeping the two sides separate. After consideration, we decided it would be effective to film the performance in the drama room at school, on the grand piano. We decided the room will be empty, with no other background detail then the black curtain surrounding her. Not only this, but the room is big enough to allow us to film scenes from above the piano and circle the performer.

Diary Entry 15

We successfully filmed more of our video this evening and added a few extra scenes that weren't on our storyboard in case of needing more footage then we thought. After our preliminary task at the beginning of the project we found that it is better to have too much footage in case of situations such as us cutting certain scenes and needing something to replace it. This preparation will be useful when it comes to editing as we will have more choice if we decided one scene we first like in our animatic, in fact, doesn't work. 

Planning for Filming

We are planning to film tonight the scenes in the house where our character is upset and comparing themself to magazine 'role models' and looking in the mirror. 

Scenes:

Close ups – crying

Sitting in the room crying, upset

Throwing magazines

Scales and tape measure scenes

Looking in the mirror

Props:

Magazines

Mirror

Tape measure

Scales

Location:

Bedroom – needs a mirror

Bathroom – scales

Dining room – table, food scenes

Costume:

T shirt

Leggings

Lighting:

Hazy

Lighting equipment borrowed from school

Diary Entry 14

In today's lesson we focused on editing the main music video and uploading our animatic and audience feedback. As we are progressing we have encountered a few technological problems within Premiere. For example we haven't been able to export some of our audience feedback. Despite this, we are slowly overcoming them and have planned to film again next Tuesday. We decided that filming then and on the next weekend would be more time effective and allow us more editing time. We hope to be finished shooting footage for our rough draft by the end of next weekend. 

Final Logo

After drawing a range of logos for our musician, we decided, after help from our audience which one we wanted. Our next decision came to colour. After a lot of consideration, we decided we didn't want the typical red/pink rose, and after trying block colours from all the spectrum, we finally tried putting a picture of roses in the text. This ended up as our final logo, creating a merge of colour, and keeping it a bit different.

First Drawn Design

Adding Colour

Deciding what the Rose logo would be like

Adding the same colour background to the Rose logo

The Final Design

Diary Entry 13

Today we are doing more editing on our footage from yesterday, as well as getting more feedback for logos. We have decided on one and are using a rose motif to relate to the artists name. We have split the group into jobs to be more time efficient, two people doing editing and two people getting feedback, then editing their work. 

Logo Ideas

Logo Ideas:

These are a few of our ideas for our artists logo. The option highlighted in red is the one that we chose to start with initially, as we discovered it would be the most suited to our musical genre - according to our target audience. We will follow on from this by developing it into a final logo using Adobe Photoshop.

We decided we wanted to have a simplistic image of a rose beside the text, which would make sense considering her name being 'Sienna Rose'. We are yet to put our rose designs into Photoshop, to see which one fits together with the text most effectively. As with all our initial ideas, we will put each imagery ideas with the text, trying different colour schemes and collect feedback from our target audience.

Birdy - Analysis

Album Artwork: The album begins with a smaller version of the artists name, ‘Birdy’, as you can see it is in very small writing in the left hand corner. The text used is not very bold however the design of the text capitals have been used so it stands out a small bit but does not stand out fully. The background theme of the album artwork is a use of pale colours on the wall a contrast of pale blues and whites have been used as a washed out colour on the background a very vintage colours used. The vintage theme of the colours on the background also give people an idea of the type of music this artist has produced. The mise en scene of the artist; the posture of Birdy herself is quite tight as her legs are crossed showing she is stood in a very serious position. Her hair and make up are both very neutral her hair covers half of her face to show she is hiding. The artist has chosen to use a very bright red jumper to highlight the album artwork which makes a stand and makes the album art work stand out. However the skirt she is wearing she has chosen to wear a pastoral pink colour. From this album, I gather that Birdy is trying to portray a very 1940’s image of her music and herself. The album artwork is very plain and a good use of a vintage theme, and the usage of neutral colours which still makes her stand out.

