Final Website

I have finally completed my website for Noxa! I decided to stick with the theme of black and white that was presented in our music video and I am very pleased with the way my website came out. The site contains a home page, news, about, videos, gallery, shows and store page which are all filled with relevant content. This is the final site:

http://lucysaunders240.wix.com/noxawebsite

Final Music Video!

After a spending months planning, filming and editing our final sequence for our music video, "Narcissistic Cannibal", is complete! The final version includes the story of Noxa and her version of a personal purgatory, which takes place in a never-ending forest, that taunts her through eery signs that have been left for her. We mixed this in with artistic shots that are metaphors for our character and how she is feeling during the song. We have all worked so hard to create this video and we now, finally, have completed it!

Shotgun Records presents Noxa - 'Narcissistic Cannibal':

Digipak Back Cover

This is the back cover of the digipak and contains the list of Noxa's songs. Due to the colour of the image I may change to an entirely new image but for now their are currently 7 songs which all relate back to her character. The image contains a barcode and the picture was edited to look polarised and slightly more bleak:

Digipak Front Cover

My digipak front cover is complete and I am extremely happy with the way it turned out. I decided I wanted something simple yet artistic, two usually contrasting aspects of a image, but I really wanted something along these lines. I had previously edited an image were Noxa was covered in a paint-like effect and decided I wanted this to be my front cover:

I then made the image a little brighter so Noxa was stood out against the black:

I was happy with this as the theme one of our main colours, black, was largely present in the image. I then added in Noxa's logo but put a white glow around it to make it stand out against the black background:

I wanted to leave the cover like this but realised I needed to add the album title. I decided to simply go for the song title 'Narcissistic Cannibal as it can be considered Noxa's first song / music video. I chose a simple font that was slightly jagged on the sides as I thought it matched Noxa's overall persona. I then put a white glow around the text to match the artists name:

However I was unhappy with the placement of the title. I knew I wanted the artists name to be larger than the title as I consider this to be her first album and I wanted to promote her rather than the name of the album. I decided to make the title smaller and move it into the corner to make it stand out even more against the background. This is the end result:

Digipak Practise - Eyes

For my digipak I wanted to make sure our main colour scheme of black and white show to be the theme of my digipak which lead to me using the black and white effect to get the look I wanted. I took a screenshot from the footage where Noxa opens her eyes and decided to put it into Photoshop:

I started by using the blemish fixer to make Noxa's skin and eyebrows look neater and then put a black and white filter on to the image and played around with the fade and contrast until I ended up with this image:

This image makes Noxa's eyes and lashes look much more defined and match the theme that I wanted to display in my digipak. However I wanted to see if I could add a darker feel to the image showing that Noxa is not someone to be messed with. I put the image above into PicMonkey and began to put shadow effects and darkened the overall image. I also added a dark frame around image to make the whole picture darker. This is what I ended up with:

Similar to the second image this effect makes Noxa's eyes and lashes stand out against her skin. I love this effect as her eyes are completely black showing no emotions at all - which matches her character in 'Narcissistic Cannibal'. However I think this image really stands out and may clash with the other images that I have planned so I will have to consider which image I want to use carefully.

Editing Progress - Almost Finished!

Although we still have a lot of tweaking to do my group and I have nearly completed adding all of the shots we need to our music video sequence! I am so happy to see the whole video come together at last and am eager to make it perfect by taking on the advice that we got during the screening and tweaking it to our audience's liking. This is the progress we have made since the first editing blog post:

I think that during the weeks we have had to edit that we have progressed pretty far and have made lots of changes to the sequence than when we first started. All we need to do now is fill in the final three gaps, sync all of the shots to the music, change the colour with the 'three-way colour corrector' effect and we should be finished!

Editing - Continued

After the holidays had past my group and I returned to editing the sequence and preparing for the mock exams. The editing of the sequence is a currently moving at a slower pace than we would like but we want to make sure we are happy with what we are editing. We have also been looking back at our animatic to see if we are following the structure that we initially planned. Many of the shots were in the same place (with the exception of quicker edits) as the shots like back to their drawn out partner:

We hope to continue on this route as the animatic makes the structure of our video a bit easier when it comes to editing our first draft.

Editing

Today we started the editing process for our music video. When we started editing we noticed that some shots varied in colour and we learnt how to use the effect 'three-way colour corrector'. This effect allowed us to change the saturation and colour theme of the footage to match the other shots and the theme of the song:

We also decided to add a lens flare shot on top of the nature shots that we filmed in the forest to give in a 'dream-like' effect to symbolize that Noxa is in purgatory:

These were just a few of the edits that we made today and we plan to start editing the order of the video as soon as possible to be ready in time for our first screening in a weeks time. My group and I hope to either focus on the shots with effects like the ones above or to put all of the shots in order before adding any effects at all.

Forest Shoot #3

Today we went on our final shoot on location to film the final scenes before we start the editing process. When we arrived at our location we decided to go on a circuit and work our way around the forest, filming shots as we went. We also managed to use and introduce more props to the sequence such as a white rose, a photograph and some signs that we could place around the location for Noxa to find. Below are some screenshots that I took s of some of the footage that we filmed:

As we have gathered all of the footage that we needed we are now ready to start the editing process. We have put all of our footage together into the editing software and are ready to start editing as soon as possible to meet our next target which is to have a rough draft to show for screening in a weeks time to our target audience. 

Risk Assessment: Drama Room - Canon XF100

As we are returning to the drama room with an expensive camera we are required to write another risk assessment to make sure that we know the risks being in the drama room and using the camera. This assessment is similar to the last but as certain things are different this time around there were some different risks.

