Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Time lapse


Megan took Harry into Dartford Town centre in order to film the time lapse on Sunday however the town was far too dead and so the footage wouldn't have looked very effective! so she returned the next day after school as Harry stood still, in the middle of town for 15 minuets. As it is winter and the days are short it began to get dark however this actually looked quite effective and fitted into our over all mise en scene and style for our video.





we centered Harry in the middle of the frame to give him dominance over the busy movements around him and used this technique through out most of our filming. we also made sure he was at the forefront of the frame despite it being a long shot.

Friday, 7 January 2011

Digi Pack Photos


Whilst we were out filming we decided it would be a good opportunity to take some photos for our digipack in which we have to create a CD cover and promotion poster.

From experience we gained last year and further research into Indie genre conventions we had a good idea of how we wanted the CD cover to look. We wanted to somehow overlay the images of the puppet and Harry in order to portray his inner torment and a sense of being trapped in a nightmare in which the puppet is the dominator.

Here our some of initial drafts just to get a feel for how we are going to manipulate the images in photoshop and the kind of look we want to achieve;


Using photoshop we manipulated the contrast of the photos in order to create a sharper more striking image. We then inputted some text and our choice of font was influenced by our research into previous Killers albums:

We chose the colours according to our research and also the effectiveness of the colours against our the background of the woods which had the potential to be very overpowering. However the yellow was striking and eye catching and so we decided to make this our uniform colour scheme along with black and white which represents our idea of "Shadowplay"

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Digipack Research

Before we could even begin to designs our digi pack we needed to fully understand the conventions of a digipack and how they are targeted at their audiences. This required intensive research on the topic. We found that a digipack was described as "A form of jewel case, for holding one or more CDs or DVDs, in which the outer cover is of card rather than plastic." Digipacks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Digipacks are not only used for CD covers but also DVD's.

In order to ensure professionalism in our work it was important for us to use the correct sizing for our digipack. We found this information out from a website called http://www.4bmartinvest.co.uk/fulfilment/pa-digipak.htm which distributes the "Flexi trays" used in digipacks. The information we found out was that the typical size of a CD tray is 135mm x 125 mm. Now that we know the correct size of the tray this enables us to make correct sizing of our images on Photoshop etc.
The word digipack is really just a fancy way of saying what we would call a CD case. In modern society with an increasing competitive market in the music industry and the competition from downloading online, the digipack has become increasingly more important to the success of the single/album being sold. The CD cover has the ability to determine the track's visual desirability and it must make our CD stand out on the rack. It also imprints an image into consumer's mind and makes it recognisable. This puts a huge importance on the design and layout of the digipack. However this also varies according to the market you are trying to appeal to. Here is an exmaple of two digipack appealing to two different markets:



Gwen Stefani - RnB


Faster Days - Indie Rock

A RnB digipack will focus more on promoting the singer of the video whereas Indie Rock will have more effects and stylistic features. Indie Rock colours and mise en scene in photos is often more simplistic e.g. singers will be in black whereas RnB will be much more glamourised. This is just one example of how digipack differ according to their target audiences.