Magazine Advert Research and Planning

Whilst working on the digipak, we began to plan the magazine advertisement that was the remaining ancillary task. It is important to link all three of our products so by planning the digipak and advert together we could achieve this. First we looked at some current adverts found in some music magazines. We chose to look at the magazines that featured in Q magazine and how these were laid out following the post about our target audience, which you can see here.

 After looking at these adverts, I began to plan what our magazine advert could look like after taking inspiration from these adverts and narrowing down the images I could use. Based on some of the pictures from our recording and the digipak ideas, I came up with these ideas:

The majority of magazine advertisements are simple and are designed to draw attention to key things such as who the album artist is, when it will be released and the reviews of the album. They commonly feature a large image of either the band or singer to establish their identity. The advert for the album by Elton John and Leon Russell is an example of the simple layout and colour scheme used in adverts and I have circled parts of the image that will need to be included on our advert.

For my first idea, I thought about using a similar colour scheme to this advert and a similar layout, with an image of the band in the centre and the information above and below this. The key things in the image are written in the largest font.

For the second idea I took more ideas from the Bob Dylan advert as this featured an image of a single person like I was using. I thought this idea could work if I similarly featured a picture of the album on the advert, as this would establish the band as a whole despite the lead singer being the only one to feature on the advert. I used a similar structure to this advert when designing my own and also highlighted some other features of the advert I could include.

The aspects that also need to be included are the website name so that people interested can go to the band's website and the HMV logo which can show where to buy the album from. 

For both our digipak and advert, we needed the logo's of the companies associated with One Republic to feature on the products. After some research, we found that One Republic's record labels were Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records, both of which are owned by Universal Music Group. We found the logo's of these and featured them on our advert and digipak.

One Republic - Digipak Logo's and Styles

Elliot began looking at the existing One Republic digipaks and whether they had any similarities. Each of the albums have a different font used on the front covers, as you can see from the image on the left. The albums also do not display a band logo allowing us a freedom when designing our own digipak. Despite this, there are many similarities between the fonts, as they all use black, white and browns as a distinct colour scheme. The fonts are all formal which reflects the band as a whole, as throughout their music videos they are seen wearing formal clothing. This style further promotes the band's image. In some cases, the same fonts are used for both the name of the band and the album title, but the difference is indicated by a change of colour.

The album artwork is generally abstract as you can see in the image on the right. 'Waking Up' uses paint splatters as an album artwork, and 'Dreaming Out Loud' uses a silhouette of a tree on a blue starry background. This album cover is the only one that appears to have some relevance to the title of the album, as dreaming is commonly associated with stars and night.

'Apologize' is one album cover that shows the band as a whole, where you can see they are dressed formally and the structure of the image gives an indication of the members of the band. The lead singer is presented at the front, and the remaining band members are situated behind him, showing his importance and role in the band. If we use an image of our band as a whole we would need to pay attention to how we set up the image like this.

Digipak Research - Alternative Rock Genre

I began some research into the general conventions of digipaks in the alternative rock genre and found some patterns in the way album covers are presented. If the album covers show the band, they usually depict the lead singer at the front of the image. The rest of the band members are behind the lead singer in a photo. The lead singer appears as the front face of the band and is often the most recognised member of the band, so putting them at the forefront of the photo makes the band more recognisable.

From the image of the Stereophonics album cover and the Razorlight cover you can see that both lead singers are at the front of the band members and both are looking out of the image at you. The other band members are looking away or appear less engaged with the viewer. This highlights importance of the lead singer and also allows people to understand the roles of the people in the picture without necessarily knowing who is who.

However I found with the majority of alternative rock digipaks that they often display abstract art or computer generated images. We had already found that the majority of One Republic's album covers feature art rather than an image of the band and this research showed that this was common for the whole genre. The image on the right is an example of the different kinds of album art within the genre, with many posing no specific relevance the title of the album or the name of the band.

Rough Cut Feedback

Once our rough cut was finished, the rest of the class watched the video and wrote feedback on areas that were good and areas that needed improvement. Many people agreed that the shots and angles used for the instruments were good and drums were synced to the music the best. The video flows quite well as a whole however there are a few improvements that need to be made and the class did pick up on these.

• To begin, many people said that the lighting was varied throughout the video and this needs to be corrected. The problems we had were that our own lighting was not powerful enough for some shots of the singer and also the light coming through the window was sometimes too bright, obscuring the rest of the shot. Hopefully when we next film the natural lighting will be slightly less, if not we will have to edit the contrast of our shots.

• Our classmates said that we need more shots of the singer looking into the camera as this will create a better connection with the audience. This will be easy to correct and we can refilm the majority of the singer shots.

• It was also suggested that we refilm the opening as it is a bit jolty and we decided this was a good idea because there was a bigger and more interesting stained glass window in the church. 

• Something that many people thought was a problem was the shots of the cello strings. The bow seems to be moving too slow over the strings however the cellist is playing the right tune. Our teacher suggested more shots of the fingers of the cellist and violinist to accompany the close up shots of the strings because this will show the audience the right tune is being played. 

• In some areas we also need to edit the syncing in time with the music.

After the feedback, we are pleased with the result of our rough cut but now know some more aspects we can improve on the easily make our video better. We are refilming in the church again on the 5th of February were we will:

1. Re film the opening using the bigger stained glass window and less jolting

2. Re film singer shots we liked from the rough cut with better lighting

3. Film more shots of singer looking at camera

4. Film a close up of lips with the line ‘all my secrets away’

5. Film more varied shots of strings and fingers

6. Create more energy in chorus

7. Film faster cello shots so they look correct to the audience

Conventions of Rock/Alternative Music Videos

For my music video, I am looking at the Rock/Alternative genre. The music itself can be interpreted in many ways as well as being easy to recreate in a performance video because of the instruments used to make the music.

Generally, in Rock/Alternative music videos, there are many shots of the band or artist, along with their instruments. The visuals typically illustrate the music, whereby the band are seen playing the instruments we can hear.

The range of shots used in a video include close ups of the vocalist, close ups of the instruments being played, long shots of the whole band, panning shots, whip-pans, high angle shots, and hand-held shots. There is a strong focus on instruments in this genre of music video, unlike pop videos which concentrate more the artist themselves. In some videos, there can be cuts between performance and narrative. The narrative generally plays upon a small part of the lyrics or just one line, and in many cases the links between lyrics and narrative visuals are unclear. Some visuals are intertextual references or metaphorical links to the lyrics. Camera movement can be frantic or slow, depending on the music. Slow motion and distortion effects can also be used.

Cuts and edits relate to the beats and instruments played in the music video, there are usually successions of quick shots during the song. This can change at the bridge of the song, but then editing will change with the pace of the music. It is unlikely that you will find a song with shots lasting longer than five seconds. The drums are a key instrument to drive the pace of the editing.

Many videos are filmed on a stage, rehearsal area, outdoors or in a small room. Low key lighting is used to reflect the genre of music and mood, and the scene will be based around the band and their instruments. What the artist is wearing depends on the song and whether it is a performance or narrative, with slower songs tending to depict more formally dressed characters.