Completed Digi Pack

Here is my completed digi-pack, this was a big challenge for me as I hadn't used Photoshop before. This took me a long time to complete but I am happy with the outcome. As the software I used was new to me I am glad I spent extra time on it to insure that I finished it at a standard I was comfortable with.

Final Front and Back Cover For Digi Pack

Front of the Digi Pack-

After going through several different ideas I finally decided on this one. It is modeled of a previous attempt that I documented. The like the simplicity but the effectiveness. The black background to contrast the colour also helped to the link the back cover making it more of a continuous theme.










Back of the Digi Pack -
I loved this photo that we took on shot but didn't know how to make it more effective. So when I decided on the front cover it gave me the great idea to make the colour stand out against a black background.

Final Music Video

Digital Impact On The Music Industry

Whilst researching into the music industry, I found this info-graphic on how much the digital world has effected the music industry. I found it very interesting to see how much of an effect it has had on music. Not only on the way we consume music but also the way we purchase it.

This has helped me to think about the importance of the digi - pack and website as they are a key part of music consumerism. I also believe this will help me when I come to my evaluation with thinking about audiences.

The Music Industry

Pop Website Research

I have researched into the top female pop artist and what there websites look like, so that I can create a website that fits our genre. Looking through these websites has pointed some things out to me that seem to be key to a pop website. 

1. The artists's picture must be on the homepage and in at least two of these examples they are the background of the homepage.
2. Hash tags are very popular and almost all celebrities/stars have them, so the artist needs to have a link to their twitter account in plain sight.
3.  Most of the websites are very clean with the exception of Miley Cyrus. But each is crafted to its specific audience and fans.
4.  Pop ups - Almost all of these websites had a pop up of the artists newest single.
5. The websites aren't complex, they are easy so they can be navigated around with ease to find what ever they are looking for.
6. Social media is a key part of music videos its a way for the artist to get known by more people and therefore most artists have at least 3 social network links on their websites.
7. The URL is almost always the artists name. 

Inspiration

One of the inspirations we took from the original was this -

They have I Love It written on their hands in a black marker and we though this looked really effective so wanted to try this ourselves. We tried this with the powder paint but it didn't really work so when we were using the glow paint we attempted it again. This is what we ended up with -

Glow Paint Editing

We finally got our last shoot finished and started adding the glow in the dark shots to the rest of out video and it is looking really good. The glow in the dark shots came out a lot better than we expected, the pink was especially effective on her lips and we have used it on a few over lapping shots too.  The overlapping shots was something we had planned to do but we are all so pleased with the outcome as it doesn't look amateur like we expected it might have. 

Animatic

Here is the animatic for our storyboard, we worked from this when we were filming although there were quite a few other shots added that were improvised on the day of shooting.

More Album Art

We have decided on a name for our artist that isn't the original artist's name Icona Pop. As a group we decided on Xena as it is a shorter more pop style name. The style I have used her allows the image to be used multiple times and keep a sense of how important colour is to the video. I used a grunge style font to keep with the costume choices we made when filming. It also makes it more appealing to a younger audience. 

A lot of female artist have the name of the album as well as there name on the cover but use a specific font to make their brand more identifiable. In the cover I have created I have chosen only to use the name to establish her as an artist. Although the name of the album is included its a lot smaller than the artists name and it also is usually less visible. For example on the Jessie J album cover it is in white font below her name and on the Lady GaGa album it is placed on her glasses but neither of which draw a massive amount of attention to the album name. 

Artist Name

Today we decided to change the artist name from Icona Pop. Here are a few ideas we had -

We decided on Xena as it was the most powerful name and it fits the genre were as some of the other names were more floral and natural matching the indie genre not pop.

Influences to our video - Glow Paint

I have been researching into videos that have influenced our choices with the glow paint section of our music video, here is a list of the videos and why they have influenced us.

Glow Paint Influences from nic96

Glow Paint Outfit Ideas

Idea One - 

The way we plan to film this means that you won't really see a lot of the outfit the focus is more on the glow in the dark make up and how it looks against a black background. I think this outfit is more sophisticated and has class to it with the added jewellery to make an effect. Although personally I prefer the second outfit idea.

Idea Two - 

I like the idea that the outfit is all black but I feel that we should have some colour in the outfit as the video focuses so much on colour I think it would look in consistent. The best colour to use would probably be red, even if we use the darker red it will still stand out more than a just black outfit. The jewellery isn't so much of an issue and neither are the shoes all though as this is more fancy than the other outfits that we have used we want her to wear heels to compliment the outfit as well as to showcase how important this part of the video is.

Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin in the "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" (1992) stated that there is a way to analyse music videos. This theory consists of 6 rules for analysis -

1. Music Videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.
3. There is a relationship between music and the visuals.
4. The demands of the record company will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which reoccur in their work.
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of female bodies.
6. There is often inter-textual references.

The relationship between music and visuals, as well as lyrics and visuals can either be -

- Illustrative (Not a literal meaning)
- Amplifying (Adds a new layer or layers of meaning to a song)
- Disjuncture (Contradiction between lyrics and image)

Digi-Pack Attempts

I have created some rough ideas for a Digi-Pack on my phone using Pixlr Express. After filming in London we took a couple of shots that I thought would look really good as the cover.  These particular shots were taken at the Southbank Skate Park.

The first image I have colourised, saturated and played with the contrast to create a bright and vivid background to fit with the ideas we have in our video.I love the text I used on this as I believe it fits the pop genre perfectly I would like to use a font type like this in my actual piece. I also like the fact that the graffiti pops in the background.


















The second image tried to make more to the Pop genre as I felt like the graffiti might give the impression of rap or Hip Hop. The amount of colour is to match the amount of colour in our video and the pink looks nice and feminine. The font doesn't stand out as much and this is my least favourite of the two but it was nice to experiment before creating my actual piece.