Owain's Final Music Video and Ancillary Tasks + Evaluation

Final Video

Digipak

Poster/Advertisement

Evaluation 1



Evaluation 2

Evaluation 3

Evaluation Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback? on Prezi

Evaluation 4

Evaluation Question 4 - Owain

Evaluation Question 3 - Owain

Evaluation Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback? on Prezi

Evaluation Question 2 - Owain

Evaluation Question 1 - Owain

Final Ancillary Task

Updated Poster

I updated the poster with the new album art, and also the record label logo and website, which can be seen in the bottom right corner. Other than that the design is still largely the same.

Digipak

I changed some elements around for my final digipak, especially on the inside, as the template I used previously wasn't very good, so things were in the wrong place. I also think that it looks more interesting now and the paper used is better looking. For the first inside panel I partially repeated the artwork from the cover, but then coloured it differently, and changed his facial expression slightly to convey the 'turning bad' in the album title. I decided on a fairly conventional back cover as I figured that it would be more interesting to keep the more quirky content on the inside.

New Digipak Cover

I re-drew Hewitson's face on the cover so that he would look more like he does in real life, I think it looks a lot better now.

Digipak insides

This was the first draft of the inside of my digipak, I thought that it would fit in with the theme of Hewitson River as a self-important person, but in a fairly humorous exaggerated way, so it would seem that this was more of a stage character than his actual personality. I tried to show this by challenging the conventions of a usual digipak/cd, for instance, the thank you section thanks nobody but himself, and the recording process shows him performing all of the instruments with a blindfold on.

First Poster

 

Above is my first draft of the poster/advert for the digipak, I thought it'd be a lot simpler to just use the artwork of the digipak as the main focus of the poster as that is what it is advertising after all, and making the image clear to the audience would be important in making them remember it, and possibly buy it. I think that the font works quite well in maintaining the older-looking style that I was going for. I also tried to make it somewhat symmetrical in the lower third, with a review on each side and text in the centre. One thing I will have to change though is his hairstyle, which was something I got from feedback, his hair doesnt look quite like Jordan/Hewitson's. Otherwise I was told that the poster is good.

First Draft CD Cover

Here is the first draft of the front cover for my digipak, I think that the illustation reflects the video's drawn style, though it is more realistic than in the video. I thought that I would include flowers as they also are featured in the video and work well with the older look of the whole Hewitson River style. I drew over a picture of flowers and then got a picture of a man sitting on a chair, except I made it so he was sitting on the flowers, then drew over that so he would look like Hewitson River, I also changed his facial expression as he was much too happy compared to Hewitson.

I made him sitting on flowers because I think that conveys the fact that he is self-centered, the flowers form a kind of throne for him to sit on; he sits in a casual way though, as if he doesn't care. He is also central to the image and the main focus. I wrote out Hewitson's name on the cover by hand so it looked like he had written it because then it would look like an signature on a painting, conveying how highly he thinks of his work and himself.

Cover Analyisis - Beck

Beck does not feature on the front cover of his album Guero, which is entirely illustrated in an abstract, and kind of grotesque, pen and ink style which harkens back to an old style of almost diagrammatic illustration. I like the way that the simplistic nature of the the drawing could usually be associated with a more serious medium, though the composition of the illustrated images creates an abstract and fairly humorous image as a whole. I think that using hand-drawn illustration on the artwork would work well because it would then tie in with the music video where is a lot of hand-drawn rotoscoping, and it would also relate to the 'vintage' feel of the video.

The typography seems quite tongue-in-cheek as it uses a very extravagant and old font for Beck and the album's name. This could imply some form of humorous self-importance, as there is a certain prestige attached to similar font styles. The placing of the font is very obnoxious as it covers a good part of the artwork on a big black sticker, which one could say is very ignorant, like defacing a painting. It seems like the man of the left is drawn to look embarrassed at this. I think that this element could apply well to Hewitson River as he is supposed to be quite self-centred and egotistical in this way.

FINAL VIDEO

this is our final video! i have posted a link to the video onto twitter so that we can get feedback :) Well Done Everyone!

Final Editing

So, the deadline is.. today (argh!) and I'm still editing, but the video is looking good and it shouldn't take much longer for it be completely finished. There is one issue with the fact that Sony Vegas never plays anything properly until you've rendered it, which unfortunately takes hours. This means that there may be black spots in the video that I will not know about until it is finished, which is highly annoying, but I'm scouring the timeline frame by frame to make sure there aren't any.

