Digi-Pack

As a group we thought it would be a good idea to take a photoshoot of the characters in there costumes. We thought that we should have them doing several poses that relate to scenes from the music video and then a few portrait images of them with several face expressions.

Our Digi-Pack consists of a full album sleeve (front cover, back cover and inside pages). It also involves a magazine advertisement for the album itself. For most of the designs made we decided that a more central approach to the layout would be most effective. We used the rotating earth from the actual music video and combined it with the flame from the video. This gave us an idea for the album title which we named "Set This World Alight".

First few ideas:

At first we thought it would be a good idea to try out a few different designs. Below are the first couple of designs that we made but later decided not to include in our finished digi-pack.

Final Digi-Pack Work:
Here are all the designs that we believed are proffesional enough to become album covers/magazine adverts. We think that they reach our target audience well and attractive people with our exciting use of colour scheme and effects.


Firstly we created the front page of the album cover. Using the programme Adobe Photoshop CS5, we started of with a plain black background. Then by adding the earth image created earlier in the project the album cover had an "outer space" look to it. After talking about it as a group we felt that having the two heads of the main characters on either side of the world would be most effective. It gives a sense of them both wanting to be the alpha in that surreal world. We also added the flames onto it so that the album title had more relelvance. We found that using a photoshoot to add the two heads onto this was in need and transforming them into cartoon like effects it gave the surrel effect more meaning. This album cover was kept very central and quite simple. Although the techniques used to create this are quite challenging we believe it payed of in the end.

Above is the design that we created for the left inside page for the album. It consists of the character who is the singer in the music video and the earth itself. By adding those certain lyrics from the track it gives the feeling that this character is sending the protagonist into that surreal world. Even though there is not much on this page it still explains the music video quite well. Again we have used the blue cartoon effect on this character.

Above is the third page which sits behind the CD. To create this we used a screen shot from our music video from one of the first scenes. Due to the contrasting colours on this image we couldnt use the cartoon effect, however we made it work to our advantage as the blur behind the characters combine with the lyrics and the world to create a slight illusion that they are being taken into "another dimension". Again the layout has been kept quite central and we have thought hard into the actual CD case. This meaning that when the sleeve is put into the case the central circular shape that holds the CD in place will be aligned with the earth itself.

After creating the third page we thought that we would design the actual CD itself. Using the design from the first page we combined that with the spiralled lyrics. These lyrics gave the CD a very effective 3D effect and looks as if its a tunnel being taken into the new world. Again this giving an effective surreal illusion.

Furthermore this is our back cover. After using an album from home to gather a concept of what to include we decided to add a barcode, websites, the producers and record labels. Using the cartoon effect on the characters we stood them on top of the flaming world to make it relevant to the album title again. As we made the music video for "Out Of Space" and most of our ideas are behind that track we decided that single should be number one on the album.
This above is just showing all the four designs in one grid. As you can see they all relate to each other and use the same colour scheme. We believe that the design is very clean and simple. The bright colours contrasting with the dark background are attractive to an audience and the effects used will draw people towards it. The audience targetted for this album are quite a young category. We believe it to be for people aged 17-25.

Above shows that we have experimented with our album design. By taking photographs of an album we brought in, we used Photoshop to distort our designs into the right shape to fit into the case. We personally believe that this test went quite well as the album looks quite proffesional.

Finally we then made our magazine advertisement. The advertisement is very central and advertises our album really well. The size of the flame relates to the album title effectively and really works with the layout too. It also adds some creativity into the design and makes it look more attractive to the audience. The magazine advertisement includes everything that is needed which is:

• The design that has been used throughout the production stages.
• The colour scheme links well with the album title.
• The release date.
• The album cover.
• The record label.
• It says where the album can be bought.

All of these aspects are essential and make the advertisement look a lot more proffesional. As a whole we believe that our digi-pack is relevant to our music video and links well with everything else we have done. It has so much relevance and we have used a lot of different techniques and programmes to create this. We believe that the designs made have creativity and originality and is something that would interest us if we saw them on sale or in a magazine.

The Prodigy - Out Of Space (A2 Media Music Video)

Here is the final piece of our A2 Media Music Video Project. However, there is a slight error with the Blogger version of the video with our special effects. We've come across a technical fault when converting the file, so the effect will not show on this Blogger version. A flame effect was placed on a tree in one of the shots, but this is replaced with 'error text' when the shot is shown.

Directors Commentary

Here is the Directors commentary for our video. On this we decided to do a voice over on our music video describing the technical features we have used. We have talked about composition, editing, the pace of some of the shots and editing.

Audience Feedback

Here, we decided to ask a few people to watch our music video and give us feedback. We then gave them questions to answer, to give us a concept of what was effective, what worked well and what we could improve on.

Here are the questions we asked:

• What do you think worked well about the video?
• Did you find the video appropiate to the genre?
• What improvements could of been made to the video?
• Did you enjoy the overall production?

Production Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we first started analysing music videos, we looked at songs of the same genre and also took consideration to the post production effects and the narrative of the music video, just like a lot of Prodigy music videos (The colour effects in 'Out Of Space'). The first music video we looked at was Propane Nightmares by Pendulum, a band that specialise in modern dance music, like our focus band, The Prodigy. This music video was very effective and gave us a sense of composition when shooting our own footage. It uses fast cuts, a variety of different angles and shots varying from establishing shots (to show our location) to extreme close ups (to show our character's emotion). Every time we recorded footage, we ensured that we took the same shot from a few different angles, so we could have more of a choice in terms of specific shots for specific parts of the the video and cut between them. The actual music video for our chosen song, Out of space, uses a very surreal narrative, with different colours, almost is if it were an other world, in which we used as inspiration for some of the scenes in our production. We also found that the original music video. This allowed us to play around with some surreal elements in our video, such as slotting in shots of nature, as a heavy percentage of our video is shot in woods, thus making various shots of nature relevant to our own video. However, the music video made by The Prodigy has no real backbone to the story behind it, whereas our own video for the track does have a storyline. This is where we had to think of original ideas, and gather inspiration from other music videos such as Prodigy - Voodoo People to children's cartoon show, Scooby Doo. After understanding the lyrics in the song, which we believe are telling a story of being in 'outer space', we created a fast-pace, exciting story where the protagonist has been knocked out in reality and has found this new world in his head, when he wakes up. Although using some parts of other material for inspiration we found that our own work original, as it hadn't really been done in this way before and something that would catch the viewers attention. We also made our video in almost a spoof-like fashion, and made it so that it was quite humourous, as the song's style would allow us to do so, with it's silly, but catchy beat. As a group we also thought it would be quite original to create our own outer space scene using the program's Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro and the Green screen technology, when we made a character from the video, lip-synch, in front of a rotating Earth in out of space (only to be attacked by our antagonist later on it the video).


How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The Main product of our coursework is a music video, and we chose to do one for the song 'out of space'. This lead our group to go for a sci-fi/astro theme for the project, by using the green screen room, as well as other worldly type locations. So in our video, a lot of prominance is given to an 'orbiting earth' effect (the opening scene, and during some parts of the chorus). This is used during the video to show the viewers the surreal elements that are included in our production. When we produced the ancillary texts, we belived that because the earth graphic played a large part in the production, it would make sense to include it in our graphic productions. So for the front of the CD cover, the first scene of the song where the characters are filmed mid-shot, sat on the couch has been used over a background of earth and space. This is effective as it combines the realistic elements of the video and the surreal elements, thus making a juxtaposition between the two on the CD cover. The magazine poster also contains the 'world' image, but this is edited with a flame graphic, because our album for our production is named 'set the world alight.'. Overall the combination of our main and ancillary products are effective because the audience are given an insight to both the realistic and surreal elements of the video, although our production isn't just a sci-fi effects music video and is balanced out with a lot of performance.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To provide a detailed analysis on one aspect of the video. (camera, editing, mise-on-scene). One of the main feedback points that we recieved was that our audience belived the video was "funny" and "original."This was extremly useful to our group beause it gave us a clear impression that the audience can enjoy the video, and that the humour element made the video effective. However, one aspect stood out in our video that needed improvement, this was the stop motion scene, with the charchters hiding behind trees. Our audience informed us that this scene was slightly flickering and disjointed. We discovered that the lighting in the scene slightly changes as we cut back-and-forth. Because we recieved audience feedback about this problem we believed that this could be rectified during post-production. Because we had all been heavily involved in the production of the video, we hadn't been able to notice this slight error, and only using audience feedback allowed us to be able to correct it. There were some shots that we believed might not be good enough to make the final cut, due to our extenisve review of our video. ie we thought the fight scene might be seen as pointless or immature but the audience feedback told us that this scene worked well in the video and that the acting in this scene was "beliveable/sensible" Our worries were put at ease when the audience feedback confirmed that the shot was able to be used.


How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Media technologies have played a vital role in the different stages of the media project. During the construction phase, the camera is obviously the most important technological product that we have to use. The skills that we learn with the camera, shape the way our project will end up as everything that appears on the video needs to be shot with the camera. Another important piece of technology that has been used during the construction phase is a video editing programme called Final cut pro. Although it can be daunting to approach Final Cut Pro without much experience, our group has discovered that the editing process can be simple if the right precautions are taken and it is a genuinely good programme to use for the editing of a video production. The final piece of technology we used for the construction stage was the green screen studio. We believed the use of the studio would help make our project to a high quality standard, when using factors such as the 'out of space' scenes for the lip-synching in our music video, as you cannot construct a set of space without the green-screen room, and we felt as though the input of the space scenes were vital to our music video.

Magazine Advertisement Research

We have found several advertisements for artists in magazines from Kerrang and Mixmag. We have anaylsed each of these carefully paying attention to composition, colour scheme, the amount of information and imagery. We have also looked at what audience each advert is trying to reach and how they grab your attention. We will need to create an advert in a magazine promoting the release of there new album with "Out of space" being the first single. We will have to gain an understanding of how an advert looks good and how to make our main features stand out to a good quality.

This magazine advertisement is for the Paramore album. The main focus is on one of the members of the band and is laid out quite central. Paramore stands out quite well and we will think about incorporating that idea into our advert. It also includes the actual album cover on there as well along with other aspects such as the barcode, production companies etc. The colour scheme has been used very effectively to combine with the females hair.

This is a very different magazine advert. There isn't a direct main feature and the layout is quite messy. However we can use this for inspiration because of the information it provides on it. It also has a lot of bright colours and the typography used does stand out.

This magazine advert is the most useful for us, it has the same layout and information that we would want to include into our advert. By looking at the advert you can tell straight away that the main aspect they want the audience to look at is the band itself. The band name is very bold and easy to read from far away which could draw the audience to it. Along with that, the album cover and other aspects such as the information included at the bottom hasn't been forgotten about. A lot of time has been put into the layout in this. The blue shape at the bottom makes the album cover stand out more and the colour scheme with the text goes well.

The advertisement above is very bright and easy to follow. The typography and colour scheme go well with each other. This is a slightly different layout than most others with the album cover being in the bottom corner as its main focus in the foreground. All of the information provided and small print is on the right hand side going down the page which is also out of the ordinary.

This magazine advert is completely different to any of the other ones. Although personally we don't think the advert is very attractive or particularly something that would interest most people there are a few positives which we can take from this. The advertisement is very central and easy to read. The album cover is the main focus and stands out well and it supplies a decent amount of information to go with it. One other aspect we think has been used is the typography at the top.

Most of the magazine advertisments follow the same pattern. Name of band or artist is the focal image, theres is always normally a picture of the album itself, and it will always include the date and release and where it can be purchased from.

Production

Over the last couple of weeks we have moved on from the pre-production stages to the production of our music video. We have been shooting regularly to ensure that we have enough footage for our finished piece.

We have also been capturing our footage onto the computers in the editing suit and editing our current footage for the music video, to keep more of a balanced approach between shooting and editing.

So far, we have shot nearlly all of our exterior scenes, with only a few pick-up shots needed in the production side of things and edited the first minute of our exterior scenes in our music video.