CD Cover

This was created as an extra piece of media which would be used as the CD sticker on the DVD. There was only one hour to create this in lesson time as we were told that the DVD were being burned that day, because of this, I took the role of creating it as it would be quicker for me as opposed to someone else in the group.
Max wanted me to darken the background as the school chairs and dinner tables could be seen, which looked childish and unprofessional, I then removed all of the emergency exit signs and there was also tripod visible on the left in the hall but I chose to remove it to retain symmetry in the image. As there was no symmetry seen with the lights I added four more lights and added a lens flare in the middle and attempted a slight glow/ silhouette effect around the girls. The red of the dresses was also increased and the ladies themselves were particularly lightened as the image was very dark.
The editing did not take too long and I only overrun into lunch by about 10 minutes. Most of the time consumption was in the removal of the tripod and the highlight/ lightening and darkening process.

Final Magazine Advert

Our magazine advert was a replication of a poster that Max luckily found to be from the Motown era. It is an effective replication and it follows the original poster closely.

Max had the responsibility with Molly to create the poster but it was largely created in the mutual frees Max and I had. I was editing the DVD cover by the side of Max while he was editing the cover and this turned out to be a good idea as I could offer my knowledge of photoshop so Max could find certain tools quickly, saving time.

Final DVD Cover

The final DVD cover took a while to finish as it was difficult to find a suitable image as many of them were unattractive and unflattering pictures. However I found this picture to be particularly interesting due to the unusual angle that was inspired by DreamGirls:

Due to the camera being behind The Harmonettes singers it connotes the idea of the audience being on stage with the band and a part of the process and a 'candid' moment is created.
It was difficult to source any actual Motown era material but found the following few images to be of interest, but our DVD does not specifically replicate any elements from it:

 

As there are no actual Motown creations of DVDs our DVD cover is essentially an original idea. The use of the 60's style microphone was a key advertising ploy to those who are a fan of that era of music but also indicates to the audience what is within the DVD, this is also described in the short blurb.

I edited this cover completely on my own, and had suggestions from Max but due to the deadlines needing to be reached, I ensured I edited in my frees and lunch times when I could (I couldn't do a lot of editing at home as my free trial of photoshop run out) and eventually got it done. I edited the saturation of the red dresses, increased the lens flare, added the logo and band name and sharpened the girls themselves. Max suggested getting rid of the tripod in the background and so I attempted this however is was very difficult and looked better with it in. The microphone on the back cover was a picture that was previously in colour and so I added a cooling effect over and over again until it the colour eventually replicated the blue near the lens flare and the lens flare behind the microphone a the bottom had a red tinge to represent the dresses. Exempt from certification logos were added as well as the DVD logo and a bar code which fits the conventions of having a transparent background so the image behind can be seen, I ensured I replicated this.

Editing - Narrative

Due to filming the narrative on the Friday and the deadline for the music videos being on the Monday, I decided to take the full editing process upon myself.
I downloaded a trial version of adobe premiere in order for me to edit the narrative into the music video over this weekend.
I encountered several problems due to the trial version not supporting certain the specific format of video which the footage was in, I tried to figure out a way round this and any conversion software did not work. I decided to import the footage individually into Windows Movie Maker and save the file as a .AVI file whereas the footage from previously in .MPEG (I think, I cannot specifically remember) this enabled me to import the files into premiere and no other importing issues were faced.
In order to appear like the song was being played through the radio I thought that a voice introducing the song would be key, and so luckily I found a willing participant, (my online friend Calum) who was able to record the line 'And coming up next on late night FM, The Shoop Shoop Song by the Harmonettes'. Calum has a strong Liverpool accent and so it was an entertaining process trying to get him to tone it down a little due to audience being able to understand as well as a Liverpool accent not being identifiable to Motown.

