Differences of a CD Case and a Digipak

Digipak

My group will be designing a Digipak in order to promote our music video. Digipak's are made mainly out of cardboard, but the disc tray itself is made from plastic. There are several strengths and weaknesses of using a digipak. A strength  is that unlike CD cases, they are made to unfold revealing an extra inside sleeve, in which we can insert further information or graphics we wish to associate with our band/music video, to further promote ourselves to audiences. A weakness, however, is that Digipak's are often criticized as they can't take as much wear and tear as CD cases and so ,for collectors, they are often unpopular. A final weakness is that with proliferation of hardware and content it is now easier for people to download music instead of purchasing it in stores and so a digipak may be more undesirable.

CD Case

CD cases are much more traditional than a Digipak. They're made completely from plastic and as a result are stronger than a Digipak. However, they are much less beneficial when it comes to quality of information as you often don't have a separate pullout booklet with a CD case. Instead, any additional information is often printed onto the reverse side of the front/back cover. This is a weakness due to the fact that audiences usually wont be able to view this side until they've already bought the CD and so, by this time, using the side for promotional purposes isn't necessary. As well as Digipaks CD's also face the problem that downloads from sites such as iTunes are becoming more preferable and so our audience will be instantly narrowed no matter which form of casing we choose.

I believe a Digipak is better because...

When comparing the benefits of a Digipak/CD case, I believe that a digipak is greatly better for self promotion. Adding to this, buyers/hardcore music fans are likely to want to collect band material/special edition digipaks/cases or other merchandise. As a result, digipaks become more desirable to the target audiences than CD cases. Furthermore, I believe our audience wouldn't be very traditional, as denoted by the survey responses which show that the target audience is made from young adults who enjoy newer rock/metal music; this means they wouldn't be into the traditional values of a normal CD case. Finally a Digipak allows us to include far more information about our band and our music video than a CD case would as it allows us to include artwork, lyrics. a track list, credits, information about the band and much more. All this will make it far more presentable to audiences, who, as a result will be more satisfied with their purchases and in the long term lead to them wanting to purchase the bands future work, as well as suggesting to others that they should also buy the product.

Deconstruction of a tour poster - Linkin Park

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 The 2014 tour poster for Linkin Park's 'The hunting party tour' is very different to the previously analysed Slipknot tour poster. This poster is a lot more brighter and eye catching to the audience even though it is only in black and white. The main image on the poster is off of the bands 2014 album 'The Hunting Party'.

 The most central item on the poster is the bands name along with the supporting band's name 'Of Mice & Men'. Unlike on the Slipknot poster the band's do not use their usual typography and instead the poster carries very little on which audiences can recognise the bands by other than their names. For this reason the poster looks very basic and i believe that it would be the opposite for this poster due to the fact that this is not just for a UK tour but for a European tour and so in my opinion the bands should want to make their logo's much bigger and use as much iconography and typography as they can in order to be recognisable to an audience of different languages and cultures.

Furthermore due to the scale of the tour, the Linkin Park poster ,juxtaposed to the Slipknot poster, isn't able to give as much detail about individual venues, resulting from it being a European tour poster. This makes the poster less informative and so it may be less likely to grip a passive audience as they aren't being fed all the necessary information that they may personally require.

In terms of self promotion both of the bands have their logo's and the album covers of their new albums on the bottom of the poster stating that both albums are 'out now'. This is similar to the Slipknot poster however you can see that on this poster both of the bands are being promoted rather than just the headlining band. This may suggest that there is a positive relationship between the two bands and so they would like to help promote each other as much as possible. The final piece of promotion is the link to both of the bands websites in very small text at the bottom of the poster.

Finally, unlike on the Slipknot poster there is no unrequired information such as who is presenting the tour of the two bands and who has booked them. This will make the poster easier to digest for audiences as they wont have to scan through as much unnecessary information.

Deconstruction of a tour poster - Slipknot

The UK tour poster for Slipknot's 2008 'All Hope Is Gone' world tour isn't too much different to their album which shares the same title.

The main image is shared with the album of the band being stood in the field in their easily identifiable costumes, which they have became famous for. The bands logo is what stands out the most on the poster and will be what attracts their audiences to the otherwise dull coloured poster as they will see the specific typography and instantly know the band that it represents. As well as this there is the iconography of the 9-pointed star (the 9 points represent each of the bands 9 members) faded across the entire poster. This star is used continually by the band and so will be easily recognisable to any member of the bands target audience.

The main aim of this poster is clearly, to sell tickets and the designer of the poster has done this by providing as much information, about where the band will be playing and where to get tickets from. Adding to this the placement of text is key to selling tickets exemplified by using half the poster to denote UK tour dates, their venues and a phone number for contacting each specific venue. Furthermore, at the bottom of the poster there is information of websites which distribute tickets Feeding audiences with this crucial information led to the majority of venues selling out of tickets.

Finally there is the aspect of self-promotion of the poster, the largest piece of visual text is the headlining band, Slipknot's own logo. The use of a brighter colour helps to highly contrast the dark, stereotypical, rock genre background; whereas the supporting artists 'Machine Head' and 'Children of Bodom' have their logo's paced in a smaller size which helps to further make the headlining band, Slipknot's logo, stand out. . Slipknot have further promoted themselves at the bottom of the poster by using white text stating that their new album is now available to buy which is informative to audiences as it will remind them to purchase the album whether or not they by tickets to the tour, making the poster successful in more ways than one.

All of these aspects of the poster make it very informative to the audience of slipknot and provide them with all the knowledge they need to know about where and when they can see the band perform. The less needed knowledge of who has presented the tour and who the booking agency for the band are is in a much smaller font at the top of the poster with their logo's in the top corners; this is information that you would expect to be disregarded by the audience.

Editing Our Music Video

Throughout our music video we aimed to include as many shots and angles that related and connoted the scenes and the emotions that the scenes were aiming to portray. Through the editing stages we was able to further develop these emotions through the use of overt and covert editing techniques.

The opening shot instantly connotes the protagonist's difficulties, we created this concept firstly by having him on the bench but further expressed it during the editing process by putting a vignette mask over the shot, this makes the shot extremely dark and also by making all of the corners dark it isolates the character from the rest of the world. This also allows for the use of Barthes' enigma theory as audiences will want to know how and why the character has ended up this way.

When editing the transitions into flashbacks we used a cross dissolve which emphasises the connotation of the characters dreariness as it continues on with the slow movements and thoughts. We further emphasise that the character is having a flashback/continuation of his dream whilst he wakes up by using a dream filter. The dream filter links to Levi-Strauss' binary opposites theory as it is a direct contrast to the vignette filter as it brightens the shot and this helps to connote that the character is dreaming of better times.

In numerous sequences we used match on action shots in order to allow our music video to flow. We often increased the amount of match on action shots within a certain sequence in order to stay synchronous with the music.

During the performance shots of the band we used a black and white filter, added during editing,  one reason why we chose this is that it differentiates the performance shots from the narrative shots. As well as this the room we were shooting in was quite bright, so by using a black and white filter we could better connote the negative meaning behind the lyrics. When deciding which performance shots to use, we chose quite a few close ups of the band playing their instruments, not only to suit the stereotype of the genres music videos, but listening to the feedback from our focus group/questionnaire suggests that audiences wanted to view solo's/instrumentals during music videos. 

During some of the flashback shots which signify the characters arguing we decided to use a desert glare filter. We chose to use this filter because it uses a slight red colourisation, We thought that this would be effective due to the fact that red can be a connotation of anger and fury, but equally it can also be seen as a connotation of love, therefore I think that this is a key shot due to the fact that it connotes both sides of the characters emotions, adding to the audiences personal relationships with them and Blumler and Katz theory.

Our music video starts with a slow motion shot of the protagonist on the park bench, the slow motion is synchronous with the slow introduction to the song 'How you remind me' by Nickelback. By using slow motion over the shot we can connote that the character is weak and dreary following the fact that he may have possibly woken up this way for a few mornings prior, this can further connote that he is extremely troubled and i believe its good that we deliver this message to the audience as soon as possible.

We specifically used the bar scene around the 40 second mark due to the fact that this allows us to use Andrew Goodwin's theory as the protagonist slams the shot glass down on each syllable of the lyric "every bottle". This links to the theory as the lyrics are synchronous with the narrative. We chose not to use a filter over the bar scenes due to the facts that the colours in the bar were saturated, connoting the characters intoxication, which also has the inter-textual reference and inspiration of the film Limitless.

In this shot we used a cross fade in order to speed up the transition of the female character walking down the slope and being held by the male protagonist. This helped to reduce the length of the shot and to keep this part of the music video quite fast paced. We thought that the tree's provided the right amount of natural lighting so there was no need to put a filter over this shot.

We used a vignette mask over this shot due to the fact that the windows were reflecting quite a lot of light, therefore making the shot desaturated, denoting the darker moments in the relationship of the two characters. As well as this the cameraman was reflected in the windows so we decided to crop the shot and use a very slight vignette mask in order to cut him out of the shot.

The blue markers in this montage shot connote the points in which the vocalist says 'yeah' and 'no', we decided that during this sequence we would use a jump cut each time the character said the words in order to keep the video footage synchronous with the music. As well as this, this has the effect of keeping the desired fast pace.

We ended the music video with a fade to black transition fading out from the man holding his arms up in disbelief that the woman has walked away from him. There is a message in our final scenes as both of the characters are seen walking away from their problems, the man walks away from alcohol and the woman wakes away from the man.

Music Video VLOG

This is a VLOG to give an update of where we are with the production of our music video.

2014 age rating scheme for music videos

Following a new scheme focusing on the age rating of music videos 'The British Board of Film Classification' will be asked to give an age rating to online music videos of artists signed to UK labels.

The Prime Minister has faced pressure to pass this scheme from parents, who believe that music videos allow their children to freely access sexual imagery . The scheme already has huge names on board such as Sony, Warner Brothers and Universal,, as well as Vevo and YouTube stating that they agree to try the scheme.

The fight to protect children against explicit music videos is far from new; ever since 1983 when Frankie goes to Hollywood released 'Relax' there has been tension against musicians and music labels to tone down their depiction on certain issues. However, this connotes one problem with the age rating, this video was banned in a time when openly being homosexual wasn't as acceptable as it is in today's society. This means that if the BBFC do begin to put age ratings on music videos, they wont just have to put them on new videos, but they will also have to change the age rating on older videos as society changes throughout time.

At the moment these are the current BBFC age rating guidelines for films, which are thought to fit the same credentials as the age ratings for music videos will.

U - Suitable for all ages.
PG - Parental Guidance
12A- Cinema Release, suitable for 12 years and over.
12- Video Release, suitable for 12 years and over
15- Suitable for 15 years and over
18 - Suitable only for adults
R18 - Sexual material only for adults.

According to the BBFC website an 18 rated film may include...

- Frequent use of strong/very strong language.
- Strong portrayal of sexual activity
- Scenes of sexual violence
- Strong horror
- Strong blood and gore
- Real Sex
- Discriminatory language and behavior.

It's important to remember that for a film to be regarded in an age category it only needs to fit into one of the criteria.

The new age ratings from the BBFC will have a huge impact on many genre's such as Rap, Metal and R'n'B. This is because of what the stereotypical videos of these genres contain. Stereotypically a Rap video will contain the use or connotation of drug use. A metal video may contain blood or horror. And a R'n'B video is often expected to denote scenes which sexualise those who are depicted in them.
This means that producers will have two choices. They will either have to keep making their videos with the same content and risk losing the genre's younger audiences; or they will have to sacrifice the content in order to reach the largest possible audience, however this may risk losing audience members who are die-hard fans of the more grittier scenes in music videos. As well as this, losing audience members due to the new restrictions will indefinitely lead to productions having a lower budget due to their previous productions bringing in lower revenue. This could potentially lead to a chain reaction which see's more audience members stop watching the videos due to music videos being lower quality due to their budget.

In my opinion the new age rating schemes will not impact my production. This is due to the fact that the only thing my music video can be judged upon is the depiction of alcohol abuse. However, I don't believe we make the scenes denoting this too graphical and therefore I believe my overall production would be rated a 12. As a result, this will not impact  my production due to the fact that this was the lowest age boundary which I planned for,

Production Schedule

Sticking to our schedule/filming diary is crucial to making sure that we complete our post-production, preparation, and filming on time. This will enable us to have sufficient time to edit and, go back to film in case we don't have enough footage.

Ideally, we aim to complete the post-production and final stages by the end of November. In this time, we are aware that we could face potential problems such as the weather leading to us having to cancel filming, problems with equipment or needing to re-film certain shots at any point. As a result, we have prepared for the possibility of taking production/post production into December in case we incur any such problems.

Before finalizing the music video, we aim to hold another focus group in order to give a first viewing of the music video to the peers in my class. By doing this we hope to highlight any areas of the music video which need refining and hope to gain feedback on the shots and overall quality of the production. Furthermore, we hope that this focus group will give us an idea of how effective our techniques have been in trying to impact our target audience. Overall, this final focus group will lead to the final production being free from errors and making sure it has the desired impact upon audiences.