FInal Cut Feedback

To get feedback for our final cut, the whole year group watched our video and made notes on it. They told us what aspects they liked and also things that could have been done better.

Overall, the feedback from our final cut was very positive. People mainly commented on the range of camera angles and shots we used to portray the band. Some comments included:


* Edited well to the beat and good lip syncing
* Good close ups and shots of the instruments
* Good eye contact from lead singer
* Effective transitions
* Good use of extreme close up on the lips
* Good variety of shots of all band members
* Good camera movement

The negative comments people had were mainly about the change in lighting in some shots as a few appeared darker with a high contrast.

Final Cut

Secrets - Final Cut from Jamie WGSB on Vimeo.

This is our final cut of our music video. We used the Feedback from our rough cut to guide us for a better video. So we changed the lighting on the singer to be brighter and clearer, have the singer looking directly into the camera more, we also gained more varied shots of our instruments. Afterward me and my group came up with the idea of incorporating the 'MTV Rocks' logo into our video since this was our selected Music channel. This gave it more realism and helped it to look more like a professional music video.

Digipak Ideas

When Creating these we took the main ideas from our mind map previously made and began making these drafts for the cover.

The image on the left were the first 6 attempts at a digipak cover. The photos used of the cello and candle were taken at the church we used. we also used doves due to how our mind map came up with the idea of peace in reference to doves, so we found a custom brush that was altered to help suit our album and requirements.

The Title 'Letting Go' was inspired to us after we created the dove cover and liked how it linked in with the church and the song called secrets since the song is all about letting go of your secrets and letting people know.

The Dove cover ( middle right) was the first idea my group came up with and was experimented across to other ideas. The idea with the cello being on the front was because it was the main focus of the song along with the singer. The candle was an idea of light and represented the church. When editing those photos they were cut them from their original backgrounds and adjusted vibrance/contrast/brightness/saturation levels to optimum levels.

When combined the dove cover with the candle cover we liked the idea of the doves looking like the smoke of the flame, so with that in mind the doves were overlayed on to the top layer and we attempted to create a misty effect and see how it would look. me and my group didn't like the end result since it didn't look like how we was hoping it would look.

The cello covers were more conventional and was deiced to be left simple and easy to look at. the title was rested on top of the cellist bow as if it underlined the title. The white text easily contrast the dark gradient background which makes for a nice effect. The top right image I had made a few adjustments to lighting in order for the cello to have a greater effect and presence.

After looking at these covers we realised that we had made the covers look way to classical and not of our recognisable genre of music, therefore would not appeal to our targeted audience. We therefore chose not to use any of these as a final digipak cover.

Below here you can see the drawn ideas made up by my group after reviewing the other covers it includes a new concept of ideas of which the band are the main focus rather than imagery and instruments. this way it keeps consistency with the music video and dove theme of which we have been trying.



The last point was to choose our font for the digipak. This font would also feature in our magazine advert as this would keep the coherency. We chose the font Headline from DaFont.com, and felt this font worked well with our designs. It suggested a mix of formality and informality with its blocky text. It also fitted well with previous fonts used by One Republic.

Digipak: Alternative Rock Research

With album covers within the alternative rock genre, the common theme among them is how the cover shows the band with the lead singer in the front of the image. the rest fo the band members are usually behind the lead singer but still easily reconisable. The reason for this is because the lead singer is the msot easily reconisable to the fans so putting him forefront of the photo would make the band as a whole more recognisable.

Looking into exisiting products of the genre, such as Stereophonics album cover and the Razorlight's album cover, it's easy to see that both images are looking out at the audience with the other band members looking out of image or appearing less engaged wiht the audience. This highlights the importance of the lead singer and allows people to understand the roles of the people withing the picture without needing to know who is who.

However, with the majority of alternative rock albums/digipaks its often displayed with an artistic or computer generated image. We have found within OneRepublic's exisiting products that they use a lot of artwork rather than an image of the band and this research showed that this was common for the whole genre. The image on the right is an example of the different kinds of album art within the genre, with many posing no specific relevance the title of the album or the name of the band.

Digipak Initial Ideas and Mood Board

The song we used called 'Secrets' was filmed in a church to keep a coherence within our themes, such as secrets leading to confessions and both used within a religious environment.

When trying to keep a coherence across all our tasks, it was decided that we would keep these themes and ideas and even incorporate a newer theme of freedom - selected due to our mind map of which is below.

We wanted the album to be dark with a light source to help represent the ideals we had, we also looked into different albums, such as 'Come Closer' by Miles Kane and 'Defamation of Strickland Banks' by Plan B, to help inspire us and make sure this was a professional job.

Both of these two albums feature a dark setting and a small light source.

From the Miles Kane album, we thought that we could possibly use the silhouette idea in front of a church window. From the Plan B album, we thought that our lead singer sitting in a confession box with similar lighting would work well.We then had the idea of doves and freedom, relating to 'give all my secrets away'. We liked the idea of having white doves flying away on a dark background, and possibly changing the contrast and effects so that the doves glow on a black background. We also added to this idea by thinking of having a cloudy effect on the background, and possibly having a ray of light shining through the clouds.We then needed to decide what sort of names would be appropriate for our album. Elliot came up with these ideas:

'Letting Go'
'Breaking Free'

If we decide to make the album a single, then we would be able to name it 'Secrets' after the song.

Digipak: One Republic's Logo's and Styles

When looking into our digipak ideas we thought it'd be best to look into exisiting One Republic digipaks, and see if we can continue a theme they might have for their texts. In the end each album used a variety of fonts on the front covers and as you can see from the image on the left, it does not display a logo for the band which allows us the freedom of designing our own style of logo when creating the digipak.

Despite all this, there are still amny similaritys between our font idea and One Republics. They both use black, white and browns as a distinct colour scheme, also we both use formal fonts to reflect the band as a whole, and trhoughout their video they are seen wearing formal clothing. this helps futher promote the band's image. The fonts are, in some cases, used for both the name of the band and the album title, but they have allowed difference to eb indicated through the change of colour.

The OneRepublic's albums always use some sort of abstract art work, as seen on the album 'Waking up' on the right side. THey used a vairety of paint splats for many of their album artwork but also used silhouette of a tree on a blue starry background, such as 'Dreaming Out Loud'. This album cover si the onyl oen that seem relevent towards the title fo the album as it creates a dream-liek atmosphere with the starts and night sky - these are also commonly assosiated with dreams.

'Apologise' is the one album that shows the band as a whole where you can see how they dress formally and give of their image as a band. The lead singer is presented at the front, and the remaining band members are situated behind him, showing his importance and role in the band. If we use an image of our band as a whole we would need to pay attention to how we set up the image like this.

Digipak Research

For our digipak, it was best that we look at existing products to make sure that our held the same professionalism as the others used within our genre. So Jamie brought in some CD for us to analyse and look into and see if we could get a good idea of what to create for our own digipak. the first album we looked into was Green Day's album: American Idiot.

The front cover of the album was more artwork than live imagery of the band, presenting us with a hand holding a heart shaped grenade, reflection on the lines of the song 'She's a rebel' on the album:

'She's the symbol
of resistance
and she's holding on my
heart like a hand grenade'

With this we can see a sense of continuity throughout their piece of which we might want to use within our digipak as an idea. E.g. Take our main line "give all my secrets away" and create an image to reflect this.

With the front cover of 'American Idiot' we can see they have used a simplistic colours such as black, red and white to help present a violent out look onto the album.

The font for 'GreenDay' is a very simple block texted design with slight distortion to keep the theme of violence and rebellion. IT is the biggest text on the front cover followed by the album name 'American Idiot' which is smaller but in a different colour, red.

When looking inside the CD jewel case, we noticed that the album keeps to the same colour scheme throughout using the colours as continuity. There are no pictures of the band them self but are iconic enough to be noticed by their Band name/logo aswell as just their names which are highlighted within red writing, they are also noticed by their instrument and their part within the band which is all written beneath the names. The inside also has references towards the producers, other musicians and guest singers who helped produce the album. It also notes the placement of recording.

Behind the actual CD is a nice simple black background, and doesn't focus on anything interesting other than the CD.

When looking at the back of the CD it shows a list of songs so that the audience knows what they are buying., it also carries on a continued theme of the 'hand grenade' by having a picture of a pin on the grenade. This is done to help create a sense of coherence throughout the album and make it look together as one product. Another aspect on the back cover is the usual bar-codes, Parental Advisory' label, and advertisement for 'greenday.com' and 'repriserecords.com' which are all references to the audience so they understand more about the artist they have picked up.

The next album we decided to look into was the Kaiser Chiefs album 'Employment'. The ideas behind this album were very similar to Greenday's album, but this time with a brown theme which is again displayed throughtout the album with amny features and designs within the same place.

This colour scheme is used throughout the album mand is even similar to Green Day's album. Both back covers present the song list, barcodes and contributers to the album, as well as 'Kaiserchiefs.co.uk' shown on the back. Whereas on the font cover, the usuasl 'logo' font for Kaiser Chiefs' band name is used with the album anme written in a very different and italic type face. The font cover also shows a sticker stating 'special edition', this is common umongst albums in general so my group will take this into consideration wether or not to add this to our digipak, but overall i beleive we shall not since the sticekr is not physically not a part of the digipak. Unlike the Green Day album, the inside of the album behind where the CD would be is a patten which is continious throughout the album. The inside cover also shows the names of the songs in the album and a small change in design is shown. The back and inside covers are different to the front cover and CD panel, as they depict lighter colours.

This album presented, 'U218 Singles', is very different to the others and is focused much mroe on the band identity and has more band pictures with a black and white colour scheme used through out this design and a varied pictures of the band across three panels of the album. Although the panel behind the CD is planin black similar to the Green Day album.Many albums appear to not have any kind of pattern behind the CD, and if they do it is very simplistic.

Adding a Logo

So now that my group has learned how to key frame and layer the video, we liked the idea of using our chosen Music Channel's logo in our video to give it more of a professional feel to the video. So we added the 'MTV Rocks' logo to the top left within our video due to our research we had done on other videos within MTV Rocks channel. Within this research it was easily shown that the MTV Rocks logo was at the top left of the screen as shown in the pictures below.


So to do this we had to import the image of the logo and save it as a PNG file as this would get rid of the white background within the image and turn it transparent. The image was then dragged into final cut and placed within the V2 column so that it would layer on top of the video.

When the image was first placed into the video it filled the whole canvas, so we checked the option for image and wire frame so that we could adjust the size of the image and place it where we wished. After this was done we attempted to stretch the image across the whole video but it would only go so far, so in the end we made multiple copy and placed them next to each other so that we could have the image through out the whole video. In doing this we gave our video a much more professional look and helped give it realism.

How To Keyframe

One idea that was brought up for our FinalCut Project was to have a small sign pop up at the start and end of video, indicating what the song is called aswell as the artist. The way you can do this is by 'KeyFraming', so after noticing this me and my group started to research Keyframing and found out how it allows the user to lay an image over another and move it to particular parts of the screen. We may also add a watermark to the video for example the MTV Rocks logo, as that is the channel we feel our video would be best suited to.

The main way my group learned how to do this was through useful YouTube videos by the 'Final Cut King' who (although using FinalCut Pro instead of FinalCut Express) had made two very simple videos which helped guide us through the basics and how to layer.

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Rough Cut Feedback

Now that the rough cut is finished we had the rest of the class look at our video and give us some feedback and advice. letting us know what they thought was good and the areas that would need improving. The overall conclusion of the group was that the shots used for instruments were good, everything seemed synced to the music (especially the drums), and the video flowed well but it was deemed that improvements would be needed since the class did pick up on a few:

• The lighting was pointed out by many people as being varied throughout the video and this needs to be corrected. the focus for our problem was how our lighting was not powerful enough for most shots, also the light coming through the window was sometimes too bright, obscuring the rest of the shot. Hopefully when we next film the natural lighting will be slightly less, if not we will have to edit the contrast of our shots.

• Another problem that was pointed out was how the singer didn't look into the camera alot and therefore didn't connect with the audience as much as the reviewer's liked. This will be easy to correct when rerecording and we'll have to replace some of the singers shot with this in mind.
  

• The opening of our rough cut was described as being 'jolty', we thought best that we re-film with a bigger and more interesting stained glass window in the church of which we saw in our photos of our first visit.
  

• We realised afterward that there were parts of the video where the signer or instruments fell out of sync with the music. So we thought best to sort this out after our second filming since we planned on getting new instrument shots.
  

With this feedback me and my group are happy with the results but understand that we have missed/lacked some aspects of which still needs improving or fixing. We are re-filming in the church again on the 5th of February, we plan on doing the following:

1. Re film the opening using the bigger stained glass window and less jolting
2. Re film singer shots we liked from the rough cut with better lighting
3. Film more shots of singer looking at camera
4. Film a close up of lips with the line ‘all my secrets away’
5. Film more varied shots of strings and fingers
6. Create more energy in chorus
7. Film faster cello shots so they look correct to the audience