Selecting images is the toughest task to complete as being the photographer of self taken pictures, i seem to like whatever i capture, but for this task we had to choose a picture that would go best for our cover of the digi pak.
I did have good experience before in my magazine task, where i took amazing photographs, but this time due to corona lock down we couldn’t really have another shoot somewhere so we had to choose from the pictures that we luckily took the similar day on the shoot.
I think these pictures below were chosen by my group members including me. We had saved them in a specific folder.
The picture below was chosen by me because i liked the aesthetics of the picture, The light on his face gave a dramatic exposure compared to the dark background, i just didnt like the pipe beside the actors face, i thought i could photoshop it out later.
For the picture below i have the same remarks, it although gave an artistic singer imagery, i actually didnt prefer using this picture but maria insisted.
lastly this picture was also what i liked, i thought if i could edit it add filters this picture could really pop so i chose this one too
Rejected
These images were rejected because artists face seemed flat the background wasnt really symmetrical or aesthetic and also the pose felt a little bland.
The picture below had somewhat filler lights and all but we felt it looked awkward as his eyes felt weird.
Lastly this picture had a good side profile but still the lights and shadows on the face made the image look bad.
So i was given the task to create sketches for a mockup album cover, the way it would look from the front inlay and back.
We all agreed to have the artists face on it since it shows emotion which really compliments our theme of the title. Maria suggested we should add a frame on all sides which would attract the eye and lastly keep the colour palette subtle toned according to our genre.
So i created this sketch keeping all the pointers in mind, the back would have an image of the dias as its a
Finding Albums similar to our genre was tough as not many Leading Pakistani singers focus on Folk Pop. I used the Website Patari which is a Pakistani music streaming service and found various Album Covers. I noticed the different variety of colors, codes and conventions. A few which really inspired me had Modern Editing and attractive visual effects. I even Looked up for albums which had a bit of double exposure because i felt that it would compliment our theme. Here are the album art i came across:
The first DigiPak album I’m going to discuss is by Maroon 5 “Red Pill Blues”. The cover depicts all seven members of Maroon 5 pictured on polaroid photographs in different SnapChat camera filters as because these filters are really common these days used by anyone of any age. So basically this albums audience is everyone. On the top left we can see the Logo of the Band written in San Serif to keep it old school and In the Bottom Right we can see the Name of the Album “Red Pill Blues” wrote in the same colour as the albums name. The overview of the Album cover is pretty basic with a white background.
The Back Cover of the Album is plain too as only the tracklist has been written with their their theme colour “Red, White, Blue and Black:” and plain white background which is quite more unique and different as we see most of the music albums with artist close ups. and in the bottom right we see a barcode and on the left side we can see the credits of the album.
The CD is again following the black and white theme colour with a triangle in between and Bands name in the bottom.
Lastly I’ll be discussing The Chainsmokers ‘Sick Boy’ on the front cover we see a girl in standing in a full shot and there is red smoke coming out of her hands, the theme is black, red, white and maroon. We can see the album name in the top middle of the cover in between the smoke and under it we can see the Bands name the font is San Serif more of medieval .This album gives more of dark vibe because of the muted colours and the red smoke In the back cover we can see the main the tracklist in the same font as of album name and the same girl in full shot but a little more zoomed in. In this album the barcode is placed on top left with all the sponsor logos who collaborated next to it. The inlay CD is plain black with albums name below and Band’s name on top of it with the same font used in the front and back cover.
Halseys’s ‘Hopeless Fountain Kingdom’ this digipak cover has more of a scrapbook feel to it, with tape, cut-outs of checkered paper and palm trees, and scorch marks on it, to name but a few elements of the artwork. Halsey is stood in an almost full-length shot, in front of a man who she seems to be holding onto, although the nature of the cover makes this an uncertain judgement. The font here differs from the first digipak, The font used is more Gothic/medieval feel to it. The predominant theme behind this album itself (which is addressed in the first track on the album, “The Prologue”) is that of the famous Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, meaning that this font choice does make sense, along with the image of the two, as they appear to be from differing gangs looking at their clothes, but when mixed with the palm trees, there is also the influence of the Baz Lurhmann adaptation from 1996.
