Creating a "GIF" tutorial.

For our advertising we will be focusing on cyber advertisement, therefore targeting social networking sites such as Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter, Livejournal, and Facebook to reach our fan base beside using Youtube. 

To make our page exciting I will be making GIF images using the music video. GIF images are a fantastic tool to introduce people to the music video and it also gives fans something to keep and maybe put it on their Tu

mblr and spread it. Or post it on their myspace page to make their page interesting. Same goes with blogs and forum sites. 

Here is an easy tutorial done by my talented friend (Neebs) which will help me to create my own GIFs 

"1. Get your video in the appropriate format ... normally it's .avi

2. Open your ps and choose File > Import > Video Frames to layers ...

3. From there you'll get a window asking you to choose which video file you want to gif.

4. Once you've picked it a window kind of like this should appear

5. Make sure Make frame animation is ticked and selected range only is clicked.
6. Then holding shift you drag the though double triangle cursor on the video screen to select the frames you want.
7. Press ok.
8. Then go Windows > Animation to get this bar

9. Then delete the frames you dont want and adjust the time per frame.


11. After you're happy with the frames ... then go File > 'Save for Web & Devices'.
12. You'll get this window come up

13. Click optimised in the top left hand corner of that window

and options will be given on the right hand side
14. You'd want to change the number of colours presnt to adjust size
Id recommend you use the settings on the picture.
Then adjust the percentage loss according to the size of the gif you want.
15. After you're happy click save"

And here is my attempt of creating a gif using a music video


Original video

Here I played around with the effects and the size of the gif. 

From this exercise I've realised I can create many gifs using one video. GIFs of important scenes from the music video can be spread out on pages of fans' social networking page. This can create a very important publicity for our music video. 


There are also these type of gifs 

(credit: awkneebs.tumblr.com)

Which gives an interesting effect of using still images and moving images to create an effective use of the video still and texts. 


Or using text as a cut out for the GIF

(credit: jinki.tumblr.com)

I think that this would be very effective to use for the myspace page of our artist. Or the header of a youtube page. I think while making the layout for the myspace page and youtube page, I will need to look into creating these type of gifs. 

My Digipak Ideas

For the digipak that I will be creating after the video has been made, I will be using a range of stills from the video in order to keep the link between the video and the digipak going strong. These Ideas are based on the possibility of doing a 4 panel digipak.

For the front of the digipak, I will have an image of Alice, possibly a mid shot or a close up of her in order to allow the audience to identify with the artist and main character of the video from the start. (As soon as you pick up the digipak). For example, this still would be a great one to work with because it shows the main character of the video in her costume which she wears throughout the video.

The back of the digipak would ideally be a shot of the tea party table itself, the dry ice going around the cupcakes and bread shown being a good example of this. I would use the colour white for the text as it seems to work well with the image and does not blend in.

Inside of the digipak, I would have an image of the Mad Hatter (played by Jasmine) and/or the other character (played by Yasmin) in order to show the audience that may have only seen a little bit of that video that there was not just one character within the story. Also this gives the opportunity to shed some attention on to the bigger picture of the story and not just have it all about Alice.

For the inside where disk will be placed, I an undecided on what I would prefer as the image to go behind the disk. Part of me would like to have a shot of the tea pot which reinforces the whole concept of the tea party which was such an iconic scene in the Alice in Wonderland films and is the main link between the films and this music video. However, I think it could also be beneficial if instead of reinforcing the tea party theme, I could have an image still from the night shots that will be taken from the garden in order to show a different location within the video. Below is what the image could be if I decided to stick with the tea party theme throughout the whole digipak.

For this mock digipak, I used a font called 'Snell Roundhand' which can be found on any mac computer/laptop and I chose this because it looks very elegant and swirly which could potentially add to the effect of an almost fairy tale look. However, it is a possibility that a different type of font could be used, but the foundations of the italic swirly writing will still be there.

Initial ideas for visual style of digipack and advertisments part 2

As we changed our star I decided to create a rough design for the digipack for my artist Amy Lee

Interviews during sunday filming

On the sunday while Yasmin was doing Amy's and her own make up, we managed to have two mini interviews. One featured Amy and her views on her being our last minute 'Alice' and the other is an update of how the day was going for us, with Jasmine being in the video.

Test shots for lighting and mise-en-scene

We tested how the dry ice was going to turn out on camera and it was important that we done this because it is what would make our video have a mystical, floaty feel to it.

For these two photo's, we used a mixture of natural lighting the lighting kits. the lighting kits battery power was nearly gone so the natural light was also being used here.

Here we were using the over the camera light which created this effect when we were filming. 

We used the lighting kit as well as the over the camera light when filming Jasmine outside, if we think it is too bright, we will tone the light down when editing the footage.

We decided to have the lighting as a spotlight which focuses on Amy. We realised that we couldn't dim the light because that feature was not in out lighting kit, so if we think that it is too bright, then we will change the lighting during the editing stages.

Sunday's Filming

Sunday 17th October was our main day of filming where we would be filming from about 1PM onwards to about 8PM in order to get our night shots. Here are some pictures that were taken throughout the day before, during and after our filming.

Yasmin had prepared the cupcakes the day before and this was the end result:

Here are pictures of what the table looked like when we were setting it up for the tea party scenes. Candles, Fairy lights and bits from Yasmin's garden were brought on to the table in order for it to have an outdoors feel to it.

This is what the table looked like as a whole once all the food was on there. We had lots of cakes which were beautifully decorated by Yasmin, pink bread and green butter, as well as other bits such as mise en scene. (glasses for drinks etc)

Yasmin had created green butter using ordinary butter and green food colouring. This would be used for the scene when Yasmin butters the green bread for Alice. (see both the butter and pink bread below)

Here are shots of the table once it was all done. (includes the dry ice)

When make up was being done, pictures were taken of Jasmine, Yasmin and Amy.

Here the final finishing touches to the set before we started filming the tea party scenes.

Here are close ups of the table before we started filming.

Here is Amy, the girl who is playing Alice in our video.

Jasmine as the mad hatter.

Yasmin in her costume and make up.

Kelly refusing to have her picture taken.

Jasmine posing as the mad hatter.

The start if the day did not go to the way we had planned because our main person who was going to be Alice did not turn up due to unforeseen circumstances. So we had to find another person who was free who could play Alice. Yasmin's friend Amy was able to help us out which solved our major problem. However, this set our filming schedule back a little bit. Once Amy and Jasmine had arrived, make up was done and we promptly began filming. Overall, the filming went very well and we didn't have any major problems with it. All in all, the day was really successful.