My finished music video

This is my finalized music video.
I think that this video does look pretty good. What i most referenced back to, was my research on the rock genre. I kept this simple, no added effects, cuts to the beat, showcasing the whole band, giving focus to the lead singer. I feel that i have done a pretty good job in lip syncing too, considering that there was a lot of it there.

However there are some noticeable faults on this version. Due to rendering this video (changing it from a project into a mp4 file) i wasn't able to render it at a higher quality because I wouldn't have been able to upload it onto this blog. As well as a skip at 1:04 (the drum part) and lip syncing changes at 1:11 and 1:59 for a few split seconds were caused by rendering.

Something that made me struggle though, was to keep myself to the storyboard. I sort of managed to do it for around the first half of the music video but during the second half it was very difficult due to me not having filmed the exact parts that i indicated on the storyboard (as in i filmed the close ups, however at a different timing therefore i wasn't able to put the clip in as planned in my storyboard).

Finalized Website

http://sleepingserenity.wix.com/sleepingserenity

This is the home page of the website. Since the draft i have added a "latest news" section, the idea with this is that the latest "article" would appear on the homepage so that this would not only make the page less bland but it would immediately add a piece of information.

I also added the tour/appearance dates on the bottom as it is piece of information that the audience/fans are always looking for.

From my draft i have also change the image as i took off the lettering that was on the actual image and put it in the description of the image with appears once you hover over it.

This is the main info page, because it was so bland at first, i thought that adding a way for fans and band to communicate would work great since that is what the band's relationship towards fans should be like. 

The biography is not filled in yet because this would have been a section of the website which would be totally up to the band as to what information about them they would want to tell.  

This is the "latest news" section. Here i have added some more articles that would have featured if this website would actually feature for the band. 

This is the "tour" section in which i have added the same tour calendar as the home page one. 

This page gives information/detail on the most recent upcoming performance and then gives the fans/audience a small indication of their next performances.

The "music" section for this website is quite different to my draft. I found the draft very bland and that it had no resemblance to an actual website at all. 

Therefore i added spotify links on the side which would equal to the songs that are on the album, i put the older songs at the bottom to give relevance to this new album, i gave the fans an outline as to where they could purchase this new album and i also added a iTunes link as this is a very popular website to obtain songs from the internet.

And where it says "edited video inserted here" is where my edited music video would have gone, however due to uploading issues i was not able to upload it to the website.

Finalized Digipack (CD cover)

This is my finalized front cover for the album. i feel that with the title of the album that the band chose ("visions"), it works well. I feel as this is very simple but yet it captures attention.
It contains popular conventions from front covers, such as the logo, band name, album name, and that the image of the cover somehow relates to the album or the band.
I think that although i like it, it MIGHT have been a little out of the box and a bit too adventurous for me, therefore i feel that i haven't portrayed my idea to the fullest due to some lack of skills with image editing.

This is the back cover. i am very happy with the outcome of this. It contains the simple conventions of having the track list, the copyright paragraph, a bar code and the sides which fold to the sides of the hard copy of the CD. I feel like this ties in with the front cover due to its colour and the same font for its track list being used.

This is the gatefold for the CD. i broke convention here by not adding the lyrics of the song mentioned in the tracklist. However i feel like this gives the CD much more personality and gives the audience some kind of incentive as this would only be available for the hard copy of the CD. The gatefold contain images from the first and second shooting session, therefore the audience would also get images that they had never seen before.

Analyzing my second shoot

These are some of my wide shots. I am very glad that for my second shoot I obtain a more varied number of shots. This is great because when it comes to editing my music video i will have multiple shot in which i can keep my audience more engaged due to it not being too repetitive my using the same angle multiple times. As well as this time around i got some hand held wide shots as opposed to only still camera being used in my first shoot, this also increased my variety.

Here is one example of a shot (bottom one) which i didn't notice a problem of even in my first shoot. This problem was that the projector is in shot. I only realized this at my second shoot because this time i checked a bit of the clip out before moving onto the next shot. This enabled me to solve my problem quickly, by simply moving the camera and zooming in more which in turn helped because it made the shot more focused on the band rater than there being a lot of space around them which could end up being a distraction.

These are some of my close up shots. I felt that the obvious main feature of the guitarist is the guitar itself (#2). Therefore close ups of this were my main focus for him. For the bassist, once again, the bass is the main feature(#1). And for the drummer i felt that the close up of the drum would be suitable and i thought that maybe the rhythm of the foot would be a nice close up (#3).

I felt that the cut-in shots for these three band members worked very well because it shows detail and it is quite interesting to look at: 

#1

#2

#3

As this is the lead singer i tried to focus quite a bit on him. I felt that in my second shoot i managed to get a very good variety of shots ranging from medium shot, medium close up shot, close up shot and extreme close up shot. However during shooting, in each take, i always went between the band members and shot the close ups. I feel that with the lead singer i should have spent one whole take on him in order to be able to include him in the music video a lot more. I think this will be a drawback in my music video as there is no more time to do another shoot.

Evaluation of the shoot (2)

• What worked:

-This time i definitely stuck to the timing frame. I did as i was supposed to and got all of the shots i wanted. Including close ups of each band member.

-This time around the rehearsal in the theater were finished earlier which meant we had much more time to set up all the equipment. Due to this we also had time to bring over some amplifiers from the music department to create a more full stage.

-Due to me having more time i also managed to bring in the technician to check if i had put the lighting on correctly in order for me to make sure that everything would work to plan.

-I think that as this was my second shoot i was much more comfortable and less worried/stressed about this therefore i was much more relaxed which enabled me to correct some mistakes of the last shoot. This made me get better shots and made me improve in my technique.

• What didn't work:

-We spend some time working out which cables would be there in order for me to play the song for them to perform in sync. When i got the technician i forgot to check with him about the sound because i thought that the correct cables were already there (which they obviously weren't). But fortunately we figured it out in the end.

I think that due to this being the second shoot i was able to correct my last mistakes and therefore not making almost any mistakes this time.