G324: Notes on what a Digipak and Magazine Advertisement are and their Importance

A digipak is a style of CD packaging that typically consists of a book style paperboard outer binding with a few plastic trays which are capable of holding a CD attached on the inside. Digipaks were quite common when they were first released and all of the biggest artists had to have one released. Digipaks were really popular in the early 2000s and digipaks were also good because they weren't as bad for the environment as jewel cases and were relatively easy to make. A digipak usually is 6 or 8 folds and will hold one or two CD's. A digipak will have a lot of information about the artist and about their new album which is what the artist will want to know about. A digipak is important because I feel it allows the artist/band to connect with their audience.


Example of a Digipak:

A magazine advertisement is a powerful piece of advertising because the advert will normally catch the readers attention and the advert will be in a magazine that is suitable for the genre/target audience. A magazine advertisement for music will typically advertise the artist/bands album or tour. A magazine advertisement is important because it allows the viewer to know when the tour/album comes out and it is important because it creates another dimension to connect to their audience with and it is an important marketing technique.


Example of a Magazine Advertisement:

Digipak's are usually consistent in conjunction with the advertisement so that the consumer knows who the artist is/band are whether they are looking at the digipak or the advertisement. Having a consistent theme makes it easier to promote one or the other and if the consumer were to see the advertisement then they will associate that with the digipak when they see it in the shop rather than having to really  look for who the digipak is by.

G324: Digipak Ideas and Analysis

I have been thinking of some ideas for our digipak and I got some inspiration from some digipak's that already exist and they are in the Drum and Bass genre as well.

This first digipak idea is from the Drum and Bass/Dance artist DJ FRESH. I like this cover because it has nice colours that are blended in with a weird object (skull) in the middle of the cover, I think that it's funky colours go with the dance side of his genre and the skull is more on the drum and bass side.

This is the second digipak idea and it is from the group NERO who do a few different genres and one of them is Drum and Bass. I like the fact that they have a space feel to this cover, this is pretty common in drum and bass digipak designs because it has a futuristic feeling.

This is the third digipak idea and is from the British Drum and Bass group Chase and Status. This is a group we were considering to use because they are in the right genre and are British. I like Chase and Status' album/digipak cover because it uses the conventional colours for drum and bass which are black/white and yellow, I don't really know why these colours are used but they are.



This is the fourth digipak idea and is from the Drum and Bass/Dubstep artist Stan SB and he is the artist that we have chosen to do our music video on. We chose Stan SB because he had the right song for us to make a music video from, it was in the right genre, the lyrics are excellent and the feeling is right.

This is the fifth digipak idea and is from the artist Example, one of his genres is Drum and Bass. This cover is a typical cover for drum and bass because it uses yellow and black. This cover is very simple yet I think it is very effective.

G324: Music Artist Poster

 

This is a music artists poster from a genre that our group are considering for our final music video, the genre of this specific music artist is dance/house, I like this music artist poster for the song "Around The World" because it fits in with the background of the music video for this song. All of the people on the bottom there are in the music video as well so in that respect they also relate to the genre/music video. In this sort of music genre you tend to see red/green/blue colours because they are associated with dance/house music. The image on the poster does fit in with the genre of the music artist, it shows what is going to be in the music video in a subtle way and the message it is trying to get across to the audience I think is "we're not conventional artists, we like to mix things up".

 

This music poster is a good poster but it doesn't really fit in with the typical conventions of music posters; the ways it doesn't are listed below:

• The artist isn't in there themselves, therefore the artist has gone with a cartoon poster to try and relate better to the song and perhaps the record label didn't want the artist on the poster, they wanted to do the poster in a unconventional way to most posters.

• With this poster because the artist isn't on there they don't look into the camera to grab the users attention, they try and do it in a different and kind of cool way by using cartoons and the same colour scheme to the background on the music poster.

A few problems with this poster are; that it doesn't say when the album/single is released, where it is available to buy and the record label isn't on there.

 

Typical Conventions of Music Posters:

• Typically the artist tries to promote themselves instead of the actual album or single.

• The artist normally looks into the camera to capture audiences attention.

• The image on the poster always represents the album/single itself, what the lyrics of the song mean and what the artist wishes to get across to the audience.

• The colour-scheme links in with the image as well as the album/single itself, in that one image it tells the audience what they are going to get from the album.

 

 

This is the music video for "Around The World", in the background you can see the same colour scheme board that is used on the music artists poster promoting this song, this is good because it follows the same theme as the video and is therefore easy to associate the music video to the music artists poster.

G324: Lip Syncing

Lip Syncing is the movement of lips to a pre recorded song to give the appearance that the person who is performing is the one who is singing.

The film track and music track are recorded separately during the creation of a music video, the artists usually lip-sync to their songs and often imitate playing musical instruments as well. Artists also sometimes move their lips at a faster speed from the track, to create videos with a slow-motion effect in the final clip. Some artists have also been known to lip-sync backwards for music videos such that, when reversed, the singer is seen to sing forwards while time appears to move backwards for his or her surroundings these make interesting music videos when watched.

Lip syncing is done quite often when the artist is performing at a live concert because they are auto tuned in the actual track and don't want to sound bad on stage. Lip syncing is improtant because the artist can't always sing to the song for the whole time they are performing on the stage, especially if they are dancing at the same time.



This person on YouTube has done a compilation of different songs and he has lip-synced to them, I thought this would be a good example of lip syncing when he clearly isn't actually singing every song.

G324: Independent Learning - Music Video Factsheet + Activities

Purpose of a music video -

- Sell products/ the song.
- Products can be marketed.
- Product desirable.

General Information off the Factsheet -

- Songs used to only available on TV music channels e.g. TOTP.
- Music + videos allowed in a variety of platforms now .
- Videos can be uploaded to sites such as YouTube.
- Viewed on devices such as mobile phones and iPods.
- The availability of this music on YouTube means that people were more inclined to watch the videos for free on YouTube other than paying for the music on iTunes.
- Laws put in place and record companies tried to sue anyone who uploaded a video from their record label.
- The record companies realise now that these sites are really time consuming to stop people uploading music like that.
- Most companies now allow their artists' music videos to be online but under controlled conditions
- Song BMG have a YouTube channel that hosts their artists' music videos from which there are links to iTunes to buy the songs.
- Television shows associated music such as X-Factor, upload performances from their show up to their YouTube channel so fans can view their contestants performances. They also have links so that fans can download the music off of iTunes.
- In America, 3 major record companies have combined to become VEVO. These are Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media (along with content licenced by EMI).
- MTV Networld and Warner Music Group have allowed American Internet Users to access music videos via their MTV site.

Conventions of Music Video:

- Movement is essential to music videos and usually compliments the rhythm of the song.
- Movement can be achieved by physically moving the camera, the people moving and dancing or through the speed of editing.

- Narrative - Most music videos have them. The storyline may relate to the song's lyrics and illustrate what is being said or be independent from the song and tell a different story.

- Intertextuality - Music video is such a well established genre that it is possible for producers to play with the conventions by making references to the genre in general and to other music videos.

- Band or Artist - Most music videos feature them altough some might go against this and they are also a product to be sold.

- Lip-syncing - The artist may be featured performing their music in the form of lip-syncing.

Activity 1: Analysis of favourite music video

This video by Naughty Boy called La La La is my favourite music video at the moment because it has a good catchy song, the music video is very well done and there is an imaginative narrative to it. The main narrative is trying to include The Wizard Of Oz, where the man with silver face paint on is meant to be the tinman, the dog is meant to be the lion, the person dressed up as a scarecrow is meant to be the scarecrow and i think this intertextual reference is very creative and pretty easy to actually get because most people have seen the film The Wizard Of Oz so it links in nicely. I think that the camera tracking the little boy is decent because it shows his journey and the clothing is especially creative because it is appropriate to the narrative and follows the same sort of style in The Wizard Of Oz.

In this video, Naughty Boy himself isn't in the video so I think it is narrative based and not performance based. He wants to get a certain message across and if he was in it, it wouldn't get the message across as easy as it does at the moment. At about 2:36 in the music video there is a tv on the screen, this is especially effective because it isn't easy to read but gets a message across and the message on the screen says "Hotel Cabana" which is Naughty Boy's new album so this is promoting their album without the audience realising really. I only realised it because I delved into this music video to see if there were any hidden messages. Overall this is my favourite music video at the moment, my opinion is bound to change sooner or later but this is my favourite at the moment just because of the good intertextual reference to The Wizard Of Oz and the catchy song.




Activity 2: Conventions found in music videos

Genre:                   Clothing:                  Behaviors:                       Video settings:

Hip-hop          Blinged up clothing    Fast cars/bling on them     Street

Metal/Rock    Dark/black clothes      Playing electric guitars      Live performance

Punk               Tight, black jeans       Skateboarding                    Skate park

G324: Other Students Music Videos

Music video 1:

This is a music video from a student from another school. This song is called The Ocean. I think this is quite a good music video for a media studies student. The only problem is that I don't think that the narrative is clear enough for the end user and the lyrics don't seem to match the video which isn't very common. The lip-syncing is slightly out as well which is easy to pick up on in a music video because you are constantly looking at their mouth movements therefore the mistakes are more obvious than in something like a movie. The camera shots are decent throughout with quite a lot of varied shots in it, there are quite a few fades throughout the video which gives it a good affect instead of just normal cuts throughout but personally I am not a fan of fades because they aren't common in music videos.

The person who features in this music video is wearing clothes that I would associate with a person who likes this genre of music so I think that they have done well in that respect. I think that the lighting was good throughout even though it was outside because sometimes you can get shots where the sun is in the frame and makes the camera go a bit weird. I think that the target audience for the video is both genders from ages 16-25. Also, I think that the video would be better if the setting was near the ocean/sea because then the setting would correspond to the song title. There aren't any titles in this song apart from the beginning bit saying the students names and candidate numbers.

 

G324: Magazine Advertisements

When artist releases a new album they use lots of different types of promotional material, they do this to make sure that the album that they release is well known and will be a success. For one of our ancillary tasks we have to produce a magazine advertisement/poster. I chose this magazine advertisement below because it is a magazine advertisement for a genre that we were considering to use for our final product.

This magazine advertisement is relevant because it is of a genre that we are considering for our music video. Chase and Status are British D'n'B artists who like to tour quite often hence me getting this magazine advertisement for one of their tours. As with typical drum and bass advertisements or album covers, this has the colour yellow in it and as well as this picture in the background standing out, this picture is also featured on their album cover so it shows that they are consistent with their designs. The layout of this magazine advertisement is decent because it has all of the relevant details in the right place, the title is in an eye catching position, the subtitle is nicely positioned in the middle of the advertisement and the tour information is situated at the bottom of the advertisement. This advertisement takes the same form as most advertisements in magazines but this one is good because it is pretty unique using a picture of a dog as the background.

From looking at this magazine advertisement, I think as a group we need to make sure that we make our ancillaries consistent with both the digipak and with the magazine advertisement. These are very important if we want to try and gain maximum marks in both the ancillary tasks.