Feelings for the new year

photo-shoot pictures

Start of digipak and poster

It's the holidays but since I have Photoshop at home, I thought I'd get started with the ancillary work. I've just recently taught myself the basic skills of using Photoshop through some very useful YouTube videos.Below are some of the pictures of logos and things I will include in my digipak and poster.

Internet difficulties/technical problems

Internet fixed and ready

Finally I am back, and back with a vengeance after several waits, anticipation and anger due to the fact that my internet was down as it suffered from a virus, meant that I was not able post my ideas about the digipak and more daily as a result you will notice from the number of posts I have done, the last time I made a post was on 21^st of December, today is new years eve (clearly it’s been a while). Now that I am able to access the internet I will continue what I do best which is blog!

Research into magazine advers

Influential ideas for cd covers

Olly Murs's CD influenced my ideas for my own CD cover; the colors, fonts, images and the layout really catches my idea and I wanted to pursue some of these things to my own CD cover. Here are a few images..

Color Scheme

It’s really important that as a group we choose the right color scheme because it helps promote the artist’s album well; this album is all to do with sadness and the ups and downs that occur in a relationship. I was thinking that we go for a darkie background (black or gray) because most of the songs are depressing.

Once the color gray gets closer to black, the more dramatic and mysterious it becomes. The color gray is subdued, quiet and reserved. It does not stimulate or energize despite one of the tracks for our song consisting with quiet allot of energy from the artist himself. 

Gray can stifle and bring this depressed energy but it is also the stable base from which the new and positive can come.

Black is more of a color that keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world such as the emotions of the artist it creates a barrier between itself and the outside world, providing comfort while protecting its emotions and feelings, and hiding its vulnerabilities, insecurities and lack of self confidence( according to Wikipedia).

Black can give an impression of authority and power towards our target audience.

These two colors are indeed very effective and will look very good on our digipak but then again this is just my opinion.

my magazine mock up

Here below is a mock up of a page of a magazine of Marcus Green, this was quite challenging  at first in the sense that in today's media lesson i did not get anything done partly because i was not concentrating but as i stayed in for lunch i was able to get the work done.  Now the image that i have chosen is clearly a closeup of Marcus Green,closeups are important especially for new artists  despite it showing little background it emphasizes the artist as  it shows the audience the personality of  the him/her through facial expressions. I used the  images from blogger then uploaded and edited them using Photoshop  but the text was done on quark as Photoshop was more difficult in terms of positioning the text.

Double click to make it big screen  

Compotents of a successful digipak and poster

Here are a few crucial rules that provide the most important things to consider when constructing a digipak and poster.

Ancillary Mock Up

These drawings are the mock up for my digipak and poster for Marcus Green's album titled 'Breaking the Walls.'

The photos above show a brief outline of what my actual advert will look like. The most difficult challenge I've had so far in choosing the right pictures. To make my ancillary to the same level as real ancillary work, I must ensure to use similar pictures through out that link to my music video. We went back to our key location at Ezra Street recently for a photoshoot and took a range of pictures of the artist from different angles and lengths. Of course, we went there after dark to ensure that the pictures we will use for our ancillary work would compliment the video.
  
This is roughly what the digipak may look like but of course I will make a lot changes between now and the final product. 


For both the advert and the digipak, I will use consistent fonts, colors and some layouts. A method used in the real world, it familiarizes audience members with the artist and his work.

MY IDEAS

After looking at a range of magazine front covers I have decided to come up with an idea that will consist of a close-up of Marcus green’s face with the text at the top of his head saying Marcus green. Close-ups tend to always magnify the object (think of how big it looks on a cinema screen) and shows the importance of things, be it words written on paper, or the expression on someone's face such as Marcus green. The left side of his face I was thinking of putting the out now sign and underneath this will also have the name of the stores to get the album from just to fill the page, whilst the right side of his face will consist of tour dates and reviews from music critics as well as the bar code. Here below is just a quick sketch of my mock up of the magazine page and how it will like once I have done this on Photoshop and quark

 (Hand drawn sketch of magazine positioning)

Photoshoot

Although there was only three of us, we stuck to our plan and went to Ezra Street after the cinema outing for the photoshoot to take the pictures we will be using in our digipaks and adverts.
Here they are,all uploaded on Photobucket.

