Digipak Promotional Magazine Advert.

Below is the image that Simran created for the digipak promotional magazine advert. She aimed to create the promotional advert with the same motif a the digipak, and used PhotoShop to help her do this. By doing this she has made the digipak and the advert related and associated with each other. She has used the image from the front panel of the digipak and the same typography font.

Like conventional digipak promotional adverts, she has made sure to include the main features that you expect to see. For example, the image takes up most of the advert, and she has included taglines. Also she has mentioned where the audience can buy the album.

Final digipak.

After getting feedback from our target audience, we decided to change the image on the front panel. This is because our audience suggested that the picture wasn't related in any way to the title of the album 'Uneducated', and it is conventional of the pop genre to have the two linked in some ways. Therefore we changed the picture to a different one, where the artist is looking more rebellious and mischievious, connecting to the title and theme a bit more.
Below is the final edited digipak. Simran also created a video with QuickTime showing how she edited and created the new cover for the digipak.

Draft digipak.

 Firstly, Simran drew out by hand a draft of the digipak, including all four panels using a template.

Simran then created the digipak for our product on Photoshop, with the inner panel as well as both back and front of the digipak. She downloaded the font 'Davy Francis' from a free online font website as she thought the ones on Photoshop would not be very effective for our product. However, as a group we decided to choose a pink and white colour scheme with black as the accenting colour. This is because we thought it was conventional of pop music, as it is a bright colour as well as conveying the sterotypes of gender.
 

Comparison of digipaks 2

In our group, it was decided that myself and Beth would film and edit the video, while Simran would do the digipak and magazine advert. As part of her research, she studied 3 digipak promotional advert s. She presented this on FlipSnack, which is an online flip book to see how they would be presented if they were in a magazine. She's looked at Jessie J, Rihanna and Ellie Goulding. This is because we are doing Jessie J as our music video and the other two are both females from the pop genre.

There are some key features in all 3 adverts:

• They all include an image of the album cover or digipak. This takes up most of the magazine page, which makes it clear to readers who's music is being advertised and which album they need to buy to listen to it.
• To make it clear who's music is being sold, there are close ups of the artist on the magazine and digipak.
• Artist names and album names are clearly written - making their target audience easily find and buy music.
• Tag lines are related to singles from the albums. They are commonly used and mentioned, and the target audience may be attracted to the advert due to the singles listed and readers may consider buying the album purely because they like one of the singles.
• Website links or links to where you can buy or pre-order the album are sometimes included to add extra information to the whereabouts of the music.
• A release date, to let the audience know when the product is available to buy.
• Ratings of the album from newspapers and critics - giving the audience an insight on how the album has been percieved.

 As we are including a digipak magazine advertisement, it is important to look at examples of promotions so we know what to be aiming for in the creation of our final digipak and magazine advert. It also allows our group to become inspired when creating and editing our design, and exploring the conventions of one while providing suitable guidelines.

Therefore, the features listed above are to be used in the final digipak product, and promotional advert. The design should look conventional to the genre while also looking realistic and promoting the digipak and music video.

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Comparison of digipaks.

In today's lesson, my class learn about digipaks and why they are used. We learnt about how they are used in the music industry and what is included in them. A digipak is a way that the music artist promotes themselves. It can be in either 4 or 6 panels featuring an album cover, a track list, a close up of the artist, which usually follows a theme. The theme relates to the musician's album and body of work on the CD. As the song we have chosen in 'Domino' by Jessie J, I have analysed relevant pop artist's digipaks. This is so we can gain ideas about our own digipak and how to design it. It will give us a better overall idea and understand what is conventional of digipaks.

Below is an analysis of various digipaks from the pop genre such as Marina and the diamonds. As a female in the pop genre, she has the same target audience as us - teenagers.

I also chose to analyse Britney Spear's digipak as she is another successful pop artist. Additionally, i chose to look at one of her digipaks because she is a young woman and so her digipak could be conventional of women in the pop genre. Furthermore, it demonstrates the male gaze (Laura Mulvey). Below, I've embedded a Photoshop document where I've been analysed and compared her digipak to the others.

I also came across Rihanna's digipak for her album 'Loud'. What i liked about this digipak is how the three inner panels have been used to create one overall image. Like the Britney Spears digipak, it is demonstrating the male gaze as Rihanna's lips are slightly parted. From looking at the embedded image below Rihanna is denoted lying in a bed of roses with her fiery red hair. I think using the three inner panels to create one composition is interesting and something different. My group could try to experiment with using photography in the inner panels of the digipak to create a composition. We could also pick a colour scheme in order to increase the continuity and have a colour palette.

The male gaze viewing theory.

The male gaze (Laura Mulvey) is a theory that is conventional in music videos and has relevance to the pop sub culture. As our music video has a female lead the theory can be applied to our work. My group member, Simran, made this prezi about the male gaze.

Rejected footage

Our original idea for our video was to use a green screen and put a background over it, as seen in Jessie J's music video 'Price Tag', which suggests that it is conventional of pop music videos. She used pastel colours such as pink and purple and we attempted to recreate the idea.

 

We chose two backgrounds from Google Images which we wanted to use our background for our green screen.



Simran has uploaded the video in which we experimented editing with a green screen in Final Cut Pro.




The reasons we didn't include the green screen was because:

• It didn't look realistic. It had a clear line around Beth making it look fake and like we had obviously put her over the screen, and not giving us the desired effect of her actually looking like she was there.
• It glitches and fades around certain parts in the video. We tried to alter this as best as we could but it still failed to blend in with the background. For example, Beth's hand.

Therefore, the reason we didn't include the green screen in our video was because we didn't want our footage to be bad quality as it doesn't look professional. This could have brought down the quality of our overall video so to replace the green screen we have decided to use a white screen to replicate a studio. We also chose to use a shadow effect for the bridge.