Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Annotating our magazine advert:


  • There is a relationship between the video, digipak and the magazine's artwork as we have used the same font and coloured text, the same image, and the same theme.

  • We chose the image to be the same as the image on the digipak because we noticed most artists do this of our artists' genre, and it helps create the same theme throughout the promotion of her music video and album.

  • The layout and page design is similar to that of the front cover of the digipak except we have ensured more room for details about the artist, such as tour dates, etc.

  • This has been made eye catching in a similar way to the digipak front cover; large, bright, colourful font, an image which focuses on the artist.

  • The design suggests the genre of the band because it uses iconography of the genre such as bright colours etc.

  • The artists star image is further developed because the heart, which is her star image motif, has been shown throughout her video, album and now her magazine advert.

  • Industry information that is included is the record label and her website, etc.

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

Annotating our digipak:



  1. There is a relationship between the video and the albulm's artwork as during the video, lyrics will appear onscreen in a rainbow coloured 'bauhaus' font, one which we will then re-use for our albulm and magazine advert for the artists name, 'Scarlett'. Additionally, we will be using an image that was taken on the set of a scene in the music video, with the same clothing and props for the albulm cover; many artists do this, especially if they are naming their album after one of their songs.


  2. Our choice of image for our CD cover not only links to the music video that the album is named after, but also is eye-catching and encorparates the colour red which we are having as our artists 'house colour'. Some of the font and colours will have been previously seen in the music video as above explains, as will the setting and the artists' clothing. The theme of the cover matches the theme of the video; fun, light hearted, and young.

  3. The layout of the cover focuses on the artist, with her name being the biggest text on the page so people will notice this first.

  4. As a commercial object, we have tried to make it desirable and eye catching by using bright colours and bold fonts, using a large image of the artist which has been brightened on photoshop.

  5. The design does suggest the genre of the artist, as rainbow colours and bright images are regularly used for female electropop artists such as Katy Perry. Iconography of the genre used includes;

  6. It develops the artists star image because her 'house colour' is red, which is encorporated in her shoes, lipstick, and the heart she is lying on; this heart is also going to be her star image motif. The rainbow coloured text and font is also developing her star image as this is used in her music video also.

  7. Industry information that is included is;

Digipack- Final Draft :)


Magasine advet- final draft :)


Monday, 15 November 2010

Digipack Drafts

This is the flat planning and literally everything we did relating to the Digipack, all using Photoshop.




This is the fan page we made for a page in our digipack. The images link to the music video, the stars our one of our star image motifs. The font is one of our house fonts.


This is the back cover we used for our digipack. It is meant to be a playful version of blueprints to a dollhouse, which links to the name of our song. If you look closely, the names of the rooms our ones which you may find in a barbie house which also links to the lyrics of our song. The font is a house font, and the turquoise and pink are colours often found throughout our products. The white stars our one of our star image motifs.


This was a draft of one of our back covers. We edited the picture to make the heart redder and the grass greener. The image links to our video and the heart is one of our star image motifs. The font is a house font.


This was another draft for our digipack.






We edited this picture by making the heart more red and the grass more green. We also brightened the image and increased the exposure and colour:
This is the spine we made for our digipack which made it to the final design. One of our star image motifs, white stars, are featured. As our the house colours of turquoise and pink. The font relates to the digipack and magazine advert and the colour of the album name links to the CD cover.
This was our fan page before we edited the font to include our house fonts.

These were pictures we were going to use for our collage page in our digipack.
This was a draft of the collage page we were going to use in our digipack, but it took too long and then we realised it wasn't the correct size measurements, and when we made it smaller, it pixelated all the pictures. The only way to get around this problem was opening the images individually into Microsoft word, making them smaller and pasting them into photoshop but this took ridiculously long. The teacup was going to be one of our star image motifs originally.

Without the font ;


Magazine ad draft


This is the draft for our magazine ad:

I think we're gunna change it drastically though because its way too similar to our digipack front cover.

Intertextuality ideas for the digipack..

Due to our intertextual references to 'Alice In Wonderland', (the tea party scene and the looking glass scene), we have decided to use memorable quotes from the book in our digipack, including:






  • 'Curiouser and curiouser!'


  • 'But I don't want to go among mad people'


  • 'What a curious plan!'


  • 'Oh, I don't come from any garden'


  • 'Through the looking glass'


We feel these link to our video well and will provide our target audience with a sense of comfort as they are reading something familiar which they are able to connect with something new. This light hearted approach reflects the representation we wish our artist to have, and audiences will be aware of her fun and carefree attitude.


We thought the following pictures would be appropriate for the quotes:



























































Another little quote we thought was
good was from Toy Story, as said by Little Bo Peep; 'You're cute when you care.' This links to the idea of our artist still showing feelings for her ex, or giving a reason as to why she liked him in the first place. By providing background information such as this in the digipack allows the audience to make an instant connection with our artist as they feel they are being given an insight to the artists' life. For this quote, we felt happy pictures from when the artist and her ex were happy would be good, such as:










Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Editing

We edited again today, all is going well. :)

Plans for the magasine advert

Out of the 3 ancillary tasks; the website, the digipack and the magasine advert, we chose to do the digipack and the magasine advert.

The digipack measurements will need to be 57cm by 12.5cm, and we have to create a brand identity within our promotional package

We are going to create a flat plan of our magasine advert and post it on here so that we are clear on what we are doing and the ideas that we have.

Brand Identity: We want to be very clear on our artist and who she is appealing to, as finding a target audience is vital for our artist to sell enough records to be able to make another one. As our genre is electropop, and after looking at other artists of the same genre, we know that we must sell our music through the artists image. To do this effectively, I feel we should have the artist looking directly into the camera so as the target audience feels a connection with her. We also want to link our artists look to how she appears in our video, as we will feature this as the main song of the album. Other artists have acheived this by either naming the album after their main song; we could do this because 'Dollhouse' is the song which is the turning point in our artists abusive relationship and the point where she stands up to her boyfriend. We could make up an award for that single so we could feature the song more obviously on the album, or put something such as 'Featuring the hit single Dollhouse'. Other ideas are using our track as a bonus track, however I don't think would work as well as some other ideas mentioned.
Typeface: We have already thought of our typography; we want to only use 3 different fonts as we feel any more would make the page look busy and distract the reader from the actual information. We want to use a bold, simple font for the artists name so that is the first thing readers notice, and then a more colourful, eye catching font for the name of her album. Any other details we feel should be similar or the same to that of the additional font in our digi-pack so we are keeping these fonts associated with our artist. We were thinking of a curled, perhaps hand-written style to imply the artists young age and her innocence. We want to incorporate the name of the artist, her album, and any additional information such as awards she has won, tour dates, where to buy the album, her website etc.
Selling music through the artists image: We want to use only one image of the artist which we feel is the most eye catching and unusual but that also links to her genre and music video. I think eye contact is important because our artist needs to establish who she is and her brand identity, and we use a lot of voyeurism in our video so this needs to link with the magasine advert. By doing this the reader feels like they have a connection with our artist which is important for selling her album. We feel if we use a shot where the artist looks most 'doll-like' would be a good idea as this is implies the name of the track on the album and keeps her brand identity constant. We want to use mise en scene that links to the idea of the artist being like a 'doll', and also intertextuality from the story of 'Alice in Wonderland' via the looking glass scene and the tea party scene. We are unsure of whether we want to use this on the magasine advert however; this may be better suited to using only on the digipack as it may be too confusing/busy for readers- however it may prove eye catching if we used it effectively.
Artists image: The artist should look very feminine as this is typical of the genre of elctropop, and either go in the innocent femininity such as Lily Allen, or more provocative femininity such as Katy Perry. We intend to make our artist to encorparate features of both of these, but perhaps not particularly fit into a category as this gives as more scope and creativity for photos. Given the artists age, innocence should play a part in our artists look; wide eyes and bare feet suggest this, whilst the issues the artist is going through are more mature and therefore she should also have an element of naughtiness/playfulness. We plan to acheieve this doll-like look by having heavy blusher, bright pink lipstick, and big black lashes to look extremely artificial but also innocent. The artists clothing should also incorporate this innocent but fake and dollike look.
House Colours: We want to use a variety of colours to represent the variety of emotions our artist is feeling, but we are also aware these colours cannot be too apparant or obvious in the magazine advert, as again, this would be too much for a small magasine advert that is desgined only for the purpose of getting information across whilst catching the readers eye. However, we could use a few of these colours to begin with just for the advert, then continue to develop these colours through the digipack. Colours we are thinking of include pastels but mixed with bright colours, as this will be eyecatching and represents the artists personality; the pastels represent her innocence, naivety and childlike features and her subdued emotions whilst her boyfriend was controlling her. The bright colours, such as bright pinks and greens, represent her more vibrant personality when she stands up to her boyfriend and lets her emotions show.
The camera angle of the photo should not be too complicated; it is more important the amount of lighting on the artists face so people recognise her easily. The colour scheme should also not be too varied as this can make the advert look too messy and may put readers off looking at it. Similar colours should be used from the video and the album, and we should use the most eye catching colour so as to make readers notice the page immeadiatly.