Music Video: You can see here a scene from Birdy’s, '1901' video. This image shows the performer Birdy playing the piano for 1901 throughout the video. Shots of her singing are used to go along with the narrative, the narrative is about a couple who begin to date and the female falls in love with the lead character, however she begins to fade away as he stops noticing her. Like Birdy’s video, we intend to use a female performer, Sienna Rose, and a female actor to perform the narrative. Here are two shots from the video, as you can see Birdy has continued her retro-vintage style from her album artwork to her music video, reflecting the artists stylised approach. These two shots show to vintage furniture shop and a clothes shop. You can tell this by the location of the shops, both of them consist of dull colours and are both very clustered which is a normal theme for clothes shops and furniture shops.The video for Birdy’s ‘1901’ is shot on a handheld camera, although this isn't what we want for most of our video, it includes useful aspects and some good camera work. For example, performance is done solely on a piano with extra shots of the performer singing, something which we can take a lot away from. We particularly like the fact that the narrative and performance are kept separate with a different performer and main character. 

Diary Entry 12

Today we imported the clips that we filmed last night into premier. Before we could import them into premier we had to convert the videos so that they would run smoothly when played on the program.  Once this had been done we edited the clips so they were what we wanted them to be. We slowed some of them down to emphasis what she was doing, and we generally clipped some of them down so that they were the size that we wanted. We could cut out any laughter that may have happened when we were filming, and we could shorten some of the clips that were too long and had bits added on to the end that we didn't need.

The XX - Analysis

Artist: The XX
Album: Coexist

Digipack: This is the album artwork for the xx’s album coexist. It is a fairly plain album cover there is nothing really to it. It is a plain white background with a cut out of an X in the centre. I believe that this is the most important aspect of the album, that the simplicity of it all will draw people in. The X will represent the name of the band more than anything. One of their main songs off the album is “angels” and that as a music video to it. The image/pattern within the X on the cover looks as if it is taken from the video of that song. The song “angel” creating the message of something pure and innocent and the background colour of white backs up that message. It creates a strong powerful meaning, not only to that song, but to the whole album. And it has been done in a very subtle way. The artwork is not big, bold and in your face. It is toned down compared to some other album artworks. It only uses a few colours, that makes it good in that sense and by using a limited amount of colours it still manages to carry a good strong message with it.

In our album artwork we also plan to make it a fairly plain cover. We don’t want it to be a really bad mix of lots of different colours. We want to keep it plain and simple. Similar to this one. We want to use a limited colour scheme, colours that link well with each other and colours that represent the artist and most of all appeal to our target audience. When it comes to creating the artwork we will most likely be conducting a questionnaire on our target audience to determine what colours will appeal to them when they are looking at album artworks on the shelves. And from the results we will choose the colours for our artwork. It is important to us that we appeal to our target audience but also represents the artist.

I think unlike this cover we will have the artist on the cover. She will be the focal point of the cover. We will aim to dress the artist in an outfit that best describes her. One that shows her style with a quick glance. As well as showing what she stands for and what she believes in the outfit will also have to represent our target audience. The artist will have to somehow, in the way she dresses, appeal to her audience in more ways than just her music.

Advert Analysis: This is an amazon advert for the xx’s album ‘heart skips a beat’

The advert is dominated by one main image and the text is placed around that image. It is an image of a back alley which has a large piece of graffiti on the wall. On the floor there are old cables and an old, broken bike. The scene made out in the image reflects the image of their band and appeals to their target audience: gritty, young and down to earth people. Its nothing flash and wildly in your face colour wise, and I think this is done to show the pace of their music.

I think that all of this can be transferred into our music video. We can choose a location that reflects the background of our artist. The scene we set can show what sort of background she came from. It’ll give an indication on what she has had to go through to get to where she is now. We can use a colour scheme that represents her as an artist and will also appeal to our target audience.

The xx  - Angels

This is a song by the xx called 'Angels'. I think that this artist is very similar to the one that we have chosen, Daughter. I think that we can use this video and make comparisons to what we should be doing in our music video. The song is a very slow paced song and that is given off with the fact that there is only one take throughout the video. It is like you are looking at the sky through murky water. All that happens throughout the video is that there seems to be a ripple effect from the water. This could indicate that she is trying to break free from the water and be with that person she wants to be with, but she just can’t quite get there. As there is no people in this video I can’t really comment on the mise en scene that is used. Only that there is the sky as the main location. Which reflects the name of the song. Because in the sky is where the angels live and that is where this person wants to be.

