Ancillary Task 1- CD Digipack

This is the production of our Digipack so far, including the front cover, spine, back cover, inside left cover and the disc in the middle. We have shown a consistent theme of black and white with a speckled dot effect across each cover, the artist's face prodiminantly shown in focus with strong eye contact to the audience and our artists 'AA' logo linked between the front and back cover.

Ancillary Task 1- Idea Improvements

After looking at the main ideas from our Audience Feedback we have decided we need to re-design our CD in the inside cover. We are going to use on of the same images from before in black and white as it shows continuity for the whole CD Digipack and we are going to put the image onto the CD rather than as a background because we have realised that is what all CD's do.

This is our first idea, we have used the same photo as the third idea on our previous post as it was a favourite from our audience but instead of half of her face we have used her whole face. By doing this our artist has direct eye contact to the audience making it a powerful and effective selling point.  

 

However we have edited this idea further by uploading it onto Picmonkey.com and adding the same filter which we have used on our front and back cover. Which gives a speckled effect and shows constant continuity between every aspect of the Digipack.

Ancillary Task 1- Inside Cover Feedback

We got feedback from our first ideas of our inside over where the CD is going, and the most re-occuring audience's ideas for us were:

 

POSITIVE

 

"we like the photograph on your third idea where she is mirrored but we would prefer to see her whole face rather than half of it"

"I like that your going to have it monotone, as it will compliment the rest of your CD Digipack"

 

NEGATIVE

 

"I think you need to put the photograph onto the CD rather than as the background, it doesn't look good like that"

"I think you need to use the third photograph with her full face, but onto the CD"

 

 

Ancillary Task 1- Inside

 

These are our first ideas for our inside cover where the CD will be, we wanted to choose photographs that fit similarly to the left inside cover and the front one. For our first idea it appears too central and would look better if it was more off centre to the left or to the right. to give it a quirkier appearance. I like the photograph in our second experiment as we our artist has her eyes shut, which contrasts to the outer cover which has her eyes open. We think this is a clever technique as eyes open on the outside and shut on the inside,  it also links to our music video narrative, to how she is percieving herself to the audience, her outer apearance she is moving on with her life, better off without her boyfriend, more independant and confident, and then on the inside her eyes are shut to connote that she does still care about him but there relationship wasn't what it should have been. It has quite deep connotations. Her eyes shut also gives a peaceful, feminine quality. However, we still aren't sure about the positioning of the cover, with the fact that the image is cropped half off her shoulder which makes it unpleasing to the audience in regards to the 'Z' rule, because it makes the frame look un-coventional.

For this cover, we used two images zoomed into the models facial expression. On the left our model has a serious expression with a slight sad face which connotes the loss of their relationship and on the right the model's face appears stronger and more powerful to connote her independance and confidence without their relationship, showing her moving on. The monotone fits with the rest of our CD cover, and the two faces on each side look's quirky and unique.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK:

 

Positive comments:

The monotone image gives a very deep contrast making it asthetically pleasing.

You can see the difference in the faces

 You can see the assymetrical features such as the eyes, nose and jaw line.

Negative comments:

It's quite bold for an inside cover

You don't want it to overpower the other covers

You could have the image on the CD rather than the background

Ancillary Task 1- Spine for CD Digipack

We had a look at spines for CD covers and we have noticed that a lot seem to be completely plain, with either one of two colours on, and just the name of the artist, the album and the record company/prdoucer logo/name with a sort code. What we think best for our CD spine, as our cover is black and white, is too keep it simple but still match the theme of our cover.

 

 

 

 



Add caption

Ancillary Task 1- changes

We have made more changes rto our Back Cover for our CD Digipack, we have looked at other covers more closely and noticed a lot of them have 'copyright/reserve' statements on them and so we decided, to make our cover look more professional, we would add that to the bottom of ours.

 

We have added the copyright statement with a 'c' symbol and distributed by details with a sort code, by doing this we have given our CD a more professional appearance, we have also made the font for the song names smaller as we felt they looked to overpowering before distracting from the other details on the cover.

Ancillary Task 1 - CD Digipack, Back Cover Design

We have looked up some designs for back covers on google and have found that they tend to be quite plain, with no images on them, we have used these for inspiration for our designs:





What we like about these CD covers was the way they get to the point, showing you what you want to know about the CD without distractions and pictures that hide the text. We liked the centralisation of the font and the typeface they both have. They are simple yet effective and as our CD front cover is black and white with a plain yet powerful effect we want to continue this and show continuity with the back, which we obviously couldn't have bright colours on.

