My Advertisement

This is my Magazine Advertisement.
I have used a different image to the ones on my album cover to make sure that the audience know that the same picture is not overused. The font is the same though to try and create a image in the audiences minds so that the next time they see scrabble writing they instinctively think of my band and album/digipak.

The information I have included on my advertisement are;

• The Date of release; this information provides the audience with a date to which they can obtain the Album, this is important since they need to be aware of when it is available.

• OUT NOW!; This huge heading catches people's eyes and will attract them to take a closer look and investigate what is out now, this means that more people will look at the advertisement and it will full fill its task.

• Reviews; This is a way of showing positive comments to the audience, allowing them to make up their own minds still, these two comments show that a popular magazine: 'NME' and radio presenter Scott Mills like it and this could influence their decision on whether to bother buying the album or not. Since both are popular then its like to work in a positive way and encourage more people to purchase the album.

Brand New Album Cover

Although i previously had finished my digipak, however after more research and also asking people what genre they thought my album cover was i have decided to change it once more, this is my FINAL digipak and i think that it is more 'Pop' than the previous two designs.

This is my new Album cover. The ways I have changed it are;

• The colour scheme; previously i used 'Black Leather' as the background, this made it more Gothic and i decided to change it to a light green since it gives the impression that its more light hearted and 'pop-py'
  
• I have altered the font; i decided that by not have a block colour creates a different font, the letters with holes in them like- O and P have been filled in and it creates a more rocky edge to the font.
• The Album name; I have changed the name of the album since 'Faking it' leads to a large amount of connotations, some possibly explicit, which is not the image that I wanted to represent in my album cover.
  

This is the inside of the front cover of my digipak.

• Amount of sides; I have reduced the number of sides on my digipak as i think that 6 sides is unnecessary and creates extra sides with usually useless and disregarded information on it
• Similarly to the front i have discarded the block black font and changed the dark leather background for a happier, brighter colour- light green.
  

These are the final two sides of my digipak;

• The green side is very similar to the previous designs, its just meant to hold the CD so the only difference is that its no longer black leather like the others, its light green.
• The back side still has the same image its just that it has been copied and flipped on to the other side of the side and made more transparent.
• I have used a font called 'Parade' and blocked our the letters that have holes like front cover on the names of the songs. This was inspired by Daniel Merriweather's album 'Love & War' which uses a similar font. It also inspired me to have the distorted pattern in which the titles are presented, which alike other album covers in the Pop/Rock genre.

This is my complete design and I am finally happy with the result, i think that it properly represents our music video and genre. With the colour, font and image i think that it will be clear to the audience what type of music to expect from this digipak


This is the Tab of my Album cover and an Image of the Four sides together:

More Digipak...

This is the last side to my Digipak, its not very interesting since it just holds the CD, i think that the design of the CD will be important to and since it will be covering the majority of this side then it will be more of a necessity to be appealing than having a lot of images on this side.




I will be posted a design for the CD at a later date, which will then be the focus of this slide.

Digipak...

This slide is a single image but this has the word 'Blah' written in the same font as the title and band, these is to make sure that there are connections throughout the album cover, as well as just the images. I had used the letters in the exact same way as the cover but enlarged it more to make sure that the side wasn't to bland and empty.
I chose the word 'blah' since its a popular word to describe nothing, its used in other songs such as Ke$ha's 'Blah, Blah, Blah' this song is in the same genre and i thought it would be a relevant word that wont impose to much or take the attention away from the real name of the album and band.
I used the image that i had previously used on one of my original front cover designs, i didnt want the image not to be used and since its similiar to the other images it didnt create any problems by having it within the digipak, it also gave the image i like a bigger 'part' as it has writing on it so its marginally more important than the other two single images.


