Construction Post 3: Week 3 production

The target which we set ourselves at the beginning of Week 3 was to consolidate our hard work across all 3 ancillary tasks and continue where we had left off the previous week - making improvements to our promo shots based on our own feedback as well as the target audience's, and continuing to knuckle down on the video and website.

WEEK 3: CONTINUING PROMOS, EDITING & WEBSITE

(Please click to enlarge)
This week's production schedule.

This week, our main focuses were:
-Taking new promo shots for the Digipak
-Beginning to edit these photos in Photoshop
-Adding further pages, details & widgets to the website
-Finishing re-branding the site
-Continuing dragging & editing shots on the timeline
-Cutting the lipsync in time to the music


CONTINUING PROMO PICTURES:

Following our original feedback we received the week before for our initial promo pictures, we made sure we would implement these changes in our final promo shoot session. The main criticisms we took on board were that GiGi's glitter looked strange and messy on her face, and that her pose, addressing the audience, could have improved slightly to appear more self-assured.

Phoebe's sketches, as well as some real-life reference points

Once more using Phoebe's list of poses, alongside references of real artists and figures such as Gigi Hadid, Carly Rae Jepsen and Dua Lipa, we took another batch of promo pictures. I believe this was of paramount importance as well as her makeup improvements, as it meant that we - especially Georgina - could observe conventional photoshoot images and use this to improve our own.

(left) original promo picture   vs   (right) improved version

A further addition which I tried to incorporate this week was to experiment more with the capture mode on our Canon camera, alternating between 'tungsten light' and 'white fluorescent light' to add or reduce the warmth of the image and give us further options when choosing which image we would prefer to use for our promo shots and Digipak images.

(left) Some of the many re-shot versions of our promo pictures
(right) we used discarded, more extroverted shots for website promos

At the end of the week, we scrolled through all of our photos as a group & decided which we liked the best and were the most suitable for the Digipak. Meanwhile, we also selected photos which were slightly more fun and extrovert to go on the website and social media pages, which we discovered was a convention of promo shots on artist websites.

EDITING THE MUSIC VIDEO:

We continued editing our music video this week and, in my opinion, made relatively steady progress. The start of the week began with us carrying on with the editing process - distinguishing good takes, marking in & out points and dragging them onto a certain point on the timeline. We started to see the effects of Goodwin's theory take shape, with the set design and GiGi's gesture during setups such as the dolls house reflected in the lyrics (e.g "that girl who's living in a Barbie world") very well.

Our progress by the end of Construction Week 3

One major advance we made this week was to refine many of the takes which we had simply placed on the timeline. In other words, we cut them down to an appropriate length as many were too long and prevented the conventional rapid intercutting usually seen in music videos, and Phoebe - who moved back onto the video edit this week - also began matching the audio of the track to Georgina's lipsyncing. Collapsing the audio bar of our takes was really helpful, as we were able to match the audio of our takes and that of the song with great precision, much more so than by using just the video track.

We were able to use the audio waves of both our footage
and our track to match the song to Georgie's lipsync.

Having made decent progress on that front, we were given more feedback later in the week from our teachers that the narrative came in far too late, and that both the doll's house narrative and performance setup were not being intercut throughout the video anywhere near enough as is conventionally seen in intertextual & postmodernist music videos such as our own.

We have started to put a lot more of the performance and
dolls house (narrative) setups onto our timeline to intercut.

As a result, we used the rest of the week to begin rectifying this, and I believe that we have made another positive step forward with editing, as we are still in a very comfortable position with regards to time left, and now have more feedback to tailor our video to, which will hopefully result in a more professional, polished final music video.


EDITING THE WEBSITE:

I feel that the website really started to take off this week, and that a considerable amount of progress was made. I recognised early in the week that there was actually a lot of work required than first estimated to produce professional pages with a number of widgets and extra details, including an email link, album widget and PayPal details. As a result, I made sure to put in an extra shift this week to improve our website from a collection of unfinished pages to a fluid, functioning site.

Editing part of a store page on Wix

Having once again reviewed a selection of existing websites, as well as the progress of our own website, I drew up some initial criteria which I aimed to meet and implement by the end of Construction Week 3:

-more information on the artist (and record label)
-more interactivity & purchasing opportunities
-connection to social media sites
-wider range of images and videos on the site

Keeping this in mind, I began making numerous additions and alterations to the website:

Some of the improvements which I made this week were:

-Creating, linking & branding Twitter, YouTube pages:
In order to address the issue of interactivity, especially via social media, I set about creating two of our four social media sites - Twitter and YouTube (An Instagram page was already up and running, and a Facebook page needed creation). I ensured that each was then linked to the icons on our footer, before branding each page. I made absolutely sure that they kept a synergistic brand, keeping a purple theme running throughout both, using the same typeface and also creating a visual motif depending on which link had been followed:

 On both our Twitter and YouTube pages I ensured that we kept a synergistic brand through the use of consistent fonts,

colours and the same gradient. Meanwhile, there is a visual motif, as the first 'i' of GiGi changes depending on the site.

-Widening the range of products offered on the store page:
With regards to more purchasing opportunities (and also again interaction, to an extent), I then set about increasing our catalogue of merchandise options. I believe that by once again keeping a consistent font, as well as the purple theme, I was able to incorporate synergy well across our products and store page; whilst I ensured that the products on offer were also available on the websites of existing artists to guarantee that we followed conventions.

I widened the range of products to 8 this week, and ensured every product had a description and product info.

-Creating a gallery page:

We linked photos on the social media
section of the website to GiGi's Instagram
feed, which ensured quick and fluid
promotion across a range of platforms.

When addressing the issue of a lack of photos, we initially had to wait until we had not only completed our promo pictures, but edited them in Photoshop. Georgina has been working hard to resolve this and edit the photos as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I set up the framework of a gallery page, and added two of the three sections for:
-behind the scenes
-the official photoshoot
-social media pictures (which, when clicked, were hyperlinked to Instagram - this was to ensure that we had as much symbiosis between our different promotional material as possible).

(left) Gallery at the start of the week   vs   (right) Improved gallery with 2 out of 3 working links

-Adding tour pages:
The fourth main task I completed this week was to set up our tour page and begin creating individual links depending on the date and venue of GiGi's supposed tour. I feel this was a really important piece of progress to further combat what I felt were a lack of purchasing opportunities - and to gratify the audience's need for both information and entertainment. Though it was very time-consuming, I believe my decision to include and link individual tour dates and locations, as well as including parking and directions information, was a good choice to uphold convention, and ensure that the audience's surveillance gratification.

(left) Individual tour page        (right) Our tour page. The two options - 'BUY' and 'VIP' matched Daya's tour page: (below)

Once again, I feel that we have had a very productive week in which we have made consistent progress on a number of fronts. We have finally produced - and are almost done with editing - our promo shots so we can advance with our website and Digipak; we have made a number of key additions on the website and once more are well aware of our feedback and improvements going forward with the video.