Creation of our digipak - Font

When creating our digipak, we discussed different fonts and the reasoning behind them in our group chat. Kieran Goodson, another member on my group, was in charge of the creation of the digipak and these were the specimens that were produced when discussing our options:

External link to Kieran Goodson explanations of the various fonts: Mayla Lee Digipak

Final Music Video | Mayla Lee - Bad Habits

Digiapak - Progress

Currently, we have our digipak organised and have chosen all the images for the different sections. 

We used a series of mug shots, close ups on the main artist, production photos and filming stills to create out entire inlay including front and back cover and disc. 

At the moment this is the progress we have made with completing our digipak, we are missing the scrips from the booklet as well as the back cover and spine. Text on the front cover is complete with the album and artist name. 

Advert Analysis - Jessie J

THE ARTIST & GENRE
Despite being associated with the pop genre, Jessie gives off a rather gothic/punk look. This is a challenge against the stereotypical 'pop princess' convention.

The image that has been used is her album cover for "Who You Are". This is the main feature of the advert. The recognition of the album cover attracts members of the audience to the advert. The artist in the advert, Jessie J, is in a predominantly black costume. She is wearing black lipstick, eyeliner, black dyed hair, black nail varnish. This gives off a rather gothic/punk look. This mode of direct address links the artist and her audience as it is directly appealing to them. The close up shot only shows her face, hands and shoulders. This up 'close and personal' element of the album matches the artist's personality and style. The image displays the artist posing with her hands facing outwards and her mouth open. This pose could possibly mimic a pair of horns suggesting the use of satanic imagery. However, this gives us impressions of anarchy and rebellion. This inter-relates with the colour scheme with the light background contrasting with the dark foreground. The black colour theme is contrasted with the white background almost metaphorically defining her. This makes her visually stand out.

The image in the advert takes up more than half of the advert because it is arguably the most important feature. It shows the artist's album cover and is what attracts people to view the advert in the first place. The lower part shows additional information about the album that is less important thus being a smaller part of the advert. The orientation of the advert is portrait to match the stance of the artist in the image.

Jessie J has her own font and branding label. The bold golden colours with the letters joining up flourish and join together. The colour gold has connotations of regality, power and strength, wealth and perfection. This matches our perception of the artist.

The name of the album "Who You Are" is in smaller, thinner scrawled writing. This gives it the look of a signature 

Digipak Analysis - Rihanna

Analysis of Rihanna - Loud Digipak to find conventions that are relevant to my genre and useful for creating our digipak

Digipak - Our interpretation

After completely our photo shot and having an idea to how we want the digipak to look, we design the inlay as well as the front cover for our entire digipak. 

On the front cover would be a mug shot of the main character containing her name 'Mayla Lee' as well as the album name 'Code of Coduct'.

The inlays will contain a series of photos from the photo shot as well as the poker game and other personal photos of the artist to create that intimate connection with the audience. 

The numbers on the drawing relate to the photo on the camera, to make it easier for us to chose the photos when designing the digipak. 

Disc Design: Poker table from the poker scene in the music video

Layout of the inlay of our digpak: number refer to the various
photographs to be used. 

Front Cover: Mug Shot from the
photo shot (missing artist name and
album title). 

Music Video - Editing Complete!

After long months of filming and editing, yesterday I finally edited the last minute of our music video. All footage is in time and it is all complete! We look forward for you all to see it!

 

Voyeurism - Pop genre

Voyeurism is an important features in our music video, almost every single as some what relation to this specific topic area. For example when the main character is undressing at the beginning, her engagement in activity with one of the males when she goes back to his house, as well as a blatant view into the crimes that she commits.
This feature gives the audience a very personal insight into the life of this female solo artists, and these intimate moments are what engage the viewers due to their connection and closeness with the main character.

This aspect has been defined to show that they watch for the gain of sexual pleasure, hence the female and the events occurring in our music video have an increase in sexual appeal than other artists, this refers to voyeurism being essential to ensure the viewers are interested throughout the entire process. Nicki Minaj and Izzy Azalea are two dirty pop genre artists that use this to their advantage. Both female artists wear a lack of clothing and commit seductive actions in order to boost their sex appeal and keep their young adults engaged. In our case, the characters image also heavily depends on this aspect and therefore, although there is no exaggerated scenes that enhance nudity, or sexual activity, it is still enough to engage their interests.

Theorist Goodwin argues that female artists often objectifies themselves through fashion and a combination of camera work and editing hence the heavy use of close ups and body shots to enhance their most appealing sexual feature. Madonna in 'Like a prayer' is seen as a sexual goddess and therefore has been seen as a sex icon throughout her entire career even to this day.

Digipak ideas - Titles

Once we had completed our filming and photo shoot for the main task, we had to decide on the album name as well as the font used. We discussed various fonts that we found online and edited them on to our front cover to see which one related better to our artist image.
Essentially, even though our main artist is seen as a rebellious criminal, in our digipak we include photos that are more personal and relate to her personality away from the con artist image that she has at night, hence why our font for the name is rather girly and feminine, we want to portray her soft side, which could essentially be her work side (when we see her leaving the house dressed more formally).

Also, we wanted to keep the name of the digipak very simplistic and formal as we do want that to be directly related to the idea of her being arrested and therefore 'Code of Conduct' is very powerful when relating them all together. Another feature that we had to relate was the track names, they all relate to wealth, crime, partying, rebellion, confidence etc.. a very hedonistic base, hence why the font was important to ensure a clear connection.

Below, are screenshots of a group meeting we had over a social networking site to discuss the font, placement and colour of the font as well as suggestions for our the title and the reasoning behind the choice.

         

      

Digipak - Photo selection

When creating our Digipack, we wanted a selection of photos from various scenes and events from our music video and photos that relate to the artist image on a whole. The main features we used were the poker game, the artist in a photo shoot that we did and other photos of the artist on set as well as photos in which the cast and team were messing around to give the audience an insight into what they are really like, hence giving them more personal photos creates this connection with the viewers.

There are photos that reinforce the 'bad ass' image that our main character essentially wants to portray yet, as it is a digipak, we wanted to give the viewers extra and give them more intimate moments that are not usually exposed by many pop artists.
Although at first we had a bit of problem with our lighting, we realised that the photos were executed better when we used to flash on the camera, and therefore the end results of our photos are much better quality than the following. Photos will be shown in the production of our Digipak.

Digipak - Finalised ideas

Due to the artist image that we want to portray to the our target audience, we decided that we wanted the setting and theme to be rather rebellious and bad; with these ideas in mind, we came to conclusion that a jail scene would be ideal for a photo shoot for our Digipack photos.
This would include:

• Mug shots of the main character
• Height chart
• Prison board (with information of the convict) 

YMAS is a very good example of the usage
of the board to recreate a mug shot.

Although we want her to be seen as this criminal we also still want to incorporate the confidence and smugness that our character has had throughout the video; therefore when producing the photos we also took shots of the main character messing around and enjoying herself with the production team as well as being silly with the board and pulling faces in front of the chart. This reinforces her 'don't care' attitude and portrays her as someone fearless and brave, she is making the police department seem weak against her and as if there isn't anything they can do to stop her. She is experienced in her field, a well known con artist. 

Cher Lloyd 'Want U Back'
Digipak cover

We took the idea mainly from Cher Lloyds 'Want U Back' cover photo. This is a prime example of something we want to replicate. Her artist image is also rebellious and she has been portrayed as the 'mouthy' female solo artist. Therefore, by recreating a similar image ensure that we engage our target audience of 17-25 mainly females as well as males, who are interested in the pop and dirty pop genre. 

Editing - Complete

Today, after several weeks of editing hours of footage, I finally edited the last minute of our finish product. Although various sections may be changed slightly, the base of the product is complete and features such as filters, are in need to be applied to the music video. 

Advert Analysis - Ellie Goulding

I analysed Ellie Gouldings album advertisement to be able to select conventions and use them when creating our advert to ensure that it will appeal to our audience and will stand out in order to engage viewers.

Advert Analysis - Katy Perry

The advert is colourful. Perry is stood by a paddling pool which creates the mood of playfulness and demonstrates her exuberant personality. She is also dressed in short pink and blue clothing, showing off her arms and legs which relate to the idea of the male gaze, she gives off a sexual appeal therefore attracting a larger audience.

The advert includes an inlay of what the actual album cover looks like, and you can see that the setting and location of the album cover is the same as the advert for the album. It also provides us with which Katy Perry song will appear on the album, which happened to be one of the bigger hits 'I Kissed A Girl'. By giving the audience a short preview as to what kind of songs that will be appearing on the album, it could increase audience interest and sales rate of the album.

It can be noticed that the artist name and the album name match Katy Perry's costume which works well for the advert. Its font is also distinct again implying her playful attitude. The colours of pink and blue provide different connotations. 'Katy Perry' is written in a pink font, pink is typically a colouradvertiesemelates to females and maybe Perry's attitude or style. She's very flirtatious and sexually appeals to men. The album title 'One of the Boys' is written in a blue font which could also be a way of appealing to or attracting her large male audience. 

Production meeting - Editing

When finalising our final video we made the editing of the different scenes very clean cut to represent how experienced and professional she is.

By ensuring the editing was not superimposed shows that the artist knows what she is doing, and therefore suggests that it is very easy to con these men. 

Convention - One eye feature

When studying Digipacks, especially front covers, we discovered that various female solo artists that we specifically targeted, had one thing in common: they covered one of their eyes.

As the main image of their CD or adverts, as an artist the aim is to engage the viewers and entice them to purchase your good and ensure they support you as an performer. Various well known artists such as: Beyoncé 

Britney Speares 

And Ashley Simpson 

All use their hair to cover one eye. All these images are from albums that the camels have released. This effect is used to create an image about the artist and give them a reputation. Although Beyoncé looks powerful and sexy in her front cover, hence the open mouth and dead tilt, this means she is forced to look down on us and gain control immediately. Also the open mouth and eye contact with the camera, ensure that she has sexual appeal, represents her being inspirational icon that most young females look up to in life. Therefore by covering one of her eyes, she is not engaging in full eye contact which leave the audience wanting more and essentially hiding this bad girl image slightly but reinforcing the goddess look that this is portrays (with the help of different filters used upon the photograph). 

Britney also hides her face to hide her ' 'naughty girl' reputation that she gained from a young age. By staring directly at the camera, she is asserting her power although the hand covering the face suggests an innocent and pure image of the artist which is reinforced with the face background and filter. By having the eye hidden with her own hair again shows this realistic and non pop queen side to Britney, despite the heavy make up worn by the more rebellious artists which contrasts the overall image. 

Ashley Simpson has used the hair to cover her eye to make this album cover personal and make it directly related to her. Make it intimate without exposing her private life. The title of the album, autobiography suggests that the album itself will be directly related in some way to the female artists, therefore by her wearing very natural make up and having scruffy hair, this appeals to her audience due to her attempt to connect to them on a personal level. This hidden eye is so represent the private side of her life, and although the CD gives her audience an insight she still remains closed of to he music industry. 

Lady Gaga has always been a very out going and extravagant female solo artist that attracts audiences who believe very much in freedom of speech and people who have strong view on certain things. She especially appeals to the homosexuals. 

She is another female artist that has been see using the one eye effect in her album covers to give herself a specific image and reputation. Lady Gaga has a very serious and emotionless expression in her face, this suggests she is a very strong person that does not react or feel any sort of emotion to anything. By hiding her one eye, it gives the idea of her being a very serious and empowered female. Also, due to her strong religious beliefs, the illuminati may very influence her attitude and reactions, hands the one eyed effect could represent her religious beliefs and her way of incoporating it into the music industry without it being censored. 

Personally I believe that this effect will benefit us when coming to make the Digipacks due to the simple fact of our female solo artist being rebellious and cocky, and therefore by covering one eye, she keeping her identity partly hidden and creating that ambiguity as well as distancing herself from the audience. This also engages with the prison and mug shot concept that we aim to recreate in our Digipacks. 

