Development of our digipak

We started out using a template for the digipak, adjusting the photos to fit. Originally, however, we somehow places the front and back photos in the reverse positions and so it ended up back to front.

Developing upon this, we swapped the covers to be the right way round, and placed an image of Jay with his guitar on the back cover to further show off his organic star image. We also created an inside slip for the CD and the CD itself with a picture of Jay on it to make his star image even more recognisable.

After this, we removed the title ‘Best Fake Smile’ from the front of the album as that was the single name and we wanted the album name to be ‘Jay Harper’ so as to help people recognise his name and establish himself in the music industry.

For the next draft of our digipak we changed the font to a bolder, more curved font. The boldness allows his name to stand out which is needed for a new artist, and the curved lettering connotes that he is a relaxed artist and therefore demonstrates that he is indie and organic and so sells his brand as such. In addition, we added the track names to the back cover to make it more professional and changed the inside slip, making the text smaller and adding another photo of Jay to show off his star image more with his guitar.

After realising that we had put the title of the album, his name ‘Jay Harper’, on the back cover for the previous draft of the digipak, we removed it. We also decided to remove the image we had recently added to the inside slip because after we had looked at it for a while and taken advice from other people, we saw that it was too much and was crowding the digipak.

Feedback from our final music video

Development of our narrative

Our narrative started as Jay being a social outcast who's girlfriend, Zoe, is in the 'popular crowd', a group of mean girls who's harsh judgement of people deter her from being herself and showing her affection for Jay in public. He tells her via song that she shouldn't have to wear her 'best fake smile' in order to impress her 'friends' and she should just be herself and forget about them so as to maintain their relationship and end her inner turmoil. However, after reviewing the shots we filmed for this narrative, we didn't think they showed what we wanted them to show well enough due to the poor acting of the popular girls, small range of shots and unintentional cheesy feeling created. We decided not to re-film it and instead changed the narrative as we thought it would be a greater opportunity to get better shots.

This narrative change removed the 'mean girl' plot completely and created a different story where Zoe's boyfriend is a guy called Ben, and Jay is Zoe's friend who can see that she is unhappy in her relationship and wants her to end it. To do this, we had to shoot new scenes with Ben and Zoe together.

We then decided to change the narrative to make it more exciting where Jay and Zoe are in a relationship, and Zoe seeing Ben behind Jay's back. Jay is aware of this, however, and is telling Zoe via song that he wants her to come clean to him and not lie to his face. Although, after reviewing the music video, we realised that we didn't have enough footage to efficiently portray this and so we changed the narrative again to something easier to portray and filmed more shots for it.

This new narrative became Zoe being in a relationship with Ben, but seeing Jay behind Ben's back. Jay can see that Zoe is unhappy in her relationship with Ben as he doesn't pay her much attention, and Jay sings the song for her as a way of telling her to end things completely with Ben as he cares a lot more about her.

However, after looking at the music video and showing it to a focus group, we realised that the narrative was still quite hard to understand as there still weren't enough shots of Ben to demonstrate his role in his and Zoe's relationship. Therefore, we removed all the shots of Ben to eliminate this confusion and changed the narrative to Jay and Zoe thinking about their past relationship together when they used to be happy. This narrative is a lot clearer in the video than previous narratives and although simpler, this simplicity can relate to the indie genre as the narratives of indie videos don't tend to be very convoluted.

Account of editing

Account of editing from SamMullerMedia

Final music video

Planning as a group

We commonly used Facebook as a way of communicating as a group. We created a media group where the three of us could talk together and organise ideas for filming, locations for filming, reminders and many other things essential for the planning of our music video. We also created another group on Facebook where we added our actors as well. This meant that we were able to tell them where to go at what time, what to wear, what to bring, and in Justin's (Jay's) case, the lyrics to learn. All of this helped us to coordinate everything we were doing in awareness of each other, showing how we worked well as a group to achieve this level of planning.

New narrative

After looking at the music video and showing it to a focus group, we realised that the narrative was quite hard to understand as there still weren't enough shots of Ben to demonstrate his role in his and Zoe's relationship. The shots of Zoe and Ben in Wembley didn't seem that interesting to our teacher and various other people who saw it, and so even if we added these clips to the music video to create more shots of Ben, it may still end up confusing the audience which we don't want in an indie artists' debut music video. Therefore, we will remove all the shots of Ben to eliminate this confusion and change the narrative to Jay and Zoe thinking about their past relationship together when they used to be happy. Although this narrative is more simple, this simplicity can relate to the indie genre as the narratives of indie videos don't tend to be very convoluted.

Feedback from our rough cut

Music video rough cut 3

This is the third rough cut for our music video. Although we haven't yet added in the new shots we filmed in Wembley, we are planning to do this after showing our media class to gain feedback on the basic idea, look, and editing of the video.

Shoot day 5

We wanted to film in a place that was less natural than where we had filmed previously with Jay as Zoe and Ben's relationship is not supposed to look so real. We therefore decided to film in Wembley to create a contrast between her relationship with Ben and her relationship with Jay which, as they spend their time with less people around them, is clearly more real. The advance planning of our location and how we would meet allowed us to be better prepared and ready to film when we got there. The filming went well as we got a range of different shots from many different angles. As we had worked with these actors before, we knew how to manage them and so we worked well with them and as a group by listening to each other. As we decided to start filming earlier in the day, around 9:00am, we gave ourselves a lot more time to film and so we weren't as rushed as we have been previously. Throughout the shoot, I filmed from different angles and helped come up with new shots that we hadn't thought of before, such as the passing elevator shot which is quite different to other shots.

New shots to add to video

Music video rough cut 2

Shoot day 4

Our advance planning of locations allowed our group and our actors, Zoe and Ben, to meet us where we wanted to film, King George Recreational Ground, on time, meaning that we weren't wasting any time. Since we changed our narrative, we didn't have an animatic concerning what we were filming, therefore we could have had a small storyboard or a list of shots for this new narrative section of our video to help us prepare for filming. The filming went okay as we got a range of shots, however, on the day it started to rain quite heavily and as we wanted to film outside we were postponed a bit. Unfortunately, since our actors were restricted on time, we didn't get as much footage as we would have liked. Therefore, although while filming we managed our actors well, causing them to listen while we were telling them what to do, the time constraints we had forced us to rush when we perhaps could have prepared better for another day. I was in control of the camera a lot, trying to keep it steady in the rough wind, and also let the actors know what they should be doing. Altogether we worked well as group on the day, but in preparation for the day we were all struggling to find times that we and the actors were able to film.

New narrative

After thinking more carefully about it, we realised that the footage of Jay and Zoe together in the forest looked too happy for her to be cheating on him, which might confuse people. We therefore changed the narrative again where Zoe is in a relationship with Ben, but seeing Jay behind Ben's back. Jay can see that Zoe is unhappy in her relationship with Ben as he doesn't pay her much attention, and Jay sings the song for her as a way of telling her to end things completely with Ben as he cares a lot more about her and wants her to be completely his.

New narrative

We have now decided to change the narrative to make it more exciting where Jay and Zoe are in a relationship, and Zoe seeing Ben behind Jay's back. Jay is aware of this, however, and is telling Zoe via song that he wants her to come clean to him and not lie to his face.

New narrative

Since we got rid of the previous narrative which removed the 'mean girl' plot completely. We have created a different story where Zoe's boyfriend is a guy called Ben, and Jay is Zoe's friend who can see that she is unhappy in her relationship and wants her to end it. To do this, we will have to shoot new scenes with Ben and Zoe together.

Music video rough cut 1