Production diary

Reflection:
The production diary was really helpful for us to remind us what work we have already completed and what we still need to do. It also shows our progress throughout media this year in our three media products; digipak, website and music video and many other pieces of work. 

Feedback from director Jake Wynne

Below is all of the feedback that we as a class received from major director Jake Wynne, he looked at all of our music videos and gave constructive feedback about we he thought of each one. This was a huge help to us because it allowed us to see what external viewers thought about our media and positive/negative points. Here is a link to Jake Wynne's film website, it shows what he has achieved and his experience: http://jakewynne.com/index.html

Our music video feedback:
Hypnotic Final Video – Really good use of varying visual dynamics through different parts of the song. The edit picked out the changes in the music very well and the lip-syncing was especially strong. Good use of locations to give variety.

After reading Jake's feedback on our music video we were really pleased about his comments of our music video, especially the comment of our editing matching the music well as we spent a lot of time working on the editing to create the correct atmosphere for our video. In all of our feedback, there is positivity when it comes to the performance side of the video, for example in the lip syncing. 
We were so happy to hear that all our hard work paid off.

Below is the feedback for all of the other music videos at Great Baddow High School:

St.Dizier- Bang Bang -  Nice framings, and interesting locations with a refreshingly different grade. However, the edit could have done with some more dynamics though to differentiate the build of the track.

Final Heidi   -   A good energy to the edit and a great use of the photographic technique which resolves nicely at the end of the video. Heidi’s performance was consistently strong and her lip-sync was also good.  It  would have been  nice to see a bit more of this lip-sync through the video.

Lovenowfinaldraft -  A great set up and concept with the first person perspective. Some really good locations with amazing colours and vistas. Some more dynamics from the editing would have helped to drive this video along and give a better build to the day ending. It would have been  nice to see a bit more of the lip-sync through the video.

Hypnotic Final Video – Really good use of varying visual dynamics through different parts of the song. The edit picked out the changes in the music very well and the lip-syncing was especially strong. Good use of locations to give variety.

Rolling with Elephants – Great lip-sync, really tight with the editing and I really enjoyed the painted on digital effects.  They worked especially well as outlines on the main performers.

"I Don't Mind"- Tori Lorente – A good filmic aesthetic to the video, with a nice use of colour. Some great framings and solid lip-sync throughout. A little more variety in the edit would have helped it build a bit more towards the end.

FINAL VIDEO - Megan Thomas – A strong narrative thread that was well performed and consistent. The Lip-syncing was very good and the emotion was conveyed very well. A good balance between the narrative and the lip-sync performance, with the cross cutting of both working well.

Ava Final Draft – Good use of varied locations and a strong narrative thread running through. Great lip-sync and a good balance between narrative and performance elements, resulting in a satisfying resolution.

iuris - Something More – Innovative use of grading, and clever transition technique between shots. Strong lip-sync and some really interesting framing on the performance moments.

Avenue - Monday Morning (Final) – A really clear beginning middle and end. A well thought out video with endearing performances from the band with great lip-sync and fun energy. The comedy was well balanced and the video continued to develop as new scenes played out, helping to drive the story through.

Stay Draft 2 – Once again, a lovely filmic aesthetic here, with very well composed shots pulling as much out of the environments as possible. The performances were well lip-synced, but at times I felt the emotions were not as clearly signposted. 

Final magazine front cover

This is our final magazine cover shown below:

HMV Signing

Below are images from the HMV signing which was Wednesday 11th January.

 

This was one of our events which we had on our tour poster and website. A HMV signing promotes our artist through the way her fans will upload pictures and share her image with other people. This will attract people who are walking past HMV as well, as people will wonder what is going on. This is also a good way for our artists fans to get to know her on a more personal level.

Magazine Front cover trials

First Draft

To create this magazine cover we used Photoshop to cut out the background of the image and the words 'billboard'. We decided to have our magazine cover as a plain background as after researching other magazines we found that having a block colour was a common theme.  We added a barcode and date as this was also a common 

Reflection:

After listening to feedback from our peers we have decided to improve our article. They said that our star looks squashed and is also looks like she is hovering so they suggested that we keep the original background. We did further research and decided that it would look better if our text was a more professional font. Also the Billboard title wasn't striking enough so we looked at the most popular billboard covers and they had coloured letter. 

Second Draft

To create this magazine article we followed several templates of past Billboard magazine articles. We used the background we already had but added different effects to it to make it more visually pleasing. We added the style of date that one of the magazines had as well as the bar code and the price. We cut around Stellato so that she was in front of the Billboard title as this was common in the magazines we looked at. We wanted to make our headlines catchy and humourous so came out with some puns. 

Reflection:

Our teacher gave us feedback on our magazine cover and suggested that we make all the text the same font as it looks more professional. She also didn't like that the writing was over the star as it takes away from her star presence. She also found it hard to read some of the writing as it blended in with the background. Finally, she thought that the stamp needed to be bigger and make more of an impact. 

Magazine Article

Below is our magazine article from Cosmopolitan magazine.

We took inspiration from a magazine article from Cosmopolitan about Miley Cyrus shown below:





Below we annotated the key features of the Cosmopolitan article that we wanted to feature in ours. By doing this it allowed us to make sure that we didn't miss out any key pieces of information and so that our article was as professional as possible. We used a different colour scheme to Miley's as we thought that the pink/purple theme was too girly for our artist therefore went with the striking red that is featured throughout our media products and also a blue that has a gradient.

Tour Poster

Below is Stellato Stars official tour poster for 2017:

From doing a tour poster, it means we are able to advertise the dates in which the artist will be performing and doing CD signings. This gives our audience more engagement with their favourite artist, and means that Stellato Star is making herself known in the ever-growing music industry.

To make our tour poster we have followed mostly G-Easy's tour poster (as shown below):

Billboard

 

Gif on our website

Below is the Gif that it currently on our website homepage. It includes a variety of pictures from different shoots at Ripley's and  at the fireworks. To improve this I think we need to add more photos from the mirror maze and bridge so that our music video is tied in with the gif. I also think we should make all the photos the same size as it looks unprofessional with the white edging on the website.

Merchandise

Above is our merchandise that is on our website. We decided to use the main album cover as a main part of the merchandise. This is because it promotes our artist's first single and the album as a whole. By researching other artist's merchandise it allowed us to choose the main items we wanted in our shop. We tried to create a range of merchandise so that it would allow Stellato's fans to have a wide range of variety. We also chose the most popular colours such as black, pink, red, blue, white. We aimed to create something for everyone so we added other items such as baseball caps and posters which are more subtle.

Poster:
The poster features a photo of Stellato in the black tunnel which was a main location for the filming of her first single 'Hypnotic'. The background has the effect of spinning lights which is main theme for the music video. We wanted to capture the music video in one photo and we really liked the effect this photo gave. We added the artist's name which is also the album title and a star as that it her brand logo. We priced the poster at £10 as other artists' posters ranged from £10 - £20 and due to us being a new artist we went for the lower end of the price bracket. In order to improve these merchandise we will add a product description which includes the size of the poster, which is usually A3 size.

T-Shirt:
The T-Shirt comes in red, white, black, pink and blue and sized XS, S, M, L and XL. The T-shirts are priced at £20 each as this was, again, the lower end of the price bracket for other artists merchandise. We used the main album cover from the digipak as our logo for this T-shirt as it is very relevant to Stellato's image. In order to improve the T-shirts we could add the T-shirt in blue and pink so that the audience can see what it'll look like in those colours as well. I also think we could add another style of T-shirt with perhaps the Stellato logo rather than the album colour so that it allows the audience to have more variety.

Sweatshirt and Bomber Jacket:
The sweatshirt and bomber jacket both come in red, white, black, pink and blue and are sized XS, S, M, L and XL. Both the items are very popular and on trend for our target audience which is 15-24 so it was important for us to include them. Both of the items have the Stellato Star album cover featured on them and on the back of the sweatshirt there is the tour dates which we have seen many artists feature (eg: Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeran). Since finishing our first draft of the merchandise we have changed the tour venues therefore this will need to be amended on the sweatshirt. When researching for sizes we used popular shops such as 'missguided' and 'asos' to know what sizes to use however after reflecting on the sizes they seem unrealistic and do not account for sizes over a UK 12 so we will need to amend this so that we can reach a wider audience.

Phone Cases:
There are two styles of phone case available for iPhone 5-7 (inc. plus). This is because the majority of younger people nowadays own an iPhone therefore we wanted to create a more subtle product for them. One phone case features the album cover and the other has 'Stellato Star' with the star logo. The second phone case comes in four different colours: black, white, pink and red. In order to improve this I think we could introduce new colours such as blue and purple and also make the first phone case available in these colours too. I also think we should broaden the phones the cases should fit as lots of people own android phones and we don't want to leave out a big part of our target audience.

Baseball Cap:
The baseball caps also features the album cover and comes in colours grey, black and white. Whilst researching other merchandise a lot of their caps were one size fits all so we decided that this would be appropriate for our audience too. Caps are very popular nowadays therefore we wanted to reach out to our audience and give them something they wanted. It is priced at £10 however we have put a sale price of £8. In order to improve this we could add another picture or maybe just have Stellato Star's logo or autograph to make it more unique. 

Feedback recieved for first draft of music video

Bad feedback:
Our peer and teacher feed back states the following; that some of the close ups are too close and the video is boring. There needs to be a dramatic cut for the ending and the editing is too fast at times, this is probably why others felt the video is over edited due to the pace. They also thought that our artist Stellato was featured in the video too much and we could do with less lip syncing. They pointed out that in one of the shots there are bags on the floor, this is due to it being used to fill in a gap. Some people felt that the wheel from Ripley's is on screen for too long and that the white wall shouldn't be included in the video, we had already planned to remove the white wall footage. There is also too much use of the ghosting effect and too many cuts. They thought that we should involve more lights in new different locations. Stellato's face popping up created confusion for our peers however this is us showing our artist is insane, instead our peers felt as though there should be dark images popping up. So we have removed the popping images and added some from darker images. Our peers thought we should edit to the thought beats of the song more so we have done this, they also said there are too many effects used at the start, so we have stripped down the editing at the beginning so the audience can see who our artist is before she goes insane. For this reason there are no effects on the bridge shot and we have replaced all of the white shots as no one seemed to like that. They thought that the car park footage wasn't needed so we have removed this footage and used drama studio footage instead.
Also they highlighted the point that we need to colour correct all the shots. Some people pointed out that they can see bags in one of the bridge shots, this is because we used this footage to fill in a gap that is not filled by something else.

We have rectified the comments above that we agreed with. Overall the feedback was helpful in improving our grade for the music video.

Good feedback:

Many people credited our lip syncing and in depth editing as it suited the genre of our song. They liked the spinning wheel, unique locations and the common theme of red light. A lot of people enjoyed the variety of shots which make the video interesting. They thought we used great costumes, had a good performance and wonderful transitions. Our teachers and peers loved the fast editing, different frame sizes and effects used. Because of the following things they thought our video looks professional. They loved the layers, fast sections, and thought beats.


Reflection- after reviewing our positive and negative feedback we made some adaptations to our music video and tried to add more of the elements that people have enjoyed from our video for example our effects (ghosting effect).

Feedback received for first draft of digipak

Below is the feedback from our peers:

The colours link to the artist well, to improve the font could have some effect on the back of it because it looks a bit basic in comparison to he images at the moment. The top left image could have some text on it to break it up a bit as well. Others said they couldn't read the writing, didn't like the font. However they liked the effects use on the bottom left image. Some people expressed the opinion that the digipak is crowded and that there is too much going on. It is difficult to see the song list because of the firework background. They thought the images were interesting and liked the front cover, but to improve it they suggested making the font bigger. Many people liked how vibrant the complete DigiPak is and believed it really shows the artist’s image well.  They liked the consistency we have maintained throughout with the font and thought the disc looks nice with the fireworks. However on the back cover there is no barcode and some of the writing is difficult to read in the colour the text is. Also the top right photo is a bit stretched and isn’t as clear and crisp as the other ones. They proposed for us to use another photo so they can see the text and so the images are as good as the other ones.  Some people mentioned that the digipak looks highly professional, the colour scheme and fonts fit well. It is well planned and well edited according to some of our peers. Some thought that the black and white picture is too similar to the front cover so maybe we should change that to a different picture or put some editing on it to make it different from the front cover. The digipak highlights the fun, party side to Stellato which is great to draw the audience in.
Overall they gave the digipak a level 3.

