Final Magazine Advert

I have designed two magazine adverts using 'Q' magazine to help me. My scanner has not been working so I will add the research and planning notes at a later date. On the first advert I decided to go for a simple look, however on the second advert I used a Michael Jackson advertisement, aswell as an advert for a band called Warpaint to help me develop the advert further. A part of the Michael Jackson advert looked like this -

 

 I used this design to inspire me to use a selection of small photos of our artist. I think this idea gives the impression of exclusivity to the audience as they gain an insight into the artists performances and life. I believe this is an advantage, as showing both the actual album cover plus additional photos of the artist would boost sales.

Final Digipack Design

Here is the design for our final Digipack design for the front, back Cover inlay and the cd design itself. We have used a neutral tone for teh background which relates to the natural location in which where we filmed our footage.

Start of Magazine Advert

Images to use in our Digipack

Digipack Research

To follow up our production of a digipack I have researched digipacks that are form the genre of our song and to see what conventions are commonly used and therefore use this information when creating our own digipack.  The following images are from indie bands and artists which are very similar to ours. The laid back approach can be seen through these covers by the position of the artist and the general layout of the covers. I like how the on this back cover the bands name is mentioned on the sides of the cover but placed vertically so that it is an interesting way of presenting the text.

Convention Images from our video

Costume - link with  The Kooks 'She moves in her own way'

Saturation - Oasis 'Little by little'

Location - country and western style - The Kooks 'She moves in her own way'

Being just two people in the video - Link with Jason Mraz 'Lucky'

Hidden identity - Katy Perry 'Hot N Cold'

Performance element - Jason Mraz 'I'm Yours'

Convention Images

Jason Mraz 'I'm Yours'

Katy Perry 'Hot N Cold'

 Both Jason Mraz 'Lucky'

Oasis 'Little by little'

Both The Kooks 'She moves in her own way'

Digipack - Paolo Nutini

I think this cover of Paolo Nutini is very similar to the look we would like our artist Nick Rivers (Joe) to have. In earlier planning and reserach stages I used Paolo Nutini to help me with star image. After seeing that he goes for a casual look, wearing jeans and shirts we dressed Joe in that style. In our video we also used black and white clips to symbolise his past with his girlfriend, so it would be effective to carry the theme through and consistently use intertextuality. I will use this digipack cover to help inspire me with my own.  

Final Music Video - Facebook

We have also uploaded our video onto Facebook so that we can gather more feedback. This will be useful as friends of mine on Facebook are of a similar age and their opinions will be helpful to evaluate our video. 

Final Music Video - Youtube

We added this to youtube so that we could gain some audience feedback. We are hoping for demographics and psychographics so that we can evaluate our music video fully.

Questionnaire - Audience Feedback

To gain more audience feedback from our music video we are presenting our video in a school assembly and handing out questionnaires. This will be extremely useful as we will get a variety of opinions and improvements for our music video and help us with our evaluation.

Digipack Production

I have decided to do some research into digipack production and how this has developed with now public access to online programmes. I looked at various sites which allow the public to create their own digipack which makes the process much more accessable for indie bands.

This is Pack Smart Inc which is an online site explainng how digipacks are created in mass production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digipak

I also researched the history of digipacks and how they have developed over time to become a key aspect in the music market. This is a company called "didgipak icreate" which is a slightly more professional programme which was set up by AGI aimed at web consumers to download music and photos for the creative market.

Information from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digipak

Digipack Template

Here is a template with 6 places. Here we could use 5 images aswell as the CD. We are now planning on designing the actual CD aswell as we think it would make our Digipack more professional. 

Artist Images Similar To Ours

Here is an image of Joshua Radin. When researching into Digipacks and artist images I was recommended to have a look at him. In the image above he is pictured with his guitar, which is very similar to our artist Joe. 

After seeing the image of Joshua Radin in black and white I will consider some of our Digipack images being in black and white also.

Here is the front album cover of Joshua Radin. I really like the way the photo is in black and white with only the bucket and spade in colour. I will consider using this effect when designing our Digipack. 

Digipack Image Ideas - 16/11/10

We need 6 images for our Digipack so, I went onto Final Cut Express and took screen grabs from our music video so that the intertexuality is consistent. Hannah and I will now look through these and photos from filming sessions and decide what ones we would like to edit on Photoshop for our final Digipack. 

Song Title Ideas

Today I have been thinking more on Digipack ideas, and what images and titles I could use. So, I went on to the actual artist of our song's myspace and looked at their song titles.
They are:

• If You
• Finding The Courage
• Get Along
• The Boiler Room

Aswell as these titles there is also 'Take Me On A Train'. Thinking back to our music video we haven't emphasised the train so I am unsure whether we will call the actual album 'Take Me On A Train' but of course that song title will feature. In the song the artist sings lines that are clearly aimed at someone but that person is never identified. We decided to feature his ex girlfriend as it matches the bitter mood of the song. However, seeing as the person is unknown I think it would be appropriate to call the album 'If You' as it is not directly aimed at one person, and almost adds mystery.

Media Lesson - 15/11/10

In todays media lesson we went through the coursework percentages and the deadlines. Hannah and I realise we still need to complete our music video aswell as a digipack and a magazine ad for the digipack. We are not allowed to use our lesson time to edit our music video anymore so have decided to use the non pupil day on Friday to catch up. We have already spoken to our media teacher and will speak to the on site care takers to check that this will be possible. If so, we will be coming in on Friday 19th from 10 til 3 to complete our music video. Hannah and I are finding arranging times difficult as we both work after school and at the moment Hannah is arranging charities week throughout lunch times. We did get a copy of the media rooms timetable to find out when it is free and what teachers would let us use their lesson time to work quietly on the computers. However, arranging this time has been difficult as Hannah and I have very different timetables as the only lesson we have in common is media. We have approx. 5 weeks left to complete our music video, the digipack, the advert and the evaluation.

I am going to :

• Buy some magazines and look at how digipacks are advertised. 
• Also look at websites and how adverts are advertised online.
• Look at previous photos from our filming sessions and do some screen grabs to get images for our digipack - this will help with intertextual consistency as we will be using some stills from the video.
• Evaluation - look at how the audience responded? (we need to complete the video firstly) and why we did it etc, I also need to include codes and conventions.

Editing Day Screen shots

On 11 November we had a whole day off timetable to edit our videos to make progress. In previous lessons we had already cut out which parts of clips that we wanted to use and used these when editing the real video. As we went along, cutting the footage we tried to put a variety of transitions in and we found out how to do this by looking up tutorials on the internet.

We mangaed to edited over half of our music video which we found very preogressive and hope to edit the last part of it over the next week or so.

Our Editing Day - 11/11/2010

Yesterday we had a day off timetable to edit our rough cut of our music video. From previous lessons and during the day Hannah and I watched tutorials to help us improve our skills and the video itself. We decided to zoom in on a clip to highlight Joe lip syncing. We did this by double clicking on the actual clip so that it appeared in the viewer. We then clicked on 'motion' and changed the scale from 100 to 150.
This was the outcome :

 We also used different transitions. The one we most commonly used was 'cross dissolve', as it helped to smooth the transitions and made the video flow much more easily. We also used a 'non addictive' dissolve which softened the clip of our artist Joe walking, to the clip of him singing on the hay bale. Later on we again used the technique of zooming into a particular clip to get a better view of Joe, this was the clip where Joe was sitting on the bridge. We wanted to again emphasise the lip syncing. There is also a clip of Joe on his phone, I moved the clip slightly which improved it greatly as the trees surrounding him then framed the shot.

As Hannah and I are a group of two I feel slightly at a disadvantage. We still need to complete our editing but we did manage to get up to our a minute and a half with only the two of us working on it and adding transitions and close ups as we went along. We have roughly a minute left to edit and will complete this in our own time.

Re-capping Final Cut Express

Final Cut Express on Prezi

Nick Rivers on Myspace

To increase audience feedback I decided to create a Myspace account for our artist Nick Rivers. It is common for Indie bands/artists to establish themselves and their fan base on Myspace so thought it would be useful to create one for our artist Joe.