Aspects of back cover of Digipak!

The photographs I used for my Digipak were all original however there were some images that I had to use from other sources, these were the barcode and the virgin record label as this already existed and I could therefore not make my own.This blog  post will show the links from where I found certain aspects of the back page of my digipak. I needed to include a barcode and the Virgin records label to make my Digipak look professional and more like the real thing. A barcode is always required of a digipak in order for the product to be sold. The record label is also needed in order to show the producer label of the record. Below are the images I used and their links on the internet..

Barcode;

http://goo.gl/A7wIe












Record Label;
http://goo.gl/noSXj



Process of back page!

Now I have made my front cover I can start on the back page. Below I have blogged the steps I took to make this part of my You Me At Six Digipak.

 

 

Above shows the original image I have chosen to use for this page. I liked this picture as the boys are taking up the majority of the left side of the page which leaves room on the right for the tracks on the album where I have planned to place them in my drawn plan. I again made a background copy of this image incase anything went wrong with my editing.

 

Above is a screenshot to show how I have edited the original image. Again I used the black and white effect which can be seen in the screenshot below also. I used this effect again as I thought it would be a good idea to make the front cover and back page match in a way. This I thought would make it look more professional as my research on Digipaks showed that many other Digipaks have similar designs on their front and back covers.

 

Next I added the barcode. This is an important aspect of the Digipak as if the target market want to purchase this it needs to provide them with a barcode. I have placed this in the right hand corner as this is easy to locate and this is the side that is usually looked at first when it comes to scanning the code, therefore it is easily found. My next blog will show the link from which I found this image.

 

I then added the record label. I have already stated that I have planned to use the Virgin record label as this is already the label that You Me At Six uses. This again made my Digipak look more professional. I placed it next to the barcode as my research showed that this is somewhere that it is commonly placed around. Having this record label also advertises it to the target market as they will recognise it from the band's other CD cases/ Digipaks. I will again blog later on where I found this image.

 

The screenshot above shows the text I have edited in. This is the tracklist of the album. It is important that this is included on the Digipak so that the target audience know what they are going to be listening to. I have again put this text in white font and used Minion Pro just like the front cover to keep the same consistent house style.I placed them here as this space looked too empty. The songs were made up be me using words from other existing songs and mixing them up and others were kept the same. The tracklist I created was;

Crash (Obviously)

Underdog

Dilema

Little Lies

Under your thumb

Bite my tongue

Behind closed doors

Playing Games

Turbulance

I blame you

Your colours

If I was you

 

The screenshot above shows where I have added in the copyright terms and conditions. It is important to have these to show that no copyright laws have been breached and that the Digipak is available for purchase. I researched other terms and conditions from other Digipaks and used these as a guideline to write up a set for my Digipak. This can be shown in the image below.

 

I first placed the conditions on word to ensure that there were no spelling mistakes or grammar errors as you can see below there are, these I then corrected before putting them onto my Digipak.

Making the front cover!

I can now blog the process of me using photoshop to create the front cover of my Digipak. I have never made a Digipak before, however I felt prepared when I was getting started with it as I had my drawn plan to use as a guideline and I had the research I had previously used to help me.
Firstly I chose which image I wanted to use and set this as the background layer.

This screenshot shows the original image before I made any changes to it. Next I made a background copy of the image so that I could start editing it. This meant that if something went wrong with this copy I could use the old one for back up.

 

 

The picture above shows how I have edited my original image to make it suit the genre of music on the album. I planned to make this image black and white which is exactly what I have done. I also thought it would be a good idea to include the black and white effect as because the album name is linked to our music promo for 'Crash' we also used the black and white effect in some shots, I therefore thought that the viewers that have watched the video may recognise this similarity and relate the two together. If they liked the video they are likely to like the album and be interested in it.

 

 

 

The next image shows me adding the band's name. This is something that every CD case/digipak includes as it is promoting the artist. I want the target market to be able to recognise straight away who made this digipak. This is why I have placed the band's name in the top right hand corner so it is easily noticeable and readable. I have made it white so it looks nice on the black background. The screenshot below also shows the font I have used for this text.

 

 

 

The above screenshot shows the next text I added in. This is the name of the album.'Crash'. I have already stated that I have named it this as this is the track we used for our music promo and my research showed me that You Me At Six have named their other albums after songs on that album. I have placed it underneath the band's name as this again is something that many other Digipaks do. I have made it white in order to keep the same consistent house style as the other text on the page. The screenshot below again shows that I have used 'Minion Pro' for the text font. I feel that by keeping the same house style it creates a professional look. 

 



 

At first I was going to leave the final front cover as the previous screenshot of the whole page. However I thought it would be a better idea to underline the band's name to give it more important. I also liked this a lot better as it made the name stand out a lot more.



 

 The screenshot above shows what my Digipak would look like with the original image and without the black and white effect. I wanted to see which idea I would like better out of the two. I have decided that the black and white front cover looks better as it makes it look more professional and suitable to the genre of music. I feel if I kept the original image the same way as it was at the beginning this would look rather dull and boring whereas the black and white affect adds a bit more interest to it.

 

Digipak design- Drawn plan

In order to help me know how to set out my Digipak I thought it would be helpful to create a drawn plan of what I hope it will look like. I have drawn it in the format of the digipak template I have shown previously to help me identify what it would look like set out in this way. I have drawn the inside page up right so my design plan can be shown clearer.

Firstly I have shown that the disc will just be a plain black disk, it will be black so it will match the rest of the black and white theme of the Digipak.

The inside page will include a photograph of the band at the bottom. This will be a photograph of the band laughing, I thought this would be a nice picture to go with the thanks above them. I will be writing out a thanks message from each of the boys.I will have the background black so the writing will be in white so that it stands out clearly and is easily read. 

The back page will also have a black background so the writing will be in white. The list of songs will be on the right hand side of the back page as normally the songs are on the left or in the middle of You Me At Six's CD cases so I thought this would help to make mine different. This will match the style of the inside page. I will also make sure I have the same house style for these pages, this will mean that the fonts will be the same to make it look professional. I will be including the bar code at the bottom of the page as well as the Virgin records label and the copyright terms and conditions. To fill up the blank space I  will include another picture of the boys in the band. I will again try the black and white effect with this photograph as this is something I liked with the CD cases I had previously researched. I will find the bar code and the virgin record label on the internet and will blog the links from where I found these.

The front page will consist of the band's name and the name of the Digipak. Again this will be in the same font as the other two pages and will be in white in order for it to stand out and be eye-catching. I will have these underlined to make them seem important and stand out even more. A picture of the band will take up the majority of this page. Again I will edit this in black and white to match the rest of the Digipak.

I will also be creating the spine of the Digipak. This will just consist of the Band's name and the name of the Digipak. Again I will use the same font.

Band Meeting!

In order for us to be able to create our ancillary tasks we would first need photographs for these. We realised that we should have actually taken more professional looking pictures of the boys in the band on the days of the filming but we were so focused on shooting everything we needed that we forgot to do this back then. Because of this we arranged to meet up with the band in the school hall again one evening in the school week. Everyone was free to do so which meant we had no difficulty with availability. We spent around an hour with the boys taking photos. At first the boys did not cooperate very well as they found it difficult not to laugh when we were positioning them how we wanted. This meant that some photos did not come out as good as we'd hoped. Below are some of the pictures we took for our ancillary tasks, some I will use and some I will not for a number of reasons.

This was one of the first images we took of the boys whilst we were still trying to figure out how we should position them. As you can see this photo has slightly blurred which is why I will not be using this photograph for my ancillary tasks.

This photo shows how some of the boys first found it hard to act professional as you can see the band member on the far left is not being as serious as the others. Also I cannot use this image as one of the actors has his eyes closed which is something that often happens in photographs. However we did like how we positioned them in this way.

Here is a single photograph of our drum player. I plan to use this for my website as on my Digipak I just want to include photographs of all of the band together as the target audience may prefer another band members so I want them to be provided with all of the boys as individuals may have different favourites.

Next is a single shot of Sam the bass guitar player.

Next is a single shot of Matt the lead singer. I like how dark this photo came out as it fits with the genre of music. I have also identified that I like the idea of black and white for my Digipak case so this image would help me with this. However as I have stated previously that I don't want to use the single shots of the boys for my Digipak, but rather on my website.

Here is another image of Matt. We took two to ensure that if one did not come out ok we would hopefully have a back up image.

Here is another whole band photograph. I really liked how we positioned the band in this one as I thought it looked quite professional. Even though two of the band members aren't taking it as seriously as the others, we thought this was quite effective as two have serious faces whilst the other two are having 'fun'. We thought this may attract the audience more if we used this image as they could maybe see them in a different more 'fun' way. This could maybe even help the audience feel like they connect with them more. This is the image that I am planning to use on the back cover of my Digipak.

