Album Cover

Front

The focal image was created by layering two images on top of each other at slightly different places and lowering the opacity, creating a blurred effect. The image is composed with Georgie in the middle and the two boys on either side, which works to establish her as the singer. 

The album is self titled therefore the main text on the cover is the artist name. This is in the same font as the website, however we decided to use the powder paint differently- reversing it so that the font itself is made up of paint, as this worked better with the composition of the cover.

Although we were aiming to achieve a minimal aesthetic when creating this cover, when receiving feedback from peers it was suggested to add a texture to give it more depth. We experimented with overlaying images of lighting from live performances as this tied in with our genre nicely:

Feedback from 16 year old male "looks a bit david bowie wouldn't buy"

"I like the image of the artist but the font does not compliment it well" - from same person as above

However we concluded that the initial plain duplicated effect was enough and when speaking with member of our target audience (as opposed to peers) they confirmed this decision saying it was they preference.

Back

Continuing with our running theme of powder paint, we decided we wanted to have powder paint smudges with the track titles on top. After discussing with Chris (the technician) we decided instead of taking photos of powder paint we could download a "smudge" tool for Photoshop off the internet. These came in a variety of smudges that you could re size to get the shape you wanted. 

Inspired by the simplicity of Disclosure's album we decided to align out track titles in the center furthermore it corresponded nicely with the front cover which is also aligned through the middle.

aligned in the center

It is important that both the album cover and website used the same fonts to create a clear branding. These fonts we decided on were"Mad Zombies" for the artist name and "Arial" for the body text. I found these fonts complimented each other well with "Arial" being simpler and easy to read and "Mad Zombies" more exciting and interesting. 

example text from website- same fonts on album cover

Production company logo

It is conventional for the back of the album cover to feature production company logos. Our production company is called Technicity, a branch off Universal, that specialises in the dance music genre. When creating their logo I took this genre into consideration being the main inspiration behind decision of font and image.

Middle 

The CD will be covering the right side therefore we decided to place the boys here as they are positioned on opposite sides leaving space in the middle for the CD. This also continues to establish Georgie's role as singer and front woman, as she is placed separately on her own page.

The composition of the photographs, in particular Eugene and Gavin, continues to follow the theme of aligning in the middle as shown on the front and back cover. 

Editing- Narrative Change

Opening Sequence

When story boarding and making our animatic we planned for the opening scene to show Georgie (protagonist) walking through a field and finding a tunnel which she enters and leads her too the white room and the cupcake. On editing we soon realised there was not enough time for all of this to happen and since we were no longer shooting the powder paint fight in the forest with the tunnel we decided to axe this scene.

Neon scenes

We originally wanted some close up performance shots of Georgie in neon. We soon discovered the complications this brought about and we did not have enough black light equipment to do so. Therefore a good alternative was to invert the shot in editing to create a similar effect. We played around with this and the results were as follows...




Although it created a neon effect that with the right make up could look like glow in the dark paint, we decided not to put this in.

Revising the website

Evolution of the website:

First

Second

The main difference here being the new banner.

second

Third (and final)

We found that a significant improvement was made when chosing a clear theme and font that ran across all the pages.

This grey, block theme is continued across all pages, for example the tour...

Branding- Logo for Website Banner and Album Cover

Font

Originally when researching album covers I thought the font- helvetica neue bold, as used by majestic causual, a brand that specializes in the electronic music, deep house, experimental, hip-hop, indie, pop genres would be a good font to use for our brand as I think it could represents the genre of our artist- dance pop, well. 

However we found that this looked bland against our images of powder paint that we also wanted to use. Furthermore when conducting audience research between helvetica neue bold and "mad zombies" we found that "mad zombies" was more popular.

Colour

We created the logo by making patterns with the powder paint (the same as we used on our shoot), then taking photos and editing them. Our first banner was the original colour of the purple powder paint we used however we wanted to make it blue as this would give it an appeal to both male and female audiences. We did this by altering the Hue on Photoshop. 

First

hue

Second

When asking peers we received a better response with the blue from both boys and girls, showing that was the best decision in order to appeal to our prime and secondary audience.

25/11/15- Back Up Shoot

This studio session was for shots that we missed from previous shoots that after reviewing the footage in editing thought were necessary. We also took this as an opportunity to take out album cover and promotional shots.

CU balloon scenes with Kayvon, Josh and Matt

In order to have a wider variety of shots to make the video more interesting we thought we should get some close ups from the balloon scene as previously we only got long shots and shots with the dolly. 

Finishing shot

We also needed to shoot the final shot for the video- Georgie "waking up"/ returning to reality.

Album and promotional pictures

Album Cover

For the album cover we had an idea to have Georgie front on, facing the camera with Gavin and Eugene on either side looking the opposite way. For this we wanted them to be in white T-shirts so that when we overlayed them, it would not look strange.

90 degrees

45 degrees

front on

Promotional Pictures

Previously we had taken photos after various set ups from the music video, but it was important to get some promotional shots for the website. For this we styled the boys in shirts for a smart/casual look, which Georgie's styling also reciprocated, with a metalic crop top, leggings and heeled boots. We took a variety of shots, individual and together with both fun and serious poses. 

Performance Scene Rehearsal/ Screen Test

The purpose of this performance rehearsal was for us to see Georgie in front of camera in the role of the lead singer and to help her feel more confident with her performance and lip sync before the shoot.



After this we felt confident in our choice of Georgie as our lead performer and she felt more prepared for the filming of performance scenes.

Performance scenes

11/11/14 (DJ Shots)

Actors: DJs

This was our first shoot for the performance scene and featured just the DJs. As this was our first time setting up for this scene we soon discovered that it would take longer then anticipated. The main time consumer was the lighting, it took a lot of fiddling about with in order to achieve the look we wanted- for the DJs to be in blue and Georgie in pink, without the actors being too dark and fading into the background. Although we had done this previously with us standing in for the DJs we are different heights to them and when we brought their decks in the composition changed. We ended up using the back lights to light them. We also had to light the playing cards individually as they hung at different levels. 

us setting up the playing cards for the shoot

However once issues with the set were over the shoot flowed smoothly, we played music which our actors reacted well to with high energy and movement. We even got around to using the glide cam, to get movement shots that are typical of music videos. 

me using the glide cam

14/11/14 (DJ and Georgie shots)

periods 2&3- DJ's

periods 4&5- Georgie

For this shoot we came in early to set up as we did not want a repeat of last time and wanted to maximise the time we had with our actors for filming. First we shot the DJ's which I think was more successful then previously as we had a clearer idea of what we wanted and our actors were more comfortable with their roles.

After break we shot Georgie for the first time. Her make up took about 10 minutes to do but we suspected this. The first take was not her strongest performance but she soon got into role and responded well to the feedback we gave her e.g. to enunciate the lyrics more. For this shoot we were just filming "beauty shots"another typicality of music videos, and mid close as we did not have the DJ's in the background, therefore a strong lip sync is key. We were very happy with our footage. 

16/11/14 (All of the Group) 

7:30am- 12pm

This was our Saturday shoot with all artist members and their first time to perform as a group. It was good that they all had previous experience as I think practice made them more comfortable and confident with their roles which showed in this scene.

We finished shooting early and got time to get some promotional shots.  

us on set