Futher Digipak Editing

I personally continued to experiment with the photos we shot for our Digipak. I was happy with our results but wanted them to look more edgy. After initially trying them in black and white, I then thought I would exploit the 'Noise' tool on Photoshop. This tool adds considerable grain to a photo, something that is visually fashionable today as it gives it an aged, vintage and shabby look. I am really happy with the way this has changed the aesthetic of the photos and plan to carry on with this whenever using photos from this particular shoot. It makes them more unique and also goes some way in clouding the outlines of the cropped boxes making it still noticeable but more seamless as we wanted. I have been surprised with how many people don't automatically know what we have done with these photos, initially thinking that the person just looks "weird, but so cool" as a peer said. 

Initial Website Development

This week myself and Rachel started making developments towards creating our website for the band. We used our preliminary research done on similar bands websites to establish what we should include on the homepage. This included;

- Most recent music video
- Information about the band
- Images of the band
- Merchandise
- Contact details

We decided to use web based design software Wix. We decided against using one of the websites pre-set templates as they limited our creative control in terms of layout.  Below is an image of our rough draft website 'Homepage'. The basic style is simplistic yet bold and takes after some other websites we researched of a similar genre. The background picture is of an oil painting, which we have colour inverted in Photoshop. We also found found a logo for our band that could run through our products. It suitably takes after the band name (Elephant Castle), combing the two. However, we feel this image still needs to be adapted slightly, possibly using Photoshop to make it more simple and take out some of the tonal lines. This is something we will experiment with next.

Below is the beginning of our 'Media' page which we have only just begun to create. We are utilising a Wix template that gives a dynamic 'Honeycomb' effect. This page features some shots that we took on our shoot day. This is ideal but I would prefer the photos to be more coherent in the style they have been edited, so they are less random. We may have to revaluate this. With this website, we intend to maintain our theme of the 'London underground'. It is impossible to see on this screenshot, but the titles for the menu bar embody different colours of the tube lines when hovering over them. This theme will be included more as the website progresses. I would like to change the base layer oil painting to colours that more represent the London tube.

Shooting the Digipak

After getting our key shoot day out of the way, we set about the task of securing our accompanying products. One of these is of course the Digipak. We still maintained our idea of amalgamating the faces of the band into one single portrait. We organised a shoot date with the band and arranged the photography studio accordingly. This was a chance for myself and Rachel to utilise our photography and photo editing skills for a different subject.

The studio was arranged in a fairly simple manor with a small infinity background, with the aim being to make this as white as possible. This would not only make the edit more simple but would also create parallels with the way we shot the video itself. We arranged markers on the floor both for us as photographers and for the band so they would all be standing in the exact same spot, making it easier to blend them together. As the taller of the pair, I took the photos. 

We got a standard portrait of each band member asking for them to look neutral, and directly into the camera. We then did the same but with the back of their heads to create the affect that we wanted. This was a fairly simple shooting process, and we knew that the edit was likely to be the more challenging. 

Once collating the portraits, we then ran them through professional photo editing software Adobe Lightroom. This is a software that I and Rachel are both well aquatinted with from other creative projects we have done in the past. This allowed us to heighten the 'clarity' of the photos, therefore emphasising the density and richness of the shadows and lines in their faces. It also meant we could use the 'soften skin' tool, while also pinpointing particular spots and dimples which we could exterminate with the precision that the software offers. This created four 'hyper-real', visually impactful portraits.

Before

After

Before

After

We then uploaded these photos into Adobe Photoshop where we could convert the files from RAW to JPEG, yet maintaining all the higher quality. Here we could start to amalgamate the photos and contort them with ease. This was an experimental process where we could try lots of combinations and see what we liked best. We started by sticking to the original design plan and chopping the photos into four sections;

This created an affect similar to what we had imagined but wasn't quite as fluid and seamless as I had hoped. We realised that this style is far more affective with three faces, as opposed to four, as it is easier to distribute the features of the face more evenly. We then began to try new layouts, and I came up with the idea of drafting single facial features that have been cropped from a different portrait. This would mean that there would be one 'base' layer of someones face, with other peoples features mapped over that;

Arguably, these photos are far more visually striking and interesting to look at. They distort the face in a very strange way and often change the mood of the original photo, as it begins to look like a different facial expression all together. It has an intentionally messy style which makes it resemble Pop Art in some ways. Both myself and Rachel considerably preferred this method. We are going to go forward with this editing style and try to blend it with text. This should help us make some key decisions on whether we would like to include all four portraits or just our favourite one. However, we still had to do something for the back of the heads so decided we would try a similar method but instead separating the image up into four quadrants, each containing a quarter of each band members head. We chose each quadrant specifically based on the hair cuts of the band so that it looked natural, yet still odd and almost unnerving. We were happy with the way this looked as it creates a small bit of contrast from the front, which is laid out in a alternative way. We found it interesting how well the haircuts actually fitted together as one, which acts as a juxtaposition to the seemingly 'shabby' style in which they have been amalgamated. 

