The first stage of production is research. We often used youtube a lot to look for inspiration in carrying out or music video, especially when looking at music videos from the same genre. With the CD covers we mostly looked at the Feeling’s CD covers as we were trying to use the cover we made to reflect on the band and there style they usually use. One problem with this is there isn’t many other bands that have CD covers similar to the Feelings CD covers style which makes them very unique yet harder to follow as there are only a few covers we can look at and analyse from.
For planning, when coming to filming we mainly produced tables to show which locations, shots, characters and types of equipment we would need, using Microsoft Word. The main problem with this as it wasn’t as detailed as it should have been and we were not prepared to adapt for certain things that may have happened or changed. For example if it we didn’t check the weather so if we had finally travelled to the location to find it had started to rain we would not be prepared to cover all the equipment and would probably have to change the day of filming.
The main thing learnt about construction is that there is a lot more work involved in it and the poor time management we had meant that the production started a lot later then it should have. The knock on affect this caused is that after going through the weaknesses of the cover once it was done and the feedback meant we didn’t have a great deal of time to fix it. We used Final cut express for the music video, which meant we could add in affects and keep it within the beat of the music. After importing all of our clips onto Final cut express we then were able to look through and delete the worst clips and keep the best ones for our video. Then we had to work on cutting the clips down to decide what bit we wanted in our video and how long we would want this clip to drag on before the beat or lyrics changed in the song, using ‘in or out’. Before preparing our actual video we practised on a song ‘midnight at the oasis’, we filmed clips around the school and then cut down clips and put them together as a mini music video. We practised ‘lip syncing’ and figured out how hard it was to keep it in sync with the lyrics. This gave us hesitation on using a band yet at the same time we could not use one in order to get the audience to understand.
The main technology we used for the CD cover was Photoshop and PowerPoint as publisher was not available to us. Using the programmes Photoshop and Final cut were the most challenging as they took time to master and work out for ourselves how we would get around producing these projects. For the magazine advertisement we put it into pages, and used a notebook application to draw the characters where it involved having to draw them onto a device and implementing them onto the computer to be able to use.
The main thing I feel confident about now is Photoshop. I have managed to grasp many elements to Photoshop such as the magic wand, photo filter and filter gallery.
Filter Gallery
Photo Filter/Black and white
The biggest problem we had with the construction of the CD cover with Photoshop in making my cover was cutting out ‘Sun is shining’ from previous Feeling covers. We knew how to cut them out however the amount of time it took was enormous. In the end we had manage to cut the text out but it looked poor. Instead we stayed with ‘The Feeling’ title and used a similar looking text for ‘sun is shining’.
Compared to our design, the turnout of our original cover seemed to cover all the weak areas of our very first design. However overall the cover didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped which is why we changed our cover to use the British version. Pictures didn’t seem to work as well together which may have been able to be altered over time but with our limited amount of time it would be less hassle to stick with our British version which still ties in well with our video.
With our poor time management and lack of knowledge with computer applications we would need to use every project was completed in a very tight time schedule. I think if we had known how to use applications such as Final cut and Photoshop we would have been able to save time and hassle rather than having to work it out for ourselves.
If we had done it again I think the main improvement would be using our time more effectively and having better organisation. However I also feel we managed to work good together as a team and spread work out evenly even though there were some absences throughout the year. With more commitment I think we would have been able to complete our projects a lot sooner than we did.
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