Ancillary Task: Magazine Advert & Analysis

As we were running out of time to take more photos for our magazine advert I decided to instead use a still from our music video.

I chose a closeup of my face because this plays up to the codes and conventions of female artists as Single/Album covers and adverts for female singers are nearly always made up of a closeup.

After I went through the HD video I chose the shot above and used an online photo editor to make my eyes and lips stand out as these are the features we play up in the video.

I then used the online editor to create a rounded-corner effect on the photo as this is considered to be 'vintage' and 'retro'. Whilst playing around with the features of the editing software I came across a 'pattern' feature which allows you to blend your photo with different images. I did think about using a photo of feathers to tie in with the bird theme of our video however when I tried this out It overwhelmed the portrait. I decided on a 'paint splat' background which I thought improved the aesthetics of the photo.

I then added text, using 'retro' styled text for 'Lana Del Rey' to tie it in with the rest of the music video theme. I finished off with adding the song title and also the title of the album. The iTunes and Polydor logos make it look more professional.

The final product:

 

Ancillary Task- Our Digipak- Analysis

Ancillary Task- Our Digipak

Digipak Designs

We shot these photos at our first filming location with Rachel's iPod Touch. She has a 'Retro Camera' app which really suits the vintage theme of our music video by giving the photos a faded, polaroid camera effect. Although we also intend to do a 'real' photoshoot for the digipak photos/ancillary tasks I thought these photos looked really effective and saw no reason not to use them.

In the first design I liked the photo the way it was so I didn't edit it at all, just added the text over the top. I chose to use faded text on both 'Lana Del Rey' and 'Video Games' because I felt that using solid text would look too severe. I chose this photo because I thought it was a good portrait shot and portrayed the general feel of the video very well. The angle at which the subject's head is turned shows off the 40s hairstyle well. I used red text for 'Video Games' becaue of its connotations with love and also because the red lips are the brightest part of the background photo.

I used this image for a cover design as it reminded me a little of Lana Del Rey's 'Born To Die' single cover:

I made the photo a bit more yellow-tinted in order to make it look like an aged photograph. I was playing around with the text when I came up with the faded 'Lana Del Rey' background. I like it as it's not something i've seen on a CD cover before and is a unique idea.
I used the thin italic font for the song title as it looks quite retro and I chose to use baby blue for it as it clashes with the background photo which makes it easier to see.

Extending Our Target Audience Through Social Media

Twitter is just a huge on the social networking scene as Facebook. In order to keep up with modern times and to extend our audience that much further, we have made a twitter page in order for people to check out images, our music video and it gives people the opportunity to leave feedback which is important for us to target the right audience. Twitter is used by many music artists and celebrities so we felt it was necessary to include ourselves with this trend. Social networking is very important and a key advertising/marketing tool that is easy, free and very effective.

Above is our twitter page that allows people, if they like what they see, to follow us so they can keep up to date with pictures, comments and videos that we post. The background is of Lana Del Rey herself, this allows viewers to immediately identify that this twitter account is to with Lana Del Rey, also it allows people to tweet us and tell us if they like our music video and if they think it is better than the original video.

Influences for a Digipak

We feel that this type of retro glam style is just the right amount of 'old school' which we can add the 'new school'. That type of look is coming back into style so we want to reflect that in our digipak. Also the 'old school' writing will keep to the retro theme and will also appeal to our target audience of young adults.
Obviously the editing will be better than the editing in the actual picture above, but we will add effects that will make some of the pictures look like they were caught on a old film camera.
Furthermore, the colour scheme is a little bit too girly so we might find a colour scheme that is gender neutral.

Our digipak template.

Here is our design for the digipak. It will have two pictures either side of the CD and where the CD is will be a mid shot portrait of the actress. That will all be inside, the outside however will have at the back, the song name and a little picture, the other spaces will be filled of still shots from the music video.

Advertising, Marketing on Facebook

Advertising is a very important part of marketing in the music industry because it gives people the chance to get exclusive photos, interviews, previews and film paraphernalia. Facebook is a very good way to advertise our music video because basically everyone who is our target audience has a facebook account. It is modern and it is a successful way to market a music video.

Editing

The software that we are using to edit our music video is called pinnacle. Before we started editing the software was updated from the previous version that we all used for our AS Thriller. We had to learn how to use the new software as there were differences since the older version that we had previously used.
We are using the video effects such as changing the speed of a clip, black and white effects, 'earthquake' effects, multiple clip effects (the same clip on the screen four different times all at once) and other transitions between clips.
All of us are using our creativity to inject our own unique thoughts of what we think the music video should look like.
One challenge of the editing is to lip sync all the clips that we will use for the song e.g the chorus. It is hard to adjust the lip syncing when we add new clips that could undo the lip syncing that we've already done. Luckily we have worked out a way to pinpoint the exact time that the lyrics will occur which enables us to put the right clips in the right lip syncing places.

Diary of a Day's Shooting: Day 3

I realised we needed to film more closeup lip synching footage as all we had up to this point was long shots. As I am playing the main character in the music video it was easy for me to do this filming on my own with the help of a tripod.
I found a wall with decorative flocked wallpaper in my house and used this as the background. There were initially unwanted objects at the side of the frame but I knew I could crop these out in post-production.
As the only part of my costume showing would be my top I decided on a simple white peter-pan collar blouse. This ensured the colour wouldn't clash with either the turquoise wallpaper or the red lipstick which has been a recurring feature throughout filming.

I filmed myself from the waist up against the flocked wallpaper, lip-synching the whole song so when it came to editing I could pick and choose which part of the song to use that setting for.

After this I decided that an extreme close-up would also be a good idea as facial features would look impressive on the HD camera we used. I went through the same process as before, filming myself lip-synching the whole song but this time with an extreme closeup.

I did this a third and final time but this time with an extreme close up of just my mouth as I lip-synched the song.

Now I have watched the footage back i'm extremely happy with how it has turned out, and i'm  positive it will be an effective addition to our final video.

2nd Day Shooting

 This is the second hair style that we are using, we wanted to keep with the retro theme but add a modern twist to it. The make-up again is retro which keeps the theme that we want to use for the music video.

 This is the prop that we used in the music video, this is seen in the shot of Sophie in the bedroom, the phone is retro and also the floral colour sticks to the conventions of a 'girly' 'romantic' music video.

This coat also is a vintage style which we thought would look and stick to the theme of the music video, furthermore, we factored in the colour coding of red which is usually known, conventionally, as the colour of love and romance.