Final Music Video

The quality is extremely bad because i had to export it into various different formats before I found one that youtube would upload.

Evaluation

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4) - This is just a voice recording of myself. I kind of got sick of filming myself.

Official Magazine Poster/Insert

The above pictures, are the best group pictures i have of the band so i decided to use one of them for my magazine poster.

This was my first draft for the magazine insert. I concentrated on making the album release date clear, so consumers could see exactly when it was out and then go and purchase it. The album name is very large to show that it is important, and it's

what we are trying to sell. I stuck to the charcoal black/white theme like my digipak to show brand continuity. Once again the band name is the only thing in colour (apart from the itunes symbol) as a part of the band's style. This makes the name stand out, so that customers remember the band, not for our look but for our music. So like the rest of the digipak, the image of the band is not really important as we are part of the rock/indie/pop genre.

After receiving feedback from my teacher, I was told that the writing on the poster was unbalanced and that I also needed to add more information. Taking this into consideration, I arranged the title and release date under each other to balance the picture. I also added information at the bottom of the poster about the single 'So What' being available on itunes. As you can see, i feel that there was a huge improvement from my draft to my final poster. The whole image is clearer, the customer gets alot of information without it taking over the picture. The band is also advertised well and the whole concept is funky and different - much like our band.

My other teacher then told me she did not like the wording of "Album out on" so I changed it, making the picture below the FINAL magazine poster/insert.

Official digipak pictures

We were asked to create six images for our digipak rather than four. I didn't draw up any drafts of my digipak as i wanted to just get on photoshop and start messing around so I could get to know how the software works.

When first told to come up with ideas for the digipak, I decided to draw up spider diagram of my initial ideas.

From this diagram, I then circled the ideas i found interesting and wanted to explore further. As you can see I chose FUNKY, BLACK/WHITE, MODERN and SCRAPBOOK. I thought these ideas could be explored further to create good and exciting digipaks.

In the picture above, I wrote down more detailed ideas about the style of my digipak. As you can see, I went with the scrapbook theme and decided to make it un ordinary and funky, while keeping it modern. I decided to call it an Antique scrapbook, as all pictures look like they are black and white or drawn with charcoal. This was created using photoshop and its many effects toolbars.

When thinking about the front cover of my digipak, I decided to use this group picture of us posing with out arms folded. A group picture for the front shows our unity as a band and the fact that we are doing the same pose shows our closeness-much like a family.

The picture above is the official front cover for my digipak. The theme is one of a an antique picture/drawing/painting that has been stuck onto a black book - much like a scrapbook. Everything is in black and white including the album name. Only the band name is in colour. I did this because I thought it worked really well with the black and white but also because it symbolises the importance of the band name. Even if people don't remember our faces, as long as they remember our music - we would have served our purpose. Our picture is in balck and white because of the message we are trying to send our audience. Which is that it is not about the bands image or how we look, but rather it is all about our music.

I find this and the above picture that I used for the front cover the best group pictures. Because of this I decided to use this picture for the back cover as it symbolises unity and family like the other picture did.

The above picture is my official back cover. It made sense to create the back cover after the front as they are the two most important parts of a digipak - they are always on show. I used the same antique scrapbook theme and this shows brand continuity. Once again the group picture is in black and white charcoal and has an old/antique look to it. this was created using an effect tool on photoshop. After I put the barcode on the left, i thought the right hand side looked a little empty and this made the picture unbalanced, so I added a website name to it. This is one of the many ways that our fans will have access to us/learn about us.

This is my Inside cover 1. It just introduces us individually as artists. Although I said the band is not about image, I think our fans at least deserve to know our names. I also think the different pictures show off our different personalities and how they work well together. Once again all pictures are in black and white and look like they have been stuck on a black background - showing brand continuity. I put our names in colour, like the front cover because it contrasted really well with thew black and made the picture look more funky.

Originally, my first draft of inside cover 2 had two pictures of me and Teri, but I was told by my teacher that it left the other band members out, so i added in a picture of Setareh and Yusra (Dutchie)

Inside cover 2 has pictures of all band members and also gives a bit of information about how the band was set up. I thought the fans would enjoy this part as it shows the origins of the band. It also shows how we relate to our target audience as we are students. It shows that we achieved all our fame and fortune through hard work and came from the bottom up, making us just like everyone else. I stuck with the digipak theme which shows brand continuity.

Inside cover 3 is just a word of thanks to our fans. By doing this I am staying loyal to our old fans and also thanking new fans in advance for supporting us. This is a marketing tools, as the more good fans a music artist has, the more successful they will be. ie - fans willing to buy albums and songs from itunes rather than downloading illegally. As you can see, the theme is still being carried out - brand continuity.

