Complete Digipak Sequence

New and Final Ancillary text design (Explanation of change)

Firstly due to how we had branded our artist in our video we agreed with our lecturer's view that the way we presented him in our ancillary text didn't match this, so we changed the format of the image by cropping different parts, adding artistic effects and bringing it together in the shape of a cross. We also changed the border of our image as we felt the old one made the image look very unprofessional and with the way we split the image into different sections the glowing white border looks much better.

We also in our magazine advertisement and our digipak changed the font of the name of the artist and the name of the album title to white and grey and had the wording of our advertisement correspond to this. Similar to Jessie J's digipak cover below.We also removed some of the features we had in our old advertisement, such as 'star ratings,' to make it look more minimalistic, and changed the position of certain icons in the image such as the Blackberry Code because we felt in the old picture it looked out of place and everything was in the centre making the image itself look very untidy.

Narrative and Performance

Steve Archer- 2004

"Often music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist's performance. Sometimes the artist will be a part of the story, acting as a narrator and participant at the same time. But its the lip synch close up and the miming of the playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band can really kick it"

We have decided to against these conventions, we'd like to stray from the usual content in music videos and broaden the audiences minds by having a relationship between music and visuals that are not in sync, the visuals do not amplify the lyrics but they illustrate the story we are trying to tell.
 

Construction of new Digipak and advertisment

After gaining feedback from our lecturer who described our old Digipak cover as 'too plain and not what he expected,' due to how different and unconventional we presented our artist in our music video production in comparison to our advertisement, besides claiming it looks as though 'there's too much going on in the image, and looking very unprofessional,' we have decided to change both images completely. 

Editing and cropping parts of the image on Microsoft Powerpoint to transform the image

Changing font and style of text to two ones with two different colours similar to Jessie J's which follows colour code of gold and white

What is the function of a digipak?

A digipak is a package of your CD along with special features included to interest your fans and increase value to your music, the pictures used in the digipak are generally taken for the sole purpose of creating the CD package, this makes these images exclusive to those who are willing to buy it. The reason why people have Digipaks instead of just selling their songs on iTunes is for exposure, having your music on the shelves of the music store exposes you to a huge number of people willing to give you a try. Another reason is to treat the fans, by buying the digipak they can have a physical copy of their favourite artists music so they can keep it for years to come, it may even serve as a memory for the good times they once had listening to an artist. Its a good way of making money and increases the popularity of the artist because of the amount of marketing that goes into selling a digipak.

 

Magazine Advert & Front cover Image

Personal digipak research ( Qualatitive and Quantative)

Digipak advertisement survey analysis pptx

More presentations from marc

Digipak advertisement research from marclevi97

Digipak chosen images

Things to consider whilst constructing our digipak

Themes explored

The main themes that Kilo Kish explores are her conciousness, heartache and art. I took a small part of lyrics from her song 'Goldmines'
"This phone isn't the greatest, well, for writing songs
but a vessel nonetheless for fantasies and shrouded thoughts
And as the light comes in and lays in wait across my wall I gather all I've got and toss the veil once and for all".
This shows that she's a dreamer, she's uses her music for creative energy and thoughts. She's a good artist to take inspiration from, her lyrics are very concious and captivating. Marco's lyrics are similar, he uses a good style of literature to captivate the listeners, his words aren't only meant to be heard but they're there to be taken in, such as 'pretty bird' if you simply listen you may think he is referring to an actual bird but he is in fact talking about a woman.

Kilo Kish

Questionnaire

 

 

 

Questionnaire questions:

 

. Age

 

.Gender

 

. Who is your favourite artist and why?

. What makes an artist stand out to you?

. Do you know what sureealism is? If so give your personal definition of it:

. What is your favourite music video and why?

. What do you like to visually see and experience whilst watching a music video and why?

.What words come in to mind from these pictures of our artist?

 

Magazine research

Fader has become an increasingly popular magazine as it brings artists from social media who are deemed trending. In their conventions of a typical magazine, they have used the artist on the front cover of the page. He dominates the foreground. However, the mise end scene alters the mood that at first sight appears to be. We see Frank Ocean holding a bunch of flowers. In comparison to the environment around him looking unhygienic and unaturalistic, not following the typical conventions of a concrete warehouse. This highlights the artists ideology of going against the stereotypical conventions of a magazine cover.

