Magazine Album Cover Adverts

The images below show some examples of magazine adverts for new releases on albums. These adverts are designed to be produced in magazines in order to promote a new album about to be released so that it can sell to the mass market. The promotion of these albums helps it reach a wider audience, who will listen and purchase it.

Finished Digipak

Here is my finished Digipak piece in a template for printing. This would not be sent

off to print, for the creation of the new album. The template contains the front, back,

inside cover and CD design. 

Digipak Preliminary Design

I drew up some preliminary designs for my digipak in hard copy. The design would

be transformed into a digital image using programs such as Photoshop. 

Digipak Research

Digipak is a patented style of optical disc packaging, usually found on an album cover. They usually contain the artists name and album name on the front cover, with various other artist information on the inside. Also on the inside will be the disc itself, that tends to have a similar look to the rest of the digipak.

Digipak Analysis

Chase and Status- 'No More Idols'
The images below show each part of the digipak created for the album 'No More Idols' by Chase and Status.

The front cover of the album cover is quite interesting and unusual. Firstly the bright yellow bold title is eye-catching and grabs the audiences attention, allowing the audience to easily distinguish the artists identity and album name. Also the choice of bright lettering and a black and white background compliment each other nicely. The bulldog in behind the lettering takes up the majority of the front cover and I think this is purely for affect as it makes it look individual and a distinctive feature that can be attributed to the artist.

The CD shares many similarities to the front cover of the album. The consistency of the black and yellow theme is present throughout including the same font used. This consistency of fonts and colour makes the artist more recognisable and presentable when it comes to distributing the album.

Finally, the back of the album is much the same to the front cover and disc. The colour scheme and font are exactly the same keeping the consistent theme throughout. The song list is also represented in this section as well as other information such as record labels and the barcode

Final Video Feedback

The Soundcloud link above is an interview with a few of my classmates on what they thought of our final music video. With the information they provided, we can make adjustments in the re-edit to make sure that the video is the best it can be. 

From listening to the clip, many enjoyed the colour scheme that we had attempted to create and also the variety of angles we used such as high angle and closeups. 

To improve, some commented on the lip-syncing being slightly out with the timing on the music and we will work to make sure it all fits perfectly.

Final Music Video

Location Shots

We used a local woodlands area for many of the scenes in our music video. We thought that the woods would be a good place to shoot because of the naturally dark atmosphere attributed to woods. Due to our video being filmed in black and white, this will add to the sinister tone that we are trying to convey to the audience.

Woodlands can also convey a sense of isolation to the audience as the subject in the video appears lonely and detached from society. The idea of escapism is prominent in our video as it appears as if the character is trying to escape or get away from everyone else. This can be quite comforting for some of the audience members who could use the video for this very reason.

Rough Cut Feedback

Below are some of the comments from a feedback survey we conducted to find out what others though about the rough cut. 

Here we asked five questions that will help us understand where we need to improve and what's good with the rough cut. 

When asked about the colour scheme, we found that the colour scheme of orange against the dark black and white background worked well, with many people finding the effect interesting and appealing. The positive feedback from this part of the video means that we are going to carry this through to the finished product.

The narrative appeared quite confusing and unclear from the feedback, so we'll work on this to make the narrative more explicit. However, we will leave some implicit parts so that some members of the audience can make their own interpretations up of what they believe the narrative is about.

We found that many believed that we needed more scenes as a few were repeated as a result of the lack of footage. This is something that we will change dramatically, with more footage and faster cuts to split it up. 

Rough Cut

The video above is the rough cut for our final music video. As this is only a rough cut, many of the scenes are not in the right place and editing hasn't been completed. However, it gives a rough idea of what the final product will look like.

Animatic

Storyboard

Below are the images of the initial planning phase of our music video. The storyboard images allow us to get a visual image of what our video will look like when its finally completed.

Production Schedule

Shooting Schedule

2nd November
Shoot walking scene down path including close up shots- 1.30pm-2.30pm

Location: Canal path down from Wem Mill
Props: none
Costume: Orange Coat, Black Jeans, Trainers
Actors: Connor Benns

4th November
Lip Syncing- 11am-12

Location: Clearing in woods down from canal
Props: none
Costume: Orange Coat, Black Jeans, Trainers
Actors: Connor Benns

7th November
Alley Shot
Dancing scene in alley and other various shots.

Location: Alley in Wem.
Props: none
Costume: Orange Coat, Black Jeans, Trainers
Actors: Connor Benns

4th December
Finishing woodland shots
Various scenes

Location: Woodlands and field with long grass
Props: none
Costume: Orange Coat, Black Jeans, Trainers
Actors: Connor Benns

Risk Assessment

The images above show our risk assessment that will help us assess how dangerous each part of the video is. We have listed some of the props that could be hazardous such as the smoke grenade and also natural hazards such as trips and water. We can determine how risky each is by the potential that the event could happen on the day of filming. 

Permission to Use Track

Through the music sharing platform Soundcloud, we contacted the artist directly through his account, asking whether we could use his track in our music video. As the track is copyrighted, this was a necessary action.

Over-Cranking Experiment

Over-Cranking

To create this over-cranked effect, we doubled the speed of the song (BPM) using Final Cut Pro. By singing at double the speed, you can utilise slow motion whilst using the original song and its speed. Lip syncing will appear at the same speed of the song despite being in slow motion.

The first thing we did to start creating the over crank was we put the original song,into Final Cut Pro so that we could then sync the lip-syncing that we had filmed to the original slower song.

Next, we put the footage of the lip-syncing into Final Cut and then modified the speed of footage by half so it was slow enough and would easily sync into the song.

Finally, we then synced the song up to the lip-synced footage together and then rendered the song and footage together to create our over cranked version of our song.

Costumes and Props

We will use a variety of costumes and props in our music video:

Costumes
The main protagonist in the video will wear an orange parka jacket with a fur hood. This choice in outfit allows us to easily conceal the protagonists' identity through the use of a hood adding mystery and suspense to the video. The coat also implies that the video is set in winter where the temperature is cold and so dark. The mysterious theme in the video will be made darker through the use of a black and white filter to accompany the wintery feel. The brightness and vibrancy of the coat will shine through at some point in the video, when the beat of the song becomes more uplifting.

Props
We also plan to use a red smoke grenade in the video. This will be used for visual effects, as we think this will look cool in the video adding a different dimension. We have also planned for the colour of the smoke to come through the black and white filter similar to the way the coat does to contrast the dark and vibrant colours. 

Experiments

We have conducted a few experiments to test a variety of shots that could be used in our final video. This experiment also allows us to trial out the effectiveness and difficulty of the shot type.


Jib Shot

Trombone Shot

We found the trombone shot difficult due to how jolty the zoom was on the DSLR camera we were using to film. However with this shot done properly on a HD camcorder, it could be quite effective.

Pinboard

Using Pinterest, I have generated some ideas for the music video using images from the site. These images are similar to what will be used in our video.

https://uk.pinterest.com/connorbenns/music-video-inspiration/

Lyric Analysis

When generating ideas for how we want our music video to look, we analysed the lyrics. This way we can use actions in the videos to match the lyrics or completely contradict the lyrics by doing the opposite of what they say. Moreover we can use the lyrics as a preliminary shot list where we feel each shot will fit best in the song.

Audience Research

From a first glance at Kygo's website, it all looks very professional. The website has an attractive white background, complimented with black and grey writing. Upon arrival on the site, a few things stand out. For example the social links in the top right corner illustrates an example of cross-media convergence as he uses a variety of social media to spread his music and news globally to his fans. This also allows fans easy access to these accounts. Next his logo is a prominent feature of the site, standing out in the top left corner making him recognisable in the music world.

When you scroll down the website page, you come across his tour dates. This is an effective way to successfully promote himself as it gives the opportunity for fans to see him perform live. The bold 'ticket' button entices audiences into seeing him live as it stands out from the rest of the page.

News on new tracks is also displayed on his website as well as merchandise. Again this allows fans to keep current on his latest releases and therefore makes him more successful as an artist. Merchandise can raise his popularity and get his name noticed by fans literally wearing his name e.g. t-shirts, jumpers etc.

Finally his bio allows fans to get more intimate with the artist. Personal background displays his roots and can inspire fans into following a similar path to the one he's led. It can also provide a flavour of his life to audience members who have never heard of him.

Reviews from live performances allow us to get an idea about the quality of the artist on the big stage in front of thousands of fans. Here are some reviews from around the web:

Ticketmaster: 

Rolling Stone Magazine:

Songkick.com:

Online stores also give us an insight into the success and current popularity of the artists music. For the song we're doing 'Stole the Show', I had a look at some reviews on online stores. The song has five star reviews from the people who have reviewed it.

From looking at Soundcloud (another website where songs can be bought) Kygo has a achieved a massive success rate for this song racking up 7.53m listens and 165k likes.

Related Artists

Related artists can help users get a feel for the genre of another artists music as well as other associated musicians. For example, if two artists create similar music they will most likely be found in the related section of an online music store so that audiences can find similar music to the stuff they normally listen to. Online music stores that contain this feature include iTunes and Amazon. Here are some examples of related artists to Kygo found on these sites:

From the iTunes results, related artists include Calvin Harris, David Guetta and Avicii. All of these artists produce House/Electronic music and this is relevant to the type of music produced by Kygo. These suggested songs are also quite popular amongst the charts, similar to Kygo's music whose also appears in the charts. As the charts is mainly listened to by a younger audience such as teenagers, this gives an idea of the audience that our video would appeal to.

Questionnaire
We conducted a questionnaire to find out primary information regarding the artist and the genre of his music. Here are a few examples of the results we received: