Digipak Planning



What is A Digipak?

A Digipak is a patented style of CD (or DVD or BD) packaging. Digipaks typically consist of a gate-fold paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays used to hold the CD. Digipak style packaging is typically used for CD singles or special edition albums. Such packaging is less resistant to abrasion than jewel cases, so it tends to show signs of wear relatively quickly.

What does a digipak include?

Typically, you would expect to find;

• a list of the songs included
• lyric sheets for the songs
• photos of the artist (sometimes signed)
• information about the artist
• tour dates
• a list of personal thanks/messages from the artist
• sometimes an offer for a download from iTunes

Our Digipak

The inside right panel will hold the disc, in a pouch.
The back cover will be a list of songs.
The front cover will show our CD cover design.
The inside left panel will 'about the artist' and a personal letter / personal thanks from the artist.
On the reverse side of the pack there will be song lyrics and photos from videos, gigs, personal etc.

Because of the music genre, we want our digipak front cover to represent individuality. We have had a few ideas as to how we want this to look:

This will be taken personally, and edited to say 'Balance' on the standing sweet so that this matches the name of the song. 

  


This will be taken on a proper scrabble board, but set out exactly like this example.

This is a very basic example of what we want, we plan to use proper alphabet fridge magnets, with more of a variety of colours, as well as capital letters for his initials and the whole of the word 'Balance'. 

Decisions for Subsidiary Tasks

To compliment our final task, we have decided to create a Digipak and a Website. We feel these two media products will allow us to be creative in the designs, and it i something new for us to investigate and learn about. 

Digipak

This is a paperboard or card case which holds the disk, as well as providing the customer with relevant extra information such as lyrics, images, tour dates, information and personal messages from the artist.
The benefits of a digipak include the fact that is is more environmentally friendly than the classic plastic CD case. Also, the cardboard used is more hard-wearing than plastic 'jewel' case, so will not crack or break as easily. They are often made out of recycled materials such as plastic bottles (for the disk tray) and egg boxes for the sleeves.  





Website

After considering many website creator sites we have decided upon 'WIX'. This is because it allows us to begin with a completely blank canvas so we can design the website however we wish, rather than being limited to particular templates, fonts or images. 

Digital Technology

Textual Analysis 3

By analysing the contents of this music video we can see there are conventions for this genre of music. Generally this style of music will have a lack of lip synching and direct eye contact with the camera. I believe that they lack this direct contact because it is a convention of pop music, like One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful" and Jessie J's "Price Tag". It seems like this particular genre is trying to avoid being a pop genre, and trying to be different to the pop music videos. From analysis of this music video and watching others more generally another convention is to have a story behind the video, for example in this they are having fun and falling in love. However this genre seem to do this slightly differently to other videos, for example performance style videos still have a story behind them usually where the artist is portraying the overall feel of the song. Although in a Narrative style video, like this, there is usually parts of no lip synching where other characters will run alongside the song to tell a story.

The cuts in the music video seem to work with the beats of the song. At the start of the video the music is quite slow and therefore so are the cuts, as the song builds momentum the cuts become faster and the clips become shorter. Also the start of the video is quite dull and dark lighting wise, whereas as the song builds momentum the sun comes out and the lighting is much brighter. This is something we would wish to achieve in our music video because it seems to have more continuity if the cuts match with the song. Our song seems to stay at the same level all the time and therefore we may not be able to reciprocate the cuts becoming faster when the song is faster.

Another convention I have established in narrative music videos is that although the song is only a couple of minutes long, the story lasts a longer length of time. For instance this one seems to be a whole day or a few hours with the characters. For our music video we hope to create the time frame of a year or two which is longer than this particular video does but is similar to other videos we have seen.

We have learnt a lot from this music video, we feel that the narrative characters acting out a story alongside the artist performing the song works well. However we would only use one story-line to run alongside it because if we had three like this example, it could become difficult to film as there will be a lot of organising of talent and we would need to spend a large amount of time on the filming of our video in order for it to work. So we would only have one set of characters that are continued throughout the whole video. Most importantly this music video showed us that you do not have to include lip synching throughout the whole video in order for it to be successful. Throughout the whole 4 minute video the artist only appears for roughly 30 seconds of it. This is becoming a convention of this style of music and is something we wish to reciprocate in our own music video

Textual Analysis 2

After watching the music video to Daniel Powter's 'Cupid' several times, certain conventions have become apparent to me and have inspired some ideas for the music video that I will be creating. 

The video has three sections to it, showing the development in the relationship of the couple. As well as this, there are another two parts to the video but in a different way; the first part is the lip-syncing of the artist and the second is the 'story' which the artist is telling through the song, shown on screen by the talent. 

The video opens with a panning shot on the female talent but cuts to the artist, Daniel Powter, lip-syncing on the beach. The fact that the artist is on the beach whilst singing is symbolic of the idea that he is taking the viewers on a journey of his relationship; the story which we are shown of the talent, portrays the flashbacks that the artist is having. This is a convention used in many music videos for love songs and is a convention which I think would help our music video to be successful due to the fact that if the song is about a relationship, as a general rule, the audience will want to be shown the relationship. It will help the audience to understand the real meaning behind the song and hopefully convey the message we intend; 'no matter how little you have, you'll always have each other'.

I like the convention of the artist taking the audience on a journey of the relationship; in 'Cupid', Daniel Powter is singing the song on the beach whilst the audience see his 'flashbacks' of his life. I think that we are going to use this convention in a very similar way in our music video; this is because 'Balance' is a love song, so we are going to have the male talent playing his guitar walking down the street, taking the audience on a journey of his relationship.

Another convention used in 'Cupid' is the presence of the artist in the video. There are some Indie music videos which choose to not have the artist in, such as Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team', but mostly they tend to have the artist. I personally like the presence of the artist in any music video because I think it portrays the 'story' better. We will be using this convention in our music video as it is one which is used in the majority of music videos, and due to the fact that we are aiming to make a successful music video, I think it is important that we follow such crucial conventions. As Billy Lockett, the artist of the song we are creating a video for, is unsigned and is from our local area, it was fairly easy for us to get in contact with him. We explained what we had to do for our coursework and he invited us to film him singing live in concert in October (FROM THE SIDE OF THE STAGE!!). 

When the talent are in the bedroom, half of the shot is cut off by the sun-shining through the window. The first time I saw this kind of thing happen in a music video I didn't think anything of it. However, as I have watched hundreds (literally) since then it has become apparent that it is a convention which many music videos, made for a love song, use. I think it is to symbolise the happiness of the relationship, due to the fact that the sun is associated with happy memories. I really like this convention, not only because of the representations, but because it just looks so good..not really a reason to use it, but then again people these days are drawn to music videos because of their looks and not just the song. 

The talent in 'Cupid' only ever make eye contact with the camera once, and this is when they are looking at the house they have just brought. We will definitely stick to the convention of not having the talent look at the camera because they are supposed to be in a 'flashback' rather than 'performing' to the camera. In addition to this, as we are using live footage rather than have the artist performing to the camera, he will rarely look at the camera either as our music video is the idea of the artist remembering how his relationship started whilst making it vivid enough for the audience to be taken on the 'journey' too. 

Lastly, a convention used in 'Cupid' which I really like is the fact that the talent 'get older' to portray that the couple have grown old together. I think that this is a really nice touch and a great way to illustrate the message of the song. This however, is not a possible convention for our music video as we do not have such a vast talent available to us. If we were to have a longer period of time and even some sort of budget, it may be possible, but with the criteria we have, we're taking a different path. 

Overall, I think that Daniel Powter's 'Cupid' music video is a really good example of the kind of music video that we would like to create and the message that we would like to send to our audience. Therefore I think that we will be referring back to this quite a bit when storyboarding, producing and editing our own music video.

Textual Analysis

Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved

The music video for this song proved extremely popular, and continues to be influential for many artists. It breaks conventions by having little lip synching, relying on the narrative to tell the story of the song. The video guides us through the lives of the stories, compellign us to feel emotion for every character, through the use of flashbacks and interesting camera angles/editing techniques such as establishing shots, cutaways and extreme close ups. These explain the lyrics and guide the audience through the song. I really like the use of flashbacks and emotive themes, and plan to emulate this in my own work.

One convention which is adhered to is the exploration of a relationship - although this is a little more complicated than most (with more than two main characters), and this matches the lyrics of the song.

Personally, I found the 'live' section of this video particularly effective, where the band is seen to be performing the song in a believable setting, as it fits smoothly with the song and provides more interest for the viewer. I plan to use this idea in my own video - using live footage of the artist (collected personally) for certain sections of the song, as this can be used instead of lip synching in order to create a professal looking video; if lip synching is not done properly it has the tendency to look amateur.