Filming - Ellie's hosue

We had decided long ago that that we would use Ellie's house for the scenes when the girl in our story takes the guy home. The shots we had to get were the ones of Nikki and I walking up the road and in to the house, us going through the front door (view from inside the house),  us two walking up the stairs and then Nikki taking me in to 'her bedroom'. This would be the last scene in the narrative section of the video. We were going to film this in day light when we arrived, but after taking a couple of shots we decided to come back later as you could clearly see day light through the blinds and had no way to blacking it out. Once we came back later when it was dark, we started to film. We filmed the shot of Nikki and I walking in to the house. We did a few takes of this. One where Tom would pann the camera and follow us as we walked up the street, on to the drive and up to the door. The next was each bit individually without any movement. After finishing that shot we had a close up of Nikki unlocking and opening the door as if she were drunk. We only took one shot of this as we were running out of space on the camera and didn't think we would use this shot in the final production anyway. The next shot was coming from inside the house. We had Tom and Ellie at the end of room opposite the front door filming Nikki and I walking in. After doing a shot or two of this we realised, due to the light and the reflection in the window, you could see Tom and Ellie with the camera. To get around this we had to move the camera back a bit so that Ellie and Tom could start recording and then hide in another room adjacent to the camera so they wouldn't be seen. During this shot we knew we had to act drunk so as we walked in. Nikki threw her shoes to the ground and i 'tripped' over the door whilst entering the house. Nikki then did the clasic drunk 'shh' action where she slammed her index finger to her lips in an over exaggerated fashion. The next scene we filmed was Nikki and I walking up the stairs. We did 4 shots of this to see which would be the best angle/view. We had one coming from the bottom of the stairs looking up at Nikki and I staggering up the stairs. We did one from the top of the stairs looking down at Nikki and I from a high angle. The third was handheld and looking through the bars of the stairs panning upwards to give some movement, and last but not least we rested the camera on the stairs whilst Nikki and I individually placed our feet in front of the camera in an extreme close up as we walked up the stairs. The last shot we then had to film was the one where Nikki would take me in to Ellie's room and as i followed, i would close the door behind us. We did a couple of takes of this from a low angle perspective which only focused on our feet which then tilted upwards to see me turn around and shut the door behind us. We also did a couple of which the camera was level just to get a couple of different views for us review afterwards. During this we then came up with the idea of somehow making it more clear and the guy and girl were going to have a one night stand. At this point i came up with the idea of Nikki taking off her coat as she's entering the room, and then once she's in and out of sight, she then chuck an item of clothing at me to which at this point, i would turn around, wink at the camera and close the door. This meant changing our camera angle which wasn't an issue as it also gave us another/different shot to film. This day was successful as we accomplished what we had set out to do, film all of Ellie's house. We came up with good ideas along the way and got a lot of different shots and angles which we could then review and see which fits best in the final video.

