Poster Improvements

After making a questionnaire and handing it out, I got some surprising results from it. Nobody directly hated the poster, but I got a lot of feedback on small flaws, such as the sizing of the characters involved in the foreground. I will use these improvements and then create a final version with my own characters in, once I have consulted with the people who filled in the questionnaires.

Here are some of the actual comments, with names ommited for privacy reasons:

"I like it, but theres alot of spare space, can't you make the guys bigger?"

"It's a cool poster, I can see how its rap mixed with acoustic, but why is there like, a quarter of the page with nothing but sky on?"

"The poster isn't so bad, its just that the writing or something should be bigger to fill the page more, you might as well have just shrunk the size of the poster."

"Not bad, but you should make the guys and the font bigger, because they don't look important enough - you should probably do that with the record company logo too."

"The font should be bigger, and don't mix the F from Classified with the H from Chad, it looks stupid and childish, and doesnt really fit the genre too well."

"You should use more than just black for your font on the final version, because it's a bit too simple, you need to use a range of colours, probably some shine effects too so it looks 'bling' and suits the rap style."

Poster Mock Up

Here is a Mock-Up for my poster, I believe it is very conventional whilst still retaining some sense of uniqueness. Obviously it won't look like this in the end due to the fact I can't use the licensed images of Classified and Chad Hatcher, however, I can do something to the effect by using pictures which I take myself, then crop these and make them look more professional and like Classified, due to the fact he usually wears his hood up. For Chad, he is a guitarist, so someone with a hood up and with a guitar in their hands will suffice. The overall image is what counts, not tiny flaws in the image, as people shouldnt have to hold a magnifying glass to the poster and look for flaws, they should appreciate the poster as a whole.

Poster Plans

Based on various ideas which I have gotten from looking at existing posters, and trouble with filming, I have decided to start work on a poster for my project. It will have the title "All About U" in smaller print than "Classified" and "Chad Hatcher", with Classified being larger as Luke Boyd is the main artist in the song, with Chad Hatcher featuring alongside him. As the song is entitled All About U, I feel that the best thing to go along with it would be a city or a town, with people walking around, being busy, perhaps with a blur to add more emphasis to the 2 people (resembling the artists) at the forefront of the poster. I aim to have a mockup ready by tomorrow at the latest, as I have tonight free and am busy tomorrow, therefore leaving myself with little time to work on it otherwise, due to my plans to film over the weekend, and also do some more planning for my CD Cover during the later week.

Film/Story Plans

I aim to borrow a camera from school tomorrow, and then grab my friend Sam and make him sort out some definitive plans for when we are going to film the video. As well as this, I am going to borrow my friends guitar after school tomorrow in advance if he'll let me, because I don't want to have to come to access it and then find out that I can't get to it because hes not available.

The bad experiences of yesterday are testament to the fact I need to be better prepared during this project. My research is still going on to this day, and I believe that it will help me to better understand the video I am aiming to make.

Instead of filming, I have decided to put work into my poster before my Film, as this is easier and takes less preparation time, making it an ideal choice while I think about and work on ideas for my film

Problems With Filming.

Many Problems have arisen with the filming of my Music Video today. Almost all of the cameras at school were being used, and the one that was available was broken, leaving me with no camera with which to begin filming footage. Upon reviewing the situation, I felt that I could merely use my phone (a Blackberry Curve) as a camera, but the quality degredation when filming, in comparisson to that of the still pictures taken by the camera, meant that pixellation happened at standard definition resolutions (640x480).

EDIT: It doesn't matter anyway, Sam had a family matter to sort out, so I wouldn't have been able to used him anyway, forcing me to replace him. I can only hope that he is available the next time i require an actor to help me with my filming.

Another edit: As if it couldnt have gotten worse, my friend Slaine was at work today, and therefore I couldn't borrow his guitar for filming, I believe the next time I aim to film, I should do much more Forward Planning, lest my filming falls apart again, and leaves me massively behind schedule.

