Just another Coombe Media group...

Today we finished putting all the footage together for the music video, but we still aren't very happy with the end of the video. Next lesson, we'll hopefully have time to fix it up and try to put the scenes in synch with the music better. We also went through the video several times to see if anything didn't quite fit with the flow or if we could better any transitions, changing a few things as we went.

- Sarah El-alfy

In our lesson today we started putting together Emily's website. We updated the photos, gigs and the music page.

We also went back to our music video to add a few touches to our latest footage, we added the sepia effect to our church scene to add more clarity to the fact that it is in the past and we are very nearly finished.


-Adam

Part of our coursework is to create two of the following:

- Digipack for CD
- Website/ MySpace/ Facebook page for the artist
- A magazine advertisement for the CD

Our group has decided to do the first two, and today we created the basics of the website with webs.com. The site is called : www.emilyquinn-music.webs.com. We have made it so that there are pages for certain things such as 'videos' and 'music' and of course 'home'. The actual site has been modified from the template to fit with Emily's image and genre. We will later on be actually uploading and putting things up on the site to finish it, including the music video when it is done.

-Sarah El-alfy

We uploaded all of the footage which we filmed in the church. Then we continued to edit the film, with the new footage.

-Sarah Evans

Today we went to shoot some footage at New Malden Christ Church. We wanted to film here because we have storyboarded an idea of having a flashback sequence in our music video, we want it to look like a rehearsal wedding where Emily recieves the bad news of her fiance not coming. We filmed for about an hour and tried to film the song sung with a different emotion each time to give us more footage, we also filmed Emily walking down the isle happily in the flashback and again but sad and in the present day to make it appear she is re-visiting and remembering the sad time (we would like to fade these clips together).

Filming was very successful and we should be able to use the footage effectively, however if we were to film again in a church we will have to remember to consider lighting (stain-glass windows are not the best type of window to provide lighting!). Also, Emily forgot her other dress, which makes us worry that the narrative will be slightly confusing with the changing story.

-Sammy

We've now edited about 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the video. I think we've successfully used most of the locations we were planning on using, although at the same time we cut out some locations thinking they weren't really fitting with the rest of the video.

However, as we are planning on shooting some more footage again, it looks like we might be playing around with what we've done so far later on, to accomodate the extra footage.


Regarding the digipak, I have been playing around with the images to try and get the final result that we all want. Since we want a warm image, I've added a red sort of hue, and made the background darker while trying to keep Emily light. Hopefully I'll be done soon, and will post them up here.


Also, we were wondering whether it would be best to leave the side with the CD blank/black/a colour that fits with the autumn theme, or actually have a picture behind it. At the end of the disccusion, we decided that a simple picture would be best, and it also had to fit in with the other sides. In the end we chose something that we had actually taken while joking around while filming, but we thought would fit nicely.

We actually already changed the original picture here on Ulead together, by simply adding a light red filter on it and making the lighting softer while we made the focus harsher, so the sunlight on the middle of the leaves almost seems like it's glowing. We considered blurring the picture, but then our eyes hurt to even look at it, so we left it at this. The result is what we hoped for: a warm feel to it, but the edges are fading into black, hopefully giving a sense of darkness out of the picture that the viewer can't see.

-Sarah El-alfy

We managed to edit to about 2 minutes and 20 seconds which is over half way through the song! We discussed more shooting and found out Emily is going to be very busy and we'll only have a morning to film in so it will have to precise, planned and brief.


As I'm sure Sarah has mentioned while she's been blogging, she has been working on the digipak. Today we decided on the rest of the sides that need filling. We thought to make it more personal from Emily to her fans, we would have a thankyou page from her. This may or may not spread over two pages. If it does we will use this image for the final slide:

If the thankyou page does not go for two sides we'll also use, this image:

Both the picture are actually stills from the footage we took while filming for the music video. However, the second picture is from a scene that will probably not make it into the final video. The image is also blurry, but Sarah has reassured us that she can fix that. We collectively decided what the sides would all look like, quite warm and autumnal, to stick to the themes we've gone by so far, and to also promote Emily's personality as a warm and fun person.

-Adam

As we are progressing through the song, we are finding it hard to find footage which we felt would actually fit with certain parts of the song. We also thought we might need an element of narrative in the music video, but even if we tried, the video is becoming a little repetitive.

To overcome this issue, we felt we needed to film some more footage. We began discussing what and where we could film, and whether or not Emily would be available to film again. We all agreed that we needed to include something which would keep the audience engaged, and want to watch the video. As when completing our research we found that many videos may need to be viewed more than once for the audience to fully understand the narrative and so they will want to watch it more than once in order for them to gain a better understanding of what is happening in the video. We liked the idea of filming in a church and so discussions into whether or not this would be possible and whether or not it would fit into the song began.

-Sarah Evans

We are continuing to edit our music video, we have made great progress so far and if we continue to edit in the same way we should soon have a sucsessfully completed music video.

-Sammy

We continued to edit again, getting up until 1 minute and 48 seconds.


We also thought some more on our digipak. We went on this site and used their template for 6 panel digipak ( Design DIGIPAK6P-TR ), although we will be having our CD holder in the middle of the front 3 sides rather then the right.

This means we'll be needing a main front image, and a main back image with the tracks, as well as the copyright information and record company logo. We found Hope and Faith's logo on their website, which we will hopefully be able to copy and paste onto our own CD pack. We still need to decide on what we will have on the rest of the 3 sides, the two that open up on either side of the CD and the side next to main covers. We've got the main pictures that we want to use and work with, which I've uploaded below:

(front)
(back)

As I am the one who is most familiar with software editing images in the group, I'll have the task of actually converting the photos into our ideal covers. I'll probably be using be Ulead Photo Express and Photoshop in the CS4 package. Although I would like to use Photoshop only, I know that I've been using Ulead for longer and know how to do more with it, so it'll be sensible to stick with for our coursework.

-Sarah El-alfy

We continued to edit our video, we have now managed to complete 40 seconds of it.

- Sarah Evans

We have continued editing and have reached 34 seconds in our music video.

We were looking through our plans for a CD digipak and created some stills from our video which we thought would look effective, we took into account the layout and dimensions of the picture in the frame so that we had enough space to add in the titles, barcode, etc. We made a couple of drafts that we thought we could use as a CD front and back cover, that went along with the theme of our site and music video. We had to keep in mind that they all were promoting the same thing, .i.e. the same artist to people who would want to buy her music.

We also had to keep in mind that it would be a 6 panel digipak, which meant that there were going to 3 sides, and 3 sides, and we had to fill them all up somehow, except for the middle of he front of 3 sides where the CD place holder would be.





-Sammy

We edited about 20 seconds out of the four minutes, which caused us to realise that it takes a lot of time and patience to get things right. We worked the hardest on getting Emily's lip synching exactly right, as we didn't want her to be ahead or behind of the singing. This proved to be quite difficult as it seemed that while actually filming, Emily did not sing in exact synch. But we managed to find footage where she had done well.

-Sarah El-alfy

Today in lesson we uploaded all of the footage which we had filmed so far. We looked over it all, and noted any mistakes or good shots which we had got, and discussed whether or not any of it needed to be re filmed. The uploading took a lot time, and so while waiting for it all to upload we discussed the ideas we had planned for the music video and developed them.

As we have, for the time being, decided we did not need to do any more filming, that means that the current locations that we are going to use in the video are:

• Hampton Court
• Warren House (conference centre)
• Richmond Park

- Sarah Evans