Analysis of existing digipaks - Becca

In order to develop a subtle understanding of the technical features and conventions of digipaks, I have studied examples from two contrasting genres.

Jack Johnsons album ''On and On'' (Acoustic genre) front and inside covers.

The sticker on the front of the digipak shows that it is a 'special edition'. This will appeal to his fans as it is a collector’s edition. The inclusion of the 'UK bonus track' also gives the feeling of exclusivity as the additional content that is available on this digipak is only available for either a certain length of time or to a certain amount of people. The sans serif font reflects the straightforwardness of the artist and the simplicity of his music. The same font appears to be used on all of his albums; this is easily recognizable to his fans. The image used on the front of the digipak, being the silhouette of Jack Johnson playing the guitar gives the impression that he isn't particularly bothered about the audiences thought on his image, and wants them to focus more on the music. This is typical of the acoustic genre, where artists are often pictured with a musical instrument to indicate the importance of the music. The absence of text on the inside of the album reflects the easy listening element of the music, as the sea is generally associated with tranquillity. The seemingly endless expanse of water which spans all three panels of the album relates to the title of it, 'On and On' as the water goes on and on. Also, according to research I have done, the pale blue shades of the water, create a feeling of serenity and infinity. These things all relate directly to the genre of the album. The image of the sea is also very personal to him, as he was brought up on the coast of Hawaii and he has a passion for surfing. The sound of the sea can be heard on his song ''Symbol in my driveway'', which is on this particular album.

Using intertextuality when creating an artists identity is very important, making adverts and merchandise which is instantly recognizable to the artists fans. 

This book on the right has the same image on the front of it as the digipak does, this links the two products together and makes it instantly recognizable.

The digipak plays an important role in establishing the artist as a recognizable brand and familiarizing this with the audience. Meaning that fans who own one album of a particular artist will subconsciously be drawn to an advert for a new album release. All the Jack Johnson album covers use the same font for the title of the album, they all use light colours to reflect the calm acoustic genre of the music itself. The simplicity of the images used on each front cover also reflects the mellow tone of the music.

Alkaline Trio's album ''Agony and Irony'' (goth-punk genre) 4 panel front and inside covers.

The iconic skull inside of a heart on the front of the album and the use of red and black is instantly recognizable to fans of the band. These colours are also typical colours for the genre of music, and are commonly used by bands of the same genre, for example, Bullet for My Valentine, My Chemical Romance and Green Day. 

The aged look of the makes the album look a lot more gothic/punk. The use of the style of font used for the track list on the back of the album has an anachronistic look about it which will appeal to the gothic fans of this band.

Like the Jack Johnson album, the inside panels of Alkaline Trio's album, doesn't have any text on it, and it also has one picture across both panels of the album. It is conventional of the punk genre that the band do not appear on their front cover, and if they are on it at all, it is usually on the inside cover, just as it is on Alkaline Trio's album. The muted colours create a retro feeling, just as the front cover does, also giving this impression is that one of the band members is wearing Aviator sunglasses which were very popular quite a few years ago. The image of the heart and skull is universally recognizable by the bands fans, it has appeared on the front of previous album releases, on a large amount of merchandise and is a popular choice for tattoos for truly dedicated fans. The inclusion of the bands logo appearing on the front of their 6th album automatically attracts the attention of fans.

Indie Digipaks

I have decided to pick out some examples of front covers from the same genre as the music we are making our video from. 'Indie' music is often associated with the lower/middle class. The codes and conventions in the indie albums often promote these 'bohemian' values, through the use of simple images in typical middle class urban settings, with people wearing typically indie style clothing e.g. shirts and scruffy jeans. The pictures are taken as if they have been taken from someones everyday life, rather than the posed, airbrushed artists on the front of pop albums. And so this appeals to the 'alternative' audience and makes it easier for them to relate to the artist on a more personal level. The very often do not include an image of the artist, which again shows the greater importance of the music rather than the style and look of the artist. 

In conclusion, I have found that intertextuality is a key feature to consider when creating a digipak. 

