Our Finished Video

The Finished Digipak

The Finished Poster

Post- production Reflection

Having finished our final product, looking back on it I see alot of areas which we could have improved on, but I do however also see that our final product turned out pretty well overall.

Looking at our pre production process I think that it could have gone a lot better. We were very indecisive on our idea and we picked the song very early on, which put the pressure on us of making up a good idea to match the song. I think that our storyline is pretty weak and I think that is the main flaw of our music video. We did all the research in pre production which we needed to do in order to go into the production and post production process fully prepared, but I do wish we had been more creative in our concept, which might have created a better video. Overall we researched the genre well and informed ourselves on how to establish the star image to attract the right audience.

During our production process we weren't quite as organized as we aimed to be in pre production. We got everything done it was a very stressful shooting day however. Running slightly low on people who were available for the whole day, two of our group members ended up being in the video as 'ensemble' to establish the feel of it being a big and successful party. I took on the job of directing and it was very stressful to keep people focused for hours on end as it was very hot in the studio, and due to the time we had to shoot it, we were slightly pressed for time. Certain people had to leave at different times on that day which means we had to reschedule slightly as we went along which meant we had to film parts of the video with less people than we intended and therefore had to fake the size of the party. Losing all of our band members the day before the shoot wasn't very helpful either and meant that we had to find people who could play the instrument, no matter how good their performance was. This was reflected in the footage we shot since our main singer was not what I had imagined him to be and the band overall lacked in energy and commitment. This also showed due to the fact that we had trouble finding parts of the song which were lipsynched. Overall I think that our production process was successful and I am happy with the shots we got for the final video, although I do wish that we had had a bigger variation in them, which would have required another shoot day.

Our post production process was probably the most crucial in getting everything out of the video which we could in terms of the material we had gathered and the idea we had to set up the whole video. We did a very thorough job on this which is, I think, reflected in the video. The cuts were precise and on the beat and the prportions of all the aspects of the video were prioritised in order to make the video as exciting as possible. Otherwise I think that the effects which we put over the video in 'After Effects' worked to our advantage and underlined our concept, involving the viewer in the world of the party.

Overall I think our video is good. The technical aspect is a good as it could have been with the resources we had and the storyline is average. If I could go back and change anything I would focus more on the narrative on the shoot day, which would enable us to carry it on throughout the second half of the video which is one thing that is lacking. The narrative pretty much stops after the kiss which makes the content very basic.

Post Production Evaluation of our Music Video

Having finally finished the post production process, looking back on it I can now see where we went wrong and where we went right. It took us quite long to complete, but now I think we have gotten as much out of the video as we could have, in terms of the technical aspect during post production.

After our shoot day, we uploaded all the raw footage onto a computer and onto the Final Cut server to ensure that we had a backup to all of our work. From there on we started sorting all of our footage into bins, determining which shots could be used (and setting a marker onto the parts we were going to use), and labelling them so we could find them more easily when we were editing. This sped up the editing process dramatically. After we had 'logged' the shots we dragged the original soundtrack of the music onto the timeline of Final Cut, and started lypsynching all of the shots, which involved band members, in time to the music. We did this by picking up the two most prominent beats in the soundtrack and picking out the same ones in every shot. This helped us because it ensured that all of the band members were in time to the music and we could then cut our performance aspect. We did this by having all of the shots layered above one another and just picking out the parts of the shots which we wanted to use in each section and took out everything else.

After we finished cutting the performance aspect, we started adding in the narrative, in order to build up to the chorus and therefore the switch of the party. For the performance aspect we picked out the parts of the storyline which would sum up the first half of the video, since we had to find a good balance between the performance aspect and the narrative. We structured the video in a way that enabled us to feature the narrative enough in order for it to be understood, but still let us focus on the performance aspect and the band in general, which was important as it was their debut album. The dancers came in throughout the second half to underline the effect the kiss had on the party, and to feature them as symbols for the 'celebration' of the band. Both the dance aspect and the performance aspect, we cut in sequences, so we cut the sequences together as a seperate section and the just put certain bits of it into the video to punctuate the feel of the party.

After finishing the cut in FCP (Final Cut Pro) we converted the video to its original and much larger definition in order to be able to access it on after effects were we added the 'Tron' effect on the dancers and lowered the saturation of the beginning party. Once we had decided that we were going to adjust the video on After Effects we started physically ordering our shots to make the whole timeline a lot tidier and make the bumping up of the video a lot faster. We sorted them into three categories: 'Special Effects', 'Performance' and 'Narrative'. This also made it easier to see which shots needed to be edited in what way on After Effects which enabled us to finish our post production process a lot quicker.

