Final Magazine Advert and Feedback

Final Magazine Advert

Creative Process

Edit 1

I had to do a lot of editing to create this. The longest time taken on this was creating the assets of our own creation for the picture, such as the movie credit text which Bastille always adds to the bottom, creating an artificial looking land and fire to make sure i'm able to add fire to the scene. In terms of the picture, the way i took it made sure it was compositionally sound to the size of an A4 piece of paper, pointing this out, i made sure Kierann was in the centre of the frame, and then a leg of the bridge went through the middle of his head, and then the bridge stretched across the whole of the image. As well as this, i made sure the bushes at the side stretched over the same length in the shot, so it all looks aesthetically pleasing. My original idea of putting fire was to blacken the water to make it look like oil, and then placing a fire on it to contrast the elements of fire and water, which was the reason we chose the shot in the first place.

We then had to make it look realistic by adding Virgin records logo, the original record label for Bastille, then we added the Spotify, iTunes, and Google play icons at the bottom to promote ways to listen to the song remotely. I then added the amazon.com symbol to advertise where to by the physical copy (The digipak)

Edit 2

I changed the triangle for the circle as it has been said that we have to create our own symbol to represent Bastille, though i do think this doesnt look as compositionally sound as with a triangle.

Edit 3

Here i rubbed out the triangle just because i forgot to do that in the first edit, and added the Taurus records logo to represent our record label.

Questionnaire - Moving forward

I asked 13 members of our target audience demographic to give their opinions on our product (Magazine advert)

"What can be improved - Notes"

DO YOU LIKE THE DESIGN OF OUR MAGAZINE ADVERT?

Yes - 7 people

Good, but needs improvement - 4 people

No - 2 people

What can be improved?

- (Kierann) needs to be looking in to the fire

-Star reviews would look nice, need to be added

Edit 4

I chose an entirely different image for the magazine advert, mainly as i felt the original image that i was using editing tools to create just didn't feel correct, also the main star image was not looking at the fire. In this case, i got an image from when we were filming of Kierann walking by the fire. It was in an unusual resolution in comparison to the scale of an A4 page, so i had to crop the image to make sure the star and the fire were both center-frame. The unusual resolution of the image made me create a border round the top edges, so that the image perfectly fit within the frame. It also made it easier to see the white text at the top and the bottom. However, i also realised that the name of the song "Things we lost in the fire" was hard to see against the sky light that was shining through the trees.

Edit 5

Responding to further feedback, i was told that the magazine advert would look even better if we had an image of Kierann sitting on the bench, so i replaced the image yet again. It wasn't hard this time as i'd already done it multiple times before. However, i did decide to extend the top border downwards so that the text below Bastille was easily visible. I did also remove the overlay rectangles that were placed either side of the artists name.

Edit 6

This edit i added Star Reviews, Release date, and added back the rectangles. The November 7th release date is actually at that date for a reason. We wanted to relate our music title back to a specific date. We thought of Guy Fawkes night on the 5th of November because it relates back to the fire, or the day of the Great fire of London, but i feel as if that wouldn't be right just because it has two dates -  a beginning and end . The star reviews replace the movie credits text as a response to feedback because i was told it looks more like a movie poster. I chose mainly British publishers as it fits with the artist's origin country. The magazines here are all fairly reputable as well, but usually post about a more niche side to the music industry, hence why i chose them because they'd be likely to post about an Indie artist such as Bastille. I added the rectangles back in to the magazine advert as I felt as if there was something missing within the top banner, like there was too much writing, but barren visuals.

Final Prop Information for all 3 products (Chris)

When it comes to props we needed to make sure that they all have similar props in each to make them all link. When it comes to successful marketing we knew that making sure our products look similar. This would mean that our audience would be able to spot the products wherever they are and it creates a sort of brand image. If we had different looking products it would mean that customers and our target audience wouldn't be able to tell that it is our products which would mean its less recognisable.

Firstly one of the props we have used for all 3 products is fire. The main song in the album is 'Things we lost in the fire' so making sure that the main prop on the products is fire is essential to the recognition. We have this displayed on all three products of ours. To create the fire it took us around half an hour which included building and getting some fuel to set off the fire. Luckily we had a friend who had a lot of spare material which we was allowed to take to burn. This mixed with a bit of dead foliage meant that we could build up a nice large fire in which we thought would make the music video look a lot more professional. We were also very lucky to get the location that we had. We had a small section of concrete at the end of a large field which meant that we could light the fire safely. overall I think that having the location and the material it meant that we could create the best fire to make our video look professional.

The second prop that we had in our video was a bench. We wanted it to look like the artist was alone to emphasise that he is alone. The best way we thought we could do this was of him sitting on a bench. We were lucky as there was a bench in the field we were filming in which meant that all we had to do was to carry it to the correct position and to make sure that it was in the frame which had to include the fire. Luckily we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do as we had a good shot list and storyboard.

The third prop that we wanted to use was a notebook. We wanted to show the love that the actor and her once had and the best way we thought that we could achieve this is through the use of a notebook. We also wanted to do this because we wanted to see the actor throwing things in the fire to represent his loss and the burning of their old relationship. This is why it was essential to firstly show the notebook first as it would not have made much sense otherwise. 

We thought that the female and the new male should be holding something to show that they are on some kind of date and that they are together. The best way we thought we could do this is through the use of them two holding the same cup. We thought that this would be good to show that they are together and to help make it clearer for the audience. We also thought it would look a lot more professional rather than them not holding anything. 

 Finally, the last prop that we wanted to make sure that we had a shot of was the mobile phone. The mobile phone was used to show that he still had emotions for her however he started to lose them once he was on it. The way that we was able to show this is through the use of footage showing him deleting old photo's of them. We wanted to show that whenever the males were on the phone it showed that they were losing their passion and love for the female actor. This is clear from the shot of the new male pushing the female character away. We thought that having one object to display the loss of love would be the phone as it would look the best and be the easiest to shoot with. 

Final Digipak and Feedback

Digipak

 Edit 1

The final digipak a task, but we ended up needing a lot more resources that we already used in the past by our own creation, this would be, for example the movie credits writing that we created using illustrator for the magazine advert, the Taurus records logo, the image used in the first panel. We tried to make this as realistic as possible, compositionally and detail wise. For this reason, we added Virgin records to the front and back of the digipak. We also added both the virgin records website URL, created a fake Taurus records URL, and added the Bastille website URL as well. On top of this, we added a barcode specific to digipak. We were originally going to do a 4 panel digipak, but we then made it a six panel digipak because it would get us more marks. this lead us to create some design decisions that we havent thought of previously, such as the two panels to the left. I wanted to keep the panel on the left simplistic, as it is what the customer would see when they first unfold it, plus i think it looks aesthetically pleasing with the faint smoke in the background, makes it look like the fire is still burning but it is not visible in this shot. For the main image, the front image, i had to create, using photoshop, and island, as well as crop fire out from one of our fire shots, to add fire to the island. I like how this turned out when looking at it from far away, however, if it were to be analysed closely there would be a lot of flaws within the image editing, such as stretched textures and poor lighting effects. I put the Bastille text in the middle to cover these flaws and draw the eye to Kierann rather than the background. We were also meant to create a new shape to represent Bastille, so i chose a circle. This is good as it opened up a lot of new ideas for composition ideas. I added circles in photoshop and then gave it the stroke effect, changed the layer effect to overlay and reduced the opacity, to finish it, i would decrease the fill, making the illusion of the circle lighting up the background, which can be seen on the front panel and the left third panel.

The flaws of the digipak become pretty obvious after looking at it though, for example i forgot to flip the top three panels, and there were some white gaps between some of the panels.

Edit 2

I flipped the top 3 panels, got rid of the white panels.

"What can be improved - Notes"

DO YOU LIKE THE DESIGN OF OUR DIGIPAK?

Yes - 3 people

Good, but needs improvement - 9 people

No - 1 person

What can be improved?

-Use a different image for the top three panels

-Flip those top 3 panels

-May need some track listing

-Vary the shots used

Edit 3

Although i removed the movie credit text from the magazine advert, i have decided to keep it in the digipak because i feel as if it needs to be there for credits. Plus it makes it look unique and niche. I replaced the main image here so it relates back to the magazine advert, and the imagery makes sense seems as Kierann is in the same setting we used in the music video, and he's looking directly in the fire.

Edit 4

In this edit, we decided to change the top three slides of the digipak, mainly because the image used at the top became extremely pixelated when becoming enlarged. I kept the middle image the same because it fit with our idea of showing progression through the day within our ancillary products as well as the music video. I also added the Bastille text and logo in the middle of these shots. The next addition with the track list. originally, we thought the digipak was for a single, turns out it's a promotional product for an album. I effectively added popular Bastille songs, but made it so the main track "The things we lost in the fire" the first within the list. we placed it on this slide as there was a lot of space on it already, and we wanted to keep the slide to the left of it looking crisp and succinct.

Edit 5

In this edit and responding to verbal feedback, i moved the Bastille text on the spine upwards towards the middle . I removed the Bastille text from the top images as well as their logo, and put an opacity 31% triangle in it's replacement so it doesn't look bland (we tried it without any effect on it, and it didn't look correct). I also decreased the text size as we felt the track list was a little too large.

Edit 6

I had realised an error within our digipak, and it came about when i flipped the product 180 degrees. The time cycle went from night to day, rather than day to night, so i changed around the top two slides.

Magazine Advert Draft 1 and Feedback (Chris)

Magazine Advert Draft 1 and

Feedback

The feedback we had gotten was to change the background of the advert. This was due to the fact that it had water in the background and didn't really have any connotations of fire which was the feel that we wanted to go for. The second piece of feedback we had got given was to get rid of the triangle in the title. This was a copyright problem which we had to put right.

Final Music Video (joe french)

Final Music Video

Music Video Rough Cut 3 and Feedback (Chris)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5MUeMRM38

Music Video Rough Cut 3 and Feedback


For our 3rd rough cut we had been only given a few points which would help the final product look as good as it can be. The first piece of advice that we had been given was to change out the first shot of the actor singing. This was because it was a little blurred and we wanted to make sure that the first shot of the actor singing was clear and was a good clip to introduce the main actor.

The second piece of advice that we had been given was to swap over the clip of the actor walking to the tree and move it forward a few seconds. The reason for this is that is that it would make it more clear to have the main actor away before being introduced with the girl. 

Music Video Rough Cut 2 and Feedback (Kierann)

Music Video Rough Cut 2 and

Feedback

Music Video

What Works Well

Lovely cutting to the beat

Some beautiful shots - panning and well composed shots - Kierann between Chris and Harriet! 

Nice performance shots - just check out what is on the surrounding edges of the frame! 

Even Better If

You ditched the curtains in the performance shots - check the outside of the frame

Check the lip sync throughout

Add more notebook scenes

Ditch the shot that tilts from under the bridge up - it is weird and the pole of the bridge is in Kierann's face

I've written wonky branch on my notes - does this mean anything to you as I am struggling to remember what I meant! 

I hate the new shot of Kierann on the bench - the sun is in his face too much - either film again or go back to your previous shot

Clean up transitions a little - they can be a little jumpy at times

We want a longer shot of Kierann walking away at the end

Our group will use this feedback in an effective way which will make sure that our music video becomes better than the previous rough-cut. The first thing we will do from this feedback is watch our music video and assess the standard of the artist’s lip syncing and make sure that it is of high quality. This is because lip syncing in the performance of our music video the lip syncing is one of the main features and it is something that the audience will notice straight away if out of sequence. We are going to get rid of the tilt shot from the bridge as our teacher advised us to. To fill this empty spot as a group we will see if we are we can either use spare footage we have or if it would be better to reshoot a performance shot somewhere else as we are lacking them.