Analysing Record Covers

While digging through my attic, I stumbled across mountains of records, some of which date back to the 1960's. When looking at these old records, you can see similarities between records and digipaks, and how digipaks have evolved from record covers.

This record sleeve for Iron Maiden is very interstice as instead of having photos of the artist, it is a cartoon design with implications of death and dark themes.

Record sleeve

However, when looking at the CD/Digipak of one of their recent albums, you can see that there has  been very little change. They have stuck to the dark cartoon design. The only striking difference is the slight change in logo colour and size. On the Digipak, it is more obvious who the album represents are their band name is in huge bold letters.

Something else I noticed on the back of most albums was that they often contained little facts or comments from the artist or band. For example, on the back of Madness, each song has a comment from one of the members, explaining how the song originated. This gives the album more use, as well as allowing their audience to know the back story to their songs. When speaking to my father about this, he commented that he feels that he is in an "exclusive" group as not many people will know of these facts as they do not have the album. 

When records were all the range, most record creators were aware that their target audience was young people. Therefore they tried to more directly pander to them, while offering help and advice. For example, this album is advertising childline, something that most CDs/Digipaks do not do anymore. This is a interesting feature as it shows that in the past there was a focus on protecting their listeners, where as now, in the present, most producers are interested in how to sell their products instead of the audience's wellbeing. 

Editing Lip-Syncing:

Lip-syncing is one of the most important features in a music video. Producers aim to make it look like the singer is singing right then and there, not that music is edited over. So, to make it as realistic as possible, lip syncing needs to be spot on, otherwise there will be a slight delay in lip movements and music lyrics. This small mistake has a huge impact on the video as it makes it look less realistic and the audience will notice the delay, and this will stop them from being fully immersed in the video.

In order to try and prevent this when I attempt to make my music video, I have decided to try to get some extra practice in and test a few different editing techniques. 

Accuracy: 

I attempted to keep the lip syncing as synced up as I could by using a few techniques when filming and when editing:

During filming I would play the song aloud, through my laptop. This allowed my friend to hear the pace of the song and be able to keep up with the lyrics. I also tried my best to countdown toward the start of the chorus so my friend would know when to prepare herself so she didn't miss the start of the chorus. I took many videos, so I had more footage to work with. This is because with more footage, there would be more of a chance of having a good lip sync.

During editing I would go through the usual routine of trying to match the section of footage up with the correct section of music. After roughly matching the music and video, I would keep my eyes peeled so I could notice any errors within the clip and the music. Down below is a clip of a bad lip sync, where there are points throughout the video where the song and footage don't match. The video is slightly slower than the audio.

Bad lip sync from Charlotte Bancroft on Vimeo.

However, by tweaking the speed of the footage by 1-2%, I was able to bring the video up to speed with the song. But, there are a few moments when the song doesn't sync with the footage, and this is because my friend briefly forgot the lyrics and stuttered. Down below is the "fixed" version.

fixed lip sync from Charlotte Bancroft on Vimeo.

Making it interesting:
Music videos rarely have large chunks of the artist lip syncing. This is because it is pretty boring to watch and the audience loses interest. To prevent this, the performance is usual split up by narrative footage or a different shot of the artist singing. Since I have no narrative footage to work with yet, I edited different angles of my friend lip syncing together.
Lip sync cuts from Charlotte Bancroft on Vimeo.

There are a few lip sync errors in a few of the clips, but it makes the clip slightly more interesting than a solid 10 seconds of one lip-syncing clip.

Testing Different Lens:

Using different camera Lens:

Most producers will either add filter over the top of a music video, or use a small lens disk to change the lighting, colour or contrast of the footage filmed. However, I wondered if using lens' actually made a huge difference to the footage. The first lens I tested out is the warming lens. It is supposed to make light more soft and warm. Down below in the original photo. Sarah's face is very red and you can see shine reflecting off her chin and cheek area. 

Without Lens Filter

The photo below is the photo I took with the warming lens. Over all, Sarah's face looks slightly smoother as there is less shine. The over all lighting of the room looks a lot darker that the image above, showing that the lens has clearly changed the lighting of the room. I believe that during filming I will use the filming lens. This is because it makes lighting less harsh and makes objects in the footage a whole lot softer and smooth.

With Lens Filter