Digipak Plan

Here is a range of images produced as an rough idea for each side of the digipak. Producing these images will allow me to go into the creation stage of the digipak with a clear mind of what I wish to create.

Front Cover:

The idea for the front cover is a shot from the music video of the path in the graveyard. This is a quite powerful image and with the appropriate fonts included to create the image, it could have a quite a strong impact. We are still undecided whether to have the image black and white or in colour.

Inside:

The image that will be used for the inside page behind the front cover will be the image from the music video of the girl sitting against the wall surrounding by image. This is a powerful and interesting image and will be good to include as we want the digipak to have a strong impact and stand out against the thousands of other CD's.

CD:

For the CD, I wish to use the image of me with the champayne glass of blood including the background of the graveyard. This image is strong and eye catching, appealing the album buyers and encouraging to watch the video to find out the reason behind these images.

Editing Photos

In order for us to gain the wanted look on the digipak, we had to edit and play aorund with some of the images.


This is the full image which we will use as the front cover for the digipak. On the far left is the original image. The image in the middle was the first edit, with both saturation, highlights and shadows being adjusted. This made the colours on the image pop and made the image more dominant and clear. On the right is the second attempt of editing the image. This time I went the total opposite way, the picture almost looking black and white. Both images are nice and effective but I think the middle image above would work best as a front cover.

Above it the image for the back cover. The image on the right is the original, full sized image. With the image on the left, I have not only edited the image so the colours in the grass and graves stand out more, but I have also cropped the image so only the most interesting and appropriate part of the image is visible. This will be useful as I would not want the full image on the digipak.

Digipak images

As a group, we did not put aside a specific day to take pictures of the main characters for the digipak. To subsitute for this, we will do two things. The first thing we thought of was to use the images we took whilst filming of the various shots and angles that we liked so we could see what the clip would look like before going ahead with the filming. The second was to use screenshots from the music video itself. This will be a good idea as it will create a strong and clear link between the music video and the other two products.

Below is a short slideshow of images that we can use in the digipak created by Fahmina Ali :)

Digipak research

To allow me to see ideally what the band digipak should look like, my first step is to perform a great deal of research.

Above are two images of album covers from bands belonging in the same genre as The Ghost Frequency. The top image is the Arctic Mokeys, a very famous Indie band from England. I like this cover, the simplicity of the image stands out. Also, the laid back and careless attitude of the model reflects the thoughts and feelings of the band. I think it is appealing how even the album name does not appear on the front, it almost appears unnecessary. The band name, located at the top left hand side of the album cover, stands out as it is bordered by a white shape. This album will stand out on shelves and is a good representation of the band. I think it will greatly appeal to the bands target audience.

The bottom image is the Kings of Leon cover for the album titled 'Wasted time'. The image on this album cover is also simple but interesting and intriging similar to the Arctic Monkeys cover. The font is in clear white, standing out against the Sepia background. The image itself is intriging, suggesting along with the album name, that the woman has been captured in wasted time. I believe that this product will stand out on shelves, capturing the publics attention.

Above is an image of the digipak for Lady GaGa's latest album titled 'The Fame Monster 2'. Similar images of Lady GaGa are shown throughout the unfolded pack. This makes it clear to the user who the artist is aswell as increasing audience interest. I like the way that the album name is written behind the CD holder, giving the user something different to see once the CD has been removed.

After looking at similar genres digipaks, I can see that a simple image is all that is necessary to capture attention. I will take this into account when producing the digipak.

Existing Band Websites

Whilst researching existing band websites, I found that all of the band website followed a set of website conventions, annotated in the images below.

Above is the Kings Of Leon website. A image of the band has been manipulated using a photo editing software to make the band members stand out against the background by adding shadows behind each member. The lead is singer of the band can clearly be identified as his stance makes him stand out against the rest of the group. The website contains both internal and external links, internal links being the navigation bar at the top and external links being the small shop section at the top of the page allowing the users to quickly and easily purchase songs. The band name has dominant and powerful position on the page, making it clear to the user which website they are visiting.

