Planning for our digipak

Definition of a digipak
Digipaks are a patented style of DVD and CD packaging made out of heavy card or cardboard material. They can be divided up into portions of 3 or fold out in the style of a book and have one or more plastic trays inside for the CD's. This plastic trays are simply attatched to the card background.
Digipaks don't crack like the standard jewel cases.

What is the purpose of a digipak?
This style of packaging is usually used for special editions or a premium packaging for CD's of DVD's. They are also used as there is more space.

Brainstorm- What should our digipak include?

• Images - Masks, Forests, Feathers, Lights, Hands, Eyes, Cats eyes, Nature.
• Colours - Black and White, Dark, Blue tones, Sepia, Vintage colours.
• Text - Illuminated, Artist name. On the front cover.

What we filmed during the half term.

We were unfortunately left with a very limited amount of time to film what we wanted during the half term as I had to leave London for a week and my Partner had a university open day to go to so we only had 2 days to film.
As we had the whole day we decided to film at different points of the day to get different lighting and we also got the opportunity to film in the dark which gave us much more opportunity to play with light which is the main theme of our music video.

The main problem we face with having to film outside and deciding to have costumes was that the weather was much too cold so we couldn't stay filming one shot for too long, meaning the standard of the shots we got weren't as good as we would like them to be.

Feedback on rough cuts of our music video - Illuminated.

We showed a rough version of our music video to our media class to get some positive and constructive feedback on it so we could improve it.

Positive Feedback

• The positive feedback we received was that they liked how we had change the colour of some of the shots to gave the video a different feel and so the colour was not the same all the way through each shot.
• Our group really liked and enjoyed our shots where we played around with the candles and the lighting.
• We got positive feedback on our use of masks, saying it gave the video a unique feel and and good use of symbolism.

We also got some constructive feedback on what we could improve.

• It was commented that we needed some more action in our shots so not all our shots were static and still.
• We were also told to change the pace of our music video so that our shots would change at the right time with the beat and so they just didn't seem like continuous shots stacked on top of each other.
• Also some of our shots are a bit long or a bit shaky so we should shorten some of our shots.
• It was also suggested that we should have some sort of sound for the beginning of the intro rather than just silence. However, it was also said that they preferred the silence and thought it was a good opening. So we can play around with those two ideas and see which opening we think would be more successful.

Breakdown sheets for shooting

Feedback on animatic.

Above you can find the animatic that me and my partner Tania made for our music video, Illuminated by Hurts. We presented this to the class and got feedback from them.

The overall feedback was that they thought we used a variety of camera shots and angels and they liked our main ideas. We were asked to explain the concept and the story line of our video to make it a bit more clearer and clarify it as some of our shots were quite ambiguous.

We have a shot of a dandelion being blown away and it was asked what could we use when we were filming if dandelions aren't in season by the time we film. We overcame this idea by coming up with the idea of using lots of lit candles, then blowing them out and reversing this so it would give the same effect of a dandelion being blown out. 

Some of the feedback that we got was that some of our shots were too long so we went back and drew the movement that was going to be in them to show them why they would be that long. Also it was commented on that some of our shots were unclear so we went back and added detail and writing to show what the shot was and make it more clearer.

Survey

To find out what our audience would expect and like from a music video we created a survey for them to fill it out. We posted it on our social networking sites and blogs to try and get as many people to do it so we had a wide and reliable range of answers.

Overall 63 people answered my and these results show that people mostly prefer a mixture of moods, not just happy and not just dark but both. Majority of people would prefer to see the artist in the music video than not. Our audience prefer music videos that don't have dancing in them and most preferred there to be a story line to the music video.Also the Majority preffered the music videos they watched to have a hidden meaning to it and like both costumes and casual clothing. The one result that almost got equally chosen was what setting they would like, which was between natural an urban. Meanin we can make the final choice on what setting we have in our music video as the audience choces are mixed. Most people also din't mind if the actors were a similar age to them or not and they wouldn't mind watching a music video that is longer than 5 minutes.

Katy Perry - Firework

Did Katy Perry's firework deserve to win the music video of the year award?

I personally don't think the video for Katy Perry's firework deserved to win the video of the year award. Simply because it is mostly unoriginal and plays on the strong 'feel good' clichés which is an idea used in most pop videos today. Not only are the ideas very unoriginal but they are shown with very uninteresting camera angles, movements and not much change in lighting. At points the special effects for the fireworks coming out of the characters and Katys chest become a bit over done and repetitive, making it very boring for us to watch. Makeup and costume in the video appear to be fairly average at most and you get the feel that not much thought went into the general look and theme of the music video over all. The video also relies heavily on close up shots of Katy, this cheapens the what is left of the sentimental feeling of the video when you realise how much Katy is used as a brand for the way she looks rather than her talent. The video is a bullet proof sentimental pop song that doesn't push any boundaries like it could of done and this is why I think it didn't deserve to win the video of the year award.