Welcome

Welcome to my media blog, which I will use for posting the progress of my coursework throughout the year. My name is Sebastian Hodge (0330) and I'm in Group 5 alongside Louis Caldwell (0131), Vivian Oparah (0621) and Joshua Brooks (0110). To the right you'll find labels which can be used for easy navigation of my blog.

NTLS - Heart Skipped A Beat video

NTLS Album Cover

NTLS Album Cover
Album for the self-titled NTLS debut album cover

NTLS Website

NTLS Website
Click on image to open the NTLS website

Sunday 21 December 2014

Audience Feedback

Alongside teacher feedback, we got peers from within our year who best resembled our target audience, to provide us with feedback. Below is a summary of the feedback we received:



The focus of criticism was the final scene - the break up scene. Our peers picked up on how the balance of narrative and performance footage was leaning far too heavily on the narrative side. Moreover, the selection of shots could have been better for this scene. In response to this, we trimmed some narrative shots and increased the screen time of performance footage. Plus, we re-selected some shots which displayed some better acting from Louis.

Saturday 20 December 2014

Group Dynamic

I would say that our group is extremely strong and well equipped for the project. Each of us bring something unique to the table and we cover each other's weaknesses.

Group 5 Photo
Left to right: Seb (me), Josh, Louis, Vivian

I have been described as level headed and pragmatic by my group - allowing me to keep the potentially too creative and ambitious elements of our group grounded within reality. I also took well to operating the lighting and was for the most part, the designated cameraman.

Louis has a meticulous attention to detail and is very capable of operating Photoshop to a very high standard. He is also very good with envisioning frames and so helped direct a lot of shots.

Vivian is extremely creative and possesses a keen eye for whether a concept/shot would work visually. We relied on her heavily as a creative entity.

Although all of us are quite capable of editing videos, Josh is by far the most technically skilled and knowledgeable. In addition, Josh is very organised and would usually be the means of indirect communication with out teachers.

In order to to work at maximum efficiency we thought it would be best to split the tasks of post production up, working to our strengths:


Music Video Edit:
We decided that it was necessary for two people to be working on the edit, as it was by far the heftiest piece of work. So, Josh and Vivian we responsible for the edit. Of course, when required Louis and I would chip in to give another point of view or to even edit when our own jobs were going ahead of schedule.

Vivian and I seemed to have a lot of free periods together. Vivian would get on with the edit whilst I did my separate job. This worked well as due to her creative mind, she came up with a lot of solutions to problems we faced in regards to continuity of the narrative or timings of the studio footage. In contrast, I was able to provide her with pragmatic feedback for when she seemed to be over doing it on the creative side, so much so that the flow of the video was too greatly distorted.


Album Cover:
The fact that Louis uses Photoshop regularly at home mean that he was the ideal person to be working on the album cover. Together, as a group, we mapped out exactly what we wanted on the album cover and Louis set to work on making that a reality. Vivian and I didn't really get involved with the album cover as Josh's and Louis' technical capabilities are superior to ours. However, Josh would help out with the album cover on the odd occasion.


Website:
I worked on Wix as it seemed to be able to operate it quite easily. To ensure I don't stray from the group's vision, Josh and I drew up some templates for each page. My job, much like Louis' was simply to make the groups' plan a reality.


In order to stay on top of each individual's progress, we held after school meetings a couple times every week. This ensured that if somebody was working ahead of time, they could help out those who were lagging behind a bit.

Overall, out group worked exceptionally well in my opinion. We were both extremely creative and efficient. We also got on very well as people and this experience has only strengthened out friendships. However, this was the cause of a few scenarios where we were perhaps a little too laid back about the project. But, ultimately, this had no detrimental effect on the progress or quality of our work.

Friday 19 December 2014

Website - Development of Final Product

Using our initial ideas, we created a rough booklet showing the layout of each page. Below is an explanation of the initial website design:


Using this guide, we created a first draft of the website on Wix. We knew that this was only the very beginning of our website development process so we used placeholders for many things, such as thge focal image and logo in the image below:

Home page

After the home page we then went on to focus on the gallery page. This page is what would allow us to most strongly convey the artist's alternative and abstract nature. Within the gallery we would have photos from promo shoots, stills from the music video and perhaps even some behind the scenes images.

Gallery
We then went onto create the first draft version of the store. This page would allow the artist to get the audience directly engaged and involved with NTLS' style. If the NTLS fashion brand lifts off then it will help the brand image as a whole grow in popularity at an exponential rate as viral fashion is possibly one of the most effective means of getting a brand out there. All items in the store have been made with the NTLS logo printed on them somewhere, whether it be a jumper or socks.

