Rough Cut

The rough cut of our music video, it has not been completed and there are many improvements I need to make to have a clearer narrative and a more interesting music video.

Fan Profile

Our typical fan will probably be a teenager however the style of song could potentially attract older audiences

Our typical fan is named Sarah Green. She downloads her music off iTunes regularly, at least once a week. She is aged 16 and attends college where she has made a lot of new friends. She reads magazines such as 'The Clash' and is interested in the indie and alternative genre supporting artists such as Passenger, Tom Odell and Mumford and Sons. She enjoys going to concerts and especially festivals, she uses lots of social networking sites such as, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. On these social networking sites she likes to share her favourite music and she likes to share songs she loves with her close group of friends. 

Advert Idea

This is the photo we are basing our idea on. This artist is named 'Sixto Rodriguez' and I like how well he stands out in the photo. We want to base our advert on this and use the same costume idea so that our star is wearing all black clothing and we possibly will make the photo very high contrast like this. However we want to make something on our artist stand out and make him seem different. We are going to have our artist wear some scruffy looking trainers which will stand out from the rest of his clothing. The rest of his costume will be a black shirt and black trousers with a loose tie to make him look casual. We also plan to put a photo of his scruffy trainers in our digipak.

Photo ideas for our digipak and the shoes our star will be wearing in the advert

Digipak Research

What to include

Back Cover

• Barcode
• Logo
• Name/logo of record label
• Website link to artist profile
• Track list
• Background image that moulds with track list
• Piracy/Copy warning (WARNING: All Rights Reserved)
• The year of album

Front Cover

• Photo of artist to portray the star image
• Title of Album
• Name of Artist

Inside our Digipak

• Space for where the CD will go
• Logo under where the CD will go
• Panoramic picture that will stretch over all three fold inside the digipak that fits in with the rest of the digipak

Last space in the digipak

• A photo that will relate to our advert 
• Lyrics to our song beside the photo

Album covers that inspired our idea

I chose to look at these artists as I think that they are of a similar genre of our artist/song.

I think these two album covers relate to our idea the most as the pictures are very similar. The picture we have chosen for our album cover is a picture of our star with part of his face cropped so that we are completely focused on him. The picture of our star is also on the left which is the same as these covers. We also are having a picture in the background which relates to the 'high' album cover.

These two albums relate to our advert as well as our album cover. I think they relate to our album as they portray a good star image but they also relate to our advert idea due to the long roads in the background as album is going to be called 'Road To Nowhere'.

This back cover is a little bit similar to our idea. We plan to have our star sitting on a bench near the waterfront in ipswich overlooking the boats which will be in the background and we plan to have it in the centre of our back cover, similar to this one.
We will take the picture from behind and put the song titles of the track list on his back or around him such as this album back cover.
This also shows the conventions of a back cover with the logo of the record company and the barcode and the small text at the bottom.

Experimenting with Fonts

Our Chosen Font
All of our fonts were chosen and download of the website 'www.dafont.com'.

We have chosen this font because we think that it fits in well with the album cover. It is nice and simple but I think that it is very effective too. It stands out well against the light background and I wanted the audience to be attracted to the name of the album and our star. I wanted to position the title in the middle where it is easiest to see it and the name of our artist at the bottom where it doesn't stand out as much. I think that having the name of the artist not stand out as much is quite a good idea due the fact that our typical fans will know who the star is as he is on the front cover of the digipak. The font we have chosen is called 'Nixie One'.

This font is called 'Sketchy Times'. I liked this font however I don't think that it is bold enough and I wanted the font to stand out so that it could be read well from a distance and I wanted it to be eye catching.

This font is called 'Amplify'. I think this font stands out effectively however I don't think that it fits in with the album cover very well. I also don't like that it is in italics. I think that the lower case letters look good but the words 'Jeffrey James' in upper case letters is quite hard to read and looks a little too fancy.

This font is called 'Simply Square'. I like this font however I think that is a little bit too bold and I didn't like the fact that you could only have upper case letters.

This font is called 'Road Movie'. I didn't like this font very much because I think it is a little too bold, it also doesn't fit in with the cover very well. I also again, didn't like the fact that you could only have upper case letters. I think that the words and letters are too spaced out as well.

This font is called 'Riesling'. I didn't like this font because it is really small and isn't very bold at all. I also don't like the font in capitals as all the letters are really squashed together.

Our logo

This is the logo I have created for our digipak. I duplicated the image in photoshop and flipped it. I then moved the images to where I wanted and used a layer mask to remove the parts of the images that overlapped too much. I plan to overlay our logo on the inside of our digipak under where the disk will be so it is seen when the disc is taken out. I like the lighting used on this image and I was going to make the logo black and just have the outline however I didn't want to have rough edges and I think it looks a bit plain and boring with the whole of the image black. It also has a lot more detail and I think it is more effective without the whole image being black. This photo will also be easy to edit as the whole of the background is white.

Creating the album cover (The Front of our Digipak) - Draft

Photos I Was Considering
                                                        
This is the photo that we chose for our album cover. I liked this photo but I wasn't too sure about the lighting as I thought it was too soft and the lighting was too powerful. I thought it would be more interesting with shadows on the face. 
I created this image by using a white back drop so that he stood out more and using two soft box lights. Although I wasn't too sure about the photo however we decided that it had more personality and we liked the fact his eye stood out really well.



I preferred this photo due to the amount of shadow on his face. I created the shadows by turning one of the soft boxes off so that it only flashed on one side of his face. I like how his eyes look as he is looking straight into the camera. However there is a lot of shadow on the backdrop and this photo doesn't have as much character as the other one.

Editing my chosen photo

This is the final image I have produced for the front cover of my digipak, however it is just a draft as the photo of the road I have used is off the internet. I will have to go and shoot my own picture of a road and simply edit it into the photo but I wanted to get an idea of how it would look and I think it has turned out quite effectively.

How I Created The Image

 First of all I opened my chosen image in photoshop.
I then cropped the left side of the image as some of his eye was revealed and I wanted the audience's focus to be on only one of his eyes as I think it stands out a lot more. 

To give the picture more character and make it look more interesting I duplicated the layer and made the top layer black and white. I then added the multiply effect the top layer. This made the picture look more in depth and created some shadows on his face. However applying this effect made his eye a lot darker and again, didn't make it stand out as much as I wanted it to, so I created a layer mask and used the brush tool to remove the black and white effect from his eye to make it brighter and more blue, again to attract the audience to his eye.
                                                                                                    
 


After I was happy with the image of Connor I then decided to start working on the background. The name of our album is 'Road To Nowhere'. This is why I wanted to include a road in the background so that it definitely related to the album name. I got the picture of the road off the internet and have just used it so that I can get an idea of what the album cover would look like.  I created a layer mask on the image of the road and used the brush tool to remove the image of the road from his face so that  there are no distractions from his face.
                                                                                                      


To finish the image I then applied a 'Soft Light' effect on the image of the road so that it didn't stand out too much and look too vibrant and bold. I like the fact that the road is only faint in the background and it will not distract from the album title.

Logo Idea for our Digipak

This is the basic idea for our logo so far. We plan to take a side profile picture of our star and mirror them. I created this rough image for our logo just to get an idea of what it will look like and to see if it works effectively. I created this image in photoshop by duplicating the image of our star and flipping the image. I used to the fill tool to make the whole area black and applied the background of the sunset. I also reduced to opacity of our black logo to make it more effective and to make sure it doesn't stand out too much and wasn't overpowering. This also helps for it to fit in with the background.

Lighting Plan

Examples of the lighting we have used

This is the lighting we have used from two different angles. We wanted to create some shadow on the face but not too much that the shot looked dark and mysterious. However I think that having some shadow makes the shot more interesting.

Market Research

Feedback from our pitch
Whilst presenting our pitch we showed the fact that we were not sure whether we wanted to stick to one costume during our video or switch costumes to relate to the music video by Beck. We decided to create a small amount of questions for our audience to answer to gather some very helpful feedback and see what others thought of our ideas and which they thought would be more effective. The questions we asked were;

1) Which idea do you prefer, the one with all the costume changes or the one with only one costume change, why?
2) Do you feel our song would fit in with the style of our music video?
3) Can you recommend any more locations that would fit in with our video?

We decided to ask these questions as they seemed to be the most helpful and important. When receiving our feedback it was clear that almost everyone preferred our idea where there is only one costume within the video. The reasons that have been given for this are that it will cause less confusion and that it will fit in with the star image. Out of the eight lots of feedback we received, one person said we should have the costume changes and another person suggested that we had two costume changes. Due to this we have decided to only have one costume within the video that is our star wearing the suit throughout our video. The fact that they are wearing a suit will still contrast with the surroundings but will make a lot more sense. Everyone also agreed that our song fitted in well with the style of music video, and the only other locations people suggested were supermarkets and shopping centres.

How we plan to reach our fans
We plan to use conventions that will attract our target audience, which are mostly teenagers. We feel that the song we have picked is similar to the style of songs that are currently very popular within the music industry, relating to artists such as James Blake and his style. We plan to make our advert and digipak appeal to teenagers due the style of them and our Star Image.

Star Image

Eminem

Eminem is an american rapper, songwriter, record producer and actor, starring in his own film based on his own life, 8 Mile. 

He has had around 9 successful albums with his most successful album being 'Marshall Mathers LP' selling 27million copies worldwide, starring songs such as 'Stan ft. Dido' and 'The Way I Am'. 

Eminem - Stan ft. Dido

Selling 805k singles just in the UK

His early star image was very humorous however he also had a lot of more emotional songs.

Most of Eminem's songs are about his childhood and his upbringing. He never had a great mother to depend on and his father was never around for him. This is mostly what he raps about in his songs, and all the tough times he has been through. He also has a lot of songs in which he talks about his child 'Hailie' who he cares for and her mother 'Kim' who he raps about in a very negative way.  