There aren't many things we could potentially use from this video. We will be using a lot more takes than there is in this one. However our takes will be lengthy takes as it is a slow song and it wouldn't fit if there were lots of fast jumpy edits throughout the song. It will be a slow paced video, but not to the extreme that this is taken to. Unlike this video we will be using a range of different camera angles and using different camera movements. We will be using close ups to show the emotion of the actors in our video. Because we want to portray loneliness in the video we will be using a lot of wide/master shots to really emphasise how alone she really is. Also we will use some P.O.V shots to show how she sees and perceives the world. 

Logo Feedback

We filmed our target audience viewing our logos. This helped us choose what logo was most appropriate for our genre of music and what appeals to our audience. After consideration, we chose the best. See above for our feedback. 

Lana Del Rey - Analysis

Artist: Lana Del Rey

Album: Born to Die

Digi-pack - The album artwork for Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’ album makes her name a statement in bold, white writing. It states to the audience that this is who she is and what you see is what you get, with the simplistic font. Similarly the album’s title relates the lyrics and tone of music we should be expecting. The positioning on the name behind her underlines who we are listening to while the title of the album in front of Lana informs the audience of what she is presenting us. In this case her album ‘Born to Die’. This idea subtly states the facts of the album without overwhelming the audience with fancy fonts and decorations. The predominant colours, blue and white, aren’t too bold and balance each other out. Within the mise en scene, her makeup adds a small splash of colour, revealing the glamorous persona the artist presents to the world. The red on her lips suggests that within her genre, Lana is a bit different, and bold in her musical choices. This contrasts the white on her shirt, representing her classical image - unlike many pop stars, she opts for a more classy style. Likewise, her hair is perfectly styled, reflecting the 50’s style she aims to portray. Her still positioning and facial expression reflects her music – moody and slow.  The background seems to be relatable to an everyday lifestyle, with what seems to be a fence and a car against the blue, again linking into the colour scheme. The two tone colour scheme is something we could also try on our own work as it will give the artwork a professional feel without overwhelming the audience with too much colour. 

Video - Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ music video begins with a series of what seems to be home video footage. It gives the impression that the video was filmed in the past and is being viewed as a memory of what was, much like the lyrics in the song describe. The footage, being shot on a handheld camera, relays images associated with childhood, for example a cartoon, and children playing in a pool. The video, for me, seems to try and create a feeling of nostalgia within the audience in order to relate the song to a memory in anyone. Editing is fairly quick for such a slow song, with most scenes being around 3 seconds long. This makes the video seem more authentically like memories - snapshots of images.  The variety of clips could seem random to an unsuspecting viewer, however the overall effect makes a beautiful video. Like mentioned previously, I think this helps to make the video mean something different and personal for everyone. This is something that appeals to us in our video, for example ‘Medicine’ could mean a variety of metaphors for anyone. A recurring character in the video is a blond woman; however her face is always partially covered, again giving the impression that it could be any member of the audience’s memories. Interspersed with scenes of Lana singing, performance is limited to around 3 seconds on each take, much like the narrative. Towards the end of the video, we see shorter takes of flashing lights and police cars, perhaps signifying some sort of danger or a memory that is hazy or they want to forget. Use of lighting is particularly important here, as it makes the footage reflect a memory in a realistic way – blurred and not fully focused. I think lighting could be transferable in our video as we can use it to reflect our characters weakness, or lack of grasp on reality. An aspect of the video which is unusual, is a small snippet of sound on top of the song. This backs up the theme of memories, with the character remembering those few lines with a image. The line itself 'Are you alright?' is relatable to any situations, perhaps not just reflecting the situation literally but the character questioning if they are alright on a deeper level. Although this is an interesting extra to the video, I'm not sure how it we could use a similar technique in our video.

