Tuesday 28 October 2014

Testshots and Photoshop


Using our first test shot image we decided to try different effects on photoshop which would be more niche. We looked into using a 'pop art' themed front cover. Liam was not as keen on this idea so as we have to come up with different Digipaks I think I may try and develop this idea myself. The only thing I am not keen about in these images is that the logo is also been changed colour although that could easy be fixed on Photoshop. I love the posterised effect to these images and how using a black wall in the original image has made the background turn to a bold black colour when using filters.

When taking another shoot I most definitely will play around with colour again but in another style. After this shoot I will begin to start using people which will be included in our music video so the Digipak and the music video are corresponding. I am excited to continue using Photoshop and developing new ideas with it as the Digipak has a lot of different potential ideas which could be developed with the genre we are doing. 

Friday 24 October 2014

Band Profile



I used Photoshop to create a band profile using the likes, dislikes and a small brief and history of the band that me and Liam created in lesson. I added these notes onto the profile as I feel like they are essential to portray the band's attitude. I also added images at the bottom which are relevant to the band's influence. I added locations such as a pub, inside venue and a festival. I also added band influences of the Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines. Stereotypes to the indie rock audience have also been added, the outfit and style of the man and the use of vinyl.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Production Log #1

23/10/2014 - Testshots

On Thursday me and Liam decided to get some test shots for the digipak and poster before breaking up for half term. We decided to do this because we needed black rooms/space which we thought would be difficult to find outside of school as in school we have drama production rooms and gallery rooms. We decided to go for a theme of a black background behind someone due to the influence of other indie rock bands. One example of this being done is an Arctic Monkeys cover and another album which a similar idea to it is a Kings Of Leon album cover.

We used a studio light to shine upon our band member's face, which for this testshot was Liam himself. When turning on the light we realised it was too bright for the image we was going for so out of black card we created a cover for it with a slit in the middle. The middle slit was aimed to go onto the eyes and less on other facial features. This idea unfortunately did not work but it was a good experience to try and create someone like this for future preparations.

We successfully got an image that we both liked. We took this into Photoshop and added lighting and filters onto it. I think playing around with different effects at this stage was helpful to create an idea for what we both want for our digipaks.



These are the two album cover ideas we both ended up with. The first has the lightening enhanced on it. This edit of our image reminds me of the Arctic Monkeys' album cover "Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not". The similarities of both would be the central image of a person. Both give a edgy and not a friendly image which could be connoted with the genre of indie rock being quite urban. The dark colours are also an obvious similarity however I feel like the black and white would not look as good with our image like it does with Arctic Monkey's cover. We decided to add our chosen band logo to the image to see if it would look correct together. I feel like the logo could be improved by adding a box of a contrasting colour behind it like the Arctic Monkeys' one. This would make our logo more clearer which is needed as a band is being portrayed as a new upcoming band. The Arctic Monkeys' cover also doesn't contain the album name but for my digipak cover I would want to contain that as they are an upcoming band and this is their first album.

Friday 17 October 2014

Digipak first design

In lesson we was asked to create a first draft for our digipak design. This is what I drew up in the lesson. The idea is to have an image of all four members on the main cover so the audience is aware of it being a band, not a solo artist. We was just going to have the lead on the cover but changed it for that reason. However, inside and the back of the digipak will have a single image of the artist with a light overlaid onto the image.  On the back cover we are going to place the drummer's face with the track list overlaying it. Then on the inside left a single image of the lead singer and then the two guitarists will be on the inside right.  The centre of the digipak will just have the CD. In the right fold we decided to add a bonus live CD in because it is the band's first album. On the front of the wallet holding the CD there is also a free download link to get the album online / onto iTunes.


 
We then created the digipak idea onto Photoshop. I got a template of 6 squares and recreated the drawing I made in my notepad. 

  • Top left: Inside left
  • Top middle: Centre
  • Top right: Inside right
  • Bottom left: the right/left fold
  • Bottom middle: Back cover
  • Bottom right: Front Cover

I realised once finishing that I have positioned the plan awkwardly on Photoshop. Since doing it on photoshop me and Liam decided to change the front cover to a split image of the four band members on one face / body similar to the Kings Of Leon - Only by the night. I used images of silhouettes to show the positioning of images once we have them as this is only a plan. On the back cover I left the text box empty which is meant to contain the track list as I wanted to show the image behind the box was one of the four band members.


Wednesday 15 October 2014

Green screen digipak analysis



I was very nervous recording my green screen despite me only speaking for one minute. After creating the video behind the green screen at school I found it incredibly hard putting my digipak behind me on Final Cut Pro, I was eventually able to do it by myself but unfortunately I am blocking images 3 and 5. I was unsure on how to fix it so proceeded because I didn't want to change the quality of the video as I thought I did a good job at making myself clear in the video and removing the green.




These were the images I unfortunately blocked out with my body so I decide them onto here. The image of the booklet of images of Michael Jackson through the years is image number 3. The other image of the bonus CD with the sound wave wallet is image number 5. I am frustrated how my green screen did not show a clear image of these two photos but I still feel like my green screen was a good first attempt and hopefully my next green screen in the future will be better.

Poster Analysis



I decided to analyse Arctic Monkey's most recent poster as I like the way it has the same theme as the CD cover itself. I think I would use this idea in the future because the poster and CD are matching to make the production of it all more easier. I think it's a more neat idea having the CD and poster having a matching theme because it stops our primary research pulling apart separate designs of our digipak and our poster. 

