Production Log: Week 4

This week was the same as last week, as we continued to edit our sequence, album cover and website and then get feedback

Sequence: We finished our rough edit on Monday:


We the received feedback on our rough edit:

• The start is a bit loose, try to add more shots of Boyfriend and Candles
• Show progression of narrative more
• Pulpit shots don't seem to work at the start
• Some shots need to be closer, stay a long way out too often
• Change intro band shot, not so much black space
• Include more of the Olivia CU, especially on first verse
• Only show Olivia on the breakdown - don't have guitar close ups

Album Cover:

We received feedback on our album cover:

• Add an effect to the back cover as it currently looks too dull
• Add an effect to the inside cover as it currently looks too dull
• Add white background to the behind disc cover, extend heightboard to the edge of the cover template
• Add barcode and institutional information on the back cover (We also inputted a QR code here)

Website:
We received feedback on our website:

• Check your links work, the banner to buy the single couldn't be clicked on
• Input a link to the record label's website
• Organise the gallery page properly, doesn't look like it is quite finished
• Input more visuals on the News, Gallery and Competition pages as there is too much white space on them at the moment.

Production Log: Week 3

Throughout this week we edited our sequence, album cover and website.

Sequence: By the end of the week we planned to have a rough edit of the sequence, so that we could see the order of our video and decide as a group what shots needed changing and where other shots need to be placed instead. Editing the sequence was quite easy to start with as we had a timeline of our sequence already planned from a pre-production meeting. This meant I could copy and paste the different shots from our original individual motif sequences and see how they matched up. We could also now input the new shots we had taken, such as the band shots and the indivual performances.
Unfortunately, we didn't quite finish our rough edit by the end of the week, so we hope to finish the edit on Monday and get feedback and edit our footage accordingly.

Album Cover: After taking our photoshoot pictures, we could start to edit them and begin our rough edit of our album cover. As Olivia had sketched a plan we knew which photos we needed to edit and place on the cover.
For the front cover of the album we decided to have the photo of Olivia holding the chalk board with the title of the cover on the front whilst standing in front of a heightboard. We finally placed 'theDropouts' text along the top of the cover to finish our rough edit of the front cover.
For the back cover we decided to put a full band picture on the back. Originally we wanted a photo of the band in their 'smart' outfits, although after editing and placing it on the back cover I didn't think it looked right and so we decided to put one of the band pictures in their video outfits on instead as it looked better. We then placed the song titles in a handwritten font along the top of the back cover, ready for feedback.
For the inside covers, we decided to have our band logo behind the CD and a picture of the band member's eyes on the inside cover. I edited the inside cover so that the faces were separated by purple strips, in order to tie in with the band identity.

Website: We started editing our website by choosing our template. We decided to use a template where the information is placed in a square in the middle of the page with a brick wall picture behind, as this fitted in with the genre of the band's music. I then created our navigation bar and designed our pages. Our pages were as follows: Home, About Us, News, Events, Gallery, Videos, Competition, Shop
On every page we had the title written in the same font in the same colour, as well as our band logo. Along the bottom of the website I put links to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, as these social networking sites were part of our online marketing campaign.

Production Log: Week 2

Monday: I started the week by filming the shots for the boyfriend motif. We asked Michael to come in and be the boyfriend for us, and he was enthusiastic for the shoot.
We were happy with the shots we took, and there was even a little bit of time at the end for me to film some of the Voodoo Doll motif, although after filming and watching back our footage I don't think we will use it in our actual sequence as it doesn't seem to fit.
After school we stayed to edit our shots with the boyfriend, as well as shooting our pulpit motif shots. Again, we were pleased with the shots we had taken and so will incorporate them into our sequence.

Tuesday: Today we filmed Frank's solo shots with his bass guitar. After the original band filming from the previous week we knew what we needed to improve on with the band members shots. We took numerous takes from different angles and distances, with long shots of Frank in the spotlight to close ups of his hands as he plucked the strings.

Wednesday: On Wednesday we edited the footage we had so far into individual sequences, so that when it came to our final sequence we could input the individual sections where we wanted. Now that we had the majority of our footage we could start edited our final sequence

Thursday: On Thursday we did our photoshoot. At lunchtime I photographed the band together and individually in their band outfits in a variety of poses. I then photographed them after school in a 'smart' outfi. The photoshoot went well and we took a lot of photos. We will start editing the good ones next week to use on our website and for our album cover.

Friday: On Friday we turned up to school at 7am to start the set-up and shoot for our band performance day, as the shots we took in the first week weren't as good as we'd hoped. We started our filming at 8:15am and went right through to 11am. In this time we filmed our band performance shots, Ben's solo (now that he had all his strings) and Ming's solo. We were tired by the end of the filming, although at the same time we felt fulfilled that we had completed all the main filming for our video.

Production Log: Week 1

Monday: We learnt how to use the website www.wix.com effectively to create a website for our band. I found this fascinating as there was so much to customise so that your band's page could look exactly how you wanted it to.
We then met as a group and finalised the schedule for the filming in the studio, making sure we had everything we needed for each day

Tuesday: Our first day of filming. We set aside today for filming the coffin set-up shots. Although to begin with we were behind schedule, we soon managed to get back on track and completed all the shots we needed with enough time to spare so that we could also film the candle/seance shots.I filmed the majority of the shots in the Seward Studio and Frank helped with the playback of the song. Later on Frank filmed the candle shots and the moving camera for the coffin set-up whilst I sorted the playback.
Using this footage, we could then start to roughly edit to our track and therefore see what we needed to do differently with other set-ups

Wednesday/Thursday: On Wednesday and Thursday we edited the footage we had taken from Tuesday into a rough edit (although unfortunately we were meant to film some more on Thursday but we had been double booked and needed to cancel)
From editing our footage I saw that we needed to frame our shots at a closer distance so that we could see more of Olivia's face whilst she was lip-syncing.

Friday: Our schedule for Friday was probably the busiest compared to the rest of the week. In the morning we shot the solo performance set-up for Olivia. We managed to film the majority of shots for the solo performance before we then moved on to Ben's solo performance. This started well, until two of the guitar strings snapped and we had to abandon the rest of the shots as we couldn't do any close ups of Ben.
Finally, we got the whole band together and shot the entire band performance shots. This was a lot more time consuming than I had first thought, and we didn't manage to get as many takes as we would have liked. However, we still have bookings for the whole band so we aim to shoot the whole band performance shots next week.