Evaluation - Part 1, The Brief

The brief we were working to was:

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
- A website homepage of the band:
- A digipak for the album's releases (option picked)
- A magazine advertisement for the digipak (option picked)


The artist we picked was 50 LEAVES, who were an indie band from Manchester, made up of four young men. However, they have now split up. We found this band on http://www.unsigned.com/ and then emailed the band on the contact address we found on their unsigned.com page to gain permission to use the band for our work.


50 leaves song 'Man on Fire' was not the song I had originally chosen to complete my brief with. I had chosen FRANK LEDAY'S song 'In This Life' which was the song I had created a POWERPOINT pitch on, to show the type of aspects I would include in my music video for the artist. However, after discussing my PowerPoint with my partner, we felt that it may be more accessible to create a video for a young indie band, as finding actors of a young age, with a indie style to them, would be less difficult than finding an actor similar to Frank Leday. This was because Frank Leday has a country style and is around 45.
My partner an I also felt that we could be more creative with the music video, digipak and music video if we used 50 leaves as the tone of the song allowed us to play around with how emotionally or upbeat we wanted the music video to be.

(Production) - Reflection blog week 14

This week:
The deadline for all three texts was this week, so my partner and I worked hard to add the finishing touches to our work to make it stand out, but still fit the conventions of either a music video, magazine advert or digipak.

Music video:
My partner and I had completed most of our MUSIC VIDEO for 50 leaves song 'Man on Fire' last week. So this week we have been adding final touches, e.g. adding the charity synergy to all three texts.

Charity synergy:
We decided to use the more simple design that we had created for the CHARITY SYNERGY. As we wanted our music video to stand only without the synergy we added a shot at the end of our work to connote that the band collaborated with Samaritans on the video.

Magazine advert:

- My partner and I decided to add a yellow colour to our stars as we felt this fit the conventions of a magazine advert better, compared to white stars.

- We also added a blur outline to the text to make it stand out more from the multicoloured picture behind it.

To the magazine advert my partner and I removed the HMV logo and made the other logos bigger. We thought this best because using the HMV logo may connote to our audience that we are incorporated with HMV, which is not the case.  We also changed the style of how we placed our main text, deciding to have the text more to the right of the advert. We feel this works best as the writing still stands out, but now takes less away from the main image. My partner and I have added the Samaritans to all three texts, to carry the message on from the music video.

My partner and I added a green border to the magazine advert to give the advert a bold outline, whilst still connoting the naturalistic, relaxed feel of the band.

To the picture of the advert my partner and I played around with the contrast and brightness to see how we could make the picture stand out more and, as in all three of the texts we wanted to establish lighting as an important aspect of the bands style, we wanted to make sure that the shading and brightness from the sun reflections contrasted against each other. Alongside this, of course, we knew that the band members still needed to stand out against the location. We thought that a good way to do this was to pick certain features of the band members and try to emphasis these features, like we did in the music video and digipak. For example, the girl band member is wearing Doc Marten, a feature we used in both our digipak and music video, so we made sure that when we played around with the contrast of the image we could still make out the show type. Also we wanted to make sure that both guitarist's hair stood out. For example. in the music video the sun shines through the make guitarist curly hair in an over-the-shoulder shot, adding to the lighting aspect, so we wanted to carry this through all three texts.

Digipak:

The final edit of our DIGIPAK  just need a few changes to it this week to make it fit                                                                                                                                                                My partner and I changed the picture on the CD side of our digipak, as we felt that this picture connected more with the band than the picture of just the location.

the conventions of a music video and stand out. 

Like with the magazine advert, my partner and I added the Samaritans logo to the digipak. We also added  ore detail to the thank you message to give the bands audience a better understanding of what Samaritans is and does. Alongside this we put Samaritans logo and contact details, to push through the charities message and connote to the audiencee that this is a charity that 50 Leaves is totally behind. To make the message stand out, my pattern and I turned around the contrast of the picture. The image on this side of the digipak is also the image we used for our magazine advert, as we felt by using the same picture it would help connote all three texts and make the bands style clear tot the audience.

Discs:

My partner and I created the CD and DVDs for the digipak this week and we feel that they are OK, but not brilliant. My partner and I wanted to make the discs for the digipak quite simple, as not to take a way from the designs of the digipak itself. We happy with the look of the discs, for the time we had left ourselves to create them. However, my partner and I feel that if we add given ourselves some more time concentrating on this aspect of our digipak, it could have been a bit better.