Some important ideas to think about are:
The font should be kept the same, or only use 3 different fonts.
Use de-saturated or saturated colours to catch the readers eye.
Overexposed is another effect that could prove interesting.
Using a lot of white space could be thought provoking and keeps things to the bare minimum so people are more likely to notice, whereas visual clutter often creates the opposite effect as readers are more likely to skim over the page. More cluttered scenes are sometimes useful inside the digipack, but not on the front cover, and cluttered music video scenes sometimes also catch the viewers eye as long as its not too heavy and used on all scenes, as this would mean viewers will lose interest trying to catch up.
There are two main types of font we could use; Serif, which is a handwriting style, more feminine, softer and more personal, whereas sans-serif is more blocked, manly, and bolder. I think we will use both of these, as Serif suits our artists style more, but Sans-Serif is more obvious and would stand out more; the boldness could also represent the artists new found confidence.
The best way to make something stand out is either Black On White or White On Black. We might use this, but I don't think this would suit our genre or artist very well, as we don't feature these colours very much in our music video. Although these colours might be very heavily featured in other videos on the album, this would be very unusual as most artists stick to one theme for each album so as the target audience are buying into a collective idea rather than a random mix of various ideas



Our advert would appear in a magasine that is aimed at the same target audience as ours; fashion/ celebrity magasines such as 'more!' and 'OK!' would be ideal magasines for this. I will link my advert to my main task of creating a video and a digipack by using the same images, clothing, hair, make-up and setting that are in the music video. Many artists of our genre only take links from one song into their magasine advert; often the most recent release. This will not only help the promotion of the artist but also their song. The digipack will also mainly use images from the video we are making, as many artists name and base their album on their most successful song to entice their target audience with something they are similar with.

BRAND IDENTITY

The definition of Brand identity is:
Visible elements of a brand (such as colors, design, logotype, name, symbol) that together identify and distinguish the brand in the consumers' mind.

I have created this 'brand' across my three products by using;




  • House colours: the recurring colour of red; this is quite subtle as it is only shown through the heart, her lipstick, her necklace and her shoes. The colour red also links to the artists name; Scarlett. The image with this house colour on it is used in all three products.

  • Typography: we used the same font and colouring for our artists' name that appears in our music video for 'Dollhouse', and the typeface for the name of her album also appears inside the digipak and on the magazine advert.

  • Images: The image used appears in the video, and is used as a front cover for the digipak and for the magazine advert.

  • Layout and design: The layout of the digipak front cover is similar to the layout of the magazine advert, except there is more room for additional information such as her website, her tour dates, etc.



Fonts website

There's this really good website called da font. com which lets you down load your own fonts.

It means our artist will have original font as all other successful artists do

We picked one we thought was suitable to our artist:


Planning fonts for the ancillary tasks




I have researched lots of different fonts and there are lots I like. I think the name of the artist and the name of the album should be in different fonts; the name of the artist should be bold, eye catching and easy to read- a serif font. The name of the albulm should be more friendly, approachable, handwritten, girly- a sans serif font.


Below are some fonts I feel are appropriate for the name of the album:




In the end we decided on:

  1. Rockwell extra bold for- 'SCARLETT'
  2. Lucinda Handwriting Italics for- 'Dollhouse


We feel both stand out well against the planned green background.
The #1 is in caps lock as this indicates this information is the most important; the name of the artist, whilst the rainbow colours imply her light heartedness. Effects we plan to use on Photoshop for this font are: Drop shadow, Inner Glow, Outer Glow, Inner shadow, Bevel and Emboss, and Contour. We feel these help the font stand out the most and give it that professional edge it wouldn't have otherwise.
The #2 is in a more curly, feminine font to imply the nature of the songs on the digipack and the artists emotions. We thought white was a pure, innocent colour, that matched our artist well as she is young, and we plan to use the same effects on Photoshop as the other font except the inner shadow and contour effect, as although we want it to stand out, we don't want it to be quite as bold as the artists name.





Digipack draft ONE


Front Cover:


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Back cover:


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or this back cover:

Pictures for ancillary tasks



1. The picture below is what we are planning on using for our digipack front cover and our magazine ad so that there is a link in the promotion of these two packages.


front cov

2. We may also use this image for the front cover:

other front covva

3. This is a picture we are thinking about using for our digipack:
could be fan page

4. On the

Planning Album :)

Below are some pictures we drew, then scanned onto the computer, uploaded onto flickr to make the pictures clearer and then pasted onto our blog, whilst planning our ancillary task of making the CD Album:
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Plans for the digipack



We have decided to make our digipack 6 pages long;

There will be the front cover with an image of the artist, with the name of the album.

