Final Video Draft

(PLEASE WATCH ON THE SMALL SCREEN- Youtube has insanely decreased the quality and has cropped it to an unwanted size when watched on new window)

This is my final draft of my music video. Overall, I think that it is a successful product and was pretty much how I had imagined it. My main ideas of my video before construction were:

•  Simple, basic editing
• Majority black and white
• Simple transitions
• Ambiguous abstract narrative

I feel that I have achieved all of these features as there is not alot of editing throughout the video, with the 'additive dissolve' being the only transition used throughout. Apart from the ink clips, everything else is in black and white so therefore the ink colours contrast and stand out much more. The video follows an abstract narrative throughout, with no obvious story at all. I feel like there is still one or two small changes to make, as some shots last longer than originally intended. Apart from this, I am very happy with the video. 

Updated front cover of CD

One of the key elements of the digipack, magazine advertisement and video is that they all must fit together in some way. Although I think that I have mostly achieved this through the use of colours etc (the red in the video and the red on the advertisement) I felt my digipack did not fit fully. Smoke is an important aspect in the video so I have decided to try smoke silhouette instead of a splatter on the front cover of the CD case. I also changed the font to something slightly clearer.

Old Cover:

NEW COVER:

When looking at the two products together, I definitely think the second one is more effective. I have several smoke shots in my video so this will add consistency and continuity to my 3 products. I also experiemented using a red colour, as one of the few colours I have in my video is a red, however I did not think it looked as professional enough. Although I do think the second one looks more effective and professional, I am still not happy with it. It still does not fit in completely with the rest of my products, and I think I should really use an image of my performer on the cover. I decided upon this one to use on my front cover:

I then started experimenting with the image on publisher, and decided that the cover on my digipack really did need some colour on it, so I edited this image to the same colour as the image on my advertisement, and lowered the contrast slightly. I then added a white border to the image to make it stand out more on a white background and chose another font from fontspace 'ALLAGES' in white to use on the black background. This is my finished cover:

I am much happier with this cover, and think it looks really good on my digipack. The use of the same colour on both the digipack and advertisement adds continuity and the smoke element is a really prominent feature throughout all 3 products.

Ancillary Texts in Action

1) BUS STOP BOARD

2) MUSIC MAGAZINE

3) BILLBOARD

3) TIME SQUARE

4) SPOTIFY HOMEPAGE

5) ITUNES LIBRARY

In the current day, promotion of a product is as important as ever. Most songs are now illegally downloaded or streamed though programs such as Spotify, which makes virtually no money for the artist. It's important to advertise the album in as many places as possible in order to reach  a wide  audience and in turn, sell more of the product. Especially for an independent label this is really important, so to make sure my ancillary products would stand out in real life locations I have photo -shopped them into different possible places that a new album would typically feature. The more places the album is advertised the better, and I feel that my advertisement would stand out and attract buyers. The black on white colour makes the writing very eye-catching, so the most important aspects of the advertisement- the band name, the album name and the release date all stand out. The photo is very alluring, and in places like time square where everything is bright and colourful, a subtle ad would actually stand out more than the gaudy ones. By advertising the album everywhere, from a bus stop to a huge billboard, it reaches people everywhere and helps build a fan base and encourage people to buy the album.

Editing Tutorials

Prior to this project, I had never used Adobe Premier Pro before,and was very unsure how to use it. I knew I didn't want to have loads of complex editing in my video, however I still wanted to be able to make my clips back and white, change opacity, insert dissolving transitions, change the speed and duration, and reverse the clip. To learn how to do these, I used several websites and tutorials on Youtube, and once I had learnt the basics, I was able to do much more complex features, such as changing the entire colouration of clips using the channel mixer tool. It took a while to find tutorials and step by step guides that I could actually use, as for many you had to pay a monthly subscription fee or pay purely for the one tutorial.

EDITING HELP LINKS AND TUTORIALS

Finished Ancillary Texts

PROMOTIONAL ADVERTISEMENT TO APPEAR IN A MAGAZINE

6 PANEL DIGI-PACK WITH 2 CDS

Possible Photos for promotional advertisement

Instead of taking new photos for my advertisement, I have instead taken screen grabs from my media and am using these instead. I feel these will work very well as it is true  reflection of the artist, and the advertisement photo will not look too staged or posed. Out of these images, I really like the first one, as I feel the colour red has many connotations and could be considered quite ambiguous- this will therefore make the reader curious and more likely to buy the album. The editing throughout video has worked really well in terms of being able to pick an image, as I have managed to get some in between shots during a additive dissolve transition.

Video Draft

Ancillary Advertisement- experimenting with different images

Once I had decided on the basic layout of my advertisement, I tried it with all the different possible images that I could use. My basic layout used the font 'Trajan Pro' throughout- the same font as I used on my digi-pack in order to add consistency. It was important that all 3 products; the video, digipack and the advertisement all link in some way, and I feel like I have achieved this through the use of colours and fonts, along with the fact I used a screen grab from the video on my advert. My basic layout looked like this:

I chose not to include social media links, as I felt it took away the simplicity of the product. I made sure I included the record label logo, just as I did on the digi-pack, along with the digital platforms that the album will be available on, as this is keeping up to date with the target audience the album and video is for. I then tried each image within the layout to see what works best:

After looking at all the posters together, even though I like the black and white photos I feel like the advertisement certainly needs some colour to stand out, so for this reason I prefer the last one. Red works well with black and white so I see no reason to change the text colour at all, and I think as a whole advert, it works well and would catch eyes in a magazine. However, I really like the image on the second to last advertisement, so I attempted to colour that image the same as the reddy colour on the last one:

The colour ended up being not as vibrant with the recolouration and I feel it looks too faded to catch the eyes of readers. For this reason, I think I am going to keep the original red coloured image to use on my advertisement. 

