Final Advert Design

My Photoshop Experience

I only have one word to describe my experience with this software and that word is TERRIBLE!!!

Never felt so incompetent with a computer program in my life. Forever making mistakes which can't even be undone - you can only press the undo button ONCE - unless you delete the layer which was utterly frustrating, especially if your not one to remember to make these multiple layers every couple seconds. To call the steps you make "baby steps" is a total understatement! Each time you do something new you have to make a new layer which feels so stupid because your getting nowhere fast, however if you do make these layers I guarantee you will get lost in that web that you create. There will come a point where you will forget which layer is which and struggle to get any further than you started off with making this process long and tiring just sitting there staring at a computer screen for a good couple of hours and having nothing to show for it. I would call this a mix between a memory game and a puzzle all mainly based on trial and error which is something that not all people like doing so often. Trial and error requires patience and it is not fun when your only allowed to make one mistake at any given time. This is the most difficult, tedious and just out right faulted program, no words can actually describe my hatred for this over priced product!

The time and effort I have spent on this idiotic program makes me want to cry and which hurts the most is that this is the second year I am using it. Believe it or not the first time I used this Adobe Photoshop was a lot worse.

Fortunately I was about to do a lot better this time round than my previous attempt but I am still not satisfied with what I have produced even though I know this is the best I am going to be able to do. I do not wish to mess it up again (Yes, it has happened before) so I will settle for what I have.

I am not sure if I am just not happy with my work because I have seen what other people are about to create on Photoshop or what I have made is genuinely rubbish

As you can tell I had VERY limited knowledge on how to use Photoshop and had to search through many different tutorials just to do the simplest of tasks. Eventually I was able to find some very helpful tutorials which was able to guide me through the long winded process and allowed me to get something along the lines of what me and my partner has draw in our plans.

I encounter many different problems along the way and now believe I have made so many different mistakes along the way that I know what buttons to avoid, things I shouldn't try on certain images and basically what not to do and there are many different things on my list.

Not happy

What is the purpose of a digipak?

Digipak is a form of packaging for any type of CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc; the outside of the digipak is usually made from paperboard/cardboard/card stock whilst the inside is a standard plastic, shaped in a way that would hold a CD that is attached to the card that looks like the image below.

 This is a typical set up for a six panel digipak:

 



An example of a real six panel 

The whole purpose of a Digipak is to attract I believe. Reflects the type of music that is on the album/single.

I have been doing research on the digipaks that are in the same genre as ours and I have realised that There are barely any digipaks out there. The only reason I could think of is that the way we consume media is different now and  the fact that dub step is a fairly now music group this may be the reason.

Below is a Chase and Status Single cover.

This is relevant as it has a clear colour scheme and clearly states the name an d this is something I would like to incorperate in my digipak

Editing Techniques

We are planning of using quite a few different editing techniques in our music video. One example of the editing technique we will use would be match on action which helps with the continuation of the clip. This is done by cutting to another clip just as one has finished which is in the same sequence of events making the movement and shot seem fluid and masking the cut. This would be explained better in the following clip.

Graphic match is another technique that we will be using. This is when you cut from one shot to another with something like an object that has correspond image (the objects having a similar shape). For example, my partner and I are hoping to achieve this why using the round circle shape of a bikes wheel and a watch/clock. The picture below if from the film Psycho which is quite a good example.

The shape of the plug whole has a similar/same shape as the iris in the eye.

Our first day of Shooting

Our first day of filming was substantially better than our filming experience with our previous project. I believe that it went very well and both my partner and I were pleased with the outcome. We were able to film everything we had planned within a couple hours. However, due to an unfortunate event that had occurred only a couple days before our scheduled filming we had to adapt to the situation by changing our original plan. Our arrangement prior to the incident was to have bikes in our video, this idea was short lived due to the fact that not one bike was stolen but two!!! This left the both of us struggling to come up with a new idea in such a limited amount of time as we had to start filming as soon as possible. We decided to use roller blades for our main character however this did make some parts of our filming quite tricky as we were trying to incorporate some tracking shots of our actors on their bikes but it was quite hard for my partner and I to film alongside them. My partner did try clinging onto one of our actors bikes on his roller blades whilst filming the other bike.

We did plan this in advance however we thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was. After a few attempts my partner did get it just right and got us pretty good footage that was exactly what we needed.

Although we checked the weather before we filmed we weren’t really prepared for the on and off rain and hail stone throughout the day. This annoyingly kept changing the lighting while we were in the park and we knew this would make editing quite difficult for us from then. We did continue to film and decided keep all the footage and use most of it especially the parts that looked the same.

Filming the match on action sections wasn't hard at all as we were able to use a tripod the majority of the time. Overall I believe the day went amazingly well as we were able to film quite a lot with hardly any problems.

Additional information

Costume

The costumes that would be worn would be of the casual sort as this is what is commonly found in a typical dubstep/ drum and bass video.

Location

There is no typical set location that dubstep/ drum and bass however in most of these videos the scene changes a lot, most start off indoors or in a house of some kind and are based on the streets of London. For example Chase and Status - Let you go (Left) and Chase and Status - Time (Below). In videos like this there is sense of constantly moving forward. The typical functions of a dubstep video is for it to be a narrative piece and have the video make a visual story as this type of music doesn't really have that much lyrics to it (depending on the artist) or at times there could be performance where you see the artist at a venue etc. Mainly because of these reasons we believe that this is a perfect opportunity for us to use various locations in London throughout the video, along the way our main character will be picking up his friends and would be roaming the streets of London trying to get as much of them as possible to get this "free chicken". I believe that the fact that we would have a lot of different locations we should be able to recreate the sense of a dubstep video.

We used locations such as my partners home and a few places in London such as Marble Arch and Richmond park, images below.

Marble Arch

Richmond Park

Props and lighting

In our video the main prop we have is the bikes and the roller blades. We do refer to a clock/watch quite often as its supposed to be a race against time so this comes up quite a few times as well as a few other objects however they are not as significant. All these objects are easy to obtain as these are just house hold objects etc. If anything does go wrong in one way or another we can always compromise with something else which would be just as effective. For example, a bike got stole and we replaced it with roller blades.

The lighting shouldn't be a problem as we would be filming during daylight and the majority of our video is outdoors however our only obstacle would be the weather and we he obvious check this in advance which we have written on our breakdown sheets.

The beginning of our music video is indoors and for this we would use windows and actual lights but we would be using as much natural light as possible.

At the end of our video we are filming while its dark but it would be very well lit as it is quite a busy area.

Breakdown sheets for our music video