Further Digipak Research

To get a better idea of exactly what I needed to include on my digipak, i decided to rummage through my CD collection. I do not have many CD's of the pop-rock genre, however I can still get an idea of the general conventions. In this link are some of the covers that I came across:

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Feedback Notes

Rough Cut Feedback

We have now completed our rough cut, although it took us a lot longer to edit than we thought it would. We have shown our video to the rest of the class and we have gained some useful feedback.

A couple things came back about how we could improve our video. One was to quicken the cuts a little bit, as at parts the still shots are a bit too long. The beginning of the video starts very suddenly, and so we will sort this out by adding a fade before the shot comes on, to make it flow more.

Everyone liked the split screen, and decided that this was the best part of the video, as it looked effective and professional. Most people also liked the black and white shots for the memories and said that it worked effectively.

This feedback is very useful, as we know exactly what we need to work on. It was helpful to get other peoples opinion of the video, so we get an idea of how easy it is for other people to understand what is happening. We can now improve on the weaker points of the video.

Risk Assessment

Split Screen

We are now well into editing the rough cut of our video. We decided we wanted to add in a split screen for one of the shots, so that you could see both Annabel and Rich. We did not have a clue where to start or how to go about doing this. So after some research on the internet and watching some final cut clips, we worked it out. We have now completed our split screen, however it needs some work to make it look more effective.

Here is the video we found that helped us do a split screen:

Learn How to create a multi screen video in Final Cut Express. For more Final Cut Studio How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

We have followed these instructions and have overlapped two shots to make into our split screen. We have had to edit and change the image sizes, crop them, edit the scale of the image and move them around so that they fit into the split screen.

We have now successfully completed our split screen, however it needs some more work to make it look more effective.

Filming - Day 2

We managed to get up to London to film on Saturday 8th January. We managed to get all of the filming done, however we are not sure how much we will actually be able to use.

It was so windy, especially on the bridge, and so parts of the filming is quite shaky. It was also very busy in London and so in parts of the footage you can only just make out where the characters are amongst the crowds. The actors also found it quite hard to film some of the shots, as it was hard to make them look realistic, so we need to re-film parts to perfect them.

However we still have some useful footage to work with, we may just need one more trip up there another day.

Editing

Now we have some useful footage, we have started editing what we have. There was quite a lot we had to cut out, as it just didn't work. However we have quite a lot of filming that we think will work quite nicely in our video.

We originally thought that we would have the scene with rich knocking on Annabel's door in the evening. However once we filmed it we realized that this did not work. The lighting is completely wrong, only half his body is actually lighted. As this did not work, we changed our idea and have re-filmed the scene in the daytime.

This is a shot from the scene where Annabel is getting ready to go out. We liked this shot as we think the lighting is good, and we like the camera angle.

We had to cut out several shots, like this one. However the other shots that we filmed for this scene we really liked, as once again the lighting is quite nice and we think the location works really well.

Filming - Day 1

Once again, we were not able to film on our planned days, due to even more snow. This meant we could not get up to London or Danson park. It was hard to find another day when all our actors were available.

We eventually started filming on Tuesday 28th December. This was a little later than what we had hoped, however we managed to get quite a lot of footage. We started at Ellie's house to shot all of our indoor scenes. This was successful, and we hope that we will be able to use most of this footage. We then went to Danson Park. This was not very successful, and in the end it was to dark to carry on filming. When looking at the footage we decided that the film from Danson was no good. So we decided that in our free lessons on Tuesday 4th January we would go to Danson and re-film, and to London to get those scenes done. What we thought would be the easiest scene at Danson turned out to take several re-takes, but we eventually got there. We now think we should be able to use this footage in our final video.

We did not manage to get up to London, as it took longer than planned at Danson and it would have been too dark to film in London. And so we have planned to finish our filming on Saturday 8th January. Hopefully there will be no more snow!