Editing Techniques

This year I will be editing on a Mac Pro using Final Cut Pro software. I used a variety of editing techniques to produce the effects within the pop promo.

• Video Transition, Cross Dissolve- A dissolve allows me to essentially mix two separate piece of footage so that there is no fade in/fadeout. This was useful in the traffic scenes at the pedestrian crossing.
• Video Transition, Non-additive dissolve- Compares the pixels in the two clips and displays the lighter of the two as the first clip fades out and the second fades in. I used this when changing into different parts of the narrative to show a change in time.
• Video Transition, Fade In/ Fade Out- Fades in the incoming clip as the Outgoing clip fades out. This helps to show a more definite passing of time and I used this on the pop promo first draft between the bar scenes and bedroom scenes.
  
• Audio Transitions, Cross Fade (0 dB)- I used this at the beginning and end of the audio track. We had to clip either end of the audio track due it being nearly 5 minutes in length.
• Video Speed- The video speed function allowed me to create the time lapse scene at the pedestrian crossing. I sped the footage up approximately 2000% to give it the correct pace to the music.
  
• Video Speed, Reverse- To create the rewind scenes I selected random clips of the video as a whole, placed them backwards of the timeline then selected approximately 800% speed in reverse. This made it clear to the viewer that we are going back in time during the day.

On final completion of the pop promo I will convert it in to a .mov file so that i can play it using Quicktime. I will use the Compressor software with in Final Cut Studio to convert the pop promo to a lower res format so that it is more suitable to upload to my blog.

Final Digi-Pack and Print Ad Designs

Nicola has completed her work on Photoshop and we have decided on the final designs.

I was extremely please with Nicola's photography skills and the final designs. Here is my evaluation the final designs.

Album Cover and Reverse

We decided to use this particular nature shot as it shows beautiful colour at that certain point of dusk- The day is just becoming night (relating to the album name). Nicola saturated and changed some of the colour of the photo in Photoshop to enhance the silhouette of the trees and beauty of the colours. It almost looks like a digital sunset, and links in with Lawrence's style of digital music. White was the most appropriate text colour for the track listings as it stood out around all the darker colours. Although we originally had the album name in 'Night' in black, we decided to change it to white as it made the play on words more obvious.

Inside Covers

A clever image taken by Nicola on a street near her house on the outskirts of town. A suburban street was suitable because Lawrence's music is not particularly gritty or grimy so would not justify a bustling city street. The inclusion on the guy in the background introduces the artist but still gives his actual face relative anonymity. The blurring of the lights links well with the traffic scenes in our music video. To create this effect Nicola decreased the shutter speed and therefore increasing exposure time, showing the blurring of the car lights. The text we included in Lawrence's thank yous, something we feel is appropriate for an artist for his first album.

Magazine Ad

Nicola again played about with shutter speed to gain this great image. The blurring of the lights directly connects it with the Digi-pack creating continuity within the package as a whole and therefore a product with greater marketing power. The text was tilted so that it looked parallel to the blurred lights. We would have liked to have changed the colour of some of the text in the bottom left hand corner but the colour of the background meant that it was often hard to read in any other colour but black.

Production Meeting 7

Learning to use Photoshop was frustrating but we eventually discovered that it was a very powerful tool when harnessed properly. Nicola had now complete the first draft of our album cover using both images of nature and city life. We wanted to create a link between the video and the album design and the inclusion of lights and traffics helps with this. The nature image on the front has had the colours altered to appear artificial and more 'electronic'. For the inside image Nicola experimented with exposure time. Using a busy road she increased the exposure time to create the blurring of the lights which give the appearance of fast moving traffic. We are particularly happy with this.

Editing of the pop promo is nearing completion but has hit some errors. A problem with the Macs effected the whole class and resulted in some footage dropping frames or footage becoming jerky and clipped. Unfortunately we do not have the original footage to re-capture to resolve this problem, but as explained it is through no fault of our own. We will try and reduce the damage caused by using alternative footage that is unaffected. Luckily Maya shot quite a few take of the same scenes so we should be able to find some footage that is good to use.

Feedback: Lawrence King

We sent Lawrence the a copy of the music video (albeit the one with technical errors) and a copy of the digipack and print ad design. We conducted the following interview over Facebook to get some feedback.

Hi Lawrence, We sent you a rough draft of the video, what do you think about it?

I think its very good! I know you said there were some issues with this version of the video but Igot the general feel of it.

What in particular do you like about the video?

I enjoyed the fast motion [time lapse] scenes, I think its suits the pace of the track well. I'm also glad you decided to uphold my anonymity. Also the concept of crossed paths and a relationship forming. Most electronic artist I follow also do something different in their videos, not just a band playing in a pub or girls dancing in aclub like you find in most pop videos.

What would you change about the video?

Probably would have put a few more of those fast motion scenes in there, maybe at a nightclub? And I'd like to have seen the track at its complete length, but I know you had restrictions and all that.

Moving on to the album design and magazine advert, how do you think we did?

