Digipak draft

This is our first draft for a digipak for Jack's album. We have gone with the conventional six sides as this is what people will be used to seeing from a digipak. All the outside images are going to be taken at Dasset Hills where we are filming the music video, so that it all links together. We have an idea of Jack on the front cover as a silhouette image with his guitar with a rural background. We chose this because it will connote a natural sound of Jack's music which we feel it is. The song 'One Side of The story' is an acoustic song. On the inside we have decided to put an artist profile of Jack. As he is a new artist we felt that it would be good for the audience/listener to know more about him. We have the picture of the guitar, because we feel that this would be an icon of Jack because of the type of music it is, much like it is for someone like Ed Sheeran or Ben Howard. A track listing will be on the back as this is a typical convention of all digipaks and gives relevant information to the listener. The first draft with actual photographs will be done after filming the video as we will take the pictures the same day we film. 

Comparing Editing

One of the main pieces of advise we got from our target audience in terms of improving it was the pace of editing. Therefore, I have decided to compare our rough cut to a real music video from our genre to specifically look at the pace of editing:

Ben Howard Keep Your Head Up:

 Total Edits: 119

First 10 seconds: 5

Middle 10 seconds: 8

End 10 seconds: 2

Kings Of Leon Back Down South:

 Total Edits: 143

First 10 seconds: 4

Middle 10 Seconds: 7

End 10 Seconds: 2

Jack Simmons One Side Of The Story:

 Total Edits 40

First 10 seconds: 2

Middle 10 seconds: 3

End 10 Seconds: 2

Comparison:
From looking at these two videos in comparison with our own, we now have a rough idea of how many edits a 3 and a half minute song should have. We need to at least double our total number of edits to meet the required pace. By comparing our video to existing ones it has definitely helped us to realise just how much editing goes on, because it never seems that much when you are just watching the video.

Rough Cut audience feedback

We showed our rough cut to the class and here is some of the feedback we got:

I like the wide shot of the sun set and the close ups of the guitar, nice variety of shots.

Maybe try to quicken the pace.

Guitar spine shot goes on too long.

Great lighting and location, continuity. Really well framed shots.

Lip syncing was a bit off at times.

The long shots worked well with the outline of people on the hill. 

Some shots too long.

Editing was good.

From this we have decided that the main parts to work on are the length of shots. We are going to think about cutting so of them down a bit and cutting between shots more frequently, especially at the beginning and the shot of the guitar spine. Most people were happy with the variety of shots that we had. We are also going to look at the lip syncing in some shots, because it was a bit out, but we may not be able to solve it all perfectly, because we think some of this was down to the artist not the placing of shots in the video. These are the main things we are going to focus on when we re-edit our rough cut. We shouldn't need to re-film anything, because we can just cut between different shots that we already have. We don't feel that making these changes will take too long. At the moment we think we can make all the necessary changes before term ends next Wednesday. 

Rough Cut: One Side Of The Story

This is our rough cut for the music video, One Side Of The Story:

Rough Cut Editing

After having the whole of Wednesday to edit, we have now done our rough cut of the music video for One Side of The Story. We were very pleased with the footage that we got from filming and it actually worked out better that we had the memory card issue the first week, because the weather was a lot nicer when we went back.

We stuck to conventions and did both performance and narrative in the video of the artist. We have intertwined both aspects throughout the video. 

The first part of editing encountered a problem, because the canvas window in Final Cut wasn't set up in HD, therefore we would lose a lot of the quality when we exported this. After trying to find a way around it we ended up having to start the editing agin, because you can't reset the video quality to clips you've already edited together. Luckily we had only done about 20 seconds when the problem was spotted and we were able to redo that bit fairly quickly. We just had to write down the points in which the original clips had been cut and find the same place in the clips imported to the new Final Cut file. Once that was sorted we didn't encounter any other problems and remembering how to use Final Cut Express wasn't too difficult, because we used it lot last year. 

Now we are working on our ancillary products for which we have decided to do a digipak and an advert for the digipak to go in the magazine. We took the photos for these whilst filming so we can start editing the images in Photoshop straight away.

Filming Report

The second time we went out filming went a lot better and we managed to get all our filming done. We decided to reshoot everything, because the weather was a lot different to when we went the week before and got a few shots. It turned out a better day to film anyway, because the sun was out and it gave us some really good shots as well as really good photos for our digipak. 

We spent a few ours at the location and got both performance and narrative shots of Jack. Although most of the shots were planned we got some other narrative shots that we thought would look good. For example, we set up the camera on the tripod facing the sun and left it there for over five minutes whilst we went to look for another place to film. Our plan is to speed this up in editing and use it, probably at the end of the video. 

We shouldn't need to go back and do more filming. We have a lot of footage to go through and decide what to use, so that shouldn't be an issue. Now we just need to start editing when we get back.

Weather forecast for filming (day 2)

This is the weather forecast for tomorrow when we are planning to film. The last couple of days has been torrential rain, but tomorrow should be dry and sunny, therefore filming is going ahead. It seems to be better weather than when we went last week, so hopefully we will get some good shots. The plan is to get all filming done tomorrow so next week can be fully dedicated to editing.