Above is the arctic monkeys website showing similar features to those seen on the Kings Of Leon website. I like the way the band image, band name and buttons link together to create one heading. The external link on this website takes the user to the bands YouTube page, increasing the interaction that the user has with both the site and band. The news appears on the home page of this website, making it a lot easier for the fans to find out what is happening with the band.

Digipak- What to include?

After looking a various digipaks both online and at home, we soon realised that they have their own set on conventions that are clear to see. All the digipaks I viewed have many things in common including:-

• Dominant image on the front, either a logo, band member or actor.
• Band/artist name is clear on legible on the front cover.
• Album name is located either underneath the band name or at the bottom of the album cover. This is once again clear and legible.
• Track listing on the back.
• Bar code located at the bottom of the back page.
• Same style image/background carries on inside the case.

I need to ensure that our digipak meets this set of conventions.

Editing the video

To edit the video, we used Final Cut Express on Apple Mac computers.

This software was extremely useful and generally quite easy to use. To create the look we wanted, we used various tools like chroma key, colour corrector and quick cuts.

Performance

There are many shots in the video that took a lot of time and effort (and food colouring) to get right. These required a lot of team work to get the shots done and quickly and efficiently as possible.

For the blood tears shots, we used red food colouring. The member of the group that was not filming used a prepet to place the food colouring undearneath my eye so it rolls naturally down my face. Once it was at the bottom of my face, more was applied making it look more like tears. We kept the camera rolling, allowing us to just cut out the small parts where someone entered the shot to apply the 'blood'. This required quite a bit of tight editing and some good acting in between blood application to ensure that we got as much usuable footage as possible. The only problem with performing this scene was the red stained face I had afterwards for a few hours so we had to ensure that this shot was filmed at the end of the day.

For the cutting wrist shots, we used a blunt bread knife, placing food colouring on the blade. I then rubbed the knife against my wrist so the food colouring transferred on to my wrist. Once I had made a few cuts on the wrist, Fahmina applied more food colouring to make the shot look more realistic.

Overall, I think we worked well in the performance section and made the shots look as realistic as possible.

Fourth and Fifth days of filming

Fourth day:
After the great trouble we had with technical problems after the last day of filming, we had to re-film many shots. Unfortunately, due to the time of day and the weather, we could not recapture the full moon or clouds. We successfully managed to re-film the blood scenes as well as the candle scenes. Luckily, Lucy could attend this filming sessions, resulting in a higher creative input and more opinion on what we have captured. I then came up with the idea of writing 'Vampire' in candles to link in the candles on the floor. We wrote 'Vam' in one shot and 'pire' in the other, planning on using a cross dissolve in the editing process so they smoothly fit together.

Fifth day:

After showing our video to our teacher, we was glad and mainly relieved that she liked it. We only needed to add a few more shots to greatly enhance the music video. One of these shots included Lucy laying on a grave, which I was first unsure that she would agree too. With a bit of encouraging and support, we managed to get a great shot that will help develop the narrative in the music video. Then it was to the slitting wrists... creating a source of blood for the blood in the champagne glass. Although it could be seen as quite controversial, it looked really good! From the feedback we got, we found that this shot fitted in well with the genre, which we was really pleased about.

Technical problems!!

After completing our rough cut and second stage and receiving feedback from these two videos, we soon realised more footage was urgently needed! Instead of using a camera from school, we decided to ask my step-mum if we could use her camera. This camera was different to the ones we used before, saving the footage onto an internal hard-drive instead of recording on to tape. Fahmina and I went out as unfortunately Lucy was ill and in hospital. We recorded about 1.5 hours of film... However, when returning to school, quite proud of our achievements in the filming department, we soon found that we were unable to upload the footage onto Final Cut Express so therefore could not use it.



We will now have to refilm all of this footage!!!