Album Cover

For the album cover I used an image of Helen from a stills camera and with the help of Photoshop I created the desaturation , turning contrast up and inserting font.



The back of the album is another image of Helen leaning against a wall with a door to her left. The font on the door is my own handwriting which I scanned onto the image and made it look like some sort of graffiti. My original idea was going to be gothic century text listing the songs but then I got my own writing idea from a Red Hot Chilli's 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' back cover below:



I feel the back cover is somewhat original and unlike any other cover out there and I have added a little love heart at the bottom, this I feel makes the songs more personal. I included a barcode and information about copyright etc, for a more professional look to the back cover.



The inside cover is Helen and Sophie's faces merged together to create a weird effect and an abstract design that confuses viewers. I recently put them on the social networking site Facebook where friends commented on my design and i got feedback like 'it's scary but good' 'I love it' etc.


I have also created a magazine ad that has come from my own imagination, with the help of Photoshop I inserted a part of the image I used on the back cover which was Helen leaning against a wall, with text overlaying the background image, adding a blue tint onto it. Its a simple design that adds my own originality. This poster is showed below:

Evaluation

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

In constructing our product we used many different media technologies. For example we used a camera for capturing our footage, and Final Cut Pro to log, capture and edit our raw footage in order to create a fitting sequence and narrative for our chosen audio track.
During filming we used the greenscreen to record part of our creative idea. This is difficult to do as you need to ensure the person whom you are recording is not standing too close to the greenscreen as it would create a shadow and/or a green ‘fuzz’ around them when you transfer it to the Apple Mac’s during editing. Once we uploaded the footage onto the editing software, we applied an appropriate graffiti background to the section and animated text.
Throughout the blog we have used such technologies as camera recording and video streaming. We also uploaded pictures of our location and characters. We also used a microphone when recording some audience feedback to upload onto the blog. In gaining additional audience feedback we used the internet, such sites as ‘facebook’ and ‘youtube’ as these were readily accessible to us, and also allowed us to receive feedback from our target audience. This allowed us an outside opinion so that we could adjust or improve anything we needed to.

Overview of our filming.

Green Screen.

Within the music video with have a used a green screen sequence for the spoken bit of the song. This sequence helps to develop our abstract image for the video. We involved the professional acting skills of Mr Rees the head of Loreto Drama and Theatre. Whilst he was miming the piece we directed him to do a number of hand gestures, so it would allow us use a number of editing techniques, for example if he shout his hand out to the right we would make the words shoot out in the same direction, to create a more modern abstract feel. We replaced the green screen with one of our chosen themes “Graffiti”, thus creating an urban feel.

Content

Content:
As well as being creative with our music video, we decided to take a lot of the lyrics in a literal sense. For example, “In life he was dealt some shit hands” involved a deck of cards being shuffled and thrown into the face of the character ‘Jack’. We also took the implication of ‘Stella’ to be a real person, whereas in fact in the song it is referring to Sheila being an alcoholic and her friend being the beer Stella Artois. However we took it in a literal sense so the negative connotations of alcohol and alcoholism were personified and portrayed to create a strong moralistic message.

Further developing on our creativity and influence of abstract qualities, we used several unusual camera and editing techniques as we thought it appropriate and fitting with the ‘indie’ genre and ‘arty’ element of the video.

The Process.

The song we have chosen is titled “Shelia” by an artist called Jamie T, who is a London based songwriter. We chose this record because of the more abstract and edgy feel than other songs.

We decided as a group to film our music video at the Bridgewater canal in Timperley. As the scenery establishes a distinctive tone and relates well to the “indie” genre of our chosen artist. As the video is set over a one day period Stella, played by me, and Jack, played by Kyle, had to make sure we were wearing the same costume attire for each day of filming in order to ensure excellent continuity. We also had to make sure I was always walking in the same direction, so as to dictate the success of the continuity. Also the weather would affect the continuity of the video, so we could only film on days with similar forecasts.

Research, Influences & Themes

Research:


As a group we discussed and established the importance of researching into the chosen artist and genre of ‘indie’ music. We acknowledged that this would assist us in ensuring that our video sequence was appropriate and fundamental to the song. The research is as follows:



Jamie Alexander Treays, known by his stage name Jamie T, is a 23-year-old English singer/songwriter from Wimbledon, South London. He is currently signed to Virgin Records, but released his Betty and the Selfish Sons EP on his own Pacemaker Records label. His backing band is called The Pacemakers and he has lately been touring, advertising and releasing material as "Jamie T and The Pacemakers”.





















In popular music, independent music, often generally abbreviated as "indie", is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels and an autonomous, Do-It-Yourself approach to recording and publishing. Independent labels have been known to strive for minimal influence on the artist they represent, avoiding the artist-cultivating behaviour of many major labels. Artists represented by Independent labels have been known to be focused more on producing music than becoming wealthy and/or well known. These artists use more off beat styles to create music since they are not hindered by the record label.

Influences and Themes:

The music video which we produced was greatly influenced by the original version created by the artist; however we adapted it greatly to input our own ideas and enforce particular moralistic views. We saw this as an opportunity to be creative and to actively produce and deliver something which we were proud of. We were also greatly influenced by abstract qualities and graffiti art, which features regularly throughout the video. We thought this to be appropriate as not only has graffiti existed since ancient times, but it is a form of abstract art exercised to communicate both social and political messages.

Graffiti has since evolved into a pop culture existence, creating a lifestyle that remains hidden from the general public. The controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials/ law enforcement and graffitists looking to display their work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested, being reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

Another influence of ours was devised from the work of Danny Boyle, from the film he directed, ‘Trainspotting’. His use of pausing action to still images to develop on a characters attributes and personality, whilst telling the story was more recently used by Quentin Tarantino in ‘Inglorious Bastards’. We used this technique on occasion employing a similar effect.