- Digipak
- Digipak Magazine Advert
- Music Video
The early research for this digipak came from my research which I did on the internet regarding the design specifics and creation needed to make a successful digipak which looks professional. Firstly, I looked over sheets which my teacher provided specifying the width and length of the digipak pallets.
I found out that:
The measurements for typical CD digipaks:
12 cm X 12 cm = print size, with a spine.
After finding the specific measurements which most digipak creators go by, I then decided it best to stick to these measurements during my influence and research finding process, so that I had a clear idea of the overall design and pallet specifications. Whilst researching during the next steps of the process, I made sure that I found a pattern in the design measurements - which I did. All I then needed to address was the design which would creatively have to look appealing to the eye (mostly concerning its target audience), and also how the creative design would relate well to the genre given to the artist's album I was creating the digipak for - for my case, Chris Eaton. This was my next step regarding digipak research: making sure that I used a lot of resources. This involved finding digipaks in HMV stores in order to see what they look in real life, as well as researching on many sites on the internet. 
Further digipak influences came from scouting digipak variations which are out there at the moment, older and modern; but always staying close to the genre or style type which I planned to use (involving the target audience which I would create my digipak for, also). The specific digipaks which I looked at were: Shakira - Donde Estan Los Ladrones, Stereophonics - Just Enough Education to Perform and Inside Again - End of The Beginning.I then went onto looking at further questions which involved the creation of my digipak in relation to the concerns which were raised when researching. I.e...
- How will my audience recognize the genre of the music from viewing my digipak?
- How will the 'house style' be linked to the brand image of my band?
- How will I link the styles of the video, cover and advert all together, so it all matches?
- What is the digipak cover for?
- The colour type, font and size needed to be consistent throughout all of the three production tasks I needed to create in relation to this artist.
- How illustrative/amplifying/disjunctive it is in regard to the messages and themes of the music on the "CD."
- The overall theme needed to stay the same.
- Any clothing or specific locations needed to relate well.
- The title needed to relate to the genre and the background.
- The target audience was to be kept in mind that that was the most important thing to base all three production tasks around.
- Needed to be suitable for the target audience's age/beliefs/advertising places (such as on shelves or on iTunes).
Through this research, I realized that for my genre style of music which I had to make media products for, (being Christian Pop), it was best to keep to the redundant structure. Therefore by the end of the digipak process, I realized that I kept my final digipak redundant by following the typical measurements which I found were used consistently behind the overall design of the digipaks I researched. I also used typical digipak conventions [listed above]. This also went for the two further production media tasks I had to do, being the music video and magazine advert.
However, following these forms and conventions were still potentially dangerous because I did not want too much predictability behind the creation (otherwise known as being too 'safe'), because it could then lead into being potentially too boring to the audience, and not catch the eye of the target audience on shop shelves, or on iTunes, etc. Thus I needed to have some sort of entropic concepts incorporated into my digipak design (as well as with my other two media production tasks, being the music video and magazine advert).
On the other side of the entropic - redundant scale, I also realized that it was important to appreciate that it could be dangerous to go into the entropic style too heavily, which would ultimately become a problem for attracting my target audience. This is because my target audience is for the older generation who are 28-48yrs old, and who most likely have a Christian belief.
My entropic boundaries I therefore decided, went into making the background images for each pallet of my digipak match but look original - yet still in reference to the genre (Christian Pop). This was when I came up with the idea of 'light' as a concept to work with and develop for my magazine advert and digipak. To the left is part of the creative research which went behind making the audience research. The picture is where a slideshow of different images were placed based behind the theme of light. I also found creative research, influences and inspiration through different types of adverts, artwork and photographers which I looked at - mostly on the bloggers site, "Tumblr." My audience research directed me into similar texts, because of the genre style and also age which my target audience were at. I followed what styles and conventions suited these aspects which needed detail to attention for, in order to make it work. One photographer which I found in particular that was extremely influential to me was Seb Janic as mentioned in previous blog posts. His work had a variety of original work which had an auteur niche. I liked the way he played with light in many of his digipak designs also.
Final Digipak Design:
Magazine Avert
The magazine advert which I had to create was something which had to keep a lot of similarity to both the digipak and the music video, was all for the same song/artist. Therefore it all had to match and co-ordinate.
