Digipacks with Lyrics

Here are some images developed for the digipack which implement the lyrics beside the image. Personally I prefer the second image as it does not alter the original image much and I believe the text is more bold and readable however the first image I think is still fairly effective, my personal preference is just laying towards the second image.

Other Digipack Designs

Here are some images of potential digipacks  that could be used, the first image is a cartoon type image of an alcohol bottle whilst the second is a needle simulating a drug injection. The themes of alcohol and drugs is prevelant in a our video and the more artistic approach to the digipacks seems appropriate based on Madina Lake's From Them, Through Us, To You and Linkin Park's Minutes To Midnight as these do not directly corespond with any of the videos however they do present an artistically dark theme.

Potential Digipack Images

Here are some potential ideas for the images which would be inserted in the digipacks. Sean created this using Photoshop and his tablet. Both me and him discussed potential designs together and drew up designs based on the themes of the video I.E sex, drugs and alcohol. Overall I am satisfied with the result. I feel as though they do present a fairly dark theme whilst still being relatively playful. Particularly the image of the cartoon-like alcohol bottles is very artistic and could potentially link together with Madina Lake album cover From them, Through us, Into You as they both present an artistic look which does not directly link towards any videos but still presents a fairly similar theme. Another image was again made with Photoshop which is supposed to link towards sex as it directly links towards genders colliding. I feel as though this image is more of an initial concept, it is certainly not going to be used in the actual digipack as the design is not particularly appealing right now however a concept which may end up like this is still a possibility. The final image is mixing the original picture of the cigerette being lit and the new cartoon-like image of the bottles of alcohol. I believe that both images look good on their own, however when combined together then they do not match and the result is slightly underwhelming, I feel as though both images (or at least the concept of both images) should be placed in the digipack but not directly together. Instead I would prefer to have the alcohol bottles on their own page without any (or much) information and then have the cigerette image on their page with lyrics written on the left hand side as I feel this would be more appealing.

Digipack Images

Here are some images Sean has designed himself for our digipacks. These designs would be placed on pages in which information such as song titles, band members, etc is shown. The pictures below have been edited using Photoshop and orignally come from either stills taken from the actual video or have in fact come from pictures which were taken from Katie's new camera on the day of filming. In terms of what the actual pictures show and the reason we chose to take these pictures is that the majority of them have an association with drug use or will have a direct link to the video. The first image is taken directly from the video and uses a "cut out" effect. Overall I feel as though this image does link towards the video (since it was taken from the video directly) however I feel the effect is fairly lackluster, it's still an interesting image to have and a similar concept may be used for the digipacks. However, as of right now I feel as though the other images are of a higher quality. The second image is of the whole band playing directly from the live performance, this is taken from some of the footage we filmed. I feel as though this one is better than the first image and helps set an effective tone far easier than the first one, although it is quite blurry which does degrade it somewhat, despite this though it does set an effective tone. The third image is an image that was taken on Saturday, it is not taken from footage, this helps simulate the idea of drugs and typical teenage antics (in this case, smoking) using the effect "monochrome" to create a dramatic effect. The final image is another image taken directly from Katie's camera, Sean edited this simply by giving it a very high contrast. The result has made this my favourite out of all the images edited so far, it creates dramatic effect whilst also indicating drugs and the reasonably dark tone. It is possible that this image is too dark (in the sense of the tone) however I think it does reflect the idea of drugs very fluently and effectively. This would fit perfectly in the digipacks as the main part of the image itself covers one side whilst the rest of the image is black, this means we can place text onto the entire half of the image and it won't look crude. I really like how this has ended up as the image was taken in broad daylight at around 2:00pm at a small area aound a bunch of trees.

Filming on Friday and Saturday

Here are some images that were taken on the days shooting. The last few images were taken on the Saturday at the weekend; these are images taken from the narrative section of the video. The images indicate the characters after they have taken drugs. We decided on the day that it might be best that the characters also took cigerettes, the reason for this stems from the fact that since the boy character initially gives the drugs to the girl, it may have seemed as though he was drugging her on purpose for other intentions, therefore if the girl then gave him cigerettes (as though she is saying thank you) then the boy's intentions do not appear as dark. Overall filming on Saturday went very well, there were a few problems at the beginning, this is namely due to the fact that we did not officially plan specific shots and the location descriptions we knew we had to film could have appealed to any street. We spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a street that we felt would suit the video. Eventually we found one and continued the shoot. The final two images are of the live performance which was filmed at the tennis court at night on Friday, this filming went reasonably well overall. The reason I say "reasonably" is because the ending of the filming was very abrupt, we filmed the whole song from a couple of angles, however we were told by Mr. Lamb (the teacher who we borrowed the instruments from) that the site manager was closing the school down for the night and we needed to leave, therefore filming was cut short. The first few images highlight the equipment we used on the day of filming, the acoustic guitar and base were used during the live performance whilst the speakers were used to play the song whilst we were filming, this would help the performance filming as I could be able to mime the song.

Permission for the floodlights

At lunch time on 16th November I managed to search for the site manager again and asked permission to have the flood lights on from 4:30pm (presuming this is when the weather would start to get dark). He promptly agreed and stated that they should be on till around 6:00pm tonight, this means we will have approximately an hour and a half to film, this is not fully ideal since we are unsure exactly how long filming will take and we will be unsure when the appropriate time will be to film since the weather will not get fully dark until around 5:30pm. However we are still grateful that the site manager has verbally agreed to have the lights on which means we will have the ability to film. Now the only question is whether the lights will actually be on. If they aren't switched on for any reason then we will have to either reschudule the live performance filming for another time next week or we can try and use the organised time we've aranged for filming tomorrow and film the live performance in the day. This would still conform to the iconography (being the same place) however the atmosphere will not be as prevelant, therefore it is vitally important that filming happens tonight and there are no issues, however if issues do occur then we will still have these options.

Call Sheet for Today

Here is the call sheet for tonight which I have personally created.

Time To Meet	3:30pm
Date	16th November 2012
Location to Meet	Framwellgate School Durham Sixth Form Common Room
Location to Film	Tennis Court
Description of Location	Should be filmed at night time with the flood lights on to create a dramatic, atmospheric effect.
Reason For Location	Live Performance
Characters	No characters needed that are not part of the band
Group	Reece Wilkins, Katie Boal and Sean Scott
Props	Bass guitar, acoustic guitar, acoustic drums, microphone stand, microphone
Equipment	Camera and tripod
Special instructions	No special instructions needed