Poster Ideas

These are some poster ideas, that I have to make alongside the digipak. I wanted them to be relatively simple, and these are just some thumbnail ideas before I decide which one I want to finalise:



Poster one was my original idea. I would take a picture of me and a picture of the ground where i was, without me. Then, in Photoshop, I would splice myself in half and draw the other half of me as a cartoon, like illustrated above. I like this idea a lot, as it is simple but effective. The text placement also seems the most effective way, with what I have drawn being roughly size representative.



This was my second idea, which has a very similar idea to the first one, where the original image with me would be taken and one without, spliced in half and draw the other half. The text placement is also similar, using the space between cartoon and real me to give extra information.

I personally prefer the first one as I feel it is a much more solid idea than the second one, but I will do a poll to gain an opinion from my classmates.

Album covers analysis

Here is a video that covers album covers of the pop rock genre, which is my genre of song. I wanted the video to have the visuals to go along with my speech, making it easier for anyone who is viewing my video to follow along.

Digipak Introduction

Consistency and branding are important with Digipaks, as this is what will ultimately attract the customer. A successful digipak includes:

- Unification with the content and message that you wish to portray to the audience. With this connection, the audience can feel a sense of belonging to the artist, forming a relationship. This could be said to be stronger with fangirls, but it can be formed with anyone if the branding directs an audience member directly.

- Information and visual hierarchy: the main image is the first thing that the audience will focus on, therefore it should be impactful. After this has attracted the attention of the audience member, they will look over the rest of the graphic and take in the connotations and feelings portrayed by the artist.

- Your graphic needs to have impact so it is important. As your CD will be competing alongside many other CDs, yours needs to have something special and original to make it stand out so record labels will take an interest in your music and style.

- The CD needs to be appropriate for the audience and the environment. Not reaching your target audience will mean that sale targets and recognition will not be achieved.

The golden era of cover art spans the early/mid 60s to the early 80s, just before the music video was introduced. 12 inch, Long play (Now commonly known as vinyl) and LPs all featured cover art. The cover art should display the artist's intent musically and artistically.

Some bands were so recognisable to only have a logo. A good example is The Rolling Stones, with the cheeky tongue logo. This key piece of iconography enabled them to be recognised even without the band's name being there. This worked well for The Rolling Stones considering their widespread success.

There was a re-birth in the 1990s for CD covers, however towards the end of the century digital downloads were starting to be introduced, which has ultimately lead to the death of the CD.

Pitch Video

Here is the video of me doing my pitch. I was very nervous to do it at first, but ultimately this makes me a much better public speaker the more I practice. I tried to do some sort of interaction with the class on what logo I should go with, which was helpful, but it may not be clear in the video. Overall, I'm pleased that I did this as it will enable me to present my ideas better in the future.

Font/Logo developments

Within this blog post, I will show the progress made with finalising my fonts. After collecting the results of my poll, I looked for 80s colour palettes online to use with my font. Here are three favourites I found:

With these colour schemes, i can only use a maximum of three colours, with slight variation. Colour palette one consists of complimentary colours, colour palette two is analogous and colour palette three is also analogous. Out of all three palettes, I prefer the last two, and like the combination of green/blue/pink. Below are the examples of all three colour palettes with the font.

My favourite is number three, and it will appear at the start of the music video at some point, before the lyrics start. I'm not too worried about the placement of this, as it is a final detail in my music video.

Storyboard

This is my storyboard of my video which consists of 101 frames, some of which have been repeated. Now I have a final plan of my music video, I am able to start filming my music video. I'm proud of the storyboard as it is very clear of how my video will be constructed, similar to the anamatic. 

Font/Logo polls

With my font/logo not seeming 80s enough, I did some research on 80s fonts and chose 5 that I liked, which are below:

With this, I have made a chart letting people vote on which one they liked best, and a separate chart letting people vote on which one felt most 80s to them. The poll used and results for these are below:

Which font face is most sutiable for my artist?

Flower Kingdom

Advert

Pincoya Black

Bubbleboddy

Discotheque St

built here

I showed people the fonts at the same time as this poll, so people had the fonts in front of them. This worked well as people didn't forget what the fonts were, being able to look at any time as well as looking at the question again to make the best informed choice possible.

With this now, I can finalise my logo which I will do. I will most likely add bright colours that correspond to an 80s colour palette. However, this may be changed in my actual videos for contrast.

Costume and Makeup tests

In this blog post, I have finalised the costumes and makeup that I will be wearing in all the scenes in my music video. As it is important that I spend most of my time filming, I don't want makeup to take forever; it will waste too much time overall with my production.



I wanted the makeup for the white screen and field scenes to be quite plain. I feel this is important for the field scene as I do not want the audience's focus to be drawn to the face only, but rather to the person overall. That is why I am wearing a white dress and nothing else, not even shoes. The lack of shoes could connote that she is free, and isn't constricted by rules. I feel that my target audience would like to be rebellious, and would relate to this carefree attitude.

The outfit on the white screen involves a much more relaxed environment, hence the pyjamas and hair rollers. It is meant to be an insight into her personal life, and I feel that the white screen makes the contrast impactful (again focusing on her) and makes it feel more professional, like a real music video. Important props in this scene will be a cigarette, however since I don't smoke this may be improvised. Cigarettes are also a sign of rebellion, which will appeal to my target audience.

This is the outfit that will be seen in the street. The party look is some sort of homage to Blondie, with the bold makeup, red lip and little black dress. The heavier makeup doesn't take too long which is important to me so it doesn't eat into filming time. The outfit is also relatively simple too, but the motive is obvious that she is heading to a party. 

Intertexual references

Within my video, there will be at least one Intertexual reference. Whilst I may add more during production, I know that there is one I will use. Two thirds of the way into my music video, I will turn the girl and boy into an animation. Because my style of art fits the cutesy theme, I don't feel it will look out of place. Also, animating will keep my audience entertained further to watch to the end.

The intertexual reference that will be made is Gigi D'Agonstino's Bla Bla Bla. The animation style within my video will only be a bold line that will stand out against the real setting. Within a few of Gigi's music videos, he also uses the same bold white line to animate the beat throughout his music video. Whilst I will not be doing it to this intricate of a level, it will still follow in time with the music.

Lyric analysis

This is a much deeper analysis of my lyrics, clearly showing where cuts will take place, locations and scene changes. Some shots and techniques are labelled, also. This will help me guide my music video as I can now follow the lyrics, even with no technology around me, therefore making it useful on set. I feel the way I have labelled my lyrics makes it clear for anyone to understand my music video sequence.

Production Mindmap

As I was having trouble deciding the sequence alongside most of the visual content for my music video, I decided to make a mind map to get my thoughts down and come up with some ideas. Whilst the mind map hasn't solved everything I had imagined, I have more ideas now than I did before. Here are the pictures of my mind map below:




Now that I have this mind map, I have more ideas that I did previously. As I work on the animatic, it is likely that I will continue to reference this mind map in case I run out of ideas.

Feedback developments

After receiving feedback from the class, I now know the improvements I should make to my project:

• As my 2/3 change within the music video, I should make the girl/boy animated. This could also connote the dreaming title better, making the song and visuals be better interlinked. It would also be something different as frame by frame animation is seen to be difficult.
• My logo should be a little bit more refined, therefore I will spend more time working on it until I am happy with the final product. Even though the bubbly style was preferred, it did not feel very 80s, therefore I should spend some time looking at fonts.

With this, I will now continue to develop my project over the next few weeks, doing the final bits of planning before I actually move on to recording the music video. 

Feedback Sheets

These are the feedback sheets given to me from other students and my teacher. I really appreciate the feedback, as now I am able to hone my overall idea before I produce anything. With this, I can now develop my idea further, adding more specific ideas to make my overall presentation better.

Pitch

Pitch from Maddison Hodge

This is my pitch for my music video. I wanted the colours of the PowerPoint to reflect the general theme I have been going with, and I wanted to make sure I used a lot of bullet points within PowerPoint to keep it concise and easy to read. This pitch will also allow me to gain audience feedback, where they can choose which logo they prefer. Overall it has also given me a much clearer direction I want my music video to go in.

Audience Profile

This is my audience profile sheet for Darcy Doo. I feel that I have quite a wide audience, even though they are majority a younger demographic. However, I think anyone of any age group could enjoy this song as a song to listen to as they commute. Still, there has to be a target that the video will appeal to and I believe this will be what it is.

Pop Rock Research

Dreaming

Dreaming by Blondie can be considered a mixture of rock and pop, both of which have many conventions. Some of the conventions of rock include:

• Dark/black outfits that are usually scruffy - heavy eyeliner can be worn by males and females within a band
• Rock artists are usually within a band, with each member playing an instrument
• Photoshoots are often done with the singer in the front and guitarist, drummer etc. at the back
• Music videos often have a story to them, following some sort of rebellious tone 
• Is an extremely popular genre, with Kerrang being a rock genre magazine

The Bangle's Walk Like an Egyptian is a great example of a rock music video, featuring women. They're overly sexualised in tiny dresses, complying to Goodwin's theory, but still generally being a lot more covered up than modern day female artists. The music video on stage is also very reflective of the genre, where many rock music videos are often recordings of the artist/band on stage. Shots of the audience and artists "rocking out" are common to make an audience feel involved with the video.

Whilst not all of this doesn't relate to Blondie, they are still seen as important stereotypes. Blondie follows more pop conventions:

• Outfits and lyrics are very mainstream
• Mood generally is happy and content, showing off their happiness
• Songs and lyrics are often based around love or relationships
• The target audience tends to be teens
• It has very bold colours within the music video, and is very bright. Attracts people very quickly with how bright it is
• Songs are usually 3-5 minutes, with a consistent and well structured beat.
• Dance routines are common within videos
• Female artists are usually very sexualised, makeup and outfits now are extremely sexy and appeal to male teens
• Videos rely on technology (i.e. heavily edited)

Many pop videos follow Goodwin theory, with the skin-tight or bare skin outfits being prominent. Female and male artists often lip sync in their songs, which also relates to the Goodwin theory, relating to the lyrics and making the viewer feel more involved. Singers within pop are also often the only person in the music video, and within rock videos the singer spends most of the time on screen. Now that they are the main focus, the audience can relate to who the lead singer/artist is and connect who is the main "star" within the band or the artist alone.

An artist that shows Goodwin theory well is Beyonce in the 7/11 video. Beyonce throughout the video is wearing minimal clothing with often revealing parts, i.e. her at the start of the video, she is wearing a jumper and only in her underwear. These also link to the Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' theory well, as this outfit could be inferred as her sexuality being frivolous or the male eye. There are lots of other moments throughout the video that will appeal to male gaze, with lots of girls at once and Beyonce doing suggestive movements (i.e. slapping girls)

Artist Developments

This is a video I made on the recent developments I have made on my artist. It was a good experience to learn and expand the variety of posts on my blog, therefore making me feel a lot more comfortable to make videos again on updates.

Recent Developments

I have decided that I am going to do the song 'Dreaming', by Blondie. The song was released in 1979, and follows the story of Debbie longing for some sort of love. However, because of how upbeat and rock the song is, it doesn't fit the typical soft and slow ideologies of a love song.

Her dreamy attitude in the song can reflect quite a free and rebellious femininity, which is what I will be focusing on in my video.

However, I do not have a name for my artist yet. Whilst I am aware Blondie is technically a band, my artist will be solo. I feel this will work as Debbie is part of the key iconography of the group. I also feel that my artist's name should only be one word as it will stand out more and be easier to remember, just like the band.

I also have started my mood-board, making a glitter ombre barrier.