Untitled from Media Group on Vimeo.

The link below is a YouTube version because this Vimeo version dramatically reduces the quality of the video.

YOUTUBE VERSION

Welcome to my blog, detailing the development of my A2 media coursework.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

Rough Cut

Fireworks - Rough Cut from Media Group on Vimeo.

Logos on our Digipak



The Parental Advisory sticker is an essential feature for any digipak containing explicit lyrics (basically swear words or inappropriate language).


A barcode is used as an optical machine-readable representation of data which is used by shops to acknowledge a product that has been sold.




The Young Money Entertainment Logo is used to show the record label the song comes from. This is needed to acknowledge the label and give them credit for the music within the digipak.




A Recycling Logo is now featured on practically every digipak across the world. This is because recycling has become a big deal due to global warming. The recycling logo normally consists of three green arrows, but black would be more suitable for our digipak design.



Saturday, 15 January 2011

Shooting the Video: Locations

An Alleyway not far from our School
This location was chosen because of its urban and natural look.



Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Magazine Advertisement Creation - Research

Before creating the magazine advertisement for our digipak, we needed to research others in the market to see how they grabbed the reader's attention and what they included on the poster. Below are some examples.


Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Digipak Creation - Research

Before creating our digipak for the single 'Fireworks' by Drake we decided to research other digipaks to discover the conventions of the front cover, back cover, inside covers and the CD itself.

The General Shape of a Digipak

This Oasis digipak shows the main parts that we need to create - front cover, back cover, the CD itself and the inside covers.


Examples of Front Covers


The above covers are general R&B and Rap single covers. This is the sort of thing we are aiming to create. All have a picture of the artist on them (even if it is abstract).


There are many different forms of front covers, but the three of the four above the most widely used. There is a picture of the artist taking up most of the shot or in the centre of the screen.


There is then large text to draw the attention of the consumer to what song they are buying and who it is by.





In contrast Kanye West's Power challenges these conventions because there is not a normal picture of the artist but it draws the attention of the consumer because of how abstract it is (a sword through someone's head will draw the eyes!)





Depending on the content there could be a Parental Advisory sticker on the front warning consumers of explicit content (such as swear words or mentions of drugs or sex).





Examples of Back Covers

The above picture shows examples of the back covers of digipaks. They have a small number of tracks on the back (the average being 3 - consisting of the original track, a clean track and an instrumental)


There is also the barcode on the back and the record company logo/writer and producers. This is normally also made to fit with the colour scheme of the digipak - such as the bottom right of the below picture. The logos are both blue, fitting in with the text in the track list. The same goes for the left side of the picture, the writer and producer information is black on a pink background, allowing the style to remain throughout.

Examples of CDs



The CDs above are the sort of thing you would find in a digipak today. They come with different looks but mostly have the same thing on them.


They have a track listing:





the name of the artist:





the name of the single:







and copyright information:







As you can see from the four examples, CD designs come in two types - plain shiny CDs and CDs with coloured designs on them. The coloured design is the one our group is going to create.


Examples of Inside Covers





As shown above, the inside covers of a digipak can be spread over two pages (ours will only have the left hand side page as the right will be covered by the CD). The page will have another track listing on it only this time it has details about writers and producers of the songs. At the bottom there are the logos from the various music labels the artist is associated with (ours would be Young Money Entertainment, Cash Money Records and Universal Music Group).



Shooting the Video: Schedule