Ancillary..........

Now that the music video part is over, our task now is to create a promotional package for our artist. This is all the digipak and magazine advertisement. This Part of the task is all individual, but with some few ideas that as to be the same. As i was not here last lesson, due to my illness, i missed out some, but got the work sheets after from my teacher to catch up. There where a few questions on their. I then went home, and looked them up my self, and got some help with friends. 


1. What is the function of a digipak?
The function of a digipak promotes the artist. As we are creating a 
debut album for our artist, we need to advertise her as much as we can. As this is her first album, and advertising the brand', and so it needs to be done professionally as possible.  

Above are two albums from a new artist 'Cher Lloyd'. It promotes her in her pictures. I think the first album 'Swagger Jagger' as got a animations, as this goes with the theme of the song. Also the background is kept quite calm, with the white theme, but then all the colours splash out on the shapes and images that are placed there. Also the font is readable, and again goes with the song, she is trying to sell out. The second album cover is completly different to the 1st one because here we have just quite a mid shot of her posing, with a radiant colour back ground red, however it is still simple with because it does not have all the images and etc going on. I think this promotes her very well, and promotes her songs aswell. 

Digipacks are also very important in ways to promote the artist it self.  Reason being is When coming to buying the album from store you tend to find out more additional information about the artist it self. How this happens is from the pictures, titles, lyrics and etc. Sometimes this is not found, when its online album. When you buy the CD, its getting the hard copy of the music. People tend to do this is they really like the artist, and will be buying the album and making your moneys worth. 

2. Why are digipaks still used despite CD sales dropping?

I think that if people was a massive fan or the artist, and really enjoy that persons music, i think they would go and buy the hard copy of it, because your a true fan. The fans of Cher Lloyd would know when her album is released, and keep up to date. As in knowing when their concerts are a etc. So its more of a personal thing, if people really enjoy the artist they will buy all their albums and keep them. Also so that the customers feel like they have owned something precious to them, and feel like they have got something that the money is worth it. Sometimes it also includes pictures and texts, which fans really enjoy to look at. 

Nowadays most younge people, tend to download music online, being illegal or legal. Downloading music online, reduces the amount of money that the album is trying to sell. Buying the digipacks can only show the growth of an artist. Below you can see the growth of Rihanna's Albums. 



3. Why are ancillary products to the industry/artist?

Ancillary products, The adverts and Digipack and very important to an artist because it is one of the easiest way to show off and sell the artist. If there was no Advert on a magazine or newspaper, poster, trains, buses and billboards and etc, i think no-one will know nothing about the product of the artist. The advert Tells us how the album looks likes, If theres any tours, and any other interesting information about the artist or album. This is a very good way in which people can notice about the item and is a great way on reaching out to the audience. 

EDITING OVERRRRRR.........

FINALLY THE EDITING PART HAS COME TO AN END, VERY HAPPY WITH EVERYTHING, AND NOW JUST TIME TO CELEBRATE :D ! HOPE WE DID WELL. !!!

Skills Development Editing......

This year in my editing Skills i don't think i was as bad as last year as i picked up My Skills from last year and used them, improved it this year. I think i have Improved hugely. Last Year The editing was just the first basic steps for me, and i think this year i have token a bigger step. How i learnt was just using the basic tools, watching other people, getting help from teachers and the technicians. 

Last year in AS i was just completely blank and i had no clue what i was doing, So i kept asking for help. However analysing this year, I have not done that Quite often which i am quite proud of. I think because i learnt alot from last year. This year I put in a lot more effort, and made them more advanced. 

I learnt how to put in the clips, Add effects to it, Fast pace, Trasitiions and etc. This year i new we needed loads and loads of clips because the song it fast pace, so there needs to be loads of different shots and locations. Also last year we had a shortage of footage so i learnt this year with less amount of time we need way MORE!!! Also this year As we had so many clips we had the chance to experiment with more, as we where expected to have more shots.

This year for me Was very enjoyable, but way harder. I found this year very Hard compare to last year. As the task was made harder. However it was all similar work, but the task seemed harder. However i got through with it and hope i did the best i could. Overall i can say my skills in editing was more precise, effective and much better, as i knew what i  was doing, and hopefully more successful. 

Digipacks at HMV

OKay, so I took Rebecca's advise to go HMV and look at some digipacks. I decided to  have myself filmed while i share some information about what I commonly notice about these digipacks. I didn't just look at my related genre digipacks because I wanted to get a more general view on what and how digipacks are used and presented.

Anyway, so here's the video :)

Sorry that I look so stuffy and trampy, but I had to rush, I was going to be late for work.

Analysis of three digipacks that relate to my genre

Analysis of three digipacks

In Monday’s lessons we went over with is needed on a digipack and genre specific conventions of digipack.

This is what we learned:

What should the outside look like:

·      Front (right) panel – Artist name, album name (artist name should be bigger than the album name), promotional sticker (sometimes)

·      Back (left) panel – Copyright, track-list, year of production, web address, record label, logo name and distributor.

·      Spine – Name of artist and album.

What should the inside look like:

·      Graphic

·      Repeat of track list but more specific, i.e. who played instruments, wrote the song, produced it etc.

·      Image of artist (if used) echoing visual style and colour scheme of front cover.

Overall digipack style:

·      Uses 3-4 colours max. Use simple colours e.g. mutual colours. If the colour is too bright it will overcome the artist, the artist needs to dominate.

·      Same fonts used for everything – two fonts maximum = conventional

·      Include element of graphic design, do not just simply use pictures.

Now lets take a look at some digipacks that relate to my genre of pop and see if they follow these conventions.

The first digipack we’ll look at is Adele for her album 21.

So this digipack used all the conventions of a pop genre digipack and was able to be successful. This digipack relates to my genre because it uses the classical conventions of a pop digipack. My same target audience will be attracted to this because it very simple, yet you can get a lot of information about who the artist is and what her music style is, which is a similar music style to my artist

The second digipack is a 6 panel of Katy Perry – Teenage Dream.

From this analyses we can see that it broke the convention of only 2 maximum fonts as it used four different fonts, two on the front and two on the back. However, it conventional carried the graphic through subtly and use linked visual images of the artist to the theme.  My target audience will be attracted to this digipack for a different reason than Adele’s. This digipack is stereotypically pop – pink, candy, cakes, ice-cream, teenage, etc - which will instantly attract my target audience.

Lastly we will look at KT Tunstall digipack as this is the artist from the song that my music video is on.

Okay, so from a look into this digipack, we can see that id is mostly conventional and ultimately very effective in attracting an audience. My audience specifically will be attracted to this digipack because it interesting with its use of pictures, it’s not just close ups. Also from a look at this digipack, we can tell you’ll be getting a mix of genres, not just pop, you can see a little rock and soul as well, so this will interest them more, because it gives them a variety.

Analysis of previous student's digipack

One of the digipacks that I was shown, that I thought worked really well and was very effective was the one for the artist 'Indiya" by Yolande Agbutro. 

This digipack got a selection of imagery, and they didn't distort them in any way.

The advertisement for this artist was really effective as well. 

However, there were some bad previous student digipacks.

There were quite a few problems with this digipack, here are the one's that I have listed:

• The colour is too strong, which over powers the writing on the back panels and also distracts from the artist. 
• The colour strength of the image on the inside left panel does not match the other pictures, they have distorted that image. 
• The spine information is missing
• The writing is too small
• Colour contrast doesn't work
• There are different fonts on the front and back panel

On the other hand one strength of there advertisement  is that they used typography really well. 

Making a digipak (practise)

So this is just a little practise digipak I made in Thursdays lesson to learn some photoshop skills and play around with effects and lighting and stuff. All I can tell you is that it is going to be yet another long process but I'm looking forward to doing it. I'm quite pleased with how my digipak came out even though it's really simple and slightly easy to do. Over here I was really just playing around will lighting and layout. My actual one will be much better. :)