Forest Shoot #2

Today we went for our second shoot at of forest location to film some more storyboard shots. We filmed both the beginning of the music video and the wondering around the location shots which were both planned on the storyboard. We also filmed both close-ups and long shots that both represent different messages and feelings. We plan to head back to our location once more to finish up all of our location shots. The link below is a glog containing all of the screenshots from our footage and why we chose to film certain shots:

http://lucysaunders240565c619c75011.edu.glogster.com/forest-location/

Risk Assessment: Forest #2

Before heading off to our location tomorrow to film we are required to write a risk assessment to show that we understand and acknowledge all of the risks present. We have identified these risks and the ways to avoid them.

Audience Research: An Interview With Jamie

For a deeper insight to how our target audience thinks my group and I prepared some questions to ask someone that falls into our target audience. We interviewed our fellow classmate Jamie and as she has never seen our project so far we questioned her about the genre and her thoughts on location, even though we have decided on a location. This way we would be able to see if it was suitable and if not we would work out another location.

Unfortunately I made a mistake in the editing process of the interview as the end text contains a small mistake as the filming process has already started and should read "when continuing to film and begin to edit" rather than "start filming and editing". Sorry for the mistake!

Drama Room Shoot #2

Yesterday my group and I went to our drama location to film our first artistic scene. We decided a while ago that we wanted to use masks to display some of the themes that are introduced in the song such as the loss of of innocence. We had one white mask that symbolized innocence and purity and one black one to represent darkness and evil and the removal of the white mask in replacement for the black portrays this theme in particular:

All of the shots we filmed have a metaphor or meaning behind them and correspond to our storyboard. We decided to focus solely on the artistic shots rather than lip-syncing as we wanted to film our first artistic shoot. The image below is screenshots from every piece of footage that we filmed:

I also edited another edit but this time I concentrated more on effect such as lighting and slow-motion than the lip-syncing. I also added every shots that we filmed in this edit to showcase everything we filmed which is why some shots do not match the lyric or beat or similar shots are repeated:

Risk Assessment: Drama Room #2

As we will be filming in a drama room tomorrow with filming equipment and we had to identify the risks and figure ways around these risks. We have written up a risk assessment to show that we have identified the risks.

Forest Shoot #1

Today we went for our first scheduled shoot the in forest to film some of the shots that we had planned on our storyboard and animatic. Unfortunately everything seemed to go wrong (which we are going to blame on Friday 13th bad luck!) as the dress got dirty, it started to rain and it was freezing cold. However we did manage to get a few shots during the time we were there and we plan to return next week to continue were we left off. Here are some of the screenshots of the footage we got:

Risk Assessment: Forest

As we are heading to our forest location to film some shots tomorrow (13/11/15) we were required to fill in a risk assessment. This is to show that we have recognised the dangers of filming in our location, the level of the risk and ways to avoid them. Luckily none of the risks are extreme and the highest risk is slipping or tripping over but this is easily avoidable.

We will be filming and checking the footage tomorrow to check over what we have filmed and where it could fit in with the song.

Animatic

My group and I have finished the animatic! Despite having some scary-looking drawings in the animatic I feel like it will be a great help when we start editing. As our animatic is like a storyboard to music it helped us identify where we wanted the shots to be in the song and how long we wanted them to be. The animatic should also make filming a lot easier as we know what shots we want in each location, however we have decided that we wanted to film more shots than we have planned so if we changed our mind on a certain shot we will have a wide choice of replacements.

This is our finished animatic:

First Shoot

Today we had our first shoot which took place in the drama room. We decided to use the session as a practice to see how quick we could set up and pack away the lights and cameras and tested different lighting. We decided to use a blue covering over the lights to make the scene purple which makes a simple standing shot more visually interesting. The following shots are some screenshots taken from the footage we took during the session:

When editing the footage into a short piece I noticed that the medium shot cannot be edited next to a similar shot like the medium close up. It disturbs the flow of the song as the jump cut makes the lip-syncing jump forward. This is something I have learnt and will know to avoid when making the final video. Unfortunately we did not manage to film more than 6 shots (as several other contained behind-the-scenes footage) and when editing the sequence I had to use a cut as described above due to the lack of footage. However the lighting effect matches the feel of the song and this was a good chance for me to practice my editing skills when syncing the song to the lip-sync.

 

Logos and Copyright Letters

Today we took a break from story-boarding and decided to make some logos for our artist Noxa and a copyright letter. We started off by making some logos that we thought matched Noxa's star image. The first is the word 'Noxa' but the 'X' has a painted look to it as we thought it matched the alternative rock genre:

This logo has a sleek look to it and would look good on top of a website or CD cover. However the font used for the 'N', 'O' and 'A' is just a first draft as we wanted the 'X' to be the main focus of this logo. Our second logo is once again Noxa's name with a rose underneath it:

This logo represents Noxa's star image in a better light: sweet and innocent-looking yet deceitful just like a rose. This is shown through the rose being a dark grey/black rather than red or white, to show the loss of innocence. The text in this logo also looks scratched or roughly hand-written with gives the logo a more personal look.
We also discussed using just 'X' from the first logo or the rose from the second logo as a image alone so our audience could identify our artist through a picture alone:

Depending on which logo we choose we could use the full logo on the website and digipak but in other scenarios the image above could act as a logo without the text and our audience would still be able to identify who it belongs to.

After creating our logos we wrote a copyright letter to the artists of our song choice "Narcissistic Cannibal", EarlyRise. We wrote a short, but sweet, letter asking for their permission to use the their song cover in for our music video:

We decided to end the letter with our names, in alphabetical order, and our artist name 'Noxa'. We also decided to include our logo (although this is not a final decision and we could not make it any smaller!) as that is part of our star's image. The main reason we wrote the letter is to make sure that we can get permission from the band as we do not want to take their song if they are against people using their song.