Advertisement draft and feedback

Digipak draft and feedback

Production of digipak front cover

I cut each band member out of the photograph I took in my photo shoot and placed them on a new background layer.

Once I had finished cutting out each member of the band I placed them upon the background which I edited earlier on  using a process called 'Curves' which allows me to adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture. This resulted in me in having a bright white background which left me with just my tree outline and not the texture in the back. 

I then coloured each person in black and white to keep that colour theme of the digipak I had chosen to do and make it look better upon the background.

I then inserted the font which I chose after doing my audience research on which font they thought was most appealing to them. 

To finish it off i added the album's title below the bands name and placed an arrow beneath the bands title to give it an extra touch.

This was my final results

                                                                               

Possible Front Cover Ideas

Fonts

Above is a selection of fonts I experimented with to see which one would be the most suitable to be placed on my digipak. To find out I asked 20 people of my target audience which font they preferred the best for my genre. Font 7 had the highest score out of all them and was a clear winner amongst my target audience. Font 2 and 4 had no votes at all which was the least successful, this could possibly by because they were to tacky and look cheap which wouldn't look professional on a front cover. I think in my opinion the best font was chosen as its the most versatile as its quite plain and simple. This also links in with the research i found when analysing digipak's that my similar genre of artists used on having simple and easily read font types for their housestyle.

Digipak template

This is the digipak template I will be using when I start to make my digipak. This will give me a rough idea of where I need to put things which I will delete after I've placed everything I want in the correct places.

Final Cut

This is our final cut we have made after we got some audience feedback. We took on board what our audience said and have made changes to what they have suggested. We have added more transitions between shot so it is more smoother.We also added another shot of the moon in the chorus, we didn't want to add a moon to every chorus as it would be to repetitive. However what we have down is added a moon shot on one of a performance shots of the chorus.

Editing Update

After our audience feedback we have arranged to finish our final cut of our music video on Thursday the 12th of December. We will make our changes to our video from our focus groups. We plan to make changes on adding more transitions between shots to make the video more smoother and adding more footage of the moon in the chorus.

CD Album Cover (Digipack) Analysis: Green Day - Bullet in a Bible

Front Cover

The front cover is very redundant and conventional for that genre of rock. It will appeal to their target audience as the cinematography is done at a low angle of the main singer with a back shot of him looking at the crowd which gives it that concert atmosphere and feel to the album which connotes that its live music which would attract their target audience as its the common thing they like to do in their spare time. This reinforces the star image as they are dominating the crowd which shows his importance and value amongst their fans which links in with Goodwin's theory of promoting the artist.

Their target audience will recognize the band as they have used their housestyle font which was used on all of their other albums. Their font style is very block style which most albums tend to use as its easy to read and very simple. They have their own unique style though which their target audience will recognize as being them as it tends to always be in white with it standing our on a vivid background (mostly black and red).

The colour scheme choice is very lively and striking, this lets you easily see the artist and the bands name with it being very graphic. The band name and album name is both in the same colour and is placed underneath one another. The bands name is slightly in bigger font because that is the name their target audience will know already rather than the album name.

Inside

The inside of this digipak they have 3 panels whereas i will only have 2 when i come to designing mine. The left panel just consists of a side shot at a low angle of a band member. This follows the theme to what the front cover was like and keeps that theme of the genre and the live music which will appeal to their target audience. The colour scheme is still consistent with it being red and black. The fact that hes playing with a guitar will attract their target audience because it connotes to live music as hes playing it right there where most albums will tend to just have a photoshoot with them having no instruments.

The middle panel contains their DVD track which has footage of their live music. This links in with the whole album and adds an extra feature which their target audiences will like. The disc has the main singer singing which denotes that this is a live show. Whereas the studio disc just has a shot of the whole band without any instruments or singing. Behind the disc is a red and black texture which adds a good effect with the disc on top.

The right panel is the main album disc where its their studio songs, you can tell this because its made for them to look cool and all about their posture, with it being done through a photoshoot. This is because they want to promote the band and make them look more appealing. The same background is used on both disc panels which keeps that consistency and continuity to the album. It also states what songs are in the studio album which is highlighted in red writing.