Magazine Article Research

Below is a slideshare which shows the research we did before we produced our magazine front cover and magazine article. From looking at preexisting magazine front covers and magazine articles, it means that we can see what is successful and what is unsuccessful.

Overall, from doing this piece of research we have learned what successful magazine front covers and magazine articles look like - meaning we now know what features to include in ours. It also means we got to review what we thought would work well for our artist image, and what colour scheme and mise en scene, etc we should use on our magazine front cover and magazine article.

Tour Poster Research

Below is a slideshare which shows the research we did before we produced our tour poster. From looking at preexisting tour posters, it means that we can see what is successful and what is unsuccessful.

Overall, from doing this piece of research we have learned what successful tour posters look like - meaning we now know what features to include on ours. It also means we got to review what we thought would work well for our artist image, and what colour scheme and mise en scene, etc we should use on our tour poster.

Fonts and Album cover first drafts/trials

In today's meeting we wanted to create a first draft album cover for Stellato so that we could begin to start on merchandise and the rest of the digipak. 

 

Font:

We used many different fonts which are shown below. We decided that we liked the top font the best (Alpaca Solidify) therefore used this to work upon to create an album cover that would stand out.

Fonts (in order):

Alpaca Solidify

Baron Neue

basic title font

Broken Glass

HACKED

Kozuka Mincho Pr6N H

Urban Jungle

 

 Album Cover: 

We created this album cover by editing the background image that we took in Ripley's Believe it or not museum on Photoshop so that the colours were more vibrant and the photo as a whole looked more textured. We wanted to layer the titles as we thought it gave a cooler vibe to the album and added stars as that it Stellato's logo. We layered the black, orange and white as these are the main colours that are shown in the background and wanted these to stand out. We used the font 'Alpaca Solidify' 


Reflection
By doing this it allowed us to create a brand image for ourselves and we realised very quickly that this album gave the effect of an urban or street vibe as opposed to our club/pop image that we aim to create. When we began editing our music video we all decided that our favourite shots were the Ripley's mirror maze ones and we wanted the theme of red to be continued throughout. If we were to continue along with the red theme in our music video and stayed with the original album colour we wouldn't create successful synergy with our media products. We decided instead that we would redo our album cover using a mirror maze image. We also thought that the font added to the urban style therefore we wanted a font that was more relaxed rather than graffiti style. Creating this album image was important for us as it made us realise our genre and style of music that we were creating and the brand image that we wanted to create.

Peer marking of digipaks

Mark scheme:
Consider the following when peer assessing digipaks. Levels and marks same as websites. - branding/synergy - images/photography - colour scheme/effects - themes - representations - typography - semiotics - band/artist image.

Level 1 0-3
Level 2 4-6
Level 3 7-8
Level 4 9-10


Annika- After looking at this digipak I noticed that you are missing 3 photos from your digipak, but the photos that are there are of good quality and represent your artist well. Id grade this 3/10 to improve include more images to your digipak of the same nature.

Ava (red)- This digipak is missing a photo and I think the photos that have been included don't match each other. For example the bottom middle photo is a calm, plain colour in comparison to the vibrant reds used in other photos. To improve you need to interlink the photos in some way. Id grade this 4/10.

Ava (yellow)- This digipak is missing images, but I prefer the colour scheme and think the bottom middle background image should be the same yellow that is used in the other photos. I really like the bottom right image of your artist's name in different font styles. Id grade this digipak 4/10 because of the missing images.

Avenue- This digipak is wonderful but I think the colour scheme that is on the bottom images should be interlinked with the other images. Id grade this digipak 7/10 because it has good quality and relevant images that match your website.

