Taking pictures for my CD cover and advertisement

After analysing different media, I then went out to take many different shots for my advertisement and CD cover. In all, I took around 250 pictures to ensure that I got the right shot and to look through them all to decide on the best images.  I went through each one to delete ones that I wouldn't be able to use such as blurry ones and ones with either too high exposure or contrast.

Here are a few examples of these types of images:

I did not use this image because it is slightly out of focus. It is unclear of what is on top of the amp which doesn't add to the full effect of the picture:

I thought that this second image was extremely blurry and decided that I shouldn't use it. Even though I did like the effect as it is orignal and different and looks as if the image has been taken through the eyes of one of the band members. I think that it would be hard for the target audience to understand this concept at a quick glance of an advertisement.



I used a few different locations to decide where the best pictures would be for the two ancillary tasks.  The locations I used were two alleyways, the bed in my room, a road and a car park.

After I went through the images, I started to edit a few of them to start creating ideas of what I could use.

Here is the original of the photo against the edited version.  I used various ways of editing my pictures through Photoshop, Word and a photo editing website 'Picnik'.

For this image, I decided not to use the original as I didn't like the general colour that was made.  Luckily, I saw a car with the numberplate 'LTA' which would be perfect to use for my images as it would symbolise the band. I thought that the picture was quite unclear as it was very dark despite my intentions for dark colours.  Therefore I edited a similar picture in many different ways to experiment and see what I could create.

I like the effect on the last image in particular as it looks as if it is a photo that has had substances spilled on it such as tea, beer of coffee which donnotes the 'Lads On Tour' image I am portraying for my work.

The next type of images I used were of my character on the road. I have edited the picture so that is clearer to see what is in the image.  I like the use of the grainy effect as it portrays an old-looking effect which I believe relates to the rock image that I have created for my band.

I took further pictures of my character on the road to emphasise the general idea of the band being on tour.  The picture shows the person sitting on the side of the street with the effect of street and car lights passing quickly by as the character remains still on the pavement. Despite these images being blurry, I like the effect that this has for its purpose.  It signifies the unknown of what is to come for a band being on tour.  Here is the original picture and a few edits of the picture.  I decided to add black and white to the image to symbolise the darker or more poignant songs on the album as they would not all be upbeat like a new audience member may expect.

Another image that I edited that I think I should use in my ancillary products is this one of my character in an alleyway again.  I like that this image dennotes the darkness that comes along with 'Lads on Tour'. The mise en scene in this picture is strong, as I have been careful in selecting what to include in the picture itself.  I have used a small guitar amp on purpose as it connotes the idea that a small band on tour can't afford the extravagant things that people may expect whilst a band is on tour, contrasting to a mainstream band on tour. I enchanced the colours of the image so that it was bold and stood out.

Analysing CD covers

In this first CD cover, I can see from researching the album that the exact same picture is used on the magazine advertisement.  This dennotes continuity and relationship between the two media products.  This is done usually to show the correspondence so that the target audience can easily recognise what product is being sold and advertised.  I like the simplicity of this album cover as it is not clutted with different text apart from the artist and album name itself.  This picture used is of the artist so that the target audience can easily recognise the artist and that the album was created by him.  I particularly like the colours used as they make the character stand out from the background and the text.  The simple clear and white font makes it easy for the audience to read.  Out of the artist name and the album name, the creators of this design have chosen to make the name of the artist have a larger font than the album name.  This is usually done for new artists as they want to advertise their name first over the name of the album so that they gain recognition.  The image of the artist itself relates to the title of the album which I think is important in establishing continuity and relationship when designing media products.  The word 'chaser' in the album can be shown in the picture due to the blurred edit of another picture of the artist behind another fixed picture, connoting the 'straight' part to the title of the album. It is significant that both the text and the artist are centralised on the cover to make it stand out to the audience.

