The final project!

Reflections on the completion of the project

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:03:22 +0000

I have already been asked by the london record label “Raskil” to interview another of their artists for a reasonable sum. I think that I will be continuing work on Untitled Promotions after I leave University considering that it has been generally well received by the artists in question. Considering I have produced the majority of content for this project I am rather proud of it as far as my work is concerned. Although I wish that the editing hadn’t taken so long and I could have spent more time towards the end on developing the website and fleshing it out a little more.
Although as I said I intend to continue work on Untitled Promotions and this most definitely won’t be the end of my work on it. Considering I have focused on digital production throughout my course I was rather glad that I was practically forced into producing some moving image for this. My original intentions have rather drastically changed throughout the production, although I think it was for the better.
It also seems like there is another unsigned artist that wants an interview, also I will be producing Kaypa’s new music video under the Untitled Promotions name. So this really as a project isn’t a completion, it’s more of simply a beginning of how I’m going to apply the skills that I’ve learned throughout this course into the world of work. And with two interviews and a rather ambitious music video in the works for the next few months, Untitled Promotions is far from over.
It has been a lot of fun interacting with artists (regardless of wether it made me quite jealous of my lack of involvement in the music production) being behind the camera and producing helpful materials for the artists has been brilliant and I couldn’t have done it nearly as well if the artists involved hadn’t given me the levels of access to their lives through the time that we were recording and shooting, although to be honest I wasn’t expecting any prima-donnas, they have been incredibly helpful and even provided me with a few good ideas along the way.

Practically working on this project on my own has also taught me a lot of organisational skills, throughout this course I haven’t really been able to keep to deadlines (And even though this project is being handed in late) Scheduling filming and networking with artists and labels has been a learning process, simply because there was no other way than to force myself into it and get over my fears of working and communicating with other professionals. Having to conduct myself in a professional way has also taught me some self confidence in the fact that not everyone involved in such an industry is nitpicking every single informality, and that my ability to produce such materials was a lot better than I thought.

Buying the domain “Untitledpromotions.co.uk”

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:44:13 +0000

I have purchased the domain: Untitledpromotions.co.uk for 2 years in order to give more easy access to the website and also push it into the mainstream opposed to some off-line student project, I haven’t bought hosting, I am simply using it as a direct link to the hosting I previously had purchased on the .net domain. The content of the final website design hasn’t gone live yet, and I am still using tom.5tick.net to host my work, but by the time of this project’s completion I’m sure it will be live.

Filling out the templates and completing website design

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:39:54 +0000

As my original intentions were to use this website as a simple design for the purpose of hosting content that could be used by artists to their own means digitally and physically I have decided to keep the website rather simple, using the page designs that I had previously intended, having a page for videos, one for band contact information and another for easy access to the photos that we have produced. Simply using it as an online portfolio of work easily presented for artists to manipulate and dispense the promotional materials by themselves.

Problems in work/time distribution on this project

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:37:07 +0000

My partner on this project Mark has focused on the pre-production research (hence why there isn’t much of this posted in my blog) and considering I live in birmingham and he lives in coventry it’s been hard networking and balancing the workload.

It has been incredibly strenuous on me producing both the website and as it turns out the majority of the content, I was hoping that he would be able to produce more but it seems that I have gotten the bulk of the content towards this whole project, and considering he’s been in Coventry I have had to do all the filming/shooting/editing all by myself which has literally cost me the majority of my spare time over the course of this project.

I was so focused on getting the actual production finished that I didn’t really have time to fill out this workbook along the way, and considering I’ve practically been working for 2 people, it’s quite a shame that I am unable to hand this project in on time due to the blog/workbook.

Finalising the content and placing idents.

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:25:58 +0000

I have placed the untitled promotions ident onto all the videos that are going to be hosted on the website. Although placing it on the photography work I produced was considerably harder keeping a persistant size/positioning considering that they were all taken and edited in different resolutions and getting the positioning correct on all of them. I think if the photos are viewed individually it’s considerably harder to notice the position of the ident, although overall I wish I could have found some form of vector or code to keep the ident positioning size and placement consistent throughout the work.

Finishing the Threatening Nobody interview

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:22:41 +0000

I think these three videos have shown the progression of my skills on the filming of interviews in general, and this is easily the one I am the most proud of.

Final editing sessions on Threatening Nobody

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:18:33 +0000

The editing process has easily taken up the most time in this overall production, I have decided to try something a little different with my final artist and add some effects onto the photos, using a grainy rusty comic book esque look, such a thing I was influenced by the Silent Hill franchise.

Here are the post-edited shots.

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Completing editing on Kaypa’s interview

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:03:04 +0000

This interview has proven incredibly time consuming but then again considerably easier to edit than Subvert Da Cynic’s (Which took about 4-5 days) I am impressed with the overall result although the audio could have had a lot more work done on it. Although I don’t have any previous experience with software like cubase which would be ideal for such a task I have had to normalise the audio to the best of my ability within the editing software.

Filming with Threatening nobody and cutways.

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:58:55 +0000

I took the standard 2 day filming format as before considering the answers they have given in the interview the day before, confirming what footage I will need to acquire on the second day. I managed to get about 30 minutes of footage. Also I am going to try and edit the pictures from the photo shoot to create a more professional look to them.

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Planning for the third interview, technique cleanup

melfice101 — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:50:21 +0000

For the interview and photo shoot with Threatening Nobody I have decided to go back to the location of the first interview considering the genre it would be rather strange to present such an artist in that enviroment. The editing of footage is taking a lot longer than I originally thought, although Kaypas interview seemed a lot more precise when it came to responses, which has proven incredibly helpful. Regardless my original role of simply creating the website on this project is slowly taking a back-seat after being overwhelmed with filming and editing.