Auxillary Task Digi-Pack Cover

As I previously researched I decided to make my digi pack cover a more art based/ related. So I searched on the Internet using words that would describe some of the moods of this song such as anger and depression and found some picture that i found i was able to change and manipulate to create a cover more suited to an indie rock band.

 This is the front cover, the original picture is allot bigger and had a larger variation of colours, I also cropped a section of the picture i wanted, sharped the image and added the band name "Colony" and title of the single "Holograms". I tried to blur the word Holograms with the background to try and add the effect of the suggested word.
Older designs of this front cover varied from different sections of the originally picture and different colour filters and different fonts etc.
one version included a longer white "spiral" which had comments from my teacher and people around me, on being too "falic" so obviously adjustments had to be made to be more appropriate to be able to appeal to my audience.

This picture came up when searching for Anger and i thought i could use this as the back of my digi-pack cover by using the shapes to add the titles of tracks.

This is the end product of the rear of my digi-pack as you can see I have rotated, colour filtered cropped, enlarged and sharpened the image. As-well-as adding the titles of the tracks, the primary track "Holograms" is the larger of the 3, I have included 2 other songs also written by the band.
To give the Digi-pack / Single more of a realistic look, I have included a bar code, a Logo of a record label which to my research signs up primarily new, more, indie rock genre bands. Finally I have added the normal copyright rules underneath as all CD/ Album covers do etc.

This is the inside of the Digi-pack part way through editing. this i found when searching the word "Acceptance" and this image originally showed an "outer-space" themed picture including stars and a larger variety of shades of blue. I had to select an interesting part of the picture and get rid of ever unwanted detail individually, it was a long tedious process but it had to be done. I Also but a blue filter on the image that gives it a more washy look that doesn't draw to much attention as its only a background. I'm using this image as it can be used as a panorama effect one the whole inside of the digi-pack.

Here is the finished inside of the digi-pack. I have added a picture of Ed the writer of the song and lead singer of the band Colony, I had to cut him out of the previous background and had to repair some the picture as it was lost during extracting him from the previous image. I have also had to blend him to match the background so that it was an obvious image but still didn't stray too far from the theme. I also added the Lyrics of the title song "Holograms" using a lighter blue, so that it would be legible from the black and dark blue and not be too over-powering.

My friends and teachers have given me their feedback and opinions through out my process of creating this, from simple movements to complete color changes. I believe this was important because its other people at my age group that would have to like my digi-pack as that's what my target audience is mainly based at, so their opinion to a product aimed at them is critical.

My chosen song

I've chosen to do a song from a band at this School named "Collony" and I've chosen one of their latest songs called "Holograms" this song is about the loss of a loved one and coping with that loss.

Holograms by COLONY

This is the song  I will put a video too.

(In order for me to be bale to put this song on this blog I had to use http://www.youconvertit.com to concert the song to the right format to be able to upload the song onto http://soundcloud.com so i cold get the embed code to copy onto this blog.)

Auxiliary task - Album cover research

For the band ‘Colony’ and their song, I would like to do a single cover with the idea of art more than focus of the band, and running with the theme ‘Holograms’ I would use this last album cover as inspiration as by using the layering technique gives an almost hologram For one of the Auxiliary tasks I have to do an album cover/ digipack So I've done research into specific genre album covers (Indie-Rock) which would help me more, seeming that the band I'm dealing with is an Indie-Rock band. I'm researching, to see if their album covers are particularly different in anyway, and what theme design would be best for COLONY and their song "Holograms".

Albums cover research: Album covers that I have found relating to other Indie-Rock bands seem to have a theme that could represent the title of the album or just art work that would be used to stand out and be “iconic” such as: R.E.M’s album Murmur inspired by some lyrics that are hard to make out; “They called the clip a two-headed cow / Your hate clipped and distant, your luck, pilgrimage,”

 

And Death Cab For Cutie’s album Transatlanticism was described as

“More ‘art’ than ‘design’” and “Iconic”.

It was designed to stand out and be immediately recognised by other people. 

This Album cover is more abstract and unclear, and more art based, it shows a number of industrial buildings digitally layered on top of each other to produce a piece of art that is clearly eye catching and iconic. 

For the band ‘Colony’ and their song, I would like to do a single cover with the idea of art more than focus of the band, and running with the theme ‘Holograms’ I would use this last album cover as inspiration as by using the layering technique gives an almost hologram effect.

