DEVELOPMENT - Magazine Front Cover

After receiving feedback on my first magazine that I designed, I realised that it didn't include as many codes and conventions as I'd hoped, subsequently leading to a lot of dead space on the page. I decided to re-design my magazine cover and start from scratch. I looked back over my initial ideas that I sketched and chose the layout which included a lot of information on the page that had less dead space.

I chose a completely different photo of the band for the key image on the front cover. I chose a mid shot of the band as the faces will stand out easily to the audience, making it easier for the audience to identity who will be featured in the magazine. This screenshot shows how I have begun editing out the background around the models heads, which I did through using the magic wand tool.

This is the final edited image of the photo I am going to use on my front cover. I edited around the top of the image so there is space for a masthead to be placed above.

DEVELOPMENT - Principal Photography Complete!

From constructing our music video, we realised that without an indication of the boy in our narrative at the beginning, our storyline wasn't going to make sense. To solve this problem we understood that we needed to introduce the boy into our narrative from the start and to do this we filmed two shots. Myself and Kate B organised to meet up after school and film this last section of our principal photography.

The first shot we filmed was a scenario on Facebook, where the boy went from 'being in a relationship' to 'single'. This demonstrates to the audience that he no longer has a girlfriend, subsequently showing that he is lonely.

This is a photo we took the of the boy's relationship status. This is the shot that will appear in our music video to depict the boy's loneliness to the audience.

This concept of the boy being lonely coincides with the idea of the main girl being lonely as well. This is because throughout the day her friends that she is meant to be meeting up with for a day out in London, drop out at the last minute. It is at this point in the story that she realises she is alone.

Here are some photos of myself and Kate filming the relationship status on Facebook :

Along with filming the Facebook situation, we decided to film the boy walking out of the house to introduce who he is and what he looks like, so the audience would be able to indentify him in the rest of the video. We set up a tripod and filmed the boy walking out of the house, showing that he is going out for the day. This storyline of the boy is continued when the audience first sees him at the train station in the background with the girl in the foreground. The narrative develops from here.

DEVELOPMENT - Video Editing 3

Today I stayed behind after school to continue editing our music video and I focused on filling the gaps in the timeline with band shots. This task took quite a long time as I had to find an appropriate band shot that was in sync with the song.

This is a screen shot of the folder containing all of our studio footage. I looked through all of the footage and renamed all of the files appropriate to what was being shown. For instance, the file that is named 'Whole song of Dann' is useful to us, as it shows that this particular clip will show that member of the band playing the whole song. From renaming these clips, it made it easier for us to locate the clips and saved us time when importing them into our timeline, as we knew which clip contained the correct footage.  

After locating the piece of footage I was ready to use from the 'Studio Footage' folder, I imported it into the timeline. I then cut the correct piece of footage, through using the razor tool, that matched the lyrics on the song on the timeline.

The above screen shot shows that after being cut down, the length of the clip is ready to fit into the timeline with the rest of the footage in the correct place. The below screen shot demonstrates this piece of footage that I lip synced with the song.

Once I had correctly imported the band shots into the timeline, I added a video effect transition in between two of the clips. I placed a cross dissolve transition between two video clips - at the end of the left clip and the beginning of the right clip.

I have added the cross dissolve between two video clips and this screenshot shows the two clips merging together.

DEVELOPMENT - Video Editing 2

Today we had a double practical lesson where we focused primarily on the band shots within our music video and finishing the end sequence. We imported a variety of different band shots to our music video, including close ups of the lead singer and mid shots of the bass guitarist and the drummer.

Firstly, the changes we made to our band shots included adding a dip to white transition before and after all of our band shots. This effect is used to distinguish the difference between the narrative and the band shots, making it easier for the audience to identify the different sections of the video.

From receiving feedback from our peers and teachers, it suggested that some of our band shots need to be extended as they are too short. From this, it was also pointed out that we need to add motion to the band shots, such as zoom, scale and rotation, from inserting key frames into our timelines.

DEVELOPMENT - Video editing 1

Last week, during the half term, myself and Kate B re-shot some footage of the main girl using Facebook. Today we imported this footage onto our timeline on the editing machines. This introduces the character at the beginning, explaining that the girl in our video is having a day out in London, developing and structuring the narrative.

Originally, we were going to add the Facebook footage into the part of the video where the girl is ready to go out and then she logs onto Facebook. However, this was not possible as the gap to fit this in between the other footage was not long enough, and we could not move the other footage as some included band shots which were synced to the music. Therefore, we decided to move it to the beginning of the video before the song starts.

This is the beginning of our timeline. We made a black screen image on photoshop which we added to the beginning of the video. We then inserted a cross dissolve between the black screen image and the beginning footage to link it altogether and prevent the jumps in between cuts. This also demonstrates where the video begins and where the song starts.

This is the drop down menu we used to select a video dissolve transition. We imported all of the transitions to our footage and experimented with them to see what effect they had. From doing this we were able to see which one worked best and chose to use the cross dissolve. From using this it allowed us to fade out one clip while fading into another.    

An idea that we had whilst filming our footage in London's Trafalgar Square was of the main girl standing still with crowds walking past her. We would then edit it later to make it appear that the girl is standing alone and everyone is moving quickly around her, unnoticed and lonely. The group set up a tripod positioned in front of myself standing still and left it running for 3-4 minutes. Today we imported this clip onto the editing machine and altered the speed/duration of the shot to 2000%.

From reviewing our footage when the boy and girl walk into eachother on the bridge, we noticed that in one of the shots the girls head was cut off at the end of that particular shot. To solve this problem, we edited the positioning and cropped our shot in order to prevent this from happening.