Shot analysis - Becca

Storyboards - Becca

Online TA research analysis - Becca

Analyzing the online polls


To make sure we got a wide enough range of data from our target audience we put our surveys online using polldaddy.I posted the link to our polldaddy on both mine and Hollie's Facebook and Twitter accounts so that friends and family could access the survey. Because of this, we got quite a few responses from ages ranging from under 20-40 year olds.

We did also have a printed survey which we gave to people so we could see what they thought to the ideas that we had gathered together over the previous weeks.




Our online results were as follows:
Looking back at the polldaddy results, I found it very interesting. 50% rarely watch music videos.
The audience were mainly female. We were interested a variety of ages, however the majority were older. All of the people that took part in our online survey were interested in the genre of indie music and liked the stereotypical indie style.The majority said that they prefer to see a story within a music video, as we were at the time doing performance, we found this to be very important information and was part of the reason we changed to create a narrative music video. However, one person had said that 'abstract adds dimension to music and words'. Every single person that took part in the survey online said that their idea of the 'indie style' in a music video would be to see guitars, drums, lads playing instruments, having a good time. Kieth Mundell answered that he likes to see 'the band, something amusing, interesting, different, new and something relating to like Danger Mouse or Brian Griffin'. If we were to take Mr Mundell's idea and use it, it would be very abstract as it would not link with any of the lyrics to the song, but unfortunately nearly all people who took part in the survey said they like the events of the video to compliment the lyrics. Also, luckily, none of our audience are easily offended by sex and drug references, as our song is about a male ruining his relationship by smoking weed. But we will not be encouraging the use of drugs, in fact, it is more than likely going to put people off by the way the male will behave in the video.

Film schedule for narrative music video - Becca

Date: 25th and 28th of November
Location: Garage and Hibaldstow beck.
Group members: the 6 members of Dood (will not see them as its a completely narrative video)
Lighting: Garage - artificial light, dull, showing mood of the male actor (upset, angry).
              Beck - street lights, time will be late afternoon so will be dusk, again shows the mood of the video.
Props: Guitar, drums, cigarette, rubbish e.g. pizza boxes, empty bottles, tobacco to put on table, sofa, television, clothes, phones.
Costumes: Boy - Jeans, shirt, vans/converse.
                 Girl - dress, tights, converse, jewellery.
Actors: Matthew, Beth and any extras we feel we need on the day.
Make-up: Light make-up to look natural, a little powder on boys face so it doesn't shine in artificial light.
Script: argument about the male being unreliable, smoking weed, drinking and having a good time, not good to his girlfriend and she's fed up of it, everything will be silent as the song will be played over the video, no sound effects of smashing bottles etc.

Similar product research for narrative music video - Becca

The Vaccines - Post Break Up Sex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU9hrd35Dsg

This is my second analysis of a narrative music video since we decided to change our video from performance based to narrative. Post Break Up Sex is a song by The Vaccines and is of the style indie rock.
The first few shots we see are of the lead singer of the band playing his guitar and singing. It then seems as though the video moves onto a tape that has been recorded in the past of another guitar player but we don't see his face. The lyric while this shot is on is ''don't tell me who you lost it to'', so this male playing the guitar could be a memory in the girls mind of the boy she lost 'it' to.

These are the second lot of shots that we see after the males. This is obviously the female involved with this man. In the first of the two shots she seems to be watching someone, the lighting in this shot looks to be the same as the second man who we presume she lost 'it' to.
And in the second shot we see her close up and she looks very miserable the lyrics while we see this are ''didn't we say we had a deal, didn't I say how bad I feel''. This gives me the impression that she agreed to 'post break up sex' and has maybe fallen for him in the mean time, but all he wants is sex. He then sings ''everyone needs a helping hand, who said I would not understand''. As though he was just helping her to get over her ex.

Then as the chorus starts we see the whole of the band playing their instruments. They don't, however, look like they are enjoying themselves, they could be trying to match the mood of the song by looking miserable. 

The next shot is a CU of the side of the females face with the male stood out of focus, topless in the background. The lyrics say ''wait until the guilt consumes, I found you in the nearest room''. This tells me that she feels guilty every time she sleeps with this man and slopes off to another room to compose herself. Another shot of the lead singer is shown and then a sequence of shots of the female sat at a window in what appears to be a blanket/throw.

