Monday 18 April 2016

Final:Band Website

Here is a link to our final version of our website:
http://thebikelocks.wix.com/fgmb

Like we planned we created and added a custom made band header as well as adding working links to our social media website and our band logo:
We also added a photo album, embedded some YouTube videos from our bands YouTube page, modified the text to give some information on our band and, of course, embedded our music video into the website.

Wednesday 13 April 2016

Final: Insert Booklet

Here is our final insert booklet:










The layout and design that we used for this insert was heavily influenced by Oasis's album booklet 'standing on the shoulders of giants' which I have done a blog post on. We really liked how their booklet looked with the photos behind the lyrics and how these photos gave the readers bit of insight into the band members lives outside of performing, In our insert we have added photos that we took when we were filming some of the scenes for our music video in the hopes that it will re-create the the affect that oasis's booklet had on us. We also added a grainy filter to each of the photos used in our booklet to give it more of a 'dated' look. For the first and last pages we listed who in our group work on what in the music video and also gave some special thanks to the people outside our group that helped in making it possible.


Sunday 10 April 2016

Final:Back of Album Cover

 This is final design we chose for the back of our album cover-taking inspiration from some of our first ideas on the back cover by using the shot of the back of the mini but with our own design added to it. The mini was very iconic and fit with the 'retro' theme we had in our music video and wanted that same theme carried onto our album cover but we felt that just having the original photo on the back would not match with the final design of the front cover(with the front over being hand drawn). So, we came up with the idea of tracing round the original photo by hand, giving it the same look as the front cover, and then adding the track list into the back window like we originally planned.. This is the end result which we though matched perfectly with the design of the front cover and therefore making the overall design of the album cover fit together much better then just having the original shot used:

 
 This is a picture taken of our actual CD. It has several added features such as the production company logo and the barcode.

Final:Front of Album Cover

The final front cover of our album is based on the design of the Stuck in the Middle with You single cover which is a parody of the original Reservoir Dogs DVD cover. So our cover is basically a parody of a parody.


Original Reservoir Dogs DVD cover


























Stuck in the Middle with You single cover













We took ideas from each of the covers and used them to design our final one as shown here with the blue depicting shaving foam from our music video instead of the red blood on the other covers and with our own band members as silhouettes. We decided to go with this cover as we felt it would appropriately fit with the genre of our music video. With it being folk/soft rock so it made sense for the cover to not be too flashy but also not too basic and the inter-textual reference to reservoir dogs also made it a good fit.




Friday 8 April 2016

Planning:More Album Cover Ideas

In our music video we feature multiple shot from inside a classic mini cooper so we thought it would be a good idea to incorporate it into our album cover. The retro mini fit perfectly with the theme of our music video which is parody of a classic song. We were going to use a photo from the front of the mini showing with the whole band inside on the front cover and the back of the mini with the track list on the reverse side but after taking a few practise shots we felt it just didn't quite work like we hoped it would with mini taking up most of the space on the cover with the band members being hard to clearly see.
Thoughts for our front cover







However the back shot from the mini that would have the track list on it would not go to waste as it would eventually become the template for our final back cover.

The original back cover design

Sunday 3 April 2016

Planning:First Album Cover Ideas

We originally thought that our album cover should have every member of our band riding on a 4-man tandem bicycle as we believed this theme would fit very nicely with our bands name which is the 'bike locks'. However, when we searched for one we found that they were VERY expensive to rent and even harder to actually collect , so,we went for the next best thing which was each member of the band on a different mode of transport (scooter,bike,tricycle etc.) which is what this sketch depicts.

The reason for which we decided against using this as our final album cover was due to the fact that even though it matched the theme of our band it had no link with our music video which we thought was something that would be important to include so we decided to change it again.




Friday 1 April 2016

Research: Adding A Filter To Our Clips

When we were reviewing the raw clips that we recorded for our music video we noticed  that some of them were just a little to bright and colourful to fit with the 'retro' 1970's re-make look we were going for. This was especially apparent in the band performance shots which featured many different  colours of bright flashing lights. To combat this problem and add a bit of an older film look to our music video we did some research online into how to create our own custom vintage filter.
I came across this website here that gave us some ideas on where to start and here is the end result:

 http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-create-vintage-video-effects-in-adobe-premiere


Before Filter:

After Filter:



 As you can see the filter has increased the reds in the shadows and given the whole footage a warm orange tone, similar to that seen in old video footage, and has improved the look of our music video drastically. This filter also dimmed the colours in the band performance shots so they were not as vibrant and fit the overall theme much better than before.