And finally...

To complete the DigiPak and offer something else to the listeners, not 'just' a CD, we have decided to include a postcard and a competition. Below are finals of each;

Postcard front;

Postcard back;

and the Competition leaflet...

DigiPak Final

So, over the weekend the final touches were made to our DigiPak design.

Below is the final product.

Outside (front cover, back cover, and outside of the flap for the middle section;

Inside (inside of front cover containing sleeve for competition leaflets etc, middle section for the CD, and flap also containing a sleeve;

Digipak Cover

In our last lesson on friday we had to tricky task of creating the cover of our digipak. Rob had taken some photos in black and white the day before and had the idea of creating a collage of photos for the cover. But Jon and Ali thought that this would look somewhat unprofessional and decided that as the digipak has six sides it would contain too many photos. So instead they suggested that the inside cover should contain the same photo and be split up into three parts and the remaining three sides should contain a single photo for each.

Final touches of the editing process will take place over the course of the weekend.

Band Name and Album Name

Dave strongly advised everyone to come up with their own band names so that we could all create a new identity and logo.

Our group could not come to a unanimous descion so, Ali decided that whilst on a band name genrator web page, we had to take a certain name on the following page, whatever it was.

The result was 'Standard Meeting', which we all agreed wasn't too bad. And so Standard Meeting will be the name of our band and will be branded on our DVD DigiPack and our magazine advert.

We also decided that the album would be self titled.

Magazine Advert

After a short while composing an image and a band name, Ali produced a magazine advert which includes the band name (Standard Meeting) and the album title (self titled- Standard Meeting) and when and where you can purchase the album. The shot was taken by Rob, in black and white and shows Jon with his guitar. The font used for the advert is the band's logo and can be seen wherever the Standard Meeting name is branded.

Black and White

Rob and Jon felt that the photos for the digi-pack should be shot in black and white to continue with the black and white ideology from the music video. Rob took some photos in colour but we felt that it was much more edgy and aggressive to shoot in black and white. We took a range of photos including some of Jon holding his guitar from various different camera angles, including a shot from below to give the impression that Jon was arching over Rob and looked more dominant. We then took various shots of Matt (the lead singer)

Below is an example of our influence:

The Next Step

Our work is not done once we have shot and edited our footage to create a music video; we have chosen to design a digipack. This will consist of a DVD, of which we have to design the cover. A CD is obviously the main focus so we will be designing a case for the product, using conventions used by other records/artists, aswell as adding our own touches to make it our own.

Initial Ideas

- Rob had an idea of taking a couple of decent photographs, for putting on the DVD and CD cases. Jon will assist during free periods to do this.

Our idea for this is to capture the feel of the track, and to maintain the look we created in our version of the music video. Therefore, Rob will capture the antisocial feel with an element of music, within each photograph.

Final Music Video Notes

Now that we have uploaded our final version for our music video, the editing stage is over and we can begin to start thinking of names for the band and DVD cover ideas.

However before we do so, the group think it would be nice to note down what we liked and disliked about our video.

Finished Music Video

This is our finished music video;

Enjoy.

Editing Our New Footage

When we had completed the filming on the 11th November we started further editing on the 13th. To incorporate our new footage into the existing edited material posed some problems as the latter was narrative-based and we had to rearrange the clips to make it look fluid and polished.

Not only did we include clips of us singing, but we had to include clips of Matt lip-syncing to the music. We filmed the lip-syncing in several venues across the college to provide variety and more material for editing. However, as we had started after college, it soon got too dark to film. Luckily, we found a flood-lit area which allowed us to continue filming and had the bonus of giving a nice golden effect to our footage. - Jon.

Shooting Finished

Finally, we have finished shooting what we need to complete the project and as a group we feel extremely satisfied with what we have come up with. The performance based shooting, which admittedly got off to a shaky start, produced some amazing shots near the end and the photography on some of the final shoots was, quite stunning.

Now we rely on the editing to make the video as good as it can be. All members of the group, have at some point said "we'll leave that to editing" so it should be a major turning point in the eventual end product.

Further Word Clouds

One of the things that struck me about the lyrics of "Shark" by Ash was their repetition of certain words. It was disturbing that these were aggressive and forceful words, so I (Jon) decided to try the same technique I used earlier in this blog to look at the lyrics in Wordle.net. As can be seen above the lyrics are disturbing. "Violent" and "mind" are the two most used words in this song. I think we have to convey the despair of this song, the need or the wish to resort to violence as frustration. That doesn't mean that they like violence, but we can understand it as an expression in some young people. It is the only way they feel they can get noticed. Does it mean that they are saying their minds are led by violence, or reacting to it? "Wanna" and "know" are the next most common words. Are they asking why society rejects them and makes them violent? Or are they saying they don't understand the violence accepted by society? We have heard a lot recently about young people dying in Afghanistan...they are our age. Perhaps young people just want to have a right to say in how they live and die?

Feedback

As a group, Jon thinks we should ask other groups and individuals for feedback about our blogs. Although we have asked for comment, we have not yet received any. Some groups appear to have received a lot of feedback. We should all ask them for their opinions - they must have some, even if they think our efforts are rubbish! It is possible to even design our feedback using tools (http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=143413) which may make it more interesting. We could also offer to swap feedback with other groups which have not yet received any either.

CCTV Footage

Jon thinks that there are ways we can put CCTV footage in our video. Although much of it is not high quality, CCTV can be found on the internet and therefore is already in the public domain. Provided our sources are credited, perhaps at the end of the video, he doesn't think usage of CCTV will be a problem.

Examples can be got from sites such as this:



Another site is: http://www.cctvfootage.com/watch/

We could decide what subset of footage we want e.g. football violence, car crime, burglary etc and search for that.

Word Cloud

Blogger does label clouds as standard, but this is not very informative about the contents of the blogs. So Jon decided to copy and paste the entire text blog into Word, then select all the text and copy into Wordle.net. The image was altered before being captured and imported (using printscreen) into Irfanview where it was edited to provide only the word cloud and saved as a jpeg and inserted above. The major words are music, video and editing, which at least shows that our blogs appear to focus on a relevant theme!

Weekend Update

We have used black and white for some of the filming because we thought this more evocative and created a seedy and depressive mood. Next Tuesday, we will film our live performance in the music block studio using a green screen background. We will try a dynamically projected background initially but this may not work as it would conflict with the moving images of ourselves as a group. We could therefore aim to project our live performance against a static backdrop, perhaps of the album cover if it can be designed in time. (Jon).

Video Idea/Justification\Self-evaluation

Our video has taken into account the genre of music, and pace at which it is performed. We took inspiration from the Justice video for 'Stress' and have attempted to show a powerful music video depicting British youths in a stereotypical way and adapted and enhance this image of adolescent society. The video has been designed to be powerful and explosive to relate to our target audience, with the feeling art is supposed to be new and different giving people new and mixed feelings.
We have concentrated on the music rather than a a true narrative story as to keep the focus on the music. By doing this the video is open to peoples unique perspective and opinion, however if taken to literally by the news and other media outlets it could create a wider fan base and more units to be sold through the rebellious nature of the target audience. We believe this justifies the content of our music video and can leave the audience to decide why this is happening and the back story of the scenario.

Marking

In todays session we were given the aspect of our video on which we will be marked on. We will do our best, if even through the means of editing, to make sure we meet this requirements;

• Ability to hold a shot steady, where appropriate
• Framing a shot including and excluding elements as appropriate
• Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate
• Shooting material appropriate to task set
• Selecting mise-en-scene including colour, figure, lighting objects and setting
• Editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer
• Using varied shot transitions, captions and other effects selectively and appropriately
• Using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task