This slide isnt complete yet since i am waiting for results from a questionnaire on how the font and labels for the songs should be on the reverse of the digipak; For now i have just used an image that is facing the side, since it allows enough room for the titles of the songs and for the timings if its decided that they should be included. The majority of this side is the black leather so it could be said that its quite dark but i think that the pink face still contrasts with the black even though unlike the front cover its not an image of a full face. I also like this picture due to the effect of the sequins, its as though the face has Stars on it due to the reflection of the light and since there are no material things in this picture, like clothes it puts the image in a innocent and sparkling light. This is my favourite image since its interesting and alternative to all the other image which are quite similiar, however i could not of used this image on the front cover since its not very big and i do not think it would be appropriate for a Rock/Pop album cover since it doesnt follow the conventions of this genre.

Digipak Template.

I have made a template to show how my Digipak should be set out, this enables me to plan out which side should have which image. This also allows me to be able to print out my deisgn more easily, since i will be sure of which sides should be next to each other so that when it comes to folding it they are all in the right places.


These are the other sides to my digipak;


















These two sides are the single image sides, they will be on both the outside and the inside of my digipak, these images, are similar to each other, they both have wide open mouths and like the whole of my album cover the image of 'Black Leather' in the background. The image of the wide mouth is to represent screaming, although our genre isn't hardcore rock or music that is traditional very shouty there are often tracks that are strong and loud and I chose these two images to represent that, I feel that people will look at them and imagine them to be powerful and positive shouting rather then violent or negative since I have taken measures to avoid that area of Album covers I.e. removing the Parental Advisory sticker.

My Final Front Design.

I looked at these two designs and wanted to develop it further to make sure that i was 100% happy with my final product, this would be the most important side of my Digipak since it would be what was on view in shops and what people would take their first opinions of. I made a list of features that an album must have in order to stand out from the 1000's of other discs in shops;

• Bright/Bold Colours
• A Striking Image
• Interesting/Different Font
• Relevance to the Genre
• Memorable Name of Artist/Band/Album

Baring all these factors in mind here is my final front cover;



I think that my Album cover full fills all of the above bullet points since it has a bright background, The pink really stands our against the black background and will definitely stand out if it were in a shop. The name of both the band and the album are ones that stick in your brain and are likely to be remembered by a lot of people. Having previously discussed the font i think that it will be a big selling point since it has never been seen on an album cover before and this makes it unique and interesting. I have almost connected the bands name ' Constant Invasions' as this makes it more together and shows that its actually the bands name fully, Almost like one word rather than two separate ones.
After three attempts i am happy with my final product since it full fills the conventions of an album cover and also fills my ideals about my perfect album cover.

Front Cover.

The front cover of my album cover required the most attention and i in fact made two versions before i made the final product;

1. This idea is completely different to my final product, i used a different image for this design, one that was of Hasan without any face paint or glitter on and used editing instead, i think that it is very unclear and that it would have been a bad idea to use this image since when showing people they found it hard to actually work out what it was. I also think that there is too much pink borderline, it makes it look very amateur and also very childish, which isn't the image i wanted to portray on my cover. I also decided against having the parental advisory sticker since this gives the image of the album being quite negative and slightly cuts down the possible audience since there will be people that are put off by the possibility of expletives etc.
There is also a huge amount of the cover being taken over by the background to the font, which looks untidy and once again quite amateur so this is something i have removed in my further designs.

2. This is the second cover i made and it is very similar to the final product, i used the scrabble font and separated them all so that there wasn't a huge amount of the background colour distracting the cover like in the first attempt. By not having an image that isn't completely photoshop based means that there is a stronger image that people can see and recognise, a feature that wasn't apparent in the first draft. I also decided to use a 'Black Leather' background to make the album cover have more of a rocky edge, since before it seemed very indie. By using leather then the genre of the CD will be portrayed in a more relevant light and will also cohere with the conventions of this genre. I think that the lack of Parental advisory sticker means that the CD is friendlier and also helps to sell the album to parents and other people that may be concerned with the contents of the disc, allowing our Album to become available to a wider audience.

Scrabble Letters.

For the text on my front cover i didn't want to use a font that had been used on other album covers, especially since i wanted mine to be unique, for this i researched into many fonts online but none really fitted the image i had in my head.
In the end I decided to use Scrabble Letters, i set them up on my scanner and cut around them separately in photo shop. I think that this is effective since people will recognise the letters from the board game and it also hasn't been used on an album cover before.





In 'Faking It' I added an extra I as i was planning on turning it into an Exclaimation mark in photo shop but when actually trying this it didn't look very realistic so instead I decided to completely cut it from my writing.

Album cover

I have decided on the name Constant Invasions for my band and the album will be called Faking It, Both of these names have been chosen from Lily Allen lyrics and are selections that I feel will fit in with our genre of Pop/Rock.
I asked a friend, Hasan Beyaz to pose for pictures that I could use for my Album cover, i decided i didnt want just a portrait since when looking at other album covers there are very few that just have a plain picture, effects are frequently used and make the cover more interesting.
We decorated his face with pinky/purple face paint and a lot of glitter, this made for interesting pictures. These are my favourite 9 pictures, I am pleased with the results as they came out exactly how I imagined them.

My Band.

When listening to our song, i have always thought of the singer being part of a band rather then just a solo artist, its a usual sight that the main singer of a band is the most popular and recognisable member, which means that most people are fans of the singer rather then the band all together, and interviews and other projects are often done as a solo thing. Its also a very reoccuring thing that the lead singer is female, examples include;

Hayley Williams; Paramore, Elly Jackson; La Roux, Beth Ditto; Gossip, And Florence Welch; Florence and the Machine.

This shows that even if i chose a band then its likely that the lead female singer will be the iconic image if the band were mentioned. Another positive of having a band rather then a solo artist are that a band will enable more people to relate to the band, perhaps certain members could be personal favourites to different people, creating more fans and also making a bond between the other members, which could feel less superior to the lead singer, that usually has all the attention. This will help to make all the features of my Band, album cover and Music video become realistic and effective.

Uploading our Video.

On the 9th December we uploaded our video onto the Apple Mac computers at school. This means that we are set up to edit our films, however when it came to beginning our editing we soon realised that the new technology and programme downloaded on the computers was not what we were used to, when trying to find the right buttons for effects and transitions, such as making the scene appear as a dream, we had a lot of trouble since we didnt know where anything was. To overcome this, we decided to look at websites that help you to understand the new version of iMovie as well as a variety of tutorial videos that gave us step by step guides to all the different things that we were able to do with the new programme.

Filming.

On the 5th December, the group finally filmed our video, having been put off on previous attempts due to some of the actors not being able to attend the same dates.

Unfortunately i was unable to attend filming due to outside problems making it impossible for me to be there and also meaning that i sadly had no input within filming and helping to make decisions that were made during the day.

However in the lesson after the weekend of filming i was able to catch up with the group and see the final product of their filming as well as being able to hear about the problems they had to face and how they over came them.

I became aware of problems such as the last minute change in scene due to difficulty moving furniture at the original location, Aprils house, resulting in the actual scenes being filmed at Reena's house, this poses problems with space and the desired effects, Aprils house had been chosen due to the large seating areas which would have been perfect for the speed dating section in our music video. The group were able to decorate Reenas house accordingly and created a serene and relaxed atmosphere for the speed dating scene by replacing tables for a cosy indoor picnic. This postponed the time of filming and decreased the amount of time they had for filming in the daylight.

Overall the group filmed scenes inside the house, with the three prospective dates all suitably dressed according to their stereotype, also matching the collages previously made. Scenes outside of the characters walking down the road, this will enable us to have different angles at which we view each person and will also allow us to use different effects and transitions without making it repetitive and boring.

They also filmed the three dates, standing and close ups of them that we will be using at the beginning of our music video and throughout to make sure that the audience start to familiarise themselves with the characters and by using a medium long shot It mimicks a dream sequence used in many other Pop videos. It was to show the female protagonist comparing her three dates in their style and body language,in turn allowing the audience to compare them aswell.