Ancillary Production - More panels

Left inside panel.

Centre inside panel with disc. (There would be a plastic holder here; this image is to show off the design side of things).

The left inside panel is meant to be the simple artwork-only panel (technically there will be more of these but this is the first one I've finished!). Not really much to say here other than that it features the reappearance of Dark Flame's signature Black Knight guitar, and some wonderfully edgy grunge-type brush textures going on (by the power of Overlay blending!). 

As for the disc panel, it uses the close-up of the fretboard from my post yesterday; I figured it wasn't really worth using anything too flashy as it was going to be covered up by the disc. The disc art itself is one of the guitar stills with my face blended in. As the disc art isn't going to have much impact in terms of marketing, I thought my priority should be making it look cool; which I think I achieved in terms of the main visuals. The legal text not so much - I wanted it to curve with the disc so it didn't take up much space, but me and pathing aren't particularly good friends. Eh, it's kinda in place I guess.

-HM.

Ancillary Production - The Knight of the Wind (Inside panel photography RAWs)

Hey folks!

Last time I updated about the digipak, I mentioned I'd be putting some emphasis on the Black Knight for the inside panels of the digipak. I now have some photography to show off!

No, I was not under influence when I took these photos - they're at odd angles for a reason. I want to maintain the disjointed theme from the video within the digipak, for the sake of consistency. Not to mention that I think it'd be a nice touch.

This guitar is becoming a kind of motif associated with Dark Flame - Goodwin mentioned in his music video conventions theory that videos from artists tend to have recurring motifs; I've taken it a step further by featuring it across multiple pieces of promotional material.

Will get editing later on!

Music Video Props

Hey folks,

I thought it'd be a good idea to make a note of the props which I've made use of so far in the I Am... All of Me music video. These are actually surprisingly limited given the fact that it's a four minute video, though when you consider that props are usually more necessary to aid a narrative, and my video is performance heavy (as per my research into existing rock videos) it makes a bit more sense as to why.

Black Knight guitar

I've used this for the performance shots in the video. This is purely to conform to one of the rock video conventions I found from the videos I've researched, in that emphasis is placed on the performer playing guitar.

Why have I used this particular guitar then? It's because it's quite similar in design, and more importantly sound output, to the guitars Jun Senoue (the guitarist in Crush 40) is known for playing.

As one of Goodwin's conventions is that there should be a link between what we see and what we hear, I thought it'd be appropriate to use a guitar which if played by a competent musician could produce a similar kind of tone to that heard on the track.

Mobile phone

This is used by Stephen in one of the narrative "chapters". I thought having the victim character talk on the phone would be effective as it shows him as being preoccupied (talking to his friend), therefore being no direct threat to the main character. This emphasises the fact that the conflict between the two is purely one-sided, which further brings up the main point of the narrative: that the main isn't exactly mentally stable.

-HM.

Ancillary Production - Album Cover Photography

Alongside filming for the music video, I've also started designing a concept for the digipak. There are a number of factors which I have taken into consideration; this post will cover said factors.

Firstly, I want the album cover to be dark. This is because of the dark and 'edgy' imagery I've been going for with the Dark Flame artist, as well as the fact that from my findings this appears to be a common convention of rock album covers - a while back I looked at Muse's The 2nd Law cover, however since then I have looked at more rock covers and have found that quite a few of them have darker aesthetics -

Because of this, it seems fitting to follow suit; whilst it may appear to be a lack of originality - it works as a marketing technique in that rock fans associate the dark imagery with music they enjoy, so when they see a new album with a similar kind of cover they will assume that the album will feature the kind of music they enjoy.

Another reason why I have went for a dark setting is for the sake of sharing traits with the music video; this will reinforce the artist's imagery through another form of media, making it more memorable, therefore more marketable.

After filming the music video footage the other week, I asked Sir to take a few still photographs of me with my guitar in the same costume I was wearing in the performance sections of the video, with the best take being the one which I'd use on my album cover. These are some of the poorer versions:

Whilst some of these are somewhat acceptable, I'm not too keen on them because a) some suffer from mild motion blur (I can't stand still) and b) show me looking slightly distracted. The one I've settled on to use is this:

Why? I like the lighting, I like the way my hair is all over the place, and I like the fact that I look pretty spaced out. It goes with the whole DARK ANGST thing I've had going on. I'm going to greyscale the photo when I edit together the cover in Photoshop, which will exaggerate this more.

-HM.

Production Update 7 - Let's try this again!

This update is, once again, about the process of filming the performance element of the I Am... All of Me video. Yes, I know. Again. But this footage has to be good before I use it. I don't want a repeat of that abysmal Porcelain recreation. Ugh, that was bad.

