Ancillary Products Introduction

What is a Digipack

On today’s lesson, I had an introduction to the Ancillary work. My teacher started off the lesson with a presentation saying ‘What is a Digipack?’, a Digipack is about adding value to the CD by making the customer feel that they are getting something extra and special. It plays on our love for music and how determined we are to buy things like these. It look very aesthetically pleasing because of the graphics used to illustrate the Digipack and to reflect the artist so that the customer is more persuaded to but it. The Digipack is also important to both the customers and the industry because it combats piracy because you cannot download a Digipack. 

What should the Digipack look like

Digipacks can consist of different numbers of panel’s form 4, 6, or 8 that fold outwards. The front cover of the Digipack clearly illustrates the name of the artist because the Digipack needs to promote the artist. It needs to be clear and easy to understand so that it doesn’t leave people feeling confused and struggling to make sense of it. It has special features like bonus tracks exclusively for the Digipack making it feel more special to the customer and making it better value for your money. And it needs pictures to covey the feeling of the song/album so that the customer has a familiarity with the artist and the songs.

The back cover consists of the production information like the blurb, copyright information and the year of production. It should also have the record label at the back cover and a web address and a barcode – following the conventional Digipack.

Inside the Digipack should have a consistency of design elements to make it look attractive.

Advertisement

In the advertisement it should include the Digipack so that the audience/customers know what to look out for when they go into shops like HMV to buy the Digipack. The advertisement should also include the release date and the same consistency of design elements. It should also include either review notes OR tour dates, and should have the record label. 

Why is the artwork popular

The artwork is popular for a number of reasons, and they are:

1. to create an identity/brand
2. to advertise the artist to create publicity so that everybody know who they are
3. to illustrate their personality
4. to illustrate genre
5. inspire customers/audience to feel empathy with the artist
6. to attract customers/audience and to attract new audiences and customers through the visuals, tempting them through the visuals hoping they might be persuaded by it
7. an expression of the artistic intent

How important are the ancillary products to the artist and the industry and in relation to the music video

The importance of the ancillary products is to the industry is that they can profit from the cost of Digipacks and can also branch out from different mediums so that they are not limited on how the influence their audience to buy these products. Also, by the means of advertising, it carries out the aim that everyone should hear and see the artist and their songs. It helps to combat piracy because you cant download a Digipack so it shows that when you buy a Digipack, you feel that you are getting something extra, value for your money. 

Digipak research

I like the colours that this image uses I thought it will be good if I use some of theses colour in my digipak 

Skills development: Editing skills

 In As I wasn't able to do much editing so I was a bit worried about editing this year but I was surprised that I was better at editing than i thought I was .This year I think I have learnt a lot of editing skills I think I was the one that done most of the editing except for Ahmed which done a small part of editing of  our video because of doing all the editing I think I have learnt a lot about editing this year. 

Layering all the base tracks underneath each other

At first I found it difficult to figure out which way to move the clips to sync it with the song but over time I got used to it. When editing I found out that it was important to film the whole song for each base track so when it comes to editing the base tracks it will be easier to cut the clips up after layering all the base tracks underneath each other but at first we didn't film the whole even though while filming I mention to my group that we should film the whole song instead of just filming different parts of the song. But in when we had to reshoot some of our base tracks we filmed the whole so when I edited it was much easier to sync all the clips with the song.

Colour correction effect I thought this will make these shots work well with the other shots that were dim by changing the colour of the shot to look a bit more blue I think sets the mood of the song and our theme we wanted to create.

The 8 point garbage was the difficult one to perfect but I remembered how to done it but when I check the effects it had it didn't look right so we decided not to use this effect but instead I speed up this clip so the people behind Yumi will look like their walking fast the good thing when I did this is that Yumi still looks like she is standing still this is what we wanted to achieve and I was able to do it without  having to use the 8 point garbage effect in the end.

Using the fade in and out effect made the clips have a smooth transition which made our music video have more flow and look more professional.

After layering all the base tracks I was able cut the clips and use the base track that I thought was the most powerful for that specific part of the song.

Me editing

I slowed down to 50 %  this shot to make the leafs fall down slowly creating a peaceful effect.

Overall I think I have learnt how to use final cut pro better and I got the hang of using the different technical effects on it I enjoyed editing our music video even though it was a bit stressful because I was the only one that was editing major parts of our music video in our group. 

Skills development: Planning

Planning: 

  

 This year when we first started to plan for our music video at first we all didn't have may ideas but after researching different music videos and music genres we started get lots of idea In both AS and in A2 we started off planning by brainstorming all of our ideas together. We first planned to use the song 'Dog days' by Florence and the machines but I thought that if we did a slower song it will be better so I suggested that we should change our song chose in the end they all argred that we should change our son to 'who yo are' by jessie which was my chose .what made our planning at first difficult was that no one in our group actually wanted to do the performing and they all was tiring to make me do it but I really didn't want to, so I looked for people who were willing to do it for use and in that process I asked my little sister Yumi if she wanted to be in my music video and strangely she agreed so that was a big reaealf for us. The other good thing about it was that Yumi already knew all the lyrics to the song we choose in the end which was 'who you are' by Jessie J so I think that made the production of our music video much quicker.

Planning where we will soot our base tracks

Planning

I also watched different videos of perfecting the production of music videos, videos of how to use the different camera settings

 When doing our story boarding I had an idea of make one of base tracks where Yumi is playing the guitar  I think this was an important part of our music video because it bring all the different base track together.

Skills Development

During the editing  process, i must say i had a bit more interaction with the Macs than i did in As year. I wouldn't exactly say my skills with the Macs have improved overly, however i can say that i have learnt a bit more on how to edit and i feel more confident in using them for the editing.

Most of the time i tried to follow the way Mika edits, because she seems to be very confident in editing, and when she does let me have a go, i would make sure she is next to me, because the others i don't really trust to help if end up being stuck in the middle of editing.

Feedback

These are some of the feedback we recieved from a few people after they watched the draft of our music video

Some really good feedback

Production of music video: Pictures

Make a video of your own at Animoto.

Try our video maker at Animoto.

Skills Development

I already knew from last year the basics of using final cut pro however this year I learnt a different type of editing which involved perfectly lining up all the base tracks. Although at first this seemed long winded when cutting out bits you didn’t need it was quite a breeze. The base tracks have to be lined up with the song , this is quite tricky trying to get every word in perfect timing with the song. I also learned to use a new feature called ‘8 point garbage matte’ which really excited me because now I know how they speed things up while keeping an object stationary. LOL when I first learnt how to do it I wanted to say ‘look what I can do, how cool is that’

I improved my skills on Photoshop, learning about using effects and playing about with the opacity. Making a CD cover is not easy work, (well maybe because its my first one) but thinking about the picture your using making sure there is no shadow in it, or the back ground colour being too close to the colour being worn ( which makes using the magic wand tool a nightmare).

I used different technology: hardware, software and online programs such as go animate, and beeclip.

We hope you like our music video

GoAnimate.com: Group 32 by Mika

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Famida

Well Famida or should i say Houdini? One minute she's there then you'll turn around and Pow she's gone.She has now been missing for about half the lesson and has yet to be found =P.

Feedback

These video are basically feedback, we got feedback from the group and feedback from Rebecca.

When we were about to finish our editing, we thought it would be a good idea if we recorded our thoughts about what we think of our music video and how we feel about it. We all said our part of how we enjoyed making and editing the music video even tough we had our ups and downs. 

Editing music video

here we were experimenting with the colour filter to see if it would look more better with an artificial colour. 

Editing on Music Video

On today's lesson, I came in an decided to carry on with the editing as the deadline is today. I watched the whole music video to see where we are at now and its really looking good. As I watching the video, I felt that during the duration of the music video in 1 minute 15 seconds, that it needed some fast pace editing between two scenes so I thought it would look good if i edited between them two with the fast lighting hitting on our artist face and the simple shot in the room. it looks rally good because they are both two different shots that convey the same fast pace and passionate feeling. 

Skills Development: New Editing skills I have learnt during editing my group’s music video.

The new skills that I have learnt during editing our music video is to layer one base track over another in sync with the song track. Then double clicking on the track it opens up and I am able to add ‘markers’ to the track by pressing the letter ‘M’ on the keyboard. This allows me to mark off each beat of the song so I am able to edit on each of the beats in correspondence with the recording of the scenes.

I also learnt how to slow down footages to make the scene look more dramatic. When editing the music video, I learnt how to slow the speed of the footage down to any percentage that I thought would be suitable. I also learnt how to use 8 point garbage where you can manipulate a scene for example with my one was our artist is in the middle in normal pace with the background in fast motion by using 8 point garbage

I also learnt how to manipulate the colour filter of the footages to make it look like a particular way like if I wanted the scene to have a hint of blue I would use the colour filter to achieve this.

Skills Development: How I approached planning this production work differently to my AS production work.


The way I approached the planning for this work on creating a music video was that I wanted my group to pick the song called ‘Every Teardrop is a Waterfall’ by Coldplay. In prior in telling them to choose this song, I decided to create a vivid storyboard depicting from each scene what I want to show and how it should be filmed. I gave a short presentation to my group of why they should agree with me and choose my song. Back in AS, the way we came up with idea was that we all just simply agreed on a rationale idea that we were able to create, so we wanted a house where we can film, there was a car scene which a car was needed, all these resources was granted because one of our members in our group had access to these.


In A2, I took a different approach in planning and deciding how we should create our music video by watching a variety of music videos from different genres that have different unique selling points in their music videos. For example, ‘Hey there Delilah’ by Plain White T’s have a split screen effect and ‘Every Teardrop is a Waterfall’ by Coldplay has an illustrative motif throughout. These ideas form these videos help spark off ideas that would inspire me in deciding how we should create our video.


I also watched on Youtube behind the scenes of various music videos to see how they film and the process it takes to make a music video. This was similar to what I did in AS because I watched a lot of Thriller movies to see the convention that they follow – normality, then building up tension, then the false plateau then the climax. Watching music videos and Thriller opening scenes helps me to understand what it takes to makes these and allows me to comprehend how the professionals do it, which motivates me in achieving a similar outcome. Research helps a great deal in both AS and A2 because it allows inspiration to take form allowing me to take something that I watched and articulate it into my own form.  


What I did differently in A2 from AS work through planning, is that in A2, the planning was more detailed in the sense of what we wanted to achieve because it was a little bit complex. We spent many lessons and workshops just planning on what we wanted to achieve out of our music video. We spent a lot of time researching our locations so that it reflects or contrasts our song. However, mistakes did happen in my A2 planning from AS planning because when we filmed and put it up onto Final Cut Pro, it felt disconnected with the other shots and it looked unfinished, which meant we had to film even more base tracks for our music video, which we never anticipated for. But in the end, we planned on what we wanted to film and achieved this through intensive planning and coordination. 

Comparition with our music video and the original music video

In making we all watched the orignal music video togther and by done so we were all inspired by it it also made me think of so the ideas I planned to film at home. In Jessie J's video her performance was the most inprotant thing becausre the video was quite simple shot in the same room using different camera angles. I tried my hardest to make Yumi's performances as stron and in the end it think Yumi's performace was good  I tried to create a simiar theme and atmosphere of Yumi in her bedroom but looking into the mirror.  

I think I did well when recreating a similar shot to the one above wit the sun behind the artist.

I was also inspired by 'Tokyo' by  YUI's  music video with the sun rising behind her while her was singing.

I thought that this shot of the artists side profile is a good way to shot our artist too I also liked how the sun light creates a calm peaceful

Bloopers

Reshooting base tracks

I though the clips we reshoot was successful because we were able to shot all the scenes that we needed to reshoot

Comparisons and Intertextual Features

Our music video isn’t just surrounded by the effects of what editing has to offer but it also circles around the performance of our artist and how she can covey the feeling of the song towards the audience. Our artist is Yumi and she was able to deliver a high standard form of acting and illustrating her ability to lip sync and perform.


The performance in our video needed to be very accurate to reflect the intensity of the song. When it became powerful, Yumi needed to look and act powerful and when it needed to be intimate and peaceful she did exactly that.

We wanted to use some intertextuality features from the original music video because we felt that those scenes capsulated the feeling of the song. Here you can see that Jessie J is sitting on the bed with her legs pressed against herself, we really love this stance that Jessie J is in because it shows very strongly through her facial expressions and movement that she feels lonely, insecure and unhappy. We wanted to convey this exact feeling with our artist in our video so we had Yumi sitting in the corner of the empty room, laying her head against the wall. Even though its not exactly the same, we tried to show the similar feelings that they both show. The emptiness in both shots show very vividly of the separation that they both have from themselves, losing their identity by forgetting who they are, not feeling comfortable with themselves.  

In this scene, it was vital that we had a medium close up shot of our artist singing. We saw from the original video of the medium close up shot of Jessie J singing towards the camera and how powerful she emits her feelings to the audience, it also makes the audience feel connected with her. We wanted to show this as well so we filmed our own version of the medium close up shot except our one has lighting in the background that is shining towards the camera giving it that soft, glare look. It really works effectively because there’s a softness about our scene – reflecting how she is feeling inside. 

What we really loved about the performance from Jessie J from the original music video was that she uses her hands to illustrate how she is feeling, the hands clenching shows how passionate she feels. Her mouth widening shows the intensity of the words. We really love this and wanted our artist Yumi to illustrate this. Here you can see that she is performing by using her hand gestures and facial expressions to covey the feeling of the song and to dramatise the performance to make it look realistic and over emphasised. Having our artist performing her heart out reflects perfectly towards the song and lyrics and it convinces the audience to feel sympathy and empathy, so that they can relate to it, as we all related to the original song and video when we first heard it.

Editing Thursday

During today, our purpose was to just to finish off editing our music video. Our footages in Final Cut Pro were still not fully edited but we managed to get half way through. During the mid ending of the music video, we have some scenes that are focused on the scenery to just establish the isolation she has with herself and where she is. The problem here was that when we played it and watched these particular scenes, it didn’t play smoothly after one another because it had these abrupt scene changes. So Ahmed and Mika had an idea that maybe to overcome this problem would be to add a fade in and out effect so that it played smoothly into each scene after one another, almost each of these scenes feels thought out from our artist – Yumi’s perspective.. 

Today we continued editing using the 8 point garbage effect. We sped up the duplicated video to 600% so the people behind will look like they are fast forwarded while Yumi stands still in the middle of the crowd showing that she feels like the outsider, she feels misplaced, we wanted to extend the speed of which the people walked past her because we felt that this intensity of speed felt right.
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Intertextuality Feature

Jessie J's 'Who You Are' video: Jump Cut feature

When we chose to pick the song ‘Who You Are’ by Jessie J, we knew that we wanted to convey how the artist is feeling through the dramatise of performance and the fast editing – in particular the jump cuts. When we watched the original music video to ‘Who You Are’, it was solely based on Jessie J’s performance and how passionately she was able channel the lyrics across to the audience. Even though I was not a huge fan of the song, what made me accept it was how we could show in our version of our music video the meaning of the song and how we have interpreted it through the performance. One way that we were inspired from the original music video was the jump cuts used when she starts singing – “Yes no’s, egos, fake shows, like boom, just go, and leave me alone, real talk, real life, good luck, good night”, it clearly shows how both the editing of jump cuts and the performance was able to illustrate her state of mind – going from back and forth to show how unclear she is of herself and trying to seek who she is. This intertextuality feature of the jump cuts was very useful to us when we were filming because we wanted to convey this meaning of the song. 

Our Version of 'Who You Are' video: Jump Cut feature

In our own version of this particular scene, we planned that we wanted to film in the park because we felt that this would be the ideal place to show a contrast of our artist trying to find who she really is in an environment where you are meant to be having fun. We deliberately chose to film on the climbing frame because of the colours: red and yellow, which we thought might illustrate her feelings and the metaphor for the climbing frame, almost climbing the top of your own mountain to find the answer that you are looking for – Who You Are. The jump cut effect we hoped to achieve was to show her state of mind and how she is going from one place to another, almost seeking for it in every direction.

Filming on sunday 13th and 14th

 

Sunday 13th Nov

Today I went out to film some more fillers for our video at Walthamstow Marshes.

 

Temper Trap, "Love Lost" (Dougal Wilson) from Carlos Pedrosa on Vimeo.

I found this music video after I went out to film some fillers for our music video which was filmed in the same place I went out to film Walthamstow Marsh.

Monday 14th Nov

We all decided that we will go out to film at the Barbican so we meet up at 3:30. When we go to our location we set up all the equipment that we were going to use and started thinking which camera is most effective but as we did and tried to film but the put camera memory card was full I tried to delete the clips that we already saved on our hard drive on the camera but it wasn't allowing me to delete the clips. After this the only chose we had was to  buy a new SD card for our camera so we when into HMV to but a card but after buying it we put it in our camera but their was an error so we couldn't use that as well.

Editing 8 point garbage

Today when editing I decide to start the 8 point garbage edit I frist duplicated the clip that I was going to use the added the 8 point garbage edit then rendered the clips together 

Comparison

This is just a picture on the real artist Jessi J, i was just looking at her attitude and outfit and make-up that she has in the video.

She keeps a very bold statement and shows a very strong powerful way of expressing attitude, this is done by alot of eye contact with the camera, and alot of shots where its a mid shot.

This picture i took out from a recent release 'Who's laughing now', very up beat song, whereas the song we are doing, is slow. So we basically did the opposite of everything in this video. which is showing confinement and insecurity.

This is our artist of the song, very plain and simple. We imagined to have a look which really presents the feeling of insecurity and confinement.

Hopefully when we look back at the final video that we have made , we will be able to say that we acheived the look we imagined

Editing

This is the new mirror scene , as you can see we've taken in what Annabel has said and Mika has put in lighting but also made it look part of the scene

This is the crew Editing

Thats anotehr edition to the base tracks thaat we have so far

Thats the crew again editing

Filming

This is kind of a late post, but i thought it would be nice for you guys to see how we were filming, and the weather conditions we had to film in.

While we were filming the weather was really bad, and it was freeeeeeeezzzzzzing!!! And poor Yumi had to be filmed without her coat.

 This was Liverpool street station and as soon as we hit the place it started to rain. so it really affected our timing schedule and how long we would take on filming a scene.

Editing

During the editing, we faced alot of difficulties because the scenes that we shoot had neither good lighting nor good focus. So after Annabell viewing our video were told to re-shoot some of the scenes keeping in mind the wrongs such as the lighting and focus.

Another problem she picked out was that while Mika filming we could see her hair on the side of the screen which wasn't helpful, another thing was having the artists hair at the bottom of the screen. this happened during the scene where the artist was looking into the mirror while singing.

So Mika had to re-film that scene.

Here you can clearly see that, the lighting is not good nor is the focus, this was the scene that had to be re-filmed.

Filming saturday 12th November

Over the shoulder shot  

I filmed so more base tracks of Yumi looking into the mirror with the dim lighting effect with candles to make her look depressed. 

Filming Friday 18 th evening

This is the shot that we needed to reshoot because it is too dark and its out of focus.

This is the mirror shot I reshot this evening  after Yumi was back from school

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I experimented with the lighting so the lighting looks as natural as possible so I tried to use foil to reflect the light on to Yumi's face this made her face not too shiny  much to the point is that her face is glowing so the technique worked well because it let off  a soft light on her face.

 

 This is the lighting I used to make this shot look brighter and for the top light I put a see though orange plastic sheet over it so the light doesn't look too white and artificial I think this worked really well with the candle lighting it didn't overwhelm that soft candle lights as well.

This was a new shot that I thought would work  as well in the to create the glowing light effect I put two table lights behind Yumi and I also use the top light as well to make the lighting equal and to make sure that you can see Yumi's face.

The table lights I used for the shot above

 

I also had an idea of filming Yumi singing while sitting down on the stairs looking distressed I though these shots went well with the atmosphere that we wanted to create in our music video.