For this research i used a sight called http://sleevage.com, this sight allowed me to read up on the artists that made the album covers and how they were made and their inspirations which helps me to understand what I kind of need to do o create my own album cover in the Indie-rock style that is most appropriate. this is the link that I used specifically to do my research: http://sleevage.com/category/genre/indie-rock/

Pete’s Advanced Portfolio – Ideas

Track: Holograms by Colony

Genre: Indie-Rock

Themes of track: The song ‘Holograms’, by the “well known” band, ‘COLONY’ is a song referring to the concept of loss and missing someone. The song contrasts the loss of two separate people, one of which I (Ed – songwriter) care about, the other I (he) do(es) not.

This is shown in the song where the first half is melancholic and soft, the other is heavy and brash.

This is info from the songwriter himself describing what the song means to him and what the song is about.

Nirvana Music Video Research

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit. This song is in the “Grunge” genre, we can tell this by the distortion in guitars, and relatively large contrast in dynamics and the “dirty” sounding vocals, that almost sound unsung and/or “shouty”.

 

 

The beginning of the music video we see the band, in a Smokey hall, with cheer-leaders at the front doing a routine in front of a teenaged audience in a school/ college style concert- already making a link with the song to the visual. “Teen Spirit” is generally regarded to be a teen revolution – not following examples set by adults as they should. This song expresses the anger and confusion within a society. This video clearly shows this in a few ways, one mainly is at the beginning we see teens sitting at a concert performed by Nivana and as the song progresses the teens become more and more riotous as they begin to break and destroy things and become increasingly uncivilised. We also see a caretaker start to “dance” and / or revolt as if he still remember times when he would rebel against the system as the teens do now, which portrays Cobain’s interpretation of the song as him and his friends still rather do things their own way. Throughout the video it cuts to the band focussing more on Cobain - the singer. 

As well as this live performance video portraying the Grunge genre, it portrays feelings that the song holds for viewers / listeners to understand.  But the dirtiness of the dark yellow colouration of the video give a “grungy / dirty feel” feel but with the cheer leaders in the background portrays a typical American almost “happiness” – everything is fine, which is contrasted with the fact they are wearing all black and an Anarchy sign which is symbolising the message of the song about teenaged rebellion.

The video changes and cuts very quickly as this song is a fast tempo keeping that sense of excitement and/or panic and often cutting in time with the music and as the song progresses and as the teenagers become more and more rebellious the video cuts more and more and closer and closer together.
At the end of the music video we see the caretaker sweeping upafter the teenaged revolt, with a teacher tied up to a pole looking s if the teens have had their way and succeded in their revolt as the song come to a close.

Some Research...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_MuUcxHATo - music video to Thriller

 

Thriller – genre:  Horror, this is a linier story based music video/ short film about all the night-time creatures that come out at night “who terrify their victims.” And is the first hit song that was accepted all year round unlike many songs that were only really popular/ universal around the time of Halloween. Making it very popular for people into pop music, horror films etc.

I chose the music video to Thriller because I believe it to be one of the best music video of all time, being able to turn a simple song into practically a short horror film, appealing to a wide audience, lovers of Michael Jackson/ pop music in general and horror/ horror spoofs. Costing around $500,000 its one of the most expensive and longest music videos ever made. It has succeeded in being able to relate the words to the action on the video (for example on the lyrics “door slam” we hear what we believe to represent a door slamming and the action by Michael Jackson of slamming a door.) and the music video’s ability to not make zombies a joke, as they move/ dance not like cliché zombies, where the audience is forced more into taking the music video seriously. The idea of making this music video into a short film, giving it a clear structure, trying to communicate to its audience

Set in the 1950’s where a couple of teens are out in the forest on a date. And as the teen Michael Jackson give her the ring and tries to tell his girlfriend something “different” about himself, he turns into a ware-cat and starts chasing his girlfriend. It then cuts to the inside of the cinema- where it’s all just a film, and as Michael Jackson and his girlfriend leave the cinema and only at this point does the song start at 02:58 as we see an establishing shot of the outside of the cinema. So far the video has given more of an impression of a horror movie with use of tensions building shots, each getting closer to the characters. And by using natural diegetic sounds of the area the characters are in at the beginning helps create an insecure atmosphere. Also the mise-en-scene of the first section in a cliché setting, in a dark scary forest with the odd bit of mist for a “spooky” