Friday 10 February 2012

Directors Commentary - Task 4

Evaluation Comments for Director’s Commentary Evaluation Task 4

My Medicine – Natalya and Laura

Excellent and considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video. There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras (e.g focus pulls) and in the post production editing process – in discussion of continuity. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the propaganda themes of the MV. The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well. Excellent command of terminology and well presented.

Covers sound and technology. Exemplifies Photoshop well and the use of projection equipment and stop motion as an effect. Excellent commentary, well done.

Thursday 9 February 2012

Completed Digi Pak Design

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research of your digipak and poster?

Digi-pak

The construction of our digi-pak began after we had established as a group what song we were going to produce a music video on and the genre/style of the band. Theoretically the design decisions were all based on the genre of the band seeing as different codes and conventions are used for different genres of music.
Firstly, we decided to title our album ‘Burn Out’ which would feature the song ‘My Medicine’ on it. This is when new media technologies came into use during the construction and research stages of our digi-pak.
By using online fan based sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter I was able to compile different design elements that I would be able to incorporate in our own designs. Initially I had designed a simple logo using the band’s initials DR (Damned Reputation) and placed them in a red circle to represent a flashing red record button to link into our concept of the band filming themselves in the music video.
However, I then decided that I wanted to make the artwork more extravagant. My idea was to place rope in the shape of my initial design and set it on fire whilst photographing the stages of the rope slowly burning out (a basic representation of the album title). I uploaded my images onto the program Adobe Bridge in order to view my images in the same file and decide which were best to edit.

I then opened up Adobe Photoshop CS4, which is image manipulation software, to begin editing my images. I decided to choose an image of the rope burning strongly, and then also an image of the rope nearly burnt out (intending to use the brightly burning image for the front cover. Seeing as I shot my images in RAW it meant that more detail and colour was preserved in the image, resulting in me being able to manipulate the colour to a higher standard.
For my front cover I was not satisfied with how the rope did not make a perfect circle and the ‘DR’ was not very clear. In order to fix this I used the liquefy tool on Photoshop which allows you to distort your image by moving it around to however you please. This was a slightly long process because it involved a lot of tweaking and making sure the circle and lettering was as good as it could be, however I felt that it was important.
Before:

Having edited the shape of the logo and manipulated the colour I wanted to add another component. I decided, again by using the liquefy tool, that I would merge the flames of the image in the center of the logo to create the words ‘Burn Out’. I thought that this might have not turned out as well as it did but I am pleased with the outcome.
After:

Another technique I used on Photoshop was used on the back cover. I decided I wanted the floor I photographed on to cover the entire image, for continuity purposes relating to colour, on the album. So I used the clone tool on Photoshop, which allows you to focus on a single part of the image, clone it, and paste it to another part of the image.
Finally for the back cover text I used the magnetic lasso tool to break up parts of the text and move it around to create a ‘shattered’ effect that I thought would fit in with the genre of the band.

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Poster

Seeing as I designed the Digi-pak first it was easier to design the poster because, in terms of continuity, I wanted the design features to remain similar. However, the design of a poster is different to that of a CD cover so I decided to go online in order to research similar band’s music posters. Again, websites such as MySpace which bands have designed around their own image offered a lot of design ideas that were helpful in this process.
A lot of the posters I looked at were of the ‘rock’ genre and were mainly designed for promoting their tours. I decided that I would design the poster for the Damned Reputation’s up and coming tour to promote their new album ‘Burn Out’.
Again, using Photoshop I set up the image size to be A3 to achieve similar proportions to official music posters. I then began with the design of the artwork, using similar conventions to my Digi-pak design such as the shattered text and DR logo. I also incorporated an image of the band performing during the music video in order to establish the band’s ‘star image’ to fans.