REALLY really good, the cover has a nature feel to it but kinda enhanced nature- which i like. In the inside cover and on the ad I like the feeling of speed or moving that you captured. Looks kinda urban aswell. The bloke standing across the road is a nice touch, like its ment to be me, but its not clear enough to really know.

Thanks for your time Lawrence!

Individual Ideas- Album Cover/ Print Ad Nicola

Nicola's Entry

Digipack

My initial ideas for the digipack were to show the contrast betweet nature and urban life. I took various photos of sunsets and then used photo shop to contrast the colours to make the sunset stand out, for the urban photos i changed the shutter speed on my camera to create the effect of rushing traffic.

Original Image

For this Digipack design i used a computer style font to show the electronica side of the music and i used the sunset picture to show the nature influences that inspire Lawrence.

I decide that night would look good in white and i placed it on the black part of the digipack, i later decided that it didn't look right her so i moved it to fit in with Lawrence's name.


I then tried out a different font to see if this worked better i decided against it as i didn't feel that it worked as well as the original font, i also moved the album name into the artist name and i felt this gave a good look and feel to the digipack.

With this digipack i tried changing the colours to see is they would stand out more and i tried bue and as you can see it blends into the background.

This was my last idea but i still wasn't happy as although i liked the way the album title and artist name are positioned i still felt that the album name need to stand out more. I put the copyright information in white on the black part of the background as it made it stand out and i used white for the song tracks as this went with the style that i was going for and i didn't want to overload the digipack with colours.

Print Ad Ideas

Original Image
I took lots of photos for the print ad and i thought this one may be nice to use as it shows the artist is a anonymous way which fits in with our genre as the artists are usually faceless, this photo also has the rushing traffic which ties in with the themes of your pop promo and didipack. I decided to use the same font as the digipack to help tie the two together and i used the same arrangement of "Lawrence King" and "night" to again tie the print ad to the digipack. I found that with the text on top of this picture the print ad became to busy and i decided it would be nicer to use a simpler image.

Original Image

I then found this picture which i thought summed up my idea as it was abstract like other album covers in this genre but it also had the traffic theme that follows through the promo and the digipack. After this i started to change the font colours to see which looked best, black stands out the most in some places for example in the album/artist title some white was need to make it pop. i tried other colours such as bright green to give a computer theme to it and i also tried red to go with the colour of the rushing traffic but they got lost against the background.

As you can see from this example i was trying out different colours and her i was trying our green and i didn't work as it didn't fit in with the print ad at all. i was also experimenting with the text placement here,i knew i wanted the date in the bottom left corner and the album/artist title in the top right corner but i was trying to figure out the best places to put the quotes from magazines and celebrities i wanted them to go along with the traffic but be cause of the colour they didn't fit.

As you can see from this idea, i changed the font to red and this still didn't pop so i decided against this font,

Individual Ideas- Album Cover Maya

Maya's entry

For my idea for our album cover, I wanted to go with the theme of the artist being unknown (so no photos of him etc), and also with the theme of having an abstract design, like artists of a similar genre of music to ours have done in the past such as Boards of Canada that I researched previously. Building on this idea, I had the thought of incorporating newspaper clippings of letters to spell out the name "Lawrence King" and maybe the album name, and also perhaps incorporating the themes of traffic and traffic lights that is present in our pop promo, with the time-lapsed cars stopping and starting at traffic lights as the tempo of the music changes.

One thing I was sure of when I started trying out designs for it was that I wanted to have simple, clutter free design, using very high quality images to give a professional and sophisticated look.

Front cover ideas:

The image below is my favorate cover design from the ones I created. The typeface and images I used make it immediatly obvious who's album it is. The photo I took of a red trafficlight (which is internationally recognisable as the colour which means stop), and the newspaper clippings that spell out the word stop, were very large high quality images at about 3000 x 1000 pixels. I then resized these down (whilst constraining the proportions so they remained the right shape) so that they were the right size for the CD cover. This image has multiple layers for each image and text, so it was easy for me to edit a particular object without effecting the whole image. I then used the "stroke" effect (in the Blending Options menu) to give a black outline 2 pixels wide around the image to make it look neat and professional.

Back cover:


If we were to go with my CD Cover design for our final piece and made a magazine cover for it, I would want to have a very similar design to the CD cover, but instead in an A5 size, with a longer quote at the bottom from a music magazine or similar giving praise to Lawrence King or the album, as well as a release date for the album.

Individual Ideas- Print Ad

The following are my rough attempts at designing a print ad to promote Lawrence's album, Including the original image.

I used the image from my 2nd album design as I felt it was easier to make into a print advert. I purposely had the background a slightly different colour from the album cover background to promote the actual image of the album. However I did use the soften tool on Photoshop around the edges of the album design to make it blend into the print ad better. I wanted to keep Lawrence name dead centre and obvious because as a new artist his name needs to be projected and remembered. I put the quote in a central position at the top as I believe a great majority of consumers will by an album based on critics responses.

After Maya commented that maybe the text was too bold and contrasted with the softness of the images I decided to have a play with font styles. I changed font colour to purple and changed it to italics- this looks a lot softer and quite understated but still manages to stands out from the background. I also added an embossed grey border to look like the advert is raised from the page and make it look a bit more classy.