Videos and Ideas

Live Videos

It is important for my promo vid to feature some live footage of the band as that is mainly what the DVD will feature. However, searching through YouTube, it was hard to find some high quality live footage of the bands performances. I did manage to find some videos from a live show they played at Graspop, Belgium, which were the best quality videos I could find of their live performances. I am not too worried about the quality of the sound in the videos because I intend to only use mp3's of their songs rather than the sound in the videos. Although, I might use some of the opening speech from the singer in the videos as a way of introducing the DVD and then bring in the mp3 tracks, showing a collage of the rest of the video clips I intend to use.

Music Videos

These are all the Lacuna Coil music videos ever to be released. I feel that it is important to try and incorporate as many in my footage as possible, as I have advertised on the DVD how it will feature all their music videos. I only intend to use a few seconds of each video, cutting different clips of them to the beat of the mp3 I choose.

Extra Footage

These are some clips of interviews and behind the scenes footage. It is vital that I show bits of these clips in the promo video to show the audience bits of the bonus features they can expect to see on the DVD. I might show the 'Walk on Stage' part at the beginning of the video to try and build up the anticipation and the atmosphere before the show, bringing on a few text screens introducing the DVD and what it is.

Change to the Logo on the DVD

As I have changed the original idea for the front cover, as I was going to take my own photo, I have decided to incorporate the grenade image into the band's Logo on the cover.

My first idea was to take an image of the band, with the singer holding out her hands to which I would edit in the small grenade symbol. However, I changed my mind and decided to get an image off Google instead. I could not find one with the singer holding out her hands, so I decided I would add it to the logo.

For the letter 'o' in Coil, I changed it to have the grenade symbol over the top of it as it was the same shape. I changed the sizing of the grenade to match the size of the rest of the logo, which I did through transforming the scale in Photoshop.

Once I had finished resizing the image so that they matched, I selected the two layers and right clicked on them, and merged them together into one. 

However, I decided to keep the unchanged logo on the CD wrap because I felt it worked well the way that it was and didn't need to be changed, because the image of the grenade worked well in the background and wouldn't look right being in the logo too.

Images for DVD Cover

Image URL: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/8/7/3/8/11448378-11448381-large.jpg&imgrefurl=http://multiculturalcinemaemusica.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html&usg=__rHuoIfbIV2JO-ll4zNMBZiJ3OxI=&h=580&w=386&sz=256&hl=en&start=32&zoom=1&tbnid=Aw6i-D__heoa4M:&tbnh=142&tbnw=86&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlacuna%2Bcoil%2Blive%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1536%26bih%3D739%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C910&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=395&ei=WOD0TLD3Ap2T4gagguGBBw&oei=T-D0TP7zOcWxhAfb0eW4BQ&esq=4&page=2&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:32&tx=59&ty=75&biw=1536&bih=739

I searched through Google images to try and find some live images of he band to place on the back of the DVD cover, to give the audience and insight of the kind of footage they can expect to see on the DVD. I chose to incorporate this photo onto the DVD as I felt it was important to have a close up live image of the lead singer because she is the most important member of the band. 

Image URL: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=403216282343&set=a.165856247343.130249.24803092343

I chose this image, which I found on their official Facebook page, because not only does it show a clear live image of the band, but also the audience. I felt this was important because the audience is what makes the show and adds to the atmosphere. It also shows they appreciate their fans and the audience. 

Image URL:  http://powerlinead.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/picture-1.png

I searched through Google images again to find some interview footage, to show some of the bonus footage on the DVD. There weren't many interview images but I eventually found this one, which is good enough. 

Image URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/taids/265300718/

I searched through images on Flickr too, to try and find some backstage footage of the band. I eventually came across this one, which shows the band after they have just come off stage. This illustrates to the audience that they can expect to see exclusive backstage footage of the band on the DVD.

Image URL: http://nnm.ru/search?q=lacuna%20coil&in=tags

This is an image from the band's Spellbound music video. This is one of the most popular songs on their latest album. I chose this image to again show the video section of the DVD. 

Image URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/reb5891/3207960451/

I found this image on Flickr, which is taken from the bands most famous music video, Swamped. I chose this image, as it shows that the DVD even has classic Lacuna Coil videos on as well as their latest ones, to appeal to the audience even more. 

Text for DVD Cover

Here is the text which I shall put on the back of the DVD cover to give a brief description of the band and let them know what to expect from the DVD...

Lacuna Coil formed way back in 1994, in their home town of Milan, Italy. They have grown extremely popular over the years, especially with their latest hit album, 'Shallow Life'. This DVD not only features their recent live show at The Forum, London on July 31st 2009, as part of their SpellBound Tour, but also features exclusive backstage and studio footage, along with never before seen interviews with the band, and their entire video catalogue.

DVD Cover - Band Image

So my original idea was to take a photo of a made up band, with the lead singer holding the iconic grenade logo. However, I have decided to change this idea and instead find a professional photo of the actual band online, as I thought this would look better because for the promotional video I am now going to use actual footage from the band's live shows, so it would look weird having different people on the DVD cover to in the video.

Therefore, I have found a photo of the band on a photoshoot for their promotion of their Latest album, Shallow Life. Here is the photo...

I got this image of the band's Facebook page. This is the URL: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=316338182343&set=a.55728832343.79434.24803092343&pid=3981465&id=24803092343

I chose this image because it showed a clear picture of al of the band members. Plus they are all wearing blacks and reds which keeps to the colour scheme I have already used on the DVD cover. 

I pasted the image into Photoshop, making sure I created a new layer called 'Band Image', so that I could cut around the image to get rid of the white background , so that I just have the band and nothing else. I started to do this to begin with with the 'Rectangular Marquee Tool' tool and pressing 'delete', which I used to cut big blocks of the white background out before I moved on to the finer outline of the image. 

Once I had got rid of majority of the background, using the 'Rectangular Marquee Tool' tool, I went round the image adding points round the outline, using the 'Pen Anchor Point' tool, getting as close to the edges as possible. After setting numerous points around the entire image and then deleting the rest of the white background, I had nearly got rid of it all, apart from the white which was very close to the main image. 

To delete the rest of the white, I added a 'Mask' to the image. I then changed the colour of the pen to white so that I could go round the image, changing the size of the brush by using the square brackets. I then went over the white parts, and instead of deleting the white, it faded it so you could see the original background of my DVD cover. This was very helpful because I sometimes accidentally went over the band instead of the white, so I just had to change the colour of the brush to black and go over it again to get the part of the original image back again. However, this was very time consuming and fiddly to do, but the end result was worth it. 

Things to add to my DVD Cover

Image URL: 

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://discountcddvd.com/images/barcode.gif&imgrefurl=http://discountcddvd.com/barcode-c-19.html&usg=__NIHJfpJgR8pUWSKDYFCA9RoyqyY=&h=480&w=640&sz=13&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=tXsjQaeYYv9SXM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=217&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbarcode%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1659%26bih%3D807%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=100&ei=dmTqTLeeN8HoOfCrrZEK&oei=dmTqTLeeN8HoOfCrrZEK&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&tx=93&ty=74

I found this image of a barcode by searching through Google images. I am going to put this on my DVD cover as it makes it more realistic as they always have barcodes on so that people can buy them.

Image URL:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mr-dt.com/graphics/dvdsymbols/dvdvideo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.mr-dt.com/graphics/dvdcoversymbols.htm&h=1683&w=2925&sz=301&tbnid=M03wu_r1wY75jM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddvd%2Bsymbol&zoom=1&q=dvd+symbol&usg=__WQ7QTC3KcbfVcvTUm3zGEUKESnE=&sa=X&ei=uovuTJSsKYiAhAeTrPXuCw&ved=0CCcQ9QEwAQ

I, again, found this DVD logo image by using the Google search engine. Like before, it adds to the realism of the DVD. 

Image URL:

http://www.last.fm/label/Century+Media

This is the Century Media logo, which is the band's record label. I felt it was essential to incorporate this into my DVD as Music DVD's always have the record label logos on them. 

I am also going to add a copyright declaration at the bottom of the DVD too.