Group Dynamics & Communication

Throughout the construction of our media texts, our group worked together incredibly well. We each took responsibility of certain roles in order to make the most of our individual abilities, thus putting them together to create an effective team. For example, I did a lot of the album cover work as I was slightly more experienced in using Photoshop. Molly created lots of the website as she is good at art and design, making her able to make a really aesthetically pleasing website. Maisie did a lot of the editing work due to this being one particular area she excels in, and Mari was incredibly helpful for creativity and prop-designing for the music video. Together, this meant that we could work very well.

The group communicated well during the construction stage of the project. We always ensured we were in touch with each other, and we all knew what the plan was for the proceeding shoot. If anything were to go wrong, we would contact the rest of the group immediately via Facebook.

Above is an example of us contacting each other about and issue, and solving it immediately. This is an example of our good group communication.
Overall, our group worked together very well. The only way in which our work could have been improved is perhaps if we had crossed our skills more in order to improve our abilities and branch out of our comfort zones. However, the way that we worked proved effective as we produced our media texts to a high standard and in time with the deadlines.

Album Cover Progress

For the back cover of the album we decided to change our idea from a photo to a simpler back and keep the photos for the inside. This was because we realised that it isn't very conventional to have a big focal image on the back cover of an album.

We looked at the Disclosure album as this is of our genre. We noticed how the back featured a simple design with centralized writing. This follows conventions.

Therefore, we created a similar design but following the branding of our album cover and website using paint. We were going to create the paint smudges by taking photos and editing these like we did for our website banner. However, in order to have more control over them we decided to create them on Photoshop. Mari did this by installing a smudge brush and creating a few different ones to work with.
We really liked this effect, however, we realised that there were lines either side of each smudge which ruined the realism and made them look clearly Photoshopped. Therefore, we edited these photos by changing the brightness and contrast in order to make the lines non visible. This also improved the colour so we were pleased with this decision:

For the back cover smudges, we edited the colour to match the final banner of our Website, in order to keep a consistent colour scheme and sense of branding:

We also did this to the text on the front cover of the album. We changed the colour of the paint by colourising it and then editing the hue and saturation. This meant that we could give it any colour we wanted, so was really helpful for us.

For the inside, we chose to use simple images of the artist, with Georgie on the first inside and the two DJs behind the CD. In order to emphasise Georgie's leadership of the band, her photo is alone. We got them to do interesting poses so that it would differ from our other promo shots as well as the front cover.

We stuck with a minimalist design, using the white background to remain synergistic with the website and album cover. We also used creative poses to make it more interesting.

Refine Edge Tool

These images were edited out of the studio background and onto a clean background using the refine edge tool on Photoshop. We also changed the levels of contrast, brightness and saturation in order to make them more aesthetically pleasing and professional-looking.



Once we had the main panels done, we focused on the spine. We decided to go simple for this; again using powder paint to keep with the synergy. For practical reasons we used plain black writing so it would be easy to read. We also changed the colour of the paint to pink, again in order to keep with our colour scheme and branding.

Our final Digipak was now complete:

This can also be viewed at the top of my Blog.

Website Progress - Interactivity & Purchasing Opportunities

As conventional of artist websites, we have ensured that our website is interactive for the audience, as well as providing purchasing opportunities. From looking at other artist websites, we noticed that these are two features that really stand out.
In order to make it interactive, we have added in the following features:

Competition
A competition which the audience members can enter with their own festival pictures in order to win festival tickets.

The latest entries are displayed on the website, giving the audience a sense of being closer to the band. The can be viewed in an interactive moving gallery.

Sign Up
We have provided the audience with the opportunity to sign up to the band's newsletter. This allows them to feel interacted with by the band.

Purchasing OpportunitiesWe have synergistically placed the album all over the website, often with the 'buy now' label on it and linking to the store. 

We have also encouraged the purchasing of live tickets, by having a direct 'buy tickets' link on both the home page and the tour page.

In our store the audience can purchase a wide range of merchandise that have been designed to be synergistic with the artist image.

Website Progress - Banner

For the top of the website we needed to create a banner that would be on every page. We wanted to create an image that is aesthetically pleasing while providing a strong sense of branding and artist identity. We decided to use the synergistic theme of powder paint which is evident through our album cover and music video as well.

We created the banner on Photoshop. Mari and I took photos of various powder paint splatters and smudges on our final shoot day and then we opened these photos in Photoshop to edit. The photos came out very dark so we had to select the paint using the magic wand tool and remove this from the background. We then put this paint onto a white fill layer and it looked fairly realistic.

In order to create the whole banner we duplicated the paint layer and manipulated it to look as if it's one big natural spread of powder paint. This was successful and ended in this final image on the right:


We were pleased with this banner and it was on our website as the official banner. However, after having asked our teacher for feedback, she informed us of its incredibly feminine appearance and thus narrowing of appeal. We then asked various males and females of the target audience whether they agreed, which they unanimously did. Therefore, we decided to create an alternate banner of the same style which would appeal to both female and male audiences.