Production Update - Digipak and Filming

Yesterday, we completed a narrative section of our music video, the poker scene. We are now ready to edit the entire scene. We also had a photo shoot for the images in our digipak, recreating a mug shots to make it look like she has been arrested. We also incorporated other photos for the inlay in our digipak as well as production photos. Our digipak and editing will all take place all day tomorrow when we have our organised editing day. Our team will split into groups, each working on different sections to ensure that increased work is completed but also more efficiently as we will be able to focus on one specific area.

We decided the layout will also include lyrics to songs as well as thank yous to the production team, editors, actors and other organisations/people that were involved with the product on a whole. As a group, we came to the conclusion on the disc design, and the front cover.

Audience Research - Feedback

For our music video, we created a survey to gain audience feedback to aid us when creating a music video. These questions give me an insight into what the audience expect and want from our music genre, pop.

Firstly we wanted to know how old the audience were as we were gaining this information from them. Our target audience is 17-23 years of age, therefore late teens, young adults. When analysing the results, the found that most, 55%, the responses were from people in our target audience bracket.

This ensured that the responses we received were accurate and very relevant to us, they will benefit us more due to them being the exact audience we are aiming our product at.





As for the second question, we wanted to know specifically what gender we were contacting due to the simple fact that each gender will desire different features and therefore certain concepts and elements will appeal to a certain sex more. Due to our artist being a female, who is seen as a sex icon, we believe that we appeal to both genders, males for the sexual appeal and females due to the iconic image, although our female is rather rebellious, essentially a criminal.


We investigated whether the audience responding to our questions actually listened to the genre of music we are producing for, in this case, Pop. Ideally we hoped that there would be a mix of responses as, if we obtained feedback from people who do not listen to Pop on a daily basis yet have noticed conventions that are very stereo-typically seen in these sort of videos, we would have to ensure these are present in our final piece. 82% of the responses did listen to the Pop genre whilst the remaining either did not listen to it, 9% or they stated what they did listen to normally, 9%.



By asking what what pop artist appeals most to them and the reason, explained what they expect and like from the pop genre.
Responses such as 'Justin Timberlake' and 'Cheryl Cole' were selected due to the fact that they are attractive and have a large amount of sex appeal. This shows that pop artist do gain viewers because of the way they look, appearance is essential, which is something we have to incorporate when we think about actors and costume, Responses such as 'Sia' and 'Katy Perry - How we do' were chosen due to the music video and in terms of the Sia video it is appealing due to the ballerina and the dramatic dancing throughout. Katy Perry is appealing due to the effects used throughout the video; it is very exaggerated with extremely bright colour and unrealistic props. The green screen mentioned by in the response emphasises how the fun factor in the music video appeals to them.

When asked to define what they think 'Pop genre' is; three of the nine did say that is was popular chart music which makes us aware that they do know what it consists of. Various other answers from then on consisted of: 'a genre with loud, colourful and vibrant music video' and two responses stating that it was rubbish and another declaring that it is what the media expect them like; after further investigation, it showed that the final response was from a teenage girl. This shows that the extrovert and over publicized pop videos are the media industries perception of what the audience expect.


Our main question would have to be what do you expect to see in a Pop music video; this will give us a very accurate expectation of what the mass audience will expect to see in our music video and therefore make sure that we incorporate it in our product to ensure the conventions are found in there.

In the 11 responses, 27% stated that they expect partying, friends and having fun, therefore we expect it to be established in a club or a social area where we would expect people to be enjoying a social gathering with people. 36% expect a good story line and plot. They expect a different perspective on the story of the video as well as the artist singing the song evidently and a variety of camera shots whilst also including undressed actors taking part in ridiculous events.
9% decided that they expected there to be female nudity and sexual dancing, this was to appeal to the opposite sex and make the artist a sex icon in the media industry. The remaining 27% were jokes that did not relate in any way to our audience research.


 When researching for our digipaks, we asked the audience how they obtain their music. This would give us a rough idea of how well we will have to market our product when selling it against other competition. Only 9% purchase their music on CD, which is low compared to iTunes which is 45%. This suggest that getting their products from online is much more popular and accessible and therefore the amount of CD purchases has decreased, hence we will have to ensure that our digipak contains all the features and extras in order to ensure that the mass audience find it appealing. 9% use youtube converter whilst another 18% illegally download. The two remaining responses consists of one irrelevant answer and 9% stating they obtain their music from Sportify.
The results show that we will have to ensure that our product is easily accessible on all platforms, especially via the internet, due to the convenience.

