Digipak Production

 



The above images are my attempts of producing a digipak for my music video. The stills were taken at the shoot for my video. I used Photoshop to manipulate the photo of the pair of ballet shoes.

 

The first image was edited using the 'threshold' tool - I adjusted this so that the whites were pure white and the blacks were 'pure' black. This gave a striking contrast, as well as giving it a 'dishevelled' look.

 

In order to boost the contrast within the image, I chose to use a range of colours for the text. I chose to go with three primary colours so that they don't necessarily match together, yet they all contrast with each other. The colours and contrast draws the audience's attention to the digipak and makes them want to pick it up and see what the album is about. The lack of artist name would make them want to do this more as they will look through the digipak attempting to find out who the artist is; perhaps the only way to find out is to look it up on the internet or give it a proper listen.

 

I think these digipaks will appeal to a wide audience as it is simply an interesting digipak that anybody of any age would like to pick up and have a look at.

 

Although this may not be the digipak I use for my final task, I believe it is a good start and is the sort of minimalist direction I want to go in.

Flower Problems!

As you can see by the photo, I encountered some problems overnight with the flower drooping, thus falling out of frame.

The flower shouldn't droop any more as the tape is holding it in place. I have now re-composed the shot and have reset the timer to shoot every hour, thus resulting in 240 images over the next ten days. I set an extra day (24 images) on the timer just in case I want an extra day and I'm not around to adjust the remote.

I will have enough memory too as every image is around 5mb, resulting in 264 images being taken which = 1.32gb/8gb.

I have spare batteries charged too which I can pop into the camera whilst it's on the tripod. I've also got spare batteries charged for the remote too. What could possibly go wrong?!

Time Lapse Set-Up

This evening, after my light box and studio lamp arrived the previous morning I decided it would be appropriate to begin my time-lapse photography project which will be integrated into my music video. I will be photographing a flower every three hours over a period of around ten days in order to mirror a dying relationship.

I started off by securing my black backdrop with Velcro onto the white light box. In order to achieve high contrast levels, I chose a white rose as the flower to use in the project.

As you can see in the photos attached to this blogpost, I am using a professional studio lamp to provide important direct light to my flower in order to boost contrast levels.

After securing the backdrop, I secured the rose to it with heavy-duty black tape in order to prevent the flower from falling over in the next week whilst it decays and changes shape.

I then set up my DSLR camera on a heavy duty tripod in order to ensure stability. I composed the image originally with the flower facing slightly away from the camera and the lamp. However, I later changed this (see photos) and lowered the tripod so that I could get an extreme close-up that was directly pointing at the flower to make the composition more appealing and powerful.

After this, I ensured that the curtains were drawn in order to maintain a constant exposure over a long period of time.

I then set the cable release timer to take an exposure every three hours, one-hundred times over. After that, I shut the door in hope that nothing falls over or changes too dramatically. Let's see how it goes!

Location, location, location!

The images above are of the location I am going to use to shoot my music video. It is exactly what I wanted as there are plain white walls with tungsten lighting which creates a deep contrast between black and white.

There is a piano available to use in this room too which means I can have the dancer in the same room as the two actors (as set out in my story-board) - the perfect location for my shoot.

I believe that I'll need around 5 hours of shooting time and I aim to have it all shot by 15th March 2013 and have the remainder of March to edit the video.

Onwards and upwards!