Album Cover ideas

We have been looking for ideas for an album cover on our digipack and Will came across this video on YouTube explaining how to have a silhouette for an image on the cover. We feel that this would work for our bands image as we under the radar and quite a mysterious Indie band. This video also teaches us how to get a silhouette over a painted background. The painted background would work for us as it empathizes the natures-ck side to us as a band, which is shown in our music video.

Magazine article - 3rd draft

Here is my 3rd and HOPEFULLY final draft for the magazine article after improving upon the style of which it is written in. I have improved upon the way it is laid out, making the text form around the images among it.  

Track List

Steve has been working on a track list for our album. He used The 1975's album cover as a template and put the names of potential songs around the edge of the cover. As you can see each song is numbered in Roman Numerals. It is like this as gives a more ancient, traditional effect to the album cover.

Falling for you - First draft

Here is the first draft of our music video for 'Falling For You'. After showing it to our fellow peers and teachers we got positive and negative feedback:

Positive:

1. A lot of enigma codes so keeps the audience interested
2. Good high quality shots, especially in the water
3. Good range of shots
4. Clever effects where James is swimming
5. Clever cuts on the beat
6. Enjoyed the reverse shot of the water splashing Ben

Negative:

1. First shot is shaky even after stabilizing it
2. Some thought it cut too quickly as it is a slow song
3. Some didn't like the contrast from the swimming pool to the river and the road
4. One beat doesn't cut on time so is out of sync
5. The shot of Ben walking towards the camera is too long

Story board for our first draft

Putting Jake Wynne's advice to the test

After listening to a lecture about filming from music director Jake Wynne back in October we decided to use his advice for filming Steve on the drums. We used a wheeled chair in order to get tracking shots. However the problem we faced was maintaining a steady shot on the camera as the person pulling the chair had to keep stopping due to the surface being very slippery.

Website research

Here is an inspiring website design that James has been looking at for the website. Different aspects of the website are extremely easy to follow as the layout clearly shows the different links to each page at the top of the homepage. 

Website Influences

In order to understand what went into an Indie Website, James thought he would look at the website for 'Catfish and the Bottlemen'. Immediately the black and white theme for an Indie band was shown on the home page and every other page on the website. The influence we took from this website was the merchandise as we were unsure as to what sort of items to sell. However after looking at their websites it gave us ideas as they sold all sorts of things such as:

• T-Shirts
• Lyric sheets
• Bobble hats
• Bracelets 
• Bags
• Hoodies

Sixth shot risk assessment

Here is the risk assessment for our Sixth shoot where we got more close ups of James singing.

Website progress

James has made further progress on our website by updating the photos on the gallery. We showed it to other media members and asked them what they thought about it. They thought the photos were good however they wanted more consistency in the type of photo next to one another. For example the green screen photos should be next to one another than far apart. 

Magazine article second draft

In the second draft I improved upon the content, making the words more suitable for a magazine article, whilst including on the amount of content. However the problems I'm facing is making the the writing a suitable size to read as its came out too small when printing it. Also the detail column has too bigger spaces between each bullet point.

Music Video - First draft

We showed the first minute of our music video to our teachers and our fellow media students and then got feedback as to what they thought.

Positives:

• I enjoyed the blood trickling on the first shot as it immediately got my attention and made me question what was going on
• Loving the effects, makes it looks very professional especially the opacity fades
• Good range of shots
• Enjoyed the music cutting on the beats

Negatives:

• The first shot could be a bit longer and also the shot needs to be stabilized on Premier
• Some shots don't cut on the beat, making it inconsistent 
• Some shots need to be slowed down to match the pace of the music  

Website analysis

Here James made a brief Slideshare to analyse ALT J's website, this was a band we looked to use for inspiration.

Website analysis from BenClifford

Magazine article - First Draft

Here is the first draft of the magazine article. I showed it too the group and got feedback as to what what they thought about it. The main thing that needed improving was the amount of dialogue as there wasn't enough. However the dialogue that is there was approved. I now need to include information about the song as to where it stemmed etc

Half way evaluation Interview

Interview research

We needed to do an interview of the band together to show on our halfway evaluation presentation. This meant we needed inspiration as to how to go about doing our interview. We decided we would have the questions coming from behind the camera rather than showing the person questioning and have it free flowing so it wasn't edited at each question.

Digipack Design

Steve is in charge of making the digipack and has been coming up with some potential ideas for it. We like the idea of having a black and white theme to keep with the sinister image.

How to be a good performer

As well as media, I have taken Drama as an A level. I am very keen on making my performance as believable and as realistic as possible. Therefore I done some research into how to be a good performer. I found the following things:

1. Be free. Try and be as natural as possible, therefore keep your limbs free.. DON'T BECOME ROBOTIC
2. Display a range of emotions in your face
3. Become the character
4. Believe in your abilities to perform

Website planning

James has been in charge of the websites design and we have decided to to follow suit with bands that are similar to us. The websites are neat and tidy and give information about the bands, tour and gig dates. We decided that our website would:

1. Show where we're touring
2. Give information about the band
3. Have a gallery
4. Look Professional 
5. Promote the band
6. Have links to our social network sites

Digipack and magazine Photo shoot

In order to improve upon our magazine article and website we needed to get more photos for it. So today we went out to get photos of the 3 of us that we could use. We used the a slideshare that explained how to capture the best images by using shapes as templates. The triangle rule stated that in each corner there should be an iconic image. Therefore we placed each person in one corner of the triangle.

NME Magazine article

For our magazine article I decided to follow this style due to its basic nature. As you can see the layout is extremely simple to follow making it easier for me to recreate. I like the fact that the image of the artists stand out the most as it overpowers the writing due to it taking up over half the page. We realize that our audience don't want to be reading too much writing so that is why I chose this style. However we do need to write information on the band and this style gives us a substantial amount of room to do so.

Halfway Evaluation edditing

As our presentation for our half way evaluation was filmed, I was in charge of editing the it. As I hadn't edited in a while I faced a few challenges. The main challenge I found was using the software 'Screencastify' as it is completely new to the school so it took a while getting used to. The software allows you to record everything you do on your screen without using a handheld camera. The issue I had was finding a way it would let me upload the footage into Adobe Premier Pro as it wouldn't save as an accessible video to which I could edit. As it wouldn't save I resulted to using still images and voice overs to present our evaluation.

NME Magazine research

As I am recreating a magazine article from NME, I looked at what to include in the main body of text. I found out that most articles spoke about basic facts to do with the band. They mentioned things like when and where the banned formed, who created the band and also things like tour dates etc. The font is basic as well, being Roman Times Numeral to keep a professional edge.