This second picture has used a similar approach to the first cover that I have analysed.  The text of the artist is larger than the name of the album title.  As this is a debut album for the artist, this could support the idea that it has been done due to wanting to advertise the new artist in to the music industry.  Again, an image of the artist has been use an takes up the majority of the album artwork showing who the artist his. The colour used for the artist text uses a similar colour to the image of the background which connotes a relationship between the image and the artist.The positioning of the album and artist name together is usually a convention of a CD cover so that the audience will fixate on looking at that part of the album cover. Having the text on the upper part of the cover is significant as it is next to a mid shot of the artist which draws the eye of the audience to both of these elements.

This final album cover is somewhat different in the type of images used.  The picture for the album cover is of a baby which does not connote a direct relation to the album itself.  However, it could dennote the idea of what the music of the album includes. Like the previous analysed CD cover, the text of the artist and album name are positioned together and in the corner of the album.  However, it differs from the previous album as it does not have a direct correlation to the image itself.



Analysing new album/single advertisements

I decided to look at three different advertisements for new albums/singles.  I thought that this would be beneficial so that it would broaden my ideas and to see what features are key to include e.g. release date.

The first advertisement that I looked at was for the release of The Progidy's new album titled 'Invaders Must Die'.  At a first glance, I can see that the designer has made a direct relationship between the title of the album and what is graphically present. The text used  connotes aggression and reflects the type of music that The Progidy create and release.  The colours are simple which allows the text to stand out from the graphic image in the background.  The image is black and white aside from the bottom part which links with the same colour of the text.  This is significant, dennoting the comparison to the image and text.  The main image is of warcraft which relates to the title 'invaders must die'.  This can suggest what type of music will be involved in the album.  The designer has been careful in creating this advertisement as they have used a different font for the smaller text so that it is easier to read.  This will allow the target audience to capture all of the information needed in order to persuade them to buy the album.  Overall, I believe this advertisement is successful as it states clearly that it is a no.1 album which will encourage people to buy it.

I decided to look at this second advertisement of Kids In Glass Houses as it is displayed on the internet which is different to the layout of a magazine advertisement.  In the background image is a faint edited coloured shot of the band itself.  This allows the target audience to connect to the band itself as well as to establish a relation between the people and the album.  The dominant part of the advertisement is the title of the album, 'DIRT'.  Cleverly, the creators of the album artwork have juxtoposed the title to the image and way it is presented.  The word is written out in bright, colourful flowers which is not what is expected of 'dirt'.  In this advertisement a release date is included at the bottom, the same way The Progidy have advertised the release date.  It is clear and easy to read.  The majority of the text used is in captials with large, bold fonts making it stand out and easily capture the audience that it is being advertised to.

Personally I like this third design for Mr Hudson's new album the most as I like the use of graphic effects.  I think that it is an interesting design which many other people of the artists' target audience may think.  The image of the artist looking at the camera is significant as it looks as if he is looking in to the eyes of the audience.  This will make the audience want to read the rest of the advertisement as it is a capturing technique.  The colour used is futuristic which is also interesting. This advert differs from the advert of Kids In Glass Houses as the name of the artist is bigger than the album name.  I think that it is better for artists that aren't as well known to have their name bigger than the album name so that the audience that will see it will remember the name of the upcoming artist.

Analysing punk rock advertisements/CD covers

I think that it is important to look at current promotional aspects for bands that are similar to the image I am trying to portray. This is so that I am able to create a design that both conforms and subverts to the norms of punk rock advertisements.  Looking back at these images, I can see that a lot of colour is associated with punk rock bands and advertisements.  Bold colours are used here as they stand out from other music genres. Interestingly,  the bands tend to have a lot of black and white images also of the members themselves which contrast to the advertisements that they create.  This is significant as it connotes the variety in the band and the music itself.  I think that I must take this into consideration when designing the CD cover and the magazine advertisement.  Even though I believe that there must be some consistency, I think that there should be a variety of different elements in colour. Here are a few images of the band members and album covers along with other band logo’s and images.

Conventions of CD covers

I noted down all of the conventions of CD covers so that I would easily be able to establish what I would and should include to fit the expectations of a CD cover.  However, I noted them so I could also challenge these conventions to make my designs unique.