The magazine advert had to have more redundant than entropic elements to it, as that was what the target audience (of an older generation) was going to most likely expect. However, I felt that I made this magazine advert slightly entropic by having a huge sparkler in the background with text over it, framed by sepia colored clouds. Blurring this in Photoshop made the framing less harsh.
The layout of the magazine advert, however, is redundant because of the way that the text and 'other music magazine's opinions' are places at the top of the advert - directly rating the artist himself. It is also redundant because it is not at all controversial towards the message it is trying to send, I found it best to do this because of the genre of the artist and the generation of the audience.
Also, because I was aware of the magazine advert having the potential to fall dangerously into a very bland image in result of being too safe and redundant, I made sure that I made a big issue about the sparkler in the background, contrasting and basing everything else around it. This is because I knew that from the original image of the sparkler, which I took - it would attract the most attention and would potentially catch the viewer's eye if made the main element to the advert. The framing of the sepia clouds made it have references to Christianity and 'God' because it would most likely be printed in a Christian Music magazine, due to the artist having a Christian pop genre. Music Video
My first branch of ideas came from analyzing different music videos which related to the style and genre which I wanted to use for my own work.
My early influences came from:
- Our idea about having a huge group of people involved in the focus of the music video.
- The concept of using dancers throughout the whole of our music video.
- The idea of people appearing happy and optimistic.
- Different camera angles of the dancers and people in general.
Justin Bieber - Somebody to Love
Yves Larock - Rise Up
Leona Lewis - Forgive Me
I then put further research into how these music videos were actually made, by scouting for documentaries on YouTube. Katy Perry's music video for Firework had a very good and detailed video about how the whole production process of the video happened, from day 1 until the end of the shooting. I took on board how the music video director approached the way of telling his musician how to act in front of the camera in accordance to the song, and to also lip-sync correctly. I found ways which also approached the way that the music video director took control of the huge crowd of volunteers which featured in the music video - i.e. how many times the director had to shoot one take, and how he kept them all behaved by making it a professional environment. It was also intriguing to see how the crowd handled the situation, and how much input the musician (Katy Perry) had on the whole project. She had creative decisions put forward by her influences of how she wanted the music video of hers to look, and the crowd of volunteers were therefore encouraged by the music video directors and Katy Perry herself on how they were to act in front of the cameras.
Also, small things such as having the director say, "three, two, one, action!" was important for me to see, because it showed how everyone responded to that command before every shot, and how it set the correct environment. It also occurred to me how important it clearly was to keep a light, positive and happy atmosphere going amongst the crew and actors, because this kept the right energy going on screen, reflecting the important message and genre of the song "Firework." Researching other music videos directed our creativity as it showed what we could achieve in order to make a huge scale project look rather professional.
- From researching Katy Perry's music video documentary, it was significantly clear that we had to keep a happy atmosphere continuously throughout the music video for our target audience to respond to. Katy Perry's song had a happy, upbeat tempo and kept I, as part of the target audience feeling positive and optimistic whilst watching it - Which is exactly what we needed our audience to feel when watching our music video, because it was from a similar genre type, with a similar message.
"Instances of repetition and difference."This is because we made our final music video follow a repetitive style of acting/dancing/piano playing, however, the difference is that we used a different angle and shot type to each individual shot which we used. I found that the cutting of each individual small shot was the main key to making this theory of Steve Neale's be successful.
Our final music video also follows the Nicholas Abercrombie theory. He said:
"Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions... It... makes sound economic sense. Sets, properties and costumes can be used over and over again. Teams of stars, writers, directors and technicians can be built up, giving economies of scale."With our music video, we kept budgeting and rationalizing... keeping it apparent when planning locations, costumes, etc. This was because we knew that we would have the most success with our music videos this way. Making everything economically beneficial was a big concept to keep in mind. For example:
- We reused the drama studio twice for the dancers and for the pianist. However, we moved the studio lighting around the room as appropriate so that it created different effects regarding the necessary mood change we were trying to portray.
- We used Sophie (the other director of this music video) as an actor as well as the director, due to our key singer (who would mime to the lyrics) being ill on the days of shooting.
- Sharing roles in the production of our music video was a hugely beneficial thing which was both good for keeping to a quick-paced schedule and also to make sure that everything got done to a good standard. Altering roles was something which both me and my media partner took part in.
- I alternated between director, camera operator, studio lighting control and editor.
- My media partner alternated between director, camera operator, actor and editor.
