New filming date?

After much planning, organisation and mind changing we have decided on Monday the 2nd as our new filming date. Although, seeing as our filming dates have a tendancy to fail at the last minute I wouldn't get the baloons out just yet :) Still, heres hoping it all goes well.

On another note...Happy New Year From Beth, Bronwyn & Mart! :D

3rd time lucky

As we've had problem with filming in the past few weeks. We have booked equipment out over the Christmas holidays to get all our filming done. Ready to edit when we come back after Christmas (=D).

The provisional dates we have planned to film on are the 27th, 28th and 29th. We will film on ones of these days or maybe two if we don't get everything filmed in time.

When we come back on the 4th January, our next lesson is on the 6th. We shall be importing all the clips then and then we will have two weeks to fully edit the video.

Webpage Finished!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH =D

At last the webpage is finished, woohoo!!! Beth and Mart (with help =]) added hyperlinks to the webpage. See below for the amazing webpage. 

Webpage kind of finished, but not yet.... =O (stay tuned for more on this breaking news story!!!!)

The webpage looks finished below but it is missing all the hyperlinks and when Mart tried to add them it all messed up...noooooooooooooooo. On Thursday with Beth's amazing iWeb talents it should be done quickly as its a easy  task to do. 

CD finish

inside

outside

The CD cover is finished! It has met up to our criteria of what we were hoping for, for our end product. 

Let down!

Again today was meant to be our second filming day. But our actors told us this morning that they wouldn't be able to make it. This meant that we couldn't film again, so we're going to have to film some other time but as it's getting closer to the Christmas holidays people are more busy so it's going to be harder to film. Fingers crossed hopefully next time we plan to film it will get done.

As the dead line for the CD cover and webpage is in for week on Thursday the 15th. We have almost finished both. We have a lesson on Tuesday when we will finish it all.

CD cover front

HOW COULD WE MISS THIS!

In todays lesson we researched Jenny and Johnny on youtube and guess what we found.... A MUSIC VIDEO FROM JENNY AND JOHNNY. We have searched for them many time and haven't found a music video from them yet. We were convinced that they didn't have any music video's but as they do we had a look at it and it shows that we are on the right track with our music video with the genre and style of the filming. Here is a link to the mysterious video!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQAF5xLOliA&ob=av2e

Webpage continued development

Below is the webpage with the Twitter feed as described in the previous post and the images added onto the page. By adding images of the artists it improves the webpage as the Jenny & Johnny fans can keep updated with the bands image and by placing images of them onto the webpage it shows page visitors who the band members are if they are new to the band and are discovering them for the first time.

The webpage is now practically finished it just needs something adding in the middle which is going to be a polaroid image that matches with the CD covers. This shows continuity within the bands image from all media types.

Webpage with images

Webpage Development

Today I am finishing off the webpage, in the bottom right corner there is a big space that needs to be filled by something. By looking at other artists webpages, our webpage page is in apparent need for a Twitter feed. It is something that connections the artists with their fans and is something that is needed as currently a artist who didn't have a Twitter account/feed would get stick from their fans.

I added a Twitter feed to the webpage, I think it looks much better and fills up the webpage without putting in random images. However images of Jenny & Johnny are needed. I will add them in and see if they work well on it.

Webpage without Twitter feed.

Webpage with Twitter feed.

CD Inside Cover - Finished!

Today Bronwyn and Beth completed the inside cover of our digipack. We decided to change the lettering on the Polaroid to "Thank you" from "Jenny & Johnny" because the name of the band will be written on the front cover so it didn't seem right to repeat this. We are really happy with the inside cover and are hoping to complete the front and back covers by the end of the lesson.

CD cover developing

In todays lesson Beth and Bronwyn worked on developing the CD cover on photoshop. We've changed a few things from last time and included the photo's we used on Sunday.  

This is the inside cover for our CD. We have now completed this.

This is the outside and back cover for our CD. We need to add the text to this next lesson then it will be finished. 

Second shoot- This wasn't fair

This was our second filming shoot, which didn't go to plan. Mart was unable to come but he didn't miss out which worked out well for him. Our plan was to get the rest of our filming done and take photo's for our CD. We had a late start which makes it stressful to get in the right mind set as your panicking and rushed, which didn't help when things started to go wrong. I took some pictures of our actors that we're going to use for our CD cover (so we accomplished one task) as I was doing that Beth started to set the camera and tripod up, when she realized that the plate of the top where you put the camera wasn't there. So if we had filmed, the camera work wouldn't of been as good, as all the shoots would be hand held. But we thought we could film some park scenes of them being together. Which was going alright but it started to rain which ment the we couldn't film as the rain would affect our shoots and it wouldn't have given our music video the right affect. We waited to see if the rain would clear up but it got worse which meant if we had to film in the rain the equipment would have got damaged and the guitars too. We called it a day which was annoying seeing as we had made the effort to get up to our location, but at least we've got photo's for our CD which we can finish on tuesday. Hopefully next week will run smoothly and we will get everything done.

Second Shoot - disaster!

So today we met up at Victoria Park for our second filming date. As I have previously said, Mart was unable to make it as he had work commitments. The day got off to a bad start as my alarm didn't go off so I was late, and so were our actors which left poor Bronwyn waiting in the cold - oops! When we were all there Bronwyn started taking photographs of our actors for the CD cover whilst I set up the camera. But when I got the tripod out of the bag I discovered that the plate which you put the camera on was missing and the handle on the tripod was broken therefore we would have had to film handheld which means that our shots would not be as steady as we would have wanted. However, we tried to carry on regardless and got a few shots of actors "park scene". Unfortunately, it began to rain very heavily. We tried to take shelter and wait out but it wasn't stopping and we were worried about the filming equipment and instruments getting damaged therefore we were forced to abandon the shoot. We were really gutted but sadly it was unavoidable. We have now rearranged our shoot for next sunday.

Webpage Development

Here is the website that has been developed for Jenny & Johnny. The background image has had effects added onto a normal image of beer cans/bottles and clothes thrown around on the floor. This shows the messy lifestyle that Jenny & Johnny are perceived to have in our music video. The links to Twitter and Facebook are visible but not huge as this detracts from the webpage if they huge as they seem to take over the page. The title Jenny & Johnny has been created to use the 'J' of both names as one as it joins the band together more.

Cd Cover (Inside)

Today, Bronwyn and Beth have been working on the inside of our CD cover while Mart was working on the web page. Using some photographs of Polaroid pictures that Bronwyn took last night we used photoshop to cut the images out and put them onto the inside of our CD cover and used effects to make it fit with our theme. We will then insert images of our band onto the Polaroid outline. We also used one of Bronwyn's images for the background.

2nd Filming Date

This Sunday we will be shooting the second part of our music video. We had to rearrange the shoot because last week we forgot to book out our equipment. We have now decided to book out the equipment today so we won't have the same problem again! :)

Two not similar artists websites

As the previous posts have said, the website we are wanting for Jenny & Johnny is of a retro style with a funky (is that the word I mean?!?!) vibe to it that takes their strange aspect and makes them what they are.

The following bands websites I looked at were, The Fratellis and The Futureheads:

The Futureheads

Jenny & Johnny on their real website have their logo which is similar to that of The Futureheads behind the text and content of their website. Their logo features colours such as blue, red and white. This is similar to the logo of The Futureheads. The layout of The Futureheads' website has a large embedded video which shows their lastest music videos, a section to the side of the video that shows details of their lastest tour then news articles and a Twitter feed below it. This is similar to the website that I designed earlier in the year during the planning stages of production. The font that is used for the title is of a retro feel.

The Fratellis

The Fratellis' website is completely different to that of The Futureheads or the website that I designed for Jenny & Johnny during the planning stages. However the layout of the page that I designed could be altered as I really like the photo reel of lastest images of the band practising for different things. I think that this insight into their life is very important for the fans of the band and it means that they will keep on logging onto the website to look at the new pictures when they are uploaded by the band. Last week I started to design the webpage with Beth, she liked a template on iWeb that had a 'torn page' effect. On the top of The Fratellis' website they have a similar effect that makes the page selection bar easy to see and read as well as moulding it into the dark background of the rest of the webpage.

Two similar artists webpages.

Here are two similar artists that have previosuly been mentioned in this blog. Wye Oak and Florence And The Machine:

Florence and The Machine

Florence and The Machine's websites shows the main artist in a pose with it reflected onto a black background. I think that the reflection effect works extremly well as it contrasts against the background and makes the image stand out even more than if it was just a single image. The informal scibble text font is also a nice font as it shows that even though the website may look formal, the actual artist isn't.


Wye Oak

Wye Oak's website is of a very basic design, they have a large picture of themselves on the right hand side of the screen that shows them off as a band and also due to the strange poses, shows that they aren't the usual band and that have a fun (and probably weird) vibe to them. The links to the website is just in basic formatting down the left hand side. This shows that they aren't too bothered about being showy and that they are just a basic band that like to be stripped back to basics.

Webpage inspiration

Today I will be designing the webpage for our band Jenny & Johnny. Currently I am researching bands that are similar in style to Jenny & Johnny so one would expect their website to carry a similar theme as Jenny & Johnny. I will also look at those who aren't but those where they have a website that could give useful ideas into how our website could look.

The theme I will be looking for in the websites are those with a retro feel. The colour schemes of the website will not match that of Jenny & Johnny so there is not much point in fretting over different colours. I am more interested in getting the right layout and text font for the website. This is because Jenny & Johnny have their own colour scheme, which is red and blue. So I should use their colour scheme as it represents them as artists and is what their fans have come to expect from them.

I will repost when I have gathered information on different websites.

Photoshop

In lesson today I used photoshop to make our Polaroid photo effect that we would use for website and CD cover. 

Re shoots

As I have previously blogged, when were editing our footage there were a couple of shots that we decided we needed to re shoot.  One of them was this shot:

The reason that we have decided to re shoot this is that the lighting is not bright enough which means that the green screen effect which we will be using in our video doesn't work as well as we had hoped.

The other shot we have decided to re shoot is this one. We have chosen to re shoot this because it is a pan shot and the one that we have is quite blurred and not as neat as we wanted it to be. We will arrange our re shoot after our second filming date.

Google Trends: Busking

On Google Trends I decided to search busking as we have a busking theme in our music video and wanted to gauge the popularity of this. I found out that although there was a major drop in the popularity of busking around the beginning of 2007 it has otherwise been quite consistently popular. Busking seems to be most popular in New Zealand and Australia with it's top three cities being Melbourne, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand and Brisbane, Australia.

Google Trends Search

In our media lesson today we decided to do some research into the popularity of our artist by searching them into Google Trends which basically gives us an idea of how many people have been searching our artist on Google and at what points they have been most popular. From the graph we can see that our artists popularity spiked around August 2010. We can also see that our artists are most popular in English speaking countries (USA, England, and Australia are their top three countries) and are most popular in the cities of Austin, Texas and Los Angeles, California.

Filming Dates

As we have just realised that we had forgotten to book out our filming equipment yesterday we will be unable to film this sunday :( We have rescheduled our filming for the sunday after.

Music Video Inspiration

Last week the artist Katy Perry released the music video for her new single "The One That Got Away". Although she is a completely different artist to Jenny and Johnny I think this music video is quite similar to the video that we are trying to make and I think it portrays alot of the same feelings and is a good inspiration for our video :)

Editing

After our minor editing disaster (when Imovie crashed half way through) we managed to redo all the work we had done before and to finish the rest of the editing in the time we had left in our lesson which is a major relief! This time, we learnt from our previous mistake and  saved obcessively after every thing we did, determined not to get out out again :) So far we are very happy with what we have managed to do although there are two scenes which we are considering reshooting. I will post screen grabs of these scenes and explain why we are reshooting them shortly :)

Second Filming Date

After our successful first shoot we have now arranged to film the second part of our music video (the park and street scenes) this Sunday (27/11/11). Unfortunately, as Mart will be at work that day he is unable to film with us. However, i'm sure between us me and Bronwyn will manage to get everything done :)

Photoshop

After playing around with a image on photoshop, eventually these two following images came out. I tried two different effects, both which work well I think. By adding highlights, shadows and different lighting the effects work really well with the image. I prefer the top image as the colours make the image more retro like.

Photos from the filming day...

At the filming day, we needed to get some still images for use on the webpage and digipak. I think I got some good photos that we will use when we come to creating the webpage and digipak. As you can see there are a number of multiple images, the good ones will be used and the bad ones deleted. I also got some images of us filming that can be used later on in the blog.

