Zhané Akomanyi | DGP

Overall Eval.

This project wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t bad either. It was in the middle. At times, it priorities my fmp just because I had come up with a few ideas, thought them through and picked one that developed the furthest and was the most exciting for me, at a quicker rate than fmp. I had times where i wanted to plan this one first just because everything i wanted to do was quite straight, and had alternative plans worked out if the first didn’t go as planned. There was some excitement to do the project but proper planning had to be put on hold for quite a while because of the dissertation unit and the major project unit.

I quite liked my idea; i thought it was different and it was something that interests me and always has. The concept of contemporary dancing has been something I’ve always watched and admired and the chance to make a project out of that admiration was exciting.

There was less panic and less urgency to get this project planned as i knew what i wanted to do and how i was going to do it. The only REAL obstacle i came across was the shoot location. The studio space i had originally wanted was booked for when i planned my shoot, even though i had tried to book weeks in advance. So i had to find an alternative. Luckily, I am part of a lot of creative groups on Facebook and they have ads for new studios being made quite often. I had seen one for a studio only 30 minutes from my house back in January and with luck, they were free on the day i needed and also reasonably priced, even without a student discount!

An original obstacle was where i was going to store my equipment when i first booked everything to use at uni, but that soon went away once there was no uni space to use.

Other than that, the project was pretty smooth in the location, equipment, the idea, the focus, the dancer and the style/vibe i was aiming for.

Printing was a bit of a hassle, but still not stressful. I opted to printing my booklet, inlay and cd label using my own inkjet printer. I didn’t really want to spend too much more on sending off for them all to be printed and possibly having to pay more for fast delivery service to get it on time after spending on a studio space, equipment use for the day, a shoulder rig for filming, and travel to and from the studio. All i had to do was order some label paper and double-sided gloss-like paper and some cd cases. I already had some cds at home.

I did some test prints on normal paper to make sure i was printing the right way. As i said before, the double-sided printing function on my printed wasn’t working at the time so i had to feed the paper back in the right way so it would print the right way up.

The only issues i had was that my inlay didn’t print the right size even though i measured it and used the template given, so my strip labels on the sides didn’t reach up very far in the case. The other issue, as i mentioned in the printing post, was the quality of the paper and the fact that the ink decided not to stay on the paper, but more so on anyones hands who decided to handle it! That can only be said for the areas that were all black or very dark, which were the cover and back of the booklet.

The cd labels were great. Again, trial and error to get it to print accurately on the sticker part just because I didn’t have the patience to work out the companies ‘free’ software. I took someones advice from the reviews section of making my own ‘template’ and winging it with the printing, making adjustments each time and only using up 3 of my 25 sheets, and printing on both sides to reduce the waste.

Of course, printing in gloss and uni was a success. Easy. Straight forward. No hassle. I sent my print in over the bank holiday weekend for me to collect and cut down on the morning of the hand-in and i even printed a second. I always do in case something goes wrong with the first!

The project was good. I feel i pushed myself to do things i haven’t yet. The cd booklet, inlay and poster gave me a chance to use my graphic communication A Level skills all over again which was fun. Once it all started to come together I liked what I had made. This project allowed me to push and have a go as filming all by myself for the first time, and a challenge in filming a dancer trying to keep the camera moving and make it fluent the way Olivia was moving. I also was able to sit down and have a go at editing an entire video on my own which again is something i’ve not done before, only watched and observed someone else do it.

So really, i did this project very independently rather than getting together an entire team this time like i have done on a previous unit project, and given myself challenges that didn’t stress me out, but only made me want to do more and practise all these new skills more.

- describing my ‘artist’ and target audience.

I DID IT! I edited my first video and it’s not terrible! There are definitely many improvements that could be made but that’s fine as I’m learning and developing my skills in this so all of this is helping me learn.

Im still super happy with how it looks though. I think my setting and lighting was good, just what I wanted and the camera work is alright, again for my first time properly filming something in a more ‘professional’ way.

Editing was a bit of a process but i enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy Premier Pro crashing everything I manually saved but I had autosaves so work wasn’t lost.

