Website editing

This weekend, I spent a few hours working on the website. The different is not extremely noticeable, but I did complete quite a lot.

Firstly, I fixed the anchors (these are the names of the strips that change as you scroll through), I named them and assigned them to each section of the page. Scrolling through, there would be a slight delay and the text wouldn't change fast enough. It took my a while to figure out how to place the anchors so that it wouldn't delay, but also when you clicked them it would go to the correct section of the page. 

where I learnt how to enable the anchors 

I then worked my way through and changing colours and adding new strips. I used Mac Miller's website as inspiration of the kind of pages that I wanted to include. I tried to keep a repetitive colour scheme, matching up text, boxes, borders and images whilst keeping in the colours that we decided as a group. 

MAC MILLER's website

I experimented with parallax scrolling, but this did not work because we are using block colours as our backdrops for each strip. I used 'fade in' effect instead which I may change if I can.

To keep consistency, I added a 'fade in' effect to all of the text including the anchor. I experimented with the length of time and tried to find one that would fit which I applied to the individual text bars. 

I also felt like this effect was quite similar to how we had the balls glowing in the video. So it translated across products.

On Mac Miller's website, the main title is in a different font and not placed in the header, but in a different section. Tried to experiment by changing the font but it didn't seem to fit. So I ended up changing the effect. Now it glows as well as fades in, which is quite literal for the the theme of the video. 

Then for the social media section of the video I found each individual icon for the social media that I wanted to use. I sized them up and tried to blend them into the colour scheme. Unfortunately, it didn't match as the icons were too dark, so I put a box behind it so that it would appear. 

I wasn't able to find one for iTunes that matched the pattern of the others so I had to use the white one. Hopefully we can find one that matches later on. 

I also changed the sign up box to a nicer preset because the other one was a bit too comprehensive for the genre conventions of a rap artists website. It was more for a big corporation.  

I used icon8.com to find these icons and download them

Finally, this is what I came up with:

frankizat website-27/11/16 from Victoria Bird on Vimeo.

Some idea's that I have for the future of this website is to change some of the backgrounds to videos or images. For example, I could export the footage that we have of the balls glowing and add that to make it more visually appeal. But I do want to try to keep a consecutive pattern in colours as well as minimalism. I would have to try and see if I and the group like it.

Performance cut

This is the final performance cut that we made:

bird performance Recover 1 from Victoria Bird on Vimeo.

Finishing up performance cut and starting the rough cut

I was not here on the Wednesday lesson, the group whilst I was gone synced up all the footage that was fell out of sync and finished the last few seconds of the performance cut.
On Friday, I came into the edit suite during my free.

I duplicated the timeline and started to set up one that we were going to use for our rough edit of all the footage will all three elements in it. Because in the previous lesson we had issues with the sync, it took quite a while to fix because we had synced up all the other clips on a separate timeline. The issue was that when we tried to bring the synced up clips across to the "cut" timeline (which included our performance cut) they synced up clips would overlap that edit of the performance cut. Anna came in and we spend about half an hour trying to figure out how to get past this.

struggling 

Eventually we figured out that we had to move all of the clips that we had edited into the first and second video tracks.

(Anna's photo) All of the clips are scattered around the timeline and in different video tracks. To solve it we moved all the clips in to V1 and V2.

We then locked the tracks so that they would not be overridden when we brought in the synced up tracks.

(Taken off google)

Then we were able to have a full timeline to set up so that we could begin editing. By this time it was the lesson. And Alen and I continued to edit whilst Alec and Anna worked on the digipak and website. Between us we discussed how the edit should flow and specifically where we could bring in other elements and keep the cut interesting.

Anna's Computer - Website

Alen and I working on Hugo's dance sequence.

We decided that the first thing we wanted to bring in is Hugo slow motion dance sequence, to do this we had to go on Adobe After Effects and add and Echo to the footage. This as well took a while because if we exported the edited footage in normal speed out of After Effects and brought it into Premier Pro then changed the speed, the footage would then be laggy. So we had to add the echo and then slow it down in after effects, then export and convert the footage which we then were able to bring in Premier Pro. Learning about this issue took quite a while as when we encountered another issue. The echo time would would look shorter when the film was slowed down, unfortunately because of the limitation of after effects abilities we could not watch the slowed down footage until after rendering, exporting and converting. It meant we had to do a few trial and error test to try to figure out what settings we need the echo effect to be on for the effect to be obvious. We ran out of time for the lesson unfortunately because the whole process took so long and we had to do it 3/4 times.

rendering the second trial 

For next lesson we took a photograph of the settings that for the latest export that we did and we can estimate how much we want to increase it by. Then we can start editing Hugo's dance footage into our cut.

the echo time

Making the performance cut

Although I was assigned to do the website, we didn't like the first cut that we had made. So I decided to create my own performance cut which took about an hour and a half. I then found Anna and we worked on it together. This was on the Tuesday.

Then on the Wednesday morning during our lesson, we went over this as a group. We decided that we would use Anna and mine's cut to progress forward. We then spent the rest of the lesson trying to complete the cut with the group. Then Phil was talking about how important the sequence in which we cut the clips together and because of the slow and normal motion. We can use the effect of this to our advantage if we cut it to the feel of the track.


He also showed us a measurement of the digipak:

We did encounter issues with some of the footage going out of sync. Therefore Alen took over and started to sync everything back up again and we worked on the website.

Drawing up brief plans for our website

Anna and I planned and she drew these plans of what the website will look like.

happy and ready to start building

Looking at similar websites

Before we started creating our websites (which Anna and I were assigned to create) we found 8 websites that are similar to the ones we want to create. This way we'd have a rough template to follow and some visual aspects we'd like to include in our own.

The websites we found were:

Anderson Paak

From this we took that we wanted to use similar font and double up on lines and shadows.

Chance the Rapper

Although we didn't like the background for chance the rapper's, we liked how you could scroll through the whole website on one page.

Vic Mensa 

We didn't really like Vic Mensa's website. We thought it was a bit plan and we want to make ours more interesting and professional looking 

Craig David

We liked that the page was continuous, but we didn't like the colour scheme that he had chosen as well as the types of photographs and text. It does not fit with the genre convention.

Flume

Flume's website was cool, because of the video footage as the background, but it did not suit our style.

BADBADNOTGOOD

This website gave us inspiration for fonts and the minimalism. Although instead of having really small images and text they would be bigger.

THE INTERNET

We really liked this website, decide what we would keep this one in mind whilst designing ours, but not focus on in completely. 

Goldlink

this website was our favourite and we decided that we wanted to use this a tool of reference to help us through the process of making the website. We liked the continuos page, we like the colour scheme and the change of colours, but we especially liked the art work on the main page. We decided what we wanted to do something similar in the style of continuous line drawings. Perhaps an outline of Franek's face 

The website and digipak photoshoot

To add more content to our website and digipack we did a photoshoot with Franek. We booked out the photography studio and asked Evelyn to set up some lights and the camera. Alen then took over to shoot franek. Alec and I directed Franek as well as holding up the reflector on to Franek's face. Here are some photographs of the shoot. 

All photographs taken by Evelyn.

The products we got out of these photographs are going to be edited by me and Alen and then put on to the website when they are done. They may also be used by Alec on the digipack

Music Promo- Evaluation of the shoot day

On Wednesday the 9th of November we had the day of our shoot. On the Tuesday before this, there were a couple of things we had to do to prepare so that the next day would run well. I had contacted Guy, the technical director and asked if we could borrow the van to transport from Conrhill to the studio on Wednesday morning. I picked up the keys from him on Tuesday afternoon and gave them to Phil who would be able to take the van directly to Cornhill the next day without having to look for the keys in the morning. After doing this, Alen and I went into the studio once the group prior to us had wrapped. We helped to clean up their set and explained to the set and light designers what we wanted for our first set so that they could set that up the night before. We had visual aids of the set design to help visualise what we see. We asked if we could help, but because they knew how to do it we left to not get in their way. When I got back to house I made a group chat with all of the cast and crew. I did this just to remind everyone of the details of the shoot.