The band's logo is placed centre top of the album poster. This makes it stand out despite it not needing to be because their fans will recognise the text their name it is in because that has been their logo for several years. Underneath the logo is the image of their album cover. The sound wave gives away nothing about their genre of music but it could be suggest that this album will be more electronic than their other albums, however it is not. The only other thing I could think the waves stand for is this album is more slower than their other albums. There are slower rifts so the logo may suggest a more calm attitude for this album. Fans later found out that the sound wave was linked with the music video of 'Do I wanna know?' which could arguably be one of the most popular tracks on the album. I feel like Arctic monkeys took pride in this song considering they picked to use their album cover idea for the music video of it.

Underneath the image is the album name, which is quite unclear due to this album just being self titled when their other albums had witty album names such as 'favourite worst nightmare'. Due to it being unclear it says 'The new album' underneath to clarify that it has no name other than their band's initials. Following that, underneath there is the options of purchase which is CD, LP or download. The choice of the LP shows that the album is ideal for the indie culture as it is common to find indie albums and Eps on LP. Finally the last row of text tells the audience the date of the release, it would have been better to announce the time and year of the release to look more professional. Usually online releases start at 9AM.

Monday 13 October 2014

Genre which I want to use

Click to enlarge

After deciding that I would like to do work based on the indie rock sub genre. I created a brainstorm of bands which are in that specific genre and the stereotypes I have picked out of that sub genre. I picked out the stereotypes by looking at 3 images of band members. The bands that I used to analyse appearances were: Drowners, Arctic Monkeys and The Kooks. 

Drowners have a urban and street image of themselves as they have the rock conventions of skinny jeans and messy hair but they also are wearing snapbacks and panels. Their photo shoot was also took behind a vandalised wall. Arctic Monkey's image is more tidier, the lead singer Alex Turner has greased back hair and wears braces with a leather jacket. It could be argued that Arctic Monkey's image is influenced by classic rock and they wear more vintage smart style clothes in comparison to the 'messy' look. The Kooks' image was very metrosexual, the band members were wearing very feminine clothing but however are all straight men. They wear low cut tops and bowler hats which was unusual and I had never personally seen before in the indie rock scene. However they still had some of the classic conventions.

All bands had a lead male singer and were shown to play their own music. They all also have the same clothing image slightly as they all appeared to wear skinny jeans and darker choices of clothing rather than bright colours. In each band there one or more man with messy hair and stubble which seems to be an edgy and stereotypical look in recent rock. 

Genre Brainstorm

Click to enlarge

In lesson we was asked to break down the different types of genre. What have I learnt is that there seems to be more sub genres of rock than there is of anything else. This may be because I know the most about that genre but others in the class who are not known to listen to rock seemed to have known the same sub genres that I listed. There are different styles of rock and rock has been around for a long time which may be why the rock genre has more sub genres from the others.

The other genre which seemed to have a few sub genres was dance music. This is interesting as I would think that dance music is the most recent genre out of the ones I have brainstormed. Dubstep is also very recent. Dance music could be argued to be the most popular genre of music in society at the moment. The stereotypical thought of dance music is the music we hear in clubs, however we now hear these sub genres of music on the radio.

Thursday 9 October 2014

Music Video History

Music videos were begun to be made in the 1920s. The most iconic music video of the 1920s which started the revolution of moving image with the audio was Bessie Smith, a jazz artist. 

Bessie's music video was known as a 'short film clip', it was called St Louis Blues and was realised in 1929. The short film clip shows Bessie singing by a bar and other people in the room singing along with their whilst sat on tables. The video is very basic but I feel like it is still influential with the idea of the music video not having just the artist in it. 



In 1965 a very iconic music video was made by Bob Dylan for his song 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. The video contains a man holding up signs with lyrics on in time with the audio. The lyrics on screen and the audio are not in sync very accurately but this idea has still been used in future music videos. It could be argued that Bob Dylan's music videos are where the idea of lyric music videos came from today. However lyric videos of today are usually animated instead of written onto a piece of card.



in 1975, Queen released a music video for their song Bohemian Rhapsody. This had rose a lot of attention and was seen as an incredible video in the 70s, this video was the first video ever to use advanced visual effects. The video contains an iconic 'honeycomb effect' on the 4 members of the band which had never been seen before on television music shows such as Top Of The Pops. Effects are used for the first 4 minutes of the video and then it cuts to a live video of them performing when the music becomes more hard rock.




It could be argued that these three iconic music videos could be where most influences of music videos come from today. Bessie's music video was a basic video of watching the artist performing their song, allowing the record label show off the artist's image. Bob Dylan's music video could be argued that it created the idea of lyric videos, there has also been parodies posted on the internet of the video which proves it caught a lot of media attention. Queen's music video was the first video using advanced visual effects which a lot of music videos use today. The video also shows the band performing live which also another type of music video bands do today so show off the different member's talents and their image on stage as a whole.




Wednesday 8 October 2014

Culture Industry

Brief

OCR Exam Specification:


This is a coursework unit. Centres must set the brief from the menu below, though they may define more precise details in negotiation with candidates. From this brief, candidates will produce: 
• a media portfolio, comprising a main and ancillary texts; 
• a presentation of their research, planning and evaluation in digital format(s). 

Friday 3 October 2014

Looking into band logos




We decided to look into band logos before creating our own one. We decided to look at four different band logos from a similar genre to what we are doing. From doing this we gathered that most indie rock / alternative rock bands usually have a logo which is black and white. The Libertines and Drowners logos have a sans serif font which is bold and blunt and stands out. However, Arctic Monkeys' and Kings Of Leon's logo contain serif font as it is more wavy and decorative. The serif fonts in my opinion are easier to remember the band's logo than the other two. I think sans serif stands out less as both band's logos containing that have an image or background with the font which has been chosen. For our band we decided we would prefer a serif font as it is generally more eye catching. When doing our research for logo font ideas we will also include sans serif fonts aswell to see what our audience would prefer.