The video then starts to focus more on the band members rather than the actors in the video, with shots of the lead singer and then the band on their instruments and then some of them all together. We then see a sequence of CU shots of random peoples faces and they are crying, this could be showing how upset people get over their ex's.

The Vaccines - No Hope - Hollie

I have chosen to analyse this particular music video as I think the way the whole video is in black and white is quite unique and I would maybe like the include this within my music video. I feel that it limits the video in a good way because your eyes will not be drawn away by bright colours and it enables you to focus on the story and emphasise with the actors involved.

This video opens straight away with a long shot, setting the hectic scene, this is something we are going to include with in our video, however we think that we are going to open with a fade. It has a long ASL of the boy running away from something? Or to someone? The camera then cuts, and pans to the lead singer. This video does contain some performance which we would also like to do, however we will have our actor sing a few lines instead of having the band in the video. The video keeps cutting to the story of this unknown boy, this keeps the audience interested and ask questions such as, who is he? Where is he going? Most of the video includes a long ASL focusing on the boy. This is something we could use in our video as it will possibly portray how our male actors life is slow and long. The video keeps repeating the shot of the actor singing in the same spot, we are going to repeat scenes of the girlfriend shaking her head in disappointment.

There are many different shot types within this video, including and over the shoulder shot which lets us see what he is doing.
This long shot shows the whole band and lets us see their style and attitude. Then it includes a variety of close-ups of each of the band members faces, as if to be introducing them to us.
Suddenly, the boy bikes through the band members, automatically making them actors in the video, and playing the roles of thugs or bullies. The story then continues which the same repeated shots throughout of the close up of the singer and also the story of the boy.

Then finally the story is revealed. This involves close ups of reaction shots and fast cuts between the boy and the girl as if building up to a sudden ending. Then as she throws the flowers away, the video is over cranked, also as she walks away back into the house. The boy then drops his head into his hands, which links to the songs lyrics 'No Hope' which is repeated after this scene.
The video then surprisingly ends with the same scene that it started with. Which answers my questions, that at first he was running to someone, then at the end it flips around as he is running away, then jumps in the river.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_3eEPpmKwE

Final Ideas. Hollie

We have now decided to make our video purely narrative with the slightest hint of performance. The band will not be involved in the video, we will have actors to act out the narrative story which will match the song lyrics. Our story consists of a young couple, a troubled male who is addicted to drugs, and his worried yet tired girlfriend who is sick of his behaviour. We will portray his situation to be tough and lonely, with a hidden meaning of how drugs can ruin your life. We will have the odd flashback within the video, showing the couples happy time within their relationship, before drugs took over his life. We will show scenes of breakdown and sorrow, and also scenes of happiness. Towards the end of the video his girlfriend will help him overcome his addiction and place a loving arm around him, showing she is still supportive and wants to help.

Our style within the video will still be indie, however we will not cover the whole scenes with indie clothes and instruments as we want to try and flip the indie genre, showing a more emotional and tough side, instead of parties, drinking and typical rebellious scenes.  

Target Audience Research Analysis - Hollie

To gain a wide variety of answers from many different people for our target audience research, we constructed different ways in which people can help our music video become more specific to our audience.
We posted our PollDaddy survey onto Facebook and Twitter which both produced lots of responses. We also had a printed survey which we could give to people who we thought would be a suitable audience so we could see what they thought to the ideas that we had gathered together over the process.

Our results were as follwed:
Our audience were equally male and female, and we interested a variety of ages, however the majority were younger. All of the people that took the time to take part in our survey were interested in the genre of indie music. Also, the majority said that the would prefer to see a story within a music video, as we were at the time doing performance, we found this to be very important information.
Most people said that their idea of 'indie style' consisted of, guitars, drums, lads playing instruments, having fun, but they were also open to seeing a different side of indie music instead of it all being rebellious. Also, luckily, none of our audience are easily offended by sex and drug references. And obviously we will not be encouraging the use of drugs.

Film Schedule for narrative music video - Hollie

Date: 21st November, 22nd November, 25 November
Location: Garage (main setting), Hibaldstow beck.
Group members: Dood.
Lighting: In garage - artificial lighting, quite dull, to show mood.
                The Beck - street lights, at dusk.
Props - Guitar, drums, cigarette, rubbish e.g. pizza boxes, empty bottles, tobacco to put on table, sofa, television, clothes, phones.
Costumes - Girl - dress, tights, converse, wooly cardigan, jewellery, hat?
                   Boy - Jeans, shirt, bandana, vans.
Actors: Matthew, Alex, extras.
Make-up - Light make-up to show natural prettiness, and slight powder on boys face so it does not shine.
Script: made up argument, but will be silent as the song will be over the video.

Storyboards - Hollie

Similar product research for narrative music video - Becca

Leona Lewis - Trouble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5U6CaNlyEQ

We know the song isn't of the genre indie rock, but the music video itself uses the story, camera shots and angles that we would like to use in our narrative based music video.

The first shot is of a bunch of pink roses, these suggest happiness and love.However, the shot moves onto the vase in which the roses are in and it is on its side. This could suggest an argument where one or the other has lost their temper and knocked/thrown them over. Or the knocked over vase could suggest an unhappy relationship.

The camera moves to the female who is looking around the room and then sits with her head in her hands looking worried as if something bad has happened. We then see the male CU, he is also looking around the room looking angry and upset. There is then a shot of a smashed vase with pebbles all over the floor, this tells us that an argument has definitely happened and this could be an unhappy moment for the two people in this relationship.There are then a sequence of shots of both the male and female looking upset and dazed as if they have no idea what went wrong. These shots end in a scene of the couple at the dinner table, they aren't talking and the female has her head in her hand but the male passes a plate to the female.



It then seems that the video goes back in time to a happy point in their relationship, the couple are in bed, rolling around, kissing and smiling.

We are then taken to a party with the couple. The male walks in front of the female and greets a friend. A CU shot of the female suggests she is at the party in person, but not there in spirit and doesn't want to be there. Another shot at the party is of the male hugging another girl, we then see his partner in the background looking at him - could this be what they fall out about?

Again we get the impression that they are happy as the male pulls the female into him and starts to slow dance with the her.


There is then an LS of the pair waiting for an elevator, the male walks up to her like he wants to hug/kiss her.



Then more shots of the couple looking happy together and then a LS of the female sitting against wall crying.

There are then a sequence of shots where the couple are sat down and the female starts to shout. They are arguing and both of them smash things up, the male rips books off the book shelf and the female breaks the lamp. She tries to walk away but he grabs her arm and pulls her back, she shouts in his face and turns away again.

The male is driving somewhere and the last shot is a POV shot out of the back of his car. This suggests that she has either kicked him out, he has left or he needed a break from all the arguing.

How this video links to ours..

Our lyrics suggest that a woman is leaving a man because of his bad habit's. So we decided that quite a lot of the video should be of the couple arguing and then seeing the male upset as he realizes that his relationship is slowing getting worse, because of his actions. The story in this video is very similar to the story we have with our lyrics, however, the problem lies with the female, she has clearly had her heartbroken before and this is why she watches him so closely when with another woman at a party, and the lyrics, 'gonna take much more than a heart to save me' also give this impression. As for the camera shots and angles this video uses, these are the ideas we had for ours and this is why we decided to look very closely at Leona Lewis' - Trouble.

Breaking Conventions

From our research we can see that indie rock videos are mostly performance led, with a small hint of narrative. Therefore we are going to break Goodwins theory by breaking stereotypical indie video conventions and make our video mainly narrative with a small fraction performance based, we are hoping that this will then make it appeal more to a female audience.

Instead of having shots of the whole band performing, we will have our main actor sing parts of the song within the narrative parts of the video.

Lyrics shot analysis for narrative video

Fear becomes clear	Images of fear – running, crying, fast shaking of head.
Still harping on	Someone shouting, screaming.
'cause I have been smoking weed	Leaning on wall, drops down, pressure overpowering, smoking etc.
I'm losing her	CU sad expression, head in hands at shock of reality.
Im losing it	CU/MS/LS – angry/in a mess, throwing objects, smashing things, slightly portraying side effects of the weed.
And you call late at night	CU on phone/talking/arguing
Hanging low with nowhere to go	Outside/streets/wandering/lost
Because late at night	time/clock/natural dark light/chime to show time?
Im losing it	Repeated images
Yeah with your long blonde hair	Female model – shots on phone/crying/fights with him/her walking away – repeated shots.
I cannot see	POV shot, slamming in as he hits head on wall.

