A2 G324: FINAL MUSIC VIDEO PROMOTION

FINAL MUSIC VIDEO PROMOTION:

This is my final music video promotion.

A2 G324: FINAL MAGAZINE PROMOTION

FINAL MAGAZINE PROMOTION:

This is the final magazine promotion for my ancillary product.

A2 G324: FINAL DIGIPAK

FINAL DIGIPAK:

This is my final digipak for my ancillary.

A2 G324: MAGAZINE JOURNAL

MAGAZINE JOURNAL - 

For the magazine construction I did not have a solid plan for what I was going to create, however, I went with my audience feedback in order to produce a magazine promotion that would appeal.

FIRST DRAFT:

This is the construction on the first draft magazine promotion - I created the using Powerpoint.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

FOCUS GROUP FEEDBACK -

IZZY - I agree with your critical analysis points. I think the magazine promotion looks more like a dance/dubstep genre of music, you need to tone down the colours change up the main font and choose a different image. You are on the right track though!

ELLA - I like the information you have included on the magazine promotion, it looks real and says all the important dates of album release. Maybe instead of overlaying her with black, you could have a picture of her face as your main focus was the artists facial expression and feeling.

TEACHER - It definitely looks too much like another genre. To get full marks you need to show the synergy between both your ancillary products. Your digipak is looking a lot like the R&B genre however, the magazine promotion needs to be changed.

SECOND DRAFT:

This shows the comparison between each magazine promotion. 

MY ANALYSIS - 

IMPROVEMENTS -

To improve the second draft I am going to change the actresses image since she looks like she is sleeping. Once these improvements have been made, I will be finished with the magazine promotion.

A2 G324: DIGIPAK JOURNAL 2

ANCILLARY JOURNAL 2 -

In this blogpost I am going to discuss all the stages I have been through to come up with a final ancillary product. I have had much feedback throughout to help me decide what looks best, and I will need to spend my upcoming lessons working really hard to please my audience. 

INSIDE PANEL:

I found this fairly difficult since I did not want to use the actresses face again. I wanted to try something different and original so I thought the glasses she wore might be a good way to break up the digipak art. Since she wears these in the music video, I could use the glasses as a symbolism of vision.

Since I did not like many aspects of my inside panel - I came to a decision to reshoot for my ancillary. I kept coming to dead ends and finding no improvements with the drafts. Therefore, I will reshoot and see if I can improve the products. 

RESHOOT -

These are a few of the pictures I captured on the reshoot day that will be used in the digipak and magazine cover.

I created the galaxy effect by using a projector at my school. The actress stood infant of a whiteboard so that the image would be vibrant and create a dreamy effect. It was a quick and easy technique to making a picture look 10x better.

DIGIPAK JOURNAL:

I made a journal talking about what I liked and didn't like about my updated digipak idea.

OVERALL THIRD DRAFT -

A2 G324: DIGIPAK JOURNAL

ANCILLARY JOURNAL -

{Voiceover explaining thoughts on Ancillary, how I am going to tackle it and what the style is}

STEP 1:

The image I chose to use for the front cover of my digipak is of the actress sitting on a chair looking intimidating and strong. When researching the RMA's I found that a lot of the album covers presented the female in a bold and powerful way by the use of costume and facial expression. Since my music video primarily focuses on the actresses feelings, this is what I wanted to implement in my ancillary products. 

My main inspiration came from 'H.E.R's Vol.2' album. It is very mysterious yet visually appealing and her audience seemed to like it. This is an image of the from cover: 

The silhouette is very impactful in contrast to the title and background colours. This focuses the attention directly onto the artist - although you cannot see her facial features. I will try it out and ask my focus group for feedback, otherwise, this is the style I am going for. 

PHOTOS -

These are the two photos I took on the day that have a high chance of being used in the ancillary.

I have decided that the image on the left will be used for the back panel of the digipak and the right image will be used for the magazine cover.

CONSTRUCTION OF FIRST DRAFT -

Overall, the first draft for my ancillary front cover was very basic and did not work well with the music video promotion. The background colour was very flat and boring, it needed more colour and brightness, the cover looked dull and would not be liked by my target audience.

DEVELOPMENT -

In order to show how I developed the front cover, I showed what I did step by step on Powerpoint. This way I can see if the outcome looks better than the original.

BACK COVER:

DEVELOPED:

In order to show how I developed the back cover, I showed what I did step by step on Powerpoint. This way I can see if the outcome looks better than the original.

FINAL THOUGHTS -

Overall, I think the front and back cover of the digipak looks much better than the first draft. The improvements made were significant and appealed more to my target audience. However, I still need to add more detailing and possibly change the background colours to see which would look the best. To decide, I will ask my focus group what they think I should improve on, and I will also get feedback from my teacher to help me further.

A2 G324: EDITING 3

FIRST DRAFT IMPROVEMENTS - 

To replace the shots that did not look good in the first draft I had to re film and try out different effects and transitions. This is a side by side of the old shots compared to the new shots:

It is clear that the before shots are lower quality and look less enhanced than the shots on the right. I tried to include a variety of shots in the second draft as this makes the video more interesting resulting in more watches by the audience. I included many slow motion effects and overlays which looked visually appealing. 

SECOND DRAFT - 

FOCUS GROUP:

A2 A324: EDITING 2

THIRD LESSON -

I spent my free time altering the video to my focus groups feedback to ensure I am taking everything into account to make the music video look high quality. Therefore, in this lesson I am primary focusing on finishing the effects that I had in mind and playing the video through to see how well it flows.

FIRST DRAFT:

This is the first draft for my music video promotion -

FOURTH LESSON -

After tweaking the first draft and finalising it so that I could show my focus group, I spent this lesson exporting what I already had. I cut the audio early at the end because I felt like the video dragged out too much. However, I will ask my audience if they thought it looked good or bad. This is how I exported the video:

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK (ENDING) - 

CONCLUSION  OF FIRST DRAFT:

Overall, I think the first draft music video promotion was well put together and presents the location and actress sufficiently. However, there are still many shots and effects that do not look clean and professional. Specifically the wine glass shots. 

The shot looks very basic and easy to film. There was not much of a challenge when creating it and this is not what my music video is supposed to present. 

The music video should leave the audience in thought causing them to watch it again. The wine glass scene could get very boring after a few watches as there is not much to see. Instead I will replace this with more neon signs. 

This shot is very grainy and decreases the overall quality of the music video. I will need to reshoot and film the video in a brighter setting. 

The darker the surrounding light, the harder the camera has to work to find the correct brightness setting. This causes grains and fuzziness around the darker areas in the footage. Therefore, when I re film I will know how to improve from last time.

The video also ends abruptly, so I will smoothen that out by extending the audio and adding more shots of the actress at the location. This was also picked up on by my focus group, so I will need to improve the ending. 

A2 A324: EDITING 1

START OF EDITING:

The very first step before opening up Adobe Premiere Pro is to import all the footage onto the laptop and organise it safely in a folder. The folder should hold all of the footage on the camera, it should not be deleted directly from the DSLR just in case it is needed in the future. It is better to have all the footage rather than the most liked ones. The folder will be called 'Music Video Footage' - easy and simple to find. 

I did not delete the footage of the SD card after importing just in case anything goes wrong with the laptop. Next, I laughed the software so I could create a new project called 'Music Video Draft 1'. All the footage was then imported into the library so I can begin to edit.

FIRST LESSON -

Each lesson is 1 hour, and it takes 10 minutes to set up my laptop and 5 minutes to figure out what I am doing in the lesson. Therefore, 45 minutes are dedicated to editing. 

In the first editing lesson I imported the music and randomly put footage in the timeline just to get an idea of how it is going to look. The footage was imported similarly to the animatic storyboard. This is a quick step by step diagram that shows this visually.

{animatic storyboard and etc}

The lip syncing was not important at this stage since I wanted to focus on the how the video was going to look. Since each video has a different colour in the background, I needed to be careful on where I placed the videos. 

I also wanted to experiment using opacity to create a double layer effect at the beginning. It was important that the effects worked well with the beat of the music and was cleverly edited. This is what I tried to do:

SECOND LESSON -

As I spend free time editing I have finished sorting out the footage for the first draft. Therefore, this lesson, I will be making sure the lip syncing is somewhat in sync so I can see the flow and pace of the video so far. I will also be choosing the effects that I want to include in the first part of the video. 

As shown in my 'Getting Started' post, I tried out different effects that would look appealing for the music video. The one i particularly liked was the 'ghosting effect' therefore, I will add this to a few of my clips.

Most of the effect I have used include the opacity overlay which looks really effective and smooth in my music video. Therefore, I will show the different effects I have included so far.

{video of some effects}

FOCUS GROUP -

A2 A324: GETTING STARTED

GETTING STARTED:

In order to understand the editing stage, I will need to prepare for it by looking at tutorials of how to add certain effects, look at keyboard shortcuts to make the editing a lot quicker and more efficient, and finally research some professional editors and email them for any help of advice.

I think this is an important phase before beginning the post production, purely because the editing could take a lot more longer if you are unsure of the key features of the software. Also, more practice and research will result in a better end product. 

PRACTICE:

This is not the first time using Adobe Premiere Pro therefore, it is not all new to me. However, I have never attempted adding effects or overlays to my footage because it was not needed. In order, to make a professional looking music video, effects and transitions are vital and will need to sync with the music. To practice this I will look at tutorials and then make my own version. 

Youtube Tutorial:

Source - YCImaging

Music Video Effects Tutorial

The four different effects I will be making are:

I am going to practice the effects with footage that I have already shot for my music video - to give an example of how these effects will look. My focus group will then be able to see some of the filming and the first stages of editing.

GHOSTING EFFECT -

BIG/SMALL EFFECT -

FRAME HOLD FLASH EFFECT - 

COLOUR BALANCE EFFECT -

SCREEN RECORDING -

In order to show my focus group the effects I screen recorded the clips while talking over it. This way, I will not need to explain much if some do not understand.

From this, I now understand how simple it is to add quality effects to your footage. 

FOCUS GROUP -

TRANSITIONS -

Next, I will try looking at transition tutorials so I can widen my knowledge of Premiere Pro. However, I do not want this practice stage to be useless so I will make 5 different transitions and ask my focus group which looks most appealing and matches the conventions of R&B.

YouTube tutorial

Source - Steven Van

5 Transition Effects

                                          The four different transitions I will be making are:

CROSS DISSOLVE TRANSITION -

CUT TRANSITION -

ZOOM CROP TRANSITION -

LIGHT LEAK -

SCREEN RECORDING -

In order to show my focus group the transitions I screen recorded the clips while talking over it. This way, I will not need to explain much if some do not understand.

From this, I now understand how simple it is to add quality transitions to your footage. 

FOCUS GROUP -

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS -

As mentioned before, it is handy to know the keyboard shortcuts for the most used commands to speed up the editing process. Not only will this quicken post production, it will also widen my knowledge for the future. 

Link to PDF: https://oit.nd.edu/assets/233837/premiere_pro_tools.pdf

Most of these shortcuts are important and I will need to spend time remembering them. 

CONTACTING PROFESSIONAL EDITORS -

I figured it would be better to contact YouTubers that make Adobe Premiere Tutorials since, they would be most likely to reply if I have any queries during the editing process. Even if they do not reply, it will not affect the next stage. 

These are the YouTubers I have researched and found to be helpful.

I will email the YouTubers further on in the editing process where problems and queries may arouse. 

WHAT I'V LEARNT -

From this I now know how to create a few effects and transitions for my music video and have an idea of where to start for the next stage (post production).