Edit: 3

With all our footage synced, myself and Rachel started the process of making a rough cut of the video. We now began to cut together our footage into a sequence, closely following our original storyboard. This is a challenging process that takes time. Our video especially is difficult to edit due to the need to maintain the chronological order of the cuts, in order to avoid serious continuity errors. We encountered a few problems during this session, but this is largely due to having to adjust to the software and build up speed.



This is what we managed to achieve in roughly an hour and a half. Even at this stage we can see there is lots of things that need to be changed. In the shot of o Joe at 0.12 seconds, you can clearly see that the white balance for the Sony NX5 it was filmed on had been altered meaning it isn't coherent with the rest of the footage shot on the other camera. This is something that can be altered when the rest of the video has been edited. This is the case for a few of the shots in this clip and will be completely overhauled with colour correction near the end of the process.

Although the opening shots are clearly jump cuts as we intended, this is where we want the jump cuts to end so that it doesn't loose effect, becoming dull and unnatural. The fact that the video continues to jump cut at certain stages can be corrected with some simple filler shots in between. This will aid the pace of the video and make it run smoother. Despite having various things to continue working on as we go, I feel we are making positive steps by getting the edit under way. It is easy to procrastinate with the kind of process, but you simply have to get 'stuck in' and see what comes out. 

Edit: 2

Rachel was unfortunately not present today, in our second scheduled session of editing. This left it down to me to complete our current task - syncing our footage. This was a lengthly job and took me roughly an hour and a half. However, now we have all our performance footage completely synced and registered on the timeline. Furthermore, I labelled each clip on the timeline with a quick summary of what the shot was and contained. This will make it considerably easier and more organised when it comes to chopping these clips apart. As it always has been in the course, the editing process is about organisation, efficiency and taking your time. If we maintain these principles, the process will undoubtably take time but with run smoothly. 

First Edit Session and Shooting Pick Ups

Today was our first editing session since the shooting of our video. This was always likely to be  a tedious period in the editing process and we were under the knowledge that we would not have a finished product immediately. When editing a music video, it is important to lay down a base layer of entirely performance. This includes syncing all of the performance footage onto the same timeline with Adobe Premier, something that takes time. However this is common practise in the industry as if a producer were to cut the time frame of a project, it still means that the edit team would have a video to some extent which they could hand over. Furthermore, if one tries to edit chronologically they often accidentally place all their best footage at the start leaving the video unbalanced. Editing in this way gives you a performance foundation with which you can tinker and then filter in your best material at strategic points. Therefore, today involved myself and Rachel regimentally working through our footage and syncing this with the track using the digital clapperboard in each shot. We managed to get roughly half way through doing this which is a positive step, as once we get this out the way we can start making creative decisions. It also gave us a chance to look over our footage for the first time, something that pleased us with the majority coming out as we expected. I noticed that on some shots there is a slight continuity issue relating to the white balance of the camera but I am confident that this can be rectified in the edit. 

In the afternoon, we took the opportunity to shoot the necessary 'pick ups' for our music video. This involved us re-arranging the band to meet us at the schools recording studio - as was originally planned for the shoot day. Me and Rachel arrived much earlier to dress and light the space to make it look more professional and also suitable to film in. We purposefully chose to use different instruments that could be described as more 'understated' to give the impression that the ones the band used in the video had been handpicked and were more for 'show' as opposed to personal preference. This theme carried on with the bands attire as we see them in far more casual outfits to connote that on this day they are not being styled due to them not been in the public eye. This look coincides with the the footage and mood we tried to achieve where the boys are more relaxed, at ease and having fun doing something they genuinely enjoy. On reflection, I am very happy with what we managed to capture in a short space of time. We achieved a mixture of performance footage shot both on a tripod and handheld and will be able to blend this will shots where we see the band joking naturally. The integrity of these later shots is very important, and we originally found it challenging to get the boys to act natural on camera. To combat this, a bulk of the shots were recorded without the band actually realising, to ensure that they were being themselves and didn't feel like they had to perform. I believe this slightly crafty technique will make the difference to the reality this scene and I know that it will make a huge contrast with what we shot previously. I am really looking forward to continuing with the edit, now knowing that we have all the footage to bring the video fully together.

Shoot Day Photography

As was mentioned in my shoot evaluation, both myself and Rachel took pictures of the shoot on the day on two separate cameras. We then collated the images and selected some of our favourites which may prove to be useful in terms of our other products. These have all be edited very simply so far and be altered much more dramatically if required.