Editing the music video.

After the division of labor we have decided that Andrew and Anastasiia will be responsible for editing. These are some of the screenshots reflecting their editing process in Adobe Premiere Pro they've sent to the group chat to keep the rest of the us updated about the state of our music video.

3rd element:

1st element 1st version:

Modeling shots:

Dancers:

1st element 2nd version:

Photoshoot for the digipack.

In order to be able to feature the artist on our digipack we have arranged a photoshoot with our lead singer.

Me taking pictures of Tia:

We had a rough idea of what should be on the digipack, so the photoshoot didn't take that long. Out of roughly 80 photos we have chosen 4, which I would later have to photoshop and use for the album cover.

Front cover:

Back cover:

CD:

Inside left:

Shoot day evaluation.

Our shoot day was planned to be on 23rd of November. The day before, on 22nd, we came to the studio to build our set. We decided to start with the 3rd element, because it was one of the hardest to build, due to we had to hang the cloth down from the ceiling and attach lights to it. Also, for element 3 our lead singer had nude make-up and no lipstick, which was necessary for element 1, so placing element 3 first seemed like a sensible thing to do. We took a long white cloth, attached it to the light sticks, which we have folded in a form of triangle. Then we have attached it to the ceiling, so that the end of the cloth is just slightly on the floor. Underneath we placed a white blanked and more light sticks to hide the black floor. The cloth was no ironed and looked awful. I brought the iron and we were ironing the whole cloth for like an hour. After that, it looked much better and the white lights looked amazing. At 6 pm we were done.

On the 23rd of November I woke up feeling excited. I came to the studio at 8:30 and brought my camera to film behind the scenes.  Everything was ready to start filming our 3rd element. We met our lead singer, she had her nude make-up done already. We gave her a white jump suit to wear and briefly explained her what she needs to do in that white cloth. When we started, the set looked a bit odd, because there was just a cloth in a form of cylinder, hanging from the ceiling and a girl standing inside. However, we had a TV connected to the main camera, so we could see how the shot actually looks. Lighting was brilliant, everything around the lead singer looked completely white, even thought the cloth was transparent and the walls of the studio at that stage were black.

We decided to switch the roles around during the shoot day, so that everyone can try different things. To be honest, we worked well as a group. we shared the tasks equally, didn't argue and was always ready to help each other, were enthusiastic and active. Mainly, I was on camera for element 2 - with the dancers and bulbs. I also was on playback a couple of times and helped to switch sets. When someone else from my group was directing or doing the camera word I filmed the behind the scenes video, which you can check in my other post. I loved being on camera, especially on the dance bit. It was interesting, trying to follow the dance by slightly moving the camera, to create panning or tilting effect.

 To be honest, the shoot day went pretty well. We didn't have much problems, as we had a simple set and we've planned everything well beforehand. The only problem we had was with the first element, where we had red background and white couch. The couch was not quite white, but more of a milk colour. It also had a big hole right in the centre. We had to find a piece of cloth to cover it. We took the white one we used for element 3 and covered the whole sofa. It looked like it was haunted. So we covered only the back part, which didn't create a 'ghost sofa' effect, but covered the hole.

In my opinion, the most successful part of the shoot day was the third element, which we filmed first thing in the morning. It was pretty straightforward and simple idea, but it looked really good and unusual on camera. Filming our lead singer from above made her eyes to standout, so she looked even prettier, which is a good thing for a pop star. On the other hand, the second element with dancers didn't went as well as we thought it would. Firstly, the dance wasn't really thought-through and rehearsed well, which was obvious when we looked back to our footage after the shoot day. Also, as we were filming on the infinity roll, we couldn't really make wide shots, which would capture the whole body of the dancers, so we had to reframe their movements on set and make more re-takes, moving the camera up and down to film their dance at different levels. In that sense, I wish we did more rehearsals with our dancers. However, our lead singer was really good. She was confident and acted well.

I can't wait to start editing, I think we should have a lot of good footage to choose from. As we have one colour scheme for every element, the editing should be a straightforward and entertaining process as we can mix our elements together and put them in any order we like. I also think with the colour grading our music video would look even nicer. We didn't make any great changes during the shot day, so our video is pretty much the same as we planned it to be. This means that, our music video still fits in our marketing campaign and links to the album cover and the website. The main lesson I've learned about music videos is - rehears your dances more. If the dancers don't know what and how are they going to dance, the footage would look rubbish. 

