A2 Media Group Blog: October 2014

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Problems With Filming

Problems When Filming

The first problem we faced was the fact that the camera that we were borrowing from Will's friend wasn't charged up which meant a lot of the time was wasted by charging the camera up, and this also led to us rushing when actually filming which meant that the shots that were taken were of a poor quality due to us rushing. On top of that, for our shots, we were only able to take one or two of each shot due to the time we had left after the wasting of time when charging the camera, and we needed to rush through it before the camera ran out of battery.

We are going to use the school camera next time we film for our final draft, and the reason for this is that we can be taught how to focus this camera so that the shots are clearer, and it will allow us to be responsible for it so that we can charge the camera and make sure we have no qualms whilst filming our video.

Another problem was the fact that this venue didn't have a backstage, and as well as that, due to the constant changes that were being made, many people lost interest in turning up so we realised we wouldn't have much of an audience, this led to us having to just film the band at this location and get the shots that were possible. Consequently, this led to us having a lot of problems to solve last minute once again. After editing the draft footage, we have come up with a solution to try and recreate a video similar to Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor where they are playing on the stage, but there isn't really an audience. This means we could hire the same place out and get every single shot in 3/4 hours to save us from having to go to a numerous amount of places when we can get it done in the same location in one day, it makes it more realistic.

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

Venue Changes

Venue Changes

Although we were originally, and throughout the whole research we were thinking of Lock 42, in the last few hours before we were meant to be filming we faced a lot of problems. When enquiring about Lock 42, we were told that it would be fine to hire out the venue and just ring a few days before. However we did this, and we were told that are a lot of items in storage so we should check whether it would be possible, but we were told there isn't a lot of room at all.

As I (Alex Rhodes) was in town this day, I went to enquire about the possibility of using The Cookie Jar. This then became our chosen venue as we had it all sorted with the owner and they allocated us a time from 11-2 which would have been enough time to film a higher quality video. However, we received an email the day before we were meant to film (we were meant to film on Friday 25th October) saying that it wasn't going to be possible (the image below).

This lead to us making calls all day on the Thursday to try and sort another venue out. The only other one we felt met our requirements was The Soundhouse in Leicester, however this didn't have a backstage which is what we needed, and therefore we need to go somewhere else to get the backstage shots.

Friday, 17 October 2014

Advertisement Draft A.R.

Advertisement Draft

Digipac Draft A.R

Digipac Draft

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Digipak & Advert Design Draft and Ideas A.R

Digipak Design

For my digipak design I have aimed for a simple design to enable it to keep the audience interested, rather than having an over complicated version which would cancel out a large audience instantly. In a vast amount digipak designs aimed at an 'indie audience', they have tried to keep to a simplistic design which I have been heavily impressed with, and it has lead to me wanting to try and recreated this design myself. For my draft, I was struggling to try and get the bottom left panel to be the same colour as the others, and as I was struggling last minute I decided to keep it like this so that I can show the idea that I am aiming for, and I will be able to spend more time on trying to get this design matching the same colour as the rest of the album.

For the colour of my design, I was inspired by the sky colour in the album which was actually released by the Courteeners for their most recent album Concrete Love. I feel as though this colour stood at me and it makes the album look interesting rather than a dull white or black. Below the picture shows the album cover, and it wanted to make the colour slightly similar and have it consistently showing throughout digipak as well as the advert.

As you can see in my digipak design, I have decided to go for a ZigZag design throughout, and I received this inspiration from both the Charlie Brown character, and as well as this I came across the logo for the band Weezer, which also stood out which is why I feel I have decided to go for this certain design.

Above is an image of the Charlie Brown cartoon, and this is where I originally had the idea of consisting my digipak of a neat zigzag. Although it isn't the same colour as what my digipak is, I believe this helped me to develop my idea for it as I was able to expand on the concept. In addition, I also thought of the idea because of the Weezer icon, and this helped me to consider the zigzag approach that I was looking at doing. The negative of the Weezer icon is that it has the two extra lines around the top of the W, which wasn't what I was planning on using so I had to take that into consideration and decide not to use it.

For my font, I had seen this album by The Black Keys, and I liked the way that it was a plain simple album cover, which stood out at you straight away. I Feel as though this simple design would stand out and suit within the indie industry which I am aiming for this album to fit in with. I have tried to be consistent wit this font and use throughout the whole digipak design, as well as the advert. I have found that this font suits everything and by being consistent with it, it makes the whole concept of the advertisement of the album look simple.

Advert Draft

For my advert design, I have mainly gone for the idea from The Vaccines advert for What Did You Expect. I like the the idea of the simplistic design as I believe for the audience I am aiming for, they would prefer a simple design rather than a complex design with many different things going on. In addition, I decided to use popular magazine that indie scenesters would read so that they can relate, and it would have more of a selling point as they could relate and see that it has had good reviews from magazines that they read, and would then think this album may be something.

As the image above shows, I have used the ideas from this advert such as the way they have laid the text out for name of the album, and the way that they have included the reviews as well. This was important as it could allow the audience to relate to it if they read the magazines that have given this album a good review. Again, I like the simple look of it, and this has helped for me to get an idea of what I wanted to create with the simple design rather overcomplicate things by putting too much on it. In addition, I also like the way that everything is based around the text (of the album), so that when the audience view the person, the first thing that they will see is that. This helps as a selling point because it instantly sticks out to the audience and they may recognise the name and want to buy the album.