The message sent to the group chat the night before

On the morning of the shoot, I felt really relaxed becuase I knew that we had planned everything really well. Alec and I brought in a bunch of clothes that fit the convection for people to wear incase we felt they needed changing. We also had the list of shots that we had to discussed and I re-wrote out the morning before we started shooting. This gave us a reminder of shots that we wanted to have. It did help us remember what we initially agreed upon. The studio was really set up well for the first sequence thanks to the communication between George and us and the clear idea that was put across.

The empty studio

studio with the lights

On the actual shoot day we divided the roles, quite evenly. At first I was on Playback, Alen was on Camera, Anna and Alen were directing. As the day progressed we decided that it would be best not to have set roles because this would offer us flexilbity and also a full experience. For example, I filmed the dance sequence as well as directed bits and pieces. We also delegate jobs as the came to different people. For example, I helped with the set design whilst Alec and Anna sorted out the extras. I think that for me planning/organising and directing were my main strengths. I helped to shape up the performance that we got out of Franek as well making lots of things happen on shoot day by planning ahead. Although the effort put into this project was really balanced.

directing

on playback

The only problem we ran into was a mistake for the second set which delayed us. Although we had told the crew that we wanted a silhouette prior to shot and on the shoot day, we built the wrong set. This was understandable because everyone is under quite a lot of stress because of the time limit we are put under. So what we did was quickly talked about it and corrected the mistake in about 30 minutes.

putting up flats

This obviously delayed our shoot meaning, extras we quite early. I personally think that we did quite well as a group to manage this. Anna and Alec assigned themselves to take care of the extras whilst I was inside helping with the third set and occasionally popping out. For all of our actors we directed them really well giving them individual feedback that significantly improved their performances and the shots we got.

The part of the day that was the most successful for me was the first sequence, because we had the whole morning to do this sequence we were able to shoot this sequence with more depth than we actually planned, but it turned out to look really good. Although because we went overtime on this we had to cut down the time dedicated to the last sequence which I felt was a really important one. Time management would have been something that I would have tried to be more forceful with.

the dolly shot

Anna on the dolly

I think that one of the highlights of our group was the communication between the cast and the crew. After every take we would talk about what he could improve on and he would often ask us if he was doing something correctly or if we wanted to change something. We also took turns to stand behind the camera and shout/mime directions to him whilst we were doing a take.

The part of the shoot I most enjoyed was the third element which is the group shot. Although it was stressful to organise, it was an interesting experience trying to organise so many people in such a short space of time.

For the edit, the most interesting thing to cut and put together will be all the sequences we decide to put into slow motion. Watching back all the footage in slow motion is something to look forward to as well. Also cutting from normal speed to half speed will be interesting.

As a group we worked really well, we divide up the jobs evenly and so far there hasn't been many conflicts and all positive input which really nice compared to last year's thriller project. In terms of lessons I have learnt, apart from time management, I think these are the only things we could have improved on. During the shoot we learnt more skills about technical use of camera which could be applied to future projects.

Last pre production lesson

In this lesson, it was our last lesson where we were given time to plan our shoot day. Because I had been in a music video earlier that day I was able to see what it was like a figure out what we could do as a group to improve upon that. We decided to outline each element and list down the type of shots that we could image for each element. This is so we would all have the same visual of how the element would look rather than contradicting images. It helps to reduce the amount of confusion on the day as well as forgetting the shots that we originally wanted, they are now all agreed upon and listed down. We can check the shots off as we do them on shoot day.

We also discussed the artwork that we wanted to have on the back wall. We decided what we wanted to have an eye shape that could be illustrated with led tape light. We still need to talk to the art designers about this and makes sure that they know. These are the designs that we came up with and that Alec drew up yesterday.

After this Alec and I went to talk to Guy about going to pickup the chesterfield couch that we could get from Cornhill. He said that it could be arranged and we would probably do it early wednesday morning. The couch looks more aesthetically pleasing than the bright orange couch that we have in the studio, this is why we decided to bring it in. It looks something like this