Our Final design for our CD

This is the front of our CD. We stuck with the idea of having the picture in Sepia because we wanted to create this certain mood and effect on the picture.




































This is on the left Panel inside Our CD. We came up with the idea of sticking with the colour for the whole CD outside and inside. We also wrote down the the chorus bit of the song in the picture for effect.





































This is were the CD will fit in. The first draft was that theres was gonna be a little sentence from the lyrics of the song in the middle. But We decided that we did not want that and that we should just keep the lyrics in the left panel of the CD case.





































This is the back of Our CD. I came up with a simple picture but very effective for the back. We also made our very own logo as you can see in the bottom left corner. I also made sure that the song list is easily seen vy our viewers.

A2 Production and AS Production

There are a lot of differences between the two productions but one of the major differences between the production of the music video in A2 and the film opening for AS is the amount of footage that you have to get whilst out filming. For the music video you need a wide array of shots, close ups, extreme close ups and many more different types of shots, this is because the standard frame time in the music video is very short, most shots are only on the screen briefly as there are a lot of quick sharp cuts that go into a music video. The main camera equipment we have used is the same as in AS which is the hand held camera which we have took most of our shots with, however we have also used the equipment in the studio in order to get better quality of shots. We used the studio cameras whilst filming parts of our video as we could get different shots of the performer from a variety of different angles simultaneously which has worked well in our video.

The editing process has been quite different as we have had to put more work into the editing of the music video, one of the most important and tricky things in the editing procedure is the lip syncing which takes time and has to be perfect to make the video look as professional as possible. Another difference between the music video and the film opening is that the film opening had to have continuity editing and had to follow a story line however the music video doesn't need this which gives us more freedom when editing the video. The editing process seems to take longer as you have to pay more attention to detail in order to make a good music video, another reason for the A2 editing taking longer is that there are a lot more shots to choose from and you have to make sure that what you are putting in the video fits with the clips around it and also the lyrics of the song.

Also in the A2 production we have had to do more work on the blogs and also make sure that the print based work is done. This has involved taking the pictures for the CD cover and magazine covers and editing them, this has been time consuming and we have had to make sure that we have been organized and knew what we are doing and when in order to get everything done for the deadline for the production. The major difference between the two has been the amount of footage that you have to get for the music video as it is essential to have a wide variety of shots to choose from for the video. However the biggest similarity between the two is the hard work that you have to put in in order to make a good quality music video/film opening.

Magazine Cover Analysis: 50 cent & Eminem

While looking at few magazines I have noticed the producers of the VIBE magazine consistently do throughout their various editions of magazine is that they will always use the large, bold and thick title VIBE, by doing this they are hitting two birds with one stone because as well as promoting the artists on the front cover they are also promoting their own magazine. This particular magazine the producers used two main artists 50 cent and Eminem for their front cover. They are both represented in an intimidating and aggressive way, with both artists leaning forwards, wearing plenty of shiny, most likely expensive jewelry with a hard stare into the lens of the camera. Eminem and 50 cent are very close artists, if anybody is a true hip-hop or rap fan, they should know that Eminem kicked off 50 cents career, this gives VIBE the right to say ‘A conversations between brothers’ – because with their target audience being fans of this genre of music, they should be aware what the subliminal message is with that text. VIBE always make the image of the artist/s the largest one on the magazine cover, this demonstrates that they want to make it clear to the reader to reader that they are the most important figures in the magazine. I think this type of magazine is not aimed at an older age band, I feel this magazine would be aimed at the 16-27 age groups. My reasoning for this is that 50 cent and Eminem are both artists of a recent era; this instantly shows us that the magazine is formed around that genre of music, and everybody knows what genre of music these artists perform.

Magazine Cover Analysis: J.Cole

After seeing this magazine cover i thought that it would be ideal for attracting our target audience. The colours used in the background of this artist is very good because of what he is wearing it makes him stand out, this suggests that the artist is the most important figure on the cover and further adds focus on him. J.Cole’s positioning at the front centre of the magazine is emphasising his importance as an artist. J. Cole’s body position is key in creating the right body language and attitude to the viewer. His hands are in his pockets which have connotations of a laid back demeanour and his attire is smart yet casual which still perhaps connects him to city life and so his potential music listeners. The artist looks right at the camera which reinforces a connection with the reader (target audience). This particular magazine is advertising the artist’s album but the artist itself which is why there is no information about his album. Instead by his stage name J.Cole in big yellow letters which instantly catches the audiences eyes suggesting his up and coming importance in the hip hop scene.

I think this a great example magazine cover we are planning on making because we want something that will catch the readers eyes and make them want to read more and find out about the album release date. We figured out that the key thing is to make artist look like he is the most important thing on this cover which makes our audience notice him. I think we should do a similar magazine cover with Solomon in clothes that make him stand out from the background.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated. One of the tasks we are required to do is to make a CD cover and Magazine which will consist of images, colours and graphical text. To use this piece of software you must have experience because the interface can be confusing for beginners because certain tasks need knowledge to be done. A member of my group called Juan has volunteered to do this task because he has alot more experience with Photoshop than any of us in the group. Using this software Juan was able to add alot of colours and textures aswell as graphical text which made the CD cover look professional.

Final Cut Pro

Once we have finished filming all the footage we needed for our music video it was time for us to edit everything together, which was all the footage and the soundtrack. We used a software called Final Cut Pro which is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. Final Cut Pro enabled us to do what we needed and add all sorts of effects such as cross dissolve. It has a freindly user interface so if you are a beginner you wont find any difficulties while using it. When we imported our clips onto the software, we edited them together on something called a timeline. In between the clips on the timeline we were able to add a filter or transition which we thought made our video look better because if we decided to not add transitions it would just be boring to watch.

FIRST DRAFT CD COVERS

These two pictures are the first ideas we came up with, together we combined ideas and made our first drafts. With the first image Solomon is from the waist up and the rest of the picture is the Altar. We wanted to have a balance between the Altar and Solomon. In the second picture, His body is right in the middle of the picture. This gives the idea of Star Icon, where we want our customers to focus on our main star.

Colour Ideas For Our CD Cover

IDEA 1: My first idea is to just increase the brightness and the contrast in the picture. This picture is fairly simple but I believe it still a powerful image. This picture has not been cropped and when I do, I will make sure that the center of the image is Solomon's body from the waist up, this is because we want to get the picture in the background. The picture in the background is very important to our video helps to bring out the meaning of our song and the whole idea of our music video.











IDEA 2: In this picture, I decided t0 edit it in Black and white. The colour of the picture creates a certain mood. This mood is quite gloomy and sad, but thats not the mood that were looking for. The mood that we are looking for us a certain positiveness and it will fit in better with our music video and our song.














idea 3: I was trying to go through the colours and I came across this one. This colour also creates a mood to the whole picture. But I dont think it is the mood that we are looking for. As this picture tells danger, hazard or rage because of its dark red colour. This wasnt a strong a contender compared to our other options, but I certainly think that something about it is really interesting.












IDEA 4: I think that this is the strongest option that we have. Simply because the colour really stands out from the rest of the colour sets that we have chosen to do. The Sepia colour creates and gives this certain effect that the other sets of colours did not create. Our song's main mood is about positiveness and this helps it bring it out and with a bit of other moods that goes with "going through challenges" there is a bit of the 3rd idea into this picture. With both effects combining to collaborate and achieve the mood that we are looking for.

FIRST DRAFT STORYBOARD: Singer scene


1. The first shot in this scenery is a long wide shot because we are starting a new scene and a new setting and we want our viewers to know straight away where it is and what is happening.











2. Second shot is a close up on the Singer playing the guitar. With this shot we aim to show our character's facial expression. We figured that we need to do a lot of shots were it shows emotions because our song relates to a lot of emotions and feelings.









3. In this shot the camera is in the singer's background.Our singer is in the audience to again present star icon. the whole place is dark to create a certain gloomy, calm mood.

FIRST DRAFT STORY BOARD: Dance Scene


1. First shot of the dance scene is a long shot of the studio with the camera just behind the judges and focused on our character.












2. Second shot is a wide shot of the whole scenery with Solomon in the background. The purpose of this shot again is to let our viewers know what is happening exactly. Also the idea of Solomon in the background is to present Star icon.










3. Next shot is that a close up on our dancer's face. to create tension. We also wanted to succeed capturing her facial expression and her feeling from this shot. We also wanted to do a close up on the judges face after this shot but we thought that we would do it after a couple more shots.









4. We wanted to have a wide shot of the bit where our dancer makes a mistake and trips over. The purpose of this shot again is to make our viewers know what is happening exactly at that very moment.










5. We now turn our attentions to Solomon to again show the idea of star icon. This shot comes up because our singer is mainly in the background, we made sure that we have not forgotten about representing our main star.










6. We go back to the main events in this scenery straight after from Solomon's shot. We wanted to make sure that we do not wanna get carried away of getting random shots in, so we made sure that stayed focused on the main events.










7. This we go back to the facial expressions to see her feelings and also to create this whole idea of tension and suspense. But we did not want too much suspense because it would not relate to our video because song is RnB.










8. We go back to this shot where we both see the judges facial expressions and the dancers improvement. This shot is very effective because the viewer will know that there has been changed in the whole mood of the scenery.

Creative Process

How we decided to do R- Kelly. I believe I Can Fly, we was just going through youtub eand then we came across it by accident, then I thought it would be a perfect song to do, easy melody, so it is not hard for us to memorise the lyrics and also a well know song, after we all put our heads together to come up with three different scenarios, which will be played out in our music video. The inspiration came from the lyrics of the song, 'I Believe I Can Fly', is suggesting that we could do anything if we really put our minds to it, so that is what aided us to come up with the scenario's we did.

Use of technology in filming

Whilst filming we have used a range of technology, from the camcorder, tripods and the apple mac's. Using a camcorder of that quality has its massive disadvantages, as for one it is hard for us to capture certain shot we intended on doing, like a long one shot of the piano, this could not be done because we needed a flash witch the camcorder did not have, but we ended up using stage-light with gave us a better shot that we even expected. An advantage of using the camcorder was that it gave us a chance to view our shots exactly as we recorded them, this is due to the memory card it uses, and when we look at our shots we can look and see there and then what we need to change or if we need to tweak certain shots. That really helped us in getting fast feedback from our team on if the shots were good enough to use or not. The apple mac's helped us to convert all our video's that we had on the memory card into files we can use on final cut pro, which then gave us a better view of the quality of recording we had.