The Importance of Cross Dissolves

A cross dissolve is - "the fading out of one picture, sound or light source while another picture, sound or light source fades in over top of the original." (web.commplus.net/jda/glossary/glossary_C.htm)

Why were they so important in our video?

In our research, we discovered that cross dissolves were vital in slow paced songs. They set a tone and mood for the video and made the pace gentle and slow.

As the first part of our song was extremely slow, cross dissolves had to be used to reflect the pace.

Digipak Research and Analysis

I have delved through my CD collection at home and have found three digipaks which I really like.

1. The Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
   
   

The best bit about this digipak was the theme of the 'monkey'. It is called 'monkey business' and I love how this monkey is present on the inside panel of the digipak. It also features a picture of the band on the front, however they are posed in an interesting and unconventional way which lures in the viewer. The colours are dark, it actually looks quite traditional and old fashioned. The black eyed peas could here be building a bridge between old music and new music, representing how their album contains it all.

2. The Killers - Day and Age

The purple theme of this digipak really appealed to me; it looks dark and mysterious, just like the music on the album. The abstract art worked well to create an image of mystery, not completley revealing to the viewer what the music would be about.

3. Fall Out Boy - Foile A Deux

The front cover of this album is completley random; however it is certainly interesting! I think that it just generally conveys the theme that appearances may be decieving- you would never normally expect a teddy bear to be carrying a grizzly- and it thus advises the viewer to 'expect the unexpected'. I really like the classic font used on the CD itself, to maintain a professional look font really is the key.

Further Digipack Research

I have been researching the digipacks of our chosen genre.

The first thing to look at is the covers of popular CDs for inspiration.

Thus, sticking to my chosen genre, I have produced a montage with a variety of CD covers, so we can gain a real grasp of what digipacks of this genre look like.

have seen through this that album covers of these genre are often abstract, with creative imagery used rather than a picture of the artist.

For example, more poppy / r&b tracks would use pictures of the artist:

Therefore, we would opt to create a more abstract digipak, like the previous examples.

How Filming has Gone

We have filmed a fair chunk of the video so far and are quite happy with how it has gone so far. Many potent scenes have been filmed; such as the dead scene, the scene where the girl has pills in her hand and the arguement between the boy and girl. We still have a couple more scenes to film, and a couple of bridging shots to do, but overall we are well on the way. In tomorrow's media lesson, we will upload all the footage and see how it looks- very exciting!!

Here are a few shots of us hard at work :

Organization of Actors

We have decided that the best way to work harmoniously would be to use members of our group as the actors for the video. Due being the only brunette of the group, which we had all previously decided should be the colour of the main actress' hair, I was elected for the role of the girl in the music video and Jack, being the only boy, was the obvious candidate for the ex- boyfriend. This has proved to be much more beneficial as we all work well together and we do actually fit the parts quite well.

Filming has proved to be more difficult than we thought, filming the scenes where we were meant to have an argument just ended up in laughing! But we perservered like troopers, and everyone is very happy with the footage we have so far.

We plan to do lots more filming this week and next, with some bits needing to be touched over, with hopes that it can all be done by Christmas so after that we can focus on editing the video and starting our ancillary tasks.

Time Management

Due to issues discussed in my previous post, we have had some setbacks due to bad weather.

However, we are taking this in our stride and have organized a filming schedule, to ensure that we fit all our filming in.

We feel that this will enable us to look at the big picture and see exactly how much time we have before the all important deadlines.

Filming Times and Dates

We plan to film ;

Wednesday during our media lesson, periods 3 and 4, and then during our frees, periods 5 and 6

Thursday during our frees, periods 3 and 4

Friday during our frees, periods 1 and 2

Saturday Alysha, Char and Jack are planning on meeting in the morning, as I have work until 3, and then I will meet Char and Jack at about 4 (Alysha starts work at 2)

Sunday we are planning to film all day.

In for a fun week!

Filming Problems

We have had a problem; heavy snow last week caused us to halt our filming temporarily. It meant that we couldn't even reach each other to do some inside filming, due to the lack of bus services and the treacherous conditions meaning nobody could drive.

Moreover, we also face the problem of filming in the snow; we either have to do all the outside filming quickly before the snow melts, or wait until it has all melted, as we cannot have half of our outside filming in the snow and half with bare grass. This poses an issue.

Location Decisions

Here are our final location decisions for our video!

Locations

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