Final Video

Magazine Advert

This is one idea for my magazine advert. This kind of advert would be a full page spread in a magazine such as Kerrang! or NME.

The image at the top is what i am using as my album's cover, so viewers will see the advert, and, even subconciously record the image and would notice it and are more likely to see it in shops.

It is similar to this other magazine advert, in a sense that it is simply the album cover with some information below it. Many magazine adverts feature just the album cover, but they are usually longer or cover the entire page. The words sometimes go over the image, however i don't think there is much i could do to make my image fill the entire page without stretching it or missing bits off.




This advert would be more used as a banner type thing, or possibly a sticker. Some digipacks come with free stickers, and people stick them up around the place so other people see them and look up the band.








This would be a banner advert on a website like Myspace or Facebook. It has an image of the band in the background, and the band's logo in the foreground. It doesn't specifically tell you what the new album is, but tells you when it comes out so you might go and look it up.

Digipack Design

This is one idea of how i would deisgn my digipack. The top right hand corner bit is for holding a booklet, which is why there is a line through it.

Task 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

For this task, we had to take 9 frames from our music videos that would be able to show how the products we made challenge or comply with traditional media conventions. Once we had done the frames with our video, we had to take images from other music videos and show how they have taken ideas or influenced other media products.

Task 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

This is the video with a voiceover by Me and Mike. it explains what we did and why we did certain things.

This is the script:

The genre of the song we chose to use is Indie rock. the way we presented the band was to put them in a rehearsal room to give a more authentic feel to the song.

There are no big budget set pieces in our video. We put them in a rehearsal room, and they played through the song several times while we filmed them.

We thought if they were all in the same room, it would give the song a more real feel as if you were in the rehearsal with them. We put some effects over it to make it confusing. This gives the video an edge, so you aren’t really sure what’s going on. this makes the video more exiting to watch.

We both created our own digipaks. My cover is hand-drawn which gives it a raw feel to it. It is coloured in. I decided to make it like this as not many indie album covers feature the actual band on it.

My digipak is somewhat different, the middle pages of the band is a picture of the band, with a neon outline. The individual inside panes show the separate band members in publicity style photo shots. The front and back were both created using creative commons images put together in photoshop.

Task 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I posted my video on facebook, and asked some people for feedback. I got several responses, however my friends aren't fantastic at giving feedback or answering questions. but this is what they said. The general feeling was that the video was very well done, but nobody really told me i should change anything.

Barney watched the first rough cut i made the other day, and gave us some feedback. Basically, he said that if it is entirely performance based, we should probably get the narrative filmed so we can do something else in the video. He also said that we shouldn't cut from singer to different angle of singer, which i did accidentally as the different layers were on top of each other, so when i cut a bit out of one, it just showed the one beneath it, and i put the 2 of the singer on top of each other.

I also need to sync it up a bit more, some of the singing is slightly out, which i only noticed after watching the video a few times, and there is a bit of the drummer at the end which is totally out of sync. I also put in a lot of footage of the drummer, and should probably use something else.

- A few of the shots were badly framed. But with the effects, we were able to make it less noticeable.

- A few of the effects were too over the top, such as the one we used on the bassist. We had to remove this as it did not fit in with the rest of the video.

- They liked the CCTV / blurred TV effects and that we should have it recurring more than just the one time we used it. Upon re-editing the video, we put the effect in at the start and another time during the guitar solo.

- We had to synch up some more of the vocals at the start of the video. With the effects, they were unable to see if we had synched it up properly. They suggested that we should do it more at the start.

- We also had to use the footage of the guitar during the guitar solo and not of the bassist. In our new edited version, we included the guitar.

We watched all of our music videos with some people form the junction giving us feedback. When it was projected onto the screen, the video was much darker than it looked whilst editing. This is what was said about our video.

They liked it really dark, you couldn't quite see the band much, so it made them more mysterious. They liked that.

They liked the effects, especially the bad TV one, which they said i should use more of as it gave it a totally different feel to if it had just been them in a room. It caused a bit of confusion and made it better.

They also liked the fact that it was done in a small room, and made it feel like you were just in a practise room in a warehouse/industrial area.

I e-mailed David O'Neill, a director i met recently, and asked him what he thought. this is what he said.
Hi Tim

Wow! love the band, they're great. Good find.

As far as the video is concerned, its a live performance film, shot in a studio environment which is familiar territory, so you expect it to be quite straightforward/raw and about the music. The lighting is dark and moody which gives it atmosphere. the guy with the white shirt is overlit though and when you cut to him it breaks the mood a little. there is a moment where you see a white plug in a socket which catches the eye, but otherwise its all fine. Good to see some more close ups of hands on guitars etc. I'd throw in a bit more of that if you've got it, as the camera movement and frame size is a little repetitive.

The lead singer is so key to the bands identity, that I wanted to read a bit more in his face, so I'd have given him a little more light. I've seen a lot of films like this, and to be honest, its about selling the band. If the band is shit the video won't keep me there, but they're great, a bit like early Cure, so I wanted to hear the whole thing. Their next step is to find a way of getting people to be more excited about them, which is about stage performance/personality and style/image.

Dx

Task 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In this project we have used a number of pieces of new technology that have made our work a lot easier. I have taken some screenshots and explained what each one is and why it has helped in my work.

This is a picture of Mike working, as i have labelled the various technologies we used to create our video.

This is a screengrab of YouTube, the site we use to upload most of our videos to. This allows our videos to be seen by a much wider audience than if the technology was unavailable and wee had to physically show people tapes.

This is Hotmail, we used this to communicate with the band to organise shooting and times and things. This made our project slightly easier as it is easier to send an e-mail than phone people, as they can respond whenever they want and they don't have to be available at the same time.

This is Google Images, we used this to get ideas for our Digipacks.

This is Final Cut. We use this programme to do all of our editing, as it is easy. This has changed a lot recently, as if this technology wasn't available, we might have to be physically cutting bits of VHS tape and sticking it back together in order to cut out bits of footage, whereas now we can just cut it and move it along the different timelines.

This is the Creative Commons Search. I used this to find images that i could use for my digipack. Any images found on a creative commons search can be used for other purposes, without fear of breaching copyright laws as you do by taking images for google images.

This is Facebook, we used this to tell everyone to watch our video and get some feedback. It is much easier to send everyone a link on here than to ask people individually to watch it. It is a social networking site so you can tell all your friends about something all at once.

This is Blogger, the website we use to keep all our work and keep tack of what we are doing.

This is Photoshop, i used this programme to create my digipack. This was much easier because it meant i didn't have to do anything by hand, as i can't draw very well.

Digipack

I decided against using the images i posted in my digipack. As i had taken the images from our music video, they were out of focus and quite blurry, so i decided to get some different photos of theband and put some effects on them using photoshop. I decided to give them the same effectt that iused on the front cover. I think it looks quite good, because it looks sort of cartoony, but still resembles a photograph.

Digipack Design

This is the design i am going to use for my 8-Panel CD digipack. I am not going to use 4 CD's, but this gave me a good idea of how i should go about making my digipack. I would have one CD, maybe a DVDand a booklet.

CD front

This is the image i am using for my front cover. The image is compiled from 5 different creative commons images, all put together on photoshop with a few effects put in. The sign above the shop gives you the name of the band, while the sign in the window gives you the name of the album. I like this idea for my album cover as the various names aren't just out there on the cover, they are moulded into the image so people will look at with a bit more care.

Ideas for Digipack

I started to work on an idea for our digipack, as we need something shiny and different in order to grab peoples attention. Many 'Indie' artists album covers are cartoony or drawings of some kind, so i decided i would have a go. As the song we had done was called Oil, and i haven't heard any of their other music, i based my design around that idea.

I made this in photoshop using images i had found in various Creative Commons searches. The thought behind it, was that some guy in the desert had found some oil, so as seems to be the case, an unspecific army had turned up, heavily armed, to take it from him.




I realised after looking at it, i realised the inspiration for my artwork may have come from the opening credits of Have i Got News for You. I wasn't trying to do this, but subconciously i suppose i thought of the image and made my own..

Magazine Ads

This advert for Sinatra's digipack is quite good, as it shows an image of the guy, so everyone can recognise who he is and buy the thing, but next to it, it also shows a picture of the physical object, with all the disks and book sticking out to show you what you get for your money.


This one is alright, as it shows the bands logo, so it is instantly recognisable, and again, it shows you what you are paying for so people will know exactly what the are buying.

This advert is more interesting, as it is designed to be an amp, with all the information on. While it doesn't show you what you are buying with an image, it tells you exactly what you get on CD1, CD2 and the DVD.


This advert works because the picture is big, showing you what you are buying, and they haven't tried to fill the page with information. 25 years, 63 songs, 1 rod stewart is quick and easy to read, it doesn't try and pack information into you, it simply tells you how many tracks you get. It suggests it will be a sort of massive greatest hits collection, and it comes with a book.


This advert is really simple, as the main focal point is to Foo Fighters logo. This is a well known logo, so is easy noticed by people. It aims the target audience towards fans of the band, as it concentrates less on attracting attention of other people with promises of special features and focus' on telling you who it's by, so fans will buy it without thinking.

These are all examples of adverts for either CD's or digipacks that can be found in magazines. Adverts for music can be found in most magazines, as it is a very mainstream media, but it is far more common to be found in music specialist magazines such as Kerrang! or NME

Digipack Images

For our digipack, we needed to find 4 images to go on the inside covers. We also need to find something to go on the front. For the inside images, we decided we could use pictures of the band members, then have the CD's or whatever on top of them. As there are 5 members of the band and only 4 inside sleeves, i think we should put the drummer on the back cover, with the track listing in front of him.

The shot of the entire band can be used as a double spread for the inside cover.

Syncing

I thought this video was quite easy to sync up, because a lot of our footage of the singer, he had his hand covering his mouth, so you couldn't really tell what he was saying anyway. This makes it slightly harder to prove we did any lip syncing, as does the effects we used over the singer. We removed a few of the effects from the start of the video so you could see a bit of lip syncing, and put more effects on at the end, so it sort of builds up as the song progresses.

Editing

After we had cut the footage down into shorter bits that we thought went well with the video, we watched it and decided there was something missing. We figured that if we added some effects we could give our video an extra little kick that it needed to be a success. We started with an effect called motion blur, which was used on the shots rotating round the singer. We thought this looked AWESOME, so it was used on a few more shots. We then found an effect called 'Bad TV', which cuts the shot in half and makes look like a broken TV. In order to make this shot more interesting, i copied the footage it was used in, placed it above the other footage so i could move them up and down at the same time and it would look like the screen was rolling properly. There is another effect being used called 'Echo', which isn't used as much as the others, but we decided it would look good in some places. It basically plays the footage over itself a few times within a split second of each other. I think it looks good.

Album Covers

I like this album cover because it is the image of Michael Jackson dancing, but instead of it just being a picture of him, it is filled with smaller pictures taken from the 'This Is It' movie. It is quite a simple concept, but the more you look at it, the more images you see hidden away in the larger picture. I also like the way the center is white, and gets darker as you get to the outside.







I like this album cover because, as it is a sort of greatest hits type thing, covering songs from 1980-1989, it references some of the other album art from that era. It has the pyramids from the powerslave album, and Eddie from the somewhere in time album. They have also changed the pyramids setup to look old and worn away. It also looks awesome, as the zombie bursts out of the top of the pyramid.







I like this album cover because it's weird. It's a mess and it's busy and it's all over the place, but it's looks good. The closer you look at it, the more you see within the picture itself, which is a cool thing to find on an album cover. I also like the fact that half of the stuff scattered around his room references various things that appear in the different songs on the album.






I like this album cover, not only because it looks awesome, but because it has hundreds of hidden in-jokes and things for people to find if they look hard enough. These are usually for fans to find as they usually reference other Maiden songs or albums. These are much easier to spot on the full size vinyl cover, but a couple are easily visible on others, such as the clock being 11:58 - or '2 minutes to midnight.'

Junction feedback

We watched all of our music videos with some people form the junction giving us feedback. When it was projected onto the screen, the video was much darker than it looked whilst editing. This is what was said about our video.

They liked it really dark, you couldn't quite see the band much, so it made them more mysterious. They liked that.

They liked the effects, especially the bad TV one, which they said i should use more of as it gave it a totally different feel to if it had just been them in a room. It caused a bit of confusion and made it better.

They also liked the fact that it was done in a small room, and made it feel like you were just in a practise room in a warehouse/industrial area.

Rough Cut 2

This is the second official rough cut.

Feedback from Rough Cut

Upon showing our rough cut, we were given some feedback on how our music video could be improved. This is what it consisted of.

- A few of the shots were badly framed. But with the effects, we were able to make it less noticeable.

- A few of the effects were too over the top, such as the one we used on the bassist. We had to remove this as it did not fit in with the rest of the video.

- They liked the CCTV / blurred TV effects and that we should have it recurring more than just the one time we used it. Upon re-editing the video, we put the effect in at the start and another time during the guitar solo.

- We had to synch up some more of the vocals at the start of the video. With the effects, they were unable to see if we had synched it up properly. They suggested that we should do it more at the start.

- We also had to use the footage of the guitar during the guitar solo and not of the bassist. In our new edited version, we included the guitar.

Upon our feedback, we made all the necessary changes to improve our music video.

Digipacks

A digipack is basically a CD with extra stuff. This usually comes in the form of either a CD or DVD, with behind the scenes footage or alternative versions of songs. Someone might be tempted to buy one of these because they are interested in the band and want to know more about them than just what music they put on their CD's. However if it can be put on a CD or DVD, it can be downloaded, so many people don't see the point in paying more money for something they can find online. For this reason, some bands have started to do different things with their digipacks. A good example of this would be the Pick of Destiny deluxe edition, which came with 8 tarrot cards, it came in a nice book like box, and you got a replica of the 'Pick of Destiny'. Obviously you also got the CD. As you couldn't get this stuff anywhere else, it was more of a motivation to buy the digipack instead of the normal one as you physically got more stuff. It is, however around £6 more expensive on Play.com, so some people would rather save the money and buy somethign else than have some extra stuff that you really aren't going to use for anything.One example of a digipack is Madnesses 'One step beyond 30th anniversary edition) This expanded edition of the 1979 debut by Camden's finest ska act contains B-Sides from the era, Peel Session tracks and five promo videos as well as exclusive liner notes by novelist Irvine Welsh. The top 10 singles 'One Step Beyond', 'My Girl' and 'Night Boat To Cairo' are featured here alongside a wealth of further material produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. People may be interested in this as it gives you previously unreleased tracks from the band. Other people might buy it because you can't get the original one new anymore, so they re-released it to hit a whole new audience.Some digipacks come with a lot more than others, but obviously that will change the price. Like the digipacks above, an extra CD or a bonus DVD will only cost you a few extra quid, however someting like The Pixies Deluxe Edition for Minoutaur.

Includes all five Pixies' studio albums in the following formats:
24k gold plated CDs
five 12" - 180 gram virgin vinyl LPs cut from the original analog tapes
Blu-ray audio mastered for 5.1 surround sound at 24/192, and 2 channel stereo
DVD mastered for 5.1 surround sound at 24/96, and 2 channel stereo
Also included is the previously unreleased Pixies 1991 live performance from Brixton, on both Blu-ray and DVD, mastered for 5.1 surround sound at 24/192 and 24/96, respectively. All discs are housed in a custom designed folio.

In addition to reinterpreting all of the original album covers, Oliver's and Larbalestier's extensive work is featured in a 96-page fine art book, measuring 22" x 14" inches, and an additional 54-page book, measuring 7.75" x 8.25". Also included is a 12" x 19.5" giclee print of the duo’s work, and two double-sided fold-out posters measuring 48" x 36". On Amazon.co.uk, this pack will set you back £292. This pack is clearly only for massive fans of the band, and not intended to be something available in many shops.Some bands create box sets of their back catalogue for die hard fans, and either release them with different features or in a weird case. KISS are one of these bands, and have released KISS: The Box Set. It is 5 CD's with 94 tracks of digitally remastered material spanning their entire career with a full colour booklet of track by track commentary by the band. 30 of the tracks are previously unreleased demos, out-takes or live versions. On Play.com, this will cost you about £322.70, again, not the kind of thing you would buy on a whim. It does come in a briefcase though.