Construction Post 2: Week 2 production

Now that we have filmed the footage for our music video, our main priorities for this week are to start editing the footage, take promo shots and create our website. I have organised our work into categories and have logged any progress that I have made in each section.

Music video editing

During this week, I focused on:

• Renaming rushes
• Putting shots in files
• Labeling the shots
• Putting shots on the timeline

Shots renamed,
labeled, put in folders

First of all, I organised the shots by the different setups. Out of the 6 setups, I renamed 5 of them and delegated the role of naming the doll house scenes to Georgina. I then placed them in relevant folders according to their shot types. As a result, this sped up the editing process because we could find the shots we wanted very quickly. For example, if I wanted a long shot of Georgina lipsyncing in the Land Girls setup, I would go to LAND GIRLS, LS lipsync.

I took this idea even further after I discovered that we could label our shots in different colours. I labeled the shots in accordance to the colour of the setup lighting so Performance shots were purple, 1950s Housewife was yellow and so on. I think that this was very useful in the end as it didn't just produce pretty colourful timeline but also an integral method of organisation.

Colourful timeline as a result of labeling our shots

My next step was to put shots on the timeline. I focused on perfecting the shots for the beginning and the end of the music video. By the end of the week, I had already put in the first 20 seconds worth of footage and the last 20 seconds worth of footage. This puts us in a good position for the upcoming weeks because we have plenty of time to fill in the gap in the middle.

This is how our timeline looks like at the end of the week

I added cross dissolve to the shots so that they merged seamlessly into each other as well as a dip to black at the end. Together, the dip to black and the focus pull that we did in production worked very well and was aesthetically pleasing.

Cross dissolve and dip to black

Editing our footage in the first week

Promo shots for the digipak

I had done a lot of research into promo shots and had a lot of inspiration and reference points. My group liked my ideas and decided to follow my lead. While Gabriel focused on the technical aspects of the shots such as lighting and focusing the camera, Georgina reacted to my requests and did a lot of the poses that I had drawn out for reference.

We faced a minor setback with straightening Georgina's hair which took a lot time to prepare, putting us 20 minutes behind schedule, but apart from that everything ran smoothly.

 

The templates that I drew for our digipak panels

The sketches that I drew

for our promo shots

Using my drawings and various references from different artists and models as inspiration, we ended up with plenty of photos for the album cover as well as quirky images for the website or for GiGi's social media. The flat plan for our digipak proved very useful when we took our photos because we knew exactly what framing and pose we wanted to capture.

Taking promo shots of Georgina     Directing Gabriel and Georgina

I have included a selection of photos from the shoot which you can view below:

Promo shots

Overall I was happy with all the shots. However, I thought that the shots we were going to use in the front cover of our digipak needed to be reshot. In the photos, Georgina looks disinterested and bored which certainly would not capture the audience's attention or make them want to buy the album. I also think that the glitter on her face was very unappealing. This was largely due to the fact that it stuck to her face in lumps and was not coated evenly.

When I talked about this to my group members, Gabriel agreed that we should reshoot the photo but expressed concerns of running behind schedule. Georgina also had commitments during the following week and was uncertain of whether or not she had time to spare for a reshoot, if we had one. In order to confirm my opinion, we showed the photo to a member of our target audience who agreed that the shot looked strange and that the glitter on the face was too much. For our promo shots next week, I want to try it again but with glitter in the hair and not on her face.

The shot that we are retaking

Website

Despite having some of the conventions of a website,
this did not look appealing as it did not have the aesthetics
or a typical music artist's website

In the beginning of the week, Georgina produced a rough plan of how the website would look like. This proved somewhat useful as it was a visual representation of our ideas. However, we decided to use an existing template which already had features that functioned properly and edited it to suit our artist.

Wix templates, our chosen template circled in red

I took this time to familiarise myself with Wix. As I was relatively new to using this software, it took me some time to explore what Wix had to offer.

Experimenting with the widgets on wix

We have completed a decent amount of work during this week. I am happy with the progress that we are making and I think that we have delegated the roles well so that we are each assigned to tasks that best suit our skills. I have done a lot of work on editing the music video and taking the promo shots, tasks that I am pleased with. I look forward to making more progress on our project next week.