Pictures of the DigiPak

Rough Cut.

Third editing process

After filming for the third time, we have finally finished our rough cut for the music video. I will be uploading this as soon as I can.

Looking back at the animatic, it would be fair to say the rough cut has ended up fairly different, however not in a bad way. We only planned on having a narrative for the chorus' but as it turns out, the whole music video has pretty much followed a narrative, but we think its led to a better end product. I think the overall feel of the video is very good, it is an enjoyable watch. However, this isn't about the music video being enjoyable, it's about gaining marks, and in terms of skill and craftsmanship of the video, it isn't too varied. We will continue to edit and try and find some hidden gems in terms of camera angles and shots, so the longer ones don't just seem to drag, but if we can't, we will go out filming again.

Nonetheless we will be showing this to AS media groups to gain some feedback to say what they think about it. Hopefully the feedback will be good enough and critical enough to enable us to improve on what we have edited and filmed thus far. Overall I'm very pleased with the rough cut though.

Filming - Monday 23rd November

This is our last scheduled day of filming as we plan to cover everything that needs covering. Sadly weather was once again an issue but it was a challenge we overcame well, it was a very windy day and different to the weather on our first day of filming but it hasn't come out noticeable on camera, so luckily the consistency will still be there.

Filming for the day once again began at our actor Luke's house, which is being featured in the video more than originally planned thanks to the weather, meaning we've had to improvise. But again there is not too much of the house in the video for it to become tiresome and repetitive, filming is in different sections of his house too. On this occasion, we filmed in his front room in front of the tv. After finishing this we went out to film again and re-shoot a few of the shots that weren't up to standard or just 'didn't fit in'. We also found a quiet area with a convieniently placed wall, so we used this instead of our original bench shot, with Cosmo sneaking up over the wall to sing to Melanie. I think that the filming on this day was the most comedic we have done yet, as we really got into it today and our creative muses were always being ticked into gear.

Overall, the filming was a success and if we need to film again I think the good work done here will continue to flow into the next day's filming.

Successful Shots.

These are a selection of my favourite shots we have filmed so far. These are ones that I would consider successful, as in they fit in with our representation of Cosmo/Mel. These freeze frames also shows the vary of shot types that have been filmed so far.

Second Editing Process

We uploaded everything on the Friday lesson, and quickly realised despite filming everything we had planned that we didn't quite have enough and some parts of the video, although looking good on paper, did not come off in reality. So it seems we will be filming again to improve these things. Editing went smoothly other than that, with the use of Final Cut Pro becoming more and more easy as time goes by, as we familiarise ourselves with the program.

Filming - Thursday 12th November

This was our second filming session for the music video. It was more successful than the first as not only did we finish what we planned but we also finished the entire storyboard and also improvised to create more shots, to add vary. Our actor Luke has many instruments so we thought we'd utilise these and create more potential footage for the video. One of our improvised shots shows Luke on the toilet playing the Guitar in a laid back manner, like playing the guitar on the toilet is the norm for him. This shows the playful side to Cosmo's music and that he doesn't take himself too seriously.

The day did not go without its issues though, one of those issues we had no control over was the weather, with the rain pouring heavily throughout the day. We had to change our plans to suit the weather so one of our scheduled locations, Marine Lake, had to be replaced to an indoor location. We decided to go with the Sovereign Centre, the shopping centre in Weston-Super-Mare. This also was not without its problems as its a busy place, even busier due to the rain outside, many people who would be in the shops outside were shopping inside to avoid the rain. We went to a section of the shopping centre that wasn't too busy, so we didn't disturb shoppers (and so they didn't disturb us!).

Production Company Logo

Our group has designed our own company logo, we've had the freedom to design what we wish and we've designed something that would match a company that would be a possible representative of Cosmo Jarvis were he signed. There are many company logos, some known Worldwide, such as Nike and Pepsi.





<-- Pepsi Logo, synonymous with the recognisable red and blue circle.

