Pre Production

We started by recording the track we needed to make our music video. We used Ben's music studio at his house, using his Korg synth and his MacBook and the Music editing software. Once the recording was all done we started to look at other pop promos so we could get inspiration for our own. Using things like Youtube and MTV. To find things that were really popular we could see what people were talking about at that current time. This also helped by the questionnaire we gave out at college. Asking people around our college was great because the age group is vast from 16-25. From all the collected information we finally starting writing down all our ideas,planning out filming times, costume and props and locations.

We checked out our locations and tested out some shots that we wanted to use, including green screen. We made collages of our outfits so we could get a theme we needed pinned down. we bought all the props we needed and after that we were ready to film.

Filming

We had Set days for planning. Different days and different locations. All in all it took about four days worth of filming to get all of our footage. We had to make sure we kept continuity on makeup and hair (unless they were meant to be different) In our first shoot it took us about an hour to set up our studio shoot. We had to connect up all our fairy lights and tie them together on a big frame. Then we had to make sure the lighting was perfect creating an golden, warm glow. We took about twenty minutes doing hair and make up and making sure our costume was perfect. On our outside shoots, we had a harder task, lighting wasn't something we could change, so we had to wait until certain times of the day to make sure we had the perfect lighting. We used our props of the antique camera and box.

Post Production

After we had all of our footage, it was now time for the editing. We fed our video through firewire to finally get it all edited on the Mac, using final cut pro we cut up all the video we had filmed, synced up the backing song to our lips. After all was in place, we got rid of all the shots we didn't like, keeping the ones we did, giving our video a good structure. We then edited the colours added in fade ins, dissolves and cross fades and other transitions where needed.

After that we added in our final pick up shots to make the video interesting, adding in narrative and other pretty shots we had. We also had to start thinking about our CD cover and advertisement,( though that was also in our minds at the time of pre - production, but now we could finally focus on it fully) Looking at other pop promotion packages to get ideas of what things they have to include and how they attract audiences.

Group work written by Kira Knight

Update on Post Production

Now that we have everything shot, I thought a quick update was in order to let you know about how the post-production process is going for Kira and I. We're at the stage now where we can confidently say that the music video is near finished and the promotional material is taking shape nicely and shouldn't require too much work to get it looking great! We've been using Final Cut Pro on the Mac Pros in the editing suite at college to put together our music video. The software, once you know your way around it, is really easy to use but effective too. I've really enjoyed taking on the role of editor and have learnt so much about the software, editing techniques and effects.

This year, I think the post-production on our work has gone a lot smoother and the quality just isn't comparable to my AS year; we've come leaps and bounds. Though the edit for our 'Lights' music video is one of the biggest edits I've done, I feel like I've learned the most from it.

We've achieved everything we set out to do regarding the edit; all techniques, effects etc. but having really good footage from the shoots to work with makes my role a lot easier. This year, every single shot is colour corrected which makes a huge impact on the quality of the piece as a whole and polishes it well.

Techniques such as syncing diegetic sound with non-diegetic sound of about 8 different shots and lining them all up in the timeline was one of the hardest things about the pre-production and took quite a lengthy amount of time but I feel that without taking the time out to do that, the whole process is made significantly harder.

Overall, our edit has come a long way from a bundle of footage in the 'bin'. Kira and I are really proud of it and it only needs a few tweaks before it's debut on the blog! We showcased the video to an audience last week and the feedback from them, though mostly positive, was really helpful and constructive - it definitely told us what needs to be changed in order to make it appeal to an audience and idealistically (in the real world), the consumer.

As far as the album cover and magazine advertisement go, I'm really proud of these too. They really represent GLITTERKNIGHT well and build up a star image nicely. Previously studying graphic design, I'm quite experienced in photoshop and know my way around the program well which helped us a lot with being able expressing our ideas accurately and Kira's learning really quickly; the graphics she produces for her media blog and general technique are getting really strong.

You can see from previous images and ideas on my blog that we've utilised Photoshop CS3 to keep the look and feel that was created with our music video regarding the band. We've shot the photographs using a digital stills camera and they're looking lovely. We've cut around ourselves using the 'lasso' tool, feathered it by a few pixels and layered it onto the bokeh styled lights featured in our pop promotion. The typography, with the glows look really effective too.

We've had a few bumps in the road in our post-production, such as Kira's inexperience with Photoshop and my reluctancy to sync all takes up at once in the timeline in Final Cut but we've moved past these, made decisions as a group and either found alternatives or worked through the problems until a solution was clear. I think Kira and I work really well and the post-production of our task proves this really well.

Album Artwork Idea

This mock-up artwork for our CD Digipack displays the basic framework for what we are trying to achieve. Concordant with our ideas for the pop promo, the colours, styling and images reflect a clear and easily distinguishable image for our band.

We have furthered the theme of bokeh lights that we're using in the pop promotion as well as the glow around the subjects (Kira and I). The typeface is easily readable and the size makes the text pop- particularly in the logo of the band name; GLITTERKNIGHT as I have applied a subtle golden glow around it.

Obviously, as this is just the bare bones of what we're trying to achieve with the artwork, there are many factors that need to be modified in order to create a (much) more professional looking graphic. Most importantly, the silhouetted figures are to be replaced with photographs of the band members so the consumer will easily recognise the band, promoting an easily identifiable star image and the artwork as a whole will be sharper. The typeface, though nice, does look like a student creation so we're looking into better typefaces that look more professional and easier on the eye, maybe making more use of the glow featured on the band logo (above).