 

 

We used Adobe Photoshop to create a gradient background on which we overlayed the names of the songs on our artists album, a barcode (generic of all CD covers), our record label 'LH STUDIOS', the artist recognisable name logo 'AA', a link to youtube and twitter to find out about our artist and a phone scanable barcode. We decided to include the last two ideas, as our target audience is young teens, mainly ranging from 13-18 and interactive media platforms such as, mobile phones, twitter, youtube, facebook etc, are the main hub teenagers use everyday, so by including this onto our back cover, it interacts with the audience, showing them we cater to their specific age and encouraging them to interact with our product and selling our artist. This is our first rough draft of the back cover, which we plan to get some feedback on to see if we can make improvements.

 

Final Video Feedback

We got a group of 30 females of the age of 16 together to watch our Final Video, this group was the same one we had shown our previous videos too, so they were aware of what it looked like before. We handed out pieces of paper and asked them to write down what they thought of it and what they understand from our video.
These were the results we recieved:

1. 'I like the start of black and white and the transition into colour'
2. 'It seems natural and effortless, good scenery'
3. 'Very Good!'
4. 'The narrative is clear, black and white = sad, colour = happy'
5. 'Clear emotions from start to end'
6. 'I understood the narrative from black and white to colour meaning sad to happy'
7. 'Really good, I like the slow transition to colour'
8. 'I like the nature backgrounds and bright colour'
9. 'Atmospheric scenes of slow motion hair blowing in wind and laughing, very powerful'
10. 'Emotive, I'm glad you got rid of the black socks!'
11. 'Use of black and white to colour made your narrative clear'
12. 'Camera angles and the selective focus shots were effective'
13. 'The scenery and natural light work well making a summery scene'
14. 'The atmosphere in the video matches the song'
15. 'Really enjoyed and understood the story'
16. 'Really, really good, colours are so bright. I like the change in colours for the change in emotions'
17. 'I like how it ends the same way it starts'
18. 'The outfit changes suit the themes and backgrounds'
19. 'Black and white- sad, colour- happy, very clear!'
20. 'A lot better than last time!'
21. 'Colour was happy, black and white was sad!'
22. 'I think it was a really good video, I liked how it went from black and white to colour according to her emotions'
23. 'Slow motion effects are atmospheric!'
24. 'Transition in emotions is good!'
25. 'I like how it changed from black and white to colour because she changed from sad to happy'
26. 'Much better than before, shots are in order in relevance to her emotions'
27. 'No black socks, makes it look so much better!'
28. 'Emotions are so much better, sad and happy'
29. 'Music fits, good scenes, good video!'
30. 'I like the meanings behind the colours, good facial expressions they go nicely with the song lyrics'

Final Video

What we have finally done to our video, with the help from our Audience Feedback groups, is show a clear transition from her sad self to her happier self. We have made the beginning of our clips to black and white when they are sad and gradually faded it into colour when she is starting to look happier looking forward to a better place in her life. This black and white also shows a link to our Ancillary tasks as they are both black and white and a photograph which shows her face looking back and forward. To do this black and white gradient effect we rendered out video and put it into Adobe Premier Pro, we then split our video into parts and added 'set in points' and 'set out points' to cut out the right bit of video. So it was easier for us to add the gradual black and white transition.

Audience Feedback- (Instagram) clips from video

We have also uploaded little clips from our video onto Instagram another media platform, to get feedback from audiences of our age group. We feel it is the bes way to recieve true feedback as our video is aimed at an audience of our current age group and below, which is 15-18 and Instagram is a popular app which teenagers use daily. We will upload screenshots of the feedback we recieve after a few days.

 

 

 

 

 

We left our videos on Instagram for a few hours to get some audience feedback, the clips were only around 10 seconds long, so our audience only saw little bits of our video but we got 8 likes on the first video and 53 likes on the second video,
we are happy with the comments we got, which were:
 'Love this!! Good job xxxx'
'Quality is really good'
'The effects you've used are so good x'

We also recieved an anonymous comment on our video and they said:
"fantastic piece of work. Beautiful setting and with so many very close up shots that are hard to get and still look brilliant, but you do it. Good lip syncing throughout most of the video. Development would be for some more longer shots when not lip syncing."

 

Next Video with Changes

After reviewing all the Audience Feedback we recieved on what to improve, we have finally made our changes to suit our Audience's ideas. For example, we have cropped some clips so the black socks were no longer in any shots, as it didn't look visually pleasing or professional. We have also moved our video clips around, to change our narrative. We have started our video with sadder clips, in which our artist is looking back on her relationship at how it was in a bad place and upsetting, and as the video moves on she becomes happier and glad she is looking back on it, as it was so bad and how she is happy now she is moving on into a better life without him. This not only makes more sense as a whole, rather than a merging of happy and sad scenes but it also fits with our ideas of our Ancillary tasks which show our artists face looking back and looking forward. Now all our tasks show a continuity and story.

Ancillary Task 1 and 2

We have listened to our Audience Feedback from Ancillary Task 2, and decided to enhance some of our text so it is more prominent and dark. We also added (14) to make it clear what year it is in, and we have changed the 'plus guests' font to the sam colour as our border and embossed it on photoshop to make it stand out and more readable. To follow conventions of advertisements we have also added the facebook, twitter, youtube and phone barcode logo's to interact with our audience so they can interact via multi media platforms with our product making it available to wider range of audiences.

 

 

After we asked our Audience what they thought a good name for our album would be, we looked into some of the ideas and chose 'Momentum' as the name, which we have now added underneath the 'AA' to make a clear link between the two ancillary tasks which shows continuity.

 

 

(Inside left cover)

 

Ancillary Task 1

We have nearly finshed our Front Cover for our CD Digipack, we have chosen the name for our album now, so need to add that to the cover and spine and back cover. We are still in production for the inside cover on the right and the back cover. Which we need to upload onto our blog as soon as we can.

Feedback for Ancillary Task 2

Me and my partner Laura, asked for some feedback from our target audience on our 3rd draft for Ancillary task 2. We know it needs some tweaking and adjustments to make it look more proffesional and we plan to work on this, but we wanted to get a certain idea on what exactly our audience thinks of our Advertisement.

The positive feedback we recieved was: It is really effective
                                                                 Bold, very dramatic
                                                                 The two faces look professinal
                                                                 Very Eye-catching and proffesional effects
                                                                
The comments made for improvements were: Couldn't see some of the writing
                                                                          Some of the font could be darker
                                                                          Need a year next to September
                                                                          The writing needs to be enhanced
                                                                         

Ancillary Task 2, Second Ideas

 

 

We have taken on board, the feedback we recieved about our first ideas, and we have completely changed the layout, pictures, text, fonts, entirely. We have chosen to use the same picture as our CD cover to show a clear link between the two products and make it recognisable to our audience. We used photoshop to create our advertisement, by adding layers and text centrally descending. We also decided to get two signatures of other famous artists whom are similar to our artist in genre, and used the crop and magic wand tool, to clear their orginal backgrounds and then overlay them onto our advertisement. We feel this adds a professional look to our advertisement. We are planning to add more changes to it and get audience feedback on this so far.

 

 

 

 

Ancillary Task 2, 3rd Ideas

So after the feedback on our first ideas,we decided to completely scratch the whole document and start over. We chose a photo that we previously hadn't decided to pick as an option, but after we used some editing tools on photo-shop, duplicated it and used the layering tool, to overlay them, we decided that this photograph was a good decision. We have now started to add text, dates, borders and bevelling techniques to enhance the font to improve the task. However, we are going to get our audience to feedback to us on what they think so far, incase we will have to start again.

Audience Feedback on Ancillary Task 2 Ideas

We have shown our ideas to a group of girls in our target audience and asked what they thought and the feedback we got was mainly negative. We anticipated this would be the case, as we didn't like it our selves. What we were trying to do was make our magazine advertisement colourful rather than, black and white similarly to our CD Cover, however from the comments we recieved we have changed our mind.

Negative Comments: Her name overlaps her head and doesn't look good
                                   The colours don't work you can't read the font clearly
                                   The dress is unflattering
                                   She looks really pale
                                   There's not enough text
                                   The page doesn't look proportions

Audience Feedback

In my previous post, I had made some questions I was going to ask our target audience and reflect on the results we recieve. Me and my partner showed a group of 25, 15 year old girls

We had mixed feedback on which CD cover they liked the most, they seemed to like them both but the overall verdict by one or two opinions was the 1st cover.

