Construction of Print Products

While constructing my print products I have used Adobe Photoshop elements as an editing software, I have taken photos of the objects I will need using a digital camera, and then uploaded them onto a template with the same dimensions as a regular Digipak, I have used a website called cooltext.com to design and generate a logo for my band (see below) which I could use on my Digipak cover as well as my advert to keep a consistent house style.

The logo I have designed using cooltext.com:


The photos I have used are as follows:




I decided to go with the clock as the front cover of my digipak, and will use the back of the clock as the inside panel, I have also imported text into the inside panels of the digipak. I cut out the clock using photoshop and imported it onto the blank template mentioned earlier.

Planning the music Video

At first I had planned to use the likeness of dead celebrities and famous figures in my music video, and use these to as comedic effect (the song I am using mentions the 'other side' I initially thought this as a reference to death), however when planning this out, I came across several problems, the first being that I could not find, or afford the costumes I had originally planned to use and this would affect the overall outcome of my video, as well as other problems such as not finding a suitable location to film what I had originally wanted, this eventually led to me rethinking my whole music video. Below is a plan for the first shots of my video that would have been had I the costumes, notice the presence of Bob Marley and Adolf Hitler.




I wanted there to be a strong connection between the song and the music video, and as the track I was using sounded to me quite abstract, so I wanted to make a video which would also match the 'trippy' feeling I got from listening to the song, as I listened to the song I realised the other side could also reference drugs, and so this formed the basis for my music video. I planned to create a video using two different settings to connote drug use and its effects on the user, the two different settings being reflective of reality, and the drug induced state. The contrast of the two states will also be shown using costumes, a central character will appear in both settings, with different costumes to differentiate the different states.

My storyboards show the shots I will use when constructing my video, and (should) show an easy to follow narrative, although I have left some of the narrative down to interpretation.

Research for music video

During research for my music video, I concentrated on watching videos in the electronic genre of music, the same as the song I am using, to see if I could find any common conventions which I could apply to my video. Below are examples of videos I have watched and their influences on the planning stage of my video.



From the pendulum video for Granite I realised that the video had no performance elements, and used only a slightly narrative format, although it didn't distinctively follow a story, this being the case I decided to watch another video by the same artist to see if a clear narrative could be seen:



Pendulum's video for the other side has a clearer narrative than the video for Granite, although again the video only included narrative and no performance shots of the band, as I planned the video I took this into account and decided to include only shots consistent with the narrative, so no shots of the artist were planned out. I felt that viewing videos by only one artist however was not representative of an entire genre and so also viewed another two videos from different artists, Calvin Harris' 'acceptable' in the 80's and Daft Punk's 'Technologic'.




After watching all four videos, I had realised all were slightly abstract, and as my song had a slight abstract quality, I thought I would also go for an abstract video, yet with a fairly easy to follow narrative.

Digipak research and Planning

During the construction of my digipak I had the oppurtunity to use digipaks provided by our teacher, as well as digipaks I owned. I set out first to see what codes and conventions regular digipaks follwed. Below are some examples of Digipaks I have researched.


From these Digipaks I have realised that the following conventions are almost always present:

1.A barcode (generally on the back Panel)
2.A record Label
3.Copyright Information
4.A song list (again generally on the back panel of the Digipak)
5.A main Image on the front panel (and occasionally an Image on the back)
6.Smaller Images or text on the inside panels of the Digipak
7.The title of the artist and the record (Yet again, usually on the front panel of the digipak)

I plan to follow all of these conventions when constructing my digipak.

Below are some of the plans for my digipak cover's main image:



For this design I wanted to keep the cover simple, and thought a clock was quite an abstract and effective cover for the album.


For this design I had planned to show the artists instruments and trademark glasses (although these are no longer included in any of my ideas)in an effort to connect the actual artist with the music, this was assuming I had the artist present in my music video to show the glasses were linked.


This design was inspired by the cover for Mindless Self Indulgence's cover for the album 'if' which features a cartoonised drawing of the band members as finger puppets (see below) however in the case of my cover the finger puppets would have been the artist enigma and the celebrities featured in my video (see a later post)





The names of the tracks I have came up with for the album are as follows:

1. Ineffective communication
2. See Through
3. ?
4. It’s all relative
5. If
6. Visiting
7. Sciurus vulgaris
8. Farsight
9. Devilfish
10. Centrifuge
11. Double your helix

I thought all of the names tied in well with the album and had the right 'feel' to them. Track 6, 'visiting' is the track I will be using in my music video.

Introduction

For my A2 coursework in media studies I have been asked to create a promotion pack for an artist, including a digipak front and back cover and inside sleeve, an advertisement for the digipak, and a music video. We will also be creating an evaluation of the promotion pack and will be marked on our planning and research and so, this blog will serve as a way to show the planning and research of my project.