Although he talks about such sensitive topics in some of his songs he also has a lot of humorous and comical songs.

                 This is Eminem's song 'Kim' where he talks about her in a very negative and mocking way.

Although Eminem raps about a lot of negative and emotional things he also has a lot of parody videos throughout his career. A lot of these videos include dressing up as certain people and characters and being particularly offensive which is another thing he is known for. He doesn't care what anybody thinks and isn't afraid of mocking and offending people, which is also why some people have such a negative view on him and why he is not praised by a lot of people.

Both of these images are from the song 'Without Me', released in 2002. It is obvious that in one of his images he is mocking the death of Elvis. He knows that he will be potentially offending people however due to his care-free personality it doesn't bother him.

In this image he is mocking the relationship between him and his mother. He has dressed up as his mother, showing that he doesn't care about embarrassing himself or having people laugh at him. He has also got someone to dress up as him rather than him playing himself and have someone dress up as his mother to make the situation more funny and offensive.

His more well known video which is a parody is 'We Made You', which was released in 2009, where he mocks many well known celebrities along the lines of Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Elvis and Amy Winehouse. 

His physical image

He is very well known for his bleached hair and his very hip-hop/rap style. He is very famous for being a very successful white rapper due to the fact that most rappers in the music industry are black. He was the first white rapper to be so successful and well known, he also raps about this in his songs and how people thought he would not be successful due to his skin colour. He is also known as 'Slim Shady' in his earlier days which is when his bleached hair was iconic to his image. 

This eminem in his very early days when he was just becoming successful. This pictures sums up what he is known for such as the blonde hair the care-free personality, due to him sticking up his middle fingers.

Eminem was most famous in the 2000's until around 2010, however he had a four year writers  block due to his addiction and prescription on sleeping medication. This resulted in not releasing an album since 'Encore' released in 2004, until his album 'Relapse' was released in 2009. His star image began to change more since this album, and due to him being away from the music industry so long his album 'Relapse' which talks about his struggle with drugs, reached number one in the US Billboard 200 Charts. He then released an album a year after named 'Recovery' in 2010, showing that he is dealing with his issues. During his came back in 2009, he also changed his iconic blonde hair, potentially showing signs of growing up. His songs also became more meaningful and emotive however his song 'We Made You' shows that he has not ditched the humours and parody side of his songs. 

This is Eminem's song 'Beautiful' which starred on his album 'Relapse'. It is showing how his star image has changed and he has made it very meaningful and emotional.

Storyboard - First Draft

Our Song

I have added the link to our song so that it is clear to see how the story and song will match up together.

For the beginning of our video we are going through the stages of waking up in the morning and our star putting on a suit - leaving our audience to question why he is getting dressed so formally. We are also planning to apply rhythmic editing during this part of the video as there is a great potential for rhythmic editing due to beginning of the song.

Analysing Magazine Covers

When researching music magazines, the main genres there are seem to mostly be rock or hip hop magazines. Due to this I have decided to look at these two genres of magazine in particular and compare both styles of magazine adverts due to the genres being very different.

Rock Magazines

Kerrang magazines mostly all have a similar style due to the ranges of colours such as lots of use of yellows, reds, blacks and whites. They also both have the star image right in the centre of the magazine so that your attention is drawn to them and know what the basis of the magazine is about. The title of the magazine is also hidden behind the star images head on both magazines, this is because most people who are interested in the magazine will know it primarily due to the style of the magazine. This also helps to show the star image more as well. The use of font is also very similar as well, due to the same 'KERRANG' logo at the top of the magazine and the titles and other fonts around the edge of the magazines are also the same as well. 

The main style of the magazine is that our focus is the star in the centre of the magazine and the rest of the information creates a sort of border around them so that we are not distracted from the star in the centre of the magazine.

After analysing other rock magazines it is clear that they all have similar conventions such as the colours of the blacks, reds, yellows and whites. The star is also in the middle again. 

Hip Hop/R'N'B Magazines

 Just like the Kerrang magazine these Vibe magazines all have similar covers, however the Kerrang magazines meet the conventions related to the rock genre and the Vibe magazines meet the R'N'B genre. Each star is very stylised and the voyeurism is strongly used within most of the covers, such as Trey Songz in the middle having his top off. He is made to look 'sexy' by the facial expressions he's pulling and he is made to look like he has just gotten out the shower. Beyonce is also made to look very attractive due to her low cut top and her body language. They all have the same colour scheme such as red, white and black. These magazines are all about the star image and do not have much information around the side of the star so that we are not distracted from the star in the middle. These magazines also have the star covering the title of the magazine, this is because people will mostly recognise this magazine due to the generic style of the magazine.

Our Chosen Magazine
The magazine we have chosen to look at is 'The Clash' it is not a specific genre of magazine but we feel that the artist 'James Blake' relates to our genre of song and he was on one of the covers to 'The Clash' magazine. 

Our Treatment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhvvo2SdpN4