Digipack and poster

For this part of the coursework we have to individually create a digipack. This includes creating a three sided CD case and a poster showcasing the artist and their new song/songs.

For the CD case, I created a photoshop canvas size as this is the size as an actual CD case. Width 14cm and Height 12.5cm. 



For the front cover I have created a stereotypical rap cover including typical conventions of the rap genre such as money. I have also put the name of the song "Back to back" on front repeated multiple times.



For the font of the writing I added a drop shadow and stroke to make it stand out a little bit more at first glance and bring the viewers attention to the name of the song. I changed the opacity and fill of the background to make give it that washed out effect, again making the viewer focus on the name of the song. I finally added a black border and the parental advisory logo  to make it look a bit more profssional and more like an authentic album cover.

Front cover:



I then placed this image onto the template for the CD case using photoshop



The album cover was a little bit too small so I had to extend it out to fit to the bleed line.

I then had to create the back of the CD cover before designing the inside of the cover. The back cover theme is drugs and in this case weed. Drugs are stereotypical when associated with the rap genre therefore I tough that I would include them on my album cover. Drugs are also used in the music video therefore this links to the media product (music video). The weed plant also suggest a 60s feel as hippy-culture, which was not what I had originally intended, however combined with the black and white colouring of the money, its keeps up a modern, urban hip-hop feel.






Since guns is a stereotypical ideology within the rap genre, I wanted to have gun images somewhere within the digi pack. I decided to put them on the actual CD Tray. Instead of copying someones image from online, I was able to just get the outline of the gun by using photoshop. In other Drake music videos such as "Energy", Drake can be seen holding his hands out, pretending that they are guns. The guns on the CD cover relate to both our music video and Drake's other music videos, as there are multiple scenes of the rappers in our music video using their hands to form gun shapes, very similar to that of "Energy". The guns are deliberately ironic as Drake isn't a violent rapper and isn't in any gangs etc. Drake is a very respectable artist that could be considered as family friendly, besides the explicit language of course.








For the other sides of the digi pack I will be using screenshots taken from the music video














The screen shots that I chose to use included each performer from the music video. I decided to do this as everyone had similar screen time.

For the second part of the digipack I had to create a poster for the music video therefore I had to consider genre, stereotype and inspiration from our artists Drake. My posters style has been inspired by some of drakes previous music posters such as this one...





I was inspired by the use of effects to make Drake look like a cartoon, therefore I used a similar effect on my poster

Recreating album cover

As part of phase three, we had to recreate an iconic album cover. I chose to recreate a Johnny Cash album cover, using Adam as the model in the image.

The album cover that we decided to recreate was Johny Cashes "Cash" album.

For this we went into a darkish room, got my friend to use his phone torch and shine it on his face.

 To get this underlit shot, we had to turn off the lights and close the blinds and then get an iPhone light and shine it up at his face from below. The angle and shape of his face was there, however it was too bright and needed to be much darker therefore I needed to edit it on Instagram.
Once I put a black and white filter on it and changed the brightness and highlighting; it was ready to have the title added onto it. The image looks more like a low key photo through the use of filtering.

I used PowerPoint to add the title text. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of this image as the low key lighting almost matches the actual image of Johnny Cash, however the font is a different style and size therefore it is not a 100% replication of the album cover. If I were to do this again, I would search around for a font that is similar to the actual album cover and use it on my recreation.

Hand made mood board

Megan created a mood board of artists for inspiration for our Digipaks and posters

Record Label - Boy Better Know

Adam researched the record label Boy Better Know as part of the research and planning stage. Our music video genre will be rap so we thought it would be best for our music video to choose a label which only has artists which produce rap. I then produced a fact file on Boy Better Know and looked
into some of the artists that are signed up with them. Adam chose Boy Better Know due to their target audience similarities to ours. We both aim our music to older teens and young adults and our content will be similar also so the target who listen to artists from Boy Better Know would also enjoy to hear the music we produce.

Music video treatment/ treatment research

As part of the music video research, I have to write a music video treatment/proposal including different scenes and locations. As I have never written a treatment or proposal before, I had to research different examples and how to write them. The main points that I found out is to make the treatment and proposal very visual, including lots of screenshots and examples from other videos. Also justify each scene, saying why we have chosen each idea.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM2dBPwgOhM



http://www.directorjakobowens.com/blog/2016/7/23/how-to-write-music-video-treatments



https://www.slideshare.net/CoombeMedia1/how-to-write-your-music-video-treatment











The main narrative behind these scenes is a group of rappers that are drinking, doing drugs, gambling and flexing (showing off wealth and other items e.g. cars), as this is generally all you see in rap music videos today. There isn't a story running throughout the video, however this doesn't mean that some of the scenes won't follow on from each other. The chosen mise en scene locations, props etc are suited to the rap genre. I decided to not have a music video with a narrative as I thought that videos with lots of eye catching colours, clothing and other props would be more appealing to our target audience. Rather than the audience follow and understand a story, they should just enjoy the music and watch the video for visuals as they please. The consumers may interpret the video however they want, I am not giving them a story, they can create one individually if they are into that.

Richard Dyer's Star Theory

As part of the research and planning stage of the music video I had to choose two artists and apply Richard Dyer's star theory to them.

Survey Monkey

Adam  created a questionnaire on survey monkey, and send it off via email so that we would get some feedback and ideas for our music video. We only sent it out to people within the age range of our target audience, as their feedback is most important to us.


We sent it out on Facebook and also via email



For each of the seven questions I received similar answers and going through it was good to see how others feedback could possibly influence our video.

Q1. The most common responses were; money, cars, drugs, alcohol and gambling
Q2. Urban type areas, clubs, casinos and mansions
Q3. A lot of responses from Brits so Grime dominated the responses for this question with artists like Stormzy and JME.
Q4. The three most popular answers given were: Kanye Wests - Good Morning, an animation featuring a cartoon bear. Eminem - Not Afraid, a video showing Eminem in an urban setting. Eminem - Rap God, for most of the video it shows Eminem in a TV screen using different effects and bright colours.
Q5. I received many similar answers for this question; Eminem, Drake, Stormzy, Kanye West, JME and Snoop Dog
Q6. Most of the answers for this question were to do with lyrics or what happens in music videos, for example Drake's 'God's Plan' video where he spends his music video budget on helping people less fortunate than him to pay for college or their weekly shopping.
Q7. Most people said they prefer to see the artists through the video to see the emotion in their body while singing the song and acting out scenes where as a storyline can sometimes take that emotion away.

Phase 2 - Audience research/field research

We created some questions that we then asked a group of people that were the same age as our target audience. The questions were worded in a way to get the group to give us useful feedback such as, what they expect to see in a rap music video etc.

We asked a group of three people, one girl and two boys, for their answers to these questions in hope that they would help us find out our target audience and what they want to see in the music video.



Evidence editing the Vox Pops videos for YouTube



Uploading the videos from the iPhone onto the computer and editing the Vox Pops on final cut pro

Putting the Vox Pops onto YouTube



YouTube link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztqMk5W9E78

Initial Research Phase 1 / Jobs roles / Jobs on set

Introduction

As part of our A-Level media course, we have the challenge of creating a music video for our coursework. We will be choosing an artist to create a music video for one of their songs. Things that we will need to consider for this is genre, target audience, props, miss en scene etc. The blog will be showing all of the stages of research, production and evaluation.