- Spatial - The composition of what is being shown on the screen
- Graphic - The images on the screen
- Temporal - The plot of the music video
- Rhythmic - The pace of the image in sync to the beat of the song
Therefore, my media partner and I made sure that we:
- a) We paid a lot of attention to detail in how the music video was shot - making sure that we had many angles, difference in depth of field, difference in close ups/long shots, etc and difference in lighting, location, costume, etc. => But whilst doing this, making sure that the composition was all balanced.
- b) The images on the screen (in the second 'Graphic' section to the theory) was linked to the first 'Spatial' theory section. We made sure that the images on the screen would be lively and interesting, keeping the target audience in mind.
- c) The temporal section to the theory, being the plot of the music video, was made sure by my media partner and I, that it was easy to understand and simple. Therefore we simply had a girl follow the 'main singer' in the woods, and then they came 'friends.' We did not need a big story plot because we had so many other aspects to the video, such as the pianist, singer (alone), sky lanterns and dancers.
- d) The last section to Bordwell and Thompson's theory, being the rhythmic section, was to make sure that the music video had each image in sync to the beat of the song. I felt that when editing, we made this a priority because it is the most basic way that a music video works successfully - to make it look professional. Different shots cut in time to the beat, also add different atmospheres and pace. For example, I made sure that we edited the last section of the music video at a faster pace so that it built up to a climax at the end of the song, making the audience feel more enlightened towards the end.
Our editing techniques also apply similarly towards Carol Vernallis' theory who believed that continuity editing was a popular way of editing music videos, yet it was limited by only a certain number of shot types. This is why we only put a small amount of continuity shots into our music video, which would equal up to around 3 shots in total regarding each different continuity section. We use montage editing heavily in the last few seconds of our music video, which as Carol Vernallis explained, makes it hard to express narrative, but allows shots to be consistently abstract. This is the reason why we used montage editing so heavily at the end - because we did not have a huge narrative so we were able to use many 'abstract shots' which added the pace linking to Bordwell and Thompson's theory.
The Auteur Theory was also applied due to the music video clearly representing the directors (being my media partner and I) having our own personal creative vision. Our personalities clearly came through the music video, not necessarily for the Christian context, but for the way that my media partner and I are rather cheerful people, which had a huge influence on the style of music video we ended up creating.
When making this music video we made sure that our video had some originality so that it would not become boring when watching. However, I found this very difficult because it was a song which did not allow a lot of creative outlets, as it had a lot of predictability in the lyrics and was quite bland. Because of this, it also proved to make it very hard to make it have entropic elements; but I did not want to fall into the trap of making it too redundant because that would have left the audience gaining no reaction or satisfaction from our music video to this song. I personally felt that with this genre of song (being Christian pop), it was best to keep it to its expectations for the target audience. Having an older target audience for this music video (being between 28 and 48) also added reason to this problem of creating a lot of entropic concepts, because older generations tend to expect what the contents of the songs or general details of media products in general, bring.
Entropic Elements included:
- The light lanterns being set off was something which we tried to make as an extra section of the music video, which particularly picked up towards the end of the music video.
- Capturing the people who didn't know they were being filmed. I.e. running around with the sky lanterns, lighting them up, smiling at someone, looking at the sky, a blooper in the dance routine, etc. All of the footage which we captured when people were not aware of it being shot kept an added positive atmosphere to our music video - in my opinion - and also added an entropic element to the overall video because it was not staged, and was simply authentic and original emotion and action coming from the people involved.
On the other hand, as explained above, we kept many redundant elements because this is what our target audience (of an older generation) would most expect to this song.
We used a lot of redundancy by:
- We kept the 'singer' who was miming the song keep it very 'cheesy' in accordance to the song's lyrics.
- We had dancers in our music video, which is a redundant element in most music videos.
- We edited in the same style as music videos typically do - this made it easily recognizable as a music video.
My audience research which I carried out was after presenting my pitch to the class. This reaction that my audience research gave was something that influenced me to look into media texts which were either similar to my genre or the message which was being brought out by my artist - Chris Eaton. This was what lead me onto researching into Katy Perry's 'Firework' song, etc, because she had the same message as what Chris Eaton's 'Dare to Dream' song had. However, the other music videos and media texts which I looked into reflected the style of motion we wanted captured in our cameras, i.e. the angles of which dancing looked best, etc.