Advert - The advert for her album again reflects her glamorous style, using costuming within mise en scene a key part. The gold jewellery adds a touch of star quality to the advert using expensively branded earrings as we can’t see any of her clothes. This is seen also through her hair, which, like her album styling is perfectly intact. We can see through this that her music will also have this seemingly effortless style to it. Her logo is placed in the left hand corner, along with her album title, in a fairly small size, not taking anything away from Lana’s face. Placed at the top of the page still makes it visible to the audience though and shows the importance of her stage name and album. The plain, light background is contrasted with the red rose in the corner. This again represents the artist’s glamorous, luxe style. A technique we like is the fact that the advert has a picture of her album in the corner with a review number to give an indication the audience should buy it. Props are limited apart from the cigarette which exudes her influences from eras when smoking was seen as ‘exciting’ and ‘cool. This also gives the impression that the artist doesn’t care what others think of her and is a bit rebellious. This is often seen in her musical choices, as she does not fit into the mainstream category of pop.

Daughter - Analysis

Artist: Daughter
Album: The Wild Youth

Digi-pack - We decided it would be a good idea to analyse the work of our chosen artist ‘Daughter’. Although we are planning to make the song our own, we wanted to look into the work of the group so that we could get a feel for the genre of music.  This seemed useful as we can take inspiration from similar artists within the genre of indie/folk pop and create a professional product. The album artwork of Daughter on their EP ‘The Wild Youth’, quite literally takes the title into the picture, using children with painted faces. This use of mise en scene within the photo is the centre focus, turning the children into ‘wild animals’ – in this case a tiger. The haphazard style that the face paint is done adds to carefree attitude associated with youngsters, linking back to the album title. The face paint also simply shows a child being a child – it could be just about anyone getting their face painted when they were young. We particularly like the way the children are innocently portrayed, acting as any one of us could when we were children. This makes the photo relatable to a large audience as many people could see themselves in this kind of photo. The picture shows the boy with his arm around the girl, an indication that they are perhaps brother and sister or share some close relationship. This is to perhaps show that the music on the album is something intimate and can have personal reasons associated with the songs and its lyrics to many people.  It also suggests that the music could remind the audience of a memory from their youth, and the people they were once close to. The simplistic white text adds a sense of purity to the music, implying that the artist wants you to concentrate only on her voice and the instruments. This is why we particularly liked the artist and the music they create, as it is stripped of the commercial side of the music industry and expresses raw emotion. This is something we hope to take on board in our own work, and take precautions not to over complicate and commercialize the video and artwork we produce. The image we want to portray is judged straight off from the album artwork, and we want to keep it simple so that it could universally relatable to many people. As well as this we don’t want to divert from the music or cover up the emotion within the song. We are aiming to build the song up in many aspects and levels so that the audience  can in some way associate with their own lives.

Video - Daughters only video ‘Peter’ is solely performance based, however we can still take away valuable techniques in making something so static still interesting to watch. The performer, Elena Tondra, is seen alone singing and playing the guitar throughout the whole video, meaning positioning and facial expression are highly important as it is all the audience has to concentrate on.  She sings to the camera for some of the song, however, at the line ‘I’ve forgotten what I wanted’ she looks away to the corner of the room she is in, perhaps wistfully, and reassessing what she wants in the relationship she sings about. To add to this she often looks down at her guitar, I think this is not only to concentrate on her performance, but also in sadness, as if she cannot bear to admit to the audience what has happened to her relationship. The video is shot on a handheld camera, however isn’t overly shaky, but enough to express the raw emotion she is feeling. The movement throughout the video tilts up and down between a close up of her face and the guitar. At one point, the camera zooms out, enough to show a mid shot of her and the guitar, as if the moment she is singing about is too personal and the audience should leave her in her element. As for editing, we see what is expected in certain places - on guitar solo, guitar is shown, when she sings, she is shown singing. The video is basically one continuous take, however focuses on certain bits when they should be shown. This is simple to achieve, but even 1 second out of time would ruin the effect. We can take away this editing technique to give our video a more professional feel.



 Advert- The advert for Daughters gig shows their same stylised approach seen in the digi pack. The title ‘Daughter and Friends’ makes the event seem welcoming and open to the audience. This is also seen within their music. The background of the advert uses the same artwork on the front of the album, relaying the ‘wild youth’ effect from the album and music to the audience. Again like the album, they use simplistic white font, differentiating key information in italics. This works effectively and doesn’t overwhelm or bore the audience with too much information. They also use a colour scheme, depicting the blues from the child’s top and colours other parts of the poster to make it stand out. For example the double circle around the date of the event. This is important and will be considered in our advertisement. The list of artists supporting the act, give the audience an idea of what they will be listening to. Another important aspect of the advertisement is the logo at the bottom. This shows the management or venue and again can give the audience an impression of what to expect.

Ed Sheeran - Analysis

Artist: Ed Sheeran

Album: +

Digipack Analysis: I’d say this album overall is pretty eye catching, one of the most noticeable aspects of it is the use of only shades of orange. By using this orange filter on the image you could say the designer has used Ed’s hair colour to his advantage. It almost creates some sort of branding related to Ed, whilst being fitting to his musical approach and styling. The way the colour scheme is neither male nor female dominating, makes it appealing to a much wider audience and would consequently influence more people to pick up his album.

Secondly, the imagery on this album is very simple, yet bold, consisting of only Ed’s face. The way the image is a close up of the artist and is easily recognisable, makes it needless for his name to be included on the cover – which if included may obstruct and draw unnecessary attention to an area of lesser importance. On top of the editing technique of an orange filter, this image has an effect which gives a subtle drawn and sketchy kind of appearance. I’d say this presents the artist as being more creative and individual, and allows his albums appearance to appeal to his teen/indie audience.

An element of this cover that would be something that challenges conventions of the usual, would be the size and positioning of the album name. To begin with, something alternative that’s been used is the symbol ‘+’ rather than the word ‘plus’, which allows the cover to look a lot more interesting and gives the imagery even more dominance across the front. The way the + is positioned in the bottom right hand corner rather than directly centred at the top, compels any potential viewer to scan across the album artwork to find its name.

Music Video Analysis: (Lego House) The first thing you notice when watching this video is the iconic Rupert Grint, known for his role in the Harry Potter films. With many people growing up with him on their screens, he introduces a younger/teen audience toward Ed Sheeran’s music and makes this particular video hugely recognisable.

Following on from the orange filter used on the album, the same colour scheme has been used following on into this video, where as well as the ginger hair, Rupert is also wearing an orange hoodie. This connects both the album and the video and makes them significant to one another.

Ad Analysis: This ad features a mid-closeup of Ed Sheeran; the way he is positioned looking down and smiling makes this advert a lot more welcoming and informal. It shows more of his personality and attracts readers to what it has to say.

The accents of orange have been used as a mode of recognition and branding for Ed, but also connects all of his video’s and the + album as they all contain this particular colour scheme. The lack of massive amounts of text make this advert very simplistic and not overcomplicated; possibly reflecting Ed Sheeran’s personality further and his approach to music.

The use of the album cover on this advert ensures that people will have an image of what it looks like in their mind, in the hope that they will go and pick up the album.

Mise en Scene Planning

Mise En Scene

Tonight we plan to film, so we thought it would be a good idea to plan ahead what mise en scene we will use.

Props 

• Water bottle

Location 

•  Forest/Tree area, eg. The back track, however we will have to be careful not to catch any fences within the shot.

Costume

•  Joggers
•  Hoodie
•  T-shirt
•  Trainers

Hair and Make up

• Hair tied up
• Everyday make up, not too much

Lighting

•  Dark in parts reflecting her mental condition
•  Hazy, blurred reflecting her physical condition

Body Language, Position, Facial Expression

• Running
• Tired, exhausted
• Centre of the shot for most of it
• Close ups from the side

Diary Entry 11

What we will be filming today

Today we shall be filming the exercise scenes for the narrative. We shall be filming these scenes on the backtracks. We are filming here because it symbolizes how she is trying to find somewhere quiet where no one can see her. Also the spot that we are filming on seems as if there are never ending trees depending on the angles that we use. Therefore these trees are symbolic to her never ending battle with the problem she has, that she has no escape from it all.  

Logo Research

Logo Research

Birdy uses a simple sans serif font with the only other detail being the dots within the 'O' and the 'E' . This add a bit more interest to the otherwise plain text. We plan to do a similar sort of thing with our logo, however we would also add in perhaps a motif to match the artist.

Ed Sheerans logo, seen on most of his albums has a kind of typewriter style with a smudged rough edge. This kind of style matches his simplistic, indie style. He doesn't try to over complicate his logo much like his music. To add to this, he uses his trademark paw print, although he has never given an official reason why, it gives a impression of his personality, as it is always seen on his guitar.