I must be honest and say I had run out of ideas by the time it came to the final inside cover, all my creativity had been spent on the previous pictures. However, I found a wonderful image of the band in a band environment - playing instruments - and went along with the antique scrapbook theme. It is a fun picture and shows the band in their comfort zone.

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of my digipak - I wouldn't change anything about it and i think it really portrays the band exactly how I wanted it to - A fun funky girl band who really care about the music they produce.

Diary Entry 31/03/11 - Problems with editing

The program used to edit the main product (music video) is Final cut express. I found the program typically easy to use as I had used it last year for my film opening. However, we had to use new effects such as the chroma key effect which got rid of all the green from the green scene/added an effect on the green screen. I found this new tool quite difficult to use and this is evident in the final video because in some parts, you can see that I didn't manage to get rid of all the green.

Here is a little video with a couple of basics of how to use Final Cut anyway:

All about music posters

I found an article on ehow.com which had a lot of information about the history of music posters so I have copied it below.

The Music Poster's Origins

• One of Cheret's Music Posters

  The first music posters as such were hand-drawn or hand-written handbills posted to advertise a local performance. The invention of the printing press changed advertising as much as it did literature. As commercial printing presses grew more sophisticated, so did the popularity of the printed advertisement. However, these printed advertisements were limited to text and crude art.
  The advent of lithography in the late 18th century brought art and graphic arts to a much wider audience. Artists and commercial printers alike were able to reproduce works of art and advertisements in color. Lithography changed the art world and the advertising world by allowing images to travel in ways they never had before---in books, prints and posters.
  By the Victorian era, lithography was an advertising staple and was often used to create posters that promoted popular entertainment. The popularity of musical entertainments during this period meant that music posters were among the most common of advertising posters.

The First Golden Age of the Music Poster---the Belle Epoque

• A Belle Epoque-Era Music Poster

  During the late Victorian era, the emergence of the Belle Epoque brought an emphasis on art and beauty to even the mundane. Thus, the era of the artistic poster was born, and the first great era of the music poster was born, as well.
  French artist Jules Cheret is credited with popularizing the use of serious art and serious artists in poster advertising. Cheret not only perfected lithography techniques, but during the 1880s, he began to take commissions to create art especially for advertising posters. Soon, other serious artists---including Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard---began to take advertising commissions, as well.
  As the Belle Epoque era waned to the Art Nouveau era, artists such as Alphonse Mucha began to take up Cheret's cause and create beautiful, artistic entertainment posters.

The Music Poster in the First Half of the 20th Century

• A Stanley Mouse Music Poster

  The Art Nouveau era was pushed aside by the Art Deco era, but music posters were pushed aside by two even more lasting contributions to the 20th century---the movies and radio.
  As the popularity of film and radio, and later television, increased, the use of posters to advertise music and other entertainments aside from film declined. Music performances declined in popularity with the advent of radio; when a live performer did come to town, shows were often promoted on the radio.
  Movies also played a part in the decline of music posters during this time. After the invention of the sound film, some of the most popular short film subjects were musical acts.
  While posters were still created during this time, they were often handbills, or even marquees, which could not be preserved.

The Second Golden Age of the Music Poster---the Sixties

• With the counter-culture movement of the 1960s came a new emphasis on the poster as advertisement. At no other time in history has the poster been used so effectively to advertise music.
  While pop music had been around for at least a decade and had made major inroads into television and radio, bands just getting their start often had to rely on word of mouth and print advertisement for exposure. Artists such as Peter Max, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and others created music posters that would come to define the art of the decade.
  Taking cues from both the Andy Warhol-influenced pop art of the day and the Belle Epoque and Art Nouveau poster styles, the music posters of the 1960s blended both art and text in psychedelic posters that reflected the changing times.

The Seventies and Everything After

• As the counter-culture of the 1960s became the popular culture of the 1970s, radio and television embraced the bands and the types of music that had once been considered underground. As a result, music posters once again faded as a primary form of advertisement.
  The punk and hardcore scenes that emerged in the late 1970s abandoned the art of the 1960s, embracing a DIY attitude. Music posters re-emerged, but in the punk era, they took the form of photocopied handbills.
  The music poster's decline continued in the 1980s, as MTV and other television stations became the primary way for bands to promote themselves. In the late 1990s and 2000s, the Internet dealt the music poster its final blow.
  While music posters can still be found adorning college dorm walls, they are no longer the artistic form that they once were. Music artists no longer need posters to promote themselves, and, as a result, the modern music poster is more likely to be a blown-up photograph of the artist rather than an artist's rendering.

  Here is a video with a couple of music posters:

  
  

  

  

  

Diary Entry 25/03/11 - Our Final decision