The Brief

In order to meet the brief we need to:

• Create our music video.
• Digi-Pak
• Magazine advertisement

To make the to the best of our abilities, we will need to conduct some similar product research of each of our ancillary tasks. We will also need to complete, scheduling, storyboards and other necessities included in the making of a music video. After we have completed the music video we will need to edit and make sure our music video is to the highest standard which we had imagined. Eventually after everything is completed we will need to get feedback from our video and evaluate our journey.


Recently our band has become very difficult to work with. Because of this, we have decided to make some major changes to our initial ideas. Now, we are going to make a narrative music video, and use actors that we have chosen, instead of the members of the band.

Film schedule - Becca

If we cannot gain access to the pub which we would prefer to film our video in, then we have decided to use a plain white room and use extra props to make the scene more pub like.

Location: white room, plain background
Group members:
Lighting: artificial, low key, dark room (night time)
Props: alcohol, microphones, instruments - bongos, guitars, piano
Costumes: shirts - casual, hats, jeans (rebel/indie look)
Actors: Meg, Kim, Jo
Make-up: not much, slight powder so their faces don't shine.

Film Schedule - Hollie

Location - The Thatch, Broughton.
Group members -
Lighting - Constant, no fast flashing lights as this will change the genre we are trying to portray, slightly low key, to link to the dull tone within the song.
Props - Drums, guitars, tables, chairs, alcohol? Pool table?
Costumes - Casual wear, shirts, hats, jeans, waistcoats.
Actors - Meg, Kim, and other extras to create the sense of an audience.
Make-up - Not much, slight powder on face so that their faces do not shine in the light.

Lyrics analysis

'Fear becomes clear And your still harping on'	Been going through a bad time, finally accepting whats happened? Girl still blaming him, but staying by his side. Start shot with low key lighting, slowly changing to a more high key lighting to show how 'fear becomes clear'
'cause I have been smoking weed And she says I'm losing her'	States the reason as to why she is becoming more distant, and tells her opinion of him. As our video will be performance based we won't show a shot of him smoking weed.We also would like to show this because, although our audience are more middle class and of indie style, we don't want to include taking of drugs within our video as this may portray a bad image of our company.
'Its always late at night when she says I'm losing it'	'Late at night' tells me that within our video the lighting will constantly have to be slightly more low key than high because we can not film in pure day light, when the lyrics to the song are set at night, and are not happy lyrics.
'I cannot see'	This could suggest he is possibly blind to what is going on around him? Such as, him losing his girlfriend but is unaware of how he is making her feel by his actions.

Digipak Research - Hollie

For any style genre most digipaks are designed and created by what style that genre has. Pop music digipaks, will stereotypically be bright, colourful and fun. Rock music digipaks will most probably be dark and bold. All digipaks will be very different but will still clearly relate to the music genre.

Some digipaks tend to not use images of the band, and instead just have a patterned front cover. I like this idea in some cases such as pop music because you can have a bright colourful pattern, but I do not think it would work for the indie genre as their style is not stereotypically colourful, but more plain patterned.

Others may just involve the bands name in there style of writing. At first I liked this idea but when I see this digipak in comparison to others, it makes me think different as it looks slightly too plain. If I was to see this on the shelf next to others that were more well planned to this then my eyes would be drawn to the other CD. Although we mainly want to attract indie styled people who are interested in music, we would still like the catch the eye of people who are opposite to our style.


Some front covers involve the band in surreal situations such as Mumford and Sons in there new album where they are posed in a shop window acting as mannequins.

I like digipak because I like the different style of photography and the way it all links. The front of the CD shows the front of a house, and ironically the back of the CD shows the back window of a house. I did like the idea of just a basic front cover and possibly a patterned CD, but now I think I would prefer the front and back of the CD covers the be quite unique and weird to link to the style of our band 'Dood'. I think I would also prefer the actual CD itself to be plain and just include the bands name and maybe the name of the particular song 'Harping On'.




While looking through other digipaks, I started to see that the way the bands names were presented, stayed similar throughout. So I decided to create a style in Photoshop in which our bands name will be presented.