Even though this image is slightly blurred and the boys aren't being serious I really like how happy they look in the shot and the fact that they are all laughing together. I am planning to use this image on the inside cover of my Digipak with the 'thank you' messages from the boys. I feel that the image and the messages fit well together as the boys look less serious wich may attract the audience effectively as they may be able to really feel like they are connecting and relating to the boys. I feel like if I was to use a serious image of the boys it would not go as well with the pleasant messages from them.

 

Here is another image of the boys laughing. I really like this one also as it shows the other side to the boys that isn't seen in the video. I will try this one and the previous one with my Digipak to identify which one looks best when edited.

This is the last photograph of the boys that we took on this day. I again really liked how they were positioned in this way. We told the boys to make serious faces for this shot which they kind of did which worked quite well. I will plan to use this on the front cover of my Digipak as I feel they look quite professional. I also want this as the front cover as they are positioned in the same places as they were for my video which the target audince may be able to recognise.

Digipak Template!

I thought it would be useful to look at a Digipak template to show me how one would be set out properly. This would also help me to understand fully what is required of my digipak (what I need to make for it) and how this would look on a template.

The template shows what goes where. I can now identify that I need to create;

- A front Page
- A back page
- An inside page
- Spine

I will be using Photoshop to help me create all of these. I will create them separately and then maybe later will try to fit them onto this template to see exactly what my Digipak would look like in this format.

Digipak task- Research !

For one of my ancillary tasks I am required to create a Digipak for the band's album that will include the song we used for our music promo. I will be using Photoshop to help me to do this. I have used Photoshop previously so I do have some good experience with using it so hopefully will not find it too difficult to make my digipak. As I was a bit unsure with what a digipak actually looks like I decided to research existing ones from You me at six to help give me some ideas on how I should lay mine out and what I should include on it. I also wanted to search You Me At Six's other CD cases to identify the styles that have been used, this will help me set mine out using styles to help make it suitable to the genre of music the band's album contains.

You Me At Six- Sinners Never Sleep Album

The first album case I have looked at is their album 'Sinners never sleep'.

The front cover image looks like this;

This album cover only uses dark tones and colours. I like the use of this as I think it fits well with the style of music the band performs. Also fans of this kind of music can recognise this style straight away due to the colours used.This CD case does not have a picture of the band on the front which is an idea I don't really like, I feel I will change this on my digipak as I would like to include a photo of the band on the front so that the target audience can quickly recognize who the digipak was made by. However I have stated that I like the use of black and white on the image which is something I will experiment with on my Digipak. They have also named this album after one of their songs 'Sinners Never Sleep' which is another idea I like. I am going to name my digipak 'Crash' after the song we chose for our music promo. 

The back of the CD case looks like this;

Again there is good use of black and white to match the front cover. Again this is something I want to try with my Digipak. I feel it is good to make the front and back match slightly in order to make a professional looking case. You can also tell that the same font has been used for the list of songs and the 'sinners never sleep' on the front cover. Again this good use of the same house style being used makes the whole thing look more professional and well laid out. Again there is no image of the band, I will change this on mine by including one to target the audience even more by provided them with lots of images of the boys.  Like any other CD case there is the bar code. I will need to include this on mine as it is something that is required of a Digipak. There are also the copy right terms and conditions at the bottom of the case. I will use these as a guideline to help me include them on my own work. Also underneath this is the record label. Virgin records is shown here, I will be using their mark on my Digipak as it makes it seem more real as these are the record label that You Me At Six uses.

To the left is a picture of the inside contents of the CD case. This is a thank you page from the band. Each member of the band has made a message saying thanks to their family, friends fans etc. I really like this idea as I feel it really gives the fans the chance to feel like they are involved with the band as they are saying thanks to them. I will use this idea in my Digipak as I feel it is a good effective way to target the audience. It will give the idea that the band are really trying to communicate with the fans. I will do a thanks from each of the boys to make it more exiting.

Another CD case of You Me At Six's that I looked at was 'Hold me down'. Below shows an image of the front cover. 

This album cover is a lot more colourful compared to the previous. They have used a unique eye catching design. However this may be quite difficult to do as I would have to start from scratch with a design like this and I do not feel I have the skill to come up with a design in this style. I also much prefer the black and white affect as I feel it suits the indie genre better.

As I don't want to spend too much time coming up with song names to list on the back page of my digipak I have decided to mix around existing sing titles to create new ones. This will be shown later on in the process of me making my work.

Final Video!

Here is the link to our final music promo for you to watch! :)

Cheer Up clothing! - Target Audience

As I have said further down my blog that we identified that Indie scensters are highly influenced by their fashion we wanted to target them with one of the band's clothing line. We did this because the fans of You Me At Six are likely to recognise this label.

Below is a picture to show the 'Cheer Up' clothing item that Millie wore in our video.

Here is also a screenshot from our video showing the scene in which Millie wore this item of clothing.







We also identified that some other fashion labels that our target audience were highly influenced by were 'Topshop', American Apparel' etc so we tried to use items of clothing from these labels in our video on our actors. In the shot above Sam is wearing a 'Topman' jumper and can also be seen wearing a top from this same label later on. We did this because it is a fashion style that is the audience's own so they would be able to recognise this. In the screenshot again below I am wearing an 'American Aparell' jumper to influence the audience further.

Problems with certain shots!

After looking over the video numbers of times once it was uploaded to YouTube we began to notice some issues with certain clips, however these were not obvious problems but Millie and I noticed them due to us watching the video over and over again so many times.

One issue we noticed with our video was that at one point during one of the shots of Matt lip syncing the lyrics you could not really tell which part he was singing. This could have been prevented by ensuring that at all times whilst we were filming him that the camera was positioned in a way so that you could at all times see Matt's mouth to show what he was lip syncing. However this was not too much of a big issue as the rest of the lip syncing is clear and easily recognizable. If we were to film this again this is what we would have done differently. We may not have noticed this as when we were originally filming Matt singing the whole song through twice we may have thought that the shots we chose in the end were fine and that because we may not have needed all of that footage it would all be useable. As you can see in the image below Matt's mouth is behind the mic which makes it difficult to see what he is singing. 

Editing starts!

Now we have all the shots we need we can start to edit them in any ways we want to make our music promo.All of the editing had to be done in school as we needed to use the Mac laptops that were provided to us as these contained the editing software. We first downloaded all of the clips onto the software so we could view them all and decided which shots were good enough to keep. Any shots that were blurred or didn't come out right we deleted as long as we were sure we definitely wouldn't need them later on. Millie and I worked together on the editing to ensure that it was not left just to one person. However Millie had much better experience with it and therefore had more skill with it so now and again Millie would have to show me how to do some things so that I could gain more experience with it. After a few hours of experimenting with it I became more confident with using the software. 

We used the storyboards to help us piece together the video. We were grateful that we decided to film some shots twice over as some of them did not come out the way we'd hoped however the second shot did so this meant we would not have to go out and try to film it again. We started to piece together the video, however when we were editing the beginning first few shots we started to have doubt about the planned start of the video. On our storyboard we had originally planned to start with an over the shoulder shot of Sam and then the band would later on be introduced. However we thought more about our research and how we would target our audience and thought it would be much better to start with a shot of the guitar playing the tune to the song this would then introduce the band waiting to perform and then the shot of Sam would come after. We thought this was a better idea as in our target audience research we had identified that our audience 'indie scensters' are heavily interested in the guitar music so we thought that we would target them better by placing a shot of the guitar at the beginning of the video, this would then keep their attention to watch the rest of the video. We also thought about the fans as well, and by providing them with shots of the band this early on in the video would help them straight away recognize who the band is again influencing them to watch the rest of the video. Also because they'd recognize the band straight away they would recognize what type of song the video would be based around again targeting their interests.  

The editing was a very long process and we worked hard on this for a couple of weeks to ensure everything looked the way we wanted it to. Luckily there were no more changes made to our storyboard so we were able to follow it easily. There were only a few problems we had with the editing and most involved putting the shots in the right place so they were in time with the video. For example we really struggled at first to get Matt's lip syncing correct to make it look professional and as though he were actually singing it. Sometimes in order for these shots to fit in time properly we would have to cut some of the other shots before or after this clip down in order for his singing to be in time with the song. As well as cutting we sometimes had to have longer clips even if we didn't really need some of a certain clip. However this was all worth it as we managed to sync it properly and we were happy with this result. 

We were also a bit worried as some of the shots of Sam and Millie were meant to be in the 'summer' to show they were in the past however on day one of the filming when these shots were recorded we did not have much luck with the weather and we therefore thought that this would show in the video. However as we planned for these shots to be in black and white, fortunately you could not tell the weather conditions as much as the black and white helped make it look like this was summer because of the summery clothes Millie and Sam were wearing.  

Below are some pictures to show us using the apple Mac to edit our video.  

Below is a picture to show the editing affect we used to create the shots on our storyboard of Sam walking through the forest and of the black and white shots that follow of Sam and Millie walking that same way. You can see that we used the cross dissolve effect in order to get the exact types of shots we'd hoped for. This kind of made it look like Sam was being 'followed' by the memories of him and Millie being together in this location. It took us a while to find the exact affect we wanted, we also tried other affects such as over lay and fade in, however these effects did not blend the shots together as well as you could tell that both were completely different shots as there was a short space in-between them, whereas the cross dissolve effect allowed the shots to run into each other smoothly.

Day 5 Filming!

Now we were ready to film in the town center. We used our shot lists and storyboard to help us identify who was needed for these shots. Myself, Millie and Sam needed to go to this location. As we were filming this after sixth form we had as much time as we wanted and needed to film the shots so we did not have a time deadline. 

Once we got to the Town we went straight to Burger King to film our 'cafe' shots. We started by filming the shots with Sam and myself in. Of course Millie had to film these. As these shots involved me talking to Sam whilst getting little response from him I found it hard to make it look like I was actually having a conversation. We thought it would be a good idea for me to actually be talking to Millie whilst looking at Sam so I actually had something to talk about and it looked believable. We then went on to filming the shots of Sam and Millie, Millie did not find it difficult to make it look like she was talking to Sam as these shots involved him actually responding back to her to show the difference between how he felt about her and how he feels about my character. We then used the storyboard and shot lists to film other shots that were needed.

Below are some pictures of us in the cafe filming.   

 

After we had filmed the shots in the cafe we went to the Water Gardens to film the outside scenes. These involved the final shots of Millie and Sam meeting again. These shots of them will be in colour so we will not have to edit these when we put the shots together to make the final video. I feel this filming day was a success as we did not have to wait around for anyone and we were not in any rush to get the filming done as we were not set a time deadline.

Day 4 Filming!

This day we had planned to film in thew town center, however when we checked back over the shots we filmed on our third day we realized that we had not filmed as many close ups of Matt lip syncing as we'd hoped and planned to, this meant that we had to postpone filming in the Town center until next week as this was the only day that Matt was available to help us. This meant we were adding another day to our filming schedule which could put us a bit behind.

We arranged to meet Matt in the same school hall location. As we just wanted close up shots of him  we did not need to position him on the stage where we'd got the previous close ups of him. We decided to stand him in front of a black wall for a good effect. Again we filmed shots of him lip syncing the whole song through twice in order to ensure we had enough good footage to use. This did not take long at all and we only spent around an hour filming him. We were pleased with how professional he was and thought his lip syncing was brilliant. We knew that he would be good as we trusted him which is why we are pleased we chose him for the main member of the band.

Day 3 filming!

As we planned, our third day of filming took place in the school hall where we could film the band performing. Our filming was unfortunately delayed for around 15 minutes as one of our actors was late turning up and we couldn't start filming without him. This left us less time to get what we needed filmed within the time period we were given to use the hall on this date. Once the actor finally turned up we realized he was not dressed in the way we wanted him to be to fit into the character of the band member and to suit the genre of music. He originally turned up in jeans and a jumper, whereas we needed him to be wearing a smart shirt just like the rest of the actors. Fortunately one of the other actors had a spare shirt in their bag that could fit him so he was able to change into this. Once everyone was ready we began to film, we used our shot lists and our storyboard to ensure we knew exactly what shots to film. 

We thought it would be a good idea to film the band performing the whole song straight through at first, and we would do this twice. This would help us ensure that we could get a good shot if one of them did not turn out how we planned. Filming it straight through for the whole song would allow us to later on pick out the bits we wanted and edit them into our video. We had Matt lip sync the whole song and filmed this from different angles in order to make different types of shots. We also made sure we got close ups of each band member as in our research we identified that this would be a good way to target our audience. 

At first the boys found it hard to take it seriously when Matt was lip syncing however after a while they got used to the idea of it and cooperated a lot better and acted professionally.After 2 hours we were done and could thank the boys and tell them they could go. I feel that despite the two small constraints we managed to get on with it and the filming went successfully as we shot everything we needed to. However if we need to film with the boys again we will ensure that each one of them knows the dress code!

Below are some pictures to show what the boys were wearing and how they were set out on the stage in the hall.