Update 31st January

As we no longer have class time dedicated to coursework planing has taken place outside of lessons. We couldn't film last weekend as we had hoped, however we are aim to get the majority of filming we need done this weekend, this will hopefully leave us only having to refill a couple of the getting ready scenes. I'm aiming to start editing straight away Sunday night, if not the filming, than the images we are taking for the digipak and advert. By the end of next week (6th February) I intend to have the digipak and the advert completed and have feedback on both from the audience, allowing myself time to re-edit if needed. All of the footage from this weekend will also be edited and added in to the existing video, again with feedback gained from the target audience. Note that I have updated my first lot of digipak analysis's to make them more detailed, I have also updated the shot list as we are re filming so more planning had to be made. I have also updated my cast and location posts to coincide with re filming

Audience Profile

Adverts and Album Covers

I wanted to make sure I had researched a variety of adverts and digipaks before I created mine. This time I looked at artists that weren't as mainstreams as the once I looked at previously. I used Spotify to find artists and tumblr to find album covers and adverts that I was struggling to find on google, for example the ones used in Loud & Quiet. This time however I didn't analysis complete digipaks, just the covers.

In one of my annotations I mentioned Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. I have decided to include a brief explanation of the male gaze theory:

'Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance.
The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object forboth the characters within the film, as well as for the audience who are watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal’ order. Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying lack of symmetry in power '
(extract from wikipedia)

Examples of male gaze

Examples of male gaze

Font

The font we plan on using for the digipak and the advert was something and I never really thought about, so I decided to do some research on possible fonts and got feedback from 50 16-19 year olds( as this is our target audience) on which one they felt best suited the band and video. Here are three fonts which I feel are appropriate. I would want the font to remain consistent throughout the poster and digipak as it creates a theme which can become recognisable.

Bebas Neue 

Elkwood 

Big noodle titling

(All fonts are from the font website dafont)

27/50 of the people I surveyed picked Bebas Neue font (the first font.)  I personally agree that this is the best font out of the three I picked, I feel it is the most bold and eye catching out of the ones selected 

DigiPak and magazine advert photo shoot

Over the weekend I have deliberated over the digipak and advert photography, I feel the pictures aren't right for what we need and feel they are bringing our work down. The pictures weren't planned and were a rushed last minutes job, I feel we need to take more time to plan what models we want (if we even want models at all), the style of picture we want to take and the location we want them to be taken in.

I plan to use the same minimalist & polished look that I used last year in my AS coursework, for my magazine INFLUXX. I also want to use the same style of photography as last year (Terry Richardson & Viktor Vauthier) using a stark and bold style that is honest to the camera. I have proved before that this is a successful way of capturing images and it is also something that I know I can achieve. In post production I also plan to edit my images, however keeping the editing to a minimum so they're not too distorted or unnatural. I believe the models clothes should relate to the video, our video is dark and previously our models were dressed smart, this didn't match the style of the video.

AS work

 Examples of Terry Richardson's work

I like how this images look so natural, especially the James Franco image, I think this is something we will easily be able to recreate 

Example of Viktor Vauthier's work

I again love the simplicity of these images, they don't look staged which is a style I really like. I'm also drawn to this style of image as the bright, natural lighting makes the models appear flawless. Although these images might not be gritty enough for our digipak and advert it is still something I'd like to try.

Once images have been taken I'll post them on a separate blog post

Update 22nd January 2015

We assumed our video was completed before the christmas holiday, so started work on our ancillary tasks. We decided to create an advert and a digipak. For both we played with the idea of using stills from the video, this is a process that we ruled out early on and the camera quality just wasn't good enough and made the digipak and advert look rather rushed and unprofessional. Secondly we thought of a band shot that would split the cover in to 4 boxes, similar to the image below, but more clean cut.

Our final idea after conversations with our teachers was to have an object as the image on the cover, we took inspiration from the below cover

However instead of an object like a lightbulb being used we decided on using trees. We believed this worked as trees are dead and bare at this time of year, we believed this worked well to show how emotionally the prostitute is dead and bare, with no life in her life. Below are the cover, inside right and back cover for our digipak.

Cover

Back Cover

Inside Right

We were really happy with how these turned out, however we received conflicting feedback from our teachers so have been left not knowing where we stand with them. 

We still wanted to include images of the band so deiced to use the four  image design we had for a cover and place it one the inside right panel of the digipak

Inside left