What they thought was sellable about the albums were:

positive comments: It's plain yet effective

                                It's different and has a strong impact on the audience

                                The mirror effect is powerful

                                It's appealing to the eye

                                The mirroring effect and the overlaping looks professional

                                It's emotive and not over done with words and colour

The final question we asked was 'what do they think a catchy name is in 'one word?'

Comments: Momentum
                   Moving On
                   The Other Side
                   Over You
                   Love Died

                   

Choosing our Album Name

We needed to choose an album name, that will match our Music Video and which is catchy in one word. We asked in our previous audience research for some ideas and the results we got were: momentum, Moving On, The Other Side, Over You and Love Died. However the only one we liked was Momentum, as we felt that it really reflects the theme of our video. Momentum means moving quickly, and this emulates the narrative of our video. (Which we are re-editing now) Our artist starts the video upset about her relationship and looking back on it, and as it progresses she realises quickly how bad their relationship really was and how she is going to move on now. So we feel Momentum, fits our song to our music video and also links to our choice of how we designed our CD Cover.

Target Audience Feedback

We are planning to show a group from our target audience, two of our ideas for our Album Front Cover, we want to know:

 

 Which one they prefer?

Why?

What it is they think is sellable about the album?

and

What do they think a catchy album name is in 'one' word which reflects the narrative of the video?

 

 

 

Ancillary Task 2- 1st Draft

 

These are just drafts/mock ups of some ideas for our magazine advertisent, we wanted to include our artists name at the top, in the same font asour CD cover to show a link to the audience, we also used the overlaying tools for our text so it blends with the colours of the picture. These are just some initial ideas but I'm not sure whether I like this so far as it is so different to our current draft of our CD Cover.

New CD Cover Ideas 2

 

We have researched some more CD Covers and we really like when album covers are in black and white, with the idea that 'the more simplistic the more effective' it is. We really like how Miley Cyrus' album cover just has a capital 'M' overlaying the image but also with a transparent effect so it doesn't blank out the image. We are going to try this with out photos and also try flipping the photo so it doubles up the picture. For example: (see below)

 

 

 

 

We think this is really effective as our narrative begins with our model being sad about her relationship and the way it is but as she goes through the song she sees how negative it actually is and she begins to become happy as she know's she is better without him. So this photo emulates this perfectly, the first picture facing the left shows her looking back at her relationship and then the second picture facing the right is her looking forward towards a better life, and we can see a slight smile on the models face. The effect is really powerful towards the audience and the faded effect shows a passing in time.

 

Using Photoshop me and my partner have started designing new cover ideas using the research above. Therefore we have started to use the layering tools to overlay text onto our picture. We have also used the blending tool to merge the two together and picmonkey.com to add effects over the top such as sun rays and the 'bokeh' effect to make our artist look like an icon/ star. We think these ideas are our strongest so far, we have also flipped the 'A' backwards and placed two next to eachother to create symmetry and patterns in the frame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have just created a possible inside left hand cover for our CD, I have chosen one of our favourite images from our photoshoot, and manipulated it by adding the lyrics to our music video onto it. I think the black and white font blends well with the image and the photograph is so powerful with our models eye contact straight at the audience and the atmosphere it creates is effective.

Feedback -Target Audience

We have again shown our 1st draft of our video to another group of girls this time aged 17-18, so a year or two older than our last target audience group and we asked them what their thoughts were. What was interesting, compared to the other focus group was the different type of feedback we recieved. For example a lot of their comments were a lot more critical and useful in order to help improve our videos understanding, rather than minor adjustments, they said:

What Went Well: the slow motion effect
                               good use of guitar
                               lovely scenery
                               laughing scenes are very atmospheric
                               good miming
                               the video suits the song

Even Better If's: mix of emotions (make the narrative clearer)
                             timing of some shots to improve the lip syncing

Compared to out last focus group, these peole thought we needed a clearer narrative as the lyrics weren't always clear with the types of shots we included. Therfore, we plan to clearly start the video with sadded slow motion shots, to emphasise she's looking back on her relationship/past and then as the video continues we show a gradual tansition into happier shots which portray her looking forward to her future without the negativity and without him.

Change of Artist Name

We have decided to change our artists name from Lola-Marie to Ava Marie, partly because we think Lola-Marie is too long when we want to add text and change the effects and also because with the new photos we've taken we think an 'A' will work really well with the layout of the image.

Ancillary Task 1- Audience Feedback

Expect to see:

 Picture of Artist (close-up or mid-shot)

Name of Artist

 Eye-catching colours
Special Effects

 

Colour Scheme: Black and White
or

pale pastel colours to compliment outdoor scenery in video clips

 

How should the Artists name be on the cover:

Central at the top
Central at the bottom

Diagonal across the top corner

 

What do they want from it:

Eye-catching that makes your Artist stand out
Simplicity
Not too busy, so there is too many distractions from the product itself

 

We are going to ask our target audience:

 

What they expect from to see on our Cover?

 

What colour scheme do they want after seeing our photos?

  

How should we have our Artists name on the cover?

 

What do they want from it?



 

New CD Cover Ideas

We have chosen our favourite image from our photo-shoot in the studio, and cropped it in a way that allows room for manipulation, we also think by cropping off her shoulder we get an effective composition which is pleasing to the eye. We have decided to change the quality to black and white to emphasise our models natural beauty and make her appealing to the audience. We have chosen this photo, because the lighting is strong and creates powerful tonal contrasts with her skin and the monotone effect. We have chosen this photo because as her eyes are closed as it links to the lyrics and it connotes the momentary pause before her emotional feelings saying 'just before goodbye'. However we don't think the photograph is powerful is enough to connect to her audience and the font we have chosen which has been flipped sideways, doesn't fit the Z effect and look right to the audience's eyeline. Also it isn't big enough, the 'IT' is lost into her hair and the colour doesn't look right.

Photo-shoot for CD cover and Magazine Advertisement

Yesterday, me and my partner Laura, used a white backdrop and studio lighting to create our photoshoot for our Ancillary Tasks. We got our model composed centrally within the frame, or slightly to one side, which in turn leaves us space around her for our manipulations. We styled our model with loose, natural, wavey hair to connote an effortless appearance, red lipstick which connotes femininity, and also an alluring aura to attract a male audience. We chose two, outfits one a pinky/red dress with a jewelled necklace and the other a burgandy/red jumper with a jewelled collar. We wanted to stick to a similar colour theme throughout so both our Ancillary tasks link and show a connection between our products to our audience.

 

 

 

For these two images, we composed our model into an uposed posture with a natural open mouth pose. We want to convey a simple, natural appearance to our audience which we think suits best to our country/pop genre. We have chosen bright coloured lipstick and clothing which can be linked to the over accentuated associations with pop, but wavey hair amd simplistic poses which give a calming aesthetic quality to the images. This can be linked to the laid back associations with country music. 

 

We also used the monotone effect for some of our photographs to empahsise the natural raw beauty of the model. However, I don't like the photo above because I feel it is too blurry and the lighting wasn't bright enough to be edited fully. I do like the model's composition within the frame and the laughter because it shows her as a happy role model.

 

I really like both of these photographs both in black and white and colour because our model has a fixed gaze directly to the audience, to engage them with her product.

The two photographs are two of my favourites from the shoot, as my model beholds an alluring facial expression attracting her audience. I like the central position in the frame as it is the main focal point and allows space to manipulate them with text for trial cd covers. I love the sharp detail throughout the picture (below) and the strong eye contact the model has with us. I think this is one of our most successful photos from the shoot with the most professional appearance.

 

 

 

I like the bright colours from her dress and necklace which compliment with her dark hair. I chose to leave this photograph in colour because I feel it has strong tonal contrasts and the models facial expression is really powerful adressing the audience. The lighting is really bright against her face and the backdrop which creates an aesthetic quality to the image.

 

I think this photograph could work quite well as the CD cover because the colours are strong and also she is smiling which completely changes the feeling of the viewers point of view. It interacts positively with the audience giving off a relaxed appearance which with the colours fits with our country/pop theme. 

 

For these two pictures we changed our models clothing to a burgandy/red jumper with a jewelled collar. We chose to stick to red because when choosing one for our cd cover and one for our magazine advertisement it will show a connection between the two products. I don't think our models facial expression works very well as she seems a bit confused, but I really love the photo below because I think with her eyes closed it is a really different composition and it seems like she is making a wish which could reflect the audience wanting to have the album.