We did so by using the 'colorize' tool in 'hue/saturation. This meant that we could choose the colour of the paint as a whole and adjust it to the exact colour we wanted. From looking at our music video, we found that it would be good to choose a similar shade of blue to this in order to create synergy and keep to our colour scheme.

We also filled out the banner with some more powder paint in order to make it look more bold and natural on the website. This is now our final website banner:

After asking our audience again which of the two banners they prefer, they all said the second one. Therefore, we were pleased with this success and realised the value of audience feedback as well as audience uses and gratifications when creating a media product.

Website Progress - First Draft

We began making the first draft of our website by creating a blog-style home page with lots of images. Each image would lead to another page. This is how that looked:

We liked this look as it was the blog style we were originally planning. However, it appeared to be a bit bland and we felt that we could increase interactivity a lot if we changed the style of the homepage. The same applied to the other pages, for example the 'Live' page below:

Although this has some interactivity, having a calendar, this was not very interesting to look at nor did it look professional of an artist website. Therefore, Molly decided to create a new website and try out a different look:

This version has a much stronger artist branding across the page. It is also more conventional of a band website with one large photo of them at the top of the page:

On the website this is a sliding gallery of photos which link to different pages. This makes the website a lot more interesting to look at as it brings out the artist image as well as increasing interactivity. We kept this website design and continued to work on interactivity as the basis of a successful artist website.

Editing Progress - Final Changes

Once we had graded the video, we asked our teachers to review it for a final time.
The first teacher gave us the following feedback:

From this feedback, we added a fade at the beginning as we agreed this was more conventional of a music video. We also worked harder on the grading of the paint fight to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

As for the recommendation that we make more of the paint fight shots slow mo, we found this a difficult change to make. This would mean that the pace of the video would be slowed down dramatically. It was also difficult to do as we hadn't filmed everything in 60fps so not all shots could be slowed down to any more than 70-80%. We discussed this with the teacher and considered the changes, but decided that it would not be the right decision at this stage of the project. Following these changes, we had a test edit ready for final approval:

We then showed this version to the other media teacher who gave us the following suggestions:

We made these changes, including adding forest Alice in Wonderland footage over the top of the shot of Georgie before she is in the forest paint fight. This was to aid the narrative and make it more obvious why there was a change of scene, as well as linking the paint fight back to the overarching Alice in Wonderland theme.
Once we had made these changes, our final video was complete. This is available to view at the top of my blog.

Editing Progress - Grading

In order to give our video a more professional look, as well as bringing the sections together more effectively, we graded our shots accordingly.
The balloon scenes and white scenes required the least grading as these were shot in the studio with very good lighting. For these we only added a ProcAmp in order to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation.

Balloon Grading

White Scene Grading

The paint shots were, however, more difficult to grade as not only were they filmed on different cameras, they were also filmed with external lighting on separate days.

We edited these shots by using both a ProcAmp and a three way colour corrector in order to balance the colours. On the left is the ungraded image, and on the right is the graded image. The graded image is noticeably more vibrant and colourful, limiting the effects of the external lighting and giving it a professional look.

By far the most difficult shots, however, were those filmed on the Go Pro. This was because the Go Pro has much less depth of colour than the Canon 5D. In addition, the lens is incredibly wide but the viewing screen is small, and so as a result it is hard to see what is actually in the shot. We also graded these using a ProcAmp and Three-Way Colour Corrector. They took a lot more effort to grade but the outcome was crucial to the look of our video and we were happy with the grading of these shots:

Go Pro Grading

Editing Progress

Within our video, there was a section that we were having trouble with making interesting and differing from the rest of the video as we felt that it would be too boring for the audience to keep it the same style throughout. Therefore, as we didn't have much alternate footage we decided to try out different editing techniques. This video shows the normal editing compared with the fading section which was our first attempt at a change in editing style:

For this one, we faded the video in and out to go with the music. However, we decided that this was ineffective as it looked unprofessional and differed too much to the rest of the video. While it was important to create some difference, this was too much change and did not fit in with the video nor the pace of the song.

Note taken from teacher feedback

Therefore we continued trying different editing techniques. We began by adding effects to Georgie's close up shots by overlaying the two vocal parts to create a doubling/ghosting effect. Although this looked quite impressive, we found that it was a lot for the viewer in and also seemed incredibly random within the sequence. In addition, we got feedback from a media teacher who said that the it weakened the otherwise very strong performance, and so it was a shame to ruin this. 

Overlaying effect

Therefore, we continued trying different effects. The next thing we tried was to overlay the DJs over Georgie's performance. Originally we tried to do this on After Effects. However, we soon realised that this would take far too long as we would have to do it frame by frame. So we explored the features in Premier Pro until we discovered how to make it look most effective.

