Digipak Templates - Need to print design to them.

Draft of Magazine Advertisement

Layout Idea Draft - Magazine Advertisement

I realise improvements need to be made to the colours and picture quality but only a draft.

The Script - Science and Faith (Album Cover)

This image is the cover of The Scripts latest album, 'Science and Faith'.

This cover holds a very simplistic layout. It uses the typical conventions of the text at the top of the cover with the image in middle being the main focus point to the audience. Despite it being simple, the image has a powerful meaning. the two hands grasped together reflect; loyalty, trust and relating back to the title of the album 'faith'. Also, the audience can clearly see it is a man holding a woman's hand therefore, putting the above meanings together with love. This is reflected in the theme of the album where many of the songs are about relationships, love and women. In addition, the background is the paper usually used as an ancient script relating to the name of the band.
In terms of colours, they aren't very colourful at all and the cover only uses 3 dull colours; white, black and brown. However, the editing techniques used to shade certain parts of the hands, and lighten the background to bring out the font used for the title ironically makes the dull colours stand out quite well against each other and in turn to the audience.
The title of the album is conventionally put in a smaller font and placed next to the name of the artist/band. However, although the name of the band stands out well in a bold and simple black colour, the title of the album is quite small to read and would make it hard to notice on the retail shelf. But maybe this puts more emphasis and adds more effect to the iconic image in the centre of the cover? The band may in this album specially want to sell the album based on the eye catching and bold image rather than the title. In reality, the name of the an album is not so much something you look for in a shop when trying to find an album but more the name of the band. The album title on the other hand is something which creates a powerful meaning and sort of describes the genre and type of album in a couple of words. In this case, 'faith' is included in the title and after listening to many of The Scripts songs on this album, they do aim towards singing about 'faith' in terms of relationships and love. This will be something I take on board when creating a name for my digipak.

Audience - Although my opinion may be biased after listening to many of these songs, I believe the genre of this album is very specific to alternative rock and slow music with an upbeat chorus - the typical style of music suited to The Script. However, this does not make the audience range limited as the style of music appeals to ages from early teenagers to late forties. On the other hand, in terms of the album cover, I do not believe it would 'jump out' to teenagers in a retail store because of the colours and image. In addition, this all depends on what type of person you are and obviously its hard to create a cover to target an audience range as big as The Scripts. Therefore, with my digipak, I will concentrate on creating something that would catch the younger persons eye yet still stand out to the older side of the audience range. E.g. not too many darker, dull colours.

Take That - Progress (Album Cover)

The above is the cover of Take That's latest album - Progress.

Title - The title of the album in particular strongly reflects Take That as a modern band today. With their growing popularity not only with the older generations but with teenagers now also. Furthermore, there is the addition of Robbie Williams rejoining the band again. Putting these two alone together, essentially shows the huge amount of progress Take That have made since forming again.

Image - The overall layout takes on the typical conventions of album covers such as the title and name of the band at the top left and the main image either centre or bottom. The image above I believe represents the monkey to man evolution theory which again shows progression but in the form of humans in general. Furthermore, the five characters shown in the main image possibly reflect the five members of the band. The image doesn't fill up too much of the album cover as the characters are being kept in proportion rather than being stretched to fill up more space. However, by the image being placed at the bottom rather than in the centre, it seems to be a lot more effective. This will be a point to take into consideration when focusing on the layout of my digipak cover because in conclusion from this, less can be more and this can be proved especially in the cover above and Olly Murs' in one of my earlier posts.

Colours - Whilst creating an album cover, it is obviously beneficial to not only the band but to the audience as well to make it eye catching. This has been done purely by the yellow background alone showing that you don't need too much to catch the audiences attention. Additionally, yellow is conventionally, a colour which is quite soft and feminine showing that Take That don't need to promote their masculinity as a boy band as long as it catches people's eyes in shops. Take That have then made a great decision to just use 2 more colours - black and a dark, glowing shade of orange. Both colours really stand out on the yellow background well. In turn, the brightness of the yellow captures the audiences attention but it's the main image that then has the effect on the audience and makes them take a further look.

Audience - Take That hold a huge fan base in the present day. Currently, ages from around 14-50 are fans of Take That's music and although their fan base is predominantly females, their music style also appeals to males. In terms of this album cover, I think that it would without a doubt appeal to females but maybe not so much males because of the feminine yellow background. However, because Take That are not just an up and coming band trying to sell a debut album, your either a fan or not at this point in their career.

Final Week

Today I bought some thin but strong card and have made a digipak template and placed inside a  plastic holder for the CD.
Tomorrow (Monday 13th) we will continue the final parts of editing and taking photos for the digipak and magazine advertisement which we will then be working on from our plans on the evening.
Tuesday 14th - Filming the final verse and placing it onto the edit suite to complete our music video. Continue with the editing on Adobe Photoshop of the digipak to complete it as soon as possible for Friday.
Wednesday 15th - Continue with the magazine advertisement and finish the digipak, both on Adobe Photoshop and the real one. Begin evaluation of research and music video.
Thursday 16th/Friday 17th - Make final touches to all texts; music video, digipak if needed and magazine advertisment. Finish evaluation from notes made over the period of production. Upload all texts to Blogger.

Olly Murs Cover

Whilst walking through HMV today, this cover of Olly Murs caught my eye. It's a really simple design which uses really simple colours but they stand out on each other very well which is what makes it eye catching. Furthermore, the several images and poses reflect the artists cheeky style of music and personality.

This style of cover has been very influential to the production of our digipak cover and also the simpleness of the cover basically does not reflect or represent a lot, therefore just like the song title of our music video - 'Nothing'.

Conventions - Magazine Advertisement

These are 3 advertisements for albums and singles in magazines.
All 3 of the advertisements have main images in the centre. In the above, there is 2 medium close ups but one is smaller than the other and a long shot. I personally think the Ellie Goulding one has more of an effect to the audience because of the brightness of the image and also it covering most of the page. Furthermore, the audience receive pleasure from seeing an artist they are a fan of, so therefore it may be more beneficial to use medium shots/close ups for the advertisement rather than a long shot unless other props or background is creating meaning as well. The Temper Trap advertisement isn't as eye catching because of the colours used yet it is more mysterious with the shadow cast over the image and the Outerspace/Alien style font. This could be exactly what the band wanted - to portray them in this light. In addition, as you can see, lone artists have an image of themselves, however the band above and many others have an image which symbolises or represents a particular thing.

The style of font used represents the theme of the album or single. In the examples above:
-Ellie Goulding - Bright, gold and bold = Lights. It stands out and can be easily read in the non-joined up font and the first letters are bigger than the rest attracting the audiences attention to that point to read.
 - Temper Trap - Small, luminous, slightly blurred = Mysterious just like shadowing used on the image and the black background.
-Noisettes - Retro style of font reflecting the artists retro style of music.

Other points to consider on my advertisement that are included in the above could be:
-Newspaper/Magazine ratings.
-Logos
-Websites
-Date of release
-Production Details (usually in very small font at the bottom)

Possible Idea - Front Cover Digipak

Edit to post:

After researching other covers of the similar genre to The Script, I feel like this cover is to much like a Hip Hop album cover and therefore have other plans for the front cover which are more suited to the alternative genre.

Current Stage

We are currently just fine tuning what we have filmed up to now and working on our ancillary texts. At this point in time, we have one last verse to film on Tuesday and then crack on with the finishing touches of the music video.
I've been using Photoshop to develop some ideas for my ancillary texts and we are just drawing some drafts which will be scanned up on to here. In the following and final week we have to:
-Complete the full Digipak
-Film the last verse and the last bits of editing
-Complete the magazine advertisement
-Evaluation

Back Cover Conventions - Kid Cudi Album

Track Listing + Numbers- Written clearly on the back cover. In many cases, in a bold font that stands out to the audience as the track list is the main purpose and focal point of the back cover. The colours on Kid Cudi's album stand out in bright yellow, blue and pink on a darker camouflage back ground.

Image - This is often an image of the artist or something relating to the theme of the album. Above, we can see the artist in a cartoon like form. This relates to the theme of the album which is obviously comic like with bright colours and bold and thick text.

Details - In many other album covers, production details will be located at the bottom of the cover in very small font yet with this one, Kid Cudi has used the logo's of the companies involved with production which would give the companies more credit for their work than on other albums where the details are almost unnoticeable. Furthermore, in an effort to promote the artist, they have included 4 websites in fairly large font which stands out.

Barcode - Unlike the cover above, there is often a bar code for retail purposes. Although it may be located somewhere else on this album, it would be conventionally placed on the bottom left of the cover.

Production Problems

We began filming in early November. We captured the first couple of scenes within the next two weeks to our satisfaction. However, the weather changed in early December and we only had 50% of filming completed. It snowed for 3 days straight and therefore we had no option but to film with snow in the background as it has not yet cleared. Furthermore, 80% of our music video is filmed outside as it would be hard to film our ideas inside. We altered our initial ideas slightly at this point.
The continuity in our video has therefore not being successful. However, we have decided to change our ideas in the following way:
-The song is about a relationship between a man and a woman, yet there's problems in the relationship where the man obviously loves the woman a lot more than she loves him.
- We have therefore captured the beginning of the video with an Autumn like background and 60% in the snow (which would be Winter time).
-This can be explained in the way that the video is strung out in multi narrative over a longer period of time. For example, the relationship begins to develop problems between the couple during Autumn time. These carry on getting worse all the way through to Winter. At this point, things between the two are finally at an all time low and on the verge of ending. At the end of the video, the actor jumps as to commit suicide, which really represents how bad things have got and how the problems in the relationship and love can affect someone.

Different album covers - Different genres.

Hip-Hop

Pop, R'n'B

Electro

Heavy Metal

Indie-Pop

Alternative Rock

Ancillary Task Brief

As part of my music video coursework, I also have chosen to produce:

-A digipak for the artist's album release.

-A magazine advertisement for my digipak.

In the above posts, I'm researching and developing ideas for both of these

Diddy - Coming Home (Music Video)

Above is the R'n'B/Hip Hop music video 'Coming Home' by Diddy & Skylar Grey. The video is mainly performance with a basic narrative relating to the lyrics such as when Diddy goes into a burnt out house during the line - 'Is a house really a home'. All of the video is set in a stone desert.

Cinematography - Throughout this music video, quite a few extreme long shots are included. These a really effective because it establishes the setting which is a rock paved desert in America. This then links to how lonely and isolated the single artist is walking across this desert which in turn links to the lyrics of struggling to get back to a safe place in his life.
When Diddy begins rapping his  first verse, this is the point at which the camera shots are mainly medium shots to close ups. Therefore, the audience get to see the artist they are a fan of - another convention of music videos relating back to the history of the music video and why they where first produced.
Because the video is mainly performance from this point throughout, the camera shots don't vary as much in order to see the artist performing. There is the odd long shot cut to the beat for the purpose of including the mise en scene in the frame such as the burnt down home in the second verse.
In terms of camera movement, the camera is obviously handheld and not very steady. This is really effective within this hip hop genre because it adds to the up-beat, abrupt and powerful lyrics during Diddy's performance. The camera movement becomes steady during the chorus whilst Skylar Grey sings because the pace has been taken down a notch because of the change in style of music.
At the final line of the song, the artist holds the final note and the right to left pan goes along really well with this because it runs parallel with the smoothness of the note, in turn, ending the song in a softer, less abrupt way.

Mise en Scene - During the beginning of the song, we see the typical conventions of hip-hop videos in terms of an ostentatious display of wealth. In the example above; a flash helicopter, sunglasses, smart, fashionable clothing and the confident walk. This is mainly used in many hip-hop videos because it often relates to what rappers write about. However, as the song progresses, Diddy turns this on it's head as background props start coming into scene. A burnt out; house, car and expensive household items spread around a lonely desert portrays the image that the rich lifestyle that many artists show off, could count as nothing if you neglect the things that actually count in life, such as; family. This then reflects the lyrics..For example, 'Is a house really a home when your loved ones are gone'. In addition to this, the line 'And money can't make up for it' again relates to how Diddy just walks by possibly thousands of dollars laid in a pile next to a cupboard in the desert and the rest of the expensive items.

Editing - The music video begins with a low angle shot placed on the ground looking out across the desert. This shot doesnt really have a purpose to the video but it allows the director to cut to the extreme long shot just as you hear the first beat - which is one of the conventions of music videos. The editing to the beat is continued throughout the whole music video and is really effective within this type of fast paced genre. Whilst the chorus is being sung, the editing pace is slowed down durastically to reflect the slow pace of singing. This will be something I take into consideration when producing my music video. The pace of beat reflects the pace of edit.
During the beginning of the music video, there is no continuity within the narrative. I can see this because the shots change back and forth between Diddy sat on a helicopter and walking through the desert. Both scenes eventually merge into the one of him walking through the desert as the performance of his verse begins