Evaluation

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Advert: Final

A final of my advert!

Digipack: Final

A final of my digipak!

Digipack final: Editing images, step by step

This is a second image I edited for my digipack, after deciding that I will use the artist on the cover. I opened the image in Photoshop. I used the ‘crop’ tool to get rid of any ‘dead’ and unnecessary space.

Next I adjusted the brightness (to +17) and contrast (to +12) as the image was quite dark.

Then, using the ‘spot healing brush’ tool I zoomed in on the image and got rid of any blemishes and spots.

I used the ‘colour replacement’ tool on the eyes of the actress. This helped to deepen the colour of her eyes, making them really stand out and thus captivate the audience.

I then adjusted the brightness (to +41) and contrast (to -29) further, to make the image even brighter.

However, after adjusting the brightness and contrast, the image turned a bit yellow. Using the hue, saturation and lightness helped me get rid of that as I adjusted them to: Hue +2

Saturation-4

Lightness -2


Once again, here is a quick and simple step-by-step of how I achieved my final effect on the image that I've used in my digipak.

Music video: Final feedback

Here is the final feedback to our final music video from our focus group.

Music video: My contribution

Here's a vlog of my contribution to the overall music video.

Music video: Final video

This is our final music video. Woop woop ! Finally, it is finished and we no longer have to worry about it! I must say, it has been a lot of hard work, time, commitment and dedication, however, looking at the final product makes me realise that it was all worth it, every second. I LOVE it!

Advert: First draft

This is a first draft of my magazine advert.

Advert: Editing images, step-by-step

After opening the image in Photoshop, I cropped and rotated the image to straighten it out.

I decided to crop the image further after readjusting and strengthening it out.

I made an adjustment to brightness as the image was a bit dark.

I edited the 'colour balance' to add a hint of blue to it.

I zoomed in and used the 'spot healing' tool to remove blemishes, freckles and spots and make the image look flawless. 

Lastly, I adjusted the colour of the eyes to make them brighter and stand out more.

I did this by using the 'colour replacement tool' and using the colour grid to make them more blue.

Advert: Drawn up draft of advert

Here is an image of the first draft that I drew up of my advert. Although my drawing skills are not very good, I hope to create something along these lines for my final advert.

Digipak: Evaluation of first draft

 The first draft on my digipak follows many of the conventions I researched: name of artist on the front cover, an image. On the back: the songs, about the record company, a bar code and an image.

However, it is also missing things like the name of the album.

I plan to change my digipak by adding the name of the album, adding the name of the artist and title on the spine and I am considering to add a picture of the actual artist as I think this is important in order for the audience to be able to engage with the artist.

Digipak: First Draft

Here is a first draft of what my digipak will look like.

Digipak: Template for digipack

An image of a template for a digipak. I will need this when creating my digipak so that I know how to lay it out correctly.

Digipak: Editing images, step-by-step

After selecting the images I wanted to use on the front cover of my digipack, I had to edit them out. Here is proof of my step-by-step editing, which images and a brief explanation of what I did to create the final effect.

At first I opened the image in Photoshop and went to 'image', 'mode' and selected 'CYK'.

I then went to 'channels', un-selected the yellow and black channel to receive the effect as seen above.

Next, I went to 'adjustments', selected the brightness and changed it to 165.

After, I went to 'photo filter' and adjusted it until I liked the effect, I ended up keeping it at 35%.

To adjust the contrast, I selected 'brightness and contrast' and changed contrast to 12%.

I then amended the following:

Hue -7

Saturation +11

Lightness +4

At the very end, I used the crop tool to crop and readjust the grid (positioning) of the image to make it straighter. I saved the final image and plan to use it on my front cover of the digipack.

This is proof of editing and also a step-by-step guide of how I reached my final images.

Logo: Chosen title/ logo and album name

The reason I have chosen these specific fonts is because I find that they are not only bold and sharp, but they are also quite feminine. They have some letters which are quite pointy and I believe that these link to the spikes on the shoes of the female protagonist – which links to her star image representation on being dominant and sharp. Also, the font is in upper case which too is effective as it really stands out and captures the eye. Furthermore, it’s quite simple which is maintained throughout all the products I have created for my coursework, not  over complicated but quite plain, appealing to the eye.

Digipack: Initial idea

This is an image of my drawn up initial idea for my digipak. Although my art skills aren't the greatest, I have tried my best to draw a rough idea of how I imagine my digipak to look.

Digipak: Photo's for digipack

Here is a collage of some of the pictures we have taken for the digiapak. I have sorted through the hundreds of pictures that we took and selected only the best ones, from which I shall select one for the front cover of my digipack.
I have decided to use shoes on my digipack as it is a motif of our artist and goes well with the strong representation of our female protagonist. Furthermore, the shoes are red and have spikes which connotes the strength and passion that are artist also displays, they are thus a great representation of the artist as they show her star image.

Digipak: Moodboard

Here, the use of a moodboard helped to piece all of my ideas together and decide on the kind of shots and pictures my partner and I will take when taking pictures for both the advert and digipak. I found this very helpful as we could just open and view the file when taking the pictures, which saved us time as the actress knew how to pose and the photographer knew what sort of shots to capture.

Music video: How to imporve

Music video: Response to first draft

A video response to the first draft of our music video. We gathered a group of four suitable candidates, all sharing a common interest in electronic dance music. Their feedback was really helpful when thinking and creating the final product.

Questions for audience feedback first draft

1.     On the scale form 1-10, how professional do you think the music video it? (one being not and ten being very professional)

2.     Do you think the story line goes with the electronic dance genre

3.     How do you think our female artists is represented in the music video?

4.     One thing that you liked the most

5.     One thing that you like the least

6.     Do you think using Adrew Goodwins theory was  a good idea


Here is just a quick idea of some of the questions my partner and I would like to pose to our audience for feedback on our first draft of the music video.

Advert: Analysis of magazine advert

Slide-share is a great way of presenting the PowerPoint I have created for the analysis of magazine adverts.

Advert: Conventions of album adverts

Here are the conventions of album adverts in magazines. These will help me when creating my own advert so that I know what to include.

Digipak: Logo analysis

I have selected four logos of Dance and Electronic dance music genre artists.

There is a clear link between these logos as three out of four of them are in black, the last in white. All of them also have the use of black and white as the main colour; this shows that these colours must be a convention of this specific music genre. This is probably done due to the fact that Dance and Electronic music is often aimed at an older audience who aren’t necessarily attracted to lots of colourful colours. It also helps to broaden the audience as both black and white are colours almost all ages find attractive, apart from a really young audience, which this music is not aimed at.

All these logos use upper case letters; this thus must also be a convention of this genre. I find this is because it stands out, yet it’s quite plain and not over exaggerated.

The use of pixelated font, used by Icona Pop is quite interesting as it relates to computers and electronic – giving the Electronic music feel.

Similarly, Avicii’s logo looks like it’s lighting up, giving the same electronic feel, again, relating to the music genre.

Both Katy B and Rudimental use very plain, yet bold logos, big black letters against a white background allow their names to stand out and attract the attention just to their names. There are no distractions, unlike Avicii’s logo, although simple, it has a greater range of colour which makes it interesting and different, however can take the attention off of the name of the artist.


In Today's lesson we looked at different logos. I selected ones that I felt would be most suitable for our genre of music and analysed them just to get a further idea of logos and how to create my own.

Music Video: First Draft of Music Video

A copy of our first draft of the music video. Even though it's not finished and there are still gaps, I am glad we are already at this stage, most of the video is now done. Hopefully we can get some feedback and make changes to it, to make it even better!

Digipak: Planning

Today I've been thinking about my digipack and how I'd like it to look, what sort of images and colours I'd like to use, but most importantly, what I'd like on the front cover.
I came up with many ideas after carrying out some research. I learned that many of the big stars i.e. Beyoncé or Lady Gaga very often use themselves. This was obviously not a surprise as they are solo artists and they want to promote themselves on their album. After seeing this, I thought that I too was going to use the main artist on my digipack, as that seemed to be a convention of CD covers.