Back Cover

The back cover again consists of a red background which been used constantly throughout the album's design. The images are at a slight angle which was is following the same layout as the bands name of the front cover which is keeping to their recurring style. The crowd is now facing towards the viewer where they are more visible than the front. This will appeal to their target audience as it makes them want to be apart of the concert. Above the crowd there is different pictures of the band playing, this adds movement to the album which makes it feel more lively. The band members show a lot of emotion which is conventional to this genre when playing music, one of the pictures the band member is pulling a funny face which adds humour and shows their characteristics with it showing their a down to earth person which would appeal to their target audience.

The track list is placed upon a red background with the font writing being white which is used throughout the album. The font size is quite small but is easily seen as the contrast is very powerful. The barcode is placed at the bottom right corner which is conventional for a album to have. Along with this they have along the bottom the CD's formats and the bands website and record labels. This will appeal to the target audience as they are given access to find information on the record label of the band as well.

CD Album Cover (Digipack) Analysis: The Script - #3

Front Cover

The front cover is very unique and grabs your interest straight away with its entropic look. The main singer has a side view of his face with the other band members inside his head which looks really cool. This challenges the conventions of this genre as this genre tends to just have a long shot of the band but this band have decided to conjoin them all into one head. The band have managed to reinforce the star image in a different layout which would appeal to their target audience as its unusual which the band would normally have on their album cover which connotes maybe a different style within their songs in this album. This links in with Andrew Goodwin's theory of the demands of the record label, a close up of the band is used on the front cover which is unique.

Their house style of the name of the band is used on the front cover as used on all their other albums so their target audience will recognize its them. Their font size is very distinctive and with it having a very different style than just having a block style texts which many albums use.

The colour scheme is very simple with just black and white. Because the background is white behind it, it makes the main band look very visible with the vivid contrast. The band title and album name is also the same colour and placed either side so its easily seen and separated apart. To fill the empty white spaces they have also added stickers like including the 'Hall Of Fame' soundtrack which will appeal to their target audience as it was a number one hit which will be included into their album.

Inside

The left side of the inside carries on with the colour scheme. They have decided to have a long shot of the band taken at low angle which makes reinforces the star image. The star image is also reinforced as hes standing directly at the audience where the other band members are standing on their side which shows the leadership. Its a very simple design but very effective.

The right side of the inside is again a shot of the band, however its an extreme long shot. They are keeping their colour scheme consistent. Their posture is very conventional of this genre which will appeal to their target audience. Also their clothing is very casual which will appeal to their target audience.

Back Cover

The back cover style links in with their front cover. However the groups faces have changed around, so the main singer is now staring directly at the audience which splits up the outline of the head which was on the front cover. This could connote to the emotions of their album songs which their songs based along a honest tale of break up that channels melancholy, anger, despair, false hope and then, finally, admittance.

The track list has a very small font size and is placed in the top right corner. Even though its small its very visible as they placed it in a different colour than the main white background which makes it stand out a lot but doesn't ruin the bands main image which is the focus. The bands website is placed in the bottom right corner along with the bar code and the music label it was distributed by which will appeal to their target audience as they can find out extra information, this follows the conventions of CD albums.

CD Album Cover (Digipack) Analysis: Simple Plan - Get Your Heart On

Front Cover

The front cover is slightly different to what a normal pop/rock artist would have. Instead of having the band on the front cover they have laid it out that a fan is looking at their new album in a magazine. This is unique and doesn't follow the conventions of this genre. They have reinforced their band through someone else, with them having posters of them also all over their room which is quite appealing as it shows their popular which will appeal to their target audience, this might connote that they like having a close relationship with their fans with it being featured upon them. This also links in with Goodwin's theory of having an intertexual reference to media which in this case is magazines and posters.

Their house style of the name of the band is used on the front cover so their target audience will automatically recognize them. Their font style is block style which is very simple and easy to read, this is a common convention in this genre. The font has been placed upon a white background so you can easily see it though the font size is small. The album title is used in a different colour which separates them both out from each other.

Theres a sticker on the front as part as a feature which is there to attract their target audience. It includes information about two popular songs of theirs which is in their album. They said 'To get your heart racing', this links in with the album title. This will be appealing to their audience as it persuades them to buy it in order to listen to that good song, with it having a bonus track.

 Inside

The left side of the inside is very unique, it is written in a handwritten font so it seems personal which would appeal to their target audience as it feels like its written by the band personally. The writing contains some of their songs for example their song called 'Gone to soon' with it having the lyrics of the song underneath it, this layout challenges the conventions of this genre but reinforces the band as it seems like they have gone the extra mile for their fans by having something personal which they would like.