We obviously took a range of photos and a lot of them to make sure we have more than enough good pictures for everyone in the group. As we know, Marcus is a new artist so it is crucial for him to start to build a connection with his potential fanbase. This is why he maintains direct eye contact with the camera in a a lot of the pictures here- just like in the video.

Cinema Screening...

The moment finally came upon us. After an hour and fifteen minutes of watching our fellow media studies students' work being showcased and wondering when our time would arrive, it was FINALLY the time for Marcus Green to be known to the CANDI media world. The lights were dim, the students' all ...the music hits. We couldn't bare to breathe for the first few seconds of the video out of nervous. The four of us had dedicated our hearts, minds and time 100% into the production of this video. This is all we'd worked towards in the last 2 and half months. Would they like it? Would we be cheered? Or worse...would there be any reaction at all...?

The guy in the picture above replicates well how I felt at the time of the showing...

I'm relieved to say we had quite a positive reaction from the crowd throughout the video. They particularly seemed to enjoy all the different locations. Being urban teens, a lot of them were familiar with some of the Brick Lane locations. I will look a couple of quick interviews on my phone afterwards and will put together a video of it all for Evaluation question 4.

More photos

Presentation Nice

Cinema tomorrow!

I just realised that the screening of our and all the other A2 media studies groups' music video is tomorrow!

While I'm delighted with our efforts so far, I'm still relatively nervous about what kind of response our video will get from the audience of fellow students. Their response is crucial as it will be the best way for us to measure our music video work against the best of the videos produced by our peers.
I look forward to 1pm tomorrow with nervous excitement!

Planning for Tuesday outing

On Tuesday the 18^th of December after our cinema trip we will be making our way down to another area of north London (don’t know the actual name) for our photo shoot of Marcus greens, we have all the equipment booked with the help of the media techs and of course our teachers. So tomorrow I will be looking forward to two things the result of the cinema screening and also the photoshoot. 

Monday's shamble

In today’s lesson we started the actual process of creating our digipak (not the mock up) but because we still hadn't thought of a name for our album or have taken pictures of the artist for the front cover and more, it’s put our production of our digipak to a halt and at major risk. Clearly without knowing the type of shots used or the name of the album despite having many names to call it, we possibly can’t continue with the digipak. As a result of this we kinda (especially me) started to drift away into my own world i.e. started talking to the other groups and not getting work done which is a real shame as we don’t have enough time to do this.

Despite me being chatty during lesson we still had our strengths as well weaknesses

Strengths

                1.  Officially agreed on the track list for the album

               2   Took a few test shots( but most were useless)

               3.   Practice uploading random shots of Marcus green onto Photoshop and also edited it.

Weakness

              1 Still haven’t got proper shots ready to use for digipak.

       2 As we talked allot we didn't have enough time to actually host any group discussion.

Above all, we have now got an official date of when we as a group will meet up to take some photos of Marcus green for our Digipak it will be on the 18^th of December at 5.00pm as it will be a good idea to take pictures in the dark because it creates that sort of sad and melancholy effect towards our target audience which is the whole theme were going for. 

Digipak mockup final

DIGIPAK EDITING

Cinema screening

Tomorrow is the day that Marcus green will shine, it is the day where new artists are discovered and new artists are broken. Now I don’t know about the rest of the group members individually but I can honestly and I mean honestly speak on behalf (of the group) that we are shaking, shaking like there is no tomorrow considering that if it does end badly( our music video) there will be no Wednesday  not for me anyways as the performer. I will not be able to make it to the cinema tomorrow  because I have a sociology lesson, so guys let me know if it went OK. 

Here below are some possible responses that our group may face in the cinema. 

Laughed at

 Applause

A possible response from me when you break the news down

Album track list

With the help of a website that we came across online known as “song name generator” we were able to create a range of tracks for our new artist Marcus green. As this album is to do with relationships we have decided to have the name of each track link with the theme that we are going for which is sort of sad (melancholy).

Here below are the tracks that our CD will consist of:

Chosen fonts

we looked at a range of fonts mostly from a website called Dafonts.com, I found it difficult to choose which font that will suit Marcus Green the best, but I have decided that I would like to use this specific font below because it looks more eye-catching (in your face) and in a way could possibly emphasis feelings of Marcus Green (remember there’s allot of emotions in this album guys). Maybe we should have Marcus’s surname in green as his surname is a name of a color but this is just a suggestion am just waffling here!

or

Digipak advertisement

Not only having a good CD cover promotes the artist and their albums but also with the help of advertising, with magazine ads its lets peop le know you’re in business. It conveys the artist’s music and type of genre they offer towards their target audience

Here below are three good examples of the way artist use adverts to promote themselves towards their audience.

Eminem 

This is a very interesting picture of Eminem, he has strong pose almost as if he is reaching for his weapon again reinforcing his rapping,  he’s for real (from the hood) .The use of dark colors make him stand out on the cover as well as the artistic typography for the title just look at the way the letter "E" is positioned(one faces forward the other faces back) but still readable.

linkin park

Again this example has good reference to artistic style, with a background just plain despite a weak composition. It is still able to capture the eyes of the audience as on one of the main vocalist is looking directly at the camera which is the audience (sort of drags us in) the typography is my favorite aspect of this above example because of its position and font.

soulja boy and 50 cent

This magazine is very different to the two above in terms of composition and lightening. This magazine shows two rappers(50 cent and soulja boy) standing together posing again notice the body language look at the way soulja boy is standing holding his jeans up, reinforcing all this street rap. 

To finally round of I do like the artistic style of a music ad as they add a little more emphasizes and effect on the detail which then enforces the creativity of the artist. Also they are more attractive to look at than classic simple styles. 

Digipak mock up

As I've had other work to do, I allocated two days to work on my mock up before I start getting to work on my actual digipak. The images below are from my first day on planning/making my mock up. Here is the task we were set:

PLEASE CLICK THE ABOVE IMAGE TO OPEN PHOTOBUCKET IN ANOTHER TAB.

So far I've started to get a rough idea on what to do for my digipak. As a group, we went out of the college grounds and took some photographs of Mark in front of a wall and near the lake. These were just test shots until we took real photographs of what we wanted.

Song name generator

As a group in today's lesson, we were to finish the things we needed to be done as from now on, it would be only individual work. We spent our time deciding on song names, and when all else failed, we searched online.

We came across this website which supposedly comes up with song names. We started out with a few suggestions, but then it went from the unusual, to the outright crazy!

Above are screengrabs of the website we used to help us with a few of the track listings.

Ancillary- looking at different fonts.

During today's lesson I looked on dafont.com at different styles of fonts we could use for the artist's name and other texts on the digipaks. I wanted something simple, and bold so that it would stand out and be clear on the CD cover or poster ad.

After looking through pages and pages of different types of fonts, I decided to search for specific ones. Whilst looking through the website I wondered what the cover would look like if it had some sort of Marcus Green signature on it to make it stand out and look unique.

I found this particular font on the website. I liked it because it looked as if someone had handwritten it, and would make sense if it looked like Marcus Green's signature.

After looking at a few different fonts, I wanted to see what it would look like if I used a mixture instead of just one type of font. Here, 'Marcus' is in bold capitals whereas, 'Green' is all in lower case. This makes it look more informal but adds a personal touch to the name.