Analysis of CD cover and Magazine poster

CD cover:

Our CD cover links into our theme of love with it displaying a painting of Jesus. Most religions have a strong relation with love and how it is important to love every person and creature and this fits into our song choice well with on of our verse and choruses being filmed within a Church. The effects used on the painting using Photo-Shop modernises it and brings it in with the urban/modern art theme that is popular today. The fonts used differ on the album with a simple font used to show the albums songs and term and conditions this is to make it easier to read. The other font used is a more classy font and links in well with the religion theme with it being a more dated style of writing. Overall, I think the album cover is well done it has all the basic features of an album cover being used and it has a link with our song.

Magazine Poster:





Our Poster links in with our album cover with a Church being used again but this time we use the stain glass effect with a silhouette of Louise at the bottom of it. We also used a Photo Shop effect on it with it being more traditional effect on it but using modern day urban colours to link it in to our song. We used the same texts as on the CD cover but positioned them slightly differently with the download information being placed in the bottom right corner and the song information being in the top left corner. We changed the colour of the text to help it stand out more on the dark background and also to make it more eye catching because this is key to advertising to make it catch the buyers eye and tempt them into buying or downloading the song or album.

we are looking to produce the digi-pack over December with it being created on Photoshop. We plan to do this over a 2 week period.

We intend to spend 5 days on filming the video, we believe this a reasonable amount as not much traveling time is required. The majority of time we will be editing as this takes up more time than actually filming. For post-production we are looking to spend roughly 10 full working days on completing the whole piece. This will include doing the blogs and completing the CD cover and posters, as members in our group will be delegated different tasks.

Our shooting schedule is:

: Thursday 14th October 2:00pm - 4:00pm
: Monday 18th October 9:00am - 11:30am
: Sunday 24th October 2:00pm - 4:00pm
: Wednesday 27th October 12:00am - 3:00pm
: Monday 1st November 9:00am - 11:40am

From November to Decemeber we plan to edit our work using FinalCut pro on the Apple Macs.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The music video that inspired us the most was Bon Jovi's Have a Nice Day. This video which we mentioned earlier in the blog, shows city life today at its most busiest displaying the constant urgency and speed that life moves at today. This shows that we have created a bridge between our research and our music video.

One music video which was a large inspiration for our video was 'Pass Out' by Tinie Tempah. We used a shot which represents the inspiration. This shot is located in the middle-end of the song where Bash steps back into the dark. There is a similar shot in the Tinie Tempah video. We used this shot as we felt it went well with cut rate of the 'Bonkers' song and fit the theme of our video nicely. The shot was used as the low-key lighting, which worked well in Pass Out, was also very effective at creating a mysterious and intimidating character in our video.

We also use camera angles that be significantly used in the common day music video with dark and bright lighting being used constantly like the Pass Out music video where Tinie Tempah quickly move from dark light to brighter light etc like we have with bright city shots and dark alley-way shots.

The relation between our music video and the lyrics is clearly evident through out. Bash lip syncs the words for the majority of the video as we feel this is important to maintain consumer interest, rather than just having a song playing over a video which hardly relates to the video. We also used hand actions and body language to represent the lyrics. This is done simultaneously with the miming of the lyrics. We use displays of the city to raise the question where is the love? Showing people walking through the city centre (Market street) without them stopping to notice what was going on around them. The back alleys and tunnels used show the dark side of urban living with griffati and crime hiding in between the cracks of city life. This is mainly showed in the second verse where Dale is a street beggar, who is holding a sign asking Where is the Love? and yet everyone who walks past ignores him therefore ignoring the love. Religion is symbolised as being linked to the love in our music video with a clip of Dale and Louise singing in the church is an almost preaching stance which the song is trying to do it is like a modern day hymn.

Album cover research

Many popular albums usually need to have a visual attraction as well as musical attraction. Album covers usually reflect the mood of the album or displays the artist/band. However the majority display the artist and contain within its background the theme of the album e.g. Young Money All stars album contains an Urban/City Background this could be linked to genre of Rap music. Some album covers show images related to the artist e.g in the Ndubz album we see Dappy wearing his famous hat and Frazer striking a pose which he had became famous for. However, if we go further back in time e.g Jackson 5's album we see the lack of digital effects used but you see the family together and singing and Michael at the front because he is the most famous out of the family so therefore has to be displayed to show the buyer that the artist they are looking for is in the album.

Editing

We are now using a step by step approach with our editing by taking one scene/clip at a time and editing it using the Apple Macs and FinalCut pro. This is a professional program and will help us get the best editing possible done. We our using the college's editing suites for this which have state-of-the-art technology.

Recording and Problems

On the week of the 18th October, we started shooting our production piece of 'Where is the Love?'. We managed to record most of the song over this week period and took some time out during half term to record some extra footage for our night scene in Manchester City Centre. However, when we returned to college to edit our work so far, we soon noticed that not all of our work was up to the correct standard: with it not being synced correctly with the song, the camera work being shaky etc and people disturbing the filming.

But we moved quickly to rectify and re do the work that needed to be changed and now are taking a step by step with us editing it at every opportunity we have. So, if changed need to be made we can make them swiftly rather than worrying about them and rushing them at the end.

We also feel that by redoing the work it has given us an opportunity to improve and remaster parts of the production which were at previous times was being rushed and wasn't as good as it could be.

We have re-assessed this several times using our step by step approach and are still having problems with our work. Our main problem is Lip sync because none of us espicially wanted to be in the music video and were reculantly made to. Our lip sync etc isnt brillant and has been the main problem if our work.

Shooting Schedule

We plan to start shooting Monday 18th October. The first thing we are going to shoot is the location shots of the urban city centre which will be played though out our music video in quick cut shots.
We will then shoot every Monday afternoon and every Wednesday morning.
We also plan to shoot in the half term holidays because we need to shoot in the evening when it is dark. Our shooting sessions will last approximately 2 hours, excluding the shooting during the half term.
We plan to finish shooting at the beginning of November, just after half term and then we will focus on editing all of our footage.