The right side of the inside is again in handwritten font so it keeps that consistency of making it personal for their audience. Instead of having the song lyrics they have put all the songs on their with it having like credits underneath of who it was written by, who edited it, and published it etc. This is different and makes it more visually interesting to look at which would appeal to their audience.

Back Cover

The back cover features a long shot of the whole band on the front. This is a different layout than most artists would tend to do it where they would have the band featured on the front first so they are promoting their selves straight away linking with Andrew Goodwin's theory. However the characteristics of this whole album design seems to be personal and handwritten towards the fans which is why they have a fan on the front cover which is linking to their style as being the main attraction and the focus of the album.

The track list is kept in the handwritten font to keep the consistent style of the album. The font size is quite small so the main focus is the band which is used to promote them which is a common convention of what an album needs to include. The track list is still very vivid though as its got a good contrast with it being very visible against the background.

The bar code is placed on the right hand side at a 90 degrees angle which normally a CD tends to be placed at the bottom right, this makes you focus even more on the band itself with the bar code being out the way of their view. It also states the bands website and the record labels website so that the fan can access more information if they wish which would appeal to them if they want to know extra information about the band or maybe even their record label.

CD Album Cover (Digipack) Analysis: 'The Kooks - Inside In Inside Out'

Front cover

The main image of the front cover is very simple with the band members being a picture of them in monochrome at long shot of them playing guitars. This could connote the band is very laid back and chilled which creates an enigma and relatable to the target audience. The costume the band is wearing is very casual, this again emphasis the characteristics of the band and the feeling that they are laid back as a band which will appeal to their target audience being young. The use of their guitars as their props connotes the type of music genre the band relate to which will appeal to their target audience. This links in with Andrew Goodwin's theory of an artist having certain genre characteristics which would attract their audience as its the same characteristics as them.

The font used is very simple and easy to read with it having a block style. This draws the audience more into the image first and then to read the text easily. The colour of the band name is highlighted in a different colour than the album name which separates them both out into different points. They both stand out well due to it being on a white background which is a very good contrast.

Inside

The left side of the inside shows a monochrome image of the band again, which keeps the continuity of the band CD theme. Above the image on the top there is a section where the band gives thanks to people which will appeal to their target audience as its addressed to people like them. There is also a red strip going across the band's faces with the word 'Out'. This colour and word relates to the title of the CD album which keeps the recurring colour scheme

The ride side of the inside features film strips of the band which are again monochrome with a slight bit of red in the corner. The images show the band messing around which is a common conventions of young youth which would appeal to their target audience, it also shows the characteristics of the band which will attract their target audience as they will see them as being fun.

Back Cover

The back of the front cover features another monochrome long shot image of the band which is slightly blurred. These images links well with the overall theme of images in the CD which keeps the consistency and style going of the album.

The track list is placed on the left side with it being quite small in size. As the main image is very vivid the track list isn't very visible and eye catching. The font however is still kept black with it having a simple style which makes it easy to read and not completely out of the picture.

The bar code is placed at the top right hand corner with it also stating the bands website. This allows their target audience to easily find out more information if they wanted to when they buy the CD.

CD Album Advert Analysis: Coldplay 'X&Y'

This advert is separated into two parts. The first part we clearly see to start with the whole band image. This is the most important element for the record label, as one of Andrews theory was “The demands of the record label will include the needs for lots of close ups of the artist". This is not a close up of the band but it does however follow the principle of using an image of the band so that the target audience will recognize them and hence be interested into the advert. The band members are also staring direct at the viewer so the audience might feel more connected.

The second part contains information about the album so the audience can get the information they need in order to buy the item. The title of the band is the most important as its in bold along with the title of the album. The release date is also in large font size but is not in bold but still is very eye catching. It stands out a lot more due to it having a black background so it will stick out to the audience straight away. It also features the cover of the album next to it which I might do for mine because if you have an image of the album cover it makes it easier for the audience to recognize and find it rather than have to research in it, so they could purchase it quicker.

It also gives the website address at the bottom so that their audience can research them and get more information about their songs. It also displays the name of the record label which is EMI, this will give their target audience more recognition and take more interest as the record label is very professional.

Finally the colour scheme connotes to a metallic and techno feel to the album especially when you can see the front cover being a simple deign which you wouldn't connote for being a rock album which is strange as it is. It indicates to the audience that they might be trying a new approach and therefore will be interested in seeing what it’s like and might be more appealing to them as its different to what they normally do.

CD Album Advert Analysis: Stereophonics 'Keep Calm and Carry On'

The size of the advert is about a full page, it uses the same image as used on their album front cover so people will recognize the CD which keeps that continuity. The image takes up the whole advert and is the most primary element as its trying to spread a message across to its audience. The title of the album ‘Keep calm and carry on’ is connoted through their use of imagery where the band is eating breakfast in the sea which makes it entropic and relates to the title well. The background of the colour is grey which is quite depressing. The colour gray connotes feelings of repentance and contemplation which suggests the album relates to the mood of grief and sadness which in some ways is conventional for their genre of rock as people tend to have a lot of emotions with this genre.

The font used in this advert is Arial. This is a neutral and friendly font to use, the type- face is suitable to attract the audience of a younger era of rock. The advert contains the release date and details of the album at the bottom of the advert. The release date is emphasized as it has a slightly bigger font size. The title of the band appear to always be first like a newspaper would, this make sure you promoting the artist straight away to your audience.

The layout is very simple and to the point, which would attract their audience as it’s easy to follow, the colours are simple and straightforward which is very redundant in album advertisement as they don’t want to overload their target audience.

CD Album Advert Analysis: Florence + The Machine - 'Lungs'

One convention I've noticed with this album advert is that they have used the same picture as the CD album front cover so the audience will identify it in shop when its released. As before the image takes up the whole page of the advert so the colour scheme comes from that. Because the artist is placed upon a black background it allows the artist to be the focus of the advert which will attract their audience as its stands out easily. This meets the need to promote the artist which was said in Goodwin's theory, it also keeps the recurring motif style this artist uses so their target audience will recongnize it.

The font used for the advert is like a handwritten style which will relate to their female target audience as its very feminine. The title of the album is a bigger size font than the other information which grabs your attention first. This structure allows you then to see the information underneath. The contrast of the colours of having white writing stands out on a black back ground which makes it eye catching. The dark tonal colours links to their genre of older teens and young adults.

The text tells the audience that specific popular songs are on the album; this is a way to persuade her audience to buy the CD. It also features their website address so they can create a link between the band and their target audiences to search for them.

Focus Group

We organised a focus group in order to get some feedback about our music video. We got our focus group be be balanced by getting two females and two males so we have a balanced view.

We asked the following questions;

- Is our video appropriate for our genre and why?

- Do you think our balance between performance and narrative effective?

- Does the music video appeal to you and why?

-Is the main singer someone you can be friends with and get along with?

-Is there anything you would change or improve on?

Most of our video was quite positive overall with a few suggestions on how we could improve. Our target audience said they think its appropriate for our genre which means we have been successful in our video. They said we have a excellent balance of performance and narrative and appeals to them. They also said that the singer looks like someone they can be friends with as he looks a cool guy and obviously is very caring as hes walking home just to reach his girlfriend.

From our audience feedback that the video we have decided we need to add more moon footage into our video as our audience brought to our attention we only displayed the moon twice within the video. We will change this as we agree that we need more footage added in because afterall our title is 'Chasing the moon'.

We have also decided after the feedback we need to make our video more smoother in between cuts, we  plan to do this by adding more transitions in between clips to make it look more professional.

Audience Feedback - Facebook Group

We created a Facebook group to get some audience feedback. We uploaded our rough cut into the group so that the members could watch the video before answering the questions.                                                                                                                                                            

The questions were:

- Is our video appropriate for the genre? And why?

- Do you think our balance between performance and narrative is effective? Or what could we change with that?

- Does the music video appeal to you and why?

- Is the main singer someone you could be friends with and why?

- Is there anything you would change or improve on?

All of the comments we received were positive where everyone said it links well with our genre and was very appropriate

Everyone said our balance between performance and narrative was perfect and we balanced it just right

Everyone seem to like our video and it appealed with them with most of them liking the storyline which they thought was very effective and interesting and makes you want to know what happens.

Everyone said the main singer seemed friendly and cool which they could be friends with which shows we are appealing to our target audience

Finally mostly everyone said we didn't need to improve on anything. One person suggested one thing which was more emotion and power from the band. We plan to research this further and create a focus group to get more discussion into our video.

