Digipak Analysis 2

For the second digpak analysis I thought it would be good to look at someone a bit different from Michael Buble, and decided to analyse One Direction's 'Take Me Home' digipak. Although One Direction appeal to a slightly younger target audience than James Thompson, I thought it would still be useful to see how other bands targeting slightly more diverse target audiences reach out to their fanbase through the use of digipaks.

Front Cover

The first thing that jumped out at me was how very British the front cover of this is. The band are in waistcoats. bowler hats and bow-ties, and are in and around a red telephone box, and all of this really typifies Britain and anyone in the world could look at the cover of this album and would immediate associate it with Britain. This immediately tells me that One Direction are branching out to a worldwide audience, but letting them know that they are fundamentally British.

There is hardly any text on the page, just the name of the band, written in the sky in cloud like font, and the name of the album in a very effective yet simple font. Overall, the layout of this front cover and the fact that you know straight away that it's for a boy-band makes it a very effective cover.

CD

This CD is very simple and very minimalsitc, but then again, why does it have to be bold and exciting? Nobody really looks at the CD itself so I think just making 75% of it red and the other bit a label, which may be made to look like a plane ticket (relating to the title of the album, Take Me Home) on the other bit of the CD works really well. The same fonts for the band name and the album name have been used as they were on the front cover as well.

Back Cover

Out of all three parts of the digipak, this is the one that I think has the most going on. It doesn't have hardly any red at all, unlike the front cover and the CD, as it's showing much more detailed information than the other parts of the digipak are. The fonts used for the track listing seem to be the same as the font that was used for name of the album on the front cover and on the CD, as this is a very smart and simple font that is easy to read for everyone. There are also some funky illustrations to the right of the track listing, which might again be appealing to the younger target audience, and also this is what one of the band members has tattooed onto him, and he ay be trying to establish his own, unique brand identity.

Digipak Analysis

The syllabus tells us that we have to analyse a digipak. Seeing as we are using Michael Buble as our 'inspiration', I decided to analyse his 'Come Fly With Me' digipak. The photos below show the front and the back of it.

The front is very simplistic, which is something I really like about it. It is literally just a picture of Michael Buble, in his trademark black suit and tie with a red light shining down on him. This is something that we tried to achieve when we filmed at the thestre, but we instead used a purple light to use on James. I like how there is no big brash colours screaming out at you, it's just the name of the album and the name of the singer in all on the same line and in the same font.

I noticed that Buble is also looking directly at the camera, and addressing his audience. This bakcs up his image of creating performance based music videos in which he does directly address his audience.

The back cover of the album is very different from the front. Buble is now not really the main focus of the cover, as he stands off to the left and he now isn't directly addressing his audience. He is also now tinted with a blue light as appose to the red light he was illuminated with on the front cover of the album. Instead. we much more information about the album and the singer itself. There is a track listing across most of the back cover as this is probably the information that consumers are going to want to know the most, and there is also some legal information about the CD.

We used this as quite a big inspiration when creating our digipak as we wanted to keep it in the style of the sophisticated, suave and upmarket person like Michael Buble, or in our case James Thompson.

Pitching our Song

The syllabus said that we had to create a pitch for a music video, we to incorporate more of David Gauntlett's Web 2.0, we did it on the popular slideshare.net website. Follow the link below to see our pitch!

The Online Presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/wantedjack95/mb-presentation-16583127

_______________________________

Slide 1: 

Opening slide 

Slide 2:

The song that we have finally chosen to change from Olly Murs to is .... Michael Buble, Feeling good. 

The link below is Michael Buble's music video to the song. We have watched this repeatedly and studied the video to see what techniques have been used. 

Slide 3:

Micheal's video link once again. 

Slide 4: 

We have decided to create a performance based music video for this song because we think that it works effectively and we have the available resources to create such good footage for our own performance based video. The pictures on this slide are showing examples taken from Michael's video that we hope to recreate. 

Slide 5: 

Puzzle: The link is showing  the 'Gone in the morning' music video. I think that the puzzle idea in this video is a very challenging yet extremely effective idea. I like the way that greenscreen has been taken to a whole new level. We will try and add this in to our video as if we can pull this off it would look incredible. 

TV: the second idea we have had is to possibly use greenscreen inside the tv and then our artist presses play off the remote and the performance part of the video is playing inside the video. This could also work if done well. 

Driving: Although you see many A-Level music videos using the cheesy 'driving' footage, we believe that if this footage is done well, It can work extremely well and look amazing. But this is only if it is done to perfection and smoothly and not the normal 'easy' shots. 

