Print Products Proposal

Mock-ups

Below are my mock-ups for my album cover and advert. I really like the idea of matching a font colour to the female protagonist's coloured hair, and will definitely be incorporating this on my actual album cover.

Case Studies - Advert

This advert has used black and white as its colour scheme to keep to the simplicity and elegance that comes with the jazz genre. The photograph of Bennett and Gaga takes up just over half of the poster, with all the writing in the bottom section. This means that the first thing that the audience digests is the photo of the artists, which would process in their mind quicker than reading all the text would. Medium close up framing has been used to allow the audience to clearly see the artists' faces, as well as still being able to see their pose. Their pose implies a close friendship, especially the holding of hands. This represents them as a friendly, warm pair which appeals to audiences. The lighting has quite a warm tone to it to make the consumer feel more connected to the artists.

This advert has placed a mid shot of Sinatra as the background, with all the text and a picture of the album cover on the foreground. Adding a picture of the album cover creates synergy between the two which is a good promotional method. In both photos of the artist, he is facing the same direction and wearing similar outfits - matching them up keeps the advert looking tidy and well pulled together. In both facial expressions he is looking into the distance, implying deep thought and humbleness. The background image of Sinatra has very low saturation, while the album image is very vibrant - this draws attention to the album cover as well as creating an artistic effect. The artist's name has also been coloured in yellow to match the album cover, again pulling the poster together.

Adding in Winehouse's list of Grammy awards was a great promotional method, as it adds high standards to the artist and makes the audience feel like they are paying for excellent quality music. The shot of her is quite out of focus, yet this only emphasises her eye contact with the camera, making her photo more striking. The image is a mid shot to fit the space on the poster the best, while keeping it close enough to allow the audience to still connect with the artist. The fonts are all in white, as this is probably the most easy to read colour against the dark background. Unlike the first two, the adjective 'extraordinary' has been placed just before the artist's name to give it more sparkle.

My Ideas

I like the synergy that placing a picture of the album on the advert creates, so I will most likely incorporate this into my own work. The framing shouldn't be further than a mid shot to allow the audience to connect with the artist.The artists' name should be the first piece of text that the audience reads. I also like the idea of including a quote as it adds authenticity and high expectations to the album.

Case Studies - Album

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga - Cheek to Cheek

This album cover uses a mid-shot, with the entire frame placed at a canted angle. This, along with the title placed above similar to a headline, is to amplify the effect of it looking like a newspapers story. Both Bennett and Gaga are represented to have a close friendship by holding quite an intimate pose and therefore reigning in realism and emotion as artists. They have both been styled quite retro, with Gaga's hair representing a time like the 80s. This is to relate to the retro aspect of the genre. Gaga looks like her skin has been airbrushed to show the contrast between her and Bennett's age - a duet between two artists with such a large age/time difference is unique to a point that it becomes a USP.





This album back also uses a mid-shot, this time without the canted angle. The shot of the two looks quite spontaneous, as if it was snapped while they were backstage just before/after a show. This is due to Bennett's facial expression frozen during movement - he isn't posing or looking at the camera. The in-action style shot also adds a sense of realism and immerses the audience into feeling like they are also backstage. The mise-en-scene of the shot shows some old-fashioned wallpaper and an old-fashioned exit sign, further adding to the vintage feel to match the vintage genre.

























This inside of this CD package included a letter of authenticity as a promotional method to allow a deeper connection between the consumer and the artists. It would make the consumer feel valued and like the artists made an effort, making the consumer's time and money worthwhile. The photos inside the CD were all signed too, further adding to this effect.

The insert of this CD package includes an action shot of Bennett and Gaga singing with big smiles on their face, exuding positivity and joy. If they can transfer these emotions to their consumer, the consumer's admiration for the artists and their work will only grow bigger. The actual CD was left blank to keep a level of sophistication and simplicity, juxtaposing with Gaga's unusual hairstyle and the action in the photo.

The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album

This album cover uses a medium long shot, capturing both artists and their piano. Evans is in the midst of writing some music, implying their musical knowledge and originality as artists. Both men have facial expressions of full concentration, representing their focus on their music. They are also both costumed in quite old-fashioned suits, adding to the vintage feel which comes with the genre.

This back contrasts with the front, as it is fairly bright. This makes it more eye-catching and makes it seem less dull. A simple colour scheme of red and white have been used on the design, as simplicity and elegance is an aspect of the jazz genre. A medium long shot of the two has been used - this allows enough space in the frame to show the piano and what's going on without deviating attention away from the two artists.

