Digipak research

We will be looking at CD's made by the same genre as our own music video, indie/rock. The first CD cover we looked at is Kings Of Leon - Because of the Times. This CD cover stands out because of the black background and use of light on the skull and lightbulb. The bands name logo is clear against the background and the name of the CD also stands out, but not as much as the bands name. We like this CD cover because it is clear and an original idea, using the idea of a lightbulb over someones head breaking.

Bombay Bicycle Club's debut album I Had The Blues But Shook Them Loose is again eye catching in my opinion. The image is original and interesting, even though being in a dull black and white. The bands name and logo stand out in bright blue, and I think the image features a lot of young people to appeal to this age bracket. This CD cover is good but not as original as the Kings Of Leon one, however this is a good example of something we could do with limited editing skills.

One of the bands I looked at was The Hoosiers, who are in the same genre and have the same sought of image. The Hoosiers album cover is sort of arty as the music on it is more awkward and about more emotional topics, which is why the album is called The Illusion of Safety. This idea is portrayed in the album cover as there are bad things happening, but then these are covered by the things coming out of the characters mouth, which is a good use of imagery.

The other band that we looked at was The Foals and their album called Antidotes, which also has an arty sought of image and a similar depth through its choice of image. It dosen't make a lot of sense immediately, but then makes the audience think and try to figure it out. This is good because it engages the audience and also subtly displays the image of someone having nice colourful things in their mouth and what they are saying, but still looking a bit sad. This keeps with the convention of being a bit sceptical and to an extent paranoid about things that seem fairls small.

As you can see a lot can be found out about a band, their songs and lyrics just by a bit of artwork, therefore our choice of image must show a true representation of our band and their work.

Digipak: Initial Digipak idea

As well as getting on with our video we also need to consider the design for the Digipak. This example is the best I could find that illustrates that we need at least 3 sides with pictures and information of the band on. The front cover will obviously be the most important, with the name of the song and band clearly shown. An initial idea includes one picture that spans across all five covers, and this would mean one character on each side, with then one cover left for the actual CD. I have already analysed five other covers as put earlier in my blog, and now I will just have to put this research to good use.



There are lots of different digipak designs that we could use including four sides and six panels, with thumbcut pockets, outer and inner mooncut pockets, and one to four trays. However, I think our group wants to keep things simple as this is our first attempt making a digipak, therefore we will use a six panelled, plain template without pockets. This also sticks with our initial idea of having one continuous picture that stretches around the whole of the digipak.


This is the initial template we will use, with another view to put our design on at: http://www.discfactory.co.uk/packaging/cd-digipaks

Second half of Music Video

Now we have got a rough cut together we decided to think about the next half of the video and what it should include. I think we need to include more typical conventions of a music video so have had the idea of the masked characters dancing in the lift, with quick cuts of this edited into the chorus. The below brainstorm shows that the characters will next get in a car and journey to a warehouse, before getting on foot and travelling to a fire and throwing their masks in. We will use quick cuts to show the most important bits of action, and a lot of close-ups as they look very effective in the first half. The characters will continue to cause havoc until they reach the fire; and then in reflection of who they really are they will throw their masks into the fire and carry on life as before.

Rough cut of first part

Since our last lesson me and Kiel have been editing our rough cut of the first part of our video together. Today with Tony back we have finished the rough cut and have placed it below, and we will be carrying on blogging and looking at locations for the second half in our next lesson. We have an idea to have lots of little cuts of carnage in the second half of the video, with the actors dancing in the chorus still in masks, but this is only a starting idea.

Editing

We could not film anything today due to our masks being in our friends locker, so we edited all the footage we had from Friday together. This turned out to be for the best as we have more footage than we thought and this already lasts over half the time of our music video. We will probably not include the corridor scene, which is a shame because the idea of a crowd dissolving was unique. The editing went smoothly, and we are happy with the way the video is starting to shape up. We are using Premiere Pro like last year, and although this program is normally good today it was slow and froze a few times. We also had trouble making our overall film full sized on the screen but a friend helped us sort this out.

Plan for tomorrow

Tomorrow me and Kiel plan to film some shots we didn't get on Friday that involve just me and him, and we will hopefully start to edit the material all together to create an opening sequence. I will wear the same costume as before to establish continuity, and I will make another post to show what we did.

Filming day one

This morning we filmed some shots for the first part of our video. Due to running out of time we had to leave some shots out that me and Kiel can complete on our own on Tuesday, but overall filming went very well. We got nearly all of the shots done and added more in too our storyboard while fliming. The masks and props looked very effective and I would like to thank Scott for his help, as well as our other actord who did a superb job. Below are pictures of us in our costumes and filming: