Digipaks

A Digipack is a type of packaging used with Cd's. They are usually used with special editions songs or albums. A lot of artists use them in order to attract the audience to buy it, and listen to there music/song. In current times digipak's are very popular and are used a lot by artists and bands.

This is Rihanna's Digipack. Rihanna is seen as quite a powerful and bold singer, and so to show this in her digipak, they have chosen a powerful image. The image is a picture of her and it is very big and focuses on her completely. They have used bold colours such as red with her hair to show her power in the music industry, which expresses why you should buy it. It is also unique and noticeable and so could be used as a trademark, and the digipacks could be used to show, and can be used every time she releases one. The insert of the album shows her lying on a bed of roses which could attract woman because it could be saying how it is a little bit girly and not just focusing on the male market. Where as we don't get this from the front, i get the idea that she is trying to attract men. The disk is plain, but has a tint of red, this is to make it the same as the whole of the digipack, and follow the trend of using the red as the trademark.

 















This is the digipak for maroon 5. This is different to Rihanna's above, but still have the same aim.  Whilst Rihanna had one key colour used throughout the whole of the front, this one is different. They have used a number of different colours and the reason why they might have used this is because they want to make it as eye catching as possible, and having a lot of colours is one way to do this. The front cover seems to be loads of little pictures placed in the same, and when you look at it the first thing you see is a face. I think the main purpose and the only purpose of the front cover is to catch the eye of the audience, because on the shelf they will be next to other digipak's and Maroon 5 will want theirs to be the first they see.
In terms of the back, they have used the main colour. This could be because they want it to match the front, and have the main colour their as the main colour as the back. I think this might be because whenever the customer thinks of the colour purple they will want them to think of maroon 5.
I don't think this is as good as Rihanna's digipak because i don't think it is as powerful and doesn't make you want to buy it. Rihanna's attracted you through the picture and you instantly knew who it was, where as Maroon 5's was through colour and unless you looked at the name at the top you might not instantly known who it was.

This is Lady Gaga's digipak for her album The Fame Monster. The primary colours for this is black and white. The reason for this might be because it is what best describes her personality, in the fact that she is quite different to other similar artists. However this is quite good because all though they are quite dark, they would stand out against others on a shelf. I think this because their is a lot of the main colour, and it is a colour other artists or bands might not use, and so because of this is will be easier to see on the shelf. The image at the front shows her to be different, through things like hairstyle and the fact that she is covering her face. The fact that the background is herself is telling the audience that the digipak is about her and her music more than anything else. She has used two pictures of herself, and so is telling the audience to buy it to find out who she is and what she is all about.

This is Pixie Lott's Digipak. She is a female pop singer and so because of this we can use this as some reliable feedback. The first thing you notice about the digipak is the use of colour. The colours are quite bright and quite summery. The reason for this might be because of the fact that the songs she released came out in the summer or the fact that the digipak came out in the summer. Within this digipak there are alot of medium shots of the singer. They show her face and the top half of their body usually. You can tell they have also tried to make it eye catching through the use of the loacation. They have used a field in the middle of the countryside. This is quite summery and on the back page of the digipak they have made sure that the sunset is the most eye catching thing. In terms of the text in the front cover it is quite large. The reason for this would be to make it eye catrching for the audience and to let them know who it is about. You want this to be one of the first things the audience sees, because of they know who they are already then they might be tempted to by it. They have also made it look quit girly. This might be because of the fact that the singer is a girl but also because of the fact that that is what the songs represent or sound like. Using pink and the font colour and using the sunset as the background and the fact that they have used pictures like she is a model makes it some across as quite girly and if that is what they wanted to achieve then they have done it well.

Weekend filming 24th November

Before
We are starting to now film for our final draft. Some of the shots that we used for our first draft we will be using for our final draft. These will be the shots that we think were best and that we can use for our final draft. In terms of what we are filming this weekend we will be filming the chorus bit (bit we are yet to film). We know what we are going to film as we are going to follow our storyboard. If we follow it well enough then it should be quick and the shots should be good enough to use.

After
We have managed to film all of what we want in order to complete our final draft. We are going to edit it over the course of this week and anything with we need to re shoot we will do next weekend and then hopefully after that we are done. We also managed to get some pictures which we could for our poster and digipak. With the filming we managed to not only do the improvements that we said we wanted to do from our first draft, but we also managed to film the chorus parts to our song. We were unable to do this with our first draft because of the weather. However we were able to do it on this weekend, and we managed to get a range of shots we can use for out final piece. When it came to the re-filming parts we had to make sure we cut out all of the mistakes that we made in the first draft. We think we managed to do that quite well and we even managed to film some new footage which we can put in for our final piece. One thing i noticed before we started filming is the fact that, during the beginning when the character is in bed, in the draft the lighting was quite bright, and i thought that that is quite un-realistic because it is more likely going to be dark due to the fact that the blinds will be closed. So we filmed that part with the blinds partly closed.  

We also did the pictures for the digipak and the poster. We had a problem in the fact that the camera we were originally going to use we unfortunately couldn't as one of the family members had taken i away with them. However the video camera that we were using also had the option to take pictures. So we gave this ago and spent about half and hour taking pictures in the hope that they would look good. We took all of the pictures outside. The reason for this is because of the the lighting. We were unable to take any inside simply because it was too dark and the quality of the images didn't seem very good. We had a target theme. We wanted to get the message across that on his lazy day he just wanted to listen or play music, and so a majority of the pictures that we chose are of the character (singer) and his guitar (a key instrument on the song). We also wanted to get the message across that music is the singers life, so whenever he goes on an adventure he will take music with him (guitar). It was hard to get the idea of being lazy across. Me and my partner both thought that if we use a picture of the character being lazy then it wont be very appealing. Although it is the title of the song the whole point of the poster and the digipak is to be eye catching and to attract the main audience to come and watch it. So that is why we thought doing pictures outside would be better, because of the fact that you have a larger variety of shots that you can use.

What we need to improve

http://www.youtube.com/v/86NMqFwsH6g?autohide=1&version=3&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=7yNmOz-5pXSLaqV0FQFQLg&autohide=1&feature=share&autoplay=1


Having done our first draft we have noticed a lot of mistakes and areas where we can improve, as well as what we have done well and what we have done badly.

The first area where we can improve is right at the start when we turn off the alarm. We do a close up shot of the alarm and knock it off the table when it comes off, but in the next shot the alarm is back on the table. This takes the point of the guy being angry that his alarm is going off and that he chucks it on the floor to make no sense. One minute it has been chucked on the floor and the next it is back on the table. When we come to film this bit for our final piece we have to make sure that things are exacly how we left it. If we move something in the shot then we have to make sure we dont move.it back untill we are done.

There is also the problem of the all the different clocks within the music video showing different times. This can make it seem un realistic but what was worse was the fact that one shot the time could be 15:00, and then a few shots later it will be midday. So we need to make sure that if we do have a shot when a clock is within the shot, then we have to make sure we either change the times so that they go in order, or we try and get rid of any shots of a clock within the shots. The only times I want the time or the clock to be shows is during the alarm clock shot and when we are filming the lyrics on the phone.   

The next thing we need to improve is how long some of the shots are. In order to keep the attention of the audience, each shot has to be short and quick, and the problem we had was that ours was quite long and so we are risking the fact that we might be losing their attention. We want each shot to match what is said within the lyrics which is what we did in our first draft however we only showed one clip and so that clip was quite long. Some shots need to be quite long because of the fact that we are trying to act out what the lyrics are saying, but for our chorus part we can add multiple shots.

There are some shots which we have done which sometimes don't make a lot of sense. For example near the beginning of the filming we have a clip where our actor is sitting on the sofa watching TV. During one shot he is in his normal clothes, and then the next he is sitting in a onesie on a different part of the sofa. I think in order to do this we need to add something to help the audience understand the reason why they changed. We could add something like the singer clicking his fingers to show that there is a change about to happen.

Another thing we need to improve is what the singer is wearing. This is mainly mise-en-scene. One big mistake we made was the fact that at the start of the first draft the singer when he gets out of bed is wearing normal clothes. He isn't wearing what someone of our target audience would wear if they went to bed. Whats worse is the fact that the stuff that he wears when getting out of bed is what he wears for the rest of the video. This doesn't make it seem very realistic and it doesn't show a good use of miss-en-scene. For the real thing we need to make sure that the costume is different during this part.

We know what we need to do when it comes to filming the chorus. If we follow our story board then we shouldn't have to many problems. We will be making some changes and add some clips to our film in order to have a variety of shots. The shots in our first draft i think we will try and keep as there is a lot to already film in a short space of time. Having watched and edited our first draft we know what we need to improve, and how we can do it.