Analysis of feedback

From my feedback there are some positive and negative points that were made.

Positive
The first main point that was made was that the video fitted really with the song and the genre that it was for. Another point that was made was the miming was 'really effective' and made it seem more like a convential professional music video. Various people also said that there were a good range of shots and the different locations mixed with the editing gave the piece a good pace that fitted with the song. The final positive point that I can gain from my feedback was about the use of the stop motion animation and the normal animation. My audience said that this split up the piece well and the shots were really effective which i'm very pleased with!

Negative
The main negative point to gain from the feedback was about the structure of the piece. A few people said that they thought it would have been a more interesting storyline if there had been other characters used in the video and also the flashbacks could've been done better as they were not always obvious that they were meant to be flashbacks/daydreams.

Audience Feedback

1.

- Fits really well with the song

- Really like the magazine scene

- Like the different camera shots

- Lip syncing fits well when song is playing

- Overall really well done!

2.

- Varied shots

- Steady video

- Good editing with a mixture of things going on

- Liked the reverse bit

- It looks very professional and something I would expect high end music video guys to create

- Not sure what's wrong with the quality?

3.

The video looks good with the song lyrics, and it is effective when she is miming the words. The effects with the money and magazine works well. Well done!

4.

Lip syncing worked most of the time, but you should have got that other guy to do the voice, having more than one character would have added to it. The shot with the graffiti was really nice and there was some great ideas. Just could have had more structure and another character.

5.

Really good piece of work Sophie! The mise en scene and the shots really fitted in well with the cheery atmosphere of the song. I also really liked your variety of shots and setting throughout the video. Well done!

6.

- Opening shots a little blurry - Is this supposed to be like this?

- Excellent syncing with music

- Good stop motion

- Great idea - Well put together and very professional!

- Great locations

- Good mixture and flowed well

7.

- Lip syncing was very good

- Notes were cool

- Locations were good

- Motion blur for was annoying but it kinda added interest. Actually I think it detracted from a great piece of work.

8.

The whole video is really effective and works really well with the song. The radio is a great idea at the end. Your mise en scene is good it makes the whole video seem lively like the song. Well done.

9.

I LOVED IT. Great storyline, great effects, great lip syncing, great mise en scene - just great!

10.

- Love the stop motion

- So many good shots!

- No criticisms

Magazine advert

Due to the feedback that my piece was too busy I experimented with positioning of the 'fantasy' parts of the picture. I decided to have most of the flowers etc on one side of Cesca and the writing of the piece on the other side. I also made the font so that it wasn't overlapping Cescas body as this made it clearer to read. In doing this I think the piece benefitted massively as it was clearer to look at, but still included the busy sections, the only difference was that they are all in an actual section rather than dotted all over the picture.

This is my magazine advert for 'Pack Up'. When coming up with ideas for my digipak I especially liked the idea to have drawn images mixed with real pictures. This would further create the feel of a fantasy world. Originally I had decided to do the magazine article completely drawn and full of different patterns and colours but then I came up with this idea, which I think is more efficient for time - to fill a whole A4 page in complete detail would take a long time and I would never be happy with the outcome as I would feel it is too amateur. Instead I decided I would go with the mixed medias approach. I wanted to have an 'edgier' scene for the main picture rather than Francesca in a field or something, so I chose to have her against a brick wall, which I think fits well with the graffiti scene in the actual music video. I think these makes it seem younger in some ways. Again, I wanted to go for the feel of a fantasy world and make it look like she was in her everyday life, yet she was imagining all these things around her. I particularly like the way it looks like the flower and grass are coming out of the ground, and the sun and clouds (if animated) would be moving across the wall. I think this adds a bit of depth to the picture as well rather than a flat image.

I used the same font as is on the digipak as well which draws all three tasks together, which is how I feel it should be as they are all advertising the same song. It makes it more likely that the audience will remember that piece as if they see the advert they will instantly relate it back to the video and the digipak and make it stick in their mind; especially if it is an eye catching piece which I hope mine is.

There are a couple of downfalls with this piece. For example, it looks slightly amateur in the way the title and 'Out Now' have been put. This is something I am considering developing as it makes the piece look less professional. In order to do this I will have to look into what existing pieces have as their promotional part and adjust this to adapt my piece.

Magazine advert research

Before I could start creating my magazine advert I needed to gain inspiration and ideas for the usual conventions of an music advert. Above our some of the examples I gained from my research. A common trend in all of them is the information. They always include the title of the piece and the artist, as well as some information on date of sale and often some comments/reviews about the piece. The mise en scene of the Madonna and Gwen Stefani pieces are bright and colourful which I think is most effective. The Ellie Goulding piece goes with a more iconic, simple feel but I don't feel this is relevant for my piece. From these images above another convention that is seen is the use of a profile of the artist themselves, and this often takes up the majority of the piece.

Final Digipak

Below is my final digipak in the template. I am very happy with the piece, I think it has a good mise en scene which is bright and colourful. A connotation of this is that the girl in the video is longing to be self-confident but at the moment is not happy with her life and how things pan out for her. The hand-drawn style of the piece represents her fantasy world in which she is confident and life is good. I decided to do the digipak hand-drawn as then it is like something the girl could have doodled whilst fantasising about her life. The sun, rainbows and flowers are all standard things that you would expect the find in a girls 'dream' life.

After doing the other inside panels to get the layouts that i wanted, I then had to think about colours etc that would work with the rest of the digipak. I decided that it would be too much one colour if I used the purple from the front cover, so I then decided that I would use another hue of purple. This meant that it still fitted in with the theme but also added another level and made the whole piece less boring.

Above are the two final inside panels that I will use.

I finally decided to use this version of the inside panel. The blue goes with the blue in the front cover and washed out effect on the circle part makes it less harsh on the eyes, but still gets across the point of brightness and colour.

