Dos and Don'ts for Digipak and Magazine Advertisement

These are the simple outlines for the digipak and advertisement, this is to help guide me when creating my ancillary product.

 

Do's: 

• Use Clear Font
• Use appropriate sizes for images and font.
• Use clear in focus pictures.
• Use appropriate sized photos.
• Use the layout that follows the convention of the rule of 3rd for composition.
• Use appropriate type face that's follows:
• Have a House Style
• Follow general conventions
• Follow convention of the 3 colour rule and use colour that is appropriate.
• Use appropriate industry logos and conventions, properly positioned:
• Date
• Company Logo
• Barcode
• Title/Artist name

Don'ts:

• Stretch images, this will make them out of focus.
• Use layer styles
• Use unnecessary effects. Any effects used MUST suit the genre.
• Place text across artists face.
• Use a font simply because 'you like it'.
• Fell you need a separate photo on every panel - be creative!!!

Using Photoshop

This is my unfinished album cover for Dan London. This is just a practice of using Photoshop Elements, which I found quite interesting. As I have used Photoshop before during photography lessons, I had quite a bit of experience of using the software.

Photoshop Tutorial

I was previously not too familiar with photoshop but during the tutorial it gave me a chance to work on my skills and allowed me to follow the codes and conventions at a fair level.

Progress Review Blog

I think that my blog details the research, planning and construction stages of our music video rather thoroughly as each note I have taken I have posted a blog about it, as well as me blogging about every change we have had during the process of our music video. 

In relation to the individual targets I had set myself, I'm rather pleased with my blogging efforts as I feel that I am up to date with my blogging tasks and I have written each post in detail, trying my best to use different formats. 

So far, I have 38 individual blog posts. 

The blog posts I am most proud of are the:

• Target Audiences
• Music Video Influences
• Music Video Influences: Cutaway Shots
• Costume Ideas #1 and #2
• Analysis of a Music Video: Rihanna - We Found Love ft Calvin Harris

I am most proud of these blog posts as I feel that I have done a lot of research into the themes of the blog posts as well as including a range of medias in each of them. I also feel that they are very well written in detail, and I have related them to my music video and target audience. I have also shown that I have generated ideas from these posts, which reflects in our own music video. 

The blog post that wish I had put more effort into was my Skills Audit post. I feel that this post is extremely brief and I could have included some more detail in it as well as incorporating images too. 

Changes: Rough Cut to Final Video

Some of the changes we had made since our Rough Cut video are major and has had a huge impact to the outcome of our video. 

To begin with, we had chosen to eliminate all the shots we had taken at our Canary Wharf Location. This decision was made because we had realised that this was the only time our female performer Abiola had her hair curly. Some of the feedback from our Rough Cut was that our performer looks like two completely different people from when she had curly hair to straight hair. This was constructive as our aim is not to confuse our target audience with our music video. 
Coincidentally, the shots at our canary wharf location were rather weak compared to our other shots and rather dark so it wouldn't have seemed professional and useful if we had used them. 

Another thing we had change is our locations, which I had previously blogged about. We had decided to film a lot more footage to replace our old weaker footage with which had been completely worth it and made our video seem much of a higher quality. 

Images pending...

Music Video Influences

 In terms of shot types and locations, again, Delilah's song Go has heavily influenced us as we have managed to include plenty extreme close ups and close ups of both of our performers. The shot of Delilah in the alley way represents an urban and 'ghetto' like environment which we have managed to include in our video. The other shot types of the camera tracking Delilah as she walks is also what we have been able to film for our music video, as the camera can never be still, it creates the feel that we are travelling with the performer, and supposedly going on a journey. 

 Rihanna's video for the song You Da One is a massive influence on our music video in terms of transitions and the projection. As shown in the image, in this video they have included many cross dissolve transitions in between the shots, which is also similar to ours. There is also a projection on the artist/performer of spots, stripes, and other shapes which gives the video a more interesting and deeper vibe, which is what we have managed to accomplish in our video. 

In the UK rapper Chipmunk's video featuring Trey Songz, Take Off, they also have cross dissolves in between each of their shot. They have also changed the opacity of the shots so we are able to see the next shot before it is fully on the screen. I have been able to master this type of editing and have used this frequently in our music video. 

Rough Cut Feedback

I personally felt our rough cut feedback was helpful and interesting to find out what our target audience had thought of our work in progress.
Some of our main points gathered which would help us improve our music video was to include more close ups of our artists. Including close ups of the artist in a music video is one of the most important things when producing a music video as it enables the target audience to engage with the artist and their performance. Without close ups of the performer, the target audience will feel disengaged with the artist, resulting, with them not buying their music.
Due to this, we felt it was crucial to film our artists again with 10x the amount of close ups.
As we were short on time, we had decided to film some basetracks of our artists using a projection. That way, it would be quick and easy to film, without the video losing its quality. We used a different projection for the artist Dee Banks and featuring artist Delilah, as they are two completely different artists with two different tones to the song.
For Dee Banks, we used a projection that included boyish colours like red,green and blue with masculine graphics. In contrast to Delilah's projection which included feminine colours like pink, lilac, silver and lime.
We chose to have them both in front of a projection to keep the shots consistent in terms of the videos structure, as well as it creates a young and modern tone to the video.