Digipak-Analysis of CD design- Final

The design of the CD again follows style I am trying to portray with my digipak and again is fairly consistent. For the design of the CD, I had to use different software. For my front and back cover, the front page of my booklet and the advert, I used Photoshop to help me design and I had became accustomed to this program. This had to change due to the fact Photoshop not have CD template which was a blow for me because I got the hang of using Photoshop so I had to figure out how to use a different software. So to replace Photoshop, I downloaded software named "Disc Label". Although I had never used Disc Label before, it was very easy to use and I immediately got used to this software. 

I again followed my own consistent style by using the same font again. This time for my CD design, I used the title of my band on the disc. This font is the same as I used for the title on front cover again showing my consistency throughout this digipak. The colour of font is also white which again follows my scheme of white writing throughout the digipak. I also have written on the disc, "Disc 1" in the same font as my band title, this also is in the same white font used throughout. I have written this to fill the CD up a little bit due to the fact it is very plain without.

The photo again is very significant. The photo is of me this time, lying down on the line, instead of facing up. Very similar to back cover of my album cover. Initially, the photo was very low down and was considered "crude" from my teacher. I fixed this by cropping the photo, and moving it slightly up to eliminate and crudeness the photo may have caused. In the photo, on the right hand side, above "Disc 1" is my finger; it is as it is pointing at the "Disc 1". This was not intended but works very well.

Again the Mise-En-Scene is the same as front and back cover. I believe this design works due to the nature that you look at back of the album, you then open the case and the CD would be in this design. I just believe it adds a witty effect to the whole album in general and also seems to work very well.

Digipak- Analysis of Back cover-Final

Here is the back of my album cover. Again we talk about consistency of the font. I here again, am consistent with the font I used. This time, only one font is used, this font was used for the title of the song on the front cover of the album. I again have used the colour white as the font as I believe it works well against the grey road, and also the title of the song is named "White Straight Line" which I think serves a purpose.  I decided the back of the album needed a little change to it. I first was going to leave it the back of the album with just the songs, but I decided it looked a bit too plain. So I came up with putting a quote on the back of the album, the font is a little bit smaller compared to the size of the song names so this means it does not take up to much of the back cover, but I also believe it is quite inspirational and adds another dimension to the album which you may not see on other albums. This is a personal favourite quote of mine due to the fact I can relate to this, and I thought it would serve a cause on my final design. I also included a bar code on the top right of the album cover. The majority of album covers include a bar code, (usually on the back of the album) so I believed it would be right to portray on this theme.

The picture again plays a major significance. Originally, I was planning on using the photo for the back of the album cover has the main photo for the front of the album. But after using both photos and using trial and error, it came to my knowledge this would not work as the front album photo. The problem was this photo was too good not to use, so by messing around trying different photos for the back cover, I decided this photo works very well. The reason I think this photo works, is due to the fact it is the perfect size for the back cover. The photo fits everything in, you can see the majority of my body, the suit I am wearing, the road and also the white line above my head which follows on from the front cover which is a major positive because you do not want two completely different photos, which make no sense, so I believe the two photos work together well, hand in hand.

Again the Mise-En-Scene work together. The grey suit and the grey road really combine together, allowing the white shirt and the white line to stick out very well.

Digipak- Changes- Advert-Final

Here is the final cut for my advert of the band album. Has before, feedback has been taken into account and here is how I have altered and why I have changed my advert.First and foremost, As I mention in my rough version of my advert, most adverts use the main image on their album as there album picture due to the fact if a person may see the advert, and they cannot remember the band name, and the adverts photo is the same as it is album, they will recognize the album, and may want to pick it up and take a look. So I again choose not alter the image only the font and colour of this.Again the most important thing we see is colour of the font. The rough advert was very dull and bland and again not very eye catching. With the addition of the green, it really brightens up the poster and grabs the attention of the audience. I have decided to alter the word "New" in Green is well. I have done this to just let audience definitely know it would be a new album being released.The design of the advert has also been altered for the better. I have changed the positioning of the ratings from down the side of the advert, to the calf of the leg. I have done this as the positioning of the initial poster was not very good. It was fairly out of sight and also the colour of the font did not work. So I decided to change the colour of the font too white and positioning against the black backdrop to achieve maximum transparency.Another important aspect to point out is the change of font. In my rough piece, the title of the band and the font of the albums name are different. This does not concur with my hope of consistency through my ancillary task. So by changing the font on my front album cover and my advert, I hope to achieve consistency.