The theme colour of this album is bright mostly used reds, blues and yellows.The tracklist continues with this scrapbook-ish theme, featuring more of the checkered paper, along with a filtered-looking blue sky, suggesting again the retro link to the album and themes brought up in it.The font used on the tracklisting is the same as the artist font, but the title does make another appearance on this page, even though it is slightly obscured by the tracklisting.
Digipak is a style of packaging special editions of CD albums. These packaging are less resistant than jewel cases as they tend to break easily, so it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly. It is made out of heavy cardboard paper material and constitutes of visual graphics/elements related to the album and the artist as they engage with the audience.
Every digipak is uniquely constructed to that represents the band and the genre they are representing and while they may vary from each other visually, there are some codes and conventions most of them share that came to my notice:
Front Cover. This may includepicture of artist/band or any graphic element that are related to the concept of the album, the name of album, logo/name of Artist, details of any bonus material.
Back Cover: Usually contains the track listing, producer information, respective copyrights, Bar-code.
Inlay: may contain images of artist/band or a continuation of their concept, and additional text alongside the CD.
After Production comes post production, in which we assign jobs for editing the product we created. I am assigned to do the digipak where as leena will be working on the music video and maria on the website.
Right before our Editing class in which our sir showed us how to work with Premiere Pro, my team had to select final clips we had to use in the video. Me and Leena assembled all the Finalized clips in one folder during our class so that leena can easily pick videos to edit.
This is a video of my sir being recorded as he was teaching us how to work with premiere on one of the class members work as an example.
We decided to compile our narrative and performance according to the shot-list, creating a sequence. Adobe Premiere was new to Me and Maria and we were inexperienced but as Leena had took IT and had used these software in o levels before she knew much more than us, Although we used basic tools/features likeimportfeature (to bring the clips),selectiontool (to make basic selections and move them around the timeline) and the razor tool to cut and trim a few of our clips, Leena did add some of her own knowledge into practice and edited the video.
The starting was pretty smooth and according to our sir the frame was also quite impressive. However, there’s a jump cut present when she looks up at the sky. Jump cuts often feel jarring or feel like a mistake. Jump cuts are normally used to show an unsettling moment or unease for a character on screen. In this shot, we didn’t need this so we have decided to fix this. Moving on to the performance of the singer we decided to cut it short and merge other videos of the artist to make it look aesthetic and smooth.
Furthermore moving ahead to the actress there comes a part where she goes to pick the key has major abruptness and jerky movement so we decided to fix that as well. Somehow the Box shot came out to be better than expected, this was my favorite scene from our production as Match on action was perfectly done when she’s looking at the things placed inside the wooden box. Also, we decide to add a blackout shot when she closes the wooden box so it adds dramatic effect
Anyways after that we felt like the next few shots were a bit lengthy and were making the video boring. Also in particular we decided to remove a shot in which she’s trying on a pair of earrings as we already have another similar shot at the end of the music video so it would have felt similar erasing the perspective we were trying to ignite. We also decided to trim the shot where she’s walking toward the mazaar because it was too long.
Coming towards the end we had to fix the temperature of this outdoor shot. As it had to be darker outside for a sunset. Also we decided to add more performance to make it look as the performance and narrative is in sync.
Here is the Rough cut we produced. I feel it looks a bit messy but obviously with other further editing will make it more furbished. We are also going to be adding more artistic shots because it helps the viewers emotionally connect to the music video.
After finally being done with the tiresome 4 day shoot, we all rested and congratulated each other for the superb team work. After Each production day when we used to come back home and we watched the videos we made for flaws and to know if we needed to re shoot certain scenes again. Overall i feel as an amateur student working with filming Music Videos for the very first time, we did a great job. One of the drawbacks was not having enough equipment and helpers as it did affect the quality of work produced. The Clips we created wasn’t up-to my expectations. Some shots really made us work hard for it, From laying down on the floor for match on action to zooming in for extreme closeups we kept everything we learnt in class in mind during recording.
I uploaded some of the video clips on my YouTube, after me and leena selected and rejected clips that we wanted to add in the final music video so we could explain the process of why we selected and what we liked the most.
For this very first clip we selected, the actress isn’t looking directly in the camera and acts like shes veiling her head which was what we needed. In the end the camera did slightly jerk which will be eradicated in the editing process.
This second clip is focusing on the items placed in the box especially the necklace, i really loved how the camera was blur in the start where she picks up and then it slowly focused on the details of the necklace as she feels it.