Audience Cycle - Miley Cyrus

Prezi presentation:

MES - Make up for Narrative

For our narrative scenes where the female character is out the house and comitting various crimes, her make up is more prominent than the natural look that she has whilst getting ready for work.

The make up consists of a sharp black eye liner across the top lid, with a slight brown eye shadow above. This shows her with more make up and therefore insinuates that she makes more of an effort when conning these men, also it isn't too dark so she is still represented as the sophisticated and upper class woman that she is. 

Red lips resembles passion, in this case, the lust and pleasure she feels when out and deceiving these gentlemen. Also, it shows she is flirty and powerful, her facial expressions also reinforce this idea of her being a very confident young woman. 

And finally brown cheeks to highlight her collar bones and give a more shark and serious look which would intimidate yet attractive men. 

Advert Analysis - Britney Spears

Advert analysis to discover conventions in relation to our genre to aid us when recreating our advert for our finished product. 

Advert Analysis - Kate Nash

The magazine advert for Kate Nash's "Made of Bricks" album features the image from her album cover and some promotional information.
The image shows the artist in a long shot on a path leading to a house. This house and the rest of the setting is a visual effect and has been super-imposed during the editing stage. However, this gives us a rich environment that we can comment on.
The two floor house takes up the majority of the image and depicts an upper class detached property with its own garden. It has been painted yellow and has a white porch and white shutters for the windows. The garden has neatly trimmed bushes in the shape of horses. All this visually represents the idea of a perfect relationship. The album title "Made of Bricks" could be interpreted as a relationship being built with true emotions without cheating, lying or falseness. The fact that the most popular single on the album is called "Foundations" emphasises this argument and also relates to the structure of the house or relationship.

Nash is wearing a long red dress and high heels. This combines the connotations of the colour of the dress (love, passion, fire) and those of high heels- height, power and dominance. The use of costume promotes the artist as a solo but powerful female artist. Despite this, she is proportionally smaller than the house in the background. This could represent her not being ready to take on such a large responsibility of a relationship and future implementations such as children.
Finally, the advert's promotional information features at the top of the advert. This is good as it is often he first thing a viewer will see or read. The largest text is the artist's name followed by the album title and release date, followed by a review in bold. Once again we see the artist's name being featured in a different font then the rest of the text present- a logo for an artist and a convention used across the music industry. This font has been stylised to look handwritten but with someone with basic literacy skills such as a child. To some extent, this could be taken as a metaphor for the beginning of her career as she grows and develops much alike a child's writing skills.

Artist Name - Audience Research

The original artist whose song this belongs to, is called Tove Lo. It is an unusual name and different just like the image the artist portrays of herself. For our character, we wanted to ensure that our name was quirky and exotic just like the original to make it stand out when in competition with other artists.

We have called our female solo artist - Mayla Lee. 
After deciding that we wanted it to be rather similar to the original, by using the main characters middle name and adding a second name gave the same impression the original did. We came to the conclusion that we liked this name because it was simplistic yet rather effective because of its uniqueness.

Mayla Lee can also be manipulated to fit any sort of personality and image that we desire to create for our main character.

Together, we also decided to ask the year 7 group at school what they thought of the name Mayla and what we could add on to make it sound like Tove Lo. After having the very excited year shout various names out at us, Lee seemed to stand out as one that would fit perfectly and they sounded quite fluent. 

Digipak - New idea

After discussing the image that we want our artist to portray, we decided that we want our character to be highlighted and remembered as the rebellious and crime comitting con artist that she is. Therefore, we came to the conclusion that she will be seen in a prison type environment, for example with mug shots of her, and giving the impression she has just been arrested. 

Props such as the shalk board for her mug shots will be essential to make the idea of prison and her being arrested realistic also the choice of costume as we still need to ensure that she looks like the bad villain that she is. 