Record Label Research

Tutor and Audience Feedback

After showing our tutor the latest version of our music video he stated he 'thinks its really come together quite well,' which is partly because of the constructive criticism he gave us at the beginning of our music production, such as changing the cutting of the shots to match the drums and getting rid of shots that just don't compare to our stronger ones process, besides all the new ideas/concepts and changes we came up with throughout the production.

Also some other students we had watch it in college also stated 'you don't know how long it is because there's a lot to watch , in a good way' and 'I like the pace of the editing, its quick enough that you don't get bored of any of the shots,' which are compliments in its self and prove we've constructed a very good and captivating product in the end after all the feedback we've received and changes we've applied to our music video.

Audience Feedback

Positive points:

' I like creative stuff and stuff that's random' 
' It's almost like a male version of Alice In Wonderland'
' Very interesting'
' What I most like is everythings out of place
' I really like the melting clock'

Constructive criticism:
' More effects to make it look more interesting' - Although this is a good idea we have added many effects which she may not have picked up, due to 'looking twice' at other things and she has already stated what we have is extremely interesting and creative so we probably won't be adding any more effects
' The shot of the reflection in the water would have been better close-up rather than far distance'- This shot was very hard to take, especially as we had to ensure the safety of all participants on the shoot hence why it was shot from so far away. Although we would have liked the shot to be a little bit closer and did try to increase the size on Final Cut Pro but the image just became distorted and therefore more difficult to decipher.

test experimentation part 2

Surrealism

Mis En Scene

Branding

Branding is very important in todays music business, in this generation not only is the music that is the product being sold but it is also the artist, they change and remould themselves to become something that record labels can sell to an audience, marketing becomes completely necessary because even if you solely just release good music and you do not brand yourself, even as a niche artist it can lead to a dry career. No matter what the audience, people expect to be sold a persona, something they can identify with and that is why branding can make or break artists in this industry.
One way to successfully brand yourself as an artist is to identify what identity you belong to, make people who have the same identity as yourself your target audience, people crave music they can relate to and they also consume brands that signify themselves.

Another way is to create emotional music, it doesn't necessarily have to be sad but It should invoke a reaction from a member of your target audience and have them feel a certain way, whether it be happy or sad. This can be done by creating meaningful lyrics, intelligent lyrics or even funny lyrics.

You must attach this identity into everything your music connects to, be it the way you play your guitar, how your website looks, your clothes or even your hair. In the music industry everything comes as a package, its not as easy to just 'sell' music anymore, people need to take in your whole essence to admire you, this is why fabricating one that can guarantee you sell is crucial, music is like a business, it constantly evolves and if you are too slow you're out.

Blooper #1

As you can see our actor and editor took his ridiculous costume to heart, hence the slight over exaggeration. Here you see one of the many highs of our media project.

Digipak shoot

Record Label Research

Originally, we chose Def. jam music as our record label but given that we changed our song choice and have decided on an original piece from Marc himself, we explored what kind of genre the song was and what kind of labels cater to this specific genre, after much deliberation it became evident that mainstream labels such as the likes of Def. Jam are not a good fit for our music because our audience is niche, our goal to introduce people to surrealism will not go down well with a mainstream audience, we realised this because of our target audience research, many people within the age bracket of our target audience have said that they do not know what surrealism is and they also have not heard about some of the artwork we made reference to in our video, we took this information and searched for another label, a label that can correctly advocate our goal of introducing people to a stranger world and opening their eyes to different possibilities. By giving our audience a taste of surrealism their capacity to take in something fresh and new expands, this allows us to have creative freedom. Tough luck records is an independent label that specialises in alternative music. From Newcastle to London via the midlands comes a label formed by three friends (Chris Q, REbEL and Twon) with a clear ethos. Tough, Raw, Industrial sounds, “Tough Luck Records” is a project born from passion and musical addiction.

 

This label use social media to promote their artists, they constantly involve their supporters in movements and hash tag trends, as a small time label this is form of cross media a fantastic and cheap way to mass promote your acts, on their website they display the synergy between music and art, which is exactly what our group is currently doing. This is why "tough luck records" is the perfect label for us.