Digipak- Changes-Front Album Cover-Final

Here is the final design for my front album cover. I have taken into account audience feedback, and here is my final front album cover. Here I will go on to explain why the changes from my first front cover and also why these changes have been made.

First and foremost I did not want to change the image, I believe the image works very well so therefore I felt I did not need to change this. I also have not altered any of the image to make it darker or lighter, the image has stayed the same from my first attempt.

The first change to my album cover is the colour of the text. When collecting audience feedback of my teacher, the first thing she noticed was the amount of white on the album. She believed it was very dull and needed to change. I took into account her words and have changed the font to grey and slime green. The reasoning behind the colour combination is that the grey helps the green stand out more. At first glance, this is the first thing that grabs your attention which is very important. The grey has also been used because of the significance of the suit. I have made the grey a little a bit lighter so it stands out against the suit and allows the audience to be able read it. Reasoning behind the colour change to green is when you think of "Mint", you think of Green. So I believe this served as relevance.

The other main change was the font. Again after feedback from my teacher, I too agreed the font needed to change. The font for the name of the band and the album name were both different in my rough piece. I believe having the same font for both the name of the band and the album name does have to be the same, again to show a consistency. We also agreed the title has to have an iconic look to the title, (as I have spoken about Oasis's iconic title in my rough piece of my front cover) the title instantly needs to be recognizable and memorable. I again had to search very hard for the right font which can be iconic and memorable and I believe with trial and error, I have done this.

Digipak- Changes-Front Cover Of Booklet- Final

Here is my final front cover of the booklet. Again feedback has been taken into consideration and I will explain why and what changes have been made.

When looking at ym rough front cover of the booklet again, the most important thing I did notice was that I had infact spelt "Clouds" wrong. This a complete error on my part and decided this had to be changes. When creating my final cut for this piece, I decided to get rid of the phrase "Grey Clouds Ahead" due to the fact it had no significance at all towards the band. It is not a song, it is not a phrase any of the band says, it was merely there to fill up the space. I replaced this with the bands twitter address. This in fact is not their twitter account, I have made this up, but I believe this plays a significance due to ever growing awareness in social media, I believed having this on a album can help the public become more aware of a bands growing success and also it is much relevant than a made up phrase.

Again the I show consistency by using the same title from the front cover of my album, on this booklet. On the my rough booklet, I did not use my title on the booklet. I feel using my title on this again brightens the booklet up and also gives a different dimension to it.

Again I have decided on not altering the picture, I believe it is a very good picture to use on a booklet due to its rare nature of it and it's uniqueness.

Evaluation Question 4-How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages ?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

                         

Media technology was major influence in the final product of my film. In order to produce a media film, planning and researching is a major must before even thinking about filming and editing a video. The first stage of planning was to find a song. This was a tricky task due to the fact the song has to be by an unsigned artist which means you cannot just pick any artist such as Jay-Z or Lady Gaga and use their song because they have a record label. Most of the students in my class used a website named unsigned.com which is in fact a website full of unsigned artists, who post their material hoping to be noticed.

Lucky for me, I know of an unsigned band through my brother. They are well recognized and I was excited to use their song for my project. Before any research into ideas on how to film, I first had to double check with one of the band members to make sure it was okay. I contacted one of the members by email to let double check if it was okay. I got a reply saying it is not a problem. 

The most important bit of technology for me, during the research and planning stage was my computer. This was due to the fact without it, there would be no project. During this stage, I used YouTube to watch music videos to gain ideas from, I watched many video from my songs genre which is indie, for example bands such as Oasis, The Courteeners and the Arctic Monkeys I also watch old students work and to compare my own ideas, I used blogger to jot my ideas down, blogger is very easy to use which allowed me to keep myself up to date and post possible images.