Various of shots of her doing her own thing such as striking a pose for the police and being rather rude, for example pulling a face and swearing will show off her 'don't care' and 'whatever' attitude. Suggests that she will take whatever they do to her and that she is very a confident and strong person, more rebellious and naughty than the audience originally thought. 

Advert Analysis - Taylor Swift

Music Video Analysis - Lily Allen /Smile

Lily Allen's song 'Smile' is based on a recent breakup that she has experienced. We notice this through the stereotypical actions of the female and the flashbacks of them as a couple that the audience see throughout the music video.

Mid Shot of the solo female artist eating chocolate and various other junk foods alone in the bedroom, is the stereotypical idea that the society have on a woman when they are grieving from a break up. This insinuates she is the weak one and by her facial expression, we gather that she is upset and not in the best frame of mind.


The actions of the main character in the music video then contrast the initial idea that we had of the artist. She is now getting her revenge on him by hiring hit-men and laughing whilst he is suffering from this event. This shows her as a very cunning and revengeful person and the is not a person to mess with due to the fact that she will not show the pain that she is feeling, she will just retaliate.

    

Whilst sitting in a cafe with the male character, the artists attitude is shown through her careless and oblivious facial expressions. This suggests again that she has no emotion and moves on quickly, that what everyone else says is boring and irrelevant to her. Shows her as a strong character due to her keeping such a cool exterior which we know is different on the inside due to the opening scenes of the music video.


The lyrics also reinforce her front that she is putting on towards the situation. 'Now you're calling me up on the phone, So you can have a little whine and a moan, And it's only because you're feeling alone'  She is portraying the male character as the needy and vulnerable one instead of it always being the female that is seen like that. This shows her as the more powerful and stronger character out of them. Also the chorus also shows that he is the emotional one that is suffering whilst she is plotting against him without taking into considering his feelings: 'At first when I see you cry, yeah it makes me smile, yeah it makes my smile, At worst I feel bad for a while,but then I just smile I go ahead and smile'.

Finally, she pretends to sympathies with him and comfort him when in reality she is the cause of all his problems. She is sly and cunning and is making him look like the fool by embarrassing him. 

This is useful when filming our music video because how the character portrays her authority and her power over him. Her facial expressions and attitude suggests that she does not care and can be very cunning and intelligent when she wants to be. This is relate-able as we want our main character is going to be portrayed as the very bright con artist that manages to daze all the men and get what she wants in the end. Also, the way the smirks and laugh at the bad situations is like our artist as all events taking place are negative for the males yet she laughs and is very confident. Our female shows no emotion, and does everything for self pleasure.

Digipak Analysis - Ke$ha

Analysis of Ke$ha digipak for useless convention when creating ours

Bedroom Scene - Layout

We rearranged the room so that the tables would resemble a dressing table. With the tables being made up of noting but mirrors, they are very sophisticated and classy; they would suggest that the owner of these items is wealthy and enjoys high end fashion. 

The furniture is very monochrome, consisting of black and white. This is very simplistic and suggests nothing but power and luxury. The black is very mysterious and dark, shows that there is another side to the angelic, innocent connotation of the white and mirrors. A grand mirror also suggests wealth and luxury. 

We then decided to light the room with very low key lighting to make it quite cosy and conspicuous. Also we wanted to follow the idea of the main character returning at early hours of the morning, when the sun is just rising. 

Although, the lighting outside may be lighter than the room, we did want it to feel welcoming and show the audience that this was her house where she is most comfortable. 

Feature we placed on the dressing table were props that related to the story line and the main characters attitude and lifestyle as well as elements that you would expects anyway such as: lamp, perfume, jewelry box, candle, make up bag and nail polish. These are all features that are found is a stereotypical females bedroom and they were incorporated because we wanted this set to be as realistic as possible. 

Extra props such as shot glasses, cards and phones (a white iPhone is also placed on table it was used to take this photo). These elements are more related to our story line and are used so give the audience an idea of this female character. The cards represent the poker game that will be revealed at the end of the music video and the shot glasses suggest she likes a drink and party which is the image we are portraying when she is out all night partying conning all the males. The two iPhone is rather ambiguous as well as we wonder  why a young female needs two phones which suggest that one is personal and one is business; shows she is part of a dark business.