This is my finished DigiPack it contains my CD cover, Album Packaging, Music Video and Poster -
Completed DigiPack
Monday 16 February 2015
Monday 9 February 2015
Tour Poster
Tour Poster
To create this poster I have used the software Photoshop as this is the best image editing software that is currently available to me. I also have used photoshop in the past so I have prior knowledge with the software. A poster is typically on A4 or A3 sized paper, we have decided to used A3 sized paper for our tour poster since this is an appropriate size. Layout is important for a tour poster since you have to balance the elements of image and information. In my poster I have split the page between text and image. I have tried to create a balance between both as this is an ideal layout for any poster. A typical poster would have the heading of the poster followed by text/image split either side by side or top and bottom, I have decided to split it left and right while keeping the heading at the top of the page but it is aligned slightly to the right. This is a conventional poster layout, as a group we wanted to create a simple poster but keep it eye catching at the same time. I thought it was best to keep a conventional layout rather than create something extreme or irrelevant.
I have tried to stay relevant to my target audience which is at the dance music audience by using bright colours that connote bright lights and visual effects which are relevant towards the genre of dance. Our artists logo and face are both included in the poster to instantly make the aware of who's poster it is. The text in the poster is edited with a light outer glow and are all different colours in different shades, I wanted our poster to be as eye-catchign as possible and using bright colours on a dark background seemed to work well. As with my posters I have used an image of our artist, but the image is a close up shot of him. I decided to use a close up shot since I want the audience to be aware of who's poster it is. The image of our artist has been faded using the fade tool. I have faded the image so another image can overlap without it looking cramped and unprofessional. The overlap or fade has no real ideology behind it, the purpose was just to include more image and make the poster more attractive. An image of John of his skateboard was also implanted into the poster, this was to create more of an appealing poster. At first we had no effects on this photo but Liam was able to include a drop shadow effect on this image which makes it look even better and professional.
The only mise-en-scene in this poster is the images of Liam and John, I would of liked to use a more creative background than just the colour black but I struggled to find a suitable background that worked well with our house style. If I had more time i would of created the poster with a better background. The images used are relevant to our video and poster since they are both characters in the video. The two shots of the images are a close up and a medium shot, These shots work well when combined in the same product. Overall I believe I could of created a better poster but I worked with what we had, the strengths of the poster are the editing of images and creativeness behind them. The weaknesses of this poster is the lack of background and the poster is not as attractive as it could be. The text used is also very bland and could be improved.
Sunday 8 February 2015
Album Cover Review
Album Cover
Above is my album cover for my digipack. To create this I used the software photoshop since it is the best software to use for this type of work. Photoshop offers many options of effects and editing so it was the software I stuck with. Firstly I had researched album covers in one of my previous posts and it gave me a great insight of how to go about creating a conventional and attractive album cover. A album cover is around 4.7 inches wide and 5.5 inches high, this is the size I followed when creating it in photoshop. The layout was important for the album cover since it contributes to the success of the album, I decided it was best to stick to a conventional layout which was - Heading top, Image centred and logo bottom right/left. I had chosen this layout since all the covers I had previously looked into followed this layout and I wanted to follow the most successful layout.
The text on the album cover is our artists logo, I had created this beforehand and given them the effects of a inner glow. Once i selected the inner glow effect I made it precise and set the spread to 2pt. This gave the text a black outline. I believe this effect worked well on the text since it helps it stand out better against the colourful background. The text and logo follow a house style of black and white. Once the text was created the background was inserted.
After looking over many album covers I found a trend of backgrounds always being colourful or designed in weird ways. I wanted to follow this trend of creating a eye-catching or unconventional background so I decided to use one of the images we had taken on Jamaica Street, the street was full of wall art and crazy designs so I had many pictures of them. After selecting a image that I thought would work well due to its colour and design I finally had to pick a relevant image for the cover. I wanted to choose a image of our artist since he is a new artist he needs his face to be spread across his work so this was a great opportunity to spread the artists face.