See the images below:

Computer Crash

As we were editing today in lesson we had done quite a lot of work. Then the computer crashed and we lost everything we had done today (noooooooooooooooo), Which means we're going to have to do all that work again :(

Record Label

In our media lesson today I found the record label contacts for Jenny and Johnny. The contacts were on there website. We have been advised to write them a letter or email them to ask if we could use there song for our music video. They are signed to Warner Brothers Records, there email address is brant.weil[cat]wbr.com. They will be the best people to contact.

Green screen practice

In our music video we want to use green screen effects, in one shot we would like to burn the green paper while having a video playing and burning at the same time. (Muwhahahaha!!!!!) As we don't really know how to use the green screen effects, our teacher showed us how to do it and helped us to create a practice piece. Watch it above I guess =]

First Filming day

Today was our first filming day. We were filming at Beths house doing all the house scenes. Beth and Mart and the actors arrived at Beths house at around 2ish to start filming. But I still had a lesson at college and arrived later at 5. All though they had filmed most of the scenes in the house when I came along, I was able to do the rest of the shots and have a lot of input. As it was the first time filming together as a team, we worked well but I felt me and Mart were a little shy directing our actors. So next time we film to be more confident when directing. Our actors we choose worked really well it showed on camera how they suited the characters of 'Jenny' and 'Johnny' with the relation aspect.


Beths house was a good environment to film in. It had a good atmosphere to suite the theme of the film which was a good choice to film at. They showed me the footage they had done with out me being there and this came to an advantage as because I had no input to the shots, I could see what had worked well and if there was anything not right with the shots as I wouldn't be bias to the work I had done. What I saw was really good they had some good shots. What worked really well was the bed room scene with the beer bottles on the floor and the camera scanning through the bed room, It was such an effective shot to fit with the theme. I'm looking forwards to seeing how the green screen will work.

Shop Visit!

During our media lesson today we realised that we had forgotten to buy the alphabet spaghetti for our shoot which is a key part of our project as it i used on both the c.d. cover and in our music video. Therefore, to rectify this Bronwyn an Beth walked into Bilborough to buy some from the Co-Op. Disaster averted!!!

Practice Shoot - Split Screen Effect

As we are planning to use a split screen effect in part of our music video we decided that it would be a good idea to shoot some practice footage and learn how to do the effect to save us time when it comes to editing our actual music video. Mart and Bronwyn used their epic acting skills while Beth filmed and edited the footage (with a little help ;) ) Overall we thought the effect worked well and still intend on using it in our video. Here is our practice footage.

Website Design Research

The website that I designed during the planning stages got good feedback from Beth and Bronwyn. I think that they likd the arty approach that the website design shows. Looking at the website criteria that our teachers gave us, the design fits in well within the criteria as it informs Jenny & Johnny's fans about the upcoming tours and shows off different aspects of the band such as their lastest music video and twitter feed.

In the next few lessons I will try to create some images that show off the actor and actress that are choosen to be Jenny & Johnny in our music video. I think that instead of using a normal image of them, by editing it and using different effects it will show the qwerty character that they seem to have. This will also fit wthin the retro feel that the band portray.

Currently the band has quite a plain, dull website that appears to have been created on a wordpress. These websites are very easily recognisable as they all have similar layouts.

Jenny & Johnny

iiiiiitttttt'ssss filming day!!!!

Today after our Media Studies class we are going to go to our music video locations and start the filming process. No doubt there will be various issues that won't go as brilliantly as we would like but on the other hand there's bound to be somethings that go brilliantly or some things that we film that we didn't plan for but are brilliant themselves!

We're nervous, ARGH!!!!

Beth, the actor and myself are getting the college bus to one of the locations, the actress is meeting us there and Bronwyn is going to join us after a class she has in the afternoon. Tuesday was the only day that was relatively possible to film on, as we can't film on weekends due to work commitments and all other free time during the week, there is at least one of us all who wouldn't be able to make it.

Wish us luck!!! =]

CD cover Digipak

When I designed the CD cover template the group discussed having a fun, arty CD cover, as we found with the research we did, that the marketing criteria for our artist genre (Indie, Folk) used quite a lot of artwork on there CD cover and used less photographic images.

This band (The Antlers) on there CD cover have only used art images and very few colours which makes it very bold and eye catching. 

This CD cover by ‘Noah & The Whale’ have used an image of the band but changed the colouring of the effects to make it look artier. 

Our group ideas of how the cover would look, we’ve decided to use objects that you’ll see in our music video and make them more focused on, these will be Polaroid pictures, the toast with the spaghetti on and a breakfast set table background with a  table cloth, fork and knife and newspaper. We want it to look quirky and fun like Jenny and Johnny are so when we use Photoshop we might change the colouring and style of the images we use to make them look more cartoon, like ‘Noah & The Whale have done’.

We’re going to take photos of all the objects we want to use for our CD cover and make it layered up on photoshop, as it should give a more 3D effect. We will need to take photo’s of our band members together and the objects which are; table cloth, fork and knife, toast with spaghetti lettering on spelling out Jenny and Johnny and news paper. I think what could look wrong is that it might look to much going off and it might be confusing to the audience of what the main focus is. 

LIghting for your Video

Summer Home work

Over the summer we had to do some research on an artist of who you might want to base your music video on. Although I chose Rihanna as my artist, I wasn't keen on doing a music video on her or something simular to her music genre. I chose her as when reading the questions she is an iteresting artist to base this task on with all the image change and the different styles of pop. She is nothing like our artist we have chosen (Jenny and Johnny).

New Filming Date

As I have previously posted we had to cancel our first filming date due to the fact that our actors were no longer available on that date. We have now resheduled our first shoot for next Tuesday afternoon. On this date we hope to film all of the scenes in our music video which are set in the house. Once we have filmed this (provided the shoot goes as planned) we will arrange our second shooting date where we will film the scenes in our music video which are set in the park and on the street.

Textual Analysis

I chose the song 'Candy' by Paolo Nutini to evaluate, as his style of music is indie folk which has the same element as Jenny and Johnny.

Video Effects on iMovie

http://www.scribd.com/doc/206685/iMovie-HD-6-Getting-Started

Above is a link to a iMovie tutorial that will help us when we are editing our music video in iMovie. We are wanting to use split screen and 'picture in a picture' video effects to emphasize the actors emotions and storyline during the video.

Recee Sheet

This is the location where we'll be filming the park scene and the buskin scene. This park has a beautiful setting and will work well with the love narrative. I'm going to go back to take more photo's of the band stand.

Music Video Target Audience Demographic Analysis Report

We answered questions to do with the target audience of our artist to help us to understand who to aim our music video at. We commented on social groups and used evidence to back up our conclusions.

Step Outline (Beth)

This is the step outline I completed of our film which tells us the key points of our storyline and helped us to complete our shot lists and storyboard.

Written Storyboard

This is the written story board of our music video. As a group we discussed all the ideas and plan of what would be happening in different parts of the song. But when it came to framing each shot, I listened to the song in stages and counted the beats to when the shot would change. I took into account the song lyrics so the shot wouldn't change half way through a line. Then wrote down the details in the grid before moving on to the next shot.

Pitch Powerpoint

This is the powerpoint that we created to use for our pitch. Although Bronwyn was away (=O) when we did the pitch she contributed equally to the powerpoint. We created the powerpoint by dividing up the slides between us that we had to do. The information that was on the slides helped us to present our ideas  to the class in a clear and concise manner with visual aids to ilustrate ours points. You can see feedback to our class pitch by clicking on the following link: Pitch Feedback Linky =D 

Class Textual Analysis

This is a textual analysis sheet that Beth and Mart completed in class of music videos from former students.

Scanning Error

In our last media lesson on 8th November, we had to scan in all the course work that we did for the planning of our music video. But for some strange reason when it came to my turn of scanning in work, the scanner gave up. So I've bought the rest of the planning to scan in at home. But my scanner isn't converting the image to a JPEG very well. So I'll find time during the week to finish all the scanning to upload on to the blog.

Mart's Textual Analysis

This is my textual analysis of an existing music video, "Whistle for the Choir" by The Fratellis. I answered questions about mise en scene, camera shots and editing styles regarding the visuals and genre form.

Production Schedule

This is our production schedule.