Production Log - Editing Ancillary Task

Originally I was on schedule with my ancillary task as I had one set idea and that was the idea which I stuck by throughout the production of my digipak. The screenshot below shows my original idea which I had begun with.

I was on schedule when producing this digipak as everything I needed was available for me. For example the galaxy brush which I used to produce the neon cloud effect behind the singer was easily accessible on the internet, as well as the fonts which were available for me to access on Dafont.com.

The difficulties that I encountered were firstly trying to come up with a good idea and the types of images to use as originally the image I had taken did not fit the digipak above, although the image shown above fitted on both the digipak that I have shown above and my final digipak design. Another difficulty that I encountered was trying to execute the effects seen on both of my digipak ideas, the digipak shown above and the digipak shown below. They both have distinct effects, for example, the digipak above has cloud neon lights on the front image with a cloud on the front, whilst the back has strips of neon lights all over the back. Trying to create the effects took some time because I was using YouTube to help me to create these effects therefore I was going step-by-step to create each individual piece of neon seen on the digipak above.

The second digipak seen below took me less time because there are less effects on the cover. The only effect that I placed on the front cover was the bright lights seen on the word WAVES. This took me less time to do, although I still had to use YouTube to help me through step-by-step.

To create these digipak designs I used photoshop and this program is the best and most effective program to use when creating professional looking posters or digipaks as the tools within the program allow for this to occur.
There are many advantages to using photoshop. The first advantage is that photoshop allows you to edit photos that you are displeased with and change it to make it the way you wish it to be to make it look better and more professional. Another advantage of using photoshop is that there are a range of different tools which one can use in order to create different effects on an image, for example, the magic wand tool or blending options.
On the other hand, there are disadvantages to using photoshop. A disadvantage of using photoshop is  that the program is quite advanced and therefore it has taken me some time to get used to the different tools and how to do things, furthermore, because it is so advanced I sometimes forget how to do some effects like clipping masks.

My chosen font for my final digipak was called Intro (used for the artist name and songs on the back cover) and Intro Inline (used for the song name). I was able to access this font from the internet from a website called Dafont.com, this website has many different fonts from a variety of genres to allow users to pick which font works best with their design. I chose to use this font because I felt it suited the genre of the song as well as making my digipak look professional, furthermore, the colour worked well with the background and made the words stand out, therefore this is why I chose to use this colour.    

Production Log - Editing Music Video

How did editing go?

The editing process in general is a long process for us. We had many different clips to cut together and some clips did not have the right lighting therefore required some brightening and some addition filters to make some colours vibrant. However, everything has gone well and the video is beginning to take shape. We have added some effects which make our video stand out and makes our video stand out to others, for example, throughout the performance our artist is in black and white, however his cap is the only piece of clothing in colour.
The biggest difficulty we encountered is editing the performance. The lip syncing was easy to line up and make sure it is on point, the only thing that we struggled on in the music video was getting the performance scenes black and white. This required a lot of time and good vision as the sometimes there were masks that did not line up and revealed our artists' natural colour and therefore we had to constantly go back over and fix the errors. 

The program we had used for editing was Adobe Premiere Pro which is a very good and professional to use when editing video like ours. Similarly to many programs, Adobe Premiere Pro has its advantages and disadvantages and they are as follows. An  advantage to Premiere Pro is the many different video and audio layers that one can have. This allows the user to align clips easier and overlap clips to add effect such as flickering scenes in quick succession. Another advantage is the colour correction tool, this allows the user to change the colour of any scene which they feel may not be correct or may add some colour for effect, this is something we would use as there are some scenes which we need to brighten up. Another advantage is that Premiere Pro is very professional and allows user to produce professional looking work compared to iMovie which is far more basic and user friendly.

On the other hand, a disadvantage to using Premiere Pro is the fact that it can be confusing to use for some people, especially when it is their first time. Premiere Pro possesses many different shortcuts that make the program easier to use for the user, however it is understanding these shortcuts which could be a hassle for the user. Furthermore, the amount of tools and features within Premiere Pro may confuse users when using the program. 

Production Log - Filming

How did filming go?

As a whole the filming went according to plan because we had planned everything we needed to do before we had gone to Brighton. The tickets were paid off approximately 1 week before we had left so that had given us more time to plan any other areas we needed to sort out like a schedule for the day. 

The biggest difficulty that we encountered was the people at Brighton, because there were so many people at Brighton due to Brighton Pride being on at the same time, this did slow down our production process as many different people were getting in the way of the camera and therefore we had to constantly reshoot a scene.

In terms of filming, we were on schedule with the narrative as we filmed in the allocated time we were given, although the lip syncing part of our video causes some disruption as we had to change the day we had to film around 6 times due to uncontrollable circumstances. Another downside to filming the lip syncing scene was the location, we orginally planned to film in a record studio, but again due to not being able to get to the recording studio so we changed to an area which was easily accessible.