Digipak Images And Initial Ideas

Above are some images we took whilst we were filming our music video. We want to use these images for our digipak design. We wanted a natural looking pose of the artist for the front of the digipak to help create a brand identity. She has delibrately been made to look natural, her clothing is casual and she has little make up on. This along with the rural setting makes for a more wholesome image that matches the music. The idea of leaning against a tree was taken from a photoshoot with pop singer Diana Vickers. (Photo to the right) The image is very unmanufactured and makes the girl look more interesting, this is the effect we want for our branding of Jose Vanders.

The images above were also taken during filming, to be used on the digipak. We want to use one for the back cover of our digipak and we had the idea of writing the song listing on path. I believe this is a good way to connect all our products together and create a brand identity. The images where bethan is on the left of side of the image I believe will be more effective to use with the song listings as there is sufficient space to put the text. The first image with Bethan turning around is more interesting and we can use this throughout the digipak or on the advert.

We were thinking of using a polaroid for the front of the digipak, here is the result of our first stage of editing:

Ancillary Tasks

We have to make two other products to accompany our music video. We have decided to make a digipak and an advertisement for the album.

We have to make sure all three products are linked together to create a sense of coherence and a brand identity. Our original idea is that we will use trains as a common theme throughout the 3 products as well as similar fonts, images and colour schemes. We plan to use an image of the artist on the front of the digipak, for easy recognition and branding. On the back of the digipak, we will place the track listing over an image we will take of our artist walking away. We want to use images of the artist in a relaxed state on the inside of the digipak, as well as a short amount of information about the artist and a short message to her fans. This adds a personal touch that we feel will help to create a nice persona of our artist and immediately make her more likeable.

Digipak

What is a digipak?

A digipak is a folded piece of card packaging that often has one or more plastic compartments which hold a CD or DVD. Digipak style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums. Digipak designs vary greatly and often have different amounts of folds, depending on what the contents of it are and the amount of information and imagery used. Pockets are also commonly used to store the CD.

Here are some examples of digipaks that already exist:

Video Diary Documenting Filming

Below is a video of me documenting the filming process of our music video.

Below are some photos of our group during the filming process.

First Draft Of Music Video

Below is a copy of our first edit of our music video.

Positive points

• The lip synching was mostly all in perfect timing and looked very realistic.
• The camera work is good, the still shots are perfectly still and the pan shots and zooms are smooth and overall the footage looks professional.
• The quick cuts at the start are very effective and are in time with the music, making an interesting instrumental, the matching audio and visuals looks really good.
• The transitions are very effective and make the shots merge together. This creates a smooth finish and the footage looks continuous and realistic. The dissolve effect and the way we edited some of the footage makes it appear dream like, as we intended.

Points to improve on

• Find more footage to fill in the missing instrumental areas.
• Improve some areas of lip synching, so the words match the track perfectly.
• Put some more transitions in to make the footage flow even better.
• Film more close ups to ensure our video fits Goodwins Theory as much as possible.

Below is a short video with clips of us filming the first draft of our video:

Target Audience For Our Artist

Girl we our using

to play our artist

We have decided to make a brand for our artist that will make her seem like an average teenage girl who is very down to earth and easy to relate to. The target audience for our music video and branding of our artist is females aged between 13 and 25. Most of her songs have lyrics relating to average teenage life, the songs also have an upbeat tempo and seem very light hearted which makes for easy listening.

Jose Vanders' music is not mainstream Kate Nash
pop and instead has an acoustic yet upbeat and fun feel. This has potential to target the audience we have outlined and also other people who like similar artists. Kate Nash is an example of an artist who makes similar music to Jose Vanders as she is of the same age and writes her own music that is often accompanied by piano.

Students are also part of the audience we are targeting and Jose Vanders is a student studying herself, this further adds to the relatability factor.

The audience we are targeting are often associated heavily with social networking and the internet. This means that we would be able to make use of online advertising on sites such Facebook and Myspace. Twitter is also a site in which our artist would be able to talk to fans directly, increasing popularity and awareness of the artist.

Shooting Schedule

Before we begin to film our music video we planned when we filmed each part and who we needed to be available for the filming of each section. We also needed to ensure we had the correct props and equipment so we are prepared when we went out to film on the selected dates. Below is a copy of our initial shooting schedule that outlines all of the above. We recorded and altered our shooting schedule accordingly as we encountered problems as it was saved electronically.

Shot List

Before we started to film our video, we created a shotlist to make it easier for us to plan and sequence our filming correctly. The use of this shotlist along with our storyboard and a shooting schedule ensures that we are fully prepared on the selected days for filming and we will have a very clear idea of what we need to film and when we need to film it. With all this planning, we will be able to film our video in the least time possible which is beneficial to us as we have a very limited time frame in which we can film. Below is a detailed shotlist of what we plan to do.

Practice Shots

-On the 1st of November, our group went to take some test shots in the locations that we are hoping to use for our music video. This was to see whether the lighting and camera quality was suitable enough to make our video look as professional as we want it to. All of our shots will be filmed in daylight hours, so as long as the weather conditions are the same on the days we film, our footage will not be effected by lighting. We also will not have the problems with dark grainy footage like we had last year.

-The photographs of the train track and train are examples of how we want to use a high angled shot in our video. This will be used in the fast editing at the start of the music video.


-I also took some images of one group member walking away from the camera on a path that we want to use in the video. We decided that these images looked very effective, so filming in this location would work really well.

-The autumn colours of the trees and fallen leaves gave us an idea to create a theme around this for our video and maybe even incorporate it into our ancillary tasks as well. We decided to have our artist wearing wintery clothing and also tried out an idea of kicking leaves to create a more interesting element within our video, rather than just having walking along a path.

-The autumn leaves and rural setting gave us another idea that we thought we could use as part of our digipack design. The shot of someone in our group standing by a tree links in the theme of autumn and would make all the things we produce cohesive. It is simple and minimilistic and similar to the promotional advert for Diana Vickers' new single. This is just a rough idea, we would use proper costume and choose a more suitable location and pose for the real thing.

-During the storyboarding of our music video, we decided to have a shot that was repeated for a certain part of the song that was also repeated. For this, we wanted an image of our artist singing to camera at the train station. As this is quite impractical to carry out, we thought of an alternative option whilst practicing our shots. Near to the path we want to use, is a wall that when filmed correctly looks as though it could be at the train station, without the hassle of getting to the station with all our equipment and the actress. I filmed one of the members in my group lip synching to the song against the wall and it appeared to work well. With correct editing, this would be a successful comprimise.

-We also took some rough video footage to see whether or not the shots

we were planning on paper would actually work in real life. We recorded a shot of someone walking towards the camera and it slowly zooming out as they got nearer, to see how effective it was. We did not have the real actress or a tripod, so the footage is not an accurate representation of how it will look and some of the camera work is shaky, be we got a vague idea.

-This day of shooting was a very helpful thing for us to do, as we began to develop a clearer idea of what we wanted our video to look like and decided on some important locations and made other decisions about themes and styling for the actress. By doing this as a planned activity before we got allocated the correct equipment, we could avoid losing time on filming days and we know have a clear idea of how filming will go.

Developed Draft Storyboard

Our Artist

• We have selected a song by the artist Jose Vanders for our music video project.
• Jose is a singer songwriter from London. She is 19 years old, meaning she is a similar age to us, this makes her a character who we can easily relate to.
• We have realised that Jose already has a style, however as we will be using another girl in the video we believe we can mold our own version of 'Jose' and completely change her brand identity.
• We found this artist through the website myspace and immediately set upon researching her further on the internet. We discovered that she has a website of her own, which features a section dedicated to her songs.
• We carefully listened to all of her music, which we found had a very lighthearted and upbeat feeling to it which we really liked.
• We eventually chose a song called 'Faces Going Places', which we chose because the lyrics were exciting and creative, whilst still being appropriate for a literal portrayal of them, that we were interested in pursuing.
  
• After we had chosen our artist and the song we wished to use, we had to make contact with her to ask her permission to use her track for copyright reasons and to avoid infringing them. We constructed an e-mail which we sent to her, asking for this permission, it can be seen below.
  

Rough Draft Storyboard

When we decided on the song we were going to use for our music video, we had to begin collecting our initial ideas for the video. We created a very rough draft storyboard of our first thoughts. Below is the story board explained in more detail:

-The first page shows the opening shot and the introduction of the first three characters.

1. -The first box shows that we want the opening to be filmed at the train station and it will involve our actress lip synching the first part of the song.


2. -The second box indicates that we want to use a male actor for part of the song that relates to a boy thinking about a girl.

-The third box shows that we want to use a female actress and a pram/baby for the part of the song that relates to this. We'll also need a lollypop prop here.

-The final box shows that we need another male actor and a female actress. We think we could use the same male actor as previous and one of our group members for this bit as it is quite small and would save time when filming.

-The first box on page two was an idea that we are not using anymore, so has been crossed out.

-The second box shows that we want a walking shot where the singer walks past. We will shoot this from different angles to add interest.

-The next box shows the singer back singing outside the train station, this is when the chorus of the song is repeated.

-The last box shows that we need a balding male actor to shoot the parts of the video where it mentions this man.

-The first box on page 3 shows the group of sweaty girls standing in a line, we will film this part of the video at school, where we can easily find a group of girls chatting.

-The second box shows the lady with a basket, this identifies that we need to find a lady to play this part. We could just use the woman we used earlier on in the video here.

-The next box shows the shot of marbles bouncing on the floor, we might incorporate a boy dropping them into this shot also.

- The last shot of the video is back at the station and shows the singer singing the end of the song here. This connects the start and the end of the song and the video together.

Locations

-These shots are of Hitchin train station. This is the location for some of our shots that we are going to use for the introducing scenes of our music video. This path will be where our actress will walk down lip synching to the first section of the song. We will shoot her singing the starting lines from a variety of different angles, so we can edit them together with the lip synching to create a more interesting introduction. This is also much more like the real music videos we have studied, so our video will look more professional.

-These shots of the train track was taken from the train bridge outside Hitchin station. We will be using this location to film some footage of passing trains and using the overhead shots to broaden the range of shot types we use in the jumpy instrumental introduction of the video, before the lyrics start.

-This path outside our school is a location that we will be using quite frequently during our music video. The girl in the song will be walking down this path, seeing the different people featured in the lyrics. We have already done test shots in this location so we know that it is a suitable area and that the shots we want can be shot here. As it is just outside the school, we can film here in our lesson time.

-This bench is located next to the path I have explained about above. It will be used to film the scene with the couple and the scene with the old man.

-Windmill hill will be the location for the rest of our video shots. The ways we are portraying the other characters and events in the video, will be based around this area. The photographs used for the anicillary tasks will also be taken in this location, this maintains continuity and fluidity between the products. The theme also helps develop a brand identity for our artist.

This is a video of our group discussions our locations and some of the problems we faced during filming.