Rough Cut

Here is the rough cut we have made! We will shortly be making a focus group and a Facebook group in order to get some audience feedback on our music video.

Rough cut finished

Today we have been finishing our rough cut of our music video on Sony Vegas Pro 11, which we successfully managed to do. We wanted the cutting of our video to be smooth and relate well to the lyrics which will reflect the song, which also links in with Andrews Goodwin's point that the music and visuals are linked in music videos

When editing our video we have focused on syncing the singing just right so that it looks professionally and on time with the music which you can see from the image above. We are taking our time with this part of the music video and carefully editing his singing to the song lyrics. This will help promote the artist and make him look better if its done right which is  vital within conventions of music videos which would make it more appealing to our target audience.

Editing Update

Today on Thursday the 29th we carried on editing for our music video. We are nearly close to finishing our rough cut and it should be done by tomorrow on Friday the 30th, which we will then be collecting our audience feedback. This means we are currently on schedule if everything goes to plan.

Time management update

This is an update on what we plan to do this upcoming month of December.

Narrative Finished

Today we finally finished our narrative in our spare time. The filming was successful and we will start to edit these clips in our lessons tomorrow on Thursday the 29th.

We hope to finish the last performance clip of the long shot of the band tomorrow also on the 29th. This shouldn't take long as we just need to do one shot. After that we have all the clips we need to finish our music video.

Editing

For editing we have decided to use the software Sony Vegas Pro 11. We will use this software to capture and cut all of our clips together to create our final music video.

This is how much we have edited so far, we are more than half way done. We still need to finish some filming  but we are keeping up with our time as we are editing on the clips we have so far and will add the missing ones when we are finished

So far as a group we are quite happy with what our music video looks like. From looking back at our previous research it is following the theory of Andrew Goodwin  where their is a relationship between the music and the visuals where we have tried to represent the emotions of the soldier which helps the audience connect to the song. Our narrative also follows Barthes theory of having the Semantic code, so far we have edited to direct the audience through the soldiers journey through different movements of camera shots.

Time management update

We were planning on doing some extra filming to finish the narrative tonight on Thursday the 22nd of November, unfortunately we have had to cancel due to bad weather. However we plan to do the filming tomorrow night instead so this is not a problem.

We hope to finish both the performance and the narrative by next Thursday on the 29th. Although in our time schedule we have planned this to start editing, we have decided to edit as we go along that way we are making efficient use of our time.

Creating a moon for our music video

Due to the bad weather conditions the moon hasn't came out much for us to use it in our music video. Because we need to get the music video finished relatively soon to keep with our time scale I created a moon from scratch using Photo shop which i think was quite successful and which could be an option for us to use in our music video if time gets delayed even more.


I think this was a success and looks very realistic once I looked pretty good once I saw what it looked like on top of a video shot.

 

Time management adjustment

Our original plan was to start editing tomorrow on Thursday the 22nd of November. However due to us having some issues with filming we will have to spend one more week doing it. This shouldn't be a problem as we will make extra time out side of lessons to edit our video so we should still stick to the time scale we originally planned to have.

We plan to finish the narrative video today this evening and tomorrow evening on the 21st and 22nd. That will mean we will just need to finish the performance which we are hoping to do on the same days but within lesson time.

Filming for the Thursday 15th November

 Today we carried on doing our performance work. Unfortunately we couldn't get the drum kit for this day which limited us for our band shots however the following shots we did do are as followed

• Close up of microphone from two different angles
• Close up of Tom Martin Singing
• Close up of playing the two guitars

.

Today was quite successful and I am happy with the work with have achieved so far.


Because we were unable to finish our performance shots today this will mean we will have to do some extra filming next week which we were originally starting our editing. This shouldn't take long and shouldn't be a problem for our time management overall.

Time management update

At last minute we have decided to film some of the narrative tomorrow evening on Tuesday the 13rd of November. This was because we needed to fit some extra hours in out of college time and this day was the best for all of our group. One problem we are facing at the moment is having the whole concept of the moon in the shot this is because over the past few weeks there has been poor weather and not very good visibility which may stop us from doing our original shots which we will have to work our way around.

Some of the scenes we took tonight was poor quality due to the lighting. We will reshoot these later on at an earlier time of day before it gets to dark so that we can still show that the character is walking through the night but we still have enough light for the filming