This artwork was created in Photoshop using images from Flickr as a rough demonstration. In our final graphic, not only will we use our own images (for copyright reasons) but also, a full digi-pack design will be made including inside the Digipack and a design for the spine of the pack.

Overall though, I'm really happy with the direction we're taking the promotional material and with amendments, has a good amount of potential.

Artwork credit: Ben Halliday (Myself)

Promotional Package Analysis: Britney Spears, 'Femme Fatale'

Following my post about the promotional materials used for Britney Spears's Circus album, this is an update of sorts. Her new album Femme Fatale, out later this month (March 25th) features a much more cohesive, thought out theme and promotional package. The methods of this promotion are also much wider. New media such as social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud) have been ultilised, 'inviting' Facebook 'friends' to online music video premiers, posting snippets of new songs on SoundCloud, and advertising everything from this to premium editions of the album on Twitter as well as frequent updates from Britney herself and her manager.

Britney Spears currently has close to 7.5million followers - That's 7.5million people receiving promotional information about the new album. In this age of social networking and, it's only natural that promotion for album releases will utilise this new media cleverly.

Above, I have posted the promotional image for Femme Fatale. The poster features Britney herself, placed prominently in the centre of the image, looking directly into the camera provocatively positioned. Also featured are the fonts of both her album title and first single, her name/logo, and, much larger than everything else, the album title. The text and typefaces used over all promotional material give a strong sense of branding and build Britney's star image for 'Femme Fatale' - particularly as the styling of the typefaces reflect the qualities of a 'femme fatale' - very smokey, mysterious, monochrome colours and very in-your-face.

Promotional images, marketing for Britney Spears's 'Femme Fatale' and first single from the album entitled 'Hold it Against Me' directly refer to eachother by the similarity of the photographs used for the covers. The colours on both covers are virtually identical and feature the artist's face in roughly the same position making it easy for the audience/consumer to link the two together as part of a package or brand ('Femme Fatale').

List of Technologies used during pop promotion

Hardware:

• Sony Z1 HD Camera & Mini DVs
• Mac Pro with Apple Cinema Display
• iPad with portable speakers
• iPhone
• Artificial Lighting
• Digital Stills Camera

Software & Web:

• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop CS3
• Logic Pro 8
• 'Flashlight for iPhone 4' App
• Soundcloud for musichosting
• Flickr for image hosting
• Storyboarding Software for Mac
• Prezi for presenting ideas
• Polyvore for visualising costumes
• Facebook, AIM, Text, e-mail and Google Docs for communication and file transfers.

Shooting the Pop Promo: Exterior Shots

Above are some photographs I took during the exterior shoot for our pop promo.
Day 1:Setting out to Christchurch Park with all our things, we were more than ready to film the narrative. Straight from college, we got changed made our way to the location. First, we were taken aback in quite a bad way; the park had changed significantly since we'd last visited about 8 months ago. Large areas of the forested area had been cut back and the park had been modernised - this only affected one location of our shoot but we panicked slightly and wondered if the other areas we were hoping to shoot in had changed much.
Luckily, everything else was how we remembered so we got back on task and worked out a way to make the first location look (on camera) how it used to be and I think it worked extremely well given the circumstances. The forested pathway was (largely) still existent and it did look a lot fuller on camera than in person with some strategic framing.
With only two of us, the exterior shots were a bit tricky to film and we actually ended up framing ourselves and I'd shoot myself while Kira was in another area doing the same (we were thankful that the monitors on the DV cameras swiveled to face us!).
The shots we got in the park looked really beautiful and the framing and cinematography, for me, really surprised me - I've really improved since the start of this media course and my cinematography has come leaps and bounds since even my last piece of coursework. I think I know how to capture my ideas on film now which I was slightly shaky on last year. The fact that continuity was on our minds the whole time as well was another big indicator as to how far we've come; I think this shoot really made this clear which of course spurred us on!
We started to lose daylight on our first day of shooting (it was quite overcast anyway so we were shooting strategically when the sun reared). We decided we'd already shot a bulk of our footage and we were really working our way down the shot list so we agreed to come back in a week and film pick up shots.
Day 2:Coming back to the park, we were excited to have all of our footage captured and ready to edit so we wasted no time making our way to the final location; the dark tunnel on the other side of the park. We set up our cameras, framing the shot from some really obscure angles including an intensely-high-angled-shot. We then waited for about 20 minutes for the light to get to the level is was on the previous shooting day and commenced.
For some reason, continuity didn't seen to be working so we had to shoot the same thing about 3-4 times before we were happy (which I'm glad about as now we're in the editing process it glides together seamlessly).
Overall, even with the problems we faced on both days of shooting, I'm ecstatic with the results and think we did a really good job. On the whole, the weather was on outside throughout our time shooting and having a knowledge of exactly what we needed to shoot helped us out drastically. If anything, we shot too much (if you can ever shoot too much) so we had a lot to work with come editing time.

Crew Roles for Pop Promo

Given the size of our group, both Kira and myself have taken much more of a hands on approach regarding the various tasks needed to complete the Pop Promo for Lights. We are the cast, the crew and the band in our project and have shared the roles out equally.

Ben Halliday:

• Director
• Producer
• Cinematographer
• Art Director
• Editor
• Set Designer
• Vocal Producer
• Singer
• Stylist

Kira Knight:

• Director
• Producer
• Cinematographer
• Art Director
• Assistant Editor
• Set Designer
• Singer
• Stylist

Post by myself, Ben Halliday.