Poster Development and Research

We wanted to research posters of similar bands, which are alternative, but still quite popular, still putting an emphasis in their album's promotion on talent and being together as a group. We looked at Nickelback'sposter of "Someday" and really liked the simplicity of it and the clear fonts, them just being together as a band. We also looked at a poster of the Verve and we chose to use the layout of teh poster indicating the name of the album, of the band and the website of the band. We decided to promote our single, "Not Like Everybody Else" by creating synergy in terms of mentioning that the soundtrack is from the film "The Agent" because in the Verve's poster of Urban Hymns they mention the most famous tracks, such  as "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and "The Drugs Don't Work", which makes it more likely for people to buy the CD if the recognise the titles of the songs included, exactly what we planned to do.

 

Underneath, there is a brief sketch of our planning of how to create the poster. We decided to include the website of Parlophone and the institution logo, and where the CD would be available for purchase in order to emphasize that it is easily accessible for purchase.

After Effects

After we finished the cut of the new narrative idea it was time to transfer the video from proxy files into HD in order to make it look more professional and have a clear and better quality picture. In order to  transfer the files one has to be very careful because every single file needs to be changed and there is a specific procedure to be followed, which takes a lot of precision.

Our next step was to edit the green screen into each performance shot. This also was quite time-consuming due to the amount of shots we had to individually work on, but very interesting as well. However, once we have edited most of the shots, it was easier because if the same type shot would come up then we could copy the changes we have made from the previous one, so this saved time. Nevertheless, there are quite a few steps one needs to follow in order to achieve a maximum believable effect of the green screen. I started with choosing a shot, then one clicks on effects and chooses "key lighting". Then on screen colour - black (it recognises the green screen colour). Then adjusting the levels to make sure that just where the green screen was, we are going to apply the shots suitable. Then we have to choose a background. Then we go to colour correction in order to adjust the contrast and the brightness. I also experimented with saturation levels in order to make the green screen fit with the lighting in the studio as much as possible. In addition, we also blurred the background a little. Not only did we change the saturation levels in the background, but also in the shot as a whole. The screen recording underneath demonstrates in practice how we edited the green screen into the shot.

In addition, we also used after effects where we chose from varieties of muzzle flashes and decided that the James Bond character should have a bigger flash than Matt in order to signify who is going to win at the end and who is the bad guy in the narrative sequence. We also put the so called "mask" so that all windows break at the same time and we chose extra footage of glass breaking - the effect was enhanced of the action scene. The bullet holes on the windows we also added additionally and timed them so that they appear at the same time with window breaking. These additional features add more precision and detail to the work.

 

Post-production 2 - Narrative

Our aim this week was to cut the performance and after we realized that need to stop concentrating on single shots and stop obssessing over if a shot is cut exactly on the beat or not , but actually getting the right shots on the time line in order to finish the rough cut, everything was much easier. We managed to finish the rough cut and we were ready for the narrative to be filled in. We had to log the narrative shots. We realized that we have over 100 takes that had to be marked and this took us some time to sort out the best takes. We had to be very careful with using the right shots in order to follow up the story. I changed the order a few times because the first time we started editing from the wrong point with the "Bond" character finding me too early and therefore we ended up with not enough shots. It was not a big problem because I just dragged the shots further away and put others of him approaching the bus where I was kidnapped in order to create tension. Putting in the narrative was more challenging then we thought and very time consuming. Nina and I spent a lot of time editing and learning from our mistakes and fixing, pollishing and even redoing a number of times what we spent hours on before, but this is the nature of editing you have to create in order to see if it has the effect that you want and then re-make again. I found on the internet some useful quotes of famous editors:


http://en.proverbia.net/citastema.asp?tematica=376

New take on the video:


You can see in the picture below a shot of one of the James Bond films when he is saving the girl, exactly what we wanted to portray:
We got some feedback from our editing experts and they suggested that the video would be better if we concentrate on the actual narrative more rather than the performance. This meant that we needed more shots to play with for example reaction shots of me to Merlin or struggling shots, more shots of him walking, creating tension towards the saving act. We wanted to portray him as the hero by using a revealing shot of him when coming on the bus. Nevertheless, we had to go back to our original footage and cut bits in order to have a more variety of additonal shots if needed. The way of creating a more film based video was to have sequences of narrative rather than just single shots followed by performance shots. We used the same skills when editing our thriller in AS as for the cutting of the narrative one uses a similar technique - thinking of continuity, builting up tension, portraying the characters in the right way (Merlin - hero, me - victim, then typical portrayal of the Bond girl) by using low angle shots, close-ups.  So, we had to go through the video again and think of possible sequences of shots that would fit together. Nina and I decided to cut the song down by 30 sec in order not to be too repetitive and long. Additionally, it would be easier for us to market the song if promoting the typical 60s and 70s James Bond wave being also very British and famous. Therefore it fits with the song well. We had a several sequences starting with him approaching the bus, you can see me struggling, next was him coming on the bus, releasing - short happy moment, then the tension increases because the bad guy comes and tries shooting us - we run, fourth final sequence is when the Bond character shoots him.

An example of a film soundtrack is Pearl Harbor - There You'll Be where you can see how the music video cuts from the narrative to performance shots, but still keeps sequences. You can also notice that the lyrics match the narrative sometimes as we tried to do in our video as well.