Digi Pack Finished

Inside Pages

There is many different things that can be included on the inside left of the cover, including:

• A page of Thanks
• Credits for producers and musicians
• An image
• An introduction to the album

I have decided I want to have a small section of thanks and an image on my inside page. The image will be a silhouette to to fit in with the rest of the digi pack and to add consistency. 

Digi Pack: CD Case Spine

(I will incorporate both of these spines on my CD case)

Finished Back Cover

As I did with both CDs, I have inserted the image of my back cover onto the digi pack template along with the 2 CDs I have already designed. This helps me get a feel for the what the finished product will look like, and will allow me to see if everything I have created fits together and is consistant. So far so good I think! I have also remembered to include a barcode on my back cover, as you would never get a CD without one, and it's one of the main (but easily forgotten) conventions.

Back Cover Ideas

As part of the digi-pack I need to create a back cover for the CD case. I am maintaining the black and white theme along with silhouettes, similar to my CD, on my back cover. I am tried both a white back with black writing, black back with white writing, and both with a contrasting cover silhouette of a cat. I chose the cat as it is usually associated with luck/bad luck, and adds to the mysterious vibes of the album. As for the track list, I have used other songs by the artist 'The XX' because I know they all fit in with the genre of the song as they are by the exact same artist.

Back Cover Examples 

My favourite colour combination is the white on black, and I think the silhouette looks really effective on the black cover. In terms of the font, I have used 'Trajan Pro' as I think it maintains a unique element however is still simple enough to fit in with the genre. I have made sure to include the record label logo, along with the year the CD was released and a copyright symbol, as this is extremely conventional and is on every back of CD cover.

CD 2

Because I have chose the Digi pack that includes 2 CDs, I want them both to be similar in style but contrast in appearance. The easiest and most effective way to do this is to make CD 2 black silhouettes on a white background, rather than white silhouettes on a black background. After designing lots of different designs for CD 1, I decided that the one I liked second was the hand print, so I decided to see if it would look good on a white CD.

I kept everything else the same, including the positioning and font of the band name and the album title and just changed the colour from white to black, along with the rough trade logo.

Like I did with CD1, I have inserted it onto the template alongside the other CD to see what it looks like:

I feel the CDs both contrast each other really really well, and I have made a professional looking product.

Final CD

I am really really pleased with my finished CD, and I think it really reflects the mysterious and ambiguous aspects of both the song and the video. I am glad I played around with lots of different options in making this CD, as it is a really important part of the digi-pack and needs to be perfect. To get a good impression of what the finished product will look like, I have inserted the CD on the digipack template:

I think my digi-pack is coming along really well, and I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing completely finished.

CD 1 Ideas

I created a basic CD template on Publisher in order to play around with some potential CD ideas. I noticed that now, it is quite popular to not have the band name or album name on the CD, just the record label and an image of some sort. I wanted to keep within the simplistic theme of the whole album and video, so was keen to have a black and white CD. Here is my first mock-up idea:

I love the simplicity of this CD, and I really like the ideas of having silhouettes. However, one thing that really irritates me about this, is the top of the woman's head and how it is slightly cut off. I decided to play around with different silhouettes to see if I could make a more professional looking product:

I like the idea of a more ambiguous, provocative silhouette as it leaves the actual image up to the audiences own interpretation. I also like how there is only 2 features on the CD, again aiding in the continuity of the simplistic design I am to create.

This is my favourite CD idea by far, as I just love the silhouette and think it reallt reflects the genre of my music. It is so mysterious, and so is my music video.

I have also made on CD with no silhouette at all, and just the name of the band and their album in very smell letters- this is a very classy look however I am pretty saure I will be using a silhouette on my actual CD design.

However, I have decided to keep the band name and album name on my CD, along with the silhouette of the young girl and the rabbit shooting- as I love how it is so mysterious.

DigiPack Template

DiskWizards is an online service providing lots of different templates for album covers, and here I found an ideal template to use alongside my ancillary texts:

I chose to use the 6 panel digi-pack with 2 CDs, as this seems to be the most conventional when it comes to full albums. Artists such as Beyonce have released a 2 CD edition of their album, with all the songs on CD 1,and special features and videos on disk 2. This will create a USP that I can also put on my magazine advertisement for the album, as it will attract people into buying the album. I will use both publisher and photoshop in order to create this album cover, and then put all images on features onto this template to present. It's important that it looks as professional as possible and I think I will be able to reflect this. 

Final Filming Day- 8th March

I decided to film the (hopefully) last bits of my video last Sunday. I only needed Matt for this day so it did not take a lot of organizing, and I filmed in a small wooded path near my house. I checked the weather forecast before hand, and although it looked promising, it ended up raining while we were out filming. Luckily, I managed to pretty much get everything that I needed before the rain hit.

I have collected some of my shots together and turned them into GIFs, which I also did with Tash's shots. Its a great way to present them on my blog without having to post individual videos.

Ancillary Texts- Conventions Of An Album Advertisement