Ancillary tasks

Magazine Advertisement
We have allocated shots from our music video to use in our magazine advertisement as a design feature, to show the music video more indepthly, and also to make them artistic and relative to eachother. We have put them in a grid shape along the page, to fill the page. We decided upon this as we wanted to make something a little different to the magazine advertisements that we'd already seen and analysed, and also other members of our class. Using fireworks on our apple computors we were limited in concern of knowledge and how to use the program, despite having background knowledge from our chosen route last year. We decided that the website we used for font was too complicated, and we couldn't figure out how to cut the text and put it on the advertisement without the whitebackground. After looking on fireworks, we found that it had many fonts available that went with our simple theme, so we used this for fonts.We wanted to keep the colours the same as our mise-en-scene choice in our music video, so that they relate to eachother and you can tell that the advertisement is advertising that music video, due to that. Because of this decision, we chose the shots from our videos, which had a soft tone with certain colours such as red standing out, and also kept the colour of our font, as well as the style of our font, soft and simple, using colours such as creams.

Digipak CD case
For our digipak we wanted to create something artistic that would accompany our talents. We decided that we wanted to explore different ranges of media by sewing and using printed pictures, so we would scan the final piece into the computor for the blog. We looked at the artist's own cd covers here and here to see the image what he went for. We then thought that these were too simple to accompany our video, as it is quite contraversial, and wanted to create something that went well with our video and the song. We decided to use photo's that we got from our first filming shoot, and then sew over them to create texture and ensure it doesn't look "flat". For the front, we wanted to use the same text as we did on our advert, but emphasise colours such as pink and red, which are apparant on the photo. We used red thread to stitch into the photo and used a dark red colour for the font. For the back we used lipstick to make kiss marks on some fabric and sewed through the back to create texture. The text we wanted to be small and central and the same colour as what we used on the front. We scanned these into the computor and created our final digipak which we have shown further in the posts.

Final Filming

After waiting for a camera to become free, we can finally film the last part of our music video. We have discussed filming one part in the day time and one part in the evening, and have found this will be too difficult as our deadline is approaching quickly. So to sort out the problem, we are going to be filming both of our next parts in the day time, one in the woods (carrying on the fairytale/dream theme) and the other in the alleyway (carrying on the prostitute/waiting for someone theme). Our filming date is the 28th February 2010, with the mise-en-scene carefully managed by being away from public influence, one location being in a local woods, and another location in the alleyway next to the actress's house. We will only have certain props such as cigarettes for the alleyway part, and a peice of cloth for the woods part of our filming. The clothes she will be wearing will be the same in the dream part, to emphasise the repetition of her life, she keeps dreaming the same thing, she only dreams of that thing. Her clothing in the alleyway will be similar to our first set of filming, however we decided they were abit too revealing to be wearing outside the house, we are still going to give her a "trashy" sort of look, but with more clothes and a leather jacket or fur coat, in which we shall decide when filming.

After publishing this post, we had difficulties getting hold of our actress, and this gave us great difficulties as we had a deadline close. We decided as a group to use ourselves but to carry on our theme and to ensure the grade we believe we are possible of, we would not show the head of the actress, and instead just use the legs and emphasise the "prostitute" theme. We planned 

Ancillary Tasks

We need to plan the digipack for our CD and DVD pack. For this, we have found a template off the internet to hold 2 CD/DVD's. We decided that our digipack and cover will reflect the artist and the controversy of our final music video. This meant that we would use simple fonts and subtle colours with emphasis to certain ones such as the colour red, which we have shown in our music video. 

To help us decide which fonts are best we used this website, we had already minimised the fonts to which we want, using the word simple to go with our theme. The colours we will be using will also need to go with the theme of our video. To match our mise-en-scene we decided to use pale mono-tones with the emphasis of the colour red, to make it stand out. The colour red represents feelings such as lust, anger and passion. For example, we have edited this photo to show how we want to emphasise the colour red on her lips, to show her provocative behaviour. 

Our progress

After having feedback from our peers of our final cut. We decided that we needed more footage to make sure that we obtain the best grade that we are capable of, and also so that our music video can be memorable and alternative to others. We have had a brainstorm and come up with more ideas to add to our existing footage. Other locations consist of in an alleyway to give the video more of a repetitive narrative, (the prostitute narrative). We will show our actress in a variation of camera angles from her slouching, to lighting up a cigarette, to standing and looking at her watch. This will be used to emphasise the feeling of her waiting for someone. Whoever that may be is up to the audience to decide. We wanted to add to the emphasis of repetition by using a number of different alleyways, if we could make this possible.

 The second location we decided was in a woods. This was to add to the juxtaposition of the "prostitute" scenes, to the dream world. We filmed our dream world in the dark last time, and this time we decided we wanted more of a contrast to the prostitute scenes, and plan to film in the day time to make it more clear. We will also use a various number of angle shots such as ariel shots, low angle shots, floor shots, over the shoulder shots and point of view shots. 

Certain props that we need will be the material we used in the first scenes of the dream world, this is just to add to the effect of her dreaming and it being abnormal and extravert. We will use similar clothes to the existing shots to emphasise this dream world, and to make it like a "fairytale", adding more of a narrative. Our theme is repetition, to show the actress's daily life, and the life that she aspires but will never be apart of.

In the alleyway, we will be using similar clothes to our previous footage, to show that she is a prostitute, without giving too much away. We didn't want to show her waiting on a street corner, as this will label our video as obvious and "tacky". So instead using the mise-en-scene such as her clothes, location and her mannerisms to emphasise who she is. We will be filming in the dark, and outside, to contrast from being inside and the dream, but still creating a similar mise-en-scene. To help with the lighting, as we found it difficult when filming outside in the dark, we will need a bright light such as a lantern or a lamp. This will add to our mise-en-scene and make it as perfect as we can get it. We are excited to get started on the next part of our filming. 

Magazine advertisement analysis

In order for our research and planning to guarantee us the grade we want, we need to do further research into our ancillary tasks. As part of last year we did a magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread, we decided to look on our blog from last year to see what progress we made and what textual analysis we conducted, on which magazines. This helped us a little bit, but we need to be more precise, for example, we looked at front pages, we now need to look at music advertisements. For help with our research, we are going to buy some magazines and textual analyse the magazine advertisements we can find. However we know that these are limited in certain magazines, and music magazines will be our best option. 

For our second part of our ancillary tasks, we need to create an album cover for our chosen song and artist. For research into this part,