OPIE

In this task, our first photoshop task, we had to create an 'Opie' of ourselves. An Opie is a style of art from the artist, Julian Opie. This style was famously used for the album cover of Blur's: 'The Best of Blur' album. 

To create the self Opie we had to take a picture of ourselves using the camera on the computer. We were given a tutorial on what tools to use on photoshop to create an opie. The skills I have picked up during this task that will help me in future tasks using photoshop. At the start of this task I was not confident using photoshop, however after completing the task I feel more confident with using the programme.

To create my Opie, I had to start with going around the photo, I had previously taken of myself, using the magnetic lasso tool to draw around my features before I could before i could fill them with block colour in which I used the sample, which takes a sample of the selected colour on the picture, this allowed me to get an accurate colour of my skin etc.

The key part to creating a successful Opie is using layers, and using them effectively. Using layers allows you to edit each part of the photo bit by bit. 
This will all contribute to my overall knowledge of the programme, making me more confident using Photoshop. I found that once you have all of your layers in order, using photoshop become much easier.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS - The Importance of Being Idle

This analysis allowed me to see more into how a music video is put together rather than just how good it looks to an audience. 

By analysing a video of a similar genre of what I'm looking at for my final product, therefore I am able to deconstruct the regular themes carried out through the genre. (I will be able to see that after carrying out a few more analysis').

Breaking down the video, even just into certain shots, gives me information and allows me to build knowledge/skills on how to create my own music video later in the year because analysing bit by bit, should allow me to build it back up again to form a video of the same genre. 

LIP SYNC - The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

The lip sync task was used to teach us how to sync up what we hear and what we see so the words match our lips correctly. 

For my lip sync I chose the song 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air' which is the famous theme tune to the tv series of the same name. 

When filming the footage for this task I played the song from my phone so the words are accurately spaced and it is easier to sync with the track when taken to final cut. Doing this task not only showed me how I would film my final product later in the year but mainly how to apply final cut to a music video. 

For example; showing the waveforms on the sound so when I applied the track I was able to see where the beats were. This enabled me to focus on matching the sound, allowing the video to fall into place.

A disadvantage of how I filmed this is there is some music in the song in which there are no words to and we did not film footage for the music, we only did it for the words. Fortunately we had left the camera rolling while we were randomly dancing in which we used to fill in the gaps and match to the beats during the blank time.

I believe that this task has been has been really useful in teaching us new skills for making our own music video.

BRIEF

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a promo video, together with:
- A digipak for the albums release
- A magazine advertisement for the digipak