Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Final Print Product - Back Cover (Whole Group)

Before...
After...
This image was shot in corporation park. As it was a winter image the colour of the grass and trees is very washed out and there is not much colour in the image. We were aiming for a much more brighter and autumn style look for our back cover.
A seperate 'overlay' layer was added and paint brush was used to add a brighter blue colour to the sky. The path in between the trees was selected using the 'lasso select' tool and the brightness of this was altered so the colour was brighter. The edges of the path were blurred out using 'fragment blur' so that they blend into the sides of the grass.
The next step was to add colour to the trees and the grass. This was also done in a seperate overlay layer. The paintbrush tool was used to add a bright green colour to the grass and different autumn orange and red shades to the top of trees. Sections of these were blurred out so that the colour looks natural. It took some time to achieve the result as the trees and grass had to look natural and blend in with the rest of the image.
The final part of this was to add the text and barcode which was very simple. We used the same font that was used on our front cover to keep the theme consistant.

Final Print Product - Front Cover (Whole Group)

Before...
After... 

This image was shot editing for our front cover and was worked on as a group. This image needed a lot of work as not only were the colours dull and gloomy but we also wanted to show a silhouette holding a balloon. We did not have access to a helium baloon therefore it was very difficult to take and original image of someone holding a baloon.
We began by editing altering the brightness and contrast of the image so that we could edit the snow. The snow was painted over using different whites and off white shades to mnake the snow even and erase all the footsteps that are in the original image. We blurred out the section using gaussian blur so that the snow looks flawless.
In a seperate layer we then added an image of the sky that we took an positioned this to look as if that sky was behind the trees. This was done as an 'overlay' so that the sky blends into the image. The brightness and contrast of this was also edited so the sun in the sky was glowing.
After this the trees and the sihlouette were selected using the magic wand and the contast was altered to make them darker for them to look like silhouettes against the sky.
The balloon was a cut and pasted from a seperate image that we pasted into a seperate layer to make it look like as if the balloon was in the actual image. As you may have noticed in the original image the person is actually holding the balloon in their hand. Therefore we erased the balloon from the image and pasted one from a seperate image. We altered the colour and brightness of this and changed the colour to a brighter blue in order for it to stand out from the rest of the image. We then added  thin line for it to look like a string attached to the balloon.
Finally the text was added to complete the front cover.

Sunday, 24 January 2010

Album Advert in Magazine

We will be working on our advert together as a group.

For our magazine advert we will be using an image of the artist (Conor) in the background, with the leaf affect background in order to keep a consistent theme through our products. At the top we will have the name of the artist and the album cover in the same font as used in our Digipak (matchbook). We will also have images of the front cover of our album along the left hand side of the page. At the bottom of the page will be ratings that magazines have given the album.

This is our basic initial idea of our album advert.

Update

We have been editing our music video and have found that some of the shots are very weak and not effective due to the bad lighting. As a group we felt dissapointed with our music video and therefore decided to go out and film some more new footage outdoors with better lighting and better angles. We are hoping to change what we have produced so far and add the new footage to our music video. We hope the new footage that we have shot at the castle and the park will look much more effective in our video.

Saturday, 23 January 2010

Feedback

Lots of good research here. Just make sure you put a post somewhere analysisng how ads for albums work and a plan for yours.

At some point can you identify who is creating what panel and what image you want your cover to convey to people?

Things are shaping up nicely - so keep being creative and exploiting the resources the DTP and editing packages offer you!

Mrs Doggart

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Ancillary Task Research - Existing Six-Fold Digipak Analysis.

Whilst planning the creation of our six-fold digipak, we thought it essential to briefly evaluate an existing six-fold digipak of the same genre, to establish the key conventions we will need to use. Therefore we have looked at the album ‘Lungs’ by ‘Florence And The Machine’. It was produced by Paul Epworth, James Ford and Steve Mackey and the standard edition of the album was released on the 6th July 2009. The deluxe six-fold edition we will be looking at was also released on the same date, but is a double CD featuring new demos and percussion versions of previous songs.


