Research into a director's commentary

Director's commentaries are a way of the 'director' to explain their choices within a scene, music video or film, why they specifically wanted a shot to be in a particular place, or the location of a scene for example. The director usually explains their choices for costume design and location and saying his opinions behind them. Director's commentaries give a chance for the director to evaluate their work, mention what they particularly liked about the scene and their main reasons for why they chose it and what they thought worked best. Although it also gives the opportunity for them to say what was more difficult about working in a particular loaction and what could have been improved as a whole. Particularly the main reasons for a director's commentary is for them to explain their choice and what the story was that they wanted to create.

Commentaries can be produced in many different ways, although the most popular is using a voice over over the top footage. This gives a chance for the veiwer to see which part is being analyzed, it gives a chance for them to hear the comments and analyse at the same time. Another way that commentries can be presented is by cutting inbetween showing the director talking about the footage in different sections, then after, the clip is then shown to the veiwer to be analysed.

the first example can be seen here:

Digipack and Magazine ad planning

We were thinking of using this as our magazine ad. We feel that the concept would work really well, the only down side to using this image wqould be that where isnt alot of space to write the info around it. Although it really does focus on our food fight concept.

Charlotte did a photo shoot of the products and food which was used in the food fight. We feel that this could also work really well as a magazine idea asw it is more simplistic and and also gives more space to allow the prodct infomation to be released.

We feel that these images would work best as the Digipak as it allows the concept to be stretched to friendship rather than just the food concept. It allows the band to be know from other songs which arent just related to food.

These Images are all ideas for our magazine ad and digi pak. We narrowed it down to these few as we felt they all showed a clear theme and linked well together. But as we didn't want the Digi Pak to focus on the one video we felt that the last image would be better for the whole album as it shows the Artist as a Group rather than a solo artist, which the top image would have suggested. 

 We also liked the idea of using the cans of food as our album is all about teeange years and summer which is heavily linked to food, we decided on using this as our Magazine Ad as we have many different ideas to try out regarding where the text would go, etc.

Analysis of Professional DigiPak

 

The theme of this Digi Pak is a Formal Party as Justin wears a black suit in both pictures, in one wearing a top hat which shows formal and in the other shows a disco ball which relates to a party theme. Both Images are very plain but stand out infront of the plain white back ground. 

The writing is shown in black and orange which again, stands out as the background is very plain. The back of the cover is focused on the image and the track listing. The tracks are clearly stated by adding underneath the name of the tracks any extra singers that may feature in them.

The font on the front and back of the cover stays the same which immediatley draws links between the two. This Digi Pak is very minimalistic and only includes the most important information, which allows the buyer to know exactly what it includes and what they're purchasing.

Analysing Student Digi Pak

This student Digi Pak uses a strong theme of fair ground, the picture runs from both the front to the back of the cover which makes it bigger and easier for people to identify. The strong colour theme has been kept to black white and grey which is very minimalistic as in the few pictures on the back of the cover, the use of colour really stands out to whoever would be reading it. The Font of 'The Thrills' on the front of the cover is kept the same as the writing on the side. The Theme fits in with the Band Name as 'Thrills' is associated with Fair ground rides and theme parks. 

There is a review from 'NME' on the back of the cover which makes it to appear more professional, especially as they have included a four star rating in bold font which stands out to the audience. They have given a clear Age guideline on both the front and back of the cover which stands out in contrast to the monochrome background.

FINAL DIGI PACK AND MAGAZINE AD ITEMS

Tour Date Poster - Digi Pack Extra!

Final Digi Pack Ideas.

The theme for the whole digi pack is Summer with Food.

Magazine Ad:

For our magazine ad we are using a picture of some of the food used in the filming, that is set out well in front of a white background. The food takes up the top half of the picture the there is a white space in the bottom half which we are going to use for text of the magazine cover. We are blanking out the brand names of the food products and replacing them with information about the track such as release dates, where its available from, etc. 

DVD Case:

We are going to use a shot from our music video for the front of the case, which is of the group running away. There is a big clear blue sky that we can put the title of the album and name of the band. We are thinking of calling our album 'We're From Barcelona'. Many bands call their album by one of their main songs so we thought we could do the same. This way we can also use a photo from our video as it will relate to the album. For the back of the album we are going to use a till receipt as this is going with the idea of food as part of the theme. We will change the items on the receipt to track names and the prices changed to the track length. 

Tour Poster:

We are going to make a poster with all the tour dates on it as an extra leaflet inside the DVD/Album pack.

Digi-pack and Magazine Advert Concept

for our digi-pack we have chosen to have a shot of the band on the front of the cover using a shot that wasn't included in the filming to try and separate the digi-pack from the individual track, the inside of the pack will be a shot of the entire group shown in film stretching across both sides of the inside cover. the back cover will be a shot of a till receipt with the track information and other info printed onto it, the magazine ad will be a shot of food but with the album information printed onto well known food labels (e.g heinz beans.

Final Music Video

Extra filming

We decided that we would need to film more footage for our music video as we wanted somebody to be singing the song. We had the idea to film one of our group members singing the song with food being poured over her in order to fit in with our food fight theme that is seen in the rest of our footage. We filmed our team member looking and acting very cheerful in order to again fit in with the atmosphere and positive mood in the video. We found that the filming was successful as we shot and planned carefully. We filmed each verse of the song in order to be sure that we had enough footage to play around with.

Feedback for rough cut from Andrea and Amar.

Positives: 

- You can sense a good vibe

- There are nice pans and a few zoom shots

- Good editing in time with the beat of the song

- Stereotypical, a fun song with a fun image to go with it; food fight

To Improve:

- Show each character at the beginning for longer so you can see who they are and what they are holding

- Have more close-ups to vary the shots, to get some reactions

- When shooting the performance footage get a lot of close-ups and try to make the background something other than green bushes. This is to make the audience establish that they are taking place in different places.

We are going to shoot the performance shots tomorrow, friday 4th November, and will use the guidance given to us by Andrea and Amar. We are also going to make the clips of people at the start longer so you can see what they are holding and recognize the character. We are going to look through the clips to see what close-ups we have then try to incorporate them into the video so we get a variation of shots.

Rough Cut Music Video Feedback

Goodwin feedback:
Music + visuals - image changes on the beat.
Lyrics + visuals - abstract, contrasting.
Voyerism - looking at the camera.
Colourful, upbeat, random.

Camerawork:
Good mid shots to introduce the characters.
Should include more shots.
Good natural feel, felt included.

Editing:
Good to introduce people but didn't get any of it?
Reverse stuff was good, but a bit pointless.
Transitions were ok and a good pace.

Mise en scene:
Costumes modern
Props - food fight, light hearted and humorous.
Colour - natural sunlight.
Feel of mise-en-scene correlates well with feel and genre of music.
A bit short.

Rough Cut Music Video - We're From Barcelona

This is our rough cut for our Music Video to We're From Barcelona. We did not get time to finish the music video completely due to not having enough time and having alot of editing and effects which took a considerable amount of time.