Filming - Performance 2/2

The second time round of filming the performance went really well. After reviewing the shots we had done last time we knew exactly what we were doing with the lighting, actions and setting. This meant we could go straight in to filming which is what we did. After reviewing the shots, Tom and I saw that we needed more camera movement in our shots so we planned out shots to fix this. The first shot we did was another shot from outside the garage but making sure the garage was semitrical and obvious it was actually a garage. Also we added all the lighting this time as we learnt that we needed all the lighting possible. This wasn't a problem as as the band was setting up, Patrick, Tom and I were setting up the camera angles. After this shot we went on tho the movement shots. For this we had Patrick walking across the front of his garage following a semi circle we had marked out. By doing this we got the movement in and lots of angels our our band. After a couple of takes of this, we decided to move on to getting lost of high angles of the band. We first did a take of Patrick climbing on a ladder and filming at a high angle in the corner of his garage. We did this to block out some of the shadows as we were having some problems with that the last filming. Also by using the high angle, it makes our band look smaller and less significant which is the image that we were trying to get across. After last filming session, we learnt we needed as much time as possible so we arrived early this time. This then allowed Patrick Tom and I to look threw the shots mid way threw the filming session and see if we had missed anything significant. By looking threw them we had realised that we didnt have enough shots of Tom and Rob together, or Gareth and Rob together. We then went about ways of trying to find a way to get them together in a shot without moving anything around. The only way we figured we could do this was if we used partricks step ladder to get a high angle shot of them as when we tried a standing shot, you could only see the guitarist and not the drummer. To get this looking good we had to move some of the lighting around so that Rob (drummer) wasn't completely black and you could actually see his face. Once we had done all the bad shots, we knew that we had to move on to solo shots and filler shots. We first got shots of the guitarists close up on the strings and then from down the neck of the guitar. This allowed us to get both of the guitarists hands in the shot playing the actual notes of the song and it looked really good when we adjusted the lighting to make it look low key. After the close ups we got mid shots of the guitarists from high angles and low angles to give us a bit of variaty in our final production. When we moved on to the drummer we had research drum solo's on youtube and looked at the camera angles that were used whilst they were playing. The most common one was a high angle from the corner of room. Doing this was tricky due to the limited amount of space we had in the corner of the room. Despite the limited space we actually got good shots of Rob drumming, however on those shots you can't see the full drum kit but fortunately for us he doesn't need that part of the kit during the solo he performs. Tom then came up with a great shot which he had seen been used in the 'Skyway Avenue' video by 'We the kings'. This was the one where tom zooms in and out of Rob playing the drums but mainly clapping the hi hat. This was another low angle shot that we got with great movement. We realised that we would be using the 'We the kings' video for a lot of inspiration for our performance so we researched it and analysised it heavily before going out to film the second time round, and it payed off. The final bits we had to film was the filler shots. Of this we basically got people tapping their feet, band members looking around, jumping and playing their instuments. One of the shots we got which looked really good was the one of Rob tapping his bass drum with the camera side on. Although we didn't film for long we knew this was going to be a great shot to add somewhere in our final production.

Evalution Of A Digipak

A digipak is an extended CD that offer much more material to the buyer that you would not normally get with an average CD or album. The content of a digipak includes much more pictures and images of the artist, bonus material such as photos, songs, extra information about the artist or songs. This allows fans to be able to see what the artist is like beyond the music and beyond the stage. Digipaks often have more than 2 panels like the average CD. They can vary from 3,4,6 or 8 panels making it more of booklet than a CD. The typical features that a digipak includes are name of the artist, album, track listing, booklet, price, bonus material, website, credits recording information, producer/director, time/place recorded, song writer, images, logo, record label logo, barcode and website address.

Elton John Greatest Hits 1970-2002 is great digipak to evaluate as it has nearly all the features that I mentioned in the first paragraph. The front cover is very basic and shows in clear writing the artist and the album. The text stands out because it is dark writing on a white background, which also makes it very easy to read. Also as there is only one picture on the front cover the viewer it forced to look at either the text or the picture. The picture on the front cover is a simple picture of Elton John. It seems to be in the style of an artistic drawing. As he is wearing a white suit that blends in with the background of the front cover, it draws more attention to his face as that is where the colour is especially the yellow glasses that he's wearing and the hair on his head. Finally, there is a sticker in the bottom left hand corner that says it is a special edition 3CD set. It also includes the names of the Elton John's most famous tracks.

The back cover of the digipak is mainly the track listing of the 3CD's. The writing above the line is the track listing of the first 2 CD's which are also the main CD's. Below the line is the track listing of the bonus CD. This is set out like this to make the buyer see how much bonus content they are actually getting it and that it is worth it. Also below the line, the bar code is situated in the bottom right hand corner. Below this, there is copyright information and information about the digipak such as the rights of the digipak, when the digipak was produced and what lable produced it .

When you open up the digipack, you are first presented with a collage of photos of Elton John. The photos are a collection of old CD covers, magazine covers and interviews, himself performing on stage. These are all photos that were taken throughout his career but between the years of 1970 and 2002. Not only are there pictures of him but there are also pictures of tickets to a gig of his such as Wembley Stadium and also a $1 note with a picture of him on it. This collage allows the viewer to see a few of the memorable things that he has done in his career. It also shows his personality more by the type of photos that he has included.

Once these to panels are then opened the 3 CD's are then shown. They each have a photo on them of Elton John at the different stages in his career. You can see this by how different he looks in each of them. The CD slots are white just like the front and back covers. The CD's are black as well. This is the colour scheme throughout the digipak which makes it look very sleek and professional. On the very right panel there is a 40 page booklet containing photos and information about his career. It also contains information about his most famous songs and how/where he found the inspiration to write them.

The 40 page booklet is effectively an inlet for fans to see Elton John not only when he's performing, but also when he's backstage, touring, or just at home. The booklet provides extra information about the artist and the songs with many photos of him doing the thing that he loves most.

Idea for one of our DigiPak's

This was one of my ideas for the DigiPak. After looking at the Avenged Sevenfold digipak and seeing that they were animated characters, i thought that it would be worth a shot if i tried to create something like that. I was looking around on different programmes i could use to create this and found a couple online that would allow you to create your own avatars. I got each individual actor we used and dressed them according to what they were wearing the day of filming. After that it tried to include some intertextuality and binary oppositions using the props each character has. The one on the left has a halo representing innocence whilst the beer in his hand represents drugs and the background behind him represents crime. I tried using intertextuality by using the props on the next two guitarists. The middle-left one is wearing a top hat, much like the gutarist Slash from the band Guns N' Roses. The next avatar to the right has devil horns and a tail, this represents the guys from ACDC as they have one of them dressed as a devil on the album cover 'Highway To Hell'. The last avatar on the right has simply his drum sticks in the way most punk bands have their instuments out like on the album covers of Blink 182 'The Mark, Tom and Travis show' and Bowling for soup's album 'Rock On Honorable Ones!!' The background idea came from a conversation Tom and I had about what we could do for our DigiPak and thought of the idea of a mugshot. Unfortunately this seemed to be a tricky task to pull off so i thought that instead of waste that idea that i could include the background on to this picture. We got this idea by looking at CD covers such as Busted's album 'Busted'. After creating each individual charachter and chosing the right background, I had to combine all the pictures together to get the final product. I did this using simple programmes such as 'Paint' and 'Microsoft Word' to layer them on top of each other to create the final product. I did this by cropping each image on paint and copying them over to microsoft word so i could format the picture and make the background transparent enabling me to successfully layer them on top of each other. I then had to resize each individual avatar to make it look more realistic by having us at different hights. Then finally after correctly getting each avatar inline witheach other and resizing each one, i was then able to layer and save my final version of the DigiPak. This DigiPak i created could be used for the inside cover of the booklet. This image could be spread out over the 3 pages of the booklet.

Filming - Performance (1/2)

The first time we actually filmed performance, i thought it went better than expected. Although for most of it we were still figuring out where things should go and the where the lighting should be, we got some really good shots. As we didn't have a lot of time to film that night we couldn't review any of the shots whilst we were there. This meant that we had to count on patricks camera work to make sure the shots looked good. Me, Tom and Patrick then came to a decision that we should do shots with and without all the lighting just so we can compare the two and see which one looks better on the computer. We first did it with all the lighting but there was only one problem with that, the light was too bright on my face. We then tried it without all the light and that made the performers look better individually but the lighting on the setting was too low key. After uploading it on to the mac, we got people's opinions on which they think looked better. Ultimately the shots with all the light used won the vote. Fortunately on the day, we had done most of the filming with all the lights so we didn't have to re-film anything. We had filmed a lot of close ups, high angles and mid shots. We had full band shots, and a lot of individual shots of each person playing their instrument. We knew we had to get some movement in our shots so Patrick started to walk round the garage with the camera getting different styles of shots of each person as we played the song over and over again. He got some good footage which we are using in our final production. When we came to look at the image we all realised that there was too much movement going on from the actors. We realised that in comparrison to other videos, you don't see as much movement as we first thought. We came to the agreement that next time we filmed, I would have to be always facing the front, holding the microphone lower and not as much jumping, and the two guitarists would have to try and face the front rather than go in to the center and face/dance with each other. We didn't get a lot done in this first session of performance in terms of filming and what we could use, but we did get a lot done in the way of preparing for our next session. We were limited in the amount of time we had as Patrick had work, but as we were using his garage we had to end the day early. We only filmed about 15 minutes of performance this day as each one of us had to do other tasks as well. Patrick and the other band members (Gareth and Rob), helped Patrick fix all the equipment and organise the garage to look like this urban, underground location where our band would practice. Whilst they were doing that, Tom and I were collecting all the different lighting that Tom's dad was supplying us and Tom's applifiers for the guitars to make the scenery look more realistic. The only thing i could say that i wish we did differently was go down a bit earlier to have more time to film but even that was out of our hands because we needed the natural lighting to be dark. Overall i think this first day of filming the performance was highly successful as we found out exactly what lighting we needed and where everything and everyone should be. This then gave us an exact idea of what we needed to do when we came here again so that we could plow through without any interuptions.

Filming - Walking home

The Walking home scene was the first bit of filming that we did for our final project. This was because we were filming close to christmas and the town's lights were being switched on in a matter of days and as we needed the high street, so we had to get it out of the way. For this bit of filming it was Tom and I that went out to film with our other main character (Nikki). Tom drove us up two up to the pub where we started filming. After doing a couple of shots we realised we were goig to have a few problems. We were filming on a Thursday night so we thought it wouldn't be that busy outside the pub, it was. This was a major problem as our Walking Home scene is meant to be set around 1 AM so there wouldn't be many people or cars about. The other problem that we came across was the lighting. We had very limited ways of how we could change the lighting. We had could use torches and lamps but we figured that they wouldn't be powerful enough to make a difference, also we only had Tom from the group meaning that he would of had to do the lighting and camera work. In the end Tom changed a couple of settings around to turn the camera to Night Mode making a massive improvement on what we had before. The only problem with this was in some parts of the High street it was too light or too dark so we had to keep switching the settings back and forth. The next couple of shots were us walking through the high street (turning the corner and kebab shots). We didn't have too much trouble filming this but obviously there were people and cars again meaning we had to wait a while before we could actually do a couple of shots. We wanted to get the iconic kebab shot in as that pretty much sums up a night out on the town (the image we wanted to create). Unfortunatly none of us had any money on us so we couldn't film us buying/eating a kebab so we had another idea. I went in to the kebab shop and explained to them that we were filming for our media A level and we needed their assistance, I then asked if we could have one of them throwing me out of the kebab shop or shutting the door behind me to make it look as if I had been in there causing trouble. One of the employee's seemed to like the idea but unfortunately the boss wasn't going to allow it. This meant we had to get a shot of Nikki and I simply walking past the kebab shop. The next shot that we planned to film was an extreme long shot of me and Nikki gradually walking closer to the camera down a rediculously long lane. On the way we would be skipping, falling over, laughing, hugging and anything else stereotypically drunk people do. This bit of filming was a mjor problem. First of all we had a football team do their fitness training down this path so we had to wait for them to finish, we then had 2 couples walking down the path as we were filming, then cats walking past and generally anything else you can think of came down this path.This meant going back and forth a lot of the time, we then ended up giving up so we went from half way. We are nbow going to do this in a stop motion kind of style as mid way through our walk we heard someone else coming so we had to semi jog to stop them from interfearing with our shot. The last couple of shots we got on this night were in the park. We had me and Nikki holding hands on a swing, hugging on a bench and the classic spin around looking in to each others eyes shot. The main issues with all of these was the lighting. In a park, with only one other person there turned out to be quite a tricky task to sort out the lighting. In the end we just hoped that the camera's night mode would be enough. After looking back on the clips we saw that we could use the swing shots as they were quite clear, and we could use half of the spinning around shots (where the background was light) but unfortunately unless we can edit the bench shot, we may not be able to use it due to the poor lighting. The final shot  we did was the kissing shot. This won't actually be the shot we use as we need to edit it and slow it down for it to actually fit in to our video the way we want it to. From this experience we learnt that you really do need extra lighting to get all shots exactly the way you want, we also learnt that  we needed to time our filming better so, if we messed up, we could go and re-film and a later date. However i thought that apart from the lighting on some shots that most of the recording we have are very successful.

Avenged Sevenfold DigiPak (taking ideas)

The last blog i did was about the 'Avenged sevenfold' DigiPack. After analyising it i thought to look through it and see what our group could take from it. In the booklet i saw that band had animated pictures of themselves which set up one of my first ideas of having pictures of our animated (maybe using the southpark engine). Layout of the inside CD cover also interested me as it's the band logo printed alll across the 3 folded pages. This gave me the idea of having a band member doing something obscure across each of the pages. And last but not least the CD's. The CD's have relevent images to the band name and album name on it.  I'm not entirely sure of what we could print on the CD's but patrick liked the idea of a band photo, So far that's what we're aiming to do untill someone can come up with alternate ideas. With countless bands doing something along this line we would have to make it different somehow, after a couple of discussions we thought we could have an idea of 3 of the members acting seriously but with the final member doing something different. These ideas aren't set in stone but this is what we will be working towards untill maybe one of us comes up with another suggestion.