So, the first time we tried this I wanted to try it in front of the green screen. That didn't work. The next time, we tried filming in an actual location that actually exists with the Bloggies and... that didn't work either. Will this be a case of third time lucky? Let's find out...

We've taken a couple of measures to try to get better footage this time:

• Remember those big sheets of black paper we used last time, because we thought the room would be too light? We didn't use those.
• We used the media department's fancy new SLR cameras instead of the Bloggies.

Here be the footage. Once again, thanks to Sir for helping me out with the filming.

 

This first video shows the main playthroughs of the song. As you can see (if you bothered to watch the whole forty minute video...) some of the early takes were first a bit blue, then completely black - these are unusable. After realising this, we did a few test shots and we found a lighting setup which seems to work (those being the more 'yellow' shots).

We also decided to take some more strobe light footage - although I felt the strobe footage from last time was good, it made sense to try for better now we had the shiny new cameras out.

It looks good! What you will notice in this video is some of the footage has some... unique... shots. This is what we've dubbed as "Crazycam" - this is because as the strobe light shots will be used to produce a chaotic-feeling pace to the video, I thought it would make sense to show a variety of seemingly random camera motion shots for very, very brief periods of time to act as transitions. It was quite entertaining producing this part - Sir was running around with the camera like an eight year old who had consumed waaaaay too much sugar, which was made even more funny when you consider that with the strobe running, my view of him looked like one of those amateur stop-motion films that has some of the frames missing.

Oh, one more thing. Have a collection of both random things we filmed to test out different camera setups and things which were left in the time between turning the cameras on and starting the performance.

Enjoy!

-HM.

Production Update 5 - ...And the law won

My original concept for the video's narrative involved me threatening my friend Stephen with a replica sword and a replica gun. I went looking for props and found out something which has quite an impact on my ability to do this... turns out the things are illegal. Not just in public places, but to own in general in the UK.

I could have went with a cop-out and just use obviously fake props, but that would look terrible, and given my reaction to the Porcelain recreation it should be obvious that I don't want to be putting out  sub-standard work. If it's obvious that the weapons aren't real, the threat scenes just wouldn't have the same effect.

Because of this, I ended up having another brainstorming session, which has led to a possible change of pace. Here's the general gist of where I'm going with this:

• First section: the two characters are shown in the same area in a public place (a street), with the performer being made aware of the "victim". He is shown staring at the victim as he walks past.
• Second section: In a slightly less public place (a quiet park) the two characters are shown to interact; the performer is shown pushing the victim out of the way. This section features rapid cuts between this, and the performer looking through personal possessions (it is implied that this will be used to harm the victim character).
• Third section: Set in an alley with just the performer and victim present. Rapid cuts are increased; this features a lot of close-ups on the performer's face, highlighting the unstable emotions present. The video will finish with the performer walking towards the camera from the darkness; I'm not sure as to whether I want him to actually attack the victim or not. I'm tempted to film both possible endings for the sake of checking which works most effectively in context.

As I still wish to include the whole light/dark concept, the three narrative sections will be set at different times of day. The first scene will be in bright daylight - this is representing the performer in his neutral state - he's acknowledged the victim's existence, but he hasn't done anything wrong. The second scene will be filmed later during the day, where it is getting darker - probably around mid-afternoon. This shows him being a tad more aggressive. Later, when nightfall strikes, our performer is filled with pure black-hearted evil, and so he goes out of his way to find the victim and confront him.

On another note, in terms of time management - originally myself and Mr. N. were going to get the performance sections filmed after school tonight, but he's had IMPORTANT TEACHER BUSINESS come up. For now we've conditionally set Thursday as our day to film after school, but this depends on whether the snow has cleared up (I really don't want to be lugging all of the equipment backwards and forwards from home to school in the snow...).

-HM.

Production Update 4 - With added TIME

As I was saying in the previous post, I am quite satisfied with the effect I achieved in the test edit, so I will be using this approach when I film and edit the final I Am... All of Me video.

Speaking of which, I have made arrangements as to when and how I will be refilming the performance parts of the video -

• I will be filming after school on THURSDAY 17th JANUARY.
• I will be filming in the media studio in school - whilst I filmed my test footage in my bedroom, the area used is too small to film myself with the guitar performing from multiple angles.
• Mr. N. has offered to help with the filming (by which I mean Mr. N. has been told that he will be helping with filming) by lending me a few more Bloggies to capture footage from multiple angles as we did last time, to be in charge of the lighting by holding and moving the mini torch as necessary, and moving the camera in the strobe shots.

-HM.