Digipack.

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The Band.

So, after the shoot at the studio on Monday night, I looked through the images and found one that stood out to me in particular.

I feel that this image is the perfect one of the band. I think that as well as the whole image compilating well together, the image also allows an audience to understand who is the lead singer of the band etc, without someone telling them.

I think that the shoot went extremely well overall, I think that both girls lace dresses are a great contrast to Rickie's leather styling.

When editing this image, I firstly adjusted the lighting curves and saturation before using the 'stamp' tool to airbrush each of the band members and make sure that their skin tones matched i.e. the foundation on the girls faces and their arms. I used the 'dodge' tool to add highlighted areas on the skin to make the image appear softer and well balanced in terms of lighting etc. I also used 'burn' in comparison to this, so that details could be highlighted, for example on the earrings, as well as darken the shine of Rickie's faux leather jacket to make it appear more like genuine leather which I feel adds to the proffessionalism of the image.

I used 'liquify' in order to heighten Catherine's beehive as it had lost volume in the car I believe. I also felt that by doing this, Catherine's hair would have a similar height as Sarah Jayne's hair on the left which was unedited.

I used the 'stamp' tool as well as 'liquift' and 'mask areas' to edit out festival wristbands that Catherine was wearing and could not remove for the shoot. This was a long and greuling task but I think that I achieved the illusion of them not being there in the end.

Although this image caused me a late night on Photoshop, I think that the image is successful and comes across as professional.

Filming Update.

Last night w\as hectic but well worth it. I had booked the studio in Oadby for half seven and when I got back at four, I had so much to do.
All day, I had been organising lifts for everyone and what times, confirming that we were coming and props etc. and as soon as I got in, I had to get the camera ready, style and dress both girls as well as Rickie who would be arriving abit closer to when we were leaving as he didnt finish college until five in Coventry.
The band instruments were all set as well as the clothes, other props, makeup, tripod etc. as well as some Dutch courage as we definetly needed some!
We got to the studio at about quater past, everything was going smoothly which was good. The studio was an outer building of the owners house as he was a photographer himself. It was perfect, really well lit, panoramic screen, huge macbook, we even got tea and coffee.
As we were all dressed and ready, we could start immediately and not waste any time.
I had decided that we should shoot the promotional and digipack shots before filming so that everybody's styling was fresh and so noone looked tired in any of the shots.
The lighting really helped, connected to my E-PL1 by a wire to its flash sync socket and set to manual, I could easily check the aparture and change it in order to make the white balance in the photos correct.
We had two hours to film and shoot everything, which proved to be the perfect amount of time. The owner was really nice and showed me around the studio which I really enjoyed. It was good to be in a professional environment as I feel it furthened my learning and I hope that the professionalism is translated into the music video.
All that I need to do now is film the final park location which I can do in the next two weeks before the deadline which is no problem. Tonight I will begin the editing for my final digipack draft which I am really excited to start doing.

Feedback from Peers and Analysis.

In today's lesson, we had to leave feedback on eachothers blogs and give some positive and constructive opinions. Here are some of my feedback comments akthough they were e-mailed to me instead of posted, due to a techinical default with my blog at the moment.

The first comment was left by Hannah about my Draft Digipack. 

'I really like this digipack- it looks really professional, mostly due to the really well tied together colour scheme. The only thing that may be a struggle is getting marks for the camera work as you haven't used any actual photos- though with the genre and the design of you digipack I'd say that really doesn't matter. Altogether it looks really professional and linked together.'

I am really happy with this comment overall. I am happy about the feedback on the colour scheme as I was unsure about the dark aesthetic, although I think it is rleveant to the warhol films and black and white photography. I still need to take my first-hand images of the band which I will do on Monday at the studio shoot.

The second comment was left by Molly about my video draft.

'I really love the way the characters are dressed! Can't see much of the guy, but Catherine looks really good! The focus shots where it comes in and out of focus looks really effective and fits the type of music. Is there a reason why there are blank spaces? I haven't read much on the other posts so I don't know, but regardless it looks really good! Pretty professional :)'

On the whole, this comment is also very positive which is good. The fact that certain band members aren't shown as much in the draft will be dealt with when more footage and different locations is edited into the final cut.

I am extremely happy with the response.

Digipack Draft Feedback.

After getting the feedback for my Digipack, I am pretty happy with the mark I got, considering that they were not my own images. The marks I got were 8/10 for my CD Digipack and 7/10 for my magazine advert which were both pretty much what I expected.
To improve my CD Digipack for the final draft, I will take my own images and edit them with a similar look to the images I found of Warhol and Bailey, except using Rickie, and I will also increase the number of panels of my digipack to six. I also had the idea to produce a in-sleeve booklet with lyrics and location shots etc which could be quite easy yet effective.
To improve my magazine advert, I will use my own images as well as increasing the band font size and making the date slightly smaller. My feedback is positive about the simplicity of the large date and minimal text on the page so I'm pleased about that.
I will also need to adapt and use a record company name and logo to use on both my CD Digipack and magazine advert. Apart from those few things, I think that the digipack could work out well and I can achieve the level grade that I want.