To sum up, I am happy with what we have done. The next stage is to start editing, which would bring us closer to finishing our music video. 

Website: advantages.

Why do artists use websites, what are the pluses? 

1. Sell the artwork

2. Share the content 

3. Free distribution

4. Good advertisement

5. Promoting the latest album

6. Interacting with the audience

7. Address large audience

8. It's free/cheap

9. Changeable, can be updated

10. Construct a star image

Website: research into similar products.

I've done research into similar products - websites of other pop stars. 

This is a homepage of Miley Cyrus' website after the release of her new album 'Bangerz'.

As you can see her website has been updated to fit the cover of the new album in order to promote it. The homepage contains the name of the artist, an album picture, the news box and the latest music video.

Website: first draft.

This is the first draft of the homepage of the website for our artist:

Music album: final draft.

After the discussion we've decided to use Anastasia's digipack rough draft as a base. 

We would have a mid-shot or close up of the artist on the front cover, along with her and the album names: Mon Cheri. This would help us to establish the new artist and the style of her music, that would attract the target audience. On the back cover we would have her, sitting on the bed with white sheets and a track list, as well as the legal info and the record label. This would help to add  variety and show more of the artist, linking back to the music video (as our third element is her in the white sheets). The CD would have a picture of her lips on it, which would have 'Mon' written on her upper lip and Cheri on her lower lip. This is important, as the CD should be recognised even without the digipack. The only thing we are concerned about is the inside left, which shows two hands, because it doesn't link with the rest of the digipack at all. It meant to be the hands of the dancers, which links it to the music video, but, again, we only show the artist on the digipack, but not the dancers, which makes the idea of the two hands a bit random. We are going to keep it for now, as we still have two weeks to plan our album cover, so we are hoping to find something else.

This is the final draft of the digipack:

Music album: group feedback.

Each member of our group has pitched his album cover design. 

This is the feedback for my album cover rough draft:

1. Showing the artist on the front cover is good.

2. Move the arts slightly left on the back cover, so that the track list could be lengthened.

3. Do the same on the front cover, so that it doesn't look odd and you have an empty space for the album and artist names.

4. Write the album and artist names on the CD.

5. Using cherry pictures as a background for the CD and the inside left might not be the best idea, because we do not have anything about cherries in our music video.

6. Change inside left to something else - fan letter, more pictures, song lyrics, something that would stand out and is linked to both the CD and the music video.

7. Ornate font is good for the pretty female singer.

Music album: rough draft.

I've added colour to my sketch and did a rough draft. 

I've added an artist name Cheri and the album name "Mon" on the front cover. Also, I've moved the track list from her hair to the right, so that it shapes it and added a record label and legal info.  I found a good background for the CD and the inside left with lots of cherries, which links back to the artist's name. I've also added the spine of the digipack, which says 'Cheri' ob it.

I've used a lot of white and red colour as they are dominant in our music video, so should be reflected in the digipack. I am now thinking of what could be added to the inside left and what font would look best on such album cover. This is something to talk about with my group, when we will be planning our actual digipack.

Music album: sketch.

This is a sketch of the album artwork I did.

As you can see, the front cover features the lead singer, as well as the back cover. I like the idea of the Miley Cyrus' "Bangezs" cover, so wanted to do front and back in the same style - showing the artist's front and back. The CD basically has a cherry print on it, as well as the half of the inside left. I think it would be nice to keep them in the same style.

Music album: artist and album names.

We've chosen the artist's name a long time ago. Because of the main focus on red and white colours in the concept of our music video we called her Cheri, purposely misspelling the word "cherry". When it came to deciding the album name, Andrew came up with the name 'Mon'. Basically if you put the artist's name and the album name together you get 'Mon Cheri', which means 'honey'. By all means, we've decided it might be interesting to release the first album with a small twist in the album's name.
So we've all agreed on having artist as Cheri and album name as 'Mon'.

Music album: similar products.

  These are the album covers of the two famous pop stars - Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. I've chosen these digipacks, because they are in the same music genre as the one our star Cheri would have, so we can identify and adopt the main features.

Taylor Swift 'RED'

As you can see the digipack clearly establishes the artist and the name of the album. It's also linked to the choice of color: album "RED" = red lips = red color = sexy, love, passion.

In the front cover we can see a close-up of Taylor Swift's face and the album name 'RED' in clear bold font. On the back cover there is the song list, as well as another picture of Taylor, record label and other legal info. The CD links well with the front and back by being in the same color palette and establishing both the artist and the album.

Miley Cyrus "Bangerz"

Pretty much the same can be said about the Miley Cyrus' album 'Bangerz'. We can clearly see the artist and the name of the album. However, compared to the previous album, the word 'Bangerz' is written in thin font and relatively small letters, not to distract attention from the star's face. Moreover, this album doesn't have Miley's name written anywhere - front or back covers. Probably, it was done on purpose to show that her face is so well recognized all around the world and she doesn't need to have it written on her digipack.

Similarly to Taylor Swift's album, this one has the songlist, record label and other legal info listed on the back cover. The whole digipack is kept in the same color palette.

Other members of my group did the same independent research about the similar products. Here are the links to their blog posts, where they analyse the album covers of other female pop stars:

Andrew Jensen: http://andrewjensenmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/looking-at-album-artwork-of-similar.html

What is a music album?

"An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape or another medium."

In other words, a music album is a number of songs of the same artist or band put together for the marketing purposes. As a part of our coursework, we will be creating a digipack, that should look like this:

Deciding filming roles.

In order to make our lives easier we decided to divide the film roles for the shooting day now, not to argue about it on the day. The main roles are: the director, camera man and the floor manager. Here is the list Andrew put together, which illustrates who should be doing what on the day:

Dora will be the Director for element 1, Set 1 and 2

Andrew will be the Camera person for element 1, Set 1 and 2

I will be the Director for element 2, Set 3.

Anastasia will be Camera person for element 2, set 3.

Dora will be Camera person for element 3, set 4 and 5.

Anastasia will be Director for element 3, set 4 and 5

Ya Fei will be Floor manager throughout the day.

E-mailing the cast about the shot day.

This the e-mail Andrew sent to our cast to confirm the shoot day:

How to edit a music video.

Today we had a lesson on how to edit a music video. We had a similar talk last year, when we did a lip sync task, so this lesson was a short recap.

As well as last year for both our thriller and the lip sync we will be using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects if needed.

The screen in Adobe is divided in 4 parts:

Bottom left contains bins and rushers, in other words - all the footage you upload. 

Top left is where you can watch rushers and drag them onto the timeline. 

Bottom right is a timeline, on which the video is edited. 

Top light is where you can watch the timeline and what you've edited. 

In order to start editing a music video you have to do all of these in the CORRECT order:

1) Sync up all your footage

We would need to drag our clips one by one on the top of the sound line so that it syncs up perfectly. To make it easier we would name each clip differently and group them by elements or shot types. After that, we would delete the original sound linked to the footage and leave the song only. This process is called 'picture sync'. Don't forget to do a duplicate now, until you've messed everything up - right click on bottom left and press 'duplicate' and rename. Now you can start editing. Listen to the music and illustrate what you hear.

2) Do a performance cut

Performance cut is needed in case EVERYTHING GOES WRONG AND ALL YOUR FOOTAGE IS RUBBISH OR DELETED OR WHATEVER AND YOU ARE PANICKING NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO. Also, it helps in further editing, as you just drop non-performance shots on the top of the already edited music video. 

3) Do a narrative cut

This is the process of adding in the creative stuff on the top of the performance cut.

4) Add the needed effects 

Anything you need extra - a giant clown or the pink dinosaur - now it's time to add it.

5) Do the colour grading 

DO NOT DO IT BEFORE. Save your time. Do the colour grading only with the footage you definitely use. 

TOP TIPS IN EDITING A MUSIC VIDEO:

1) Treat the whole editing as 10 sec. Try to make the best 10 seconds of the music video you possibly can and then move on.

2)First time you show the singer it should be a mid or a close up.

3) Group shots together - it helps to make unrandom choices.

4) Cut in movement, it looks cool.

5) Make a plan. Stick to a plan.

6) Don't do the rough cut.

7) ENJOY IT!