Store
We felt it was necessary to revamp the aesthetics of the whole site at this point. Drawing direct inspiration from The 1975's website, we sought to make the social media toolbar more professional and stylistic. At this point in time we had also just created our logo for use on the album cover. Below is the result of implementing the new social media buttons and logo.

1975 website
New NTLS header

In order to give the website a complete overhaul, we had to select a different and personalised background. From our on location promo shoots at the local forest, we managed to capture multiple extreme long shots of the artists engulfed in the forest. We came to the decision of using the image below:

New background image

However, with this new image, the logo was not visible in its current position. To fix this, we inverted the colour or the logo to black and airbrushed the point of the image that the lgo was resting on. This, coincidentally, worked very well as there was a natural gap in branches where the logo was previously sitting, making it seem like we barely edited the image at all.

The final, completed interactive homepage

We then set out to upgrade the individual pages, beginning with the about page. We added a sort of entry page for the about section. This entry page displayed a portrait of both of our artists, named LuLu and Nathan, and clicking on either picture will take you to the respective bio page.





Next, we revamped the news page. We incorporated a tour section, with dates and venues listed, a live Twitter feed, a listen in live plugin to BBC Radio 1 and a general announcement feed. This page acted as a sort of hub for interactivity and live information. Linking to social media, music industry news and artist specific information meant that this page covered a wide range of functions.

News page

For business and commercial purposes we thought it necessary to have a contact page. On this page, is information about the location of the record label's HQ, their email address, their postal address and an interactive map of where the HQ is actually situated. In addition, users can also sign up for the mailing list on this page, a vital function that will keep the user up to date about all things NTLS related. Alternatively, the user can leave a message for NTLS using the message plugin in the top right of the page.

Contact page
The last addition to our website was the record label, Red Pigeon Productions, logo and name on the footer of every page, for promotional and legal purposes.

Any other changes are visual changes and can be seen in the website guide video below:

Album Cover - Development of Final Product


Our initial ideas for the album cover dictated how we went about getting the promo shots and exactly which promo shots we aimed to capture. We then used these promo shots as a basis of creating the final product version of the album cover. However, the first task was to create a logo for NTLS in general.

The creation of the NTLS logo was a straightforward process. We had Josh sketch out the image on paper, using previous rough sketches as guidance. Then, we scanned the image into photoshop, smoothed it out and converted it into a PNG file, ready to use on any digital system.

Josh's sketch of the logo


The scanned and edited digital version of the logo





Drawing inspiration from Rihanna's album digipak for her album "Loud", we were set to use the establishing long shots we had captured to create a panoramic image covering both the front and back of the album cover.  


Digipak for Rhianna's album "Loud"


Panoramic style of image for front an back of cover
Creation of the front graphic was a process that we repeated numerous times in order to get it to the quality that we wanted. Drawing from our initial ideas, we used the image below as our first image to work off of:


To create this graphic, we simply laid the images over each other, but underneath a transparent layer. We then cut out holes in this transparent layer to allow the faces to appear, without them being distorted in structure, as we only wanted them distorted by visibility. We constantly toyed around with the exact placement of these holes but the above image is extremely similar to our final choice.
After creating the key components, we focused on the smaller details, such as the bar code, legal text, record label image and QR code.

Legal and commercial details

We then focused on the inside section of the digipak. We intially decided to use a couple of simple promo shots of the artist to solidify their identity within the album. These are the two images:

Inside of cover on left
Inside of cover on right (behind disc)

However, we eventually decided upon removing the image of Vivian, in favour of the NTLS logo on a black background. This decision was made as it seemed odd having just Vivian, without Josh, which would offset the equality we have between the two. Secondly, have the logo as a major aspect of the album cover will increase the level of synergy between this and the website, as well as aiding in promoting the artist's overall brand image, not just appearance.

With all of these changes and developments in place, we finally created the end product of the album cover:

Grading

We graded our shots in Adobe Premiere Pro, predominantly using the tools ProcAmp and Three-Way Colour Corrector

ProcAmp interface, along with other minor grading tools

Three-Way Colour Corrector interface


The grading of our shots proved to be more difficult than I initially thought it would be. Many of the studio shots were fairly easy to grade, with some needing barely any grading to look good. For example:

Before Grading

After grading


With these shots, we really only had to decrease the brightness, increase the contrast to deepen the boldness of the black on white increase the saturation to get a more comfortable aesthetic.

Left of center is graded, right of center is not graded
Surprisingly, VHS shots proved to be quite easy to grade, with little changes in saturation, brightness or contrast required. The majority of the time, grading was barely noticeable on VHS shots.