Chosen and Final Text (Explanation)

    

We chose to go with the font of Times New Roman and get rid off any 'fancy writing' with added effects on it because after experimenting with this and beginning to gain audience feedback on the fonts we initially felt matched our chosen genre of surrealism we decided to not even have the font follow the theme of surrealism as its not entirely necessary. We instead chose the simplistic font of Times New Roman and just added a cross dissolve to the text as this is actually what many videos which use text tend to do, rather than add text which has a fancy transition on screen and doesn't look very simplistic.

Moodboard of shots

Record label research

Interview On Wonderland

Shooting The Digipak

Digipak shoot

Before beginning our shoot for our Digipak with numerous surreal props (some of which we did and didn't use in our music video), we recieved a talk from a media professional in college who gave us some advice as to what is the best way to shoot our items within the lighted box, the different backgrounds we could use, and how to get our still images and photographs to come out really sharp and detailed.

                               

Audience feedback on text/font in music video

We had a media professional look at both texts we are contemplating adding to the beginning of our music video and he stated one 'fits in better'' but the other is ' harder to read.' So we may have to try and find a much more simplistic text font to add in, or just leave the idea of the text appearing in the first shot of our music video and have all text appear before it. 

Another audience feedback on the other hand said she likes the other one as its 'very weird' and she 'likes the idea of it', but when viewing our other choice of text said it seems too 'posh and aggressive' too her. However, 'weird' is not how we want our artist to be viewed and in comparison to the media professional who saw our whole music video before our text so he can understand how we've already branded our artist, we decided to show her text before the music video so maybe her feedback isn't as reliable. 

                                   

Conceptual Digipak's

Definition and importance of a Digipak

More presentations from Marc

Development Of Ideas and Concepts Up To Now

Effects scrapped

Me Myself and I (Yung Bush)

The constant filter effects were at first, appealing to the eye and this particular music video was believed to be a key influence in making the editing a strong contribution in the our overall production. The ideas that were presented were rich throughout the video. However, I decided to opt away from these particular effects as although the effects were appealing to the eye and appearing to disorientate the audience, which would work well for our genre of surrealism, we thought that it would not flow well with the rhythm and the style in which the artist is being presented. Furthermore, we decided to follow Andrew Goodwin's convention of “there is a relationship between the music and the visuals.” The effects shown above completely go against this theory, hence why they were not used in our music video.

Acclaiming over 40 million album sales worldwide Michael Jacksons thriller is the most successful album of all time. His high quality music was of course a key factor leading to its success. However the albums digipak appeal played a vital part in its own way. The basic medium shot of the artist himself in simple plain black and white is simply constructed but yet is highly sophisticated. The white may portray purity of the artists music and the black background plays a complimentary role in emphasizing the white costume. To add further, the artists stylistic choice of gold text in italic handwriting font, strikes the audience emphasizing the text, potentially leading to the audience to focus on the household name.

What we decided would not be appropriate

The combination of the above images were deemed to be "too weird, funny, or completely inappropriate", by our group and as a result, although initially seeming like potential ideas, we decided to not proceed with these costumes in our music video as they would not be as effective in portraying our chosen theme of surrealism.

Frank Ocean Digipak (Alternative Soul artist)

Sam Smith Digipak (Soul artist)

Deadline timeline

Bird nest burning (Cut shot)

We decided not to use this shot which we were going to use at the end when I sing 'pretty bird' because once again it is too dark even after trying to brighten the contrast on Final Cut Pro, and the lighter we was using to light up the nest is also in the shot, so we just don't feel it's one of our stronger shots. Despite being able to crop out the lighter in Final Cut Pro by zooming into the image which tended to just bring down the quality of the shot.

Digipak experimentation

Whilst being introduced to the programmer Adobe Illustrator to potentially develop a digipack, I experimented various covers and eventually developed this cover. However, I did not feel that this was particularly satisfactory, in relation to our chosen genre and theme of our music video. This is as firstly, the video does not contain a modern theme, it is a instead,a surreal theme. So for this reason such a digipak would not be suitable for our artist Marco Levi as it would not demonstrate a surrealist theme and conventions needed by the artist. Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that the digipak cover shown below was not adequate. However, we gained some knowledge of how an improved version would look like. We came to the conclusion that as the video had a persistent outdoor natural setting, the use of earthy, natural colours would be suitable hence in this aspect the colour selection in the trial digipak worked. On the contrary, other aspects such as the modern font were not so successful.

