Ancillary task Shoot!

Today I took photo's for my new digipak and magazine advert. I printed out a variety of examples of R&B artists album covers so that I could have a clear idea of how to take the shots, and the makeup and hair styles which would be most appropriate in order to achieve the 'R&B look.' 

The artists in these examples tended to have quite dramatic makeup, with neutral colours. I tried my best to achieve a similar look and I am rather pleased with the overall outcome! The hairstyles in the album covers that I took a particular liking to were quite curly and voluminous. Lauren already has quite curly hair with a lot of volume! So I didn't have to style it that much. I took a lot of head-on extreme close up shots of Lauren, aiming to achieve a similar style the examples I had found. I took shots on both a white and black background, as the backgrounds varied on the examples, and I wasn't sure which would be most effective. I wanted to have a lot of images to choose from when it came to putting my digipak together!  

The two examples I followed!

A few of my own shots!

I then went onto taking various different shots for my magazine advert. I decided to take shots with Lauren wearing all of the different dresses, as during my last edit, I was unhappy with the outcome as the outfit didn't fit the R&B genre, and I didn't want to find myself in this situation again! I took a lot of shots so I would have many to test when it came to editing! I took many medium shots of Lauren's whole body, as I found this really effective previously! 

A few magazine advert shots!

I also took a couple more shots in positions which I had found to be successful from my previous shoot. I decided to photograph these with Lauren in the lace dress as this is a style that I have found to be currently popular for female R&B artists, and successfully fits the genre of my track. (see costume research post) I thought that these could be incorporated into my digipak!

Digipak photos

I attempted to shoot some footage today, but everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong. Firstly, the (only) plug socket in the photography studio has blown, and therefore none of the lights could be plugged in (hence the photos being slightly-less high quality than my previous photo shoots, but this can be manipulated on photoshop.) After taking all of my photos I decided that I would try filming, although the lights weren't in use, as it was better than having nothing! However when I started to play my track, the wrong song had been downloaded! I ran out of time, and therefore myself and Lauren have decided to film tomorrow (Friday 9th) during my double media lesson and her free periods! I have decided to use a long extension lead (plugged in from another classroom) so I will be able to use the studio lights!

Planning for my NEW magazine advert

I have found it challenging to find R&B albums advertised in magazines, therefore I have chosen to stick closely to the design of my digipak. This will ensure both continuity and brand recognition. 
After being inspired by Rihanna's digipak to her album "Loud" I have decided that I want to include an image of Lauren lying across the three inside panels.

I have recently been researching, aiming to find some inspirational images of R&B artists posing in this position, and it has turned out to be quite popular for this genre! 

Beyonce:

Rihanna:

 Shontelle:

I particularly like how in the images of Beyonce and Rihanna, the heeled shoes have become an additional focus point. I am eager to recreate something similar for the inside panels of my digipak, and I feel that using the same image on my magazine advert could be really effective! These images seem to be landscape rather than portrait, which is something that I might consider when it comes to editing my advertisement, as this could make it more eye catching and memorable! 

My next step is to carry out a photo shoot, and I aim to capture some shots similar to the ones above. This will make my magazine advert accurate and authentic to the R&B genre as this lying down pose appears to be quite common.    

Costume changes!

As the actress that I was originally using for my music video has changed, I have also needed to change the costumes that I had planned to incorporate. Since my previous costume post, I have discovered that the majority of the music videos, which are studio based, tend to include the artist wearing a variety of different dresses. Myself and Lauren have collaborated our 'dress collections' together and picked out which ones fit the R&B genre. After doing more research, I found that the following three colours/prints/styles were the most popular for female R&B artists!  

Animal Print

The animal print style appears to be very popular, particularly for the R&B artists I have been focusing on during my research and planning! Luckily, I have an animal print dress which I Lauren can wear throughout the video. And she also owns a pair of animal print high heels! 

Lace

During my previous costume research, I found lace to be a very popular choice. However the black lace made the actress look more 'Rocker-Chick' rather than R&B. I have a more colorful lace dress which I feel will help to incorporate the appropriate style, whilst also presenting the correct genre!  

Sequins

Sequin dresses are really popular for female R&B artists! I plan to also incorporate this style into my music video in order to contribute towards presenting the correct elements of an R&B music video! 

Shoes

Female R&B artists tend to wear rather extravagant high heels when performing in their music videos. Myself and Lauren both own a couple of particularly high heels, which will achieve a similar look to the artists that I have been focusing on! 

Changes to my music video!

Due to unforseen curcumstances I have had to make some drastic changes to my music video in order to meet the upcoming deadlines!
The female artist from my music video will now be performed by 'Lauren Mills.' Although this will mean altering and changing a lot of detail for my ancillary tasks, I haven't been very happy with the current designs that I have produced, and have a lot of ideas to improve the overall authenticity of my two products. Looking back at the album covers I came across whilst researching female R&B artists, I have noticed that they include an extreme close up, head on, shot of the artist. I was unsuccessful when trying to re-create something similar during my previous photo shoot, so I am aiming to achieve this during my filming session tomorrow.  

I will also want to have a long shot of the actress for my magazine advertisment, as recently whilst editing I have found this to be really effective. I want to recreate something similar to the album cover by Jennifer Hudson, where she is looking away from her name.

As the actress has changed, I will now be using the name 'Lauren Mills' instead. I intend to find a really effective font for the title of the actresses name (as her album will be self titled) I really like the simple white fonts that are featured on both Leona Lewis's and Kelly Rowland's album covers. If I could find a similar font I feel that I could make my ancillary tasks really authentic, and fit the style of my genre!

Latest Filming Ideas!

I have gone against filming a 'bedroom scene' as I feel that this will ruin the continuity of my footage, but I have come up with some new ideas to assist the continuity. After coming across Ashanti's music video- 'The Way That I Love You.' I have really likened to the idea of the 'paparazzi style' footage and photo's that are featured throughout the video. I have been concerened as to how I am going to feature the male actor throughout my music video (successfully showing that he has cheated on the female artist, as she is singing about him taking her for granted) I'd really like to include some paparazzi style photo's between my footage, using really fast edits, taking shots at different zooms etc. presenting the idea of the male actor being unfaithful towards the female actress. I feel that this will break up the footage slightly and make it more exciting, rather than the whole music video being filmed in the photography and drama studio. I have decided that I will use the screen in the drama studio to create a 'silhouette' effect of the actress, I feel that this will look really effective during the split screens that I am planning to use throughout the video, particularly at the beginning.

The making of my magazine advert!

I found it really hard to find examples of R&B artists magazine advertisements. For my ancillary tasks I have chosen to design both a magazine advert, promoting my artists album, and a digipak. Although my research was unsuccessful, from both knowledge of this area and examples from other genres I found that magazine advertisements tend to be very similar to the album cover, if not the same and simply enlarged (with more detail e.g. release dates and websites). I also found that newer, less established artists don't tend to have an album name, and self title their albums. To make my ancillary tasks as accurate as possible, I decided that my album should be self titled to enhance my end result. Therefore I will not include the name 'Stride' in my magazine advert as it will not be featuring on the digipak. 

I plan to include a close up shot from my photo shoot on the cover of the digipak, and to make my magazine advert as authentic as possible, I will also include an image from this particular shoot in order to keep them consistent.

Add caption

After chosing an image I started to edit it on photoshop. I wanted to achieve an 'airbrushed' effect which tends to be very common for female R&B artists, on both their album covers and in their music videos! As I want my magazine advertisment to follow the same route I chose to produce this effect. To do this I used the 'eyedropper' tool to select the appropriate colours and filled in imperfections by using the brush tool. I used the same process to perfect the lips and brighten the eyes! I also used the eraser tool around the body as the images original background was an 'off-white' colour and didn't blend in with the advertisements clean white background! 

