The Creation Of My Magazine Advert

When creating any form of advertisement to sell our performer it is important that we bring the best of her to our audience. As of such when we were designing our magazine advert we found it best to have the same memorable and captivating image that we used for our front cover as our magazine advert as it shows her intensely mysterious nature and exotic animalistic beauty. To do this we edited the picture slightly to have her eyes being the main attraction of the photo. We did this by simply removing the surrounding colour using Adobe Photoshop and bringing out her eyes by means of the ‘Sin City Effect’. The colours, which are highlighted through the editing, also convey her playful, joyful, surreal nature in a very compelling way. Her name and the album title, as with the digipack, are stylish and classy to show her true flair. As for her tour dates, they are placed below the main attraction of the photo to allow the reader to instantaneously see where and when she will be performing so that they do not need to look for the information they want right away.

The Creation Of My Digipack

The creation of my digipack cover required a great deal of planning and thought as we needed to convey to our select audience that Marie is a exotic, mysterious, trendy, surreal and definitely a dangerous performer. She is indeed a performer with real ‘bite’ and magnetism so it stands to reason that we needed to convey this through our digipack.

As we know around 70% of meaning is conveyed through our visual sense, as Khuleshov stated, because of this we needed our front cover to not only display the qualities of Marie but also be eye-catching enough so that people will want to look at it. We did this by firstly having a close-up of Marie’s face, being slightly covered by a black fur scarf, staring into the onlooker’s eyes with real intensity. This, in itself, conveys her exotic prowess and animalistic nature. Yet then we also had the eyes and the eye lashes of Marie intensified by removing the excess colour using Adobe Photoshop. With this the onlooker looks deeper into Marie’s eyes and deeper into her soul to truly see her magnetism as a performer. Her name and the title of the album are put in a classical and stylish font as to appeal to our audience by conveying a true sense of style and ostentatiousness.

As for the back cover we make a slight allusion to our music video as it included the cinema seats from the video.

The track list is placed on a black background putting across the idea that we are in a cinema watching the credits. The back cover is kept simple and uncluttered to keep the sense of style the front cover builds.

The middle pages add flavour to the digipack as it includes an image of Marie’s co-performer on a bike as well a thank you note and on the other page there is a compilation of photos from the shoot of the music video.

The ‘thank you’ page includes Lucas, Marie’s co-performer on a bike. This photo is designed to hit several hotspots thanks to Lucas’ face, the bike and the thank you note. The random quality of the photo also promotes Marie’s playful nature and surreal quality.

The compilation of photos really conveys Marie’s qualities as it includes photos of her in playful poses wearing appealing clothing and, of course, her fur scarf, which gives her animalistic traits life. They also further develop the illusory state of her music with the pictures of Lukas and the background all of which helps draw in our select audience.

Task 4 - How we used new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages.

A director’s commentary on how I used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

New Media Technology is a whole new form of technology known as digital technology which uses binary code to compress and store files into minute packets. Digital technology is the modern world it exists within computers, cameras, mp3, mobile phones, the Internet, and most technology used in the world today.

New media technology was crucial at every stage of production, but especially so in the shoot and editing stage. There RATIO meant we could be very creative and this was caused entirely by the digital technology. Because of small and light cameras which are easy to light we were able to take over 200 shots and experiment. When we came to editing we had 200 shots to choose from and only used 35 of them in the final version. This meant our ratio was 6:1 which gave us a lot of choice to be creative.

As for the research and development of our pop video we required a great deal of help from the internet as we needed to understand exactly ‘what’ we wanted to included within it. This involved looking at pop videos on ‘www.youtube.com’ to understand how pop videos required a definitive performance and narrative within them. This helped us create our pop video by influencing our storyboard process. We also required the Internet to research the location of our pop video and what props / wardrobe we required and with great ease we were able to find exactly what we needed.

When it came to the planning of the pop video we used digital cameras to take photos of the location to make our storyboard, but then we needed to change our idea and thereby our storyboard. Yet, we did admit how effective it was to use the digital cameras to take the photos and assist in the storyboard as it was a lot easier than drawing them as none of our group members were excelling artists. We also used new media technology with the call sheet as we included a map from ‘www.google.com’ to show all the members of the team where to meet. We used Sony Z1 and DSRS7 cameras, which are digitally based.