Why we make reference to Alice in Wonderland

Alice in wonderland

Alice in wonderland is about a young girl who discovers a magical world full of mysterious beings, she meets the weird and wonderful people of wonderland, although our video is not based on a young girl and its also not based in wonderland, we decided to create a similar sensation and incorporate strangeness into the real world, this links to surrealism, which is our main theme. Surrealism is all about implementing eccentricity into the real world, our goal is to achieve the same sensation for our viewers and listeners . We do this by using unusual props and putting them in odd places, for example, having marc outside sipping tea (reference to Alice in wonderland tea party) with a mannequin seated next to him, unlike a real tea party, one of our guests are inanimate, this is a direct reference to Alice in wonderland as well as surrealism.         

                

Jump cuts

Jump cuts are a common editing
technique used in music videos
for various different reasons such as; to show the quick passing of time or to speed up the sequence of shots.

In the short clip on the right hand side taken from Beyonce's 'Freakum Dress' music video, jump cuts are used in an extremely creative way to allow; the choreography she's doing in different clothing to look continuous whilst changing her costume, and the dancers in the background to also change their costumes and  positions as Beyonce changes her, but again it looks sharp, clean and effective due to the jump cut's used to allow her to achieve this in her music video.

               
                                                                                                                                                                 

We tried to use jump cut's to show the quick passing of time I've been looking for our female actor after she's disappeared in the shot before and have me moving closer and further away in each shot doing different gestures to reinforce the quick passing of time, but decided the quality of the shots just weren't strong enough besides a car and shed being in the Mise En Scene which would have distracted our audience from the real purpose of the shot and may even have attracted criticism as it would take away from the concept of surrealism by looking so modern and realistic.

                 

Frank Ocean- Promotion

Surreal shots we shot/used in our music video

 View this Pinterest Board at: http://uk.pinterest.com/marcolevicd/surreal-shots-we-shotused-in-our-music-video/

Word Insertion ( Coldplay Influence)

                 Music Video for Coldplay's 'Magic' 2014


                              

After watching the first 20 seconds of Coldplay's music video for Magic I thought instead of having to re-shoot the Tv snow shot to fill in the gap we have at the start of the video which is running the sequence of shots at the start of our music video when when we watch it back. I thought we could use words to fill in the gaps instead, stating first who the music video was directed by (Hud Ahmed), then who the music video was shot by (Valentino Memaj) and lastly the song title and our artist (Wonderland- Marco Levi.)

However, due to the fast editing of our shots at the beginning of our video and the continuous sequence (from the time the mannequin moves to face me and I approach the sofa to sit down and watch the television ) the words will have to not be on the screen for more than a few seconds so adding special effects and transitions to the words once we insert them similar to that of the words in the 'Magic' music video may not work,as the blank word shots may not be on screen long enough for a transition or special effect on the words to be necessary, but we will try it out to see before we come to a decision.

Collage of intially researched surreal images (not used)

These images are perfect examples of surrealism, however we did not end up using these because although they didn't have to necessarily relate to our video and Alice in wonderland theme, it proved to be difficult to execute and replicate these images because we lack the expertise needed as well as the materials it wasn't necessary so we eliminated them, it was also very time consuming in attempting to recreate these pictures and we realized we could over schedule if we had dwelled on creating the perfect shot, however we did make substitutes for a few of these images and used them for our own creative shots that we fabricated ourselves, for example we did not recreate the bird cage image however we did use a bird cage and we left it on a tree for Marco to find, this bird cage is linked to Alice in wonderland, Alice constantly sees distracting items during her stay in wonderland which side tracked her goals of going home, our Marco's goal is to find a girl in a red dress, during his search he finds the bird cage which keeps him occupied. This means he is left in questioning where she is further, the lack of conclusion keeps him wondering and the mystery doesn't end.

Collage of initial researched Surreal images (Not used)