 

(Production) - Final magazine advert

(Production) - Final digipak individual shots

FRONT COVER



BACK COVER



INSIDE COVER - RIGHT HAND SIDE

INSIDE COVER - LIGHT HAND SIDE



LEFT IMAGE - AT FIRST OPENING OF DIGIPAK




MIDDLE IMAGE



(Production) - Final digipak design with CD and DVD

This is the CD that will go inside one of the pockets of our digipak. My partner and I are pretty happy with this simple design as we feel it fits the the conventions of a CD design and connects with the digipak and magazine advert. This is because we used a picture that we ScreenGrabbed from our music video and is also one of the pictures on our digipak.

(Production) - More research into ,magazine adverts

My partner and I have been looking into other bands magazine adverts and aspects that are included in them that we may need to include into ours.

This magazine advert by 30 Seconds to mars for their album 'This is War' has many features that we have included in our advert. The picture on theirs is simple compared to ours as they have opted to just use the album cover and we have used an image of our band. I have noticed that they included what live covers the band have done and this is something my partner and I will take into consideration when making our final edit of our magazine advert, as this is something which may make our audience more intrigued to purchase our product.

Also, they have a DVD included in their digipak, which is something my partner and I are including in our digipak, therefore we need to have text on our magazine advert which makes this clear to our audience. This advert from Green Day, includes some aspects that I would like to included in our magazine advert. They have told the audience that the bands hits are included. I will look at how I word certain texts in my magazine advert and try to use words which will draw the audience in more.

(Production) - Man on Fire final edit

(Production) Reflection blog week 13

This week:

My partner and I had a discussion about what we needed to add/change to all three of our texts. We added an EDITING POST to our blogs to show what we were planning to do to our texts.

Details to add to our text:

Over the weeks that we have been producing our texts, I have released that more strong points are working on Fireworks, Photoshop and Paint and adding some details to our texts that make them more authentic and stand out.

For example, this week I had a look at my 'ASPECTS TO ADD' blog post and realised that we still needed to include, e.g. small print details and logos from the albums produces. So, I decided to create all the small details we needed to add, using Fireworks.

Digipak:

For the digipak I saw that we needed to include some more small print details and add some more detail to the message, on the inside of our digipak, so that it incorporated Samaritans into our texts more.

This is a rough edit of the message we would like to include:

We decided that we wanted the message to be short and and to the point but still go with the band's layed back, young style. To do this we decided to use informal language and saying, such as 'Thanks a million.' We also added a smilie face:   :)   to the end of the message to connote the band's style further.

Magazine:

My partner and I are pretty happy with our MAGAZINE ADVERT and are now thinking about aspects we can change or include to connect all three of our texts. We feel that the most important aspect we need to include is the Samaritans logo, to insure that the message runs through all of our texts.

Music video:

To insure that our music video can stand alone without the Samaritans message and still be a strong piece, we decide to not incorporate the charity into the actual video, e.g. having the narrative character ring Samaritans as part of the story line, but instead have the Samaritans logo, slogan and phone number come up on a blank screen after the music video has finished.

Next week:

As our production deadline is next week, my partner and I will carry on working to complete our texts to a high standard and ensuring that all our work so far is up to scratch.

(Production) - Editing our texts

Today my partner and I have some free time and have decided to do some media work. We decided to look at all three of our texts, to see what we needed to change/add to our work and what aspects we liked and wanted to keep.


Music video:
My partner and I have been changing round our time line to make the song fit with the video. For example, we had put the electric guitarist at the beginning of the video, however an electric guitar was not heard in the song until later. To fix this problem we had to crop some of our footage, without pixelating it to much, in order for the scenes to not include the guitarist in them.

Last shot of the music video:
As we wanted to team up with a CHARITY to put the videos message across strongly, we wanted to make the videos last shot a shot of the Samaritans phone number and message. We have used Fireworks to create a few different designs that we could use at the end of the video. We then asked people what they thought of our designs. This include:

What people said:
- Has a stronger effect on its own
- Very simple and gets the point across
- The colours work well together and using it's slogan makes the shot very authentic

What people said:
- I like the way you have connected the picture from the video
- I like the way the picture is from the video but you could see this picture on a stand alone poster fro Samaritans, very clever
- I like the merged affect on the picture as it connects with the dream like feeling you have in your video, yet still goes with the Samaritans shot.





Digipak and Magazine:
My partner and I are happy with our digipak design, however, now we have decided to team up with Samaritans, we need to include Samaritans into all three texts. For example, adding a small note to Samaritans in the Thank You Message on our DIGIPAK.