The Construction Process

Jon Black

In filming the music video in all locations we used a digital camcorder to record the main footage. We also used a stills camera (to record content for the website, the social media accounts, and the digipack products), and had a tripod to use with the main camera to get a steady shot for some of the sequences within the music video. We used the stills camera alongside the main camera mainly because it was easier to manage the extra content for the ancillary products when using a separate device, but also because this meant that we could split the work and have different group members recording different content concurrently (which maximises the time allocated at each shoot). In regards to the aesthetics of the video, we recorded most shots at day, so no lighting equipment was needed for the shoots – but most of the video’s aesthetic comes from the colour grading carried out in post production (in Final Cut Express for the video, and Photoshop/Wix for the other two products)

The Filming Process

The Website

In creating the website product I used Wix, a free online website creator that allows users to make professional looking websites.

One feature of Wix allows users to insert images into the site and edit them with relative ease. I mostly used this feature to adjust images to differing saturations or warmth levels to match the aesthetic with the music video and digipack. In order to make the Website product match with the Digipack product, I considered the colour scheme and set the image temperature and saturation to bring all images on the website as close to the Digipack colour palette as possible.

Image Manipulation

To create the News page, we needed a blog to create post updates about the band. I used the "Blog" feature in Wix to do this, which allowed me to post directly to the website on the page. The set up of the blog was extremely simple, and opposed to creating an offsite blog and embedding it into the news page it seemed the easiest way to create the News page with a professional aesthetic and layout.

On Site Blog Creation

We needed a way to create an online store to sell Limerence merchandise to the fanbase. As with the creation of the blog, the Wix software also has a way to create a generic online store and customize it accordingly. We decided on a few products, and I created the profiles for each (the pricing, titles, product descriptions, and refund policies custom written and added to every product page), before adding the images for each – which were all created on Photoshop (with a few product images being made in collaboration).

The Store

The Digipack

In creating the Digipack product I used Adobe Photoshop, an image editing software often used within the music industry, as well as by other media corporations.

We needed a unique font, so we used a font downloaded outside of Photoshop to give our band identity a distinctive look. The resource we used was ‘Dafont.com’, which was useful as it provided a multitude of free fonts to download and was extremely easy to use from the perspective of a new user of their service.

We went with ‘King’ and uploaded it for use in Photoshop. The logo was made in King, then exported into an image file which was then used in the website product in the top bar (above the navigation bar – Limerence’s brand being prominent in every webpage in the product).

Custom Font

Naturally, a project as complex as a Digipack is created on multiple layers in the Photoshop software – and with these layers was also the option to group them together to better organise the content. Initially, there were problems as the layers weren’t named, meaning that the content was tricky to locate within the project, but this was resolved later on. We certainly could have improved this by naming each layer to make sure the project was as organised as possible and to make changes and improvements to the product more efficiently.

Layer Locks and Grouping

In order to make the images consistent with the other products in regards to the colour scheme – the colour grading tools within Photoshop were utilised to create the ‘Indie Folk’ vibe from the raw content. We utilised tools that changed Hue and Saturation, Brightness and Contrast, Exposure, and the Curves tool – all of which being useful in changing the images imported into the software. We initially went for a black and white vibe, thinking it would be good as it’s a common convention of Indie music videos, but after further discussion we decided to improve the product by making it less saturated (which in turn made it visually closer to the website product).

Image Colour Correction

The Video

In creating the Music Video product we used Final Cut Express, an industry standard video editing software package.

Though I personally didn’t set up the project, I do know that the project was set to save in the hard drive scratch disk so the editing software had space to save the project, and that we set the framing as 1920pX1080p to match the digital camera’s frame size (this means that transferring the content over and editing it was extremely easy).

However there was an initial problem that the camera content was saved in a file type that was unsupported by Final Cut Express, and this was the case for most of the shoots. We addressed this by converting the files into .mov – an action I carried out with ‘AVS video converter’ which is a conversion software I have access to outside of college. This allowed the files to be converted prior to each editing session, efficiently carrying on with the project despite this technical issue.

Setting up the project

To fully utilise the software, multiple timelines were used to edit the project which meant that clips could be interchanged, shuffled, and modified without loss of footage. Despite this, we didn’t rely on multiple timelines as much as say someone who’s creating a performance only music video – as the performance in our video is dotted throughout the piece, and therefore not many multiple timeline cuts were made as the narrative editing process was mostly linear and heavily inspired by the animatic and storyboards we created in the Research and Planning stage (though of course major changes were made, as in any project). I wouldn’t say we edited to a professional industry standard, but the techniques we used in the software and critical decisions made in editing the piece are skills that are no doubt useful in the process of creating any music video (both commercial and independent).

Multi-Timeline Editing

To make the raw footage fit style and genre, colour correction was used to change the aesthetic of the music video to fit our vision for the video.

The ‘Colour Correction’ tool was primarily used to desaturate the footage – supporting the convention of many Indie products having muted colours. Alongside this, we experimented with the ‘RGB’ balance tool, which changes the tint of the footage (which could have been a brown hue to link the video to the digipack and website products), however we decided against this visual decision as the colour correction tool allowed us to capture the atmosphere and vibe of the song through the visuals effectively.

Colour Correction

Our vision for the music video was minimalist yet ambitious in emotional resonance, and as such we did decide early on that visual effects created via Adobe After effects should also be included in the piece. A notable effect used was the brief shot in which the word ‘Love’ is wiped off a whiteboard to reveal the word ‘Hate’ underneath it – which was done through After Effects by layering the ‘Love’ layer on top of the ‘Hate’ layer and animating the top to move with the wiping hand to reveal the second word underneath. To make sure the shot looked professional, the layers were also feathered on the edges to make them blend well with each other (as the hard lines would make the effect apparent and unprofessional).

Visual Effects

Within Final Cut Express, we exported the music video with the ‘Quicktime conversion’ tool, and the final version of the music video has been uploaded onto Vimeo – although the first draft was uploaded to Youtube. The main benefit of having it online is that anyone with the link (or an idea of what to look for) can find and access it – meaning that from an artist standpoint, it can be released to an existing fanbase and be shared around via social media (this sharing of content usually causes a notable spike in views if popular). Naturally this medium is also beneficial as both Vimeo and Youtube have comment sections underneath the video, meaning that the audience can directly respond to the content and give feedback easily (which can then be responded to by the artist with the ‘reply’ tool).

Exporting the Music Video

We didn’t use Twitter to gain feedback on rough cuts, but we did use Google Forms for this purpose. Google Forms allows the user to create instant, free surveys online which can be shared via a web link. This allowed us to share the music video (embedded in the survey) alongside some questions in a survey that can be responded to by multiple users simultaneously. Though we only got six forms handed in, this shows that the Google Forms service is useful for this purpose, as it directly benefited us as the producers, but also indirectly benefited the audience as their answers shaped how we created our products. However, we did utilise Twitter in the creation of the website as many professional artists utilise social media to connect with fans – and we are directly contactable over all of our social media accounts (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and the comments sections on our Youtube channel) – so feedback was available over these mediums, though regrettably we didn’t use them for this purpose.

Improvements to Rough cuts