Planning - Filming Times.

I want to film my Music Video (or at least part of it) on the weekend, and so have planned out tomorrow as follows, in the vague hope that I can tailor to it and in the process, get the feeling of organisation in on my project -

08:00 : Camera setup in Chell next to the roundabout, this is a relatively good time as kids wont be around much yet, but the hustle and bustle will be starting to increase, with older people getting ready for work and going past in cars. This will be a good time to film the rap part of my song, where I plan to walk down a road lip Syncing to the song, then chopping pieces of it out and mixing in shots of day to day life. This is because I don't want younger people in my video because I feel that it will undermime the seriousness of dealing with Life - children haven't had enough life experience to go through a midlife crisis or a conflict of moral interests on where their lives are going.

12:00 - Filming in my house will be done at this point in time. I plan to film a quarter to a half of the actual final footage in here, as it can account for good interval shots between rapping and performance of the actors whom will be portraying the parts of the actual singers. I think that I am being optimistic with my timings due to the fact that it won't take 4 hours to film the rap scene and then come home, but I feel that setting times which are too strict will undermime the quality of the actual footage, so I'm playing it safe.

16:00 -17:00, as it gets darker towards 5 o clock in winter, I believe that this would be a good time to do a scene which would portray the end of the day, yet be free of the hassle which you would get from thugs and yobs around my area if you were to actually film this during the evening.

If all goes well, The rest of the evening will be spent reviewing footage, and Sunday may be used slightly for retakes.

Storyboard - Prequel & Actors decided.

I have completed a storyboard-style intro, which sums up the first few seconds before the song starts, and then the beginning 10 seconds of the song. As the song begins with a bit of random guitaring from Chad, I believe that I can stick 2 actors in a room and one playing guitar randomly, as the storyboard suggests, as a rapper walks in and does abit of casual chatting, before they set up for the song, and the Guitarist begins singing and paying the introduction of the song (which comes in at about 10 seconds after the song starts), I think that what I have decided so far can bring my video total to 20 seconds, but that isn't the whole 4 minutes of the song, which means alot more thought will be required.

I believe this gives a relatively good idea of the first part of the song, and is the best I can do to solidly describe the first part, becaus as It get's into the rap part after Chad's singing, I beieve major problems with storyboarding arise, and so the best description would be to post the lyrics of the song and state that the words will be loosely followed in a documentary style of a persons day to day life.

As for the actors, I have decided that Sam Nellist is to be playing Chad Hatcher, and I will be playing the part of Luke Boyd (Classified). This choice is made due to my friends imposing appearance, which is the complete opposite to how he is, and so I think it will push the lyrics further when trying to say that everything isnt how it seems, and life is all about you, not about what others think about you. I chose myself to be Classified as I know the lyrics best, and so Lip Syncing won't be an issue, and I make a good contrast to Sam, as Chad and Luke contrast in the actual video.

Storyboard - Ideas

I believe that my choice of song was well made, due to the relative simplicity of the song, however, the large amount of changing themes make storyboarding it very hard. I wanted a video that stuck to the themes of the story - living your life as you want it, and doing everything you feel is ea from day to day - but I wanted to portray this by a person doing things which stuck relatively closely to the lyrics. The problem with this is, it's going to be difficult to portray without alot of sheets of paper, or a complex animatic. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I do not have enough time to do either of these, and will have to settle for something overly simple, which will not give the best idea of what I am aiming for, and probably make my planning look poor, regardless of how much thought I have put into it.

I think I'll need to put some time into making a storyboard regardless, and have started drawing up an intro to the song involving actors doing various things in preperation for the song, as a setup, i.e a person tuning his guitar as the rapper walks in and says Hi, etc. I want to get a good effect for the video, using a wide variety of shots, but I fear that without alot of thought into it, I'll just be emulating the lyrics via acting.