The Finished Poster and Digi Pack

album editing on photoshop

Shoot Day

The shoot’s set preparations started the day before where we wished to create a green screen, we painted the walls and floor green. This was done to allow us to use  ‘Chroma Key Compositing’ which is a technique that enables us to have two images or frames to appear as one by superimposing one image over another. The green is removed (or made transparent) in after effects and another image is placed behind it. To make this appear as effective as possible had to be careful that none of the band members were wearing green, as this would become invisible in after effects and appear unrealistic. The green screen also had to be lit in a minimal way so that there were no shadows on the back wall. This is because the shadows would affect the green screen and make it appear unprofessional. we used four overhead flood lights and four side lights. The band were bringing in all their own instruments so we had made sure that the platform was big enough to support all of them at the same time.

To save time on the morning of the shoot day the whole team met early to have a final dicussion and briefing in order to make sure everyone knew exactly what they would be doing that day so that there were no delays or wasted time. We then went to the media suite to get the camera and equipment that we would be using. Francesca then went out to greet and then take the band to the studio, whilst the rest of the group went to the studio to set up the camera and monitor. The camera had to be “bubbled” which means getting it at exactly the right angle so that we could get the best and most professional looking shots. The monitor is linked to the camera so we can automaticly see how good the shots look on screen and giving an indication of how they would appear in post production. this also allowed the whole crew to see what was going on on screen and not have to crowd round the camera to see how the shots looked. When the band got to the studio we briefed them on the plans for the day. We then helped them set up the instruments and gave them their positions on the stage. After the band members were settled we rehearsed to enable them to feel more calm and get used to performing naturally with a camera in their face and a crew surrounding them. This rehearsal was also good for the crew as this gave us a chance to try out different angles with the camera without actually recording or wasting time as well as making any needed changes. After this we started straight away with the takes. The first takes were wideshots of the whole band as it built their confidence more than asking them to perform solo, it also provided us with an establishing shot of the band. We also had the track playing through speakers to maintain the syncing when it came to editing in post production. This is called playback. We took four takes of the whole song of the band in establishing wide angle shots, then we moved on to the mid-shots and close-ups. There was some problems with the lighting and in order to restore the lights and lighting we had to let them cool first and as soon as possible we quickly reset the shot and began filming again right away, trying to keep the amount of time lost to a absolute minimum as there was lots to be done. We then continued to film for the rest of the morning providing us with a wide variety of shots of the band (e.g. over the shoulder shots of the drum kit, extreme close-ups on the guitar strings and fingers playing the keyboard) until 1:10. At this point we packed up the camera and locked it back into the media suite and helped the band pack up their kit. We then went to lunch with the band during which we briefed them on what the filming objectives would be that afternoon. After lunch we collected the camera, extra battery pack, new memory card and a large piece of green card which was to be used as a portable green screen. We then travelled into central Guilford. When we got into Guilford we set up for shots in some of the more recognisable town areas. At first we where trying to get establishing shots without people in them, however after a while we realised that for one it was taking along time waiting for there to be no passers by and also that by having them in the shot this would add to it's realism of the situation and provide an edgy feel to the promo. Other shots which we filmed were of the band members walking though puddles which ties in with the theme of the promo. Our original idea was to use the piece of green board to reflect into the water in order to be able to use the technique of chroma-keying to superimpose the band playing into the puddles. This ended up not working as we found that the board was not big enough and also the puddles where too dirty to properly reflect the green.

The next part of shooting was when we were trying to film the entire band meeting together outside the “Boiler Room”. This was to create further realism to the shoot. To do this we all the members entering from different sides of the shot. This took a few rehearsals to get right as it was difficult to judge when we needed to queue each one of the band to come into the shot. We were also lucky with the fact that as we where filming, the owner of the Boiler Room turned up and allowed us to get the band walking into the location and also turned the lights on in the venue for us. This further added to the realism of the shot. After we finished filming at the Boiler Room we called it a wrap, packed up the equipment, said goodbye to the band and then went back to Hurtwood to upload our raw footage onto the computer.

The Prop List

• Keyboard
• Bass
• Guitar
• Drums/drumsticks
• Mic
• Guitar piks
• Ink – red, blue, green, purple, orange, black, pink
• Paint – red, blue, green, purple, orange, pink
• Wax Spray
• Water
• Buckets
• Hosepipes
• Empty Coke Cans
• Hat for money
• Money –coins
• Plastic cup / cup
• Bed
• Cupboard / wardrobe
• Wallpaper

account of editing week 4

Now that I have finished cutting the shots together, we are beginning to add the after-effects. Because we shot the band onto green screen we are going to use the technique of chroma-keying in order input in the wallpaper and the floor. This is done by first masking out the band members, and making the green “invisible”. This keying was done using the software “key light” which is part of after-effects. I then changed the saturation of this layer in order to make the band appear as if they are in black and white. Then I added in the floor and wallpaper to the shot as a different layer, the wallpaper was found by searching on an online home-wear store and then copying a screen shot of some wallpapers and then seeing which one worked best. The wallpaper screen shot was then made into a tile format in order for it to look more realistic. The floor tiles where found and made in the same way, expect this time when they where keyed into the shot they had to put at a specific angle in order to make sure that it looked like the band was standing on them. To also make the room look more realistic I added an omnilight to the middle of the shot in order to light the wallpaper and flooring layer. The next step was to add the layer of coloured rain in front of the shot. The rain was shot at night so the background is black with the rain being lit by coloured gel’s over lighting. To make the colours better and brighter I changed the hue. In order to place the rain over the shot I used the blending tool linier doge so that the black would become transparent. This sequence had to be repeated for every shot. The effect when wanted to use was to have colours start coming back into the shot at the end promo, this meant having to another two layers. I got the rain water splatter effect from the animation library called “riot gear”. I then placed this over the shot and used a blending tool to make the white in the middle of the splatter transparent showing the band in colour underneath, I then used another blending tool in order to make the black around the splatter transparent this time however revealing the black and grey layer.

account of editing week 2

The next step we are doing is to sync up long performance shots so that we could intercut between these to get a rough idea. This was done by listing to the shot and placing a marker on a specific bit, we when put another marker on the music on the time line at the same part of the song, we then dragged the shot onto the time line and levelled up the markers. I also then have to remove the sound element of the shot so that it does not affect the sound quality of the promo. This is simply done by separating the video from the sound and then deleting the sound bar. I did this with 5 of the clips that went from the beginning of the song to the end. The next thing I’m doing now is placing markers on the song at specific beats in the tune; this is so that when we cut it has an ecstatically pleasing rhythm and cutting pace.

account of editing week 1

We are using the program final cut pro in order to edit our prop promo. I used this programme before in the editing of my thriller title sequence. We filmed the promo on Mpeg 2 NX5 Cameras which have a hard disk so that every time that I paused the camera it would save as a different shot, this also meant that the raw film uploaded much faster onto the computer then with our thriller title sequence. This is because we filmed onto celluloid film for the thriller, which downloads in “real time” so that if we took 10 hours worth of film it would take down hours to upload to the computer this is not the case when using a hard disk. Once all the film had been uploaded I have set about sorting the shots into bins so that it would be easier to find the right shots we wanted later on. Some of the bin titles included: Head shots, wide shots of performance, puddle shots, concept shots...etc. The next thing we did we did was to place the sound track onto the time line. We are having a slight problem with it as the version of the song we had was not compatible with final cut pro, so we are going to take the track and convert it to a WAP file in order for it to work

task 4

Pre-production

As we were looking for a band to develop or pop promo from we came across a band called ‘Now is Everyone’ we followed there link and found there Myspace page, after listening to there music and deciding its just what we are looking for we decide to contact them through facebook, we sent them an email organizing to meet up in Guildford, this was to discus if they wanted to make a pop promo with us, they were very willing, so we discussed the ideas that we had, we found a hole load of information on the internet through sights youtube, which is a user generated website creating a massive variety of videos, we came up with an idea from a clip called ‘the pen story’. After each of the group member had listen to the song about 10 time we all had to come up with ideas and images that went well with the song . For instance colored rain came from an idea to have some of the elements in colors such as to say at the end it starts to rain and during the majority of the promo for it to be in black and white because we thought this was a way of introducing their star quality (metaphor) which is “from the gutter to the stars”. To test on of our ideas I went out with a video camera and a tripod and making a puddle using a large drum of water then I would walk through it, I would then run it back to the editing studio then play about with the raw footage on final cut pro as part of my preliminary task planning, however unfortunately due to the lack of time we had to complete the hole video in time we had to cut toughs parts out due to a lack of time at it would have taken around about 5 months of constant adjustments to each shot and this was time we simply did not have.


