Research for Digipak

These are some of the album covers that I will use to inspire my digipak. After looking at lots of albums from the soul genre I realised that conventional album covers within the genre feature a close-up image of the artist and they usually have minimal text to prevent drawing the attention away from the artist. I decided that I want to conform to these codes when I make my digipak because I want to make my album cover look as much like a real media product as possible. 

Images for Digipak

Here are some of the possible images that I could use for my Digipak. These photos are screenshots that I have taken from the footage we have for our music video. I am not quite sure of the mood I want to create for my cover yet so there is a variety of angles and poses throughout these images. I am planning on doing a photoshoot separate from the music video to get some close up as well because I have found that for album covers of the R&B genre the image is usually a close up of the artist.

 

The images displayed above are from the same location but they are very different in the emotions that they are conveying. The one on the left is more serious which is in line with the mood of the song, however, the image on the right is more consistent with the approach we have taken for our project.

This image is what I am considering to use for the back of the album cover because there isn't much going on within the image so the focus would be on the songs that I am planning to list along the left side of the image where the lighting is more predominant. 

Analysing Magazine Adverts

Analysing these magazine advertisements will help to inspire me when I start to work on my own, they will outline the common conventions used in ads such as a profile of the artist as well as the name of the artist, preferably written in all capital letters to add more status to the artist.  

Final music video for 'I Need A Dollar'

Here is the final product. 

Adding Titles

Now that we have the name of our artist we are able to do the last stage of editing, which is adding the titles to the music video. We used a simple bold font and basic transitions to make the text appear and disappear, this was intentional as we did not want to distract the viewer from the footage.

Finding a new Name

We decided to change the artist name from Inka to something more ambiguous so that it fits the artist. The idea is that the singer is male however he remains anonymous, choosing instead to have a female performer. To complement the idea that both a male and female are apart of the project we wanted to find a gender-neutral name. 

I used several name generators to find a gender-neutral name:

              

Out of all the names, 'Edion' stood out to me because it has potential. However, the derivative 'Eden' is more fitting for a music artist because it is short and catchy, just like Beyonce and Adele. So the new name for our artist is Eden.

Shortening our music video

In response to the feedback we received from our showcase about the duration of the stick shots, we decided to cut down the sequence of stick shots to make the video flow better. 

In order to cut down the footage while successfully maintaining our lipsync in time with the music, we had to cut out 30 seconds from the beginning of the song. Shortening the song from 4.00 minutes to 3.30 minutes was a good decision because it is more consistent with the conventions of real media products, also it meant that we didn't have to prolong the footage we had just to fill the space up until the lipsync.  

Showcase Feedback

The feedback from the showcase was very beneficial as it helped us reflect on some of the creative decisions we made and we got some really good suggestions of parts we could change or enhance. 

Here are some of the comments that stood out to us:

" It suits 20-30-year-olds"

"The sequence of shots with the sticks was too long and so was the car wash"

"The shots with the bottles is good but maybe add more to match the exaggerated beat"

"The lighting is really low during the shots of the sticks"

Preparation for Showcase

Before presenting our music video at the showcase we thought of some questions to ask the audience. These questions are going to help us see if we achieved the intended purpose of the Music video and to help with the development as any constructive criticism will help us improve our product. 

Q1. What did you understand from the narrative?

Q2. Do you think it fits the soul genre? 

Q3. What age group do you think it would appeal to? 

Q4. Are there any parts that you think are too long? 

Q5. Are there any changes that you would suggest?

First edit of 'I Need A Dollar'

This is our music video after all our filming and editing, enjoy:

Target Audience

We decided to use the name Eden instead of Inka because we wanted a gender-neutral name for our artist. The artist of the song we chose is a male, however, we have decided to have a female in the music video as the singer to keep the identity of the artist anonymous. Having a young female as the main singer in the video opens up the demographic of the audience as it becomes more relatable to girls as well as young people as a whole.

 According to the marketing agency Young and Rubican's 4c Marketing Model, our music video is targeted towards explorers that have high energy and are mainly the younger demographic of students.

Keeping this in mind the idea to keep our artist anonymous is a way that we could make their music more inclusive and therefore more relatable to audiences with explorer characteristics.