Dear Moderator

Dear moderator 

My name is Hannah Yates and my candidate number is 9349
In a group of three myself, Francesca and Isobel we made a music video and I have separately created a digipak and website, all of which is on this blog

Here are my group members blogs 
Francesca - http://francescawatkinsa2.blogspot.co.uk/
Isobel - http://a2mediaisobelmoss9112.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Thank you for your time

Final Video

Our Evaluation Of Our Video

We got a few comments a bit too late into the course of how we could improve our video, so we did a group discussion of the criticisms we received and how we may of addressed them if we had the time. 

Final Website

Natalie Imbruglia Official Website

Final Digipak (together)

Final Digipak (separate)

Front Cover:

Back Cover:

Inside Pages:

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 2

How effective is the combination of the main product and your ancillary tasks?



I decided to produce an advert of all three combined to show how well they go together.

Evaluation - Question 1

Final Digipak Edits

Sections to be improved:

Website Criticisms

Revamping my Digipak

After the criticisms I changed my digipak photos:

 I changed my front cover I cut myself out using the magnetic lasso tool and also random flowers on the bush behind me and made the rest of it black and white with added yellow to keep the colour scheme I had already started.

I made the umbrella more pink to make the colour match the front cover than the orange that it was before.  

 I had to decided between these photos for the section with the CD on, I liked this photo on the left with me in the black and white as it kept the continuity of the colour schemes, however with the CD over the top, the image was distortined. The picture on the right was perfect as after my editing the flowers were directly in the middle of the CD and so the picture did not lose its impact in anyway.  

My digipak changed from this:

To this:

Second Photoshoot

After showing my teacher my Digipak she didn't like all the pictures, they were not popy enough and should include some more make up and should have my hair down and make them very different to provide a contrast to the photos we had already taken, with this knowledge we did a second photoshoot.

Digipak so far

Putting the Digipak together

I had to add all the pictures I had created on Photoshop and add them onto the template:

I also had to create the spine on this page, I wanted the spine to continue from the picture of my back cover, therefore I cropped the picture to get the right size and the right section of the photo to fit the spine and continue from the back.: 

I then added this and the writing to put over the top onto the template with the rest of the pictures.

I chose Orange for my bold colour for my font because it matches the umbrella and because it stands out 

Front cover of Digipak

Back of Digipak

Although the copyright, is small and hard to read, I designed it like this because from my research is the same on all other digipaks I have looked at, but it says:

'The copyright in this sound recording is owned by BMG entertainment international UK and Ireland LTD > all trademarks and logos are protect >1997 BMG entertainment international UK and Ireland'

Inside of Digipak 2

Inside Digipak

However I decide not to use this as my front cover, because it wasn't engaging enough to draw an audience in, I decided I wanted a picture where the artist was looking at the camera, to draw in an audience, hence why this is my finished inside cover. 

Editing the website

I wanted my homepage to be quite simple and only include some photos, the video and the artists name, as from my research I could see that this was a popular style for successful pop artists.

This was my first attempt:

The gallery was under the main header, and I was going to put the video under the gallery, however I decided that the background looked very plain and so I edited the background and how the gallery was displayed:

I think this was more effective and also I was able to mirror the umbrella image so it looks towards the centre of the page and towards the artists video:

I made sure that the video in the centre of the page started as soon as someone enters the page, this means they are drawn to watch it straight away. I was able to this when I added the video by selecting Autoplay, and Loop, which also means it won't stop:

Also I added a social networking site bit at the bottom of the page, that says 'Follow Natalie on twitter or Facebook and keep up to date on latest releases and tour dates':

Research of websites

When looking at the website home pages of successful pop artists I realised that their home pages were quite limited. They included one main picture or a selection of pictures and then promoted either their new single, video, or album. I wanted to use a similar design as I think the mess included in the homepage the more attractive it looks and also it would make people look at the rest of the website.

Research of Digipaks

Wix Templates

The wix website lets you pick templates to make it easier for you to create your website, it even includes different categories:

It even has a music section which made it very easy to choose a template for my website. 

As you can see I selected the singer / songwriter section to see the templates and find a suitable one for my artist Natalie Imbruglia
















After looking through all of them I narrowed it down to these two because they both had very simple home pages with a big picture and limited writing, which from my research is what I was looking for:

This is the one I chose

Feedback of Video

In our class we each evaluated each others work using feedback sheets to try and give some advice on what really works about each others music videos and film trailers and what could be improved to make them stronger, this is the feedback we received:

The main points mentioned were

• Some of the shots are held for too long, for example the main singer there are some shots where she is not singing but just getting ready to sing
• We could maybe include some more filters
• Maybe the narrative could be a bit clearer

If we get time, we might try and amend these pointers

Wix website

I have decided to use wix website, to create my website for my singer this is for a few reasons: 

• Its free
• Very simple and easy to use 
• Has templates that match what I would look for in an artists website 

http://www.wix.com/

Template for digipak

I have chosen to use this template as my guide for creating my digipak as it is easy to read and follow, and will make sure I get the exact measurements that are required.

Photo Shoot

These are some of the photos we have taken and might use for our digipak and website:

What we have learnt about filming

From filming for both our practice task and our final task, we have learnt that it is not as easy as we first thought it was going to be. Its hard to keep the camera steady, to zoom in gradually and slowly, to get everyone in the shot and make sure the framing is correct. Something we found very hard was the framing especially when characters were moving we needed to get the camera in the right position to make sure we never chopped off anyones heads.
We also learnt that filming in public places doesn't always got to plan and things like other people, animals, and weather can effect your filming.

First Draft of Music Video

This is the first draft of our music video, however there are still a few edits we would like to make.

New Story line

Editing the video

We used iMovie to edit the filming we did, and to create the film, we worked together to edit the video and choose clips that would be suitable

This is us editing the video on the Mac

This is one of the shots on our computer 

Our video has changed a lot since the story boards we planned it on, for example, our teacher informed us that the narrative wasn't clear our main guy was with two girls and as we used past and present shots of Fran with him some of the shots she is happy and other shots they are arguing, and then the guy was seen with another girl. We tried to make the narrative clearer by taking out most of the shots with the other girl, or as we planned it the new girlfriend, and edited the past shots using effects that darken the light and make it look like a past event. We think the narrative is a lot clearer now.

Also our teacher pointed out that as it is a pop video, they normally have a lot of focus on the main singer, however in ours, she was firstly always seen in the same location and in the same clothing, therefore we put more attention on the main singer and this is why we had to do more days of filming, so we could add different locations, different clothing, and shots of the singer not always singing, just looking at the camera and drawing in an audience.

3rd Day Of Filming

We had about 30 seconds of our video left before we finished it. However again we didn't think we could finish it with the clips we had so we went filming for a third day. This was just at our local pond in Harlow.

Further Filming

We decided there was not enough film from our first day filming to complete our video and fill the time. Also that we wanted to add a different setting to the video, as all the filming we did in London, was on a sunny day, however as the song is quite sad and based on heartbreak we wanted to add darker clips. Therefore we did some filming in Harlow in evening time.

This is one of the settings from our second shoot

This is an under-path we used for shots on our second shoot 

Me filming

Fran filming