Magazine and digipak, composition and posing research

 

Rihanna's Digipak's tend to feature her in a seductive pose of some description. because this plays to the style of songs which she makes, which hinge around the idea of romantic and sexual lyrics.

In this image Rihanna is wearing a revealing top in fitting with her lyrics and song styles, the pose on the left has her leaning back against a wall with one leg raised.

The right image has Rihanna to one side which s more interesting than if she was flat in the middle. The use of warm colours on either side works well for the overall effect of the digipak.

The digipak has an image on either side and a CD in the middle. This 3 leaf cover means she has more room to ad advertising for her other albums (the left side).

Analysis of student digipak.

I have chosen to look at this digipak because I'm really impressed with the layout of it. The back of the digipak is easy to read and relates to their music video but doesn't look like a single. The front of the digipak is very simple but effective. The image looks effective because of the edit that they have used. This makes it more interesting to look at and makes you want to know more about the artist. The images that they've used on the back of the digipak are simple but how they've overlapped them looks effective and makes the back of the digipak visually interesting. It also contains all of the information you would expect to see on a digipak for example, the bar-code, record label and certificate.

Timeline

0.00 song starts to play - camera begins upwards tilt

0.01 - 0.10 series of cuts in upwards tilt.

0.10 - 0.15 dark room lighting

0.15-0.32 vicky with colour filter over the top of the video

0.32 - 0.53 vicky in dark room with UV paint lipsynching to music

0.53-0.55 vicky blowing bubbles and reversing.

0.55-1.11 vicky with colour filter, singing. focus on artist. Bubbles blowing in front of the camera.

1.11-1.15 glowstick ball spinning in front of the camera.

1.15-1.25 kynan rave dancing in front of camera with glowsticks and uv paint.

1.25-1.34 Glowstick spinning to create a light effect with bright colours

1.34-1.42 Vicky lipsyncing with UV paint

1.42-1.50 Max rave dancing with glowsticks and UV paint

1.50-1.57 Vicky lipsyncing with UV paint

1.57-2.11 Group dancing in Dark room with Glowsticks to create abstract colours

2.11-2.13 Vicky with UV paint shaking head from left to right at 300% speed

2.13-2.20 Vicky lipsyncing with colour filter outside

2.20-2.29 Vicky dancing in dark room with UV paint

2.29-2.51 quick cuts on beat between two scenes of Vicky, one in a darkroom with UV paint the other outside with a colour filter. Towards the end we also cut in images of Kynan and Max.

2.51-3.15 a scene with vicky lip syncing with a bright colour filter

3.15-3.44 As song reaches an instrumental area, we cut between images of vicky, and the group in the dark room.

3.44-3.48 scene of the glowstick ball spinning towards the camera.

3.48-3.53 Vicky sitting on step with a colour filter

3.53-4.31 (end) we have alot of cross disolves between different scenes of people during our filming process, looking happy or dancing

Directors commentary

Lyrics Analysis

• The lyrics have a strong focus on sweets
• There are a lot of sexual innuendo throughout the song. Drawing parallels between sex and sweets.
• A lot of repetition in the chorus is used because of the backing music
• The focus of the song is not actually on the lyrics, but rather on the beat, making the song catchy rather than meaningful

Analysis of student magazine ads.

This is an example of some students work. I chose this as an example because it's simple but very effective. I especially like the lighting that they've used because you can barely see the artist but this makes you want to watch the video to find out more. The image is making a statement so I like how they've kept the rest of the advert simple putting all of the main focus on the image. Similar to our theme, they have kept with an abstract theme but used simple text to make it easier to read.

Story Board

Analysis of real digipaks - Rihanna

In Rihanna's digipak she has 2 CDs and and 3 leaf CD case. The album itself is brightly decorated with lots of reds (her hair and roses). Which is very bright and vibrant, which in the case of the 3 leaf cardboard leaflet means there is a lot of contrast between the roses and the dark green of the leaves and the background. Rihanna's music is very romanticised which is where the theme of roses would have come from.
The digipak comes with a CD which would contain all the tracks from the LOUD album, and a DVD which would have a directors commentary and a music video from one of the tracks.

You will also notice that this digipak does not have a track listing, however inside the booklet there would be a list of songs on the album.

Location Report.

As we wanted to incorporate the UV paint, we knew we would need to shoot that section inside and in a dark room.  We decided to film this section in the black room because this would be the darkest room we would be able to film in. By using the black room, the back light is very effective and all of the focus is on the artist and the UV paint.

However, when it came to filming the rest of the music video we needed to find a suitable location. We decided to film at Cherry Hinton hall which is a Victorian country house set in public parks. Within Cherry Hinton hall there a stream which runs through from a small lake. There is small playing areas for children and stepping stones across the stream. We decided to film the rest of the music video here because although it is a beautiful setting, it was perfect to carry on with the abstract theme. With the trees in the background, it provided different lighting in certain areas which was really effective when we put on the colour edit in Final Cut Express. This kept it abstract but at the same time, added variety to the music video.

Analysis of real magazine ads

Rihanna's magazine advert has a large focus on imagery, The bulk of the image is of an air brushed Rihanna. This helps sells the album and subsequent albums because it creates a link between the audience and the artist, instead of just one song or album.

The largest word is the album name 'LOUD' so it draws the viewer's attention to the album name, then the second largest is the word Rihanna which draws the eye there, then they'll read the rest of the poster. This means the first things that people will look at upon looking at this magazine advert is 'Loud' 'Rihanna' and then the names of the songs on the album. This will boost sales as the name of the advert and artist will be the main parts which stick in the viewer's mind.

Research into Digipak track listings.

When it came to choosing the track names for our digipak, we decided to look into Rihanna albums and use a variety of her old and new songs. As we called our album 'Emulsion Unleashed', we wanted the songs names to be short but effective. We wanted the layout of the song listings to be quirky just like the look of the album. By placing the song titles in this layout, it looks effective because it makes them stand out from the background and they're easy to read.

Research into fonts

When we were creating our digipak and magazine advert we needed to think about all of the different aspects which when put together will look creative. One aspect which will have an impact on what the magazine advert and digipak look like, is the font which we use. We looked into using a number of different fonts, just trying out what we think would work best.

This is the font which we used for the majority of out writing on the digipak and magazine advert. It's called iNked God. We decided to use this font because we felt it gave the advert and digipak a abstract feel, just like our music video. This font is effective because it blends in with the abstract theme, but at the same time is girly and relates to the style of music.

Other than this, we only used one more type of font. This was because the background of the magazine advert was so bold, that when you used iNked God you couldn't read what it said. Therefore we decided to use a basic font which is easy to read but works well with the background and is still effective. This is the other font we used. As you can see its very basic but is effective and it's easy to read.

Script.

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

Our Music video uses the conventions of other pop music video’s. Bright lights and a main focus on the lead singer. We decided to try and stick to this as it works well in a lot of rihanna and Will.I.Am’s other songs. The use of abstract effects is a strong theme in both artists for example Rihanna - Rude Boy.
Arguably our group developed this a little bit by using a lot of pre production things, like UV paint, as opposed to putting it on afterwards using programmes such as Final cut, or after effects. This is not a huge step forward but something which makes it stand out amongst other music videos in which the bright colours and abstract features aren’t present when the artist is performing.
In a standard pop music video you would expect to see certain conventions. As our song was a pop song, these conventions can be found in our video. For example, in a pop song, a lot of the focus is on the artist and although the angles change they all focus on the artist. We have incorporated this into our music video and all of the focus in on the artist. By doing this, it makes the audience feel like they can relate to the artist.  


2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?

After planning, and then making our music video, we went on to make a dvd cover, and a magazine cover that featured, not only our music video, but other videos that could be on that CD. We kept the theme of using bright colours, as was used in our music video, however as we didn't want to make this look like a single for our music video, we used other features, for example the font of the texts is very intricate, and the the gradients used to fill in the artist. We also used very 3d backgrounds, to make it look a bit more interesting and eye catching.
I think that from looking at our music video, as well as our magazine cover and dvd cover, they compliment each other nicely, as they both share similar features, but both have differences that give the music video its individuality.
 The ancillary text is important to our music video because it provides some more insight into the process which lead us to what we’ve achieved in this years coursework. From the steps where we were looking at rihanna’s music video’s in a class room, to dancing about wearing uv paint and glowsticks. The slow growth of idea’s and reasons we chose to do the things we did and how we achieved different effects is what really makes this music video stand out to me. Things like the half a second of rewinding bubbles seem really simple when you watch it but lining up the frames is something which really takes a lot of time and luck to complete. For example, when we thought of the idea with the lip syncing and using the green room, we tried out a few ideas to give us some examples of what it was going to look like and from that, whether or not it was something we would like to include in our video. 



3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

 From our audience feedback, i learnt how the filters over the lip syncing worked well, as well as having the lip synced, well synced. The bubbles blown behind the camera were also very effective, and the audience liked the fact that the bubbles weren't over-done, but still enough to be noticed and appreciated.
Close ups of our artist allowed the audience to recognize and engage with the artist; and the audience liked the fact of the video cutting to different scenes on the beats. We were told that the video demonstrated its video genre, and had good individuality.
 Our audience feedback helped us learn that keeping a constant theme (in this case abstract) was one of our strongest points. It also helped me realise that people do appreciate the idea of doing pre production editing and the amount of pre planning and shopping for mise en scene to get a final clip which might only be 5 to 10 seconds long.
Also after gathering people’s feedback I’ve also realised that people feel differently towards music videos depending on their sex. For example it was said in our feedback that ‘reference to not being too sexualised - like the fact that they can relate to the artist’. By doing a Rihanna video, she has always been known as a very glamorous artist and girls crave to be her. From the feedback we learnt that by making the main characters ‘approachable’ it makes the video more popular with a wider audience and therefore has a bigger fan base. 



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

In our video, editing was a really important part of forming our music video, without the technologies used (Final Cut Express) we wouldn't have been able to add the filters, to make the music video a bit abstract. Also by using final cut express, we were able to make the transition between clips look a lot better, with it fading in and out between clips.
We used green screening to have a look at using them as an effect. This helped us decide on how we wanted out music video to end up. We decided against the idea of green screening because of time restraints and how long it would take to make a final product which isn’t constricted by those limitations.

Evalation of Music Video

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In our music video we use different effects that are used in other pop music videos, with bright lights and lots of editting, we made a music video that fit the convention of the genre.
To make sure that we made a music video that fit the right conventions that are used in this genre, as well as using similar methods that the original artist uses we looked at other videos made my Rihanna - Rude Boy.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?
After planning, and then making our music video, we went on to make a dvd cover, and a magazine cover that featured, not only our music video, but other videos that could be on that CD. We kept the theme of using bright colours, as was used in our music video, however as we didn't want to make this look like a single for our music video, we used other features, for example the font of the texts is very intricate, and the the gradients used to fill in the artist. We also used very 3d backgrounds, to make it look a bit more interesting and eye catching.
I think that from looking at our music video, as well as our magazine cover and dvd cover, they compliment each other nicely, as they both share similar features, but both have differences that give the music video its individuality.
3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback, i learnt how the filters over the lip syncing worked well, as well as having the lip synced, well synced. The bubbles blown behind the camera were also very effective, and the audience liked the fact that the bubbles weren't over-done, but still enough to be noticed and appreciated.
Close ups of our artist allowed the audience to recognize and engage with the artist; and the audience liked the fact of the video cutting to different scenes on the beats. We were told that the video demonstrated its video genre, and had good individuality.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In our video, editing was a really important part of forming our music video, without the technologies used (Final Cut Express) we wouldn't have been able to add the filters, to make the music video a bit abstract. Also by using final cut express, we were able to make the transition between clips look a lot better, with it fading in and out between clips.