Construction Post 6: Website Post-Production

To create and design our artist's website we used 'Wix'. Although no one in the group had any previous experience with using 'Wix' before, it was relatively easy to get the hang of so by the end of the project we were all comfortable using it; a key factor behind how much progress each member made when working individually on the website.

The gallery page

As an artist's website is the hub of all the information a consumer needs to know about the artist. Therefore we needed to create an interactive and cohesive website which also had synergy with our other artifacts (the music video and digipak). We also wanted to create purchasing opportunities for our artist's audience as this is proven to be successful with existing artists when it comes to increasing audience interaction.

My personal contribution to the website included setting up the shop and editing the products on sale, producing the gallery page, setting up both the social media pages and creating the tour poster.

The tour poster for AJ

Construction Post 5: Digipak Post-Production

To create our Digipak album cover we used Adobe Photoshop. Below is the template we used for the front and back outside panels. A similar template was used for the inside panels too.

Outside panels template

As mentioned in the previous post my group made the decision to share the responsibility of all the products. However, as I had the most experience in Photoshop and was most comfortable on it I took the lead on the last week and therefore had quite a big contribution to the final design. I produced both the inside covers and made the finishing touches to the front covers, I also produced the spine and the institutional information on the back cover.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with what my group achieved with the Digipak as it met our intended targets and expectations.

Below is the finished product:

Inside album cover

Outside album cover

Construction Post 4: Music Video Post-production

Editing

We edited our music video using software called Adobe Premiere Pro, which we used both last year and at GCSE. Due to having used this software previously I was quite experienced and therefore felt confident thought the process.

Myself editing the music video

The first step we took was to watch through all our takes and rename them so they would be easy to identify when placing them on the sequence timeline. We then proceeded to choose the best take for each shot and place these on different tracks; if the shot was a lip-sync shot then we synced it up to the original Cry Me A River soundtrack. The purpose of this was to have every lip-cync ready at our disposable when it came to actually putting the video together.

In order to finish all three of our artifacts in time we decided, as a group, that the best course of action was for the group to share responsibility for each product. Even though we all worked on each product, the group made a decision that on the last week each member should focus on the product they work the fastest on as this would give us the best chance of finishing in time. In the last week Sian took more responsibility for the music video edit so therefore my main contributions came within the 1st half of the video, grading decisions, lip-sync matches and shot transitions.

Construction Post 3: Week 3 Production

The sole aim of week 3 was our promo photo shoot which we carried out on a set in our school's media department. The set-up we used can be seen below:

Our photo shoot was very successful as we not only managed to get all the photos we needed for the digipak covers but also a lot of other promo shots which we placed on the website and our two social media platforms. As I took on the character of AJ I was required to be in front of the camera, whilst Meera and Sian switched between the roles of director and photographer as the week went on. I really enjoyed the whole process as it was fun to experiment with my character, moreover as the main aim of the promo shots was to portray the personality of AJ (which is quite similar to mine, i.e. goofy) I was able to have fun on set with my group whilst still taking high quality pictures which we could use across all the different platforms of our project.

Below are some of my favorite promo shots from the photo shoots:

Construction Post 2: Week 2 Production

The second week of production was our main shoot week. We spent the majority of the week in the school studio, with the Sunday being spent on location.

To keep on track we created a schedule which showed us who would be in the studio at any one point. This was very useful when creating the individual shoot schedules for each day as we could easily see who would be available at certain points. It also enabled us to create a call sheet with our actors as we could match up our schedule to theirs and find times when were all free to film.

