Music Video
Skills Audit
Demo Work
Demo Work
Demo Work
Contents
Demo Work
Contents
> Theoretical exploration of the purpose
and application of research
> Secondary research into
music video genres, codes, conventions,
techniques, and theories
> Primary research with the
client to inform ideas development
> Focus group presentation of ideas for
feedback and review via questionnaire
survey
Moving Demo
Wednesday 5th January
Today was the first day back from holidays. I started off by continuing with my rough cut. I had a little issue, as I had started editing at home, so locating all the files to keep editing took a little while. I had shared all the files I’d used across google drive, but some of the, didn’t download off of google drive correctly. Luckily, I could go back and individually download them, so this didn’t hinder me too much.
I then continued and added all my multishots to my rough cut. I found a VHS backdrop off of YouTube, then using my past VHS test, I could easily make my clips with rounded edges and place them correctly. Finally I added a VHS overlay to give them that recording look. Overall, I’m very happy with how they turned out and I’ve now finished my rough cut, so I can continue and further the look of the cut as a whole.
I handed in my first draft of project 4 today, but before that one of my lecturers read over it. Overall, he said it was very good. The only things I need to improve, is go back and use a bit more technical language on my film form and sound paragraphs in part 1, as well as updating my bibliography to follow the Harvard style. He has recommended me a book for the technical language so I will look at booking that out tomorrow.
When I got home, the first thing I did was read through my project 4. While reading it, I jotted down what pictures I would need for which parts. Now, I know all the photos I need so that once I’ve written up the final draft, I can add all my images.
I then updated my WIX website by adding all my journal entries of the post production I had done so far as well as adding supporting images and videos.
Finally, I did some more research into the Harvard style bibliography, so that I can update my project 4.
Thursday 6th January
We started today with project 2. Danny talked us through the pre-production section. Prioritising the proposal and navigation flow chart. Once he'd talked to us, he set us off to do our own work. I started my proposal and wrote about 3/4 of it before the lesson finished.
In the second half of today, I started and completed my Harvard referencing for project 4. This is good to get out of the way now and will allow me to continue with getting and adding the images to the essay. Since I had more time, I finished the proposal for part 2. This will allow me to look at the navigational flow chart over the next couple of days. Finally, I went into photoshop and adjusted the stage image I am using for the green screen element in my music video. This provides me with the final stage, where the band is faced away from us.
When I got home, I started collecting the images for project 4. I got a decent amount of them. However, I won't start putting them into the essay until I get all of them.
Friday 7th January
I spent my whole lesson time today editing my music video. A lot of my work today focused on my green screen band shots. The first thing I needed to do was mask my drummer. I hadn't realised till after I had shot that the floor of the room would not green screen out. So, to fix this, I placed a mask around the bottom of the drum to separate the floor. Then using the crop tool, I could crop out the floor, with the drum being left untouched. Obviously, this wasn't perfect as in between some of the drums, the floor is still a little bit visible. However, with the other band members in front of the drummer, this isn't too much of a problem.
Continuing with the band shots, I made a base colour grade so that the band members fit in more with the background. I adjusted the basic corrections such as exposure and contrast, but a lot of the effect is due to the tones being changed to more of a yellowy orange colour. Thanks to my self-portrait work I have a decent amount of practice with this. I'm decently happy with the colour grade so far, I may change it more further on but I'm not entirely sure at the moment.
The last band edit I did was add an opacity grade between two shots, where it goes from a wide to a mid-shot. By adding this opacity change it just makes the transition between the two shots a lot smoother. I think it looks good and I'm happy with the effect. However, I'm not sure whether it fits in with the rest of the video. It feels a bit out of place. I'm going to try to get some lecturer feedback and see what their opinion on it is.
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The last edit I made was adding some slow zooms and moving to some of my stationary guitar shots. This wasn't too much of a large change, but it was simple to do, and I feel it really helps to keep up the energy throughout the whole video.
Once I got home, I started with gathering the rest of my pictures for project 4. This wasn't too hard, but it did take a little while. Now that I have all my photos, when I get my project 4 feedback back, I can start on adding all the images in.
I then started looking at project 2. I reviewed the navigation flow chart again. I then made a brief plan of all the pages I currently have, and that I would have to add in the future of my WIX website. This is a good start for my navigation flow chart and will better prepare me for when I make the actual thing, which I would like to start doing in the coming days.
