Ancillaries.
This section of the product is dedicated to the two ancillaries that must be individually produced. As we are creating a music video we will each create separate posters for magazines and digipaks. I have divided this page into digipak and poster production.
Poster
Digipak
The poster will be arguably be better produced by me because I have made many posters in the past and am familiar with the software used to make them, in this case a mixture of both Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office Publisher.
The picture I have chosen to use is narrative based as it shows an image of an eaten apple on the floor, a shot that was taken at the time that our main character passes out so shows the final apple Zak had before passing out. I like this image as it is simple and is narrative based rather than performance based, which I believe is the most attractive part of the music video.
On the poster I will have logos from applications such as Spotify, Apple Music and the music store HMV to make the poster appear official and genuine, as they show where the album is available. Other important elements that could be included are the date of release, album title, in this case it is most likely going to be What For as that is the most popular songs name and I dislike the name of the actual album 'Room 74 Demo' as it is irrelevant to the theme I am trying to create for the album, the band name, Basement Cat and maybe a review from a music or media institution.
I have decided to split this individual project between two primary programmes; Adobe Photoshop CS5 for editing the images and Microsoft Office Publisher 2010 to create a template and putting everything together. Although other people have only used Photoshop, I want to put this ancillary together using Publisher because I am more familiar with the programme and therefore find it easier to do, which will make the poster quicker to produce and hopefully to a higher quality. However, because I studied Art at GCSE I am familiar with Photoshop for editing images and therefore I will be able to make the chosen image ready to be cut down for the final poster.
As the cameraman and cinematographer I took many images on top of filming, while at shoots, and therefore I have a large quantity of pictures I could use for the poster. I have decided to make the poster narrative based, as these images are of a higher quality and it is important to focus on the actual narrative rather than the band, as the music video is also narrative focused, so it will inter-link well. As apples are our main prop and object of focus, I have used an image which has an apple with a bite taken out of it from the last shot of the video, this creates a strong link between the video and the poster.
In regard to editing, I have made the image appear darker and more miserable, as the subject is actually quite sad, if you ignore the metaphor of the apple, showing overdosing of drugs. I did this by increasing the blues in the image, lowering brightness, increasing the shadows and reducing the contrast in the background, so the image is primarily greys, blues and dark greens. However, the object of focus, the apple remains bright red so it is easily identifiable and clearly the subject.
Other elements include the text, I have chosen to use 'Calibri (body)' as the font as it is clear, easy to read and suits the simple theme I am trying to put across. This has made me decide to use as little text as possible because I want it to be very simple, therefore I have included the band name in a large font, in a light shade of grey, so it stands out but is not too bright, and I have written the song/album name 'what for? (4th march) below, in a smaller font, so that the band name stands out over the album name.
For final touches to make it appear as official and as genuine as possible I have included the most up to date logos of Apple Music, Spotify and Soundcloud, as they are three of the most popular music applications. I removed their backgrounds, so there are no white bits, so it looks professional. Finally, I have included the release date in the bottom right hand corner, in the same font and shade. I was orignially going to make this very small, however, after experimenting different sizes, I think it is important that it is clearly visible.
Below is an image of my final poster (the image has lost some quality when it was put on this site):
For the digipak I will have to spend more time on Microsoft Office Publisher as there is more to do on this and I am unfamiliar with the process as I have only every made one digipak before at GCSE.
The digipak will be made out of black card and will feature four images in total including a front, showing the album name and band name, a back; showing the songs within the album and two inside images, one of which will be a pouch for the CD.
I took images throughout the production stages so I have a variety of images from shoots as well as many screen-grabs from the footage. This gave me many potential images to use in the digipak. Selecting these images is crucial to retain synergy between my ancillaries and the music video and to create a good, uniform appearance of the digipak.
The font, just like in the poster, will be Calibri (body) to keep consistency between the ancillaries. This creates synergy as a theme is created by sharing particular elements. To add to this I used the same music application logos, to show where the song is available. I also used a similar environment, primarily the park, where we filmed.
I wanted to include both images from the shoots and images of the band to have a 70-30 split between narrative and the band members to keep the band linked to the album but primarily focus on the narrative, like we wanted to do for the music video. To make the digipak appear organised though I only showed images of the band inside so that the puttied maintained the same theme of a rough, urban enviroment. I also had to make sure that I didn't use the same image that I used for the poster as I need to differentiate but keep the same theme.
An issue with the construction of the digipak was getting the sizing right and creating the pouch for the CD to sit in. I had to be very careful to make sure that the disk could fit in the push comfortably, without it sticking out the top or being difficult to get out, if it is too tight. The solution for this was simply trial and error, it took multiple attempts to create the perfect sized digipak.
An area I thought would be difficult was correctly laying out the images so that they would fold on to the template. However I overcome this by splitting the digipak into five areas; front, back, inside left, inside right and the spine. When I had created boxes for each area I edited in images and text, printed them, cut them and stuck them onto the correct part of the black template.
I am very happy with the final digipak; I think it looks very real and works well promoting the band and maintaining the theme of the whole project. I particularly like the image on the front, of Zak, and the simple use of text, as well as the positioning of it, giving a clear and modern look.
Below is an image of the final digipak that I produced as my second ancillary product:
