Final Cut

This is the final cut for my music video production:

Magazine Advert

This is the final magazine advert.

This was a relatively simple procedure that involved taking the original picture used for the front cover of the digipak and placing it at the centre of a new page filling the width. On the digipak cover, the image only went to just to the left of her head and so cut out the trees behind her. Including this on the advert expands the image and gives it more depth without making it unrecognisable. 

I then took the same font used on the digipak front cover and moved it above the image to make it the prominent text on the page. I kept the name of the single in italics to keep the link to the front cover and I added a release date underneath the image as it would be second thing the reader would see. This was a slightly different font to keep it separate form the artist name and single at the top. I underlined the release date to give emphasis and variation, and then wrote a short sentence describing the artist as she is new and most people would not know anything about her. This was again a different font and a lot smaller so that it would not interfere with the other text. Below the description I place two quotes - one from a music magazine (Q) and one from a music website (Pitchfork) - praising the single, encouraging the viewer to take a listen. 

The picture in the bottom left is of the record label, Rabid Records, which links it to the digipak as it is on the back cover of it, and is there to add authenticity. The three logos in the bottom right are; Rough Trade, a series of record shops and a record label; iTunes, a music download and management program; and Sister Ray, a record shop in central London. These are present to also add authenticity and because it is a convention I found in other magazine adverts.

Rough Cut Feedback

This is the questionnaire that I gave to the same 30 people after their viewing of the rough cut and after the final cut.

The main criticism of the rough cut was the sequence of shots that were cut together over the lyrics "Do you laugh while screaming".

In the rough cut I put red and green filters to denote the positive nature of the laughing and the negative connotations of the screaming. Several audience members thought that this did not fit with the rest of the video and took away from the effect that the I was trying to put across.

To respond to this I removed the red and green filters and replaced them by making the shots darker and lighter to keep the emphasis on the negative/positive connotations and also keep with the rest of the video.

Magazine Advert Research

Below are some magazine adverts for albums with the original album directly beneath. They will differ to those of adverts for singles, but only in the amount of information given, e.g. it would not say "including the singles..." New bands like Shrouded Violet are likely to want to advertise their first single as much as possible, so an advert like the ones below would likely be produced.

This is the magazine advert and album artwork for Friendly Fire's self titled debut album. Being their debut album they have chosen to name the album after the name of their band, which means that the album may not have a specific theme running through it. Their artwork, in this case, is just something that is representative of the genre. This album is considered alternative/disco/funk and so they have chosen to use a picture of a mirror being shattered, which can be thought to represent the intended effect on people who listen to it - they are a brand new band who will shatter people's expectations of them. Being considered alternative choosing an unconventional picture, which has no obvious meaning, for their artwork will conform to the conventions of the alternative spectrum of music.

The magazine advert is the artwork of the album with the name of the band above the picture in a much bigger, more visible font. This is likely to be because they are a new band and want people to remember their name. They have chosen to tell the audience what singles will be in the album so that they know there will be something familiar to them in the full album. For people who have heard one of the songs on the radio once or twice they may come across this advert and notice that the song is part of a debut album and if they liked the single they heard, then they may be tempted to get the album. They have also chosen to put quotes from various newspapers and music magazines to give the audience an idea of what they sound like and that the album is well worth getting. This is also an advert that has been made after the release of the album, so they have put dates of their tour at the bottom, which potential customers can see and also find out that they might be playing live near where they live.

This advert has taken the album artwork and rotated it to catch the attention of the reader. It could also be said that this has been done to reflect the genre of the music - electronic pop. A genre which is known for unconventional artwork to reflect the music that is on the album - edgy, funky etc. They have also taken the name of the band and bent it around the bottom left hand corner of the artwork, which is also eye-catching as it is at an unusual angle and is more noticeable than just having a horizontal header.

Like the Friendly Fires advert, they have added quotes from magazines about the album, to give a more authentic feel and encouragement from an authority that knows a lot about music. They have also chosen to include the logo of HMV (a high street retailer that sells CDs, movies and games) and the the logo of the record label to show that they are not independent from a record label and to give them credit for signing them up as well as for copyright and licensing reasons.

This is the artwork and album cover for the Kings of Leon's fourth album. Like the all the adverts, they have chosen to make the album artwork the main feature of the advert so people will be able to recognise the album from seeing the advert. They have kept the font used in the album artwork and made it considerably larger to anchor the name of the band to the picture an ensure potential customers associate the name of the band with the album image.

They have decided to not add quotes from any magazines, newspapers or websites. This may be because they have not allowed anyone to listen to it yet or it could be because they are already a well known band. From listening to the radio and the news when this was released, it was evident that there was a lot of hype about this album and everyone was talking about it. This probably meant that quotes were an unnecessary use of space on the advert and they were mainly informing readers about the release date.

This has a technique employed by the other adverts - that is to take the artwork and rearrange it so that the name of the band took the main focus of the advert. Like the others, they have kept the same font and formatting and just scaled up the size to fit the advert. Also included is a quote from a magazine complimenting the band, which readers will see and possibly want to buy the album if they think that the source is trustworthy.

The way they have approached their album front cover is slightly unusual as they have chosen to put the track listings on the front as well as the back, which is the place that the track listing usually is. They probably did this to stand out and for people to see if they were just browsing in a record shop. Most designers choose to have the track listing only on the back because it has become a convention and in many cases it is more aesthetically pleasing to have just a picture, the name of the band and the album. It could also be considered a reference to old style records, which had the track listing on the front.

Here are some common similarities between the four adverts/album covers.

• One thing most of these adverts have in common is that they all have the artist's name in large letters (larger than all the other words) in an eye catching place in the picture.

• They also have the date of release in a large font so that the audience can know when they can get their hand s on the album.

• Another similarity is having quotes from magazines, newspapers or radio stations praising the album for being good.

• All the adverts contain the album artwork in some form, although The Vaccines advert does it slightly more subtly. In a lot of cases the advert is just the original artwork expanded and the words enlarged and moved to a more noticeable place.

2nd Shoot

Yesterday I went back to Banstead Woods and filmed the extra shots I discovered I needed. I collected around 26 different shots of various parts of the wood using different techniques. Some were slow pans, others were slow and tilting and others were still shots with a tripod. I only need to use about 10 in the actual video, so having this many to choose from will give me a metaphorical safety net.

1st Shoot

Last saturday I had the first shoot for the music video. Everything went fairy well, although it was incredibly cold, which slightly affected the actor's ability to lip synch perfectly.

Having looked through all the footage I have gathered so far, I realise that I will need more to cut to during the running sequence. I decided to do this, partly because the way it was filmed does not give a huge variety of shots and partly because it was quite long enough. To add to the theme of contrasting I have decided to cut away to shots of other parts of the wood, which I will go and film this weekend. These shots will not contain the artist to emphasise contrast and for feasibility issues.

Album Artwork and Digipak

The next stage of the process, after having finished editing the music video, is to create the album artwork for the song. The band, who I have chosen to be called Shrouded Violet for reasons previously explained, is mainly focused on its singer who is featured heavily in the video. She is the one who writes the songs and although it is technically a band, the songs are all about her life and her feelings about having children and whether or not to continue making music. The name of the song, I'm Not Done, clearly denotes that her time in the music industry is not yet over and she wants to continue making music. From the lyrics however it is not particularly obvious that this is what the song is about. The lyrics are more akin to that of some kind of fever dream or distorted reality, which fits hand in hand with the music and what kind of environment the writer was in when she wrote them.

With this in mind, I decided that the artwork would need to in some way represent the meaning behind the song and the thoughts of the writer. I started off by taking one of the stills from the video. I chose to take one from when she was running through the woods so I could contrast the singer with the woods behind her.
I started with the image below:

After choosing this particular frame I had to make it fit to the correct size, so I cropped out the left side of the image so it looked like this:

I then used the lasso tool to duplicate her head and put it on a new layer so that it could be independently edited. I darkened her face as a whole to add a more serious tone and acknowledge that the themes in the song are to be taken seriously. I then made the background black and white to give more contrast between the trees and her face. I also added an effect to her face which gave her a slightly blurry look to connote that she is not clearly defined by anyone or anything and she won't do what may be expected of her.

After this I needed to add the name of the band and the name of the single. I thought that this needed to be fairly simple and understated, so I chose a font that resembled a typewriter, Courier New, and positioned the artist name in the top third of the picture and the album name below and slightly to the right.

Happy with the album cover I decided to choose pictures for the back of the digipak and the inside. I chose a picture of a fur tree I took while filming to go inside the digipak and a picture of a clearing in the woods with a tree in the middle for the back cover.

For the picture of the fur tree that was to go inside the digipak, I wanted to the give the picture a gloomier look, so I made the white cloud behind the trees darker to a more grey colour and turned down the brightness of the picture as a whole. I decided not to put lyrics on this inside picture because it is not really a song which you would sing along to at a gig/concert. By this I am essentially saying that it is not the genre of music to have lyrics in the digipak. If it were a full album then there could be a booklet with the lyrics inside, but with the lyrics being easily available online to those who want them there is not much point as it would be an unnecessary expense.

With the picture for the back of the digipak I decided to use the tree trunk as a place to place the names of the songs on the CD. This did mean that I had to resize the image so that a significant portion of the picture was taken up by the trunk. To do this I had to remove parts of the original image and make a section larger, reducing the quality, which is not ideal but it isn't too noticeable. Continuing with the theme of contrasting I decided to use a similar technique to the one I used for the front cover, which was to select the tree trunk and copy it onto a new layer so that it could be different to the scenery behind it. I chose to make the scenery black and white and also give it a filter, which makes it look slightly out of focus and blurry like the background in the front cover image. I made the tree trunk greener and more saturated to give a greater contrast as the original picture had less vibrant colours. As this is a single rather than an album and there are only a few songs - the single itself, a remix of the single and two other B-sides.

Below are five back cover images with different text styles.
I asked a sample of the target age range (15 ~ 40) which design they preferred.

The most popular design was the last one.
Here are some comments regarding the different designs:

"The first design has an interesting effect - it looks as though the words are coming out of the tree, but it does not really fit with the rest of the image and the genre of the music."

"If you look closely at the second design it looks like the words could have been carved in to the tree, but from a distance, where most people would see it, you can't notice this and it gives the words a white glow which makes them slightly harder to read."

"I like that the third design looks fairly understated, but it makes it harder to read, which is not ideal."

"The text in the fourth picture is not particularly aesthetically pleasing as the yellow glow is out of place and doesn't really add to the effect."

"The fifth design is both understated - like the front cover - and fairly simple to read, although there is a mark on the tree near the 'u' in Gui, which might make it hard to read that word. It could do with being a bit clearer and it also needs some copyright information somewhere (probably underneath the barcode)."

I acted on the last comment and made the text slightly clearer and added some copyright information in the bottom right corner.

After the back cover there was one more image that was needed to complete the digipak. I decided to take another still from the music video, this time from a shot through the tops of trees.

I decided not to alter this image too much as it already showed a contrast of colour between the sky and the woods. I turned down the intensity of the blue in the sky a little and increased the brightness a small amount.

After this final panel I put them together into the digipak format. down the middle there is a spine, which I decided to fill with black and the name of the artist and single between the front and back panels. The same font was used to give some continuity to the digipak.

This is the template design for a digipak from a manufacturer's website and below it you can see the final digipak design in the same layout.