Overall I am happy with our post production, since it was thorough and accurate, assuring that the video was as perfect as it could be with the material which we had gathered. I do however think that we were lacking narrative in the second half of the video, because the couple seems to pretty much disappear after the big change. I also think that we could have structured our process a little more clearly from the beginning, since we were slightly stuck at times and sometime the different members of our group seemed to work against each other, just because we couldn't make the same slots all the time, so communication would have really worked. Also in terms of structure, it took us a while when coming up with the idea to cut the different aspects as seperate sequences, if we had really thought about it, we might have realised that that was the smartest approach.

Feedback on Director's Commentary

Excellent considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video, for example in terms of set design quality and the use of FCP to create effective set design and mise en scene – the kiss represents the electric feel.




There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras and in the post production editing process – in discussion of match of action, lip syncing and graphic matching’. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the branded themes of an electric feel for example in discussion of the beat of the song and pacing of the cuts used in the editing process.



The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well, particularly to selection and construction of narrative, editing techniques, such as FCP Tools – such as glow in colour process. Excellent command of terminology and understands and discusses convergence really well – this is impressive knowledge at times.



There is sustained justified decision making links between the technologies used the product and audience reception in terms of the creativity that the group used. Recognises the need to account for errors in the post production stage and the importance of convergent technologies. Well evaluated.



This is a well considered documentary

Evaluation Task 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The use of Photoshop as a New Media Technology

We used photoshop when we were creating our digipak and our poster. This helped us to lay out and design the way in which we were going to present the necessary presentation. So for instance on the digipak we had four different panel to design and we had to fit the band members on there, the cover, the list of song titles and all the other sale information and insure that all the panels worked together as a design concept. Then we designed the poster which also had to fit the style of the digipak to create synergy in the audience's mind and also to reflect the band's style and market them as a brand.

For the bubbles in the background, we used the internet as a new media technology and used the image as a base for our digipak background. Once we had uploaded the picture onto photoshop, we adjusted the 'Curves' into an s shape, which increased the contrast and the brightness of the image. After that we used Hue/Saturation to increase the vibrance of the colours and adjust the image so it resembled the used of colour in our music video. After that we then found another picture on the internet which we layered over the background image. We put a filter over that image which was called 'Darken' and created that effect of having the background come through, and still let you see the layer which we put over the top. After that we used a Canon EOS 40 D to take pictures of our band members, which we then uploaded onto photoshop through a card reader. On photoshop we then layered four different heights of threshold over one another in order to create that stencil effect. This effect resembled a graffiti tableaux which represents the style of the band image  which we were trying to establish. For the fourth panel of our digipak we got a diagram of an 8 pack and changed Hue/Saturation to create the same colour scheme which we used for the rest of the digipak. At the end we then used the text tool to add all of the information needed on the digipak. 

We followed a very similar procedure for the poster. First we did the background, which is the same as it is for the digipak. Then we also added in the line like pattern which we also have on the digipak. Then we layered the stencils which we had already used on the digipak onto the top of the poster and used the line like pattern to make the band members look like they are dripping. For this effect we used the transform tool to turn the image upside down and then used the hue/saturation and brightness/contrast to make the shape white as well and help us to merge it in with the band members. After that we then once again used the text tool to add the needed information to the poster. 

Overall we used several different photoshop tools and effects to create the advertising campaign which we came up with. This was also a very creative process as it involved the design of both products and then the realisation of each of them. 

Use of Digital Technologies in Pre Production

Our pre production process consisted of us coming up with a basic idea for a music video, comparing it to other products and artists, pitching the idea to a teacher, refining the idea, casting our whole video (both narrative and performance), making a plan for our set and researching different things that could be used and come up with a final structure. Throughout this process we used several different new media technologies.

We did a lot of research on the internet especially at the beginning when we started working on our concept. We researched background information to support our concept, which was linked to reservoir dogs at the beginning and then changed gradually to what we ended up with. The main websites we used were youtube and google to find pictures and videos of other music products and artists.    

Having the internet as a research tool really helped us when establishing our concept, as we orientate ourselves to other media products.

Another new media technology we used, was a film camera, with which we recorded all of the shots of our storyboard, which we would then carry on to create our animatic. After we shot each image of the storyboard on a SONY HXR-NX5E for 10s we uploaded it onto a mac computer through the use of a memory card. We then uploaded the footage onto the final cut server which helped us access it from any computer, and automatically provided a backup for all the work we were doing. Then we dragged the soundtrack of our video, which we had to cnvrt to a '.wav' format onto the timeline for final cut, and started ordering our shots according to the timeline which we had written out on paper. This animatic provided a visual idea of what our music video would look like as a finished product. After using the technology final cut to put the shots together in a certain order, we then also used media convergence by uploading the animatic onto youtube.   

Except for using the internet as a research tool, and final cut in a creative way to create our animatic, we also used a digital photo camera (Canon EOS 40D) to take pictures of our cast whilst we were deciding who to put in our video. After deciding on our cast we had to blog about our decisions and research, which we did all the way throughout the process of creating this product, on eblogger.

Overall we made use of several different new media technologies troughout our pre production process which all helped us to construct our idea and prepare for the shoot day. Creating the animatic was a creative process, as well as a practical process as we had to decide which shots to put where and it forced us to come up with a final structure of our music video and it also showed us where our faults were. For instance we realised that we needed a lot more detail shots than we had originally planned. The research on the internet was a very informative process because it helped us to compare the band we were marketing to already existing and established bands and it allowed us to blog about the whole process of creating our product which was another way of structuring what we had done and what we still had to do.

Feedback on Evaluation Task 3: Audience Feedback

Good evidence of a variety of audience feedback which is fully reflective.  You link comments from your audience very well to what you intended in the product.  I would like to see more evaluation of CD digipak and poster.  You have tried to apply Hall's concepts to your product and the decoding of the text well done.  I do feel that stronger links to what went well in your production and even better if ...always contributes well to reflection of the feedback and any final changes you would may to your product.  A very good effort well done.

Task 3- What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this evaluation task we had to collect the feedback which we got from our target audience about our video. When planning this we though of a couple of questions which might help them along in their discussion about our video. These were:

What is your opinion of the bands style?

What else did you like about the band?
What don't you like about the band?
What do you like/not like about the video?
What elements do you think we could improve in the Campaign?
Was the Narrative clear in the Music Video, if not why?
Did you pick up any messages or hidden meanings?
Would you buy this album?
Could you see this band at a major festival (Reading), and why?
Does the Star image suit the band's style?
Would this video appeal to you and your friends?

What we did for the feedback is that we selected a sample of five people from our target audience, to come in and give feedback to our video:

What we got from the video was:

• Overall the audience got the style which we were trying to convey by marketing the band
• What they didn't like about the video was that the band's lip synching wasn't very accurate, there was no energy in the band's performance and we had a slight lack of narrative
• However, I think that most members of the audience did get the narrative which was there
• In terms of the campaign, the feedback we got was that the design of the poster had some flaws. I think that if we go back to our original poster design with the right band members this time, we could erase some of those flaws. Otherwise, some of them weren't sure about the colour scheme but then did agree that it linked back well to the style of the video
• People also said that they would consider buying the album, if they got to hear another song from it
• The audience also agreed that the band would be good for playing at indie festivals due to their indie style
• Generally people liked the use of dancers and the way in which we edited the sequence to give another aspect to the video, but did agree that we should have had a more continuous narrative throughout

I think the points that have been made are all reasonable and they also reflect some of the feedback which we got on our youtube video.



I think that the points that have been made by our target audience are valid and relevant. Some of the points which they have made interlink with our idea of our video. We also think that we are a little short on narrative and none of us are that sure anymore about the band members which we picked. We thought that the narrative that was there was clear and it should make sense to most. In terms of our campaign we liked the use of colours and basic design because we thought that it reflected the image we were setting up well. Everyone we asked understood what image we were trying to convey through the band image, which showed us that it worked out the way we were hoping it would.

If I were to go back and make changes to our video I would make sure that the narrative is more evident, especially in the second half of our video, I might also choose different band members just because of the lacking energy and the problem with the lip syching for our singer. If I could change anything about our campaign, I would set the poster back to the original  design with the right band members and change the stencils on the digipak, in order to have white on the background, rather than white and black on the background.

Overall what we got from the audience feedback was that they liked our video but thought we could have focused a little more on the narrative of it, and they weren't sure about the band themselves. I also think that they all understood our preferred reading. As Stuart Hall argued:
there are three different types of reading from the target audience:

Dominant reading – the reader accepts the codes of the text.
Negotiated reading – the reader accepts some codes, but has their own modifications.
Oppositional reading – the reader opposes the code of the text entirely.