Finally, I added the LO's to my music video within my WIX website. My lecturer recommended doing this in order to make marking of it easier. This wasn't too hard to do and I can see the usefulness of it.
Monday 10th January
The first thing that happened today was that Danny came around and watched my music video edit so far. Overall, he thought it was pretty good, but he gave me some tips for what to add. So that is what I did during the rest of the lesson.
The first thing I did was find a new background for my band shots. The original background was more of a picture than a video which made the shots look kind of weird. Now, I’ve got a new background which includes moving lights and makes the shots feel much more alive. Due to the background changing, this meant I also had to alter the colour grade on the green screen individual shots. This wasn’t too hard but it took a decent amount of time as I had to remove all the original colour grade, and then add in the new one. I also removed the fade near the end band shots as I no longer liked the look of it and I felt it didn’t blend in with the rest of the video.
Going hand in hand with the band shots, I undid all my chroma key work and replaced it with Ultra Key. This was something I didn’t even know existed before today. But using Ultra key helped the shots look a lot smoother, in my opinion the green screen looked a lot less obvious and the outline of the people looked so much smoother.
Two other things Danny recommended were to add a light strobe effect to my audience shots and make my behind the scenes shots black and white to help them to stand out. To make the audience shots, I simply applied colour mattes over the audience shots, made them all overlays and added opacity fades between different the different colours. I feel this worked pretty well and I was happy with the end results. To make the behind the scenes shots, I desaturated the shots all the way, then adjusted all the key colour editing, in order to make the different shades of black and white stand out. Currently, I’m not entirely sure if I like the black and white shots, but I’m going to keep them for now and see what my group thinks.
Finally, I just adjusted some simple composition in certain shots, especially including the band shots to remove some empty space. The major composition I improved was slightly adjusting the multishots so that the two shots were more central in frame.
Near the end of the lesson, my whole group went around and watched each others pieces. I think both of my teammates pieces are looking pretty good at the moment. I’m hoping when we put it all together it will look good.
When I got home I did more work on project 2. I’ve now created a rough version of my navigation flow chart, I plan to get Danny to look at it on Thursday, to see if I’ve done everything I need for it.
Finally, I planned the different things I needed to design for the rest of project 2. I’ve now got all the things I need to design planned out and I hope to start designing them in the coming days.
Tuesday 11th January
It was only a hour and a half lesson today, so I took the time to finish off my edit for music video. I only needed to change a few simple things. I turned up the exposure and contrast on a couple of the close up instrument shots to just improve the lighting ever so slightly.
After that, me and my group went around and watched all of each others again. My teammates both seemed to like mine, but recommended adding a little bit of grain to the black and white shots. At first I was a little hesitant, however, I added 20% noise using the Noise effect, and I’m glad I listened to their advice as I think it certainly does look better.
Finally, I exported the final cut and sent it to my teammate who’s computer we will use to slot all our cuts together. We didn’t have enough time to do that today, but that will be the first thing we do tomorrow.
When I got home, I first uploaded my final cut and all my post production journal entries onto my WIX page. Then I went to work on some of my designs for project 2. I pretty much finished my design for a logo. I plan to do some more of this work in tomorrow’s lesson, now that I’ve finished my music video edit.
Wednesday 12th January
Since I finished me music video cut yesterday, today my group was putting them together. This was harder than we thought. We got it all together in the end, but some of the audio sounds a bit weird, as we had to try and sync up the audio with the visuals. The majority of it works, but there’s a couple of clips at the beginning where the audio repeats itself by a second. We’re planning to sort that out tomorrow, and I’m hoping it isn’t too hard to do.
In the remainder of the lesson, I worked on the rest of my work. The first thing I did was write down my specific journal entries that are required for the music video project. This took a little while as I went into great detail. We were supposed to be told about these in detail yesterday, but our teacher was ill. Hopefully, what I’ve written today will be good enough. Once I’d written it, I uploaded it onto my WIX website.
Finally, I improved my project 2 Navigation flow chart. I added some more colour changes to make the levels of the flow chart fit in with one another. I also improved the layers on the photoshop so that further editing will be easier to do.
When I got home I continued further work on my project 2. I planned out the designs that I need to create. I plan to have all of them designed by the end of the weekend. Today, I designed to button that will take the user to the top of the page as the rough design for the About page. Once I’ve finished all these designs I’ll be able to move onto the full page mock ups. I’m struggling to think of all the things I need to design, but I’m hoping we get a bit more guidance in the lesson tomorrow.
I plan to get my Navigation flow chart checked over tomorrow, to double check that what I’ve done is correct.
Thursday 13th January
I’ve done a lot of work on my project 2 today. With all the work I’ve done at home and at college today, I have now finished my designs for project 2. This includes the buttons, rough homepage, about me page, journal page, top button and logo. Additionally, in lesson I actually created a new logo for project 2. I liked my first design, but I felt it was too complex and hard to read. Now that I’ve created my new logo, I also plan to create a small gif to go along with it, that will also be inputted on my WIX website.
I also added more detail to my Navigation flow chart, added the about me and a portfolio page. Additionally, adding in Journal months and splitting my project into the two different years.
At college, I also wrote up my Music Video evaluation. I wrote quite a lot and I’m very happy with all I talked about.
Finally, I then uploaded my section of the music video as well as the evaluation to my WIX website. This means now all I have to do is upload the entire piece onto my website and it will be complete. My teammate exported it today, but then lost it, so we’ll have to export it again tomorrow.
I need to get Ash to come export my section again as the lecturers need additional parts for marking. I’m not quite sure what he needs to do, but I must get him to do that tomorrow, as he was too busy with other people’s to do mine today.
Friday 14th January
Today is our deadline for music video. Which meant I spent the entire lesson going over my WIX website to make sure everything was present. I started with uploading the whole music video, which has each teammates part in. My teammate had found the video she’d exported yesterday and she shared it with me and our other teammate.
After this, I was confident that all the content was up on my WIX website. To help out with the marking of my project I added all the LO’s to each piece of work, to show what each piece of work is for. This was also a good way to make sure all the content was definitely on my website. And going through adding the LO’s assured me of this.
Finally, now that everything was on my WIX website, I went over my website to double check everything was working. I first read over all my work, this helped me to fix a couple of spelling and grammatical mistakes that I hadn’t realised first time round. Additionally, I checked that all my buttons worked and that all my images are able to be clicked on to open a pop up. There were a couple of things that I fixed but no major mistakes.
When I got home, I did some more work on my project 2. Over the weekend I plan on starting my 3 mock up pages. Then by Monday I will have all the rough work for project 2 pre-production. This will allow me to flesh it out more before next Thursday.
Monday 17th January
Today was the start of the options project. We first conducted a demo on sound. We were given a short clip from Toy Story with no sound. We then had to go through and create our own sound to bring the clip to life. My group started by planning the sounds we needed, which included dialogue, sound effects and foley. Then once we had it planned, we went out and recorded our sound. It was quite hard at first to record sound, as we struggled to find a room that was quiet enough. Luckily, we found a room which allowed us to record well. We used several different techniques to get the right sounds. For all the dialogue we used our own voices. I voiced all the soldiers, as well as having to contribute to some of the kids voices. We used my Lego keychain as the base for the running sound of the soldiers and we even used a real door for the opening of the door.
When we were finishing up on our filming the technician alerted us to the fact that the boom mic that we had been using the whole time wasn’t working. I was immediately very worried, luckily though it just meant we were recording with the microphone on the recorder, and the audio still sounded fine.
Finally, we imported all our clips into Adobe Audition and started editing. I’ve only used Audition once before so it was good to get some more experience with it. I began with cutting all my audio tracks and placing them in time with the music. I then adjusted the volume of all the clips to make them better fit the environment of the film. I only used the basics of Audition today, but it was still good to get more experience with it. Especially since the options project is coming up.
We also saw the options project brief today. We haven’t gone over it in detail yet but it’s good to see it. I’m slightly hesitant by the fact that we only have one week for pre-production and only one week for production but hopefully it will all turn out fine. I really want to do an animation, which we are going to be doing more demos on in the coming days, so I’m really looking forward to being able to learn more about animation.
Finally, once I got home today I did more work on my project 2. Today, I created my 3 page mock ups. I made them all today, which now means I’ve completed all my pre-production for project 2. However, I want to do some more detail onto my designs, so over the next couple days I plan to do some more work on this.
My 3 mock up pages are design for my home page, journal page and a production page. I chose these as my mock up pages as I feel they are the pages that need the most work on them. The Journal pages are entirely brand new and so a good design for them is crucial. My homepage needs updating and that’s a good place to show of my new logo and drop down menu. I redesigned the drop down menu as I felt the images no longer fit in especially with the homepage design. Instead I’ve given each section a colour which will be repeated when the menu drops down. Finally, the production page is designed as the layout of all my pages will change immensely as it now all needs to fit in the guidelines, this page also shows off the new button design.
Tuesday 18th January
Today was a great day. We learnt how to rotoscope, which is essentially drawing over an original video. This was so great to learn as I can now finally animate much easier on Photoshop. Originally, I was drawing each individual frame and then exporting it as a JPEG. Now, I’ve been shown you can import a video and draw on each frame, and then export it as a video. This will save me so much time, I’d really been worried by how hard animation was going to be, but learning this technique has made me feel so much more confident.
You can use rotoscoping for adding effect over original videos, but today I mainly focused on using it for animation as that is what I’m hoping to do in the near future, but the skills can be transferred if I wanted to edit onto real videos.
When I returned home, I first created a demo work page for todays rotoscoping. This didn’t take too long and I was able to display the work that I’ve done, which I’m very proud of.
Finally, I uploaded all the project 2 pre-production that I had completed so far. With all of this displayed on my website, I’ve now technically finished pre-production. But putting it up onto my WIX website means I no longer have to worry about making sure its handed in. As I said yesterday, I want to do a little more work on this, which I will most likely do tomorrow after lesson, and in the final lesson of it on Thursday. This will just help me to expand my work a bit more. But having all of this work on my WIX website now means that even if the work I do in the coming days doesn’t turn out well, I’ll still have this amount of work to fall back on.
Wednesday 19th January
We did some more work on our rotoscoping today. Our task was to create sound for the video that we started yesterday. To began with, I added some more detail onto my rotoscoping. I started with adding some of the detail to the characters cloak, this made the movement seem more realistic. I then drew the other character that is present in the scene. This helped with the story as it showed where the bullet came from. Finally, I coloured in the two characters which just elevated the video and made it look a lot better.
When designing the sound, I wrote up an audio script. It was a very short video so there weren’t too many sounds I needed. After I completed my audio script, the sounds I needed were; a gunshot sound; the sound of a bullet moving; wind and clothes sound. For the wind and clothes sound I simply stood outside and recorded me moving my jacket around, this allowed me to get a naturalistic sound. For the gunshot sound I simply stamped my foot on some laminated floor and for the bullet sound I quickly dragged my foot along some concrete.
Then in post production I did some simple editing to make the sounds more realistic. For the wind and clothes, I slightly slowed down the sound to make it seem more slow mo like the clip, then turned the volume down as it was more background noise. For the gunshot and bullet sound I used pitch shifter. I pitched down the gunshot and pitched up, while also quickening the sound of the bullet. This made them sound more realistic as the gunshot sound was deeper and more dramatic and the bullet sounded like it was whistling past the character.
Finally, I compiled them together in audition and I was very happy with the results.
To finish off the lesson we had a quick look at the art department within a piece of media. I looked into the show His Dark Materials, and found out how they used puppets and CGI to make lifelike animals, and how they used the game developing software Unreal Engine in order to build a virtual set before they built the real ones. This allows them to view different camera shots. Overall, it was pretty useful and will fuel my ideas going forward.
Finally, when I got home, I updated my Rotoscoping demo work page and did a bit more work on project 2. I mainly just updated how it looks on my WIX website, as I thought the layout I did yesterday was a little messy. In tomorrows lesson we have time for project 2 so I plan to finish all the little bits off then, as I do not have much I need to do.
Thursday 20th January
We were supposed to spend all lesson today working on project 2 on WIX. However, WIX was not working for anyone in the class. Luckily, I had put all my project 2 work on my WIX page a couple of days ago, so I’d still be able to hit the deadline fine.
So, instead during the lesson I did work which didn’t require WIX. The first thing I did was create my start up logo for project 2. This is just a simple animation for my logo that will play when the user first opens the website. Since my Logo is set on a TV I though a great start up animation would be turning the tv on. So to do this I first found a real clip of a TV turning on. Using my recent rotoscoping skills, I then rotoscoped it to create a short animation. I then layered this animation on top of the logo in premiere and keyframed it so that it would fade into the title LeStrange Media. I think this worked really well and it means I’ll be able to implement this during Production of project 2.