Here is a break-down of each album sleeve at different intervals of folding:


The front cover:
 The back cover:


The first two slides once the album has been opened:


The three slides inside once the album has been completely folded out:


The three slides on the outside of the album cover once it has been completely folded out:


If we begin looking at the amount of detail put into each sleeve fold, we can see just how important cover art, and indeed sleeve art, is to the overall product. Each fold is almost like a piece of art, whether it be photography or a painting and each linking to the theme of the album. For example, the sleeve art and CD art of the centre inside fold is an edited image of Florence Welch holding a rabbit, thus linking to her song ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’.  The title is also hugely linked to the art used, the front and back cover highlight this especially. By looking at the front cover, the mise en scene portrays Florence wearing a piece of jewellery shaped as lungs made out of wood, this is then complimented by an intricate yet scientific drawing of lungs on the back cover, just above the album track listings. The editing of this main image has highlighted on particular colours, such as her hair and the flowers around her, almost bringing the image to life.

Focusing more now on the way the tracks are indeed listed, we can see they are listed horizontally, almost like one long sentence following onto the next line. There are thirteen tracks on CD1, following with 7 bonus tracks on CD2. By looking at the image of the lungs previously mentioned, there are numbers relating to the songs placed at various places around the image, almost anatomically. Aside from the barcode, on the back cover are also instructions on how to unlock bonus tracks, and a website ‘www.florenceandthemachine.net’ where you can find more information about the artist herself. This writing is written in an intricate looking font, almost calligraphy which is also used on the front cover but in a much bolder style. These two sleeve folds are the only ones with any writing at all on them, and what writing there is, is minimal. On the sleeves that hold the two CDs, the backgrounds are the same as the images behind Florence herself on the front cover, the remaining sleeves are all photography or paintings. Although this is not necessarily needed as a part of our final product, Florence’s album contains a small pocket underneath the first inside cover art. In this pocket is a small booklet, in which there is information, lyrics and other images Florence herself has picked out.

The second part of our ancillary task is to produce a magazine poster advert for the album we have created. We will look at this in much more detail further on in our research, but briefly, in relation to ‘Lungs’, here is an example of the advert. This one itself was also featured in magazines, although here it is on a billboard, featuring the cover image, the name and the release date:

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Digipak ideas


These are the ideas we have put together for our 6 panel digipak. The image on the bottom right will be our front cover. The image on the top left is our back cover. We will be working on these and editing these as a group. The other four panels each one of us have designed as individuals and will be editing them as individuals. The other two panels that have not been drawn will be an image of the artist and a forest trees image.
The concept of our digipak is based on the idea of different seasons and weathers as that is the name of the album and is also the name of the song we have created a music video for. Therefore a front and back cover will have the contrast of both autumn and winter. As we have been creating our project in winter is is very hard to get still shots of images where we can make it look like summer as the weather is really bad. Our album has the same theme as our music video as our music video has shots outdoor and in the snow. So we have aimed to keep a consistant theme.
The image we want to convey through our album art is to show uniqueness and creativity. We not only want to portray the artist as being creative but also his music providing various connotations. For example the album itself creates a certain nature theme which is in order to represent the artist as being one of a kind and distinctive to others.
At this stage we have already started editing our panels and are half way through our editing. Once all the editing has been done we will be uploaded before and after images and breifly explaining how we got the final result and why we thought this would be effective.


Who is doing which panel :-
Digipak front cover - Full Group
Digipak back cover - Full group (Autumn Trees on either side)
Digipak panel 3 editing- Jess (Image of the Artist Conor)
Digipak panel 4 editing - Zulaikha (Artist and Jess holding hands walking in the snow, with their footsteps behind)
Digipak panel 5 editing- Matt (guitar with leaf background
Digipak panal 6 editing- Carla (Forest Trees)

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Feedback

There is a lot of good research here. the main thing to add is the scanned plans for your panels and some explanation of why you have chosen what you have and how it links to the video.... think about your choices of fonts for artist's name and album cover, as well as the images and what effects you want to use and why....