However, when looking into Electronic dance music, I realised that this wasn't the case. More than often, the images do not contain people. For my digipak, I would like to challenge the idea of using the artist on the front cover, and focus of using one of the main motifs in the music video: red high heels. I think this would work really well as the motif will link to my music video, but also, it will be different than the typical CD covers and thus challenge these conventions.

Digipak: Analysis of Icona Pop

Digipak: Analysis of Icona Pop from itchorzewska

Here is an analysis of Icona Pop's digipak for their album 'This is'.

Digipak: Analysis of Lady Gaga

Digipak analysis - Lady Gaga from itchorzewska

Here is an analysis of Lady Gaga's digipak for her album 'The Fame'.

Strengths & weaknesses of filming and photoshoot

Here is a video blog of some of the strengths and weaknesses we faced during filming.

Music video: Images for music video & digipak

Here is a GIF of some of the images we took before re-filming on Friday. We plan to use these for the music video & for the digipak, as well as the advert. Awesome, right? :)

Digipak: Female artists research

·         More mainstream female artwork takes on conventions of pop star artwork e.g. Lady Gaga

·         Convention includes large logo of artist names, particularly more pop artists aiming at a wide or young audience

·         There must be a clear correlation across the range of products – representation much be consistent. Cheryl Cole fails here as her CD cover does not link in any way to the videos for the songs – this is confusing for the audience

·         Audience of Taylor Swift is young females and the CD represents her as being young pop rock, care free, natural, unthreatening, non-sexual – this links to the songs and video representations.

·         Audience for Lana Del Rey is more mature, female audience and the CD represents her as moody, low angle shot suggests she is dominating, stern expression, contradicts the background high key natural lighting and blue skies. This suggests that her music is going to be melancholic and different from other pop stars.

·         Black and White used for more serious female pop stars, reflects them as song writers, and is shown in their videos

·         More indie pop stars such as Kate Nash use more artistic covers, collages, use of props

We also covered digipaks, looking specifically at female artists and their representation.

Digipak: Dance music research

• Chromeo – niche audience, alternative males, 'geeky'
• Abstract artwork especially for male DJs and artists
• More mainstream dance music features more modern artwork
• Covers relate to the music videos e.g. Rudimental graffiti wall links to the videos being set in urban areas and narratives relating to typical stories such as bike accidents
• Another example is Simian Mobile Disco which use abstract and retro art on the cover, relates to the videos using 80s inspired graphics
• Male covers and videos do not tend to show the artist
• Female covers and video DO show the artist
• More mainstream is more modern
• Underground/alternative is more retro and electronic
• Female artists represented on the cover in long shots revealing their bodies to attract male audience (Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey)
• Females are attracted to these covers as well as they heavily represent forward fashion/retro styles. Also women are attracted to the representation of women, like to interact – men more attracted to abstract artwork

In today's lesson we covered digipaks -specifically of the dance music genre.

Music video: Take two - re-filming

Filming take two - schedule

Finger close up “come” “spin”

Tight close up – whole song

Just lips – whole song

Long shot – all angles

Close up – whole song

Close up - walking in shoes

Close up – mid shot of walking and singing lady gaga glory + backwards

Time to disappear – Nicole

Low angle of ‘all my crazy girls get up on your feet’

Close up of the dress & spinning around

Dancing about

Tilt up of body

Messing about with Vlad

-         standing back to him, him playing with my hair

-         singing in his ear

-         close up of hand on him

-         behind a shoulder shot smile

-         him sitting on a chair, Irmina sitting on him

-         sing into his face

We have decided to re-film as we were missing some clips. Here is a list of things we need to film in order to (hopefully) complete the video.

So excited for filming! :)

Here is a schedule we have created for re-filming. These are the clips that we have realised we need and are missing. You can also see an image of our drama pod and our equipment (not yet set up).

Music video: Emailing & booking the drama pod & actors - re-filming

Here are screen-shoots of organising the actors and booking the drama pod for re-filming. Hopefully this one won't be as long as the previous one!