I’ve uploaded the video on 2 sites, Youtube and Vimeo, just incase one doesn’t work properly or it’s not accessible for whatever reason.

                      Link(s):

             Vimeo  /  Youtube

SELF-PRINTING

I decided that I wanted to push myself a little and print all the cd ‘pieces’ myself at home. I have a pretty good inkjet printer so I thought why not. Spend some money on some printing paper and labels and do the rest at home!

I ordered some double-sided photo paper that had a slight glossy satin sheen to it as you can see in the video above. The quality felt good before printing. After was a different story.

Below is the cd label paper i ordered. It said you could use their free software to do you printing but i ended up making my own ‘template’ (i put the images in an A4 photoshop document, guessed where abouts the labels would be on the paper), put the paper in my printer and printed! It only took me about 3 trial prints to get it the right size and centring i wanted. The image to the left is the first attempt I made eye-balling it and you can see the outline of the labels - not bad!

There’s my printer above, printing away! I did test printing on normal paper before to check what way I need to feed the paper in to print on the other side. My printers option for double-sided printing right now isn’t working so this was the only way i could do it.

The front and back of my cd look so good! Im so happy with how they look inside the case, i think it looks quite legit. The only thing that’s letting it down is the side labels with the album names on them. I thought I had measured everything right but didn’t do so well as they don’t reach up enough. Still a good challenge for me.

The cd labels are great! they printed so nicely and putting them onto the cd was so smooth. They do rip a little when you remove the second ‘removable’ tab but you don’t notice it too much.

The 2 different images came out so nicely I still couldn’t decide with to use to i put one on a cd each and will probably end up deciding tomorrow on hand-in day which i like better.

I did find that the ink doesn’t seem to stay on the page very long and likes to leave a lasting impression with whoever touches the darker areas of the booklet. So im not happy with this paper and won’t be using it again, unless Im only printing with light colours. I still don’t want to risk it with that so no to this paper!

I put together my digital images using the photoshop templates.

I tried playing around with the text and some what the image to make sure the all this was still strong and held enough dancer information for an audience to have an idea of who she is and what she’s about.

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This is my booklet layout. This took a bit of time to put together as I couldn’t decide which pictures I wanted in it the most, and then what order or where to put them. I think I finally managed to put them together well enough to showcase the dancer in all her glory.

I also did the pages so some would overlap and join together over another page as a continuous image. As templates, it doesn’t look like it makes sense, but once all printed out, I’m hoping it all flows well!

This is my cd label template. i used both templates that were on the indesign document. I put together 2 different cd images as i couldn’t fully decide which image i liked best. The plan is to just print both and see what they look like on a physical cd.

My platter was quick to choose from out of all my final images. I felt this was the best image that fit here as there isn’t too much going on and you don’t feel like there’s too much information in the image to be sitting behind the cd.

For my back cover, i tried to make the little label pieces on either end that most cds have with the name of the artist or album and the label logos.

Im super happy with how it looks. It came out better than I thought and im really happy i got to use my graphic design/communication skills from here. Good A Level to have for projects like this!

I did use a small digital reference for the font and track listing at the back of the cd down here. I was trying to decide if i should number my tracks or not and wanted to see a cd that did this. In the end i felt mine worked better with numbers.

For the actual track itself, some of the songs were chosen by Olivia, me dance subject, in person on the day of shooting. She created a playlist on my Spotify account so I would have it later on to refer to when putting the track list together. The songs on there make up some of  my final track list. We also used it for her to dance/improvise to. See screenshot below.

I kept this kind of style going when as I wanted my compilation cd to have about 30 songs like some compilation cds I know. So i made a playlist on spotify too! It was suppose to help to see how the songs would look and also how they would sound if you were to listen to it in real life. I wanted to treat it in a real way by actually thinking about the songs that would go on there and how they flowed into one another if you were to just listen to it at an entire cd or playlist. 

Screenshot of playlist and link to Spofity webplayer below;

Link: https://open.spotify.com/user/1137262834/playlist/6YeWgzuDCQlhYdoocP6qQr

These are the cd examples i used throughout editing and designing my booklet, booklet cover, platter and cd back cover. These are cds i own and knew they all had interesting and very differing styles in the different areas of the cd. I wanted to use ones i was familiar with and also ones that i knew were laid out differently to each other. This was I was able to take inspiration from all of them in certain aspects.

My final poster.

I like it a lot. I tried to add in a few little extra details that I know i’ve seen on other posters in the past around me and other promotional images, like the icons for places to stream. I liked that extra touch i put on there or else that space would have been a little bit empty. Also adding in a strap-line was quite good too as it gave the audience and on-looker a bit more information about the cd and just a but of a voice as to what it’s trying to sell to you.

I did use this poster as a bit of an example in terms of how to utilise the darkens around her and the font placement.

I sent my poster to be printed at the print shop in uni as I like the prints i get from there. Also, in a previous unit, i had printed a black and white image in glossy paper there and really liked how it came out. Since this image is primarily black, i thought it best to stick to a good place that prints nicely and makes the dark colours pop with the gloss paper.

I’ll have to wait till the morning of the hand-in to pick it up and cut it down on tuesday as I’ve sent it to print over yet another bank holiday weekend

Im super happy with the way my images came out. I like that for some i’ve used a lighter background and some a darker one. it sort of looks as though it expands the idea of the music from the cd being versatile and on a slightly broader audience scale.

The shoot day went really smoothly yesterday. I did both the shoot and filming on the same day. i felt it easier to handle it that way rather than separating it out too much. Maybe on a different type of project, I will separate the days of filming and shooting.

I’ve worked with the dancer, Olivia before so we’re both familiar with each other and my shooting her for dancing work.

As usual, she was really good, got really into it and we produced some really great images and great footage. I’ve yet to fully watch EVERYTHING at this point but that’s happening in the next few hours as I now need to start putting everything together.

Everything is all booked and it was super smooth and quick! Im ready for the shoot on saturday. Hopefully it all goes well too as I’m doing the majority of it on my own.

I went through a few studios that I knew or had heard of and remembered that a new one had just opened in Brixton in January, which isn’t far from where I live. I had looked at it before but couldn’t really remember what it was like so I had a look at it again and found it was the kind of studio i was looking for.

The studio I’m looking to book is like a tunnel/cave shape. It looks quite large and spacious which it was I’m in need of and it also says it can achieve full blackout which again is what I need for the lighting I want to do with the filming.

The price for a 4 hour session is reasonable and the added cost of normal flashheads isn’t too much either.

Since I’m going to be doing my shoot at an external studio, I won’t need all the equipment i pre-booked like 3 weeks about. I cancelled all the equipment I didn’t need like lights and light stands and a studio will have such things to supply someone hiring their space with.

Since i’m filming this myself, and it is essentially an all movement video, I thought I would need some kind of shoulder rig / camera rig to be able to have freer and somewhat smoother movement. I don’t want loads of camera shake so I thought something like what i bought below would help me reduce that as i don’t film a lot or ever so I don’t have that ‘still hand’ skill for filming.

I’m then going to use my camera on this as it’s smaller and lighter than the one i usually book from clr. This will act as my mobile, movement, close up etc. camera.

I didn’t cancel everything from clr. Instead, i decided to keep the nikon d610 camera, and then book a second one and 2 tripods. I thought that having 2 extra cameras and placing them in different parts of the studio might help me to get extra footage from different angles so I wouldn’t have less than i needed.

I of course had to get permission to do this as I didn’t know you couldn’t book more that 1 camera out at a time without permission. Luckily, Geraint responds to his emails like lightening!

EXTRA NOTE:

These 2 videos are different in the way they are light. They are both examples of what I would like to have for my video now that I am going to be looking to do my shoot somewhere else as the room i ideally wanted to use at university is booked.

This first video is pretty much the same as the first video I used as an example of it being completely blacked out and having a spotlight in the background. This one just has a more blue, cool tone. I’m just looking to replicate the complete blackout-ness and have spotlights on my dancer.