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Through out the day I and a few other members of the production team were taking stills of the band as they set up played through there song. As well as taking different angles then taking multiple shots of the band, with a SLR camera, each of us had a go at making the poster and contributing to the digi pack, we ended up putting the pictures of the band all over the front, innards and back. This reinforces their organic nature. For the front cover we made the title bold this was to draw the target audience in, then scaling the band members larger than life to emphasize their importance. The color reflects both the mood of the song and band, tying it altogether. The poster creates certain enigma codes. The most obvious being the positioning of the lead singer. He is positioned in the background but is the only one giving direct address, just like in the promo, showing he is present but out of reach which relates to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image and reinforces that they are, as a band, different to the audience. When shooting the band in the studio we painted the walls green in order to use the technique of chromo-keying. To make sure it was as effective as possible we used specific lighting in order to eliminate shadows but also to light the band.
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Post-production




During our shoot day to film our pop promo we used an Mpeg 2 SD NXCAM which luckily had a hard disk, this enabled the hole of the editing process as when each shot is taken they go straight to a separate file, this allowed the editing time to less time, this also allowed us to handle the bins and manage the footage was easier to handle in the way of extending it and cutting it, this in retrospect enabled us to make marks at each beat of the song making quick shout clean cuts sinking them perfectly to the clips of the audio. Behind the band on the shoot day we painted the wall behind them, thus creating a massive green screen when it came down to the editing of the background we replaced the green with flooring and wallpapers from google images, even though I went on countless wallpaper sites trying to order some before the shoot day. When editing we placed an omni light into the composition in order to make the room look more realistic. After this process we had to key the band, using key lighting to get rid off all of the green, this made the flooring and wallpaper show through, this was the first layer, the second was adding the colored rain it was filmed using a black background in order to place the rain over the footage we used the blending tool ‘liner dodge’, which makes the black go invisible. This was very handy as this left the colored rain behind. Then we had to add the splattered effects, this was a little bit easier as we just had to repeat the same process over and over again but at a different angle, this made it have that real authentic look, although we did have to construct a different composition which used an animated splat effect from ‘riot gear’. I then used a similar blending tool to darken which thank god transformed the white into a transparent image. Ten placed this composition into the original and proceeded to edit it in the same way and do another set of keying to remove the black around the splats.

Finally we used the internet to promote the video and gain audience feedback by uploading the video to youtube, and my facebook site, although no one really commented except one guy, all feedback counts rite, then using a site called ‘surveymonkey’. By using this particular site it allowed us to create a questionnaire,


which we then got people who had seen the video to fill out, giving us our audience feedback. And that concludes our pop promo commentary.

task three

If you go in my facebook at oscar mitchell heggs you will be able to comment on the pop promo.


We wanted to gain some audience feedback on our pop promo, so we created a questionnaire using the website "survey monkey", we then posted this questionnaire with the video on facebook and myspace, as these would be network sites which the target audience would use. We also created a focus group that watched our video then answered the questions on the survey.


1. Do you find the video enjoyable?
2. Did the video hold your attention throughout?
3. Did you feel any emotions during watching this video?
4. If yes which ones and why? (write answer in space below)




5. Anything else you want to add

6. What do you like concerning the video?

7. What don't you like about the video?

8. Are the band attractive?

9. Would you buy their music?

10. What kind of other music genres are you into?

11. What genre would you put this band into?

12. What message do you feel the band are trying to put across to you as an audience member?

13. After watching this video how do you feel? what member of the band do you associate with the most?

14. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how effective was the video at showing the band as an authentic band and not constructed by a record company?


The feed back comments that I got  about "Now Is Everyone" 's musical performance from a couple of friends was:  it's kinda emo-inidie, pretty cool.... loving the Guildford location :P.... I'm into metal, but the vid seems really vintage and cool.... only downside is the band all look pretty young.