The shoot itself included digital cameras as they allowed the a higher ratio of shots shot to shots used as we shot around 198 shots and used 59 which came to about a 2: 1 ratio. This allowed us to shoot more and thereby use more shots, as non-digital cameras would have a lower ratio due to their inferior ability to store information. We also used green screen to allow us to develop our layering effect, which would not have been possible with out digital media.

Post-production included a massive amount of new digital media technology, as we required to edit the film. With new media technology we were able to edit the film in a non-linear fashion, which made it quicker and easier to edit the film as we could make changes anywhere we wanted unlike analogue.

Task 1 - In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we began researching and developing our pop video we found that we needed to understand the major conventions of a pop video as to create a compelling video that our audience would appreciate, because of this we began researching and analysing the major conventions of a pop video which Keith Negus lists as the following:

· The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption.

· The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)

· A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement

· Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)

· A possible narrative structure

· A possible performance element

· The flexibility to disregard realism

· Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track

· Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGIs, in-camera effects)

· A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track

· High impact instantly

We wished to imitate most of the conventions of the pop video to give plasir, the expected pleasure to the audience as Barthes explains, and also subvert the conventions in order to achieve jouissance, something new or unexpected in Barthes terms.

With all this in mind we sought out to use the conventions and imitating them and subverting them were we thought fit to promote the image of the singer and message of the song. The image, which we wanted to promote, included an individualistic woman who is exotic, mysterious, new age, secretive, ambiguous, hip, trendy, and surreal. As for the message of the song we wanted to communicate how the singer wishes to make herself happy and kill the pain, which she is feeling.

As we can see in this image of our pop video, we have our performer in the middle of the frame. As Negus stated as one of his conventions for a music promo video, one needs to have the artist featured within the music video with almost no exceptions and as of such we have included our artist through the performance and narrative. However, in this shot we have also subverted the conventions, as we do not have the artist placed in one of the hot spots corresponding with the rule of thirds. This makes the audience look at the singer as not being the ‘central attraction’ but a bit askew, which communicates her trendy and surreal image. It also communicates how in the song she is the main focus of her song.

In this imagine we can see how we have broken continuity for a reason as to appear irregular, strange, and mysterious, which relates to the artists image, yet by doing so we are not only follow Negus’ convention of having the flexibility to disregard realism but also subverting the entire stable continuity convention that is generally followed in all real media products.

With our music video we wished to not only capture the audience right away but also confuse them to initiate the idea that our singer is not only mysterious but also surreal. To do this right away we had our first shot be a ‘rewind’ shot of the singer falling down after dancing for a while. When played backwards it appears that she falls upwards and begins to dance to the music, which captivates the audience due to its almost illicit nature of disregard towards realism. This one shot not only disregards realism but only creates high impact instantly thereby following imitating two conventions at once to provoke the audience to thinking that this singer is strange and quirky but also brave enough to do what she wishes. The shot also carries solid strength in the forms of composition rules as the colours in the background symbolise calmness and coolness making her come across as cool and collected while disregarding realism. Also, as the singer ‘falls’ upwards in a straight fashion the viewer gets the sense through the shape she creates she is going straight up in correlation to fame, fortune, and all the rest.

Our entire video technically uses special effects as we used layers to allow us to place the cinema seats inside the music video as well as the actual music video behind it. Yet, one shot that carries real substance with this idea is the shot where the singer begins to sing to the audience member we eventually find out is her. This shot not only uses a more developed skill of special effects, as we had to edit in the actual singer with a more precise use of the layering technique but it also shows a narrative structure while the overall performance carries on whilst at the same time disregarding realism. It conveys the singers’ mysterious qualities and surreal nature, while at the same time getting across the message that the singer is trying to make herself feel better within the song. Yet, this shot also subverts the convention of having shots cut to the beat as it goes on for a long while and then ends when it the singer sees fit to leave herself, getting a whole another round of messaging across to the audience suggesting that she does not care about the rules.

Our digipack front cover was designed in such a way as to communicate a whole lot about the singer to the audience. As you can see the photo presents the singer staring straight at the person looking at the cover, as if to intimidate the onlooker. With the fur of her coat as well as her eyes we get the feeling that we are looking into the eyes of a lioness or a tiger on the prowler: strong, mysterious, and surreal. The picture follows the rule of thirds well as the hot spots are quite evenly matched out with her, giving the viewer as sense that she is the most important thing there is concerning this album and soon the entire music industry as her image is unrivalled by any other artist.