Digipak Research

Another aspect of our courswork is to design a Digipak.

Firstly we researched to discover what a Digipak is and existing examples.

What is a Digipak?

Digipak is a patented style of compact disc or DVD packaging, typically consisting of a gatefold, (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

Filming

First day of filming was planned to be at my house, having been given the deadlines as very soon we were aware we had to have some sort of material to be-able to work with and get our footage done.

Although we used this as an opportunity to see what elements worked and which did not.

The lighting in many of the shots was awful, the suit that Jon used appeared green despite it being grey. Many of the outside shots, the angle of the camera was extremely wonky or you were able to see a reflection in windows and glass making it look amateur filming which is definitely not what we want.

Some of the shots are too close up or don't include Jon, focusing on more insignificant objects.

It gave us all experience with filming and also skills of directing the actors around.

We know we still have a lot of work to do, but we can use the material we have obtained.

Animatic Storyboard

Now we have drawn the storyboard we have composed an animation of the pictures.

This is very useful, as it gives a very vague idea of how the music video will eventually turn out.

It provokes aspects that we had not considered before until we had made the animated video including timing, continuity and the reference to the lyrics.

We had huge gaps where we realized we needed more scenes but still had to make sense to the whole story.

The animatic overall looks very affective, although it is only a very rough cut of how the overall video should appear and how we plan for it to be eventually.

It gives opportunities to plan improvements.

Storyboard drawing

Now we have a set idea of what we want the video to be based around, we worked out as a group the scenes we would have to shoot, and also parts of our film that we would be able to repeat.

The idea of time passing and a new day would mean significant things such as the routine of the male in our video and his journey to work.

Jake took this into account and produced a hand-drawn storyboard for our group, which included around 30 different pictures. As the artist of the group Jake was voted to draw out all the different pictures.

Now we have produced the pictures, we have to put them into an animated video which will enable us to work out the timing of the shoots and if it works out how we intend it to.

Storyboard FINAL IDEA

Our final idea was based upon the feedback that our teacher gave us.

She pointed out how we may have gone about the wrong way of our song - choosing a theme that is too mellow and does not suit the theme of the song.

Pitch

We had the task of presenting our video idea in a 'dragons den' style to our teacher to see how she would perceive it and approve it as a successful idea.

We presented our idea, but as we did so we realized how very much it would not work. The interpretation of death did not fit the tone of the song which was actually quite fast pace upbeat song.

So we went back to the discussion within our group - we listened repeatedly to the song - despite the halfway gone being perceived as death it could also be about a relationship.

It would be much easier to convey, it is also much more realistic to film a video as it is such a common theme to appear within music videos. It made us rethink very carefully our next video idea - not only did we need a good storyline, it needed to fit in with the tone and lyrics of the song !

Copyright

To use the song of our choice - we have had to ask for permission from the producers of our song.

I have emailed the official Lifehouse band to as if we can use the song for our video - so far they have not replied which means that we should be fine to use the song.

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by the law of a jurisdiction to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.

Storyboard FIRST IDEA

Our first idea was loosely based around the idea of death.

We interpreted the lyrics 'halfway gone' as a girl being halfway gone out of a boys life.

She would portray a ghost, ke

ep reappearing throughout his everyday life as he cannot get over her - shes halfway gone out of his life until the very end when he establishes that he is finally over her.

We planned how we would need a main male character protagonist - it would be vital that they were able to act to a certain standard and would be willing to express the grief they feel. The girl would have to also be believable in the role she would be portraying - constantly haunting him to show that he is not over her.

The idea initially was very good, we had planned our locations - it would include places to establish her death - such as a graveyard and everyday places as he would continue his everyday life - town centre.

Group discussions

We had thorough group discussions throughout lessons - deciding upon ideas and how we interpreted the music. We realised how very difficult that the task was going to be - not only did we have a to have a good storyline that the audience would understand but we needed locations that would be sutible and people to star in our video that would take it seriously and would fit the roles of our characters.