Iuris- I think your digipak really suits your artist and that your colour schemes are really good. But the top left image uses different colour schemes and should match the bottom middle and top right image. For that reason Id grade this digipak 7/10.

Ivory- I think grey is not the right colour for your artist as she is more edgy rather than plain. However, there is a running theme in all the images. For these reasons id grade this digipak 6/10.

Luella- I think the colour schemes work really well in your digipak, but I don't like the white backgrounds. I also think the images should be in a different order. For these reasons id grade this digipak 6/10.

Mya (1)- I really like black and white on the CD, and the black and white colour scheme. My only criticism would be that the bottom right image on the digipak is quite boring. For these reasons id grade this digipak 6/10.

Mya (2)- I prefer this digipak to the other one as I feel like the images match each other and match your artist. Id grade this digipak 8/10.

Tori (1)- I really like the colour scheme of your digipak and the images are of good quality but you are missing one image. Id grade this 6/10, to improve include an image to fill in the gap of the same black/white nature.

Tori (2)- I think this digipak is too dark for your artist, however I like the blue effect on the top left image. Id grade this 6/10.

Tori (3)- I think this is the best digipak our of the three due to the colours used and the images. Id grade this digipak 6/10 because your bottom middle image needs something else on it.

Sempa- I like all your photos separately but they don't really match each other. For example the bottom left photo is very photo shopped in comparison to the other photos. I also like the editing you have done to the top left and bottom middle photo. To improve I think you need to pick a colour to work with and incorporate it into every photo of your digipak. Id grade this digipak 5/10.

Heidi- All the photos in your digipak match each other and suit your artist. I really like the colour scheme of it. To improve you need to make sure all your photos are the same size. Id grade this digipak 8/10.

Album Title Research

When it came to naming our first album for Stellato we researched into other artists' album titles. We noticed that quite a lot of artists name their albums after a song from the track list or the albums are self-titled.




Track List Album Title:
 My Everything - Ariana Grande
Dangerous Woman - Ariana Grande
Teenage Dream - Katy Perry
Joanne - Lady Gaga
Salute - Little Mix
In The Lonely Hour - Sam Smith

 

Self-titled Album Title: 
Demi
1975
Beyonce
DNCE
Shakira
5 Seconds of Summer
Nick Jonas
Jason Derulo
Christina Aguilera
Rita Ora

First drafts

This is the first draft of our music video:





After viewing our music video and receiving constructive criticism to improve it further. We have filled in the gaps and solved some of the lip syncing issues, but we are awaiting further comments from our peers and will improve using this in the future.

This is the first draft of our Digipak:

From producing trials and drafts of our music video and digipak, it means we can keep receiving constructive criticism and strengths. Additionally, we can compare our drafts to our final music video - and see how far we have come. We can also see the process in which is took to create the music video and digipak.

Reflection of footage used so far- with subtitles

By analysing our music video frequently it means we can look at lip syncing, lighting problems and get an idea on how we have progressed. Prior to this, we still need to get footage in our drama studio with glow sticks and glow in the dark paint.

Prop Research

Our music video doesn't use that many props as the main focus is the artist herself. due to her being a new up-coming star we need to make sure the audience see her as the main part of the video.
However we have used glow in the dark paint when filming in the drama studio so we can use a dark background and show our artist in the light. We also used glow sticks to bring colour to the shot. As our video is trying to propose a colourful, insane and vulnerable presentation of our artist relating to young girls. The footage from Ripley's black hole shows the colourful side and the footage from the drama does the same. The town/subway footage shows the vulnerability of our artist.

Accessories:
We have used hair accessories and a variety of make up for various different shots to show the quirky side to our artist. So when we filmed at Hyde Park in London and in the Dance studio we used hair clips and fake butterflies to show the nature side to our artist.
When we filmed at Ripley's museum in London we used heavy dark make up on the eyes so they stood out. But when we filmed in town/under the subway we used lighter make up and little make up on eyes. The attention was focused on the red lipstick our artist was wearing - this made the lip syncing clear.