This is the right hand side inside panel. I found some old wrapping paper at home with this pattern on and thought it went well with the theme of my video and was good colours to fit with the mise en scene of the digipak. With this firs draft, I felt that it was too bright and a bit of an eye sore so I explored ways to make it less harsh.

I decided that the blank background was boring and too simple, so I added a worktop into the picture to give it some sort of surrounding.

The first inside panel for my digipak was the left hand side one. I wanted to use something of relevance to the song itself and something that related to the video so that the audience could associate this cd digipak with that song. Originally I drew an old suitcase that could represent her 'packing up' her worries and leaving them behind, but the this didn't look very interesting on the page as basically the drawing was simply a box. Instead I chose to use the old fashioned radio, which features in the video as well.

I wanted to keep the design simple and effective to create the feel of a pop art drawing.

Influences for digipak

Below are some influences for my digipak and the style that I would like to do.

I think these images look really effective even though they are simple which is the style that I would like for my piece. The picture has to look as if it has been 'doodled' to represent what the girl is dreaming of and I think that this style does it in a good way. The black outlines are especially something that I think stands out and makes the piece eye-catching.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak

Afterwards I sketched the font that I needed out and scanned these in as well. I think this aspect brings the piece together and I feel that the writing makes it look professional. I also think that the style of the piece fits in with the genre of Eliza Doolittles music and personality.

Once I had finalised the cover for the single, I could then develop it through onto the back. As on the front cover the sky was bright and blue (daytime), I thought it would look cool to contrast this and do a night scene on the back cover. The same style was used - hand-drawn - and with some effects on the flower and heart to make them stand out and look more aesthetically pleasing.

Finally, after getting other opinions and analysing the pieces I decided on the final front cover. I went with the original one, but instead of adding the picture to the space I incorporated the title of the track to fill the space up. I am happy with this piece and think it fits well with the theme of my music video.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak

Again, even with only the fence at the bottom I felt that there was still something missing. As in my first idea I had mixed the two medias of pictures and drawings, I thought I would give this another go. And chose a picture of Cesca that made it look as though she was leaning against the fence, with her world behind her. I thought the idea of this was good and worked well, but at the same time it still didn't have the correct feel that I wanted for my digipak. Feedback of this said that it felt more like a children's TV programme advert rather than a digipak and I agree with this.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak

As a further development to this idea, I thought the space under the 'Doo' in Doolittle was empty and thought it might be better if there was something else included to make the piece more interesting. I added a fence to the bottom the digipak which added another level to it and made it seem more personal, as if the viewer was looking over the fence into her world.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak

Above is the first draft of my 3rd style of digipak. Instead of using 3D font I decided to go for a more simplistic doodle of the writing. The imperfections in the sizes of the letters and the lines give it a more homemade feel which is what I was hoping for. I added an effect the the writing so that they stood out more as obviously this is the artists name and although the picture may draw the audience in, the name and track is what you really want to advertise.

Like my previous ideas, I used to idea of a fantastical dream world where the grass is bright green and the sky bright blue, with colourful flowers and rainbows. The connotation of this is the fact that the girl in the video may be self conscious but in her dreams she can be confident and happier. This is what the bright colours and cartoon style of the digipak represents.

This design is my attempt at the Mika inspiration digipaks. I really like the background of it and the style of the drawing with the bright colours as I think this represents the feel of the music video particularly well. I've included a sky at the top with a cloud and a sun, a rainbow and grass in the right hand corner and then other random shapes and patterns. With this design I used the drawing as a picture of a fantasy so a dream world in which it is sunny and rainbows all the time. This correlates with the video as the girl is fantasising about being self-confident and in her dream world this could come true. A flaw with this design was the font. When doing the first sketch of this digipak I didn't think about the fact that I put 'Doolittle' above 'Eliza' and on reflection and from feedback this doesn't work very well and is quite confusing.

I decided that I will save this sort of design for my magazine advert and then try out a more traditional hand-drawn cover.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak inspiration

The inspiration for my digipak comes from the likes of Mika, where he has used a hand-drawn pop art kind of style which I think is really fun and effective. The colourfulness of the covers fit perfectly with the style of Mika's music and would also accompany the style of 'Pack Up' very well. I think that these digipaks are extra interesting because of the amount of detail the designer has used in them. This is something I may develop for my own digipak and make it more simplistic, as this will be easier for me (not being the greatest artist) and also less time consuming, but still have a more professional feel to it than my first attempt.

Ancillary task 1 - Digipak

The first attempt at my digipak was the above cover. I thought it would be quite cool to use a hand-drawn style for the writing and then incorporate images of Cesca into this to mix the two styles. First of all I created the font by drawing it and scanning it into the computer, and then I manipulated the pictures in Photoshop and copied them in. I feel that the idea of this digipak was a good one but I was not able to carry it out in the most effective way and it ended up looking amateur and not what I wanted. The pictures of Cesca didn't particularly go together very well in terms of mise en scene and because the photos were originally taken in different lights this was hard to get right and make them look like they hadn't just been copy and pasted.

Making the digipak

For both the making of my digipak and my magazine advert I used Photoshop. I chose to do this as it was the easiest form of editing images and I was fairly confident using it as have used it for previous projects.

Change of storyboard

When I was editing my piece, I found that there was not quite enough footage to cover everything I wanted, so this therefore meant I had to come up with some more ideas to incorporate and pad out the whole piece more. I decided to film a new location, and to represent the man that sings the sample in the chorus, have Cesca turning a radio on which then plays the song, and she can be dancing to that. I thought it would be effective to incorporate another part of 'before and after' where she drops an egg on the floor (showing she is clumsy and fed up before) and then it rewinds and plays again, showing how her life has turned around for the better.