Final Music Video

Final Digipak

Final Magazine Advert

Evaluation question 1- Draft

Music video:

We wanted to make a narrative music video where the main story of the song is shown in an easy way for the audience to understand. We didn’t want to have instruments because we thought that the song would be better staged as a narrative than a performance. We are developing the conventional forms of media and what is perceived to be ‘normal’ in the music industry.

Traditionally the genre of music we are doing normally have a performance style video with the examples of the Oasis, Wonderwall where they are performing the video as a band. Other videos such as the Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony is a video we looked at and likes the idea of having the lead singer walk down the street, but instead of having people around him have it just the band member.  

We developed this shot in the Verve video by doing a long walking shot of the main individual and developing it slightly as we decided to put shots in between it so it isn’t just one big continuous walk through of a large part of the song. We did many different types of shots which developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media products, for example using the close ups, mid shots and long shots. This was so the audience could get a feel for the band and who the stars of the video are. Also having more shots of one of the artists will get the audience to recognise which of the artists is the most important to the band and the video.  

Digipak and advert:

When I researched what to put on my digipak and the ideas for it I struggled to find something that I would really like to use for my digipak. In the end I found something, it was the simplistic idea of the pet shop boys, actually. I really like this album cover because it is simplistic and easy to look at on the eye. If it is this then it is then better for the audience who are the people that are going to buy it. I feel like this idea challenges the conventions of real media products because normally bands have more going on within their CD covers but because mine is very bare and not very busy this means that there is more chance that people will like it. People will like it because there isn’t much of it to take in therefore it won’t make them think too much about it because there isn’t much too it, this simplistic idea gives my digipak an advantage against others because people who have used complex idea will have lots going on within their digipak, this means that the people who are going to purchase this digipak or album might not enjoy being bombarded with lots of different colours and designs. A good example of a simple digipak that fits in with the style of mine is the digipak for the Mumford and Sons album, Sigh No More.  There is a simplistic design to this but there is also a bit of writing on the back, where I have put my most writing.

While researching for the magazine advert I found lots of adverts for bands such as Kings of Leon, Kasabian and the Foo Fighters. They all are similar because they all have the same picture on the front as the album cover does when the album actually comes out. For example the Foo Fighters have the FF on the front surrounded by a red circle and in front of a metal sheet. In this case I think I have used the ideas from existing media products because for my magazine advert I decided to use the front cover picture of my digipak as my magazine advert a long with having ‘OUT NOW’ below this. This gives the image of the digipak and album in the heads of readers of the magazines which means that if they see it In a shop then they will recognise it and pick it up to look at it. This is why lots of famous bands and artists use the same image from the album cover on the magazine advert to make it look like the album and make it look recognisable for potential buyers and fans.

Overall I feel that I developed different media products in the music video, using different ideas and shot types in order to gain a better grade and make a better video. This is different to the Digipak where I challenged but also used different ideas from already made digipaks in order to get the ideas and develop my own digipak. For the magazine advert I used the ideas from a few different magazine adverts that have excisted for a long time in order to get the best mark and to gain experience needed for the making of my own magazine advert which will show the band in the best and most individual way. 

Evaluation Question 2- Draft

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For my main product, our task was to make a music video which represented a type of music and the kind of artists that play this kind of music. The ancillary texts we had to make to go along side this main product was a Digipak and a magazine advert for the made up band and the new music they are bringing out.

We are doing the Indie style of music. The indie style of music should reflect the latest bands and trends in the music business and the bands around at the time. It also must reflect the people who listen to the music and buy the tracks and the albums as these are the people who buy the albums.

When designing my advert and digipak I hadn’t got a very clear idea of what I was going to do. So when my first draft wasn’t very good I had to do a total revamp of the whole thing.

When I came across the Pet shop boys, Actually cover I thought this would be a good cover to use as an example because the cover is quite basic but looks very good and quite affective. I wanted to get this kind of band style into the digipak and magazine advert because the band that we are doing the music video from is this indie style.

This research I have done into this Digipak along with magazine adverts made me believe that I had found many different form of media convention that Indie genre’s use with magazine adverts or album covers. My digipak was a four panel with the front, back covers and the inside left and right. I have a picture of the band on the front which is very isolated so that the audience can focus on them while they are looking at my digipak. The centre image is the picture of the band which is organised so they are all wearing white shirts so they look like they are a ‘unit’ or a group of individuals who are friends and can work together to make good music.

Indie style is not the easiest thing to relate to a digipak and to relay this information to the audience and buyers was the most crucial thing in order to get the people to want to listen to the music and purchase the digipak. When I was making my Digipak I didn’t think much how it would fit into my video because our video is quite unique but also my Digipak is quite unique but in different ways. The way that both the video and the digipak are unique means that my work links in to also being unique, this unique style also links into the ‘indie’ genre of music that we have with both the style of music and the style of my digipak and music video both being quite individual. If i had to complete the Digipak section of the coursework then I would find more individual and Indie bands album covers in order to copy some sort of styling from these which would take my grade higher than it is. I feel like my research for the magazine advert was very minimal and just used the front cover of my digipak in order to make it look the way that I wanted it too.   

Overall I feel that I use the individuality of my digipak and Advert and mixed that with the ideas we had for the video and I feel like the two mix well to show a good idea of an indie band and music video. 

Evaluation Question 3- Draft

What have you learned from you audience feedback?





For my digipak I got lots of feedback after I had done my very first digipak. This was without doing much research into digipaks and the way that they should look and how well they are set out. For example some feedback I got from my peers in my class including Milo who said that my digipak ‘needed more consistency throughout the whole thing.’ This is exactly the same as what Charlotte said about my digipak. Some positive things that were said were that the song names are very creative and fit the indie genre that I am doing well. These feedbacks made me feel like I needed to do more research into a better target area and maybe find a digipak or album cover to replicate. This is what I did for my digipak after this and got better feedback from Nathan Beard who said ‘It looks better now that you have done more delicate research into good examples that you can replicate’ This feedback was good for me because it meant that I had more confidence in the Digipak.  

I got other feedback that I got from other people in my class. For example charlotte also said that my font wasn’t the best throughout the whole digipak so the idea was from this was to change the fonts in order to make it look better and more professional on the top of the rest of the digipak. This is why I have changed the font on my new digipak in order to get a better grade.

Other feedback that I got from Rebecca, she said that I had put the logo of the band on the digipak too many times, it was a good idea to use it but I used it too much. This feedback was good because it made me see that I did use it too much. On my new digipak I didn’t think that it fit in with the new simplistic style so I decided not to use the logo at all.

Creative Journey

1)      The idea I started with was having a picture of a Small Ruin in a forest.

2)      Then I had an idea of having just a picture of a forest or the idea of having the front cover based on nature.

3)      Having a trippy image on the front cover was one of my ideas.

4)      I decided to not do a nature or trippy image and copy a very simplistic idea of having the band members on the front of the magazine. I have taken Ideas from the Album cover of mystery by Brent McCollough with the black and white colour scheme and the simplicity of just having the artist with the name of the album and the name of the artist on it.

5)      For my digipak I was going to use the three pictures of band members on it. This is important because it gives the band members so kind of identity.

6)      Where some of my ideas came from was the album cover to the Pet shop boys, please. The simplicity and the gap between the picture and the writing of the name of the band and album.

7)      Another of my main helpers and tips came from the Pet Shop Boys album, actually. This is because of the simplistic nature of the piece and the way that the two members of the band have been cut out and placed against a white background.

8)      Jay-z’s ‘the black album’ was something I used for the font types and the idea of having the album name below the name of the group or artist.

9)      The two Weezer album covers have been very influential because of the simplicity of the two pieces. The idea of having just the band members on the cover is one I took and I was also interested in the way that they had the same kind of font for both the albums and that they use it in a good way.

10)   ACDC highway to hell I used as an example for the way the name of the band and album is set out. I was contemplating having the name of the album below the image and the name of the band above the image.

11)   The backstreet boys album cover is one I like because of the simplicity but also it has the band members and then the name of the band above it. I took the idea of the band members onto my digipak.

12)   The razorlight album cover is one of my main influences; this is because it is very simplistic. Having the band with the white background behind it was very appealing just like the Pet shop boys albums. I was contemplating having the band name in large like on the Razorlight album but that would have made it too close to it so I went against that idea. 

13)   The ‘Our Last Night’ album was going to be used as inspiration as I was contemplating using the black or white background but with then the band members on the strips with a different colour.

14)   This is the image I have used for the front cover of the band members. What I did was cut each member out one by one and added them to a white background.

15)   The white line which I am going to use as part of the album title, as a separator between the name of the band and the album.

16)   The different fonts I could have used for the name and title of the band and album respectively.

17)   The colour panel I used for the album. Very basic and simplistic as this is the kind of feel I wanted for my album.

18)   The finished Digipak. 

Responding to Feedback- Ben Wakeford Digipak

Front cover, Picture was just of the lead singer and the text was slanted across the top of the singer’s head.  On my new front cover I changed the picture to accommodate the whole band. The band are cut out with the lasso tool on Photoshop.  I used the rectangle tool in order to get a white background on the front cover then used the colour overlay in order to make the background look the whitest it can be. I also changed the name of the album to make it sound better; I changed it from the Undercover Martyn to Expensive Sound. This is because Expensive sound is one of the names of the songs and I thought it sounded better to me. I changed the Font type to Calibri because this is a simpler font and it is easier to read than the slanted font over the artist.

Back, on my first draft the back cover was a black background which I did using the rectangle tool on the back cover. I then used text boxes in order to make the song names. On my new digipak I changed the back cover to not have the numbers down the side and just have the names of the songs; this makes it easier to read. I also took the ‘Small Ruin’ away from the top of the list because people would already know the band is called that. The back is now very simplistic like the rest of the digipak.

Tray disk, On the first tray disc I had one of the Small Ruin logo’s. I changed this from the disc because it was just a bit too much for the viewers to take so I changed it to a plain white background using the rectangle tool. On top of the white background I had the address to the Facebook, Twitter and online pages.

On the extra panel, I had that the it was the Small Ruin debut album. I also had a few reviews from people and magazines in music. On the new digipak I scrapped the extra panel and just had four panels.     

Inside left, On the inside left of my old digipak I had the name of the Band and the names of all the band members. Also I had a message from the band, I decided to take these off because the message was a bit ‘cringy’ and wasn’t needed. This is one of the sides that I took off because of the needlessness of the panel.

Inside Centre, On the inside centre of my old digipak there was a picture of the band. I decided to take this out on my new digipak because of the picture of the whole band being on the front cover. 

Magazine Advert

Digipak

Album cover analysis

Album Cover Analysis

Digipak moodboard

Mood Board

Magazine advert inspiration

This is a magazine article for the kings of Leon and their fourth album ‘only by the night’. It has the cover of the album on the article which means the fans of the magazine will see the album and then would recognize it if they see it in the future.  The main features of the article are the hit songs are listed just above where it says ‘OUT NOW’ in red. This makes it stand out and so people can see that it is actually out now and they wouldn’t have to wait to buy it if they did want to. 

This magazine article is for Kasabian's debut album which is just called Kasabian. Like the Kings of Leon article it has the band name in bold at the top so that anyone who don’t know who the band is can see the name easily. Also it has the bands website so that people can easily get to where they can buy the album. It is near the top because it is important for people who want to buy the album. Like the Kings of Leon article it also has the hit singles that are on the album, this is important because if people had heard the songs before but never heard of the band then they will be able to affiliate the song with the band and it makes the band better known that before. 

This is the magazine article for the foo fighter’s greatest hits album. It has the album cover on it which means it would be recognisable for people that might see the album in a music store.  A massive band like the foo fighters would not too have much advertisement because they are guaranteed to sell a lot of records.  The other features on this magazine advert include the date that it is coming out so that people who want to buy it know when they can. Also it has the formats that the album is being released in for example in CD, CD/DVD, and LP and by download. Also the article has the hit singles that people would know but this is less important because people would already know what songs would be expected on the album.  

Digipak Ideas

I like the idea of having this kind of picture of a desolate and relaxed area of forest as the front cover for the Digipak. This is because if the band is a relaxed and chilled out kind of music vibe then this would be more realistic and better for the representation of the band Digipak.

I like this picture because it shows a different vibe of the band because Indie/ alternative music could be associated towards smoking and this represented in the photo. The butterfly flying out of the pipe shows that it is chilled out and represents peace and a chilled group of people. People would like this picture and would draw them in.  

This photo is intersting and is trippy. It would be good because it would draw people into the digipak and they would read the band cover and who the band are. 

I like this image because it shows the countryside and the peaceful nature of it. It is nice and colourful and this would draw people into the Digipak and this would make it more likely to get sales.

Summer work- Ben Wakeford