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Draft Digipack

As the first draft of my digipack, my teacher is pleased with the outcome and only has one issue with the design: Not all the members of the band are in one picture, which makes it confusing for the audience. But since I could not arrange a day when they were all available, I was forced to take separate photographs. 

I used Photoshop to design the digipack as well as the magazine advert and created stars on the front cover of the digipack and the advert using paint brushes tools and erasers and colour balance effects rather than waiting for a clear day to take a photo of stars at night. I merged the image with a photograph I took at Destiny of the band (lead singer) performing. 

I wrote the texts in a serif font except the album title with different sizes and colours.

In the photographs with the members, I wrote their names using this font and cropped the area around the writing using a paint brush with a low opacity/transparency rate.The photograph of the field was taken at the Arboretum in Nottingham where my location was picked and put an artistic style on it to create interest in the picture.

Draft Edit Music Video

This is the draft edit of my music video. I have posted it on Facebook and Twitter and have had feedback from people who have watched it including friends who made suggestions of what I could do to improve on my final edit. The whole editing process took almost two weeks along with other subjects. I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together, because I like the variety of effects and transitions I can put on the video and it brings out my creativity allowing me to explore new ideas and express what the song is about. The only painful bit about editing using Adobe is the time it takes just rendering and encoding which needs a lot of patience otherwise I can often feel anxious about watching the finished draft of any video I've created. Plus there is always room to improve.
Most of the feedback I got from posting the draft video on Facebook was saying that I maybe need less layered shots and need to remove some of the more jerky shots. Others said that there were a couple of suddenly changing transitions which were distracting.
Here is what feedback I got from my teacher:

As we have discussed, you have some beautiful footage Ben. You need to work on this now to aim towards a top A grade. Well done so far!

There is quite a strong guitar track  with plucked strings rather than strumming – this could do with shooting. For example shot at 0.53 the player is not playing the tune that we can hear.

1.59 wobble on cross. 

2.23 narrative – too much overlaying.

3.40 what is this shot?

Text on screen – have you got an example of this happening in one of the other videos that you watched? If not, take it out.

4.22 what is this shot?

4.26 this shot seems to be repeated too much.

4.30 this bouncing seems to be to a different track – not sure this track is suitable for bouncing – maybe swaying? The lip synch is also out.

4.31/4.47 lip synch also out/

Lack of editing at the end – is this the section you are going to cut?

Filming

Filming was the most difficult part of the whole construction, not the most tiring, but tricky.
It felt like it had taken weeks to find the actors and arrange a day when the whole band could meet up.
Luckily, I had support of my friend Jordan (lead singer.)
For the performance part of the filming, I spared an evening to get together with just the band, and getting there half an hour early to set up the lights, drum kit and lay out the camera equipment ready for when they came. Some of the lighting equipment I would've like to use wasn't available so I made do with only a couple of professional stage lights and  used Ikea lamps as overheads by attaching them to the framing above and taped others to microphone stands to adjust the direction.
When everyone was ready on stage, I gave them directions for the song, which I shared as a link to them beforehand so that they could learn it. We played the track using the main speakers on the side of the stage sourced from the sound desk.
To get the best out of each person on stage, the track was played the whole way through for each individual separately. It was good that we had two cameras, both in HD and both with tripods so I could have two set up for every run-through of the song.
Filming the actors was not as difficult, because there was only two subjects and they were on seperate days.
This time, however I had only one camera, but still, it is all that was needed. The first day I filmed the actors was with Vincent and Alvin Kayembe at Bramcote Park late afternoon. There weren't many issues at all; Vincent was dressed perfectly for the shots and so was Alvin, as ordinary as the dress code may seem, much thought had gone into it and how to communicate that dress code to them. The weather was good, sunny with only some small clouds. The biggest issue that was to be had was the low battery in the camera. I had two low batteries, but I managed to get the best out of them and they lasted longer than I expected.
The filming took less than an hour.
The next filming day was with Thando Ndovu in his school lunch break, he wasn't far from the city centre, thankfully he was available for that half an hour of filming which was last minute, because I had had two actors for his part drop out before then. It was straight forward; just change into some tatty clothes I brought, set up the camera and go. I went into down into the square at the weekend to film some crowd scenes for the lyrics "for everyone to realise this love" and that was it.

Editing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g1MOv-0A-E