You also need a group plan for the ad - again with some minimal explanation.

The main thing is to get all your footage and get editing - hopefully on Monday!

Mrs Doggart

Friday, 15 January 2010

Update [Jan 15th]

Due to the weather conditions we had lost a lot of precious time for filming our footage and also taking our still shots for the digipak. However we have finally been able to get back on track as when we are not able to filmd we have been planning our digipak design and taking indoor shots for both music video and our ancillary tasks. Alongside that we have spent any time during our lessons in the last week filming our narrative and performance shots. We have replaced the idea of shooting the artists performing in the park with him performing in the recording studio. We have been able to get all of this footage as well as our outdoor narrative shots. We also spent today taking still shots of our artist for our album digipak. As we have already planned the design of five of our sides of the digipak we have been able to take all our still shots and are now able to start editing. By our next lesson (monday the 18th) we will have completed all of our filming and our still shots. This will allow us to begin editing the music video and our images for the digipak. All our research has also been completed and therefore we can now concentrate on our editing.

Below is a brief list of things that each member of the group has been doing in the last few weeks and is going to be doing over the next week:

Filming in corporation park - Jess and Zulaikha
Filming in music studio - Matt
Filming in Jess's Home - Jess and Zulaikha
Filming outdoor narrative - Matt
Digital Images of outdoor snow shots - Zulaikha
Digital Images of indoor artists shots - Zulaikha and Jess
Directing on Set and pre planning- Full Group
Practice editing images and footage that we have had already taken - Full Group
Research - Full Group
Film Footage editing - Full group - We will all be editing parts of the footage and working on it as a group
Digital Images of trees for back cover - Zulaikha
Digipak front cover - Full Group
Digipak back cover - Full group (Autumn Trees on either side)
Digipak panel 3 editing- Jess (Image of the Artist Conor)
Digipak panel 4 editing - Zulaikha (Artist and Jess holding hands walking in the snow, with their footsteps behind)
Digipak panel 5 editing- Matt (guitar with leaf background
Digipak panal 6 editing- Carla (Forest Trees)

Thursday, 14 January 2010

Dimentions of a DigiPak (Research)

DigiPaks can have 4, 6, 8 or more panels.
Inside the DigiPaks there is usually photographs of the artist or object(s) that link to the song(s) or used during the filming.
Some DigiPaks contain lyrics and information about why the songs were produced and their inspiration, sometimes you can get background information (almost like a mini biography) of the artist or the band, how they came about music and why they continued to make the CD, etc.

We will be using 6 panel DigiPak so we can include Photographs and Information of the artist.
Below is an example of a 6 panel DigiPak and a template:







When it comes to making the DigiPak we need to make sure the quality of the photographs are very good to obtain a professional look to the product. This can be achieve this by using good quality paper and Ink also making sure the image being used isn't blotchy or pixelated.

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

Practice using Photoshop

Last year i did a video based production and therefore have no previous experience in using photoshop and photo editing programmes. Others in my group however do have knowledge about how to work the programme and have had experience using photoshop even though they some of them also did video based production last year. For this reason i decided to get a few images and play around with them to see what effects i can do and how to do these. However i did not use photoshop as i do not have access to photoshop at home. I used a programme called Paint.Net which is considered to be very similar to photoshop. I felt that although this is not photoshop i will stil be able to gain some knowledge on how to create certain effects and how to even fo some of the more basic things. Therefore this will give me an opportunity to enhance my techniques and learn how to do things as i go along.

Our group has already come up with an idea for our front cover and we will soon be uploading a mock up design of our digipak. I decided to try and put together the front cover by using Paint.Net just to see how i would come across doing this.


I used the two images below to create the 3rd image. I will explain a few pointers below about how i did this.




Our initial idea is something along the lines of what you can see above (however this is only a practice that i did and there were some effects that we are going to try and create in our final design that i have not yet been able to conquer).
I did not have any images of a person standing on a hillside with a balloon in his hand and therefore decided to take two seperate images and merge them into one final image. In our actual design for our cover we will be using an image of our artist shot in such a scene and therefore will not need to put together the two images.
I firstly edited the picture of the girl holding the baloon in Paint.Net. I removed all the background and coloured the remaining in area in black so that it looks like a shilouette. However the girl in the image is wearing a hat and is also not an image of the girl head to toe. Therefore i had to draw the rest of the body and also had to erase some areas to create a figure like shape. I then had to create another layer with the hillside background and change it so that it is an overlay. This image i changed into a black and white tone which was very simple. I then cut the figure and pasted it onto the black and white hillside background. However it was slightly challenging to change the size of the figure without distorting the shape as it appeared that the pixels altered the shape making it look slightly strange. This left the final thing to do which was changin the colour of the balloon. However when i filled in the balloon in the orange colour it looked very odd as it was a very blunt image of the balloon. To make it look more realistic i used 'gassian blur' to slightly blur out the colour so it looks like a slightly more softened shape.
Although this may not seem like much skill and may not seem like alot of affects have been created i feel that for the first time of using Paint.Net i have been able to create a good image. I feel that i will be able to improve my skills now that i have basic knowledge on how to use photo editing programmes. I do realise however the image looks slightly 'cartoonish' and i will work on trying to improve my editing skills to making the image look more realistic.

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

Branding - Ancillary Tasks

As part of our research we have already published a post on branding as you may have already seen. We have already explained the importance of branding and how it is achieved. In this post we are going to explain how we are going to create our brand image.

As mentioned before branding is all about creating an image that creates an impression that consumers like and people can link to a particular line of products. For this reason there must be a consistent theme and brand image through the line of products in order to link them together. The image the brand is trying to promote and show should be shown in all of the products and the same message should be given. However there are many similar products on the market and for this reason it is necessary that this certain line of products, this brand, stands out and is different to compared to all the rivalling products. Once this image in manipulated and has been created it will allow the consumer to see the value and potential in the products. Therefore it is necessary that we create an image that attracts our indie audience and is able to connect with them. We must be able to portray our indie genre yet bring something new to the market that is slightly different to everything else. The fact that the artist we are promoting is also a up and coming new artist it is necessary that we are able to create a brand image that will bring about a large audience. One of the key elements to creating a successful brand is to keep consistency across the range of product promoted at any one time across the world.

To create a consistent brand image our theme is going to be the weather ad in his main song ‘talking about the weather’. This is the song we have created a music video for. In the music video there are several outdoor shots which we have shot to show in which you can see the snow and autumn leave etc. The song is actually about the artists love for his girlfriend however he has used the weather as a symbol of his affection towards her. For this reason we are also going to use this weather / outdoor nature scene in our album cover and magazine advert so we are able to a create a consistent theme. As well as the nature/weather theme we are also going to try and keep the indie image and an indie theme in order to represent our genre. So we will be aiming to use creative and different types of album art as indie art is often very artistic. This will allow audiences to identify the products linked to our music video. We are also going to use the same fonts throughout our album cover and magazine advert as it sets a consistent brand image. It allows our products to be identified as a brand and as a line of products.

It is necessary that we keep this image and theme consistent throughout our products so that the audience are able to identify the products and link the products together. The brand image is what allows our indie audience to identify the artist and distinguish its quality and uniqueness from other products on the market.

Monday, 11 January 2010

Mood Board - Indie Album Covers




I thought it would be a good idea to put together a mood board/collage of famous Indie album covers. Displayed above are the album covers of some of the most famous Indie bands/artists.


As you can see that the album covers of one artist or group has a similar theme and image. They tend to use a certain type of art. For e.g. stereophonics tend to do a very simple cover but it makes it effective through the use of colours. The colours are enhanced to look brighter and more vivid. The killers on the other hand use a very simple but and mellow toned background. The killers also use the same font and colour to produce a consistent brand image. Kasabian use very dark and shadowy colours. They use a lot of shadowy and dull images along with the contrast of red and blue. It shows that in indie art there is no one set type of art that is created and used, it is very unique and different to other indie products on the market. However each artist has a consistent theme and image that are portrayed in their videos and other promotional merchandise.

By looking at album covers we have realised that indie art is always creative and diverse. Generally they tend to have out of the ordinary yet interesting ideas. Indie art often consists of a vibrant imagination. As you can see from the above mood board\collage ever cover is exclusive from one another and to not have a template which is universally followed by all indie artists. Often very simple, the simplicity of the image must be noted as it is very artistic through the way the image is shot and edited. The colour grading and affects used make the image eye catching. The photography used is very symbolic and paint the artists message within your mind. It is through the images and colours that the audience connect to the artist. Not many indie albums have an image of the artist on the main cover, However when the artist is shown on the cover they are shown in a glorious and imperious manner.

The font primarily used in indie genre is block like and imposing yet it is also very simple, this is to make it stand out from the background. The norm of the background is generally contrasting between dark and bright colours; as identifiable from the mood board\collage above can see there is a lot of use of blue, orange, and black.

We are also going to try and create something that is unique and will also consist of a contrast between dark and light colours. However consistently through our products we will try to keep a certain theme and are going to try and portray a certain image to the audience.

Digipak - dimensions and ideas


We looked up the basic dimensions of a digipak so that we were aware of the sizes and space we are working with. However we were not aware that we will be creating a 6 sided digipak so we will be updating this post with dimensions for a 6sided digipak and a mock up of what a 6 sided digipak consists of.

Below are also a few different ideas that we have put together that we could possibly use in our digipak. The first two digipak ideas are ideas that go with the theme of our song and have been created in order to keep a flow of the same brand image.


At the moment these are only ideas that we have come up with but as a group we will all be putting our ideas together and creating a mock up design of our product.

Saturday, 2 January 2010

Weather Issues

Majority of our music video was based outdoors and was initially going to be filmed in coporation park. The performance as well as narrative sections were based in our local park as the track we are using is ‘talking about the weather’. Therefore as you can see from our storyboard and synopsis our filming was going to be based in the park where we are using a lot of nature sites and a lot of outdoor scenes where we can show the weather. We were hoping to set a autumn type of scene where we are able to capture many shots of when the autumn red leaves are flying around etc.

However due to the severe weather and snow we have not been able to do this. The weather has significantly affected our project as we have no been able to film according to our schedules. The schedules and deadlines we had set for our group have had to be changed several times as we have no had the appropriate nor safe weather to film in. due to the snow blizzards over Christmas it prevented us from getting out of our homes and meeting up as a group to film at corporation park. We did at one point make our way to corporation park however after several minutes of filming the weather began to affect us. We felt that it was a great health hazard as our artists hands began to turn blue because of the cold. Therefore we decided it would be in our best interest to not continue filming and produce a new idea to overcome the issue of the weather


To overcome this we decided to try and come up with ideas of filming indoors. So we came up with the idea that we will film our artist performing in the music recording studio. We had access to this in our college and gained permission to film here. We filmed several shots from different angles and lengths of connor performing on his guitar. We felt that it was necessary to change our initial idea as it would not be possible to film outdoors and this may have an impact on our overall project. We were very lucky to have also had access to the recording studio as if we were not able to get permission it would minimise the chances of completing our music video. We also had the idea of trying to film the artist performing next to a window and looking outside at the weather. We have also filmed this as it will allow us to have more footage and be more creative with our final product.

We also yet still need to film the narrative part of the music video. Once again because of the weather we have not been able to do this. To overcome this we were hoping to film all of our narrative today but because of the heavy snow college has been closed and therefore cannot do this. However we do have parts of the narrative already film. We are hoping to film shots of the narrative outdoors however as it very cold we are going to try and spend as little time as possible outdoors. We are hoping to get a combination of outdoor and indoor shots so that the visuals still mirror the lyrics.