Before overlay effect

As shown in the image above, we edited the shots of Gavin and Eugene by changing their scale and position so that they would be either side of Georgie. We then added the 'screen' blending mode which made them appear as if they were over the top of Georgie's layer:

Above is the effect that it created. We were happy with this effect as it appeared professional yet wasn't overly time consuming. This section of the video ended up looking like this:

It alternated between regular close ups of Georgie, balloon wide shots, and close ups with the DJ overlay. We feel that this allows for enough difference to make this section interesting, but not too much to make it confusing and aesthetically unpleasing to the viewer.

Editing Progress

Once we had the shots in place on the timeline, we reviewed the footage to see what we could change. In order to make our video more interesting to watch as well as enhance the amplification of lyrics, music and visuals according to Goodwin's theory, we decided to add some different editing effects. This is also incredibly conventional of the dance genre.

Some of these that I edited included:

• Delay & Blurred effect:

I created this effect by putting two shots over eachother, one starting slightly later than the other. This created a slight delay and so a blurring effect to the image. I did this in order to create a sense of confusion and add interest to an otherwise quite dull shot. We had comments in audience feedback that people liked how the blurred effects in the video were synergistic with our blurred album cover.

• Reverse Shots:This worked particularly well in our video so in order to preserve its impact I knew I would have to use this effect in varying ways:

For this image I used small clips of the same frame and repeated them as a delay to the reverse. This delay is in time with a delay in the music so it looks effective.

This image was edited to make it appear as if the balloon stays in the air and returns to Georgie's hand. I did this by making the shot delay on changing frame, thus making it stand still. I then added the matching reverse of the shot after. Again, this pause in movement was to the music so this was a simple but impacting effect.

This was a more simple reverse shot, just making it appear as if the paint went back into his hands. However, in order to make this slow motion shot fit with the next part of the sequence, we sped up the end of the shot. This worked well as it stopped the slow motion shots from looking disjointed from the rest of the video.

• Cross Dissolve:

For the end shot, we decided to create a cross dissolve from the white balloon covering the screen to Georgie waking up from her imagination.

In order to do so, I just put a cross dissolve effect over three shots; the balloon hitting the camera, a plain white shot and the shot of Georgie waking up. This created a powerful ending to the video:

Audience Feedback

During construction of our music video, we have asked a member of the secondary target audience to give us his opinion on the music video. He is also a fellow media student and so can give us technical and creative help as well.

Editing Progress

After having reviewed and changed our edit according to the noticeable problems after editing to the animatic we had a rough edit of the video. We then got feedback from the technician, Chris, on what we thought we should change to improve the video:

From this we learned the major issues with our videos and could continue to improve the fluidity and development of the video. One of the major issues we found was that the ending was far too slow paced considering it was such a major part of the video and this lead to the video feeling incomplete and not conforming to the audience's expectations.

Therefore, we decided to focus on speeding this section up. Here is our first attempt:

We compared this to the original edit which had shots lasting twice as long, and we realised that the difference was huge. This made the video a lot more impactful, and from this we learned the importance of pace when making a music video. This also corresponded to Carol Vernallis's codes and conventions of a music video which we had researched into earlier on in the project, with the editing matching the musical phrases and the beat.

Album Cover Progression

Title:

For our title we used the same typography that we have used for our website in order to create a strong sense of branding and synergy. Again, in order to keep this synergism we made created a clipping mask of the text in order to use images of powder paint to fill it out.
After having received audience feedback we discovered that the title appeared too feminine with the pink colouring and so we edited the colour in order to make it more blue and therefore gender neutral.

Our album cover at this point looked like this:

However, from some consideration we thought that it would be interesting to try some sort of texture on the image. We thought that this could make it more interesting. For these textures we chose to use laser effects as this is in keeping with the dance genre:

However, we decided that this did not look as good as the original image. We also asked our audience which they would prefer and they chose the original image. The feedback was that this layer detracts from the blurring effect of the image and gets rid of the clean and professional feel of the album cover. Therefore, we have kept the top image.

Album Cover Progression

After we had removed each person from their backgrounds we placed them on top of each other in the right positions. We then edited the opacities in order to make the boys visible through Georgie's image. However, we soon found that this didn't look very interesting or aesthetically pleasing at all and so we needed to do more to the images.

We then tried making the image of Georgie blurry by placing three layers on top of each other and changing the opacities. We found that this created a really interesting effect and would be conventional of the genre to have effects on the image.

This worked really well so we decided to try this with all of the images and put them together. We did this by changing the opacities of each person on three layers and moving them slightly apart. The opacities for each had to be different due to differing skin tones however we found that we really liked the effect once it was done.

After having done this, we put this focal image onto the Digipak template (seen on the left) and changed the brightness, contrast, hue etc in order to make the image appear far more professional and blend better with the background as well as our colour scheme. This was our focal image complete.