Pages 1,2, and 3 will be joint to the front cover, forming a small booklet.

The back cover will list all the songs featured on the album.

Page 4 will be joint to the back cover and will be the image behind where the CD slots onto.








Ideas for our front cover are simple; we want an eye-catching design, mainly featuring the artist. We feel she should be making eye contact as she is a new artist and needs to let the target audience know who she is, but we also feel if she's looking away it keeps an element of intrigue and mystique about this new artist and may compel audiences to want to know more about her.





Pages 1,2,3 will be forming the booklet, and we feel it is important that it is here we feature many pictures of the artist in different settings and outfits that feature in 'Dollhouse' to intrigue people that have never seen her music video before, but also so that people who have recognise this and feel connected to the digipack. For the intertextuality our song shares with 'Alice in Wonderland', we want to have little quotes from the book on these pages so the audience notice this link more.



We want page four to have perhaps one image of the artist, so when audiences lift the CD, they see the artist and will hopefully remember her face when they listen to the music.



We want the back cover to be unique whilst also displaying the relevant information; ideas we have so far include a blue print of a house similar to those architects use, with numbers on different floors of the house and a key at the edge; the key will then name the tracks. This links to the title 'Dollhouse' and connects with the song, but also isn't too busy, as it gives the relevant information.
Basic plan of the digipack:

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TARGET AUDIENCE


After some research, we discovered our target audience is:

  • In the age bracket 14-25
  • Female

Our research is below:

We asked 20 males and 20 females:

Do you like Electropop?




We then asked 30 females who liked Electropop their ages:





Uploading

We uploaded our video today and hopefully will have time to edit!!

Filming :)

We had a lot of trouble with finding a day to film; either the weather was predicted rainy, or our actors couldn't make it, or there weren't any camera's left. Before the half term we took out the camera's with the intention of completing all our filming so as when we came back we would be ready to start editing, and we did it! :) We filmed on Thursday and Friday, and the weather was not as sunny as we would have liked but at least it didn't rain. On Wednesday night, we had both actors cancel and only had a few hours to find some more, but we managed to, and in the end were happy with our choice. Whilst filming the video, we made sure to take lots of pictures of the artist in every outfit so as to be sure we would have enough material for our other ancillary tasks.

The day before filming :S

Me and Saffron got together all our props, storyboards, and location shots to make sure we knew what we were doing. I have scanned in some of our planning and notes below:


1. This was a list of things we needed to do before filming:
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2. This is planning shot locations. The things circled in pink means we only need the female actress for those scenes. This meant we could plan to shoot all the scenes without the male first, then shoot all the scenes with him after. We ticked them off as we went along so we knew what shots there were left to film. In pencil there is a list of outfits we used.

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Location shots

1. Stairs/Tree/Fence area- Ickleford


We plan to film by the trees in this photo.
We also plan to film the artist walking down the stairs so we can rewind it etc.
We also plan to film the artist in front of the fence for a plainer background in the video.











2. Tea Party- Ickleford


This is the piece of green we plan on filming the tea party scene.











3. Church/ picnic scene: Hitchin


This is where we plan to film the picnic scene with the couple, and also the scene in front of the church.




4. We plan to film a scene in this alleyway in Hitchin.







5. This is the market in Hitchin where we plan on filming scenes.








6. This is the park where we plan on filming the rollerskate scene, the flower, coat etc scenes also here.

More planning....


1. These were some notes we made on which shots would need which outfits for Sarah and Tatenda, our actors.



2.













Planning for filming!

  1. This was breaking down a scene into parts so we knew exactly what we where filming.

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2. These were different ideas we came up with for our music video. For example, the phone scene, the artist standing on the 'dollhouse', the artist in front of the maze (before we knewwe couldn't use it), and ideas for split screen

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3.
These were more ideas for the video:
  • The lollypop scene
  • The bedsheet scene
  • The 'four walls' scene
  • Trying out transitions
  • Other ideas for the video.

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4. Planning locations with outfits:



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5. Planning shots

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6. More planning!!

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7. Planning locations:

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8. Me trying to demonstrate a shot where the boy is in the foreground as if he doesn't realise the girl is in the background singing. We used this for the church scene.



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