Dolly-Tracking shots:  We plan to use the cars, with the camera in the boot to film the 'walking towards the camera shots' as with this filmed out of the back of a car, the footage would be smooth and look as professional as we can get our footage. 

Look into the camera: during our music video, we will have lots of shots where the artist in the video is staring directly into the lens to give the audience the sense as if the artist is singing the song to them and not to anyone. It will make the video more personal and connecting to the audience. 

round - 360: We will use a 360 shot as this is used within many music videos and looks great. this is also a challenging shot to pull off as it has to be done well and smoothly. 

Slide 6: 

Intertextual references: During our video, we will include references to other music videos and films as we feel that if the audience can relate this and link two videos, it will make the video more successful. 

Photoshoot: another idea that has been said is the idea of possibly using a photos hoot element? including photo snaps into the video, possible model shots to show the audience that the artist is successful and is not just a singer but a model too. 

Trinity theatre: I will explain about this on an upcoming slide. 

Slide 7:

From working at a theatre over christmas, I have recently contacted them to see if it would be possible to use the theatre for a few hours to do some filming in a professional location. We have been granted permission to use the theatre for a morning to film the performance part of our video. We could not be grateful enough as using a professional venue such as Trinity Theatre, will give us some stunning footage and some professional looking footage. We are very excited to our filming day here! 

Slide 8: 

For the performance part of the video that we will be filming at Trinity theatre, We will be using a silver mic stand, with a retro silver mic. We think that these will look great with the lights bouncing off the metal of the equipment. I will do a separate blog about the camera that we will be using to film. 

Slide 9:  

For our front cover for our CD case, I have come up with an idea that could be used. My idea is to have three separate beams of lights shining down on the arists who is standing center stage, with one hand on the mic. I think that this would be an extremely dramatic, cover to an album and would portray our artist perfectly. 

Slide 10:

The End, Thank you, any questions? 

Copyright Letter

Now that we are definitely 100% committed to 'Feeling Good', we now have sent the copyright letter away to Michael Buble's record label, who are '143 Records'. It didn't take us long to find their address and we comprised a letter asking permission for us to use their sound track without a fee. I doubt that we'll get a reply, but there's only so much we can do and we've sent the letter and can do nothing more. Take a look below to see the letter we wrote.

Dear Sir/Madame:

We are presently producing a music video for our A2 Media coursework at Sackville school in Hildenborough, Kent. I understand that your company are the owner of the copyright in the musical composition “Feeling Good” and we would like to use the entire song as the basis of our music video for our A Level. 

Since we are students and distribution of the video will be only to fellow students and the administration of our school, we are hoping that you will allow us this use without any charge. 

Please could you reply with a signature, confirming that will indicate that you will agree to permit this use without payment of a fee? Please let us know if you have any questions concerning this license. 
Also would you please let us know as soon as possible if this song cannot be licensed so that artistic changes may be made in the song to be used in the video production? 

You can reach us at:
Jack Cooper (jackcooper03@gmail.com) 
Christy Mitchell (christymitchell3@gmail.com)

Underhill,
Withyham Road,
Groombridge,
Tunbridge Wells,
Kent,
TN3 9QP 

Mobile .07708697504
Home. 01892864338

Thank you for your help with this matter and we look forward to hearing from you.


Jack Cooper and Christy Mitchell

Change of Plan...Again!

OK, so it's been far too long since I last blogged, and a lot has changed since I last did! So, we're not doing The Overtones. We're now doing Michael Buble's version of Feeling Good. If you're not familiar with the song take a look at the video below.

SONG ANALYSIS AND IDEAS

Jack and I both felt that we could really relate to Michael Buble, as he had a certain charisma to him that we liked. It was also convenient that he was a single artist, so we wouldn't have to run around looking for other people to star as band members in our video, as we would have had to have done if we chose to do a song by The Overtones. 

We also liked the song because of the lyrics. They're very clever lyrics, which we can easily put a video too, as we want to relate to Andrew Goodwin's music video theory, which suggests that the lyrics should link up with the visuals. To avoid going into our filming days not knowing what to do, Jack and I created a mind map of what sort of shots we could take. Take a look at our ideas below to see what ideas we came up with. 

                           

Creating this mind map made it far easier for us to film, as we had ideas in our head of what we wanted to do, which made it far easier than wasting half the day trying to think of ideas when we would be wasting valuable filming time.