POSTER

Dear Readers,

When I started planning my digipak, I looked at different posters of different bands. Most of the posters I looked at were really simply made. For instance, the bands have put their name with a special font or just their logo.

  Example:

• "The Rolling Stones" is written in a simple, not reinforcing the stereotype,  font.
• They have used simple black colour background (The Rock'n'Roll colour)
•  They have also added the famous logo of the band.

However, I was looking for something more imaginative and creative. Something that was not often seen in the Western Europe. That is why I researched an Eastern band called Dubioza Kolektiv ( The song I am using for the music video is created by them) and I came up with one of their old posters.
This poster was the basis of my poster. The reason I liked it was:

• because ll the members of the band are on it.
• because it is shown the stereotypical look of Eastern Europe by being seen as a villagers. 
• because they are wearing clothes with black and yellow colours which are the main colours of the band.
• because they have shown some of the traditional folk instruments such as accordion and a drum.
• because they have shown what eastern Europeans are most proud of- a bottle of rakia.

After knowing what I would be looking for I had to make a small sketch of the poster. The first think I want it was to take a group photo of the band. However, they had to work as a villagers and as an Eastern European revolutionists. Example:

• The main characteristics of a revolutionists in the Eastern Europe of 19 century were the long moustache. 
• As the audience could notice, they had to wear a comfortable clothes. In 21st century such clothes are known as sports kit. 
• And the last thing is the face expression! The actors should look mature and wise like the man on the photo.  

Once I applied all this points into my poster the results were satisfying. I work with the colours by making the poster look old. The focus colours were red and yellow as the audience could notice. 

Moreover, the look of some of the actors were scary, but also they look really wise. The moustache contributed to that. The shorter people, however, look happy. They smile and have fun. As the audience could notice, I used different colour letters. The reason to do the was because the punk genre can be really colourful and messy. However, because my genre is not entirely punk but also ska I thought that soft colours will make the poster look good.

DIGIPAK PLANNING (CHANGES)

Dear Readers,

Throughout my Research and Planning process of the digipak of my music video, I find out that the way I imagine it to look wasn't as good as I thought it will be. The reason for that was because it didn't look as punkish enough as I want it to be. To me it looked more as a album cover of a Hip Hop or a Rap genre album cover. To avoid such misunderstanding, I look closely in what exactly makes an album cover exciting and the way it communicates with its audience. I came up with a really simple conclusion and final idea.

As I said I changed the whole concept and composition of my album cover. I looked at the different photos I took during the filming of the video, the casting and the video with the different locations where I wanted to film. I used as a background my desk which is covered with a special black paper. This black paper is the background of my album cover. The reason to use it was because it looked better than a normal black cover. It looks more interesting and nobody has used such shade of black which makes the cover look more unique. Another interesting supplement was the way it is presented to the audience the name of the band and the name of the album. This unusual way of writing made the look of the album look more rebelish and the different colors of the letters creates the sense that it is somehow connected to a punk genre or a sub-genre. 

As every punk or ska album is common to see the musicians on the cover. That is why I used photos of the members of the band and made them old polaroid photos. The reason to do that was becaude it aesthetically look good and because the genre is considered as an old genre. Besides them I was hinking that every band has its logo. After a long thinking and many changes I thought that a star will fit perfectly on the digipak. I design the star to be colored with the common communist colors which are RED and BLACK. The reason to do that was because the actual band comes from the Esatern Europe where the comunist regime took place long time ago. Furthermore, I added more stickers such as thr rock sign, a guitar and a graffiti. It represents perfectly the genre and what the audience should expect when they buy the album. 

When I was choosing the the songs the first thing I did was to add the same letters I used for the name of the album and the band. However, I did't like the way it looked so I changed the font to the stereotypical college graffiti. I used again different letters to save the sense of a punk/ska genre album. 

As a conclusion, the final results were satisfying. The reason to think that way is because I used original conventiones to present to the audience what exactly genre of the album is. Example for the conventins I used are: 

• colorful letters
• polaroid photos
• messy composition
• Logo
• different grafitti and stickers

pic 1.The outside look of the Digipak

pic 2. The inside look of the Digipack

NU BOYANA FILM STUDIOS

Dear Readers,

As I mentioned many times on my blog, I filmed one of the scenes of my music video in one of the biggest film studios in Europe known as Nu Boyana Film Studios. That is why I thought it would be a good idea to tell you more about the studio itself.

NuBoyana Film Studios is located in Sofia, Bulgaria. It is positioned on the top of the mountain Vitosha. The studio is successor of the former Boyana Studios, established in 1962 as the main film and television production facility in the country until the early 1990's. During the years of communism (1945-1989), the Studios produces nearly 600 feature films and production peaked at around 25 features annually in the 1980. Hit by financial difficulties in the 1990s, an inventive policy of “services-rendering” was the lifeline of Boyana Studios for nearly a decade. The Bulgarian film industry is largely relied on co-productions (where the country participates as a secondary co-producing partner) and runaway productions (big budget productions exclusively using Western creative input that only hire local facilities, technicians, and locations) to keep the studio going. During the 1990s services were rendered to a dozen major productions, which included Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” (1993), Emir Kusturitza’s “Underground” (1995), Reji Vernie’s “East-West” ( 1998) , Vercingétorix” (1999), Michael Cacoyannis’s screen adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1999) and others. In 2007, Boyana Film Studios are privatized by the famous independent companies " Milenium Films" and "Nu Image". That is when “Nu Boyana Film” was created.

Over the years NuBoyana Film Studios serviced hundreds of feature films, including big-budget movies like Criminal, The Expendables 1, 2 and 3, London Has Fallen, 300: The The Rise Of An Empire, The Black Dahlia, Killing Season, Conan, The Way Back and Kon-Tiki.

CONSTRUCTION OF MY VIDEO

Dear Reader,

I have made a short plan how the scenes in my video will be cosnstructed into one piece. I thought it will be useful and it will help me build my music video quickly. Moreover, I thought that the video will be looking great if I manage to plan everything conserning the editing process. This is the planning shee!

POST-PRODUCTION- HOW DID IT GO?

Dear Readers,

As I have mentioned before in my previous posts, few weeks ago I finished filming my music video of the song ''U.S.A'' by Dubioza Kolektiv. The location of the filming was in Bulgaria. There are scenes filmed in a music studio located in Sofia, some scenes were filmed in a actual New York film set also located in the capital and the final shots took place in a small village called Plana.
 The first think I did once I finish filming was to follow the storyboard and the plan which I made specially for the editing. The first think I began with was the establishing shots of the Easter European Nature. There I worked on the colors of the image and on the stabilization of the beginning scene. To make it stable so that it looked nice, I used warp stibilizer. However, when I applied the effect it still could be a little bit see that it has been work on that scene and it has been edited with effect. After that I added the title of the song where I used the colors of the band which are yellow and orange.
  Once I finish with the beggining, I focused on the scenes filmed in the music studio. Once I started adding parts of this scenes I noticed that I haven't done enough filming. The reason for that was because the receptionist of the music video forgot to add us on the list and I had 30-40 min to film this part which wasn't enough. However, I handle the situation by adding the parts where the musicians dance, laugh and have fun. It looked ok because it represented the band as a funny and energetic. Furthermore, I had to make some fixes in the scenes so that I could synchronize the singing and the playing on the instruments with the song. For that I used, speed duration and made the scene a little bit slower.

  The third scene where the musician look like they are a villagers, I didn't do any changes. I added them in a way to make a story which the audience will understand. The only thing I added was the speech bubble where they say few lines of the kyrics. I made the effect on Adobe After Effects in a way to look like it is drawned. To me it fits perfectly because its something new and untroditionallike the Hybrid genre.
Moreover, I added some spotlight effects the scene where the ferry comes and sends one of the villagers in New York. With this effect I aimed to show that the ferry will do something magical. It give the sense that the ferry comes from a different dimension. The moment whenshe sends him in New York, I useda small parts from a video of New York. The reason to do that was because the New York set we used wasn't fully made.
  Overall, I was happy with the way I added the video. I used conventions to represent the genre by creating different effect like the speech bubble and I used the colors of the band on the title.

MY DIGIPACK

Dear Readers,

For my A2 coursework I have to create a Digipack of an album. So for that reason I started planning my cover image for my album called "Balkanjada". Again, I will use different Dubioza Kolektiv songs and put it in my album.

Throughout the Research of different Eastern Europena bands albums, I got to know the traditional eastern punk culture. They have used many animated images of their albums, they used many colours for their album covers,etc. I used similar conventions to illustrate my album cover. My main song in this album is the one which I will do a music video on (U.S.A.) and as I looked closely on the lyrics it was focusing on the nostalgia for homeland. That is why I aimed my album cover to look like a children drawing of a house in the mountains. The reason to be in the mountains is because the eastern Eropeans are very pround with their nature and because my video story is located in the countryside.

Here are some photo of the sketces I have made.

MY LETTER TO CINEMA CENTER BOYANA

Dear Readers,

For my project I wanted to film some of the scenes in New York. That is why I ask premission from Cinema Center Boyana to use their New York film set. During this summer I worked there and that is why the menager of the studio was happy to let me film there for free. This is the actual e-mail that I had send to them.