It had previously been discussed the possibilities of having a black and white music video, but when experimenting, I thought it made the video look dull and the red dresses made the video stand out more than it would have done if it was in black and white so I decided to keep the music video in colour, but edit the narrative in black and white. This again represents the narrative to be set in the past whereas the colour performance is a modern day representation and the younger selves have grown up with the song. We noted that in Girls Aloud - The Promise the performance was in black and white whereas the narrative was in colour, our video juxtaposes this one and it was where our idea of using black and white came from.
Other regularly seen themes in music videos is the fade appearance of the band name, song name etc coming up at the beginning of the music video and so I decided to add this when the song starts after it is turned up on the radio. I did this my remembering the previous process of adding band members names to the Behind the scenes documentary and so this as a quick addition this time round.
I also edited any other lighting issues that were existing and tried to iron out anymore flaws.
Due to the original first shot seen of the singer singing the first line being out of sync, I changed it completely to show the keyboard player first as it is a key part in the music where the keyboard is heard distinctly and so it made sense to include it. This erased any drastic syncing issues as it was largely the main part out of sync, however still due to the lead singers inability to mime, parts of the song still look dodgy.
On Monday I showed Max and a small group of people to see of their approval and they said it was significantly different to when they were saw it and said that it was a positive improvement. I also got someone that does music technology and has extensive knowledge of sound and recording in order to see if the syncing can be improved however we found this difficult as it meant that certain parts would have to be cut out which would make the visuals inconsistent. For example, the line 'oh no that's just his charms' should be seen being sung by the singer, whereas if we edited the syncing any further the word 'charms' would not be sung and the shot would cut at an odd place and so for these reasons it was the better option to leave it as it is.

Filming Day - Narrative

Having no problems with timings and meeting up with people, we could arrive at my house as planned. Max and I soon arranged my room to be suitable for the narrative, placing vinyls and make up deliberately in certain places.
Afterwards I helped with hair and we soon got filming, I took charge of the camera whilst Max took the director role however shared the process of agreeing camera angles and shots which had to be improvised due to my room being small and having slanted ceilings meaning the access as restricted.
There were some difficulties trying to style one persons hair which resulted in her wearing a hair towel however this added to the Motown theme as it looked quite old fashioned as well as portraying the 'girls night in theme'.
Below are pictures taken from the shoot:

Despite Molly and Zoe being previously made aware of the shoot, they did not come, which was not a hindrance and was probably beneficial as not everyone would of been able to fit in my room. As Max and myself only had each other to discuss things with, the process of getting the shots we wanted were quicker.

Editing - Behind the Scenes

As all footage from the main filming and the behind the scenes filming has been transferred to the computers, the editing was quickly ensued.
We split into two groups, Max and Zoe who were to focus on editing the main music video together whereas Molly and myself were to focus on the behind the scenes documentary. This would hopefully ensure both products are edited within the internal deadline.

The process of editing the behind the scenes footage was very time consuming and a little worrying as looking at the interview of the singers, there was not a lot of worth while footage. I didn't think it was a good portrayal in the interview to show one of the singers to be eating in the background, it didn't look professional which could have given the wrong impression to the viewers.
Having watched some behind the scenes interviews from films as well as music videos I found that whoever is being interviewed, their name usually fades into view as well as their role within the production and so I decided to use this in our documentary. I asked Mr Sheppard for help in how to do this as I was unsure and then I was able to create the text for each person that appears. I had several problems were if I tried to create a new text with a different name then it would overwrite all the others to have that person's name and role and eventually figured out how to correct this.
I also decided to include the song quietly playing throughout the documentary and faded the song to silence when certain shots that included the band playing their repetoire of songs. This would advertise the band to play not just one song and could influence employers to hire them.
I wanted the documentary to have a sort of introduction and so used the promotional stills consisting of individual medium close ups of the three singers, showed each one in turn with fades between them and then finally displaying a three shot of the singers with the band name. I feel this introduces the band and the idea that the video is a documentary as opposed to another music video.

Narrative Production Schedule

A very simple production schedule was created as we had little time and there were no need to extensive details of the location and timings as Max and myself have planned to drive the cast to the location and then take them home so there will be no issues of late arrivals, or one person not turning up etc.
The schedule can be seen here:

We gave the production schedules personally to each member of the cast, and Max notified Molly and Zoe via text of the shoot a few days before the planned recording date. Molly said she could not make it and we received no response from Zoe so we found her at school to ask her if she was coming or not.

Max and I also created a facebook message together to ensure they knew about it and remembered, even though they had a production schedule, we wanted to make sure.