Using Photoshop Creatively

By using Photoshop CS4 you're collaborating with the photographs taken, allowing you to edit them, establishing a creative process. This process transforms your images into a different way which best represents the message you want to bring across. 
When working with my CD digipak and poster I layered my work accordingly. I had to do this because I had multiple backgrounds and text that I wanted to include. Photoshop helped fix the tone of my image incase there was any over-exposure, this is vital in bringing the quality across. As well as Photoshop, I used Illustrator to adapt a drawing image for my poster. This took a more artistic approach as well as including an image of the band, reminding the audience of the band. 

Feedback on Directors commentary

Excellent considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video, for example in terms of set design quality and the use of FCP to create effective set design and mise en scene.

There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras and in the post production editing process – in discussion of match of action, lip syncing and graphic matching’. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the branded themes of a broken relationship for example in discussion of the beat of the song and pacing of the cuts used in the editing process.

The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well, particularly to selection and construction of narrative, editing techniques, such as FCP Tools. Excellent command of terminology and understands and discusses convergence really well.

There is sustained justified decision making links between the technologies used the product and audience reception in terms of the creativity that the group used.. Recognises the need to account for errors in the post production stage and the importance of converge technologies.

This is a well considered documentary – you may want to re-edit in terms of the presentation I think this is a provisional draft of the commentary

Evaluation Task 4- directors commentary

Task 4- Using Photoshop

To create the CD Digipak, I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Illustrator CS4, which is a mage manipulative piece of software that allowed me to form a professional CD album product. To the left is the original image that I shot and to the right is my manipulated. I have used different layers with the text and image. For the first layer I created a background with light leek circles, this made a link to the music video where we played with the focus of the lights and gave this effect. The second layer was cropping the lead singer's face and using a gradient filter to create a 'pop-art' effect. The third layer I wrote the band's name. After completing this design, I realised that it was a bad representation of the band because it was only showing one band member.

I then re-shot the entire band to have all of them in the album cover. I changed the background in a similar way to the previous one having a light leek effect. I then placed the band over it and changed the level of exposure. I then placed the band's album name slightly behind the band. 

Above are my completed posters used for the band. The left one is the poster created for a male audience and the one on the right is for a female one. I predominately used Illustrator for this because it specialises with drawing, which is what I did. 

Task 4- digital technologies used in pre-production

The digital technologies I used in pre-production were; filming our animatic, researching how we wanted the style of the band to come across, and looking at YouTube videos that we wanted to relate to.
To film the animatic we used a Sony NX5 camera to film the animatic drawings we made that represented each shot for our music video. We used Google as an online research tool that we used to search similar band styles that fit with our band. We found bands such as; Paramore, White Stripes, and Guns N’ Roses.  Google also helped us discover a lighting and effects scheme for our video, which were light bulbs, strobe lights and a smoke machine.

We went on YouTube, an online broadcaster, which helped us identify similar aspects that we wanted to portray in our video. Videos that helped with this were, Christina Perri’s “Jar of Hearts” and Eminem and Rhihana’s “Love The Way You Lie”.