The rotoscoping is looking surprisingly good with the addition of the backgrounds I mentioned, and I added some paper-y animation so I think that improved it too. I'm glad Jack and Lily filmed what they did on Tuesday because that has greatly helped me in many places. There are some small sections that may confuse the viewer narrative-wise, but it's all up for interpretation as to what's going on.


Hopefully it'll all get done before sunrise (just kidding).

Rotoscoping Ideas

I was thinking that I should probably add some form of texture behind the animation to give it more depth and also for it to just look more interesting than a plain black background. I thought that a old paper texture would work quite well, as it would then look like the animation was drawn on the paper. Eventually I settled on the texture on the right, though I couldn't work with it being white, as the the drawing's wouldn't show up, also it wouldn't reflect the nighttime mise-en-scene that I was intending.

In Sony Vegas I applied a Chroma Key to remove the black from the original rotoscoping, and then turned the contrast up to make the animation brighter. I then put the paper image in the layer below, turned it black and white, then turned the brightness down and the contrast up. However I then had to invert the colours (it was looking weird the other way i.e. pixelly and awful). I think that it looks a lot more interesting than a plain black background, and I'm hoping to do some faux-paper animation alongside the rotoscoping for one section, where the sun rises and the moon disappears, though I'll have to see how it pans out.

Plan for tomorrow

As I have the day off tomorrow (I am lucky) I can get on with the bulk of the editing for the entire day. First of all I have to complete 250-something frames of rotoscoping, which will take place in the instrumental section near the start.. hopefully it will add more of a seamless narrative, though still leave some mystery as to what is going on in reality.

 Above is a screenshot of me working through it, you can see the original footage that I filmed last week on my day off, and the red Hewitson River drawn over the top of it. I will remove the reference footage when I'm done drawing on it. I am also drawing in red because it shows up better on the footage, though I will completely desaturate the colours eventually. After I've done it all, I will also produce a more in depth step-by-step guide to how I eventually created the overall effect.

 I will then add it to the rest of the footage, which includes the shots we filmed today in the graveyard. Hopefully it'll end up making sense, but still look good.

Our Last Day of Filming- Sofie

Today we filmed our last bits of footage. This was lip syncing and Hewitson waking up in the grave yard to show the transition of night to day, and to explain why he is in the grave yard. We used the church nearer to school to save time as we were nervous about not filming all we wanted before the end of the day. With permission from somebody involved with the church, we got plenty of footage filmed making sure we filmed more than we needed so that we wouldn't be left struggling for footage when we are editing over the next few days. I liked the location today as it's a big and very pretty church, and we had a good amount of sunlight for the video as well so everything went very well. We had to make sure we were careful with our shadows getting in the shot and encountered problems whenever anybody walked by, but other than that, it all ran smoothly. 

Tomorrow, Owain will edit a lot of the footage as he has a day off on Thursdays. Jack and myself are planning to edit in a free period we have together tomorrow, and we will share the workload to ensure that everybody is contributing and to get it done quicker as our deadline is nearing. We will hopefully all get together on Friday to edit together and make sure we are all pleased with our final piece and make any small tweaks that we think should be made.

Here is a short video of footage from our filming today, including a mini vlog by Jack and Lily

Our Track List

We have come up with a few names for our track list. We took inspiration from our image of Hewitson River, trying to avoid song names that sound too 'lovey-dovey' and soft. We have chosen song names that sound more serious and a bit ambiguous as this is typical of our alternative/indie genre.

• Hideaway
• Curiosity
• Galactic
• No Time
• Expectations
• Fires
• Trouble
• Stitches

Tomorrow's Agenda - Rotoscoping

As I have the day off school tomorrow, I am intending to film all of the footage that I need in order to rotoscope. I am trying to fill in the space in the video where it explains how it is night in one scene but day in another, hopefully this will do the job.

Above is some rough concept art of one shot that I was thinking of doing, as the sun and moon move across the sky to signify to the audience that the time of day is changing. Showing Jordan walking also shows that he actually went to the graveyard rather then just appeared there. I'm fairly sure that the finished sequnce will look fairly different to this when I come to actually drawing it out and seeing what works and what doesn't; bear in mind though, that this is only a picture to get the feel of the sequence. The final shot will reflect what has already been produced as well, in terms of art style at least.