Construction of my music video was the third stage of my project. Again media technology helped in a major way. The camera for me is the most important object. For my project I used a JVC Everio GZ-HM30. This camera was not supplied to me by the school due to the fact I had used a school camera for my GCSE project and my AS project and I did not believe it shot in high enough quality. So my friend kindly lent me his HD camcorder and I immediately noticed the difference between the qualities of clips this year, to the two past years. 

A tripod was also a major help. A tripod is a 3 legged stand which allows you to place your camcorder on top of the tripod, and allows you to film without any un-steadiness. This allows shooting long distance shots without shakiness which is a huge positive. Whilst filming, I noticed a huge significance in using a tripod instead of a handheld. Again in my project last year we did not use a tripod and them where many shaky hand held shots which a tripod would eliminate. I learnt from my mistakes last year and incorporated what I learnt from last year into this production of my project.

Another important aspect was my phone. This was because it had the song I was "lip syncing" on. When filming myself lip syncing, I needed to hear what was playing so I knew the timing, when to mimic the right words and when to stop the action I was doing is well. The clips I filmed where muted, then I put the original song over the clips, so this majorly helped me in the timing of lip syncing. Without my phone and being unable to play the original song whilst filming, this would have made my video a lot harder to produce so this was a major positive.

IMovie was the software I used to edit my music video with. In GCSE I used editing software named "video studio 8". Video studio 8 was a very basic editing software which did not offer a whole lot to the student. For example, there was not many transitions, you could not edit brightness levels, you could not mute the clips, the layout was aged and not up to date and was simply enough not professional enough to use for A level. For two years now iMovie has been my chosen editing software due to it being a more advanced piece of editing software. We used iMovie in our AS project as well my A2 project. Again this was a huge positive due to the fact I was already very comfortable to using iMovie which was a huge positive. My video needed to have lots of different filters, I would have needed to change the pace of the video and I also would have needed to use very specific transition which video studio 8 did not offer.

To edit my album Cover, Advert and CD design I used software named "Photoshop". I had heard a lot about Photoshop before using this software but I had never used it myself. This software is a remarkable piece of software to use when editing photos; the only problem is it takes a very long time to get used too. Photoshop provides everything you need, it allows you to select parts of the photo that need editing, you may change the colour of the photo, you can place text anywhere you like, and it really is a brilliant photo editing program.

The evaluation is the final piece when completing your project and some may argue one of the important. For me, I used blogger to help me with my evaluation. I believe blogger again is a fantastic way of allowing me to write exactly what I feel in a very simplistic way, it allows me to express my feelings. I also believe it can allow other people to express their minds due to the simplicity of blogger and also, this allows them to watch or look at my project, and immediately allow them to express their minds. I also have found filming myself, answering the evaluation questions, is much more interesting then reading them. I have given the examiner, the option to either read me answering my evaluation questions or to watch me answering them.

Evaluation Question 3-What have you learned from audience feedback.

I believe audience feedback to be predominately one of the most important things before ever thinking you have finished with your product. I have learnt that your eyes do not see anything. Before I finished my rough cut, I asked kindly for my classmates, who have not seen my product before, to have a fresh look at it and to give me a critical response. The response I received was over whelming due to the fact, I was so oblivious in thinking I had finished, when they’re where many mistakes which needed to be attended too before any finished product was posted online. 


I created a post on my blog, for people to write their thoughts and comments on there. I did this for this reason that they're could be slight problems with my project, so that they could write their thoughts down. I read every single bit of feedback and outlined the criticism. This was also used to give feedback on what they thought worked well, what camera angles they enjoyed, I also took both types of feedback on board and I hope to take major positives from this, and expand my work in the future.

An example of using feedback to your advantage is, the more people you can ask to give you an outlook on your project, you will be able to please a wider audience. When I asked my classmates to write their feedback for me, they all noticed the same problem. There was a clip where I was lip singing, but it was not in time, they all put this down and told me the it is not in sync and that the clip is too fast, I tackled this problem and the video has majorly improved.

Feedback just doesn't help me either, I believe it helps the student giving the feedback is well. I hope they pick up some ideas from my video which may help them, I hope after watching mine and assessing the problems they have just seen, that make sure there lip syncing is in checked for example.