The music industry however, does not have many stand out logo's in terms of producing companies. I'm an avid follower of music and I can't think of any logo from the top of my head. This is where our producing company could stand out. One of the most famous record companies, Universal Music Group, is the parent company of Def Jam recordings. Def Jam recordings are a company known Worldwide in the rap industry, yet their logo is very simple and recognisable.

<-- Def Jam recordings, powerhouse in the rap industry.

Our production company will be lesser known however, so our will need to stand out. Def Jam recordings have a reputation so can do a simple logo because it guarantees quality. A smaller company in the music industry is Roc-a-fella Records, created by Shaun 'Jay-Z' Carter. Their logo is much closer to the feel we want for ours, to stand out and be instantly linked to our production company. This is the Roc-a-fella Records logo.

<-- Roc-a-fella Records, up and comer in the music industry.

With all that said, we also wanted our logo to serve more of a purpose than being a recognisable image. We wanted it to clearly represent the company, and what its aim was. We wanted more colour than most logos, so it grabs your attention and prints an impression in the mind. And it needed to be adaptable, so it could fit on a small scale, such as on the case of the DigiPak. We decided to go with 'Purple Tortoise Productions' as the name of our production company. It just sounds like the kind of company that would pick up a talent such as Cosmo Jarvis, it sounds fun and not too serious. Two drafts were drawn up for our image, the first is a simple design of a purple tortoise, drawn on photoshop with the 'freedrawn' tool.






<-- Draft one. Tortoise drawn using purple paint. Draft Two was done on Adobe Photoshop, using a photograph of a tortoise found on Google Images and editing the colouring and adding text, which is used in all 3 above well known examples.

<-- Draft two. The image we decided to go with.

Final Cut Pro vs iMovie

Two editing programs, two programs designed by the same company, two very different results.

Final Cut Pro is the editing software being used by our group for this year's coursework, the music video. As mentioned in previous blogs last year we used iMovie. I would be hard pressed to say i prefer Final Cut but I can't deny it gives crisper results. The wider range of abilities available, such as transitions (many yet not explored) mean it is not as limited. The viewer window is alot more accessible, with the use of tabs allowing you to change things in simpler ways, such as the motion tab, containing tools to adjust the scale, opacity, cropping, rotation, motion blur and many more things of the clip.

With all things said though, I still preferred iMovie. It was more 'student friendly' for what its worth and simpler to use, but this is coursework, not a playaround, so there is no doubting the best results will come from Final Cut Pro. iMovie is best used in amateur editing, I can't name a film from the top of my head (or know if there is a film) created using iMovie, but I know many a film edited using Final Cut Pro, many in fact amongst my favourite movies, including:

• Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
• Super Size Me (2004) - a somewhat amateur documentary anyway but still a huge (or super size) success
• Jarhead (2005)
• No Country For Old Men (2007) - Received global acclaim and numerous Golden Globe nominations, 2 winners.

As well as being used in other successful films, such as The Simpsons Movie and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

The history is shown here that you can produce quality with Final Cut Pro, and unlike iMovie, there is no excuse for us to not do so. Final Cut Pro will open a new world for our editing process, so lets just hope we can learn how to use it correctly!

First editing process

After a semi-successful first day of filming, we began editing on our first lesson back from half term. In our AS year, we used iMovie to do the editing process, and overall that went quite well, but we did run into problems because it was so limited. So for A2 we are using 'Final Cut' to do our editing. This is a more complex program, therefore it is more difficult to use, but it's a challenge our group looks forward to facing, and hopefully it will produce a better quality video.

To upload the footage was the first new difference from iMovie. We had to go "Edit --> Log and Capture" in order to upload and segment our filming into different frames so it wasn't just one long frame with all the filming in it, making it harder to cut successfully. This was quite time consuming as you'd expect and it took around 15 minutes for the work to be completely uploaded to the computer.

Once that was done, we uploaded Heidi's MP3 of 'Mels Song' so we could make a smooth transition with the video matching the song and the lyrics, making it easier to position the clips where we wanted. The remainder of the lesson we just cut and pasted around half of the clips filmed on the first day into the video, realising where our gaps were, what may need to be filmed again etc. We fear we may not have enough angles but thats something we will look at when we finished our rough cut.