Speaking of project 2 production, I have written up a list of everything I need to do for it. The majority of the work is converting my current pages so that the work is all set in the guidelines and that the colour scheme is updated. On top of that the new pages such as the about me, portfolio and new journal pages need to be added. Additionally the new buttons and drop down menu will be implemented. And all the new pages for future work will be made, although obviously they will be blank until I reach that project. Although there aren’t too many ground-breaking new things, my website will look completely different and more functional, especially due to all the work being moved into the guidelines.
We finished off the lesson by being put into groups for an upcoming demo. This demo includes filming a dialogue scene between two characters. My group has chosen to do the red pill, blue pill from The Matrix.
Finally, when I returned home I started some of my project 2 work. Today, I re-organised all the navigational pages so that they’re within the guidelines. As well as adapting all the demo work pages so that they now are adapted to the guidelines and new colour scheme.
Tomorrow, I plan doing more guideline and colour scheme work, as I feel it’d be best to improve all the stuff I already have on my WIX website before adding all the new pages.
Friday 21st January
To begin with today, we were shown and taught a more in depth options project brief. It’s really good to know more about this project and I’ve already started to have an idea. I really want to do an animation, which I know will take a lot of time, so starting as soon as possible would be good. So, over the weekend I plan to try to flesh out my idea a bit more.
For the rest of the lesson we look at Hollywood Scripts. We were introduced to a website called Celtx which is supposed to have script writing. We didn’t look at it too much in lesson, but I’m sure it will come in useful for this project. We also looked at current Hollywood scripts that could inspire our own projects. I chose the script for the film “The Mitchells VS The Machines”. This is an animated Netflix film, and it has a really unique animation style, I think as an animated film, it’s one of the best ones if I’m looking for inspiration.
When I returned home, I went back on doing Project 2 production. Today, I put more of my navigation pages into guidelines and updated their colour palette. These were the navigation panels for specific projects.
I also created my new home page, adding in the animated logo that I created the other day. This is really good to update as this is the first page anyone will see. I finished off with just adjusting some of my project 2 pages into the guidelines as well as updating their colour schemes.
Monday 24th January
The first half of today's lesson was purely theoretical. We were looking at staging and blocking. To do this we analysed a couple of scenes from popular movies, as well as looking at what goes into staging and blocking behind the scenes.
Then in the second half we applied this theoretical knowledge. We picked a random short scene from a random film and filmed it using the knowledge we’d just learned. Slightly annoyingly, I was used as one of the actors which means I didn’t get too much experience behind the camera, but we will be doing another similar task on Wednesday, so I will make sure to do some technical work then.
When I got home, I first wrote up the notes from today and did some further research into continuity as well as the 180 degree rule. This knowledge will come in useful in my upcoming options project. I then made up a demo work page for the short demo we had today.
I finished off today by doing some more of my production for project 2. I finished off converting my project 2 pages into the guidelines and the new colour palette, and then began doing the same for my Music Video pages. I’m hoping to have all the current work on my WIX page updated by this Thursday, which will then allow me to add all the new features in the following week. We have five weeks to do production, post production and bug testing, so I’m planning to have my production done in these first two weeks, to allow me ample time for the rest of the work.
Tuesday 25th January
In todays lesson, we were looking more at animation, specifically stop motion. I have previous experience with stop motion animation as I’ve played around with it before in the past. So there wasn’t too much new information given to me. But it was still a good practice of it as a potential for use in the options project. We will be editing our pieces next week.
When I got home, I did more work on project 2. Today, I finished off converting my music video pages into the guidelines as well as adapting the colour palette. This took quite a while as there was a lot of information on these pages, and adapting them into the guidelines took quite a lot of time and effort.
Wednesday 26th January
We did our proper staging and blocking practical today. As I said on Monday, I wanted to get more of a role behind the camera, and so today I chose to be in control of the audio. This was especially good as a while ago I missed the lesson on the audio technology, so being able to use it today was especially good in getting my knowledge back up.
Being in control of audio meant I was using the audio zoom recorder and the boom mic with the boom pole. Using the boom pole was especially fun to use, I learned especially that holding it for a while can get very tiring on my arms, but it was a great learning experience.
Once we finished recording we were able to upload all our shots and audio recordings. There are several audio recordings that we can delete as I did a couple of test shots throughout, but overall there should be everything that we need. We will be editing this demo in lesson tomorrow.
When I got home I did more work on project 2. In tomorrows lesson we will have the first half dedicated to this project. So, I spent today checking over the work I’ve already done. There were only a couple things that I needed to adjust such as slightly repositioning some texts to make sure it was properly in line with the vector art behind it. I’m now fully prepared to continue with all my work tomorrow. I should have all my pages re-aligned and coloured by tomorrow, but all the other buttons that I need to add should be done by Friday. This will allow me to add all the new informational pages over next week.
Thursday 27th January
I thought we were going to have the first half of today to work on project 2 but instead we were given the whole lesson to edit the staging and blocking task from yesterday. It was good to get plenty of time for editing, but it was slightly annoying we couldn’t work on project 2.
I started my edit by putting all my shots in the correct order. We had a rough order planned out, but the vast majority was up to me. I was happy with the order I chose and I believe it helped to keep up the pace of the piece.
Once I had the visuals, I added in all the proper audio recordings. This took a lot longer than I thought it would, which restricted the time I had to add effects later on. However, I believe this was time well spent as getting all the better audio recordings helped the scene feel much more professional. There were a couple of transitions between the different audio tracks which I felt were a little rough. If I were had more time with editing I would have liked to make these transitions a bit more smoother.
I finished my edit with adding an adjustment layer, which I then added a slight green colouring to. This was to emulate the more Matrix feel, and I was pretty happy with how it came out. Overall, I was pretty happy with my edit and I thought the final piece gave our work justice.
Once I got home, I first made a demo work page for the staging and blocking task. I then continued with project 2 as we didn't do it at college. I re-organised and coloured my summer work page and then started doing the same to my Self Portrait page. When I finish my self portrait page tomorrow, I will have finished re-organising and colouring, This will leave only the buttons before I can start adding all the new content to my website.
Friday 28th January
We started looking at ideas development for our options project today. I had already had a rough idea, but I created a completely new one today. My new idea revolves around a single character, who’s going to be some sort of alien. This character will travel to four different dimensions to collect pieces of furniture for his apartment. At the moment the idea is a little hard to explain, but I’ve got it expanded a little more in my mind. The first world will be a normal human world, the second will be where inanimate object are alive, the third will be a medieval world and the last will be the alien original world. To access this the protagonist will have a small machine that opens portals to travel to the worlds.
I know for a fact that the whole thing is going to be an animation, but currently I’m thinking about using a mix of traditional animation and rotoscoping techniques. For the protagonist and backgrounds, I’m planning on using traditional animation as I feel it will better help fit the tone of the piece. But for the human side characters and background characters, I will most likely use rotoscoping as I feel that will help me to achieve a better looking and more realistic result.
When I got home I continued with project 2 work. Today I finished re-aligning and colouring my self portrait page, this means I have now completed re-aligning colouring all my previous pages, this means over the course of next week, I can implement my new buttons and start on adding and creating all my new pages.
Monday 31st January
We began the morning by looking at project management. This includes production schedules, Gannts and Call sheets. This is a good thing to look at now as it will come in extremely important in the upcoming FMP, I can use it a little bit in my upcoming options project but as I’m doing an animation it will be slightly less important.
In the second half, I continued working on my options project. I first started making a PowerPoint for the upcoming pitch that I will have to do as part of my ideas development. After that I then uploaded the research on visuals and audio that I had done so far. This is good to get uploaded onto my website now as it will allow me to continue with my ideas development.
When I got home, I first finished writing up my notes about the project management that I started this morning. After that finished updating my options project WIX pages, including adding the navigation page for it. Finally, for options project, I created a questionnaire that I have sent out to a wide variety of people. This will act as my primary research as help fund my ideas development. I’ve sent it to a wide variety of people which will allow me to get a wide range of feedback.
To finish off the day I did some more of my project 2 production. Today, I started on changing my buttons. I was able to change all my buttons for each of my project pages, which only leaves changing my drop down menu and adding my top buttons before I can start on adding all my new pages.
