Just another Coombe Media group...

Our coursework is officially over and done with. All that's left is the teachers marking it and sending it off, and then our exam in June. We just thought we'd leave a message thanking everyone who've helped us - Emily, the teachers, our parents, the owners of the locations, and just generally the people who let us steal their time just so we could get feedback over and over again. Thankyou so much for helping us along with this project.

We also want to tell you that we've learnt so many things from this month long experience. From year 12 when most of us had barely even picked up a camcorder or sat at a mac. To now, where we can get people on screen to lip synch perfectly to something they're not even singing, where we manages to do these super cool edits like split screens and cross dissolves, and where we realise that those 20 minute long walks down a road so we can shoot someplace are actually worth it.


Since it is our last post, we thought we'd share some of the photos we took that made it so fun while making the video, but that we didn't necessarily actually put in it:

In the lesson today the class watched our video and made comments on the areas which they liked and they thought worked well and also made note of the things they didn't like, and felt could have been improved. Examples of responses to our video included:

"I liked it when she says 'Sunk so low" the representation of the lyrics through the action of her sitting down worked well"
"The mixes using the spinning parasol were in keeping with the genre"
"The framing of shots is beautiful especially the lying on leaves shot and the editing of the two close ups on opposite sides of the frame as if she is singing to herself"
"I was a little confused over the flashback sequence and why no-one was in the church"
- Ms Hafenrichter

A lot of the positive feedback was on commenting on the choice of costume, and people thought that our edits were in keeping with the pace of the song, we noticed that a lot of people seemed to like the 'spinning shot' as they felt that is suited the video and fitted really well.
The choice of the location was also one of the areas which recieved a lot of positive feedback, as well as the mise-en-scene, especially the colours of some of the particular shots such as the ones including the leaves, as they felt the colours matched the song.

There were mixed views when considering the casting, some people felt that she suited the role, however others believed she did not necissarily suit the role of the artist. Another suggestion which we had from our feedback was to put some more work into the make-up used on the artist, this is so that she is able to be as attractive as possible, and as a result, want to watch the video more and more.
One comment which came up was that they felt that there could have been more narrative used in the video.Despite the fact that we did include a narrative in the video, feedback suggested that it wasn't always that easy to follow, and so if we haad put some more thought into imporving our narrative we may have been able to create our music video with some more narrative included in it.
Although comments on the choice of location were fairly positive, people felt that we could have used more lighting inside the house, as the picture looked a bit grainy, a problem which we could have avoided if we had used the lighting kit available.

However, overall there was a lot of positive feedback, as well as negative feedback, which we will take on board and consider in detail when we analyse our video and see how we could have imporved it, as well as what we managed to do well while making our music video.

- Sarah Evans

Today we presented our evaluation. Here's the presentation which we gave.

The on-screen presentation was supported by our group talking. We covered conventions, artist, institutions, ways we used the web and intertextuality to promote our artist (i.e. the site and the digipak), and general technology we used during the project.

The teachers filmed us doing the presentation so the examiners could get a sense of who we were as students and if we really understood our music video. Being filmed made us feel a little jittery so we ended up rehearsing a couple of times beforehand, just to make sure we knew what we had to say.

Nonetheless, in the actual presentation, we of course ended missing things out but also put in other things that we remembered on the spot. All in all, we felt we did okay.

- Sarah El-alfy

Here a the panels:


(The front of the digipak. I changed quite a few things on this picture. First of all I put on a slightly red filter, then worked on changing the saturation, also making them more red. I blurred the background - the forest trees, so as to make sure that the main focus of the cover was Emily. I also made the lighting much brighter and harsher to emphasise the beautiful colours of the autumnleaves.
In reality Emily's eyes are lighter but the photo had made them darker, so I used the lightening brush tool to go over her iris to to make it lighter. I also tried to make her lips darker [since during the filming the lipstick had worn off by the time we took this photo], so they stood out on her ivory face, making the close up that much more dramatic. When looking at the photo herself she thought that her spots and her teeth made her seem unattractive, so I airbrushed the spots out, using a cloning and blurring tool, and whitened her teeth slightly which also contrast stongly with her red lips. I also added several strands of hair infront of her face just to make her look windswept and indeed feeling like she has "fallen."
Finally, the title and the name were in a curly font, which we thought was important to have to fit in with the feminie and fantasy-like theme. I had to make a white shadow just so a viewer could see the writing more clearly against the colourful background.)

(The back panel of the digipack. I similarly tried to make the image more 'warm' with filters and light changing. I had to keep tracing around the floor, being the most 'dullest' part of the photo, and adding quite a deep red filter to make it look better. The lightening here was darker on edges, while I lit up the actual objects.
I traced around Emily's dress and shoes, unlike the rest of the picture, and made it very light and took away all colours - trying to make it almost glow, and help connotate her innocence and purity.
I ended up cropping the right side if the photo, and having her left side seem more bigger, pushing Emily to the right, so the track would look better.
While adding the copyright information at the back, I had to being out one of my own albums that I owned so I could structure it correctly. The bar code was taken off here, and you can probably notice the absemce of number beneath, since we didn't want to unintentionallytake someone else's barcode number which might not be allowed. The logo was cut and pasted on from the site.
The tracks were done in the font "Lucinda Handwriting" and the numbers are in "One Stroke Script." The numbers were chosen purely because they could be seen clearly in that font. The track titles we had to think about more carefully. In the end, I blurred the area behind the track listing, which allowed us to have the font we wanted since the out of focus background leaves the viewer able to read the tracks. We wanted a white font so that something else on the panel was white, going with the dress.
Finally, the same changes that were done on Emily's face on the front cover, was done here but on a smaller scale and with less care since her face is not seen that clearly anyway, and is not the main focus on the picture.)




(The first page of the 'thankyou' page. Here I just put up a blank black page, and used several text boxes towrite down her message. We know straight away we wanted some sort of curly, fancy writing to fit in with our fantasy-like theme, we were going to use "Lucinda Handwriting" or "Vivaldi," however they were both hard to read in that size font. In the end I downloaded a font from here in the curly section called "jiggle" which we all agreed looked good.)







(The second-page of the mini booklet - it did end up running on to 2 pages. The main blocks of text are same as the first page, as are the letters on Emily Quinn's name, except for the E and the Q, which I used "Palace Script MT."
The change in size font was done since we thought it would emphasise that in the end, this whole project was for and about Emily. It also gave it a signituare like look, making it more personal from Emily to her fans.)








(The middle slide, and the picture we chose was this one and not the other one where Emily was standing behind the tree, was because it went with the leaves picture that would be behind the CD holder - it would seem as if that is where she was lying before, but now she is gone.
Here I used the exact same effects as the levaes image, so as to try and make them as similar as possible to try and give the effects which I have just mentioned above.)






The images, including the one beneath the CD's transparent plastic place holder, which is also the background of the website and from a scene in the 'Fallen' music video, hopefully whows that we've really thought how we need to try and make it intertextual, that they all need to promote the same artist together.


- Sarah El-alfy

We've finally begun the last tasks of our courseworks. The digipak and the website are almost done, and we've begun our presentation for our evalutaion. Hopefully we'll be done by the Christmas Holidays.

- Sammy Little

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