However, from the on-line questionnaire survey we were able to draw some further interesting conclusions about the appeal of "Now Is Everyone".  The majority of those who took part answered correctly that the genre of the band was indie rock and this showed that we had successfully portrayed the correct band image to the target audience.  The survey showed that the target audience were inspired and empowered by the band; their image and their music,with male participants, some of whom were already playing in bands, wanting to play in the band and female participants wanting to be in the social sphere of the band or involved romantically with them.  Most participants identifed that Elliot was the lead singer as he stood out from the rest of the band by wearing a bright T'shirt and leather jacket with the band members gathered around him.  The fact that this band is "home-grown" and talented seemed important and helped the participants appreciate the band and their genuine personna and non-commercial status, with the band trying to succeed against all odds.  This band image was appealing and popular with the target audience who would probably in future help widen the band's exposure by their use of social electronic interfaces such as facebook and myspace, sharing their music with friends and may ultimately have considerable interest in the band's future success as the target market for "Now is Everyone" and their sound.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Stars are manufactured by the music industry to serve a purpose — to make money out of audiences, who respond to various elements of a star persona by buying records and becoming fans. Stars are the cogs around which a plethora of record company gears find themselves turning. Record companies nurture and shape their stars — as the PopStars/Pop Idol process has shown us. They tend to manufacture what they think audiences want, hence the 'photocopied' nature of many boy bands, teen bands etc. However, there are whole markets out there who are not convinced by the hype and don't want to spend their money on blandness. The record industry also has a duty to provide bands/artists who are perceived as 'real' (for 'real, maybe read 'ugly' or unpolished) for these audiences. Stars can also be created by this route. Oasis perhaps? Or U2, whose slow rise to stardom took a decade. Pop stars, whatever their nature, are quite clearly the product of their record company — and they must be sold.
Dyer says


A star begins as a "real" human, possessing gender & race characteristics, and existing against a socio-historic background. The star transformation process turns them into a construct, but the construct has a foundation in the real. We tend to read them as not-entirely-fictional, as being are very much of their time and culture, the product of a particular generation. Stars provide audiences with a focus for ideas of 'what people are supposed to be like' (eg for women, thin/beautiful) - they may support hegemony by conforming to it (thin/beautiful) or providing difference (fat/still lovable). Much of the discussion of stars in celebrity magazines is about how stars compare to the current hegemonic ideal, and how we compare to the stars ("Meg Ryan's fab new haircut"/"How you can look like Meg Ryan").


Dyer says

In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society. There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person's "self" from his/her social "roles", and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg the struggles over representation of blacks, women and gays in recent years). Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.



Organic- One of the main points that make now is everyone so appealing is the fact that they are a “real” organic band. They put themselves together when they met in school and not by a record company. They write about things that are real to them and do not have someone writing there lyrics for them. To make them look organic in the promo we have them walking around the area which they are from, which was made famous by other organic bands such as The Smiths in Manchester and the Arctic Monkeys in Sheffield. In the digi pack to show there organic nature in the inlays we have used a montage of images from both the shoot day and there private life. This was to show that although they are a band they are real people to. This gives the audience a voyeuristic feeling as they can look into the lives of the band and feel as if they know the band better, but there is still separation as they know the band knows nothing about them. In the poster there is no gloss, it’s very honest and down to earth. The band has been shot in an alleyway which is somewhat like a gutter which was to reinforce there saying that they will go from the gutter to the stars.



Sexual magnetism- The members of “Now is everyone” are quite appealing to there target audience, this will be another reason why girls will become fans of the band. To make the most of this in the promo we have made the band (bar the lead singer) seem quite distant form the audience as there is nothing people want more then what they can’t have. This was done by them not making eye contact with the camera for long periods of time and also when they walk up to the camera it jump cuts before they get really close. In the poster we have the band all leaning up against the wall in an almost rebellious manner, according to Richard Dyer’s star image theory rebellion is one of the things which create a “star”.

Youthful- This band although young they have already managed to reach a level of stardom. This has enabled them to be very inspirational to many other young upcoming Indie rock bands. We have shown that they are youthful throughout the products by the way they are styled, with there hair and clothing strongly representing the young Indie rock genre. This enables there target audience (who are likely dressed very similarly to them) to feel more connect to the band as they feel they are the same as them.




Success against the odds- “Now is everyone” is a band in one of the most competitive genres of music for young artists. They have been able to get a name for themselves, won many music competitions and have even performed at a music festival. To portray the fact that they are succeeding against the odds in the promo we used the special effect of having the band in black and white and then having them come into colour. In the digi pack we have a mix of pictures of them performing and them just hanging out. This shows that they are just a teenage rock group and that although they are “normal” teens, they are succeeded against the odds.




Craftsman- One of the major strong points of “Now is everyone” is that they are all talented artists in there own right. I have tried to emphasize this by using lots of close up shots of the band playing their instruments, which are clearly worn and slightly battered and not brand new. This is to show that they have been grafting on these instruments and these are the instruments that have toured with them. This is also shown in the digi pack as in the montage of pictures there are images of them playing there instruments at gigs, parties’ and in the studio.