These are the photos after I had edited them using Photoshop:
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts?
The unsigned band we are promoting are an indie/alternative three-piece from London. We chose to use the song 'The Exam' and focused our video on the setting and connotations of high school.
For the front cover I used the same characters from the music video and photographed them walking along a city street holding hands. I decided to use the characters to maintain some consistency between the video and the album and show the audience a familiar 'scene', the school connotations attract a nostalgic audience, as in the music video, school is a familiarity for most people and therefore the audience have an identification with it.
The font/typography of my digipack and magazine advert is a simple, sharp style used similarly by bands such as Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys, this and the use of the forward slash connotes the indie-pop scene, tieing with in the music video and showing a consistency between products. The magazine advert has a very similar style to the cover and insert of the digipack, using the same colour theme, font and a dark, grungey background photo of the city market stalls.
The music video we created follows the narrative of a male lead going after two different girls in the school/exam setting, we also incorporated performance shots to define the genre.
The CD cover I designed consists of three panes and a seperate insert.
For the front cover I used the same characters from the music video and photographed them walking along a city street holding hands. I decided to use the characters to maintain some consistency between the video and the album and show the audience a familiar 'scene', the school connotations attract a nostalgic audience, as in the music video, school is a familiarity for most people and therefore the audience have an identification with it.
As some of the music video was shot in the city, it has quite an urban, grungey feel - or at least this is what we hoped to achieve - to tie in with the genre. I wanted the CD cover to have the same feel so for all the pictures I applied a blue/green colour scheme underneath the photo. I chose these colours because they're cold and urban, quite like the genre.
I achieved this colour effect by discarding the colour of the picture so it was in black and white and then applying an additional layer of a mixed blue/green gradient and combining the layers through luminosity.
I think the colours give the photo more vibrant, quirky look, which fits in well with the genre. They are also reminiscient of the lighting in the music video, especially in the performance and cafe scene shots.
My second (inside) pane is a photo of a school clock, which is used to reference the school exam setting and the title of their song. I applied the same colour effect to make it more aesthetically pleasing and bold. This again, shows consistency with the setting of the music video and appeals to the audience who may recognise the simple 'school style' of the clock.
The back of my CD cover is composed of a picture of an electric guitar, with the song titles slotted in beside it. The guitar references the instruments used in the video, in some of the performance shots and the beginning close ups of instruments, as well as defining the indie rock genre.
The insert of my album has 4 pages, one a copy of the front cover, the back cover a photo of a city bench at night and the inside double page a photo of the 'band'. This inside picture appeals to an aspirational audience and develops a closer link with the band, their music and their audience or fan base.
The font/typography of my digipack and magazine advert is a simple, sharp style used similarly by bands such as Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys, this and the use of the forward slash connotes the indie-pop scene, tieing with in the music video and showing a consistency between products. The magazine advert has a very similar style to the cover and insert of the digipack, using the same colour theme, font and a dark, grungey background photo of the city market stalls.
The music video uses a narrative/performance structure, showing shots of the 'band' performing through close ups of instruments, long shots of a crowd and medium shots with dark, misty lighting of the band playing. The digipack and magazine advert also incorporate the narrative and performance elements of the video, the digipack uses images of the characters walking through the city and the exam references as well as an image of the instruments (guitar on back cover) and the band picture inside the insert, which refer to the performance element. Similarly, the magazine advert uses an image of the city, indicating the location of the narrative and it also references the performance element with a smaller image of the band playing.
In conclusion, I think the combination of my main product and ancillary tasks proves to be very effective, showing coherence in the themes of school/exam, the narrative/performance elements and the colour or overall tone of the products. This captures the audience's attention, giving them a familiar scene to identify with and showing consistency, meaning the products would be recognised as Blighters' own.
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