Generally we managed to get a dominant reading on our text since most of them seemed to accept what we were trying to impose on the video. This wasn't guaranteed for our video. For instance the kiss could have been read as something different by our target audience. The kiss could have been interpreted as a more sexual sign, so the kiss could lead onto something else, rather than reading it as just sparking off the party. This could be the negotiated reading of parents for instance. Parents aren't part of our target audience and this video could be read as a lot less innocent than we intended it to be, which could plant a negative seed in the audience's mind. Whilst some members of the audience might have read the 'Electric Feel' as an effect of the music and really cool, others might have interpreted it as a display of drug consumption. This then goes into the oppositional reading. It doesn't conform the image which we are trying to set up for our band, but makes them look like criminals. This could therefore be an issue to a mainstream audience, once again especially for parents.
A piece of audience feedback we got, was that the band was lacking in energy. This could be taken as a negotiated reading of what we wanted our band to represent. In this case it isn't because as a matter of fact the band members didn't have a lot of energy in their performance which we didn't aim to show. Their laid back performance does however seem cool, and 'used to it' which makes it look like their music just generally has that effect on people and that isn't the first time that has happened. Therefore you could take the feedback about their lack in energy as a negotiated reading.

There are several different readings which our video could be seen as but generally we managed to get a dominant reading from our target audience. We might have gotten a negotiated or oppositional reading from members of the audience which aren't the ones we have targeted but that is to be expected from most music video products.

In terms of our marketing camapign (focusing on the poster and digipak) I think there weren't as many reading that could have been made, as there were for the video. Both the digipak and the poster are in the same style, which we designed that way to ensure synergy and audience recognition across the products. We designed our products in the way we did in order to reflect the feel of the video. The use of vivid colours and interesting patterns were supposed to reflect the use of lighting and energy in our video. The poster and digipak were therefore also supposed to be used to market the bands star image which we had set up through the video. If you saw the video before seeing the poster the reading which was made in the video could be transmitted to the poster. So for instance if you had an oppositional reading of the video and read it as a party with a large consumation of drugs, the poster could be seen as reflecting the feeling the party guests got when they took the drugs.  This could create a potential problem due to the fact that some parents might not allow their children to attend the concerts because of the reading they got from the video. On the other hand, this might further enhance the interest in going to their concerts from our target audiece and create a bigger audience to come and watch the concerts.

Feedback on evaluation task two

This is excellent evaluation, thoughtful and decisive nterms of how weel the main prodcut operates alongside the ancilliary tasks.  The area which I feel you need to develop in order to complete  evaluation of the tasks is to consider the branding of the campaign in terms of how you created the right marketing mix - what would you develop further.

Excellent effort well done.

Evaluation task 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Feedback

The presentation is well design and you communicate your ideas well. I think that you have identified the conventions of the music video, CDdigipak and poster. However, in evaluation you do need to link these to existing media products and you could have applied notes taken in discussion of the evaluation exercise as discussed in class. I feel that would provide more detail and explanation of the use of conventions. I also feel that you should add an a post which directly addresses the question set: how have you used, developed and or challenged media conventions with your advance portfolio.
Excellent effort, please go back and revise the presentation accordingly or include additional blog posts in order to complete the evaluation.

Evaluation task 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Feedback

Can you please post evaluation task 1 as soon as possible and email me when this is completed.
Thank you

Feedback

A proficient and selective account of the shoot day.  I think that you have been careful and selective with your comments which highlight your participation and direction of the shoot day.  Do you have any images that can be posted with your evaluation?  Also what technologies were used?  How creative was this as a production process?  Well done

Account of Shoot Day

We had our shoot day on Friday the 18th of November, 2011. For this day we obviously had to prepare a lot. This ranged from building the set to choosing the costume and to sorting out our props.

We tried to build as much of the set as we could the night before our shoot day. We had a slight problem time wise since the group before us could only start around mid day, so they could only finish by 6.30pm. This meant that we could only start setting up at about 7 o'clock. During the two hours in which we set up we started by carrying in the raised floor, then we set up the walls around them. We did this so we could build in the right kind of lighting for our 'electric feel' sequence of the video which had to be particularly colourful. We set up the walls for three sides of the set, leaving out a bit upstage centre in order to include a bay window. We then covered the basic walls with cardboard sheets since we could not put the wall paper on the walls themselves. After screwing the cardboard boards to the walls we started wallpapering them. This was a very time consuming task since it included precision and careful measurements in order to fit the pattern of the bits of wall paper together in order to link. We stuck the wallpaper on the cardboard, using a special type of glue, which needed to be pencilled on the back. After that we just put the carpet on the floor and we had our basic living room as we wanted it. Overall I think that we were very effective and precise in building our set and I was very happy with the outcome. We ended up with a room which looked like an old fashioned living room which was exactly the type of thing which we were hoping for since our video is set in a house party. 

The next morning we finished our set as quickly as we could by arranging the furniture, the band and any other lighting constructions which we hadn't done by then. Whilst the other three members of my group were doing this, I went to the dance studio and started rehearsing with the dancers. Since I am not that much of a dancer, they had come up with a thirty second dance for our video, fitting the main beat of it which meant that we could use it anywhere we wanted. We went through the dance a couple of times until everybody was happy with it and then they started putting on their costumes and make up. Meanwhile I went to find the other members of our cast to get them ready as well. I asked the three members of our band to start rehearsing together in order to get used to playing together since they had never done that before. After that I then asked our two main characters to get into their costume. Whilst the set was being set up and everybody else was rehearsing I then started painting our Electric Girl with UV paint, in order to make her stand out from the rest of them. Luckily we all finished at the same time and could start shooting pretty much on schedule. I think that we were also pretty efficient with the preparations in the morning since we managed to get everything done pretty quickly.

Around 10 o'clock we actually started shooting. Richard was doing the camera and I was directing and doing the playback. We started by doing the normal party scene which included introducing the viewer to the house party and introducing the connection between our two main characters, leading up to the kiss. We knew which shots we wanted to do and came up with little pieces of plot whilst going along which resulted in more material which we could use overall. We also had some shots which had to be cut as they were logistically not possible to do, such as the shot of our protagonist tripping over the sofa as he was following her. We encountered a bit of time pressure since we knew we only had the dancers until lunch time which meant we had to get the non electric feel section and the electric feel section pretty much done before lunch. Except for the fact that we would have lost the dancers at lunchtime, the were a very big part of our party, which meant that it would have looked very empty if we hadn't had them for any of the narrative. So after we got the first section done, we then decorated everything for the 'Electric Feel' part. This included painting the dancers, which took quite a while, and it also included trying to get UV on the rest of our cast too. We ordered UV bracelets and necklaces, UV contact lenses (worn by our protagonist Andrew) and UV paint which all made the party look more interesting, creating the juxtaposed contrast between the first section and the second section of the video. 

Once the UV paint arrived and we borrowed some from the theatre department, we had to test it on all of our cast in order to see whether anyone got an allergic reaction to it. To find that out we went around and applied different colours to different people the day before, which would have given us enough time to find a solution if there had been a problem. Luckily it all went well and everybody was fine with it.

After making the necessary to our set and cast we started recording the second part of our video. This started with the dancers. We put them on the set and looked at the image we got on camera. The lights we had switched on were the lights around the sides of our set and a couple of extra lights spinning around and projecting patters on the walls. Along with that we obviously also had our UV light turned on which made the paint come out very nicely in the shot. When looking at the shot I decided that the lights on the sides were too much for the dancing shot so we turned those of. We ended up only having the UV light and the moving projectors. Once we had established the lighting set up for this and had increased the aperture on the camera in order to slightlylighten the image up, bringing out the paint and features of our dancers more clearly, we started shooting it. We did a wide of all of the dancers, a close up of every single one and a couple of detail shots, which we could include in our video.    

After we finished with filming the dancers, we started shooting the performance aspect. First we did the 'normal ' half of it where we covered all the shots we had planned, and featured each band member and appropriate amount of time. After that we then did the 'electric feel' half of the performance aspect where we had to change the lighting and use some more interesting shots in order to convey the excitement of the second half of the video. After filming all the planned shots on the band, we just filmed the rest of the party and tried to get as many shots of the electric feel party going on as we could, in order to stock up on narrative and material.
      

 

Overall I think that this was a very successful shoot day and we got everything done which we needed to do. It was a very stressful day for me, mainly directing whilst the others were filming and standing in for people in the actual video. I think we could have gotten more narrative shots than we did in order to have a stronger evidence of it throughout the whole video. But overall I am very happy with the material we got and the range of shots which we managed to collect. The fact that we have such a big range of shots is going to make it easier for us when we are in post production.

Teacher Feedback

This is an excellent account of the process of the construction of the CD digipak and poster.  You are able to link the design of your ancillary tasks to real media practice.  This is well reflected upon.  I feel that you have fully evaluated the design at this stage and importantly posted audience feedback on this.  Nonetheless the digipak and poster fit really well as a campaign - well done!

Poster Evaluation

We all had some idea about the design of our poster, but before we started doing it we did some research on different kinds of band posters, in order to know what information needed to be on there. We found out that most of the band posters had mainly images of the band and the band name on them so that is what we started doing. We then realized that only bands which had already established their image really managed to just put their name on it, but since our poster was an advert for their debut album we had to put some additional information on there.

This is a poster of a band which is already pretty well known, and is therefore just advertising itself rather than their debut album. Except for the band name and the three band members there is no information of there and the style is established purely through the costumes worn by the band members and the colour scheme of the poster.

This is the type of poster we are going for. It advertises her new album, tells the audience a little bit about what it is, where it is sold and at the bottom it lists all the copy rights.  The problem we will have with that is mainly due to the design element, as our poster is already quite busy and I think to many labels might ruin it a bit aesthetically. I will however try to adjust it in order to fit the titles in. Similarily to us the poster reflects the design of the album cover and reminds the audience what was being advertised.

This is another album release poster, this time by George Michael. Apart from a picture of him on the front, selling the album itself, it tells us a bit of imnformation about the album (i.e. what it is featuring) and when It is going to be in stores.

For our album cover, we tried to stick with a similar theme, of having a recognisable design on the poster. We did this so the audience would link the album and the poster once they had seen it. The background for the poster is the same as the one for the digipak just that we had to duplicate it and flip it so it would fill up the screen and merge together. Then we put the stencils of the band members on there and arranged them at the top. Once I had done that I realized that the change between the stencils and the background doesn't look good so I changed it into having the images 'drip' down. I did this by using the light beams which we had already used before, and using selective colour to turn them white. Then I turned them upside down and erased part which weren't needed and ended up with the dripping effect on the photos.

Then I put in the title which we already used on our CD cover and wrote below 'Their new Album featuring 'Electric Feel' / In Stores December 12th'. Then at the bottom I put in the EMI logo and the copyrights small print which we already had on our digipak.

Overall I'm really happy with our poster and I think that I works in terms of representing the band for the debut album. I like the simplicity of it, but I wish we hadn't needed to put in anything apart from the band and album title. I think however that the solution we have found for this works well and it still looks good.

Other poster designs

These are the poster designs which some of the other members of the group came up with:

Richard:

I like the use of radiant colour in this design of the poster, although I don't think we should steer away from the basic design of our digipak. We would also need to put the band members on there and just because of the straight beams of light it might not be very easy on the eye.














Will:

This is another design of the poster which Will came up with. I like the thematic UV painted people in this although I think we should still stick with the original digipak background and font. This would help the audience remember the band, purely due to the use of synergy.

Final Digipak design- except for the band members

This is our final digipak design, with the exception for our actual band members. We encountered a problem because one of our band members could not do it on short term notice so we had to find a substitute. We are going to do the photoshoot for that on wednesday.

Poster Design

This is the poster design which we came up with, although we still have to edit in our actual band members, which we cannot do right now since we haven't had our photoshoot yet.

Digipak Design

We had many different ideas for our digipak and did many different drafts. One which we decided to stick with was a combination of different ideas, floating about in the group. For instance we used a similar background to the one I used, we used a similar colour scheme from another member of our group and the style of it from a third. Overall I am pretty happy with the design which we came up with and I think that especially the recent improvements make it look nice and easy on the eye. This is one of the earlier designs of the Digipak:

We have a very prominent use of colour, which reflects the video of the single we are marketing, and therefore of the band. I think that the digipak is visually attractive and it is interesting to look at. For both the fron cover and the back cover we used the same background and then put the 'Lighten' Filter over it in photoshop. For the fron cover we also used another image, which is what is creating those lines and put another filter over it to create the effect we achieved here. For the inside left we took pictures of each of our band members and created stencils of them. We then put them on top of the original background and filtered them to make the black in the stencils transparent and show the background of the cover. Since we had already established the colour and white theme, we decided to be consistent and use white for our writing too. The writing on the back is a very simple and modern type of writing, which I think works well as it is subtle but yet attracts your attention to the song titles. The title on the front reminds of stencils and therefore fits in with the already established theme. After having created the basic layout and design of the cover we put the bar code in the right hand corner on the back of the digipak alongside with a production logo.

This is the back of our digipak with the right production logo this time. After we put the columbia logo on because the original band MGMT is marketed by columbia, we remembered that our band would be marketed by EMI. So we went on the internet and looked for the right logo. There were many different stylized versions of it, but we decided to go with the original old fashioned one just to show the audience straight away we were signed with EMI. Another adjustment we made was the order of the songs on the back. When looking at it we realized that the white writing on the light grey background is not very easy on the eye. You could read it fine but it just looked nicer when we switched some of the longer names with the shorter names, avoiding any light grey background below the writing.

We then looked at the inside right of our digipak and tried to come up with a good design for it.  We all liked the idea of having an 8track behind our CD and our initial idea was to just have it behind the Cd as it is here(left). We then decided that it did not work in terms of style and therefore made some adjustments to it.

We manipulated the diagram (right) to look more authentic in terms of the use of style and colour and it ended up looking like this:

I think it fits in very well and sums up the colour scheme in a way. After having designed this we put it all together and came up with our final digipak design. Once we had turned the 8track pink we thought we should turn the stencils pink as well, just to have some sort of colour scheme in our design. 


Overall I really like the design of our digipak and I think it works very well with the image we are creating through our music video. The use of vibrant colour is reflected by the second section of our music video, which is also extremely colourful and slightly weird. 

Feedback

A sound presentation of the CD digipak design and the importance of album covers - albeit concise woork. I feel that you could have developed research more into the conventions of Album digipak's and addressed layout and design more closely. What initial design's into CD covers for your group artist and consideration to target audience have you made?

Feedback

Exellent outstanding work on CD covers.  Well done.

Our digipak Design

This is the digipak design which we have come up with after our research and our final could probably look a bit like this.

Digipak Research

For our Digipak design, we started to design a cover each, trying to find the right style for the cover. After designing our own CD covers, we all looked at each one and started cominh up with an overall concept, using certain parts from each design.

This is the very first cover we designed. This cover was designed by our whole group. I quite like it as it is a visually interesting, yet quite simple design. The graphics behind the writing were taken from teh internet, and it fit well with our original concept, until we changed it.

This cover was designed by Will Day, using the sea to show their relaxed attitude and their image, along with the crowd to show their popularity. I really like the simplicity of the font on this design and I think it would be good to use for our final design.  

This cover was designed by Richard Hill. Once again this is a very simple cover, and that's exactly what I like about it. I love the colour schemes used, since it moves very much within the blue and green range, and due to the picture I think it would fit quite well to our band. The only problem I see with this is that it might be too individual for our band since it looks more like a radio head cover. I do think that we could use the colour scheme for our final design.  

This is the CD cover which I designed. I used the lights because it reminded me of a house party, and therefore represented our video, which therefore also represented the image we were setting up for it. Then I put the girl in it, also reminding of the video, although I think that for a debut album we should put the band member on the digipak rather than the girl starring in the video. Then I also used a mix of different bodypaints in UV paint which represented the casual yet indie image of our band. I think in our final design we might make use of the lights and possibly of the colour scheme.

This cover was also designed by Will Day. What I like about it is the use of different colours on it, reminding f a colour wheel and in terms of colour I think our final design might end up looking a bit like this. I don't think however that we will be able to use that writing, as it might not work with our design, and I'm not sure the colour will work either. I like the simplicity of the design.

This Cover was designed by Richard Hill. I really like the background of the cover. He made use of the little party lights which we might use for our final design and which I also used for my album cover. Also the use of the moon reminds of the image of the band, although there was also a big focus on the moon in the original MGMT video, which is probably why we won't use it in our design. I am also not sure about the writing, it is too agressive for that kind of design.

This cover was designed by Ian Heritier. I like the rainbow scheme of colours in the middle of it and it might be used for our final design as well. I am not sure about the rest though since it is very dark and possibly too agressive for the image we are going for. I quite like the simplicity of the writing and I hope we might use it in our final design as well.








After designing our own album covers we also started really researching into existing artists and their album covers. There are certain conventions for digipaks which have to be kept up, in order to fulfil the audience's expectations.

Every digipak should contain the artist's name, the title of the album, the titles of the different songs, the price or bar code, if it's a debut band an image of the band. There are also certain 'rules' which are normally applied to digipaks. They normally make use of four to six colours and two different fonts. And normally the song titles are the same font as the album title.

Except for the layout, you also have to think about the meaning behind your album cover. Often album covers are Polysemic- meaning that they are open to different interpretations. The album cover should link to the style (both music and star persona) in which you are selling your artist. So a cover for a pop star will look different than a cover for an emo band. In order to alert the audience to your album cover if they are just skimmingcertain ones, you need a good design. Often artistic directors use intertextual references to make the audience 'identify' and also to show creativity and give the viewer a certain sense of familiarity through the use of those links. One very common intertextuality is the use of fine art to inspire album covers. 

For example, Silverchair used a Mondrian inspired album cover to sell their album 'Young Modern'. This works well together since the title is 'Young Modern' and Mondrian's work is considered to be very modern, due to his use of vivid colours and shapes.      

Milla Jovovich then used a religious painting to illustrate her album cover for 'The Divine Comedy'. This is an intertextual reference to Dante's epic poem on the afterlife, which was written in the 14th century. The painting also shows a version of the afterlife, which links the title of the album to the painting used to illustrate it. The naked woman on the cover, sells her star persona in a way since it sexualizes the album, although that is the original painting.   

For this album cover, the intertextual reference used, was to link her cover to Andy Warhole's work. The style of his work was pop art, possibly linking to the fact that Madonna is a Pop artist, linking in a word play. Warhole's most famous pieces of work include pop art pictures of Marylin Monroe which this is quite clearly referencing to, even in terms of the hairstyle and the beauty mark. By using this intertextual reference Madonna is selling herself as an iconic figure.








In terms of intertextual reference I have to admit that we have not been as creative and clever about our digipak designs. We have purely gone for the visual representation of our artist's style which probably works quite well for us, as we are promoting a debut album. So overall I think the research we did into different album covers is really interesting and helpful to inspire our use of style, but at the moment we are not making many intertextual references.  

Organizing Our Cast

Since our shoot is on a Friday, this has proved more difficult than we thought it would be. We found that some of our cast could not stay past 4 o'clock on a friday and we also encountered some clashes with different activities. Therefore we decided to rearrange our shooting schedule, so that we would do the narrative in the morning and the performance in the afternoon, planning that we would need less people for the performance aspect than we would for the narrative.  Our new shooting schedule:

Studio Narrative Shots ‘Normal’ - 9:00 - 11:00

MCU- Dude enters door, goes right
MCU - Dude grabs drink, walks off left
POV - Holding Drink
Profile Shot - ‘Electric Girl’ dancing
MCU - Girl dancing
MCU - Dude sees girl
Close Up - "
MCU - Girl turns and looks over
ECU - Girl's eyes
Wide Shot - Dude starts dancing over
Two Shot - Both dancing
Details - Dancing
Close Up - Them getting closer
Close Up - Dude closing eyes
Close Up - Him opening eyes (electric blue lenses :)
Wide Shot - Band's POV, them kissing


Studio Narrative Shots ‘Electric’ [UV] - 11:00 - 13:00 (lunch)
Profile - Them getting out of the kiss
Zoom out - Changed surroundings into 'electric craze'
Wide Shot - Crowd Party
MCU - Crowd members dancing
Wide - Crowd Part
Details of Dancers (UV paint etc.)
Funky Disco Ball
Wide Shot - Lasers and Smoke and crowd
Crane Shot - Aerial view of band from front
OTS Shot - Girl smiling at guy while dancing
OTS Shot - Guy dancing with girl
OTS Shot - She pulls him into the crowd
MCU - he follows her
Profile - Kiss (fade out)

Studio Performance shots [UV] - 13:30 - 18:00

Wide Shot - Whole Band
Close up full frontal - Singer
MCU - Singer
Profile Shot - Singer
Staggered Profile Shot - Singer 1+2
MCU - Guitarist
ECU - Guitarist’s Fretboard
ECU - Guitarist tapping foot
MCU - Bassist
Close Up - Bassist’s right hand
Wide Shot - Synth/Drum player
ECU - Fingers on Drum-machine
Close Up - Synth
Detail Shots (time allowing)

Guildford - Semi-detached average dwelling. Post 18:00

Exterior Shot - People arriving at house party. (Better if in twilight.)
Exterior Shot - People leaving house party (Must be night-time.)