I decided to keep the background of my advertisment white, as the costume Alice is wearing is black, and I didn't want the overall imgage to be too dark! I found it really hard to find appropriate fonts on photoshop, therefore I downloaded a selection from the website dafont. I will most likely use the same font for both my magazine advert and album cover to keep up the consistency. So I decided to look at fonts on album covers, to get a rough idea of what I wanted! They tended to be either quite simple or big and bold (Like Jennifer Hudson's for example) 

Some of my Results:

I started to try out these fonts on my advert, but they just weren't working! I was finding it really difficult to find one that appropriatley fitted the genre whilst looking proffesional! I had first decided to use a Silver font, as I thought that black would be too harsh, however this just wasn't looking powerful OR proffessional enough! Also, with every font I found the name "Leah B" wasn't long enough to use in the style I had wanted to on my digipak, and as I wanted to use the same font, I decided to reconsider the name. I looked back at my previous suggestions but they all seemed a bit too predictable. Although I need to be addressing the typical conventions of the R&B genre, I was starting to think too far into it! I decided to keep things a bit more simple and use my artist's (actress) own name 'Alice Clark.' The letters in this name fitted the fonts better, but still didn't seem to correspond with one another. I then came across a font called Segoe Script in photoshop which almost gives a 'Signature' effect! This still looked a little plain, therefore i decided to add a black banner behind it, and change the font to white. 

This is fits the advertisement a lot better than the previous fonts, and the black and white complements the image I added.
I needed to add a website address to my advert, for listeners to find out more about the artist, I decided to make it simple after researching other R&B artists website addresses.  

The majority tended to feature the artists name and 'online' or 'official' etc. I decided to go for something similar "www.aliceclarkofficial.co.uk" and added it the bottom of my advert. I tried to achieve a similar effect to the title of the artists name, but used a less fancy font in block capitals to avoid making the whole image look too busy. 

I needed to add some information e.g. the release date and the price. I browsed on iTunes for some prices of R&B artists albums. My results showed that £7.99 was a common price for albums by artists similar to my own, therefore this is the price i chose. 

I used a very simple font for this and again, stuck with black. I also decided to mention the name of my track "You've got nerve" as albums and magazine adverts tend to state priority songs that are featured (usually ones with music videos.)

  

I wanted to keep the magazine advert simple, as the examples of R&B artists album covers i found, don't have a lot going on. And if I am going to create something similar for my digipak, my magazine advert will need to correspond to that! This is my final result....!

First day of filming!

Today was my first day of filming! Alice agreed to film during our free periods so we had 2 hours of solid filming! I decided to start off in the photography studio with some basic shots to get both myself and my actress a bit more confident with the lyrics and rhythm etc. and the space and lighting around us! I managed to achieve a pink effect, similar to the Pussy Cat Dolls music video which had inspired me, by adding coloured filters to the lights! This is shown really effectively in my footage and makes the location appear a lot more interesting! I plan to either repeat this or maybe even add different colours for each different costume?! I filmed Alice lip syncing to the beginning of the song and the chorus several different times, capturing her from different angles and positions. I found that filming an extreme close up of her lips was really effective! I plan to maybe film her singing the whole of the lyrics with this effect so that I can add it in at various intervals! I only filmed her in one of the costumes today, but I am really pleased with the outcome of my footage and ready to crack on!

Survey results!

After receiving input from my classmates, and coming up with various artist, song and album names, i decided to put together a survey and asked 20 people interested in the particular genre I am focusing on, what names they thought would suit my artist and her music best! These pie charts show the results...

It is clear from my results that there were particular Favorites and this survey has really helped to narrow down my overall decision. The most popular name for the artist was Leah B, the most popular name for the song was You've got the nerve and the most popular album name was Stride. I will take advantage of this feedback and use these three names to include in my ancillary tasks!