Before Grading

After Grading
The long winded issues arose when dealing with shots that were filmed with the camera set to a high exposure level. The grading tools on Adobe Premiere Pro were rendered useless for this, as they couldn't isolate colours very well. This resulted in a situation where whenever the subject was graded well, it will disrupt the background and make it look odd and vice versa.

In order to tackle this problem we took to After Effects which has a more advanced colour isolation system. Within After Effects, we used the plugin Colour Finesse. Although the software appeared very complex, it was quite easy to learn as a lot of it functioned by using the recognisable colour sliders.



As you can see below, the shot appears completely different after being grading on After Effects. It appears much bolder and less painfully bright. Although the grade from Premiere Pro looked usable, in comparison to our other shots, it was far too bright. So, using After Effects was extremely useful.

Graded on Premiere Pro
Graded on After Effects

Editing

In order to make the editing process as simple as possible, Josh synced all of the footage with our edited version of the track. This allowed us to drag the desired shots down with ease and in only a matter of seconds, we could create short sequences. This proved to be very time efficient and we are grateful that Josh decided to spontaneously do that in some spare time.

Layered and synced footage

Although Vivian and Josh were solely focusing on the editing, they would always consult Louis and I before making any major creative or technical decisions.

We used the method of alternating layers with each shot placed in the sequence. This made the sequence more friendly on the eye allowing us to see which footage started and finished at which point, very accurately. 

Alternating between layers with each shot

We stuck, rather rigidly, in line with the theories of Carol Vernallis. An example of this is how we linked the cut away of shots directly to the beat of the track. This, in sync with her theory, meant that the lyrics became more deeply connected with the video and the video as a whole possessed a much better flow. In addition, we followed her idea of challenging audiecne expectation. We did this by switching between the colour schemes of black and white rather frequently whilst not sticking to any noticeable pattern. This kept the video fresh and added a layer of complexity to an otherwise simple concept.




We also challenged audience expectations by way of disregarding the 30 degree rule, extreme switches shot type and extreme fluctuation in pace.

This is clear contrast of our inital plane, which was to follow a continuous studio sequence. Although we have kept the same shots and some of the same chereography from when this idea was the one we were sticking to, we have not followed a continuous sequence. Doing this will prevent the video from getting too boring and yet again, adds another layers of complexity to it.



The only worthy problem we came across was with the length required for some shots. For instance, we needed some of our establishing shots to be on screen for 4 seconds, but after 3 seconds one of the actors fidgets. To combat this, we decreased the speed playback of the shot, meaning that the same 3 second shot could be dragged out to a 4 second shot. The viewer wouldn't be able to tell that this is what we did as there was virtually no movement in the shot. Another use of the speed function was to speed up blinking shots appropriately so that it synced properly with the beat.

Adjusting the speed of a shot


On Location Promo Shoot

To prepare us for the real shoot, Vivian and Josh got into consume and we went to a green area near school. We captured a few test shots to see if the ideas we had for the website and album cover were actually realistic prospects. Below are a few of the shots we took:











We happened our first proper promo shoot location by chance. We were en route to Grovelands park, from school when we noticed that it was beginning to get darker. Realising that we wouldn't get to Grovelands Park in time we explored a more local green, being lucky enough to find an ideal forest location. 

Due to lack of precis planning, we hadn't allocated time for Josh and Vivian to get changed into costume beforehand, so we took up some of the little time we had, letting them get changed. In anticipation of the dark, we had with us, a flash attachment for the camera. This allowed us to capture a few extreme long shots of the artists with the forest engulfing their surroundings. Therefore, achieving our primary aim of the shoot. 

Unfortunately, although we had the flash, the shots were still too dark when we came to review them. They had a very artistic feel to them, fitting the artist's style perfectly, but they weren't up to the qualitative standards that we were aiming for. So, we decided upon a re shoot in a couple of days time.



Learning from our previous mistakes, we all arrived at the location much earlier on the next shoot day, with Josh and Vivian already in costume to avoid wasting time. In addition, we also brought along a tripod for the camera, which will aid in keeping the camera stable and allow us to pump out shots much quicker. Due to the time of day, there was no requirement for a flash attachment. The natural light was more useful than expected as there were rays of light shining through the trees, giving off a really authentic and stylised look on camera. The tripod served its purpose for a few shots but we ended up going back to freehand after a while. Again, we achieved our primary objective of capturing the extreme long shots, but this time we also got a range of other shots as well. These shots did eventually go on to be used in our final products - the website and album cover and was therefore, a great success.