Here is the final draft of our music video, and we are very proud of the final result!

Here is what we did today, just a little video now that were coming towards the end of making our music video. We were literally just adding the finishing touches and experimenting with transitions.

In today's lesson unfortunately Beste wasn't here however I decided to make a few tweaks here and there on our music video. When watching it back on You Tube me and Beste noticed a sound of us laughing at South end which was heard on the shot of me singing into the microphone. However when I looked back on iMovie there was no detached audio. I then discovered that the clip hadn't been muted, and so i muted it, although i am still confused because the sound which we heard was not the sound from the actual clip being shown. It has however fixed the problem which is whats important.

I then went through and adjusted specific shots to make sure that they were all framed more professionally. For example in one of the snow shots at 2:00 when we are running around the tree, the tree was more positioned to the right, so I cropped it using the cropping and rotation tool so that we would be more central.

I also added in a transition at the end, so that it would fade out to black rather than just cutting off. It makes it flow nicely rather than just finishing abruptly. I also adjusted the title of our song at the beginning as i felt it faded out too quickly. It was difficult to get it right as there isn't a separate option to fade in and out, only the option fade in/out, so I had to find a way to make it longer and continue fading out into our animation.

I watched our music video over and over and noted down all the little things I could improve. I noticed that some of the lip syncing was slightly out and so I tried to adjust it making it fit in time with the music. Hopefully it is now all on time. I also noticed that one of the panning shots of Beste crouched down by the door didn't look right. I therefore swapped the shot with clip which I felt was framed better. This is seen at 1:46, and compared to what it was before I think it looks much better, hopefully Beste will agree.

Yesterday we went to Richmix for a collective identity study day..

Here is a copy of the presentation in which the chief examiner gave to us, which if found extremely informative and helpful.

G325 exam

View more presentations from petefrasers

Here is my first magazine advert design..

How I made my Magazine cover..

I made my magazine cover using Adobe Photoshop as I have recently found myself becoming more confident with it, after making my digipak. I decided to use the same image from my digipak which featured on the back cover. I personally felt that it was important to have a picture of the artists on my magazine cover to get our faces, if we were a real band, well known. On the top right hand corner I put our logo of 'The Capulets' as this is our main signature design. On the top left hand corner I have placed a small company logo which I made on an online website. This allowed me to design and create my own, choosing specific font types and shapes, in this case I used lines. I wanted to keep it fairly simple as most of the company logos that I've seen pretty much are, such as the Universal logo. I also added a small HMV logo to show where our album would be available. I saw this idea on a number of different magazine adverts and so in order to make mine look professional I decided to also include it.

At first I was slightly worried about how I was going to put writing over the photograph and find a colour which wouldn't be overpowered by the image. However, I then had the idea of the ripped page effect. I went onto Google and found this image below..

I then manipulated it on Photoshop by erasing the middle section and filling it in with black, using the paint bucket tool. I then carefully erased the background colour leaving only the ripped section. I then adjusted its size to fit across our photo and put the text on top, using the same Lucida Calligraphy font as I used on my digipak. I decided to use a white font as it makes it clearer to read and also looks more professional against the black background, instead of using a brighter colour like pink for example, which may have made it look tacky.

For the 'Live on stage at 11:30' bit, I again used an online website to reconstruct a font which I had previously seen on the Nirvana poster, which said 'Live at Reading'. I thought it was a very eye-catching font, it looks as though someone has stamped it on, an effect which I personally found really effective. I think it also worked well with our electro pop genre which often uses a black and white colour scheme. I feel that this poster would attract a younger female audience as our logo is quite feminine with its twirly patterns and pink hearts. Also the fact that we are both young girls might aspire younger girls to look up to us.

I am really happy with my final result, I feel that I have managed to create a realistic looking music poster  promoting our band, which also goes well with our genre and suits our target audience.

Here is my second magazine advert design although I personally prefer the first one..

In order to get the heart imagine in the background I took a screenshot from our music video, then manipulated it on Adobe Photoshop. I enhanced the contrast to make it stand out more and I then coloured the wave in white using the paintbrush tool, so that I could blend it into the white at the top of the canvas, giving me enough space to include the text, our band logo and our company logo.

I will be asking the class on Friday for feedback to see which one they feel is best suited for our band.

Magazine/music poster analysis..

Today me and Beste spent most of our day editing piecing together all our remaining footage. We decided that we wanted the ending to be split into two sections. The first section goes with the lyrics 'this is the potential break up song' where we included shots which suggested the breakup, for example the cake smashing (symbolising the anger and hurt), the birds flying away (symbolising freedom), a shot where i'm staring at the clocks through the barriers on the steps (the barriers symbolising the feel of being trapped) etc. For the second section the lyrics say 'this is the potential makeup song' where we inserted lots of shots of us having fun, we also reversed some of the clips for example the one where a snowball distroys the word 'love'. This looked quite effective and we felt the idea behind it worked really well. We both really like the idea that our music video uses enigma codes, it is an open text, open to interpretation. The audience do not know whether they do breakup or whether they don't.

In the afternoon, although we had practically finished I decided to make a few adjustments and tweeks here and there. I turned the contrast up on some of the clips in order to bring out and enhance the colours. I also used the cropping and rotation tool to crop certain clips in order to frame the shot more professionally. I also inserted a few more quick shots to make sure that the clips change on the beat of the music. I also added in the title of our song to our opening shot. We still need to make a few adjustments on this however i feel that we had a very productive day and I know that we are very happy with our result. We are very nearly finished!

Here is our sixth draft, our first final draft..

Today me and Beste spent the morning editing our music video footage. We managed to piece everything together fitting it in time with the music. Watching it back I have noticed that the lip syncing needs adjusting in some places however here is our fifth draft showing what we managed to do today. We also edited the bridge section in the song which we are really happy with, although we would like to get some feedback from the class and our teacher to see whether we can make improvements.

Today me and Beste spent the whole day editing our footage. We are so happy with what we've done so far, we had lots of different shots to work with which made it a lot easier. We have decided to stick with our original plan of using one location per chorus in order to show the passing of time through the seasons. We edited in all of our Southend footage which is seen in the first chorus. We've created freeze frames for some of our establishing shots, for example we use one when showing the fairground as we wanted it to be a still shot. We were also really pleased with how we timed certain shots to fit with the music, for example the panning shot of Beste playing on the arcade machine, as she runs her hands over the buttons, we hear the drums play in the song. When showing some of our friends they pointed this bit out as a particular favourite.

Here is our fourth draft, we have now finished the Southend section although we may want to tweek a few bits. The rest of the footage after this is not yet in time with the song however we are planning to meet on wednesday to continue editing!