This logo is very similar to what we want to achieve. In particular the font is nicely styled to fit the the genre of music. the serif font reflects the artists intricate songs and music and also gives it a glamorous feel.


The XX - This logo very simply states the bands name with the bold white X against the black background. the colour scheme is important here as we get a feel for the genre of music, meaningful, covering quite deep subject. We can take away from this the way they simply present themselves with basic key colours - black and white.

Diary Entry 10

Today we completed our logos for the band. This helps establish our artist and differentiate from the original artist of the song. This goes hand in hand with costuming and styling as we need to create a certain image for the artist. We will then go onto show our target audience these and gain an insight to what they think is most suitable. To help us in our research of logos, we looked at a variety of established musicians and saw how they represented certain aspects of the artist. See further on the blog for analysis of these.

Animatic

Our completed animatic will give us an idea of what our finished video will look like. Of course as the project progresses, we will see changes as we develop and adapt the video to fit our specific image. We added editing techniques such as fades and dissolves which related to the music and fitted to key sound within the song. We think these simple changes made all the difference and give our video a more professional feel.

Planning Over the Weekend

As we approach the weekend we have planned what we are doing to develop our project further. We have decided to finish all of the analysis that will help us in our project and also come up with a logo. We will draw one each then take a vote on Monday. As well as this we are planning to film on Tuesday, this will be the scenes of our main character exercising. 

Costume Planning

We planned outfits, hair and makeup for most of the scenes, for both our main character and our performer so that we can sort these out before we film the video. We thought about how these costumes would fit in with each scene and the context of what is happening. From here we have a basic idea of what we are doing in this aspect of the mise en scene, and we can develop it further as we go on in the project.

Performer

Playing the piano

·        Long hair, straight/wavy curls, natural

·        Beanie - ?

·        Red Lipstick, natural makeup apart from that

·        Parka jacket

·        Casual

·        Boots – ankle boots, black

·        Jeans

·        Cool jumper – knitwear

Main Character

Exercising

·        Trainers – running shoes

·        Jogging bottoms

·        T-shirt

·        Hoodie

·        Baggy clothing

·        Sporting headband

·        Hair tied up, ponytail very scared back

·        No makeup – pale powder, dark under eyes

In the house – eating/crying/television

·        Leggings/Baggy trousers

·        Vest top, baggy jumper – not bright, grey/black

·        Hair tied up, similar to exercising

·        Undone hair, over her eyes

·        Same makeup as exercising scene

Counselling

·        Skinny jeans

·        Hoodie – baggy

Weighing herself/In the mirror

·        Vest top

·        Leggings

·        Black socks

·        Hair down 

Diary Entry 9

We focused on how to make our video professional today, concentrating on mise en scene. This made us think about how we will style our performer as well as the narrative cast. For example, we discussed how our main actress will be dressed and styled in specific scenes such as exercising. This is useful as we can think ahead and make our video look more professionally viable. 

Diary Entry 8

Today we finished our animatic, however found we still had gaps in certain places. From this we will develop our video and find more footage to fit in. We added a few more shots however this still wasn't enough. As well as this we have written more analysis of digipacks and adverts to aid us in our own work. Our next step is to get feedback from our animatic from our target audience. This will help us get a fair idea of what they will think of our video.

Storyboard - Audience Feedback

This is the final product of our audience feedback on our initial storyboard. From it we were given tips on how to improve, and what appealed to our audience. In particular we found that our audience commented on the amount of detail we had put into the storyboard and also how the topic relates to real life issues that teenagers face on a day to day basis. 

Diary Entry 7

Today we finished off the editing of our audience feedback. We compiled all of our clips together into one continuous video. This will help us in the development of our music video by learning what our target audience think of our initial ideas for the video. From this we would be able to make any changes to fit our audiences needs. 

Diary Entry 6

Today we went to find some of our target audience and conducted a series of video interviews with them. In these videos they expressed their views and thoughts on our initial storyboard. From the feedback that we gained from these interviews we can look to change anything that the audience bring to our attention. Once we had collected all the feedback that we wanted we went on to Adobe Premiere and began to put it all together in one video.  

Diary Entry 5

Today we have come close to finishing our animatic, and have found that we need more shots of the main character exercising and running. This will help establish the the story line more and will give us more material to work with.