A close up shot of out artist was perfect for the album cover since it fitted into the open space in the cover and it gave off a very professional look. The image of our artist is edited as the skin on the artist has been manipulated to seem more clear and looks as it is glowing. This was Liam's idea he thought it would make the artist more attractive and therefore making the whole album more attractive. By using the effects above I created a album cover that was conventional and professional.
Before selecting any image for our cover, me and Liam went through our contact sheets deciding on which images we thought would be best for the album cover. My job in the creation of the album cover was positioning the cover together and making sure the layout was how we planned, Liam added the effects and gave the cover an extra push of attractiveness. I am very pleased with how the album cover has ended up. I would not change much about our cover since it ticks all the boxes.
Tuesday 3 February 2015
Music Video Filming
My role in the creation of our video was director and camera man. I decided this would be the best role for me since I have previous experience with camera work. I had completed a short film studies course in the FACT cinema last year so this experience was key in the creation of our music video.
Firstly when I came up with the idea of time lapses in the video we questioned as a group how we would go about creating them since we did not have the equipment or experience to create them. My first initial idea was to research this, I had found many different varieties of how to film time lapses or make still video into a time lapse. Most of the methods required high end softwares which we did not have a disposal. This was an annoying problem as in our planning time lapses became a big part of our video.
I decided to ask my cousin who is in her third year of media at Hope University for help around the situation, she then told us she had access to a tripod and go-pro camera from her university. This was a big help and I do not think we would of been able to create the time lapses we did without this equipment. The tripod was used in most of our shots and this is why our shots in the video are extremely steady and give off a very professional aspect. The very beginning scene in our video was shot on the beach in new brighton, I had to get up at 5am to film this shot and the tripod was very handy for this situation as it would of looked awful with a handheld shot.
As the director of the music video it was my job to make sure our shots were perfect and professional. We had filmed the same parts of the video in many different locations and then narrowed it down to what location looked best and relevant.
Firstly when I came up with the idea of time lapses in the video we questioned as a group how we would go about creating them since we did not have the equipment or experience to create them. My first initial idea was to research this, I had found many different varieties of how to film time lapses or make still video into a time lapse. Most of the methods required high end softwares which we did not have a disposal. This was an annoying problem as in our planning time lapses became a big part of our video.
I decided to ask my cousin who is in her third year of media at Hope University for help around the situation, she then told us she had access to a tripod and go-pro camera from her university. This was a big help and I do not think we would of been able to create the time lapses we did without this equipment. The tripod was used in most of our shots and this is why our shots in the video are extremely steady and give off a very professional aspect. The very beginning scene in our video was shot on the beach in new brighton, I had to get up at 5am to film this shot and the tripod was very handy for this situation as it would of looked awful with a handheld shot.
As the director of the music video it was my job to make sure our shots were perfect and professional. We had filmed the same parts of the video in many different locations and then narrowed it down to what location looked best and relevant.
Sunday 1 February 2015
CD Packaging
We wanted our album to be eye catching so we used the background of one of the shots in our video as the pattern of the background was great on the eye it was also quite bizarre which was another thing that we liked about it. I decided it was best to use the traditional CD packaging as this is what I was familiar with the most.
While filming we had already had the album packaging in mind so I took many pictures of Liam and John beforehand, this gave us a lot to work with when deciding how to go about creating our album package. I personally wanted to go with the images below for our album cover and packaging but Liam thought the close ups of the artist were a better idea. After feedback and discussion we finally agreed that his idea was better as they were more relevant and easier to work with when editing,
After selecting two images for our album packaging the editing process began in which Liam took control of since his photoshop skills are far superior than mine. I was with Liam the whole time of editing and gave him my opinions on certain effects and positioning, He took my feedback very seriously and worked around what I thought looked better. My role in the creation of the packaging was essentially to give solid feedback to push our work to the next level and improve it. With my feedback and Liams skills on photoshop we created a very eye-catching package which I am proud of. This is our finished product -