• People
• Band
• Photo
• Art design
• Album name
• Artist name
• Spine has the album name and artist
• The back contains the names of all the songs
• Variety in position of titles
• Size changes
• Photography of others
• Extra stickers for advertising
• Spine contains music company's label
• Extra cover
• Variety of whether the artist or album name is larger (artist name bigger for LTA - not as well known band, therefore they need to promote their name)
• Contains small print of company name
• Info of artist/album story
• Barcode - bottom of album
• Album name shares name with track
• Style of visuals connotes the artist's persona and the genre

Deciding on which ancillary tasks to choose

I must pick two of the three options below to create in order to gain marks for the ancillary task of the coursework:

• A website homepage for the band
• A cover for its release as part of a digipack (DVD/CD package)
• A magazine advertisement for the digipack (DVD/CD package)

I have decided to create a magazine advertisement for the digipack as well as the CD cover. I am going to look at the current advertisements and CD covers that bands of my music genre have created and analyse them. I will compare them to other CD covers of different genres as well as magazine advertisements. This will ensure that I know how to both challenge and conform to the conventions of media products.

Changing the characters in the video and editing my video

I have decided that I am going to change the characters in my video as I believe that I will be able to develop my mise en scene.  With an already formed band in the media, it can be hard to change their personna in order to fit in with my own ideas for the video.  I think that with these new characters I have chosen will allow a better variety for the mise en scene as I will be able to shoot in more locations for longer. There is more accessibility with these members in that I am able to use a car. I am able to portray the image I am looking for in the video to demonstrate the general feeling of 'lads on tour'.  With these characters, I am able to vary my types of camera shots better as they are not afraid to put themselves in to situations to fit my camera angles!

From creating a preliminary video to help me learn about the skills that could be used in my video making, I started to create my final video.  I was restricted with the amount of footage I had due to problems with arranging times for the characters to be filmed.  However, I embraced this problem due to the fact that in this genre of music, the videos the bands create tend to have a limited amount of scenes in them.  This is because of the low budgets they have to film the videos.  In my video, I wanted to stress the fact that I wanted to portray the band I had created as new and upcoming, therefore there wouldn't be much of a variety in setting.  Also, I purposely used a camera in the scenes of the band playing at a gig that wasn't of high quality to emphasise the idea that the band weren't of a high status that could afford high quality cameras. This is similar to the first music videos created by bands such as Enter Shikari and Deaf Havana which are in this music genre.

Below shows print screens of editing the video itself and including different transitions along with the clips.  I wanted to include these transitions as they helped compliment the meaning of the video.  At the upbeat points in the song, the transition would be quick and would include jump cuts. When the music slowed down, I used transitions such as fade.

Editing

First of all I imported the different videos that I had filmed to start a preliminary idea for the video so that I could get to grips with the windows program.  Here you can see that I have inserted clips in to the video time line and have edited them so that different shots appear at different times. One challenge that I had with learning about how to make the video was how to time the different shots of the video with the beat of the music.  Trial and error was key in developing the creation of the video.  I imported the song as the overall music of the video. This meant that I had to mute each video with its original sound so that there wasn’t any background noise.

After I understood the ways of putting basic clips together, I started to add in different effects for transition, colour, etc. In the screen shot below, you can see that I have added in titles to the video to introduce what the film is.  I used a greyscale theme as I would like to show variety as in the video itself it is mostly bright colours.  For my ancillary task, I am going to use bold colours, so I think it would be interesting to show a contrast as I believe it would capture the audience as it is effective in having the audience questioning why the video may be different to the advertisement.  I also added a clip of a slow motion greyscale edited scene for the end part of the small movie that I had created to show continuity from the beginning credits. I added the effect of slow motion as it links with the end of the song itself as the pace slows down.

Pictures of scenes for shooting the music video

I think that for this video, I will film quite an amount of the video at different gig venues to portray the image of 'Lads on Tour'.  I will be able to film the band itself as well as fans.  There will be large groups of people in these places which will help emphasise my ideas. I will check before filming if they're okay with being featured in my video which I'm sure many will be. The mise en scene is key for these scenes.  The shots allow the mise en scene to vary due to bright, flashing lights which means that one moment the scene could be dark and dull; the next, the shot can be lit up in an instance showing the people, band and setting itself.  I wanted to use these settings as it will help portray my ideas that fit in with the music and song itself of fast and slow pace music.

Here are some picutres of the places where I filmed the clips for the video:

Filming

For my music video, my ideas include many different scenes. This means that I am going to have to film the video over a few days as it is impossible to arrange a whole day and evening where both I and all of the band members are free.
I want to have the first day of shooting of the band’s gig in Camden.  As I want the music video to be filmed as if it was a documentary of the band’s tour, I'm not bothered about the band lip syncing to the lyrics of the background song.  However, I need to make sure that this idea is stated clear throughout the video otherwise it would look as if I have bad editing.

However, for some lyrics of the song I think that it is important for there to be a strong, direct link to the lyrics and what is happening in the video.  To establish this, I it is necessary to film the band on the roof of my house to fit in with the lyrics ‘and we’re going to play the roof off the venue’.  I think that it will be very effective in capturing the passion that the band have for the lyrics that they have written if these lyrics are lip synced by the singer and some other lines in that verse.

Storyboard

Questionnaire & analysis

After handing out my questionnaire to 10 people with a variety of music taste and age I looked back on what the general answers tended to be.


For people aged 16-18 who answered my questionnaire, they tended to say that they would expect a band to be performing in a punk rock music video.  They also believed that the video is important for the promotion of the band whereas people aged 19+ didn’t necessarily think so.


The younger people who I gave the questionnaire to thought that the third picture for the expected clothing in the picture was the most suitable.  This differs from all ages of 16+ as they thought that the first and fourth picture  were suitable for the clothing of the band in the music video.  In my questionnaire, I included an image of the drummer of Lower Than Atlantis for the clothing question and the majority vote was this type of clothing.


I believe that it is important to include both quantative and qualative data to make it both easier to analyse and then to understand the personal needs of my consumers.


For the qualative data questions I got a variety of results over all the age groups. For the second question, the answer tended to be shots of gigs and the band itself performing with loud music.

Out of the 10 people who answered my questionnaire, 6 of them said that they would expect to see text on album cover rather than the band itself.  However, the other 4 all chose that they would expect to see the band.  I think that for my album cover I will use both images of the band and text; however, the text will be the dominant feature of the cover.

I think that it would be interesting to experiment with the images that I want to include on the cover by editing them.  After looking at the analysis for what colours the audience would expect to see in all three products that I am going to create, there were a mixture of suggestions.

Preventing copyright

When I met the band, they said that it would be fine for me to use their song for my music video, however, I had to write to the record label manager so that I could get permission formally and have evidence.

Contacting the band

It is important to contact management of the band or the record label to ask permission for use of the song for my music video.  This will prevent any copyright issues with the company.


As I am going to be meeting the band soon at a gig, I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to ask permission in person.


Meeting the band:

Finding a band for my original choice

Luckily, a friend in my media class was talking about his band’s upcoming gig. I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to use the band to create my music video with one of my initial ideas with ‘(Motor) Way of Life’.  We arranged times of when all members of the band were free, getting to the gig and using a van for the ‘lads on tour’ idea that is presented through the lyrics of the song.

Problems with finding an actor for the video

As I had a set image in my head of a type of character for my music video, I found it hard to find a person with this look that was able to fit in with my schedule.


After having all of these problems with finding a right choice for my music video, finally, luck came my way with finding a band for one of my original video choices!

Further brainstorming

• Neglected location e.g. alleyway, deserted train station
• Dark weather, foggy
• High speed walking with faster backing song/vocals
• Slow motion with slow introduction of song
• Storyline
• Stop motion
• Some parks in black and white - effective as it connotes the darkness and feelings of the singer for the lyrics.

The image above shows a good location where I think I could shoot part of my music video. This deserted location would be sensible as it suits the lyrics 'pacing all the backstreets' for the song I would like to do.

The following images link to the lyrics, 'i've been waiting for the last train out of this place' too.  If I were to film here, I would be able to vary the mise en scene in the shots due to different characters wearing alternative clothing. I would film at different points in the day to match the different settings described in the song.

Analysing the lyrics

After getting feedback from the class, it encouraged my decision to film a video to ‘Mike Duce’s Symphony…’. For this song I had a clear idea of what camera angles to use and the mise en scene. Therefore, I think it is good for me to go with this idea. I have strong visual ideas to relate with the lyrics of the song.

Initial Ideas

•You Me At Six – Fireworks

Originally, I wanted to use the song ‘Fireworks’ by You Me At Six.  My plan for the music video would be to film the band themselves at a gig that I would be going to see and then include  a narrative that would fit in with the lyrics of the song. Here is an analysis of the lyrics.

However, the You Me At Six gig wouldn’t be until October. This will be too late to film at this time as there wouldn’t be enough time to edit the clips.  In addition to this, I may have problems with filming at the concert if I am not at the front and may be viewed as copyright by the company running the show.


 •Deaf Havana – Friends Like These
Here are the feedback ideas from some members of my class with what they thought would be included in this song:

•Lower Than Atlantis – (Motor) Way of Life
After this, I changed my plan to create a music video to the song ‘(Motor) Way of Life’ by Lower Than Atlantis.  I chose this song as it is their current new single and thought it would be good to create a video to promote it along with the ancillary tasks but to create, edit and develop the project with my own ideas.  Also, I am currently in another music video that the band has released so thought it would be interesting to create a video of my own for the band. As I am friends with someone who is close with members of the band, I asked the band if they were able to be in my video.  This would be good promotion for the upcoming band as well as good for originality in my coursework.  They eventually replied and were interested in my ideas, however, their schedule was full up until the new year as they were touring as a support band You can see my ideas in the lyric analysis below:

Definition of a music video

I think that it is important to look in to the description of a music video to make sure that I have included all aspects of a video. It will make sure that I understand the purpose of the video with its ancillary tasks.


According to ‘Answers’ (http://www.answers.com/topic/music-video), they have noted that a music video is designed to portray ‘musicians performing the song or including visual images interpreting the lyrics’.  For my music video, I like the idea of including an actual band as it is important for promotion. It will also allow the audience to make a visual link to the song.


On the ‘Dictonary Reference’ website http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/music+video), they have written that a music video includes ‘performers with lip-synching and special effects’.

Deciding on a target audience

I think that it would be suitable to have the target audience as my age group(16-18). This is because I will feel more comfortable in establishing and developing a music video and ancillary tasks for people that I can relate to. It will ensure that I meet the criteria of music videos that people of my age range enjoy. However, I will have to carefully select some people to hand my quesitonnaire out to as the answers made by people who enjoy the punk rock genre will differ to people that favourite the mainstream genre. When I later carry out my questionnaire,  I will ask all ages of people above the age of  11 as I think it’ll allow me to broaden my ideas and decisions.

Choosing a song for my music video/genre

As I listen to many different genres and bands every day, I initially found it quite hard to decide on a particular genre and song.  I asked for class feedback from students in my class after playing them a few song choices that I had.  I showed them versions that meant that they couldn’t see the original music video if they already had one.  This meant that they were able to use their imagination to picture what visual links they would have to the song.  I would then match this feedback to my own ideas to see if I could make any improvements.


The songs that I played to a few students were:

Deaf Havana – Friends Like These
Lower Than Atlantis – Mike Duce’s Symphony No. 11 In D Minor
Lower Than Atlantis – Up In Smoke
Lower Than Atlantis – (Motor) Way of Life
You Me At Six - Fireworks

Working as a pair

I decided to work as a pair with Kate for the music video as I believed that it would be good to have input from two people. The combination of our media skills would allow us to work together to create a good product.


As we have similar interests in music, this easily helped us decide what songs to choose from. We had a few initial ideas for both the song and the setting. However, when it came to filming over the summer period, we found it hard to set a date in which we could do it.  Our schedules clashed, therefore we both decided to go our separate ways and create our own music videos.