The spine also has to have the name of the artist and album. :)
Here's a quick plan I created to show what the album should have on it. This is obviously just a basic one because as a group we have to decide the colour scheme, the name of the album, songs on the album, the font style and graphics. We've already decided some of these.
Artist: Alex
Album name: Golden Frames
Colour scheme: Brown/ light blue (a sepia type colour, neutrals) Release date: 1.1.12
The inside panels don't have to be as...decorated as the front as it's just going to hold the CD. Buuuutt possible things that could be placed on the inside are: Pictures of/by the artist Art work from the artist Details of the song - track time, who wrote it, who played the instruments etc Lyrics of songs Story behind the song
What is supposed to be on a Digipack and on an Advertisement:
The Front:
Artist name- bigger than the album name
Album name
Clear font, large, fore grounded
Same font through the whole digipack
Might have a promotional sticker
Spine needs to have information on it
As you can see Ellie Goulding, has followed the conventional front for a digipack. she has clear writing, her name is bigger and she has the album name on the cover.
The Back:
Track listing- same font as artist name and album name
Production information:
Copyright, year of production
Web address, record label, logo, name
Distrabuter, producer, possibly price
Bar code
As you can see the writing is the same font all through out, and she has a clear track listing for her album
The inside panles:
Repeat of tracklist
Sometimes more sprecific detail of the track listing is included e.g. length of songs, who played instraments, who sang etc.
May have pictures/ art from or of the artist
May contain two cd holders
Some other key points to rememeber:
There has to be visual links between the song and the pictures on the digipack.
3-4 colours maximum and must compliment eachother
No more than two different fonts
visual link between the digipack and the advertisement
Ancillary products are things that you get extra with the product that you are buying. A digi-pack is a modern approach to CD packaging. It includes more information about band/artist and adds value instead of just buying the dual case.
What is the function of an ancillary product? There are sevarl reasons why ancillary products are still made; They promote the artist and make the customers feel exclusive and The quality of the hard copy is better. a lot of people still buy and want a hard copy becasue they feel like they are getting an insight into the atrist life with pictures, quotes etc which they would get anywhere else; this also makes them feel like thery are getting more for thier money. The music industry also want to tap into the REAL FAN BASE, the real fans will buy anything that has aditional background on the artist, they are the ones who support the artist by actually buying the cd's and digi-packs. Fans see ancillary products as a novelty , special, something to collect. Ancillary products also promote the brand. The artwork on the ancillary products are important for promoting the artist and the label becasue it defreatioantes the artisrt, espeacially when downloading of the internet; the little picture that comes with the song is really important becasue the consume will want to see what they are buying.
This is an advertisment for a band, Posters are really important becasue they promote the artist and tells the consumers when a new album is out or maybe tour dates if thier going on tour etc.
Why are ancillary products so important for the music industry?
There are a lot of reasons why the industry wants ancillary products to keep going and whay they want people to buy it more. The obvious reasons are that They will make more money from selling digipacks comppared to downloads. They also need digipacks becasue sooo many people are illegally downlaoding songs which meqns that they are dying out slowly. it is important for them to make the consumers feel connected to the artist becasue if they do they will buy and stay loyal to the atrist. One of the reasons why digipacks are still used despite of cd sales dropping is to try and comabt priacy, also the music industy want you to feel like you are a real fan if you buy the digipacks.
Now that we've finished with our music video, we have to create a promotional package for our artist. This includes a digipak and a magazine advertisment. In yesterdays lesson, we had a discussion about ancillary products and worked together as a group to come up with ideas for our own. We're making these indivually which I think is kind of a good thing because we can be as creative as we want. So to start, Rebecca gave us a few questions to brainstorm and then we regrouped as a class and discussed them further.
1. What is the function of a digipak? Ultimately, a digipak promotes the artist. In our case, as we are making the debut album for our artist, we need this to advertise her as much as possible. Being her first album, we are advertising the 'brand' so it needs to be done in a good way.
Take Alexandra Burke's debut album, Overcome. It promotes her as it has pictures of her and the customer isnt really distracted from a busy background or obnoxious colours. It's simple and I think it promotes her really well.
Another reason why a digipak is needed is exclusivity. When you buy an album, it gives you additional information about the artist - for example, pictures, lyrics etc.You can't really get that from an online album. When you buy one from the store it's a novelty, your getting a hard copy of the music. If you really like an artist, you'd buy the album to get your moneys worth.
2. Why are digipaks still used despite CD sales dropping?
One reason would be that if you are a true fan of the artist, you will collect their albums because you are a dedicated fan. So fans of Alexandra Burke would know that her debut album was also released in two deluxe versions as the arrows point out. One includes a DVD and the other is a grils night in version. So if your a really massive fan, maybe you'd buy them all. It's kind of a luxury item, again a novelty so its slightly more personal if you buy the album rather than get it online. Sometimes albums contain artwork or exclusive photos which makes it more personal for the customer/fan and they kind of feel like they are getting more for their money.
I think the most important reason is to help combat piracy. Nowadays everyone gets their music online, legally or illegaly, so if one person is buying an album off the shelf then they know that that is one less person illegaly downloading the songs.
Buying a digipak(s) will show the growth of an artist. Say you've been collecting albums from an artist since their first album, you can see their transformatin trough their albums. For instance, Beyonce has released four albums and you can see her growth through her albums.
3. Why are ancillary products to the industry/artist?
Ancillary products (adverts and digipaks) are important because they are probably the easiest way to expose the artist. Without the advert in a magazine, on the bus or train or a poster no-one will know about the product. An advert will tell you if the album is good, it will show you what the album looks like, it could tell inform you of a tour (if there is one) etc. Theres so much information an advert can hold and its an easy way to reach out to the people.
I have been going to workshops and have been working on putting together some bloopers, the mos funny ones are when we are trying to shoot peoples faces :D
Today in lesson Rebecca asked us three questions and told us to have a disccusion in our group about them. These were the questions:
1)What is the function of a music video?
2)Why are digipacks still being produced even tough CD sales are declining?
3)Why are ancillary products (digipack/advertisement) still important to music industry?
We all then, after discussing with our group, we had to report back to the class our answers. This is what we all decided on:
Function of a digipack:
·It gives additional information about the artist though use of art work and pictures, which allow more of the personality to come across not only just in their songs, where in many cases nowadays, they didn’t even write it.
·You see a growth of the artist
·The most important point, we all thought, us for the use of promotion. Though the use of a digipack the audience get an insight into who the artist is; what’s their genre and what’s their brand. Also through this the artist can generate a wider audience by attracting people for their brand and genre. For example, if didn’t watch X Factor and know who Cher Lloyd is, her didgipack will inform me of who is she; her brand and image, and if I do listen to that type of music I can now listen to her and buy her music.
A example of a good debut digipack
Why are digipacks still being produced even tough CD sales are declining?
Loyal fans will still go out and buy the digipack to help their artist.
It could also still being made to compact piracy. Real fans would rather buy than download, so in a digipack they will give more for their money.
·You get a feeling of exclusivity because you feel as if you’re getting something special and different, which makes it more personal. Whereas if you were to download it illegal you do not get all the other features such as pictures, which then makes it less personal.
·Your getting more for you money whereas if you were to buy online your only spending money on the song and nothing else.
·Advertising the brand. The aritist is packed up as if it were a brand. For example Cher Lloyd’s image is a brand. Her music, clothing, music, images, art work etc all fit into one brand.
In this music video, it is very typical of her brand - bright, bubbly, girly etc.
On this album cover her brand is portrayed through use of
c
louring and clothing, the
font contributes also.
And lastly her clothing
Lastly, because the audience is getting a hard copy. Those audiences that don’t download illegally or even buy online, do so because the see the hard copy as more valuable and worth more than the digital format. That’s why it’s more impotant now than ever to have good art work.
Kanye West is an artist that focues heavily on the art work in their digipack
Why are ancillary products (digipack/advertisement) still important to music industry?
Without adverterisments on TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers etc. we wouldn’t know about new alerts of that artists such as tour dates, new singles and albums. Even viral marking is being seen as vital in the promotion and distribution of an artist.
Okay, so last Friday we just finished making the Music Video. However, today in lesson Rebecca informed us that its not all over yet – we still have our ancillary packs to make. An ancillary pack is both a digipack and an advertisement, which will be linked to our music video. The ancillary pack is makes up 60% of our overall coursework grade. To stress the importance of our ancillary packs she gave us a memorable true example of past media students, which she referred to as A and B. This is how it went:
Student A was in a group for their music video where all members got 40/40 – which is an A*. Student B's music video was OK and they ended up getting, I can’t remember I think about 20 something out of 40.
The cut a long story short, Student A began to become lackadaisical on their work, and saw the music video and a big enough contribution towards their final grade and thought the was set. Student b consistently worked extra hard and always put in all effort. As time went by the different in their grade started to decrease, until eventually, when the final grades were made, Student B had taken over Student A. Student B has gotten and A grade whereas Student B had a C/B.
Student B
Student A
Rebecca told us this story because, according to her experience, this same thing happens ever year. To prevent it from happening again this year to us, she told us this so that we understand that the video is not the end, and that the ancillary project is just as important – if anything more because it accounts for a bigger percentage of the overall grade.
I've improved the skills I've learnt from last year because last year I was pretty rubbish at editing. Last year when editing we had to edit with match cuts to make the video flow while this year we had to do lots of cuts between the artist singing and the story. While editing this year I learnt about editing on the beat. When we began editing one of the first things we did was mark the beats on the track. When first learning doing this I didn't really understand why this was necessary but now after editing our video I realised that we needed it as something to cut all our shots to. If we didn't have the marks there our video would look really off and not that good.
As you can see in this picture the first two green lines are the music track. And the red markers on them are...well the markers. And if you look above in the blue section you will see the base tracks cut accordingly to these beats.
I also learnt that in a music video you need special effects. This is because it can get kinda boring and the music video could end up looking static and rigid. Layering is a really good effect to put in music videos and is used in many. In our video, we used loads of transitions and made several shots translucent so you could see the layer underneath.
Overall, my editing skills have improved alot because this year I edited alot more than last year. I felt more comfortable doing the editing and I'm quite pleased with the way our video has come together.
Planning the thriller was done completely differently to planning this music video. I have to say I think planning for a music video was slightly harder than for a thriller. This is because we had to plan alot more. We started from the beginning, with a song, then with the artist and her image, then planning the whole music video. For the thriller, we had a story with a beginning, middle and end and then the locations were pretty easy to find and film in. Whereas for the music video, you have there isnt a strict storyline so to keep the audience interested we had look for numerous locations and stuff. Also, planning wise, it was a must that our pitch was prepared to the fullest with every single little detail possible.
We planned everything as group, we worked really well together in the beginning and we were all pretty much on the same page, with similar ideas about the different aspects for our video. Last year, the actor in our opening was in our group but this year we had an artist from outside of our group. This meant that we had to film when our artist was available, which was pretty much every time we asked her to. Renee was really nice and dedicated to helping us. :)
Because we filmed over the holidays, we created a schedule on where to film on what day. We had to look at timings as well, as we needed to film both in the day and evening.
I think the thriller was easier in some ways because it was just the opening so we didn't need lots of locations, in our case just two. We didn't need lots of people or props.
As an individual, I had to remind myself that this was a music video from time to time and that we needed our video to promote the artist (which meant lots of close ups, lots of shots of her) and we have to keep the audience interested and that we aren't making just an opening (which means a storyline, different lighting, locations etc)
Over my time in A2 media, i have learned new skills, and develped on the skills that I new before. They have helped me become a better editer and a better filmer.
One of the skilles i learned is how to add effects on the shots that i had filmed, at first i experimented with different effects but after a while when i was editing the music video it came in handy becasue i would know which one would suit witha aspecific shot or where to go to find a certian effect.
For example, the pictures below show that i chose the shot that i wanted and then i went to video filters and tried the tilling effect. we didint like it very mush and it didnt really go with our music video, so we tried more until we found the one.
This is the effect that we went for at the end, we really liked this effect, it went perfectly with our closing shot. it was the diffuse effect. below is a picture of how the diffuse effect looked on the shot:
How I approached the planning to to this production differently to my AS production work. The way we planned for our thriller was completely different to the way we planned for our music video.
THE PLANNING FOR THE THRILLER: We had to film in a different way when we filmed the thriller, we had to plan it like a story. We had to make sure that the filming looked continues, so that all the shots would match and it would look like its all happening there and then. We had to think about the specific shots and what they represent. We had to think of a story and how we were going to show the audience that something exiting was going to happen after the opening. it was much easier to edit the thriller than it was to edit the music video because we knew that we were editing from the beginning to the end, there was a sense of direction. when we edited the clips together for the thriller opening, the clips were put down one after another and it was easy to see what was happening next. however there was some difficulty to this because we could just put a random shot there, it had to flow with the story.
THE PLANNING FOR THE MUSIC VIDEO: We had to focus more on the image of the artist and what kind of locations would suit their image. We had to look for really amazing locations and had to plan to get the permission before hand. When making a music video we had to think and plan the schedule a lot more closely. This was really important because our artist was not in our group, this meant that we had to take into consideration when she could film, this made it difficult to get a lot of shooting time. last year it was easier because our main actor was a group member. The editing for the music video was a lot more difficult, there were a lot more clips, and base tracks that we had to lay down and work around. When we wanted to put a clip down it was easy because we didn't have to make it look continues, however we had to make sure that if the artist was singing in the shot then the lip syncing had to match. In some aspects making a music video is a lot more easy of you are doing amplification or disjuncture because you can be really wild and creative because it doesn't have to be justified and doesn't have to relate to anything.
I think that they were both challenging and i have learned a lot from doing both, but i would have to say even though the editing for the music video is a lot more grueling it was much more fun than the opening to a thriller.
Today is Friday, the deadline for the music video!!!!!!! I came in to put the finishing touches on and to make sure it was ready to post as finished. Rebbecca checked if everything was alright and is it was in sync, she spotted that some of our shots were slightly by like a Milli second late, so she asked Marissa the technician to help me. Marissa helped me and and now everything is great. hopefully everyone will like it.
these are pictures of the parts where they were out of sync: we fixed these and now they fit.
Their wasn’t a vast different in my editing skills acquired from the space of last year, but I do think I have grown. Last year editing to me was just a learning process – there only room for improvement. I learnt by just playing around with it, watching tutorials on YouTube and listening to the teachers and technicians.
At first I didn’t know what I was doing and I had to keep call for help. This time, because I had learnt from last year, all I did was add on new more advanced information. I used more effective transitions, as I learnt which transitions are effective where to give across a certain mood. Editing this year also help to be a lot more fast-paced, and it wasn’t all about continuity. This meant we needed double the clips, luckily our group had tons of footage – but we can never had even more than enough. This meant we were able to experiment more with editing, instead of like last year where I was restricted to a limited amount of shots because I had under filmed.
Overall, my skillsediting have advance as I can now edit more precisely, neatly, effectively and successfully.
This product I think I approached very differently than my AS Thriller. Last year when planning our thriller we were very vague. We weren’t even able to come up with a successful pitch. When it came to filming we basically had to just go with the flow because our prior storyboard was so brief that we couldn’t follow it. We didn’t think carefully about the location, so when we went to go and film we weren’t able to film in that location, but lucky there was a handy alternative We ended up not having enough good clips to use and just had to make do with what we had. However the in the end it all came out all right and I got a B overall for my coursework.
Comparing last year to this year reveals a vast difference. We thought carefully about the locations, the costume, the time of day to film in order to ensure the right light. We even went out before filming to test whether the locations can be used in our music video. We all worked together in producing ideas about what we wanted in our music video and how we wanted it, so it’s not surprising that we were able to come up with a successful pitch and nice presentation. One thing that went better last year than this time round was the fact that your performer was in group, so we were able film during lesson, and it was easier for us to do last minute filming because of this. Whereas now we have to have to work according to your performer availability, but this wasn’t a big deal because Renee was really committed and generous when we needed her for something.
On the whole, this year I have shown better planning than last year, but I’m grateful for all the mistakes I made last year, because that’s what made me aware and prepare for my planning this year.
Before I talk about conventions that we included we need to go through what are the conventions in a music video, in our case a pop music video.
I did some researching and these were the most common conventions for a pop music video that i came across (i made some videos of other music videos that used these conventions, to better illustrate my points):
·Lighting – is used also to enhance the atmosphere as it can be used to give a bright and up beat feel.
Beyonce's use of lighting
Our use of lighting
·A mise-en-scene - associated with the inter textual link of the music video.
·Close ups – these are usually used in music videos as they put emphasis on the artist for promotional reasons, and their lips show the lip sinking. (Cher Lloyd – your love)
Close up shot of Cher Lloyd in her music video
Close up shot of our artist in her music vidoe
·Fast –paced editing
·Jump cuts
Our jump cuts (i've only put in three but they continue until she reaches down the stairs)
·Editing in synch with the music
This is advert video, but the advert is of an actual video so i used this because i like the way the accurately cut to the beat.
·Singing while acting (lady gaga you and i)
·Props
Enbed picture with artist with guitar
·Costume – reflects the genre of the music and the style of the artist. (katy perry costume)
Katy Perry's costume in her pop video
Our artists costume
·Location – translates a mood. The Wanted – beach location- happy fun.
The Wanted location at the beach suggests happy and fun
Our locations also suggest happy
Sorry about the bad quality of my pictures, its because they way the video shows on blogger is really bad quality, but i could only screen shot for those pictures because I'm not at college
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