Poster Research

Its come to my attention that less is definatly more when it comes to advertisments, and to create a good poster you have to have captivating imagery. Not one of my above posters shows the band, but illustrations of the album. Their not over crowded with information, and most of them display info withid the imagery.

From this i can conclude that its probably a good idea to avoid photo shoots with the artist, as posters are often displayed to sell an album, so its best to promote album images on the poster!

SATURDAY 1st OCTOBER FILMING EVIDENCE

We did the narrative side of our filming at the beggining of the month and it was a successful shoot. We used our blogged location, and our actor was really willing to do exactly what we wanted. The filming process was long and slightly tedious as times, as with very little running water, it took us nearly an hour and a half to fill a bath with cold water. Ezgi was fab tho, and she was happy to do take after take, whilst sat in a freezing cold bath, in a house without heating or electric, at a nightly hour of about 7 o'clock!

The bath scene from Britney Spears pop video 'Everytime' inspired us to do a similar shot as we felt it succesfully connoted a suicide in a managable and well constructed manner whithout offending its audience, but at the same time suggesting an imbalance in her life. I think here we have achieved a good representation of the conventions of an emotional media product

this shot is evidence of our filming about to shoot the scene where Ezgi goes under the water in the bath, this follows the same image as below taken from the Britney Spears video.

Album imagery

I like the idea of symbolism, and using a ciggarette to mark a moment in the music video

I think fading the image out or making it sepia, creates a very vinatge/retro/indie feel

Using our female on the front cover gives the album narrative, and i like the idea of using her to sell the genre of music.

 This album mixed black and white imagery with colour and that is an idea that we could develop on, to draw focus on different areas of the album.

Images we are considering to use are as follows..

 I have edited the photo of ezgi to make it into a mixture of black and white and colour. I like the way this centres the image, and shows the fade from colour to black and white as you move down the image.

    

   

On this image i played around with a bit of sepia mixed with back and white, and i then soften the background and sharpened ezgi. To create the black edge, i lomo-ished the image, and this was what i ended up with! 

 For this one i struggled for a while to mix all the effects together but i got there in the end. I blured the image and then created a focal soften around her left eye. I then used a focal B&W to make her face coloured and the back ground more black and white.

To get this edit, i faded the edge, and used brown and yellow duo-tone to edit the colour. I also sharped the edge of the bath, to make it whiter on one side.

Artist and album

Markus Pearce will be the name of our artist, and the album will be called Scattered Souls. Alice created the artists name, and we decided on Scattered Souls becuase we thought the song drew on these sorts of connotations, when talking about two people divided by death but in love with one another.

Font styles

I have searched some different font styles on word and played around with a variety of styles, my favourites Pristina and Hight tower text. I think our artists name should be decorative and the album more simplistic, so maybe the fonts i have used for Markus Pearce and Scattered Souls should be swapped around.

I have also drawn inspiration from current indie albums, that may be slightly alternative or un heard of...

This album cover has a simple type font to my Pristina font

This album cover has a similar type font to my Monotype Corsiva

Rough Trade Records

Alice and myself are going to be using Rough Trade Records as our signed record label. I have searched the artists on the website and most of them are of the indie genre; even the homepage looks vintage and indie!

A girl group i have researched on the website-Warpaint, quite well represent the indie culture. Their music is deep and the lyrics have depth and meaning. This is just two examples of some of their music..





 Rough Trade Records is an independent london based label, that supports many unfamiliar artists. Its classified genres are post-punk, alternative rock, and folk. However its website supports quite a few indie artists, making the record label perfect for our small indie record label.

4 most popular British Indie Record labels

1- Rough Trade -The big daddy of British indie labels, Rough Trade has had its ups and downs since 1978  Its early roster was an embarrassment of riches: the Smiths, the Fall, and Stiff Little Fingers whose Inflammable Material, Rough Trade’s first ever album release, sold more than 100,000 copies. The label went bust in 1991, losing a decade, but soon after its relaunch in 2000, Travis happened upon a little-known New York band called The Strokes. Now owned by Beggars Group, the label manages acts as diverse as Antony & the

 Johnsons and Micachu

2- Creation - Whereas most labels attract signings with lucrative deals, Creation, according to a former label manager, “used to drink and drug the bands into submission”. This worked a treat with Oasis, its biggest success story, and Primal Scream, neck-and-neck in the debauchery stakes. However, despite a host of great names on their roster, Alan McGee’s company never got the hang of turning a profit


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3C7DECI0jU&feature=player_detailpage

3- Domino- Domino Records was founded in 1993, when Laurence Bell set it up to license American records for the UK. It has yielded some very handsome returns. In 2006, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys, became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history. Before that, Domino had scored big hits with the first two albums by Franz Ferdinand, who eschewed the majors in favour of the little south London label. With the help of its star acts, Domino continues to release offbeat materials.

4 - 4AD - With the punk era in ashes, 4AD negotiated a space for atmospheric, darkly emotional music from bands such as Bauhaus and the Cocteau Twins. Later in the 1980s, it diversified, releasing M/A/R/R/S’s cut-up classic “Pump Up the Volume” and turning its attention to the US rock scene. Here it found its greatest success, the Pixies, as well as Throwing Muses and, later, the Breeders. Thirty years on, 4AD is in rude health, thanks to a new breed of US acts, notably Deerhunter, Ariel Pink and Gang Gang Dance.

Digipack Feedback

We origionaly wanted to do the four panel digipack becuase we thought it would be easier to work with and more managable, however after class discussion on the 13/10/11 it has been made apparent that to do a 6 panel digipack would be more beneficial, with alot more imagery to work with.

Digipak - CD cover ideas

 I wouldnt use any of these exact designs as i dont think they are relative enough, or proffesional looking enough to be placed on a CD digipack. However they do give a rough idea of the style and tone Alice and i will be going for...

 I took this image from the internet and just messed around with the exposure. I dont have photoshop at home so i couldnt do anything fancy, however i like the simplicity of the photo.

 What i would have liked to do to this image is burn the background and blur it, so that the focal point is Ezgi... I like the tight framing of this image and i also like the idea of adding a boarder.

I edited the boarder on this one and filled it in black using paint. Although i have done nothing technical to the image, i think it gives a slightly indie tone, by making it bold but basic...

Digipak - different types

Here is the most commonly used case that displays two parts of which one folds over the other with the CD in between the two sides. I think this is the best idea to use as its simple and easy to work with. We would have to create the inner and outer design, plus the design on the CD face itself.

 

 

 

 

 

This is another example of a digipak that folds out into three parts. On this one we would be designing 6 panels, one would be the front cover of the album, one would display the song list, one would be holding the cd, and the other three would be advertising the artist and the album. With this design there is more for us to work with, but at the same time sometimes less is more!

This third example extends the life of the album even further by having eight panels to work with! Often two CD's would be sold in this sort of digipack, and a sleevle would also be part of the design, enclosing a booklet with either song lyrics or a photo gallery of the band or artist. Although this digipack style alows more development of ideas, in our case i think it could be over powering. Instead i think this sort of digipack should be limited to companys like Ministry of Sound, for thinks like R&B Summer Classics..

I think Alice and i are most suited to the origional 4 panel digipack. It will be relativly easy to work with, yet its simplicity will allow us to expand and develop each panel idea. Also it gives us more time to edit and manipulate each image using software such as PhotoShop.

Digipak - CD covers - ancillary

We have create a CD cover as part of our ancillary task. So i have looked into other artists CD covers to gain some ideas for our own:

 This example shows a hand sketched design approach to an album cover, which i think allows the album name to be better represented. I think it also suggests a more narrative based album instead of performance based one, because the image is suggestive of a story, or it could be representative of the genre of music...

 This is Baby shambles Shotter's Nation (2007-2010) album cover. This album uses magazine cut outs and black and white imagery to represent the indie genre. I like the brassy black and white image of the female, framed over the faded black background of a her passed out on the bed; it gives a very retro classic edge on a relatively contemporary album.   i think this album could be great inspiration for our own, and we could re-create this look using photoshop.



I this the simplicity of this album cover example speeks quite strongly through connotations and colour. The origional standad shade of red gives it a mellow tone, whilst the contrasting white hand outline bring it into quite an alternative genre- American idie rock. This album has a very un-offencive feel to it, and i like that.

Vampire weekends album cover looks slightly like a faded polariod photo and could imply a classic indie genre. The opacity of the colours has been reduced, and fading from the centre gives the cover a sort of aged beauty. I love this look, and its appealing to our genre. If i was to use this idea i think i use the reduced opacity but i would also fade the boarder into back instead of white, as our music video has a darker tone to it in my opinion.