Our group schedule for the week

Studio Shoot

Monday's Shoot Schedule

Above is an example of one of our shoot schedules which we made to help out with the studio shoots. As a whole this shoot was quite successful as we managed to get all of the footage which we wanted to get, however they were some big obstacles we had to overcome throughout the week, all of which are listed below:

• On the Monday we had to work on the background in order to turn it into an infinity curve, this provided many complications as the actual process of sticking A3 and A4 paper to the parting took all the morning, however after recording some footage with this infinity curve we discovered that the idea didn't work as our lighting was too dark and therefore made the background look a bit off. Overall, this process put us behind schedule but in order to ensure this time wasn't wasted we brought in the male dancers and had them rehearse their routine with Meera whilst myself and Sian tightened the Cyclorama

  

  The monitor showing the attempted infinity curve

• On the Tuesday we really face any issues and in fact we actually made up a lot of the lost time from the previous day
• On the Wednesday we were having some difficulties with the camera; it wouldn't read the SD card and therefore wouldn't allow us to capture any footage. Fortunately for us, our teachers and technician managed to find a nearby repair shop who could fix the camera fault and have it fully functioning by the next morning. Our replacement camera, a Canon Legria HFG30 (our camera for location shoots), was available for use at this point however the difference in quality between it and our studio camera, Canon 5D MK 11, was huge and in turn did not work with the lighting we sorted out in the test shoot. As we did on the Monday we decided that instead of wasting our time we should sped the time rehearsing; I learnt the group routine and a selection of moves for my solo dances

My dance rehearsal

Construction Post 1: Week 1 Production

For the first week of production our group focused on preparing and carrying out the first location shoot. This shoot took place over one weekend with one night-time shoot on the Saturday and an all day shoot throughout the Sunday. The footage we captured over these shoots consisted of promo shots, filler shots, lip-syncs and rehearsals for narrative shots which were scheduled for the following weekend.

Saturday

First page of our shoot board for Saturday

Our first location for the Saturday shoot was at an old fashioned lamp post near Sian's house. As the shots we wanted at this location were filler shots and lip-syncs my role was solely on performing. Sian took on the role of cameraman and Meera directed. The shots we planned to film differed between hand held shots and tripod shots as we wanted more variety and creativity when editing. However, after filming the tripod shots in a CU we decided to scrap using the tripod at the location and instead capture a lot more hand held footage; we felt that the tripod made the shots too static and therefore boring, in contrast we felt the hand held shots brought the scenes to life whilst also allowing us to film in multiple angles and framing within each take.

Meera giving me direction between takes

The second location we filmed at on the Saturday was on the road by Sian's house, we decided to keep all of the roles within the group the same for these shots. For this location we wanted to mix up the shot types by adding character movement with camera movement; we achieved this with a tracking shot of me walking down the street lip-syncing to the camera. We particularly liked the lighting at this location and in turn decided to film some filler shots, as you can see below. The lighting form the street lamps gave an outline to my head in a LS and added a shadow to half of my face in a MS. 

A filler shot with back lighting from the street lamp

Sunday

First page of our shoot board for Sunday

On the Sunday our main location was in and around Meera's house, i.e. her back alley, her living room, her attic and staircase. Our aim for the day was to take a selection of promo shots, primarily our back cover for the digipak, film our rehearsals for narrative shots and capture the rest of my lip-syncs so that only studio lip-syncs remained. As I was required to be in every shot, Meera and Sian split the filming and directing and switched throughout the day. Due to myself taking on the main role of AJ I felt a lot of pressure to give a convincing performance, however Sian and Meera was great and gave help motivate me throughout the day to keep me on track.

Meera filming one of my outdoor lip-syncs

Once we had finished with capturing all of our lip-sync footage and promo shots that we had scheduled in for the day we decided to practice some of our narrative shots for the coming weekend. As well as practicing and experimenting with framing for the couple shots of myself and Sian we decided to script the argument scene between me and Sian; we believed this would be great preparation for Sian and I as we would be able to learn our lines.

The script for the argument

Overall, I think we had a successful first shoot weekend as we managed to film all the shots we wanted and manged to get in great preparation for the coming week. Some of the shots we filmed on the weekend actually became some of my favorites in the final edit and I believe as a group we worked very well- a great confidence booster for the stressful studio shoot week.