Designing Our DigiPack

 The music genre that we are working with it Club/Electro
We have to remember that we are designing an ALBUM not just a Single so can not base our artwork on this one song.
 So far we have chosen a rough colour scheme, Neon, club colours (blue, red, green) against a black or dark blue background.
 Although we will start with a photo that we take, the image is going to graphic.
Between the colours and graphics we will show that our band's genre is club inspired (neon colours, like the lasers in a club) electronic because of the computer generated images with under-tones of darkness with the black background.
People react to images subconsciously due to 'social priming'.
For example, putting black into the cover doesn't necessarily mean that the music will be dark, but people have learnt that Gothic culture mix black with other colours, like the Cradle Of Filth album where Black and Green is mixed.
Similarly, if we used a pink and white colour scheme it would be assumed that the music is feminine, light-hearted and mellow. 

DigiPacks

 When designing a digipack, the first thing that we need to do is establish what audience we are marketing to.

 For Example - Ed Sheeran's music is predominantly acoustic and 'mellow' with a touch of indie-culture so his album cover is black and white, rather than electric bold colours which would suggest something more club or electro orientated. The focus of his cover is him but with his back turned so we know the music is going to be about emotion but not necessarily about him. With this cover we can expect something relaxing and simplistic rather than messy and loud.

Now we have the highly contrasting cover of Cradle Of Filth, a metal group. Titled 'Thornography' images of a totrured Chritst (the crown of thorns) and self indulgent sexuality come to mind. This colour of this album coveys a cold, gothic, unhealthy feel. The crucifixes and position of the man and woman depicts an anti-christian, debauched, demonic atmosphere. Therefore we can expect that the music will convey the same sort of feeling. The song name also reflect the intentions of the musics with titles such as:

Temptation

Tonight in flames

Cemetry and Sundown

The Shoot Day

1

2

3

4

As Holly was mainly shot on a rope swing we had to think of some way to 'cheat' is otherwise she would be very uncomfortable. For the close ups of her face or mid close of her face and body, she was actually standing on a ladder, (Photo 4),  about five or six feet off the ground, this way it was more comfortable for her and easier for us to film as she didnt move around so much. At the start of the shoot day, it was hard for Holly to relax because we could not use a harness whilst she was on the swing as it would be seen and she had to be at least five or six feet in the air for the shot to look right, this nervousness was quite obviouse when we watched what was being filmed on the TV that the camera was linked up to, even with someone holding the bottom of the rope so she would not swing about as much (Photo 2). I did most of the directing and filming in the group and the others would watch the TV moniter and tell me is my directions were working, this gave us better shots as what looks good from my point of view may not look so good on screen. 

Although Holly was higher than the other band members (Photo 3) we didnt want her to seem like she had much higher status in the band, we just wanted to  give her the slightly dominant position of the lead singer there fore she was the main focus in most of the shots, yet we tried to avoid shooting her from a high angle. To do this we could have raised the Tripod, but that would have been awkward to film on, or we could have lowered her but this would not have been as effective as we really wanted to convey the feeling that she was swinging on a rope high off the ground. With these two options out, we decided to use the 'genie' a small lift that fit just two people and a camera at best, but with two people it becomes cramped and movement is restricted so only one person would be in there at one time. Holly was also much more relaxed in these shots because if she did fall, she could just grab onto the cage of the genie. before we introduced the Genie, (Photo 1) we kept getting the ladder that Holly was standing on in the shots, we almost reverted back to her sitting on the swing without support. However, with the genie we were filming at a much less awkward angle so movement wise, we were not resticted by lack of reach and could adjust the shots to cut out the ladder.

I think that we worked really well as a team; I had most knowledge of the camera and as I direct mainly in theatre, I also took a main role in directing, But Daisy and Joe were better than me at seeing if the shots worked spacially on screen. Mikey had lots of good ideas about which members of the band to focus on the most, and he was also good at going off to find extra emergency cast member's whilst I continued shooting with the band and Daisy and Joe set up a make-shift dressing room and filled in the new cast as to what they were meant to do.

Account of the shoot day

 How The shoot day was meant to run:
Night before: Set up the minimalistic black set with Holly's rope swing.
Morning: Shoot the band (Holly, Will and Otto)
Lunch Time: Set up lighting and set in the woods
Afternoon: Go down to the woods with the rest of the cast and shoot the wood's scene

BUT!...

The night before it rained! The reason we could not set up the woods scene the night before was incase it rained, hence why we would do it on the day.
However, the ground was far to wet so we just could not set up of shoot down there.
Luckily the night before i had gone to dress the set with this in mind so instead of making the set minimalistic, we raided the set and probs storgae room and designed a sort of scrap heap with tiers, chains and fake sheets of corrogated iron that was left over one of last years thrillers, just incase we didnt get a chance to rescedule the woods scene.
 
    We went ahead with the preformance shots which went really well (described in more detail bellow) but by this point, we had told our wooods cast that the shoot was off and we were going to rescedule.
We finished the majority of preformance by 1pm and just as a precaution decided to improvise a woods scene in the studio incease we didnt get to shoot outside.
  Mikey then went on a mad scramble around the school dragging anyone in free period to the studio, Kindly Jason, a media teacher, let us have his class which pretty much saved the day! Daisy and Joe then set up a make-shift dressing room and started to dress the new found cast, filling them in on the basic storyline- bearing in mind that at this point, not even we really knew what we were doing. Baisicly, we told them to be 'creepy' and 'demonic'. For such little infomation i think that the cast worked really really well.
 Meanwhile I finished up the last of the preformance shots to release our DJ and basist and talked to matt and luke about  what sorts of things we could film with this lastminute.com cast.
 
      We improvised a scene where the animal people stood in a circle, I stood in the middle with Luke holding the camera (hand held to get a shaky shot) and stayed behind him as he spun around experimenting with shooting high angle and low angle either holding the camera above them of kneeling, even lying, on the floor- shooting from Abby's (The victimised 'innocent') perspective. After Luke had demonstrated this I suggested we did the same shot but with Abby in the middle. I shot alone this time shouting directions as I filmed. Every time I stopped on a characters face they would lunge at me, when I got onto the floor I shouted for them to begin climbing over the camera. In the Shots with Abby in the circle I would come in and out of the group shooting from the perspective of one of the animal people.
 
  We then had the idea to incorporate Holly into the shots again. Holly and I got inside the genie lift and it was raised to about 15-20 feet. Holly then lay on her bak with her head overhanging the edge. She held the rope that she had previously been swinging on and i stood over her shooting down wards so it looked like the camera was above her whilst the climber up the rope. We did one shot of this with her singing the track then repeated the shot but with Abby in the circle of animal people on the floor below.

  Just before we let everyone go, we shot all of the animal people tangled on the ground with one standing up in the middle in a flexible back-bend. Although this shot followed no real logic narrative wise, it provided a good opportunity for screen- grabs to be used in our DigiPack.