artwork ideas for covers

The reason I chose this cover was purely because of the artwork, not the artist. 

 The layout:

Photograph behind text

Text is bold

Photograph is of the artist

The photograph is also an edited headshot with bright colours.

 Style:

The style also captured my attention because the electric colours match HIS genre (electro/dance-indie)

This means his artist (whoever created the artwork) followed the conventions of Mylo's genre correctly

 Font:

I like the font because it is what I have used for past products (impact) however it also has been edited with a brush over effect and the wholes in the letters are filled in. This is similar to other artists artwork I own CDs of e.g. Tinchy Stryder

how to deconstruct a music video dvd cover

looking for artwork:

when researching the album artwork most useful to my product it is ideal to deconstruct that in the same genre. To find artwork to deconstruct, I will visit appropriate sites such as freecovers.net, amazon, play.com, itunes etc this will give me enough images in my genre to deconstruct.

what to look for:

• rule of thirds
  
• continuity from front-back
  
• accurate representation of artist/genre
• choice of colours
• choice of designs
• mix of the two

update on music video

Due to the genre of our track and also our keen nature we decided to edit our recently filmed green screen footage. At first this was going to just be for a chorus mixed with our footage from the car park, however we went all the way and edited 80% of the song, intro-chorus-verse 1-verse 2- chorus. This meant we we were left with two videos, and possibly a third if we mixed them together.

 our solution is, we have put both on youtube to decide which video gets the most views and most love. We can then use our feedback to finally back adjustments.

monday 14th december

Aims until christmas:

• update blogs 
• Research + deconstruct 3 DVD covers
• begin to research skills + techniques needed to create  a DVD cover.

Review of marks.

 100 marks

 60

 - video

 - dvd cover

 - print Ad

20

-planning

20

-Evaluation

todays notes:

• Promotional Package has to be in 'house style' (match genre throughout). for example Grime = Urban photo's
• DVD design has to match:

1. Representation 
2. Audience 
3. Genre
4. Ideology

Design.

Front

Spine

Back

(useful sight www.freecovers.net)

Update 2nd December

After another catchup with my colleague we went over where we had gone to so far, and what was left to do. We made a few adjustments such as fixing the timing on some of the shots, and adding some new footage into it for more variety. Due to our quick cuts being successful, we made use of this by cutting between some foot stomps and the artist moving in the camera before the chorus. This worked really well, the quick cuts keeping to the pace of the music. All we have left to do is to film an intro for the video, rather than just using up some spare footage. We also considered using some new footage to put at the end, to meet the conventional types of rap/grime music videos, allowing a use of a new song to be included at the end of the video.

update 29th november

This week was our last full week to be able to complete our music video, as it has to be completed for next Wednesday. I feel that we will be able to meet this deadline.

We spent the Wednesday before this week to begin putting all of the footage to the timing and to begin putting some of the clips together to have some initial thoughts on the structure of the video. This week we were able to work more in depth on this. Wednesday was focused allday on putting the full structure to the music video. It did however run onto afterschool, where my colleague worked afterschool, and I then carried on from where he left off when I arrived for the open evening the same night. He was focusing on the verses, and I was focusing on the choruses and the missing parts between them, such as the intro and the ending, but also the instrumentals between the chrous and verse in the song. By the end of the open evening I was able to put the chorus that I had edited, with the verses that he has worked on, both in time and then filled in the blank areas, with some of the spare footage that we had. My colleague was able to include some effective cuts to the beat, for example when the drums come in before the second verse, he included several quick fast cuts to each few drum hits, which worked really well.

For the choruses, I included the reverse jump shot that I had shown in a previous post, and used several of the shots that my colleague chose to include into the verses too, so it is synchronous together which is what we needed. I did consider whether to include the abstract shot that I created in a previous post from 2weeks ago, but from looking over the footage that we currently have to the music, I don't think that it would fit in with the rest, and also how this is a grime/rap video, the effect used in it wouldn't fit the genre, so if I were to include it, then it would have to be included several times elsewhere, which could ruin the video, so I decided to leave it out.

All in all, the video is now looking to come together, and we both feel like we're making some really good progress. The video is now structured, all we have to do now is to consider any effects to include, transitions, and any other effective camera shots of locations that we have but hadn't yet included that could improve the quality of the video and the variety of shots shown. Only 3 days to go!

conversion with artist

Although we had planned to spend tomorrow to concentrate on editing, the artist (my colleague) suggested that we should do some green screen work. So tomorrow will hopefully be spent to add a few shots with it to further our variety and hopefully be able to finish the music video tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

wednesday the 18th

We came to the conclusion that we would just focus with what we have, as using the green screen at such a late date wouldn't give us enough time to work with it and put it together with our music video, ontop of the editing that we have left to do. This was a positive decision made, as if we did decide to use the green screen, then we might not have a chance to finish in time to the deadline.

problems

During my time in the media suite on Wednesday, I was suffering from technical difficulties from the mac's. It seemed to brign an error each time I begun editing the video clips. I came to the conclusion that it could have possibly been because there was "too much" footage in the iMovie file, meaning that it would have such a large file size to process that it couldn't handle it.

My way around this is to possibly use some software I have on my home pc, or to work with a smaller amount of footage. At the end of the day, it might have been just from the computer I was on, suffering from the server with all of the other colleagues processing files at the same time. Hopefully it won't create this problem for me again next time, or it could lead to a slow down in the editing process of the music video.

Problems although progress is still being made
We looked through what we managed to put together and it looked promising. We agreed that I would focus on the chorus's for now and he would look at the first verse, possibly the second too if he has time, and then on Wednesday we would look over it and then make any last minute ammendments and aim to finish the editing on time. The intro is one of our problems, but the artist is taking a visit to London this weekend so hopefully he was able to take some effective still images for us to use so that it is similar to his inspired track by Tinchy Stryder.

Update 16th November

As I was unable to use the media suite today due to me being elsewhere I decided to show the current stage i'm at wit hthe editing, and the possibilities that will need to be done from nwo on, considering that we have less than two weeks left now to finish the editing. Last week was spent to put the clips together so that they had a caption with them as to where they will be placed along the timeline with the music, which was cut at certain points such as the verses and choruses. This took less time than we had anticipated, as it was all done by the Wednesday afternoon. It was important that we did this, as it would mean that we would delete footage that was of no use to us, as we took several scenes more than once. During this stage, I had soem experimental phases where I tried out some of the effects within iMovie, to try and change how the certain video clips were shown. One in particular, where ther artist is made to look like he is lying down, and then gets up and begins to rap to the song. I decided to try and change this one because in the clip he looks upside down which is unfortunate, but the camera rotation to then be upright and steady whe nhe begins rapping is really effective. I tried an effect called 'mirror' to try and rotate the footage so that instead of being upside down he is looking up so that when the rotation is done it will look right. Instead of this happening, I was given some kind of abstract pattern effect. Whether this was accident or not, the outcome was quite effective.

(CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW FULL RESOLUTION)

As you can see from the image above, the footage has been split up into three sections, which is for the different sets of footage that we have, which did total to over two hours of footage!
The clips that we have decided could be used have been put with the music and captioned as to where they start from, so that we can add each bit that we need at the right moment, and have it lip synchronous to run smoothly with the video as we edit the clips together.

From now on we'll need to focus on decideing where to cut each clip, and which ones to put in each part with the lyrics so that it is lip synchronous, and it looks good. Once this is done we can figure out if re-filming is needed, or additional footage, and to decide on whether special effects could be included anywhere to enchance the final image.