Digipack Promotional Advert Research

For this task we had to compare the use of two Magazine advertisements, to do this me and my group member decided to analyse one magazine advertisement each. Digipack promotional adverts are important when creating a digipack as they help advertise upcoming albums for there target audiences.

For my digipack promotional advert research I chose to use to look into 'Rihanna's' - Loud she follows many typical conventions of the pop genre for the audience to expect to see.

• The digipack consists of vibrant colours in order to attract attention
• The album title is called 'Loud', this is juxtaposed by the use of visual images as she appears to have her fingers over her lips signifying to 'shh'
• An image of her album cover so that the audience know which album she is referring to and advertising
• The use of typography to connote 'OUT NOW' so that the audience know when they can access the digipack
• Close up of her face is used similarly on the album cover connoting her in a sexual desire reinforcing Laura Mulvey's male gaze
• Similar use of vibrant colour of red is dennoted through he magazine advertisement and album cover

Ishpreet Sundal then analysed a digipack promotional advert for Britney Spears:

Here are the main things that we as an audience are presented with:

• The name of the artists ('Britney Spears'), in large capitalised font. It is shown in through a bright and vibrant colour, which indicates that they are the main focus of the advertisement.
• The release date and name of the album
• A hit single which the audience may be familiar with
• A large proportion of the page is dedicated to an image of the artist
• The image is quite sexualised: Britney appears to be showing a lot of skin, as well as directly looking into the camera which connotes her confidence
• The font and theme of the advertisement is similar to the digipak
• The theme of album name 'Circus' is expressed through the colour choice, and layout of the font

Digipak & Magazine Advertisement & Sketches

From doing research from the pop genre we found that it is very conventional for many artists to produce digipacks for their albums, Rumena Ahmed decided to take on the role of creating these to help fit our target audience.

Here is our first version of our digipak and magazine advertisement for our music video, we have followed some of conventions used on a Kesha digipak by the use of vibrant mixed colours and also the use of the props such as a red cup connoting that she may be having a party. The use of typography on our digipak denotes her artist style as being quite edgy which was very important when creating the digipak.

Below is one of the digipak and magazine advertisement that Rumena has created

When creating the digipak Rumena Ahmed created a video showing her step by step process of editing the digipak pictures below is the YouTube video in which she downloaded softwares such as quicktime, in which she was able to record her entire editing process allowing the audience to see her process to get to her final digipak.

Digipak & Magazine Sketches

When it came to planning the digipak, Rumena had to ensure she had a rough idea of what she wanted to do, to help her do this she created sketches and annotated them in order to make sure they fitted the pop convention. Once she had done this she then uploaded them onto SlideShare. 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJa4i4irpe0#action=share

Sketches and Planning for Digipack from ahmer007007

Digipak Research

In todays lesson we focussed on the importance and why Digipaks are used, it is a type of packaging and is usually used on limited addition CD's intended for a special purpose.

My first Digipak I have chosen to research is the Katy Perry 'teenage dream' album, it follows the typical conventions of a Digipak such as having six panels in order to connote pictures of the artist using different shots such as a close up and extreme long shot. The use of bright pink colours help relate to Katy Perrys personality and is one of her artist conventions to use a lot of girly colours which also helps appeal to her target audience of being majorly females. The digipack also consits of a tracklist which usually appears on most digipacks to inform the distributers and audience what is featured on the CD so they know what they are buying. The CD also features Katy laying on clouds which repersents one of her well known songs 'Teenage Dream' which most of her audience would be aware of. The digipack also denotes a parental advisory label as her audience may be quite young it informs those that the CD has no use of profanities and is suitable for a younger audience. Katy also appears to be laying in a sexual way, this shows that it would fit Laura Mulveys male gaze which would also suit her male target audience. As we were working in a group I researched my own digipack which is above and below is the research that Ishpreet Sundal has completed for her digipack:

I then went on to researching the conventions of 2pac's digipak, which is an album of his best hits. The first conventional feature on the cover, is the image of what appears to be the top half of 2pac from the back. From this image we can see that he is topless, but is wearing things such as a gold chain and watch. This links in with the hip-hop genre, as this connotes success and masculinity. 
The font used to present 2pac's name, appears to look rough and battered. This may make 2pac seem raw and tough; which also links in with many other artists in the hip-hop genre. In terms of editing, the image of 2pac on the front cover, seems to have a sepia edit. This creates a dim light which emphasises his muscular body, which once again emphasises 2pac's macho persona. The front cover includes a 'parental advisory' label; this enables the audience to know that what they are about to buy may include explicit content.

By researching digipaks of different artists, I was able to see what particular conventions were used to meet a certain genre. The Katy Perry digipak differs greatly from the 2pac digipak. By looking into the 'Teenage Dream' digipak, it will help when creating our own as they both cater for a pop genre. For an example the 'Teenage Dream' digipak used vivid imagery through the use of bright colours. We may also opt to use bright colours for our digipak, in order to make it conventional of a pop genre.

Research to help us towards our final piece

As a group, we decided that we would take screen shots of Kesha's music videos to suggest what we paid homage too and what influenced us to help us get the same similar idea. The screen shots in which I found are what we have included in our music video to help connote the pop convention and relate it to Kesha. We learned from doing this that it can be minor things such as props which can help us to follow the typical 'crazy' themes which are connoted through Kesha's videos.

In this screen shot taken from Kesha - 'Tik Tok' we can see that the people in the background appear to be holding the red party cups which are stereotypically used for American house parties, we took this into consideration and managed to get hold of these props and included them in our video. Below is the screen shot in which I took from our video during the editing process of our music and it also connotes how we as a group have accounted and taken note of minor things Kesha uses in her videos so that we can also do the same.

Below is a screen shot which I took from Kesha's music video 'We R Who We R', there was a large use of party scenes showing everyone going crazy, we used various locations when I was filming the music video we similarly gathered a lot of people together which was one of the difficulties we faced but then we used organisation skills to inform everyone go when and where the filming will be taking place.

Below is the pictures taken from our edited music video in which we have made similar to Kesha's video, below you can see we have used a similar dark filter as we thought that it emphasises it to make it more like a party. We also didn't want this to be too clear as we made it a quick shot just to show the audience what is happening, by making it a fast pace editing, also instills one of the pop conventions and is also commonly used in Kesha's music videos which connotes that she follows the typical pop conventions.

In the picture above, we gathered a variety of students from our sixth form and decided to film everyone going from normal to 'crazy', we done this to create a form of humour to our target audience as in one shot everyone appears to be sitting down bored then quickly cuts to them being wild. This is also connoted in Kesha's music video 'We R Who We R' as there is a lrge use of party scenes, I had already filmed a party scene in a different location so we decided that if we use a variety of party scenes in different locations it will denote the themes of craziness and that she doesn't appear to be a boring person.

Costume List

For our music video Ishpreet Sundal conducted a costume list using Polyvore of the clothes that our main star wore during our video, we used the Polyvore that I had created before in order to help us get an idea of the type of style Kesha would go for. From below you can see there is a variety of different colours and some crazy clothes, this is very typical in a Kesha video and it also helps us convey the narrative of our music video as being very 'crazy' and 'wild'. This was important when contributing to our music video as we will be able to compare these clothes to the ones that Kesha tends to wear and notice how we took this on board and included these in our video. Costumes were also important as it is mainly what the audience is going to see, so when choosing these outfits we wanted our audience to gather that our main star is quite crazy and out going like Kesha.

Music Video Equipment List

Our group decided to come together to create an equipment list in order to help us for our preparation and planning for our music video. We enlisted all the items that we would need so that when we came to filming it would help us remember all the equipment that we need. We made sure we included items that will help show the conventions of a typical Kesha video. This equipment list was created by Ishpreet Sundal but worked together so that we didn't forget anything. This helped us when conforming to our music video as we had listed some of the common props and equipment used in Kesha's music videos and it also helped us when it came to filming as we knew what props we would be using and want to include.

The equipment we will be using are:
-Camera
-Tripod

 -Polaroid camera
-Party poppers
-Disco Ball
-Torch
-Balloons
-Streamers
-Cups
-Glitter
-Punch bowl
-Drinks
-Lab coats
-Ladles
-Beakers
-Tubes
-Make-up
-Mirror
-Spotlights