The Lady is a Tramp

The mise-en-scene is everything in this cover. The lace and intricacy of Gaga's costume represents elegance and wealth, adding a classy vibe to the shot. Yet her unique blue hair contrasts with the dress, giving it her own spin - originality and being yourself can be used as a promotional method to make artists more relatable to an audience. The artists' names have been written in large white font a bit below the centre of the image. This means it will be the first thing the consumer sees, so the white colouring is crucial to make it quick and easy to read. The title of the song has been placed just below the artists' names, this time in blue to match Gaga's hair. The matching of the colours ties together the picture so that it looks neat and aesthetic.

This cover uses a medium close up to allow the portrayal of the microphones while still allowing the audience to clearly see the two artists' faces. This is an action shot, where they are in the middle of singing. Gaga is looking down as if she is reading music while Bennett looks at her with admiration in his smile. This makes the shot appear that they both have quite a strong bond that contains a lot of respect for each other. This is important because if their fans see that the duo respect and admire each other, the fans will follow suit and feel more inclined to buy the album.

My ideas

From looking at these case studies, I now know that the conventional framing for album covers is between a close up and a mid shot, and tends to not be any further unless the artists are wearing extravagant costume that they want to show off. Eye contact with the camera isn't crucial, as the shot could be taken during a performance. The standard costume for a male in the jazz genre is just a suit, and for females it is a dress, however Gaga has added her own twist to this by having blue hair.

Final Music Video

Here is my final music video.

Music Video Rough Cut Feedback

Here is some feedback of the rough cut of my music video from Abel.

I learned that the way the audio has been cut in the intro sequence doesn't work too well. There was no way around this unless I cut out the intro altogether, which I didn't want to do. He discussed to keep the music flowing throughout instead of cutting to the frames in the dance studio at the beginning, however this would have greatly reduced the time I had to portray what is going on.

Additionally, Abel suggests to include an establishing shot of the theatre, which I would have done if I had more time.

Post-Production with Complete Footage

Once I had filmed the rest of my footage, I was able to lay down my entire sequence:

I encountered another major problem at this stage which I personally felt like it let down my entire music video. Initially, I assumed I'd be able to easily find some free sound isolation software online, where I could get the song and isolate the trumpet parts. My plan was to then place these trumpet parts as the audio for my busker, to make it look like he was busking parts of the song. After lots of searching and experimenting on the internet, my luck did not prevail and I was stuck with a busker with no clear sound - during filming, he was 'playing' along to the original song on my mobile phone.

To overcome this, I ended up taking a snippet of the audio out from the part where my actors are dancing on stage, as this was the most prolonged period of time where the music was playing but there were no vocals. I then slowed down the speed/duration to distort the sound and distract the audience from the fact that the trumpet wasn't the only instrument playing. I cut the audio sharply as the shots themselves cut, which in hindsight, looks unnatural.

Once I had placed this audio in to my intro, my music video was almost complete.

I found the RGB Curves tool really useful for balancing out tones during the shots where my actors are dancing on stage, as their skin got a bit red from dancing so much.

As I didn't know how to myself, I followed a tutorial on Youtube to create a split screen effect, as both my actors sang that line.

In the dance sequence when my lead female joins the lead male on stage, I struggled to cut the shots in time to the beat while having to constantly switch framing/angle to keep the energy up - every take I did, the actors had slightly different positions for each second, as it would have been impossible for them to stay exactly the same for each take. Due to this, I had to reverse some shots too to try and keep continuity in the dance. In order to keep the cutting rate in time with the beat of the song, I had to put one of my shots in slow motion, however this worked out well and looks intentional.

Reshoots

Sunday 6th November

The original print under the pencil is my first reshoot. The only complication was a lack of time - I only had a few hours between when my actress was available until when it got dark, and in this time I had to style her hair as well as organise the rest of the team. Due to this, we ended up scrapping the plans of filming the busking shots in South Bank, and decided to do them local instead. Similarly, Her Majesty's Theatre was switched to The Royal Theatre in Stratford. Despite swapping the Central locations to be more local, it was still difficult to stick to the time schedule and it was pitch black outside by the time we wrapped up. As both my actress and assistant director had to go straight to work, I had no choice but to borrow family members for the remaining shots, however this wasn't really an issue.

Tuesday 22nd November

Foolishly, I ended up not saving the data from the camera's SD card to the hard drive, and subsequently lost every single piece of footage that I had shot that day. This dampened my spirits to an all time low and left me feeling unmotivated and unwilling to finish the music video to a high standard. However, my team and teachers motivated me to do one final reshoot, which is everything written in pencil on the call sheet above.

I only had a few hours from when I finished college to when it got dark, and in this time I had to style my actress' hair as well as organise my cast. At the very beginning of my shoot I ran into complications whereby someone who had agreed to be my extra had completely forgotten, and had gone home. Luckily this particular shot where they were needed was going to be shot on the college field anyway, so it wasn't too difficult for me to find a replacement extra.

The quality of the shots were far better during the first reshoot, as by the second reshoot I had lost a lot of motivation to keep the standards high. However, someone watching my music video for the first time wouldn't be able to tell, so it was okay in the end.


From my reshoots, I learned to not let the stress get the best of me when experiencing emotional hardship. Additionally, having strong bonds and friendships with my team helped me to keep my calamity in many situations where I otherwise wouldn't have.

Post-Production with Partial Footage

My first step during post-production was importing all the videos that I took into Adobe Premiere Pro and renaming them according to what shot they were, for organisational purposes.

Following this, I downloaded The Lady is a Tramp to iTunes using an online Youtube to MP3 Converter. The song downloaded straight to iTunes where I could then drag it over to my project on Premiere Pro.

I began to lay down the footage that I had, so that my sequence was ready for the reshoot footage to be slotted in.

It was during this stage that I realised my mistake of the lighting on my actor during the theatre shoot. Some feedback from one of my teachers was to test out applying a black and white filter over my male's shots to disguise the shadow cast over his face, however I discovered that this didn't work. After lots of playing about with the shot, I found that the best thing that worked was a simple increase in brightness with some minor colour correction to balance out the colours. This worked to an extent - the extent being that the quality was compromised, and gained a grainy effect.




Despite the grainy effect, it was better than before:

Before


After



This is what my sequence looked like after I had layed down the first batch of footage I had:

Monday's Shoot (Central and West London)

Monday 17th October

Not long after the theatre shoot was the shoot for the narrative. The day began with a minor setback - a mix up in meeting points caused me to lose about 45 minutes, which would have been my hair and make-up time slot. As well as losing out on time which we already didn't have much of, it added on a lot of stress to me.

I had to style my actress' hair in a music practise room in the college, which opened the door to several disturbances, as it wasn't a private room. The fact that it wasn't the best environment to do vintage styling added in with how behind schedule we were made me quite nervous, especially as I wasn't meeting my assistant director until we got to Central London.

We used the college TV studio to hurriedly shoot the 'backstage' scenes, as the college theatre doesn't have an actual backstage. We then went to the tube station, however it began to rain very lightly as soon as we got there. Luckily, the rain stopped by the time we got to Portobello Road, where my assistant director was waiting for us. While we were on our way, as we were late, he managed to find the perfect record store for us to shoot outside for the vinyl shot, slightly catching us up to be back on schedule. 

We stuck rigidly to the order that I made (as seen in the 'Call Sheets' blog entry), commencing in Portobello Road, before getting the tube to Ed's Diner in Soho. Shooting in Portobello Road had quite a glamorous feel - it is quite a tourist hotspot, so people were watching and taking photos of us.

When we got to Ed's Diner, we encountered two major problems. The first one was that the restaurant manager told us that we could use the outside area, but we weren't allowed to film my actress walking out of the restaurant - we overcame this by using the take we took just before he told us that.

The second major problem was that it began to rain as we were finishing the shot. We decided to wait under some shelter for a short while to see if the rain would stop, yet it only got heavier, despite the dry weather forecast. I desperately needed the shots of my actress dancing to the busker with Big Ben striking 6pm in the background, but unfortunately, due to me, my actress and my assistant director all working at our jobs on different evenings that week, this particular day was my only chance to grab that shot. The miserable weather had a detrimental effect on our spirits as we had to trundle through torrential rain while preserving my actress' styling in order to grab this key shot. I had to compromise the busker being outside Big Ben, as there was no time or dry/light skies, and I decided that I would just have to edit the busker to make it look like he was outside Big Ben when in reality, he wasn't.

Sadly, when it started raining I had less than half the shots that I had planned to take that day, so I had no choice but to arrange a reshoot.

Saturday's Shoot (College Theatre)

Saturday 15th October 

Following the one hour choreography rehearsal was a one hour time slot for hair and make-up for my actresses - my actor didn't require any hair and make-up, as it wasn't convention for males to have styling in the 40s/50s.

I did both my actress' hair, as there was a very specific 1950s look I was going for.



I made sure to follow each exact step in this tutorial for continuity purposes for later shoots.

I used curling tongs to curl my actress' hair all over, and then used a lot of hairspray to keep the curls in place. The front curl was especially hard to do, and had to be physically held vertically while the hairspray dried to keep it in place. Despite the difficulties, I successfully managed to achieve the look I wanted:

My actresses did their own make-up, as this was easier for both me and them.

Once hair and make-up was done, we headed to the college. It was very difficult and stressful to stick to the time schedule, however I knew it was crucial in order to get all my shots done.

The first thing my assistant and I did was join the technician at the lights room to set up the lights. However, as it was my first time using a light board, I majorly underestimated how long setting up lighting takes and ended up losing track of time, cutting my shooting time very fine.

I knew I wanted a spotlight as I wanted to stay typical to the jazz genre. We tested out just one spotlight, however it was too bright and didn't look too good, as seen below.

Next, we tried dimming down the spotlight, however this was too dark on my actor's face, so we reached a compromise by adding a second smaller spotlight on his face.



I then saved this onto the lighting board, ready to use later. It was too late by the time I realised this was one of the biggest mistakes I had made on this project - the second spotlight was so small that every time my actor moved his head, his face would be cast in to shadow. I had organised his shots to be last on my call sheet, and by the time it was time to shoot these shots, I was very low on time and only had time for a few rushed takes.

Once my actor's lighting had been saved,  I experimented with how I wanted the lights to look once my actress joined him on stage. My assistant director helped me settle with a purple tint, as it gave a nice, warm, friendly atmosphere. It also contributed to the narrative, as the plan was for the lights to be just a plain black and white spotlight for the whole duration of the performance, and then the moment my actress joins my actor on stage, colour gets added in to the mix to represent her individuality.

Here is a clip of the sequence I used:

1) Lots of shadows as the song is about to start.

2) A second spotlight lights up my actor's face as he starts singing.

3) Purple tints for when my actress joins him on stage.

On the day, the technician gave me a walkie talkie so that I was able to easily communicate with him whenever I needed him. This proved very helpful as he was never very far away, but far enough where going to find him would have wasted a lot of time if I needed him.

Additionally, I wrote the whole song out into cue cards, just in case. Despite common opinion, they turned out to not be that useful as the song was quite fast paced, and it looked unnatural on camera for performers to be reading off of cue cards. As my shooting schedule had the whole song rearranged into chunks, my cast learnt the lyrics quickly and easily.

Once we had finished shooting in the theatre, there was one more scene to shoot - the taxi one. I was the taxi driver, and used an eyeliner pencil to accentuate my eyebrows and add facial hair. I also wore glasses, a hat and large coat to disguise my naturally feminine features.

For the shot where my actress is leaning out the window, my assistant director offered to be on camera while I drove the car. He leaned out the window of the passenger seat while my actress leaned out the window of the back seat, however speed bumps on the road meant we had to squeeze the line in in the intervals between speed bumps. This wasn't a major setback, yet it still did cause issues.

Overall, I learnt a lot from this shoot - my biggest lesson that I took away was that video shoots take a lot more time than you expect they would! The initial set up of the lights and set was what tripped me up the most.

Choreography Rehearsal

In order for my choreography to look the best it can be, an hour of practise was necessary before the shoot so that my actors had a clear idea of what they'd be doing when they were on set.

Here is a short clip of my duo getting to grips with the agreed routine:




Here is a short clip of the finalised dance routine:

Researching and Planning the Moving Image Work

Risk Assessments

Saturday:

Monday:

Team Update 2

After having cut down my team, it became a lot easier to manage everyone.

Copyright Permission Email

Below is a copy of the email I sent to Columbia Records asking for Copyright permission.

Call Sheets

Saturday

Here is my call sheet for my Saturday shoot, filmed in the college theatre.

Monday

Originally, I planned to shoot at Hampstead Heath Hill Garden and Pergola, however eventually I decided against it due to the £30 admin fee - there was no point paying so much when the shots could easily be taken elsewhere. Below is my original call sheet.

Here is my revised call sheet - I decided to shoot in Westminster, Portobello Road and various other spots around Central London.

Additionally, I created cue cards to speed things up on the day.

Talent Release Forms

Props

A visit to the college's prop cupboard was essential for my shoot. Items I took:
- New York Yankees cap
- Fedora
- Flower
- Trumpet
- Dress
- Handkerchief