Website Progress

My Website is still a work in progress at the moment but these are some images of what it looks like currently:

The Homepage- Following the pop conventions it has a major image of the singer to attract its audience. The font is the same as the Digi pack to keep continuity and a sense of brand. 

News - I am happy with the content on this page but I feel that at the moment there is something missing from it.

Gallery - I am really pleased with the photo-strip gallery it looks professional and allows there to be a variety of artist images.

Music - This page is completed, it is a main page where as the one specifically for the album is a sub-page dedicated to the new album. I included a previous attempt I made at a digi pack cover as the cover for an EP I thought this was a good idea as artist do usually offer free downloads on their websites.

Xena The Album - This page is also complete, I have included several key aspects such as the video, the album cover and also a way for fans to listen to some of the songs that will feature of the new album. 

Online Store - I am happy with the store as I have created a range of products to show the artist's diversity. I need to change the font to the brand font that I have used on every other page. But other than that I believe this page is complete. 

- I still need to fill in the events page. 

- I also need to create a Bio page for the artist. 

Inspiration

One of the inspirations we took from the original was this -

They have I Love It written on their hands in a black marker and we though this looked really effective so wanted to try this ourselves. We tried this with the powder paint but it didn't really work so when we were using the glow paint we attempted it again. This is what we ended up with -

1950's Re-Shoot

We have reshot the opening due to issues we had whilst editing. We were unhappy with the way the footage looked when we were trying to piece it together to create a believable 1950s setting. The first shoot was fairly rushed as well so this time we were careful to make sure that we had ample footage to play with. In this shoot we tried to use more realistic props and professional in comparison  to what we had done before. We also developed the opening more than we had beforehand, including the addition of dialogue.

Crucial changes we made to our opening - 

1. We made an adjustment to the outfit that Katy was wearing, we removed the cardigan to give the more natural effect as she is in her own home. It also makes her look more vibrant as the dress is red with the original white cardigan it took away the effect of her dress. 
2. We also made a clothing adjustment to Taran, the outfit he is in is more formal now and the hairstyle is more fitted to the time period we are looking at. This change in outfit definitely makes a difference to the way the shot feels when you are watching it. 
3. Change to several props, we added a more old fashioned looking radio that look better in the close up we are using it in as well as also changing the cake we used to a bigger size so that when it is thrown it makes more of an impact as well as having several more angle of it hitting him so that you can see the whole scenario. 
4. As I mentioned before we added dialogue which we will use subtitles for as we aren't sure whether or not the dialogue will be effective on its own. We can also have a go at finding a suitable font for this. 

Although we have made a massive improvement to the original footage we had the opening we now have is longer than and takes more time from the song, which is only around 3 minutes long and we have a lot of footage to fit into it. 

Powder Paint Filming

Today we filmed the powder paint which was so much fun to do. Although the weather wasn't very nice we managed to shoot before it rained which could have caused an issue with the paint becoming liquid.  We shot at The King Centre Park in Chessington as this was easily accessible for all the people we asked to help us out as well as being a large open space that allowed us to throw the paint around. Unfortunately we were unable to film any where else due to needing permission to use the powder paint, so we were unable to use the desired destination we had planned which was Painshill Park. But this didn't seem to cause an issue the field was a decent backdrop for the shoot and we didn't have a problem with continiuity.

The powder paint worked better than we had expected it too and looked great in shot. Once we have colourised the paint clouds it will fit in to our film in the way we want it too. By making the colour more vivid in editing, we will hopefully be able to make the setting look warmer as it by the images it can be seen it was very dismal day.

Making Powder Paint

In our first attempt to make the powder paint to use for filming we made it ourselves using cornflour and food colouring. This had its benefits:

• Cheaper than buying actual powder paint 
• More accessible for us as students without a real budget
• Easy to make
• We could choose how much we made/used

A big issue with this way of doing it was that we were not able to get a vivid enough colour as the colour would dull down any food colouring we used. For instance we used a red food dye but the final result of the dried powder was a pink despite how much food colouring we had added.


The other issue with this is that we made it a while before were able to shoot the powder paint due to our volunteers having commitments and needing them all on the same day. The powder did not keep very well and therefore had to be thrown away before we could us it.

We ended up using actual powdered paint bought from an art shop in Kingston although this was more expensive, it did end up looking a lot better as the colours were more vibrant and the powder was finer therefore was easier to throw.

Editing progress

We have been editing our current footage and currently we have filmed and edited up to the point in which we want to add the powder paint party. The powder paint we plan to film during half term. We have tried to use a lot of quick cuts and colourisation to make our footage as close to the genre as possible. The editing has so far been an interesting process as we have been experimenting with different effects to create the desired look for our footage. 

Also the work we have done as group has been very effective due to the amount of ideas we all have. The collaboration of all of our ideas has been great to allow it to be more flexible than we had originally    anticipated. The collaborated ideas has also meant that we ended up with shots that we hadn't storyboarded and different effects that we hadn't really thought about before hand.