This Third clip is a bit longer but we will just be using some of the seconds from it. This is where the artist is shown synchronizing with the song we wanted to add it in the video for the aesthetics and for scenes where song has instrumental tunes.
Clip 4, 5, and 12 were also important some were for the aesthetics some were based on the shot list, i didn’t post all the shots as it would have taken forever. This is an overall gist of the work we collected.
After 4 tiresome days of shooting and shouting we finally ended our process of producing the video. I honestly found team work tiring and troublesome as our perspectives didn’t quite line up together. We all wanted to have a bigger part in production and due to not having any experience in teamwork during video shooting we all had misunderstandings between us. On the other hand teaming up really paid off during collecting props and equipment, having ideas, presentation and work load being divided. After all we had a great time together and to show that Maria compiled a cute short little video of our BTS which im sharing below.
After finally shooting our actress, we wanted to give our Artist recordings another shot since last time we had major flaws as it was our first time recording. Anyhow as i mentioned earlier, I wasn’t available this weekend so Maria and leena picked up the artist and went straight to the location as they had planned and had straightened out what they were supposed to do this time and they had already gotten the permission letter signed beforehand so they dont get into another hassle.
Anyways moving on, the shots were recorded using the list and this time the artist actually tried his best to lip sync with the song which really helped. Maria Took my position and helped Leena with Art directions as well as being a director. On the other hand leena did a great job taking orders and giving the shot what maria wanted. I was glad i had a hardworking team who wanted to put in all their efforts for a great outcome that we wanted to produce.
I truly i felt that the last day of shooting wasn’t as hectic as the other days maybe because we had done this part before it was easier for my team to manage direct and produce clips that we needed. Overall as we used same equipment and shot list over and over again we had developed skills that we did utilize.
I will be attaching BTS and adding information taken from Maria’s and Leena’s perspectives as i wasn’t on the set.
× According to Maria and leena it was a beautiful day, I wasn’t available on this weekend as i had another Project to be a part of which was my friends Travel and tourism final on which she will be graded on. I had already told my team 2 weeks ago in the end of January but they didn’t cooperate and told me they were running out of time and couldn’t wait for two more days. They only needed my equipment anyways as leena as the videographer but after the incident with the lens on Production day 2 my dad didn’t allow me to give the camera nor the lens if im not going to be there, i was pretty sorry but i think its how anyone would do being in a situation like mine.
Anyhow i did deliver my gorilla pod along with the lens and reflector i had borrowed from school at 11pm at night. So Maria and leena called one of our mutual friends to borrow a camera Canon 70D. I also texted the sister of the one who gave her camera to give extra supplies like batteries and lens and also the actress of our shoot ( shes a friend of mine) to take extra equipment with her on the shoot. I wished her luck and texted Our media sir being sorry for the inconvenience caused by me.
× Hearing from my team, the shoot was great i was watching the stories and updates everyone was posting on the social media while i was on my way to another city. My team had utilized the location and had already set up the decor as was done before. They waited for our sir this time so he could give proper guidance on recording, handling the camera and how to cooperate with each other. I wished i could have been there so i would have learnt something new.
× With the help of our Sir they completed the scenes marvelously, i was super proud of the outcome. I love Maria’s sense of aesthetics as she captures appealing photographs with her phone she really does work her way best with iphone. Where as Leena is actually really careful about rules and angles she keeps perfection her first priority which i admire about her.
(the videos that i shared are from maria’s youtube)
× Moving on they didnt needed my art directions as last time they pretty much did everything on their own. This time finally everything was shot according to the shotlist and as per sir salmans instructions. Our actress did get lousy by the end of the shoot as she was extremely tired. They had a 30min break in which they ate food and rested.
× Coming to the end they did tweak a little with the shot list with a certain key scene where we had first thought to put a key under a book but sir and my team felt it would look better if it was hanging on the wall.
as i mentioned of maria’s amazing photography by phone here are a few pictures maria captured during the day.
Critique:
As i wasn’t really there i dont have first hand experience neither can i fully criticize. But hearing through my team, Its actually a blessing having given some guidance by someone who is a professional and has experience of working with beginners. Also that everyone on set should be coordinated and should communicate so they have a better understanding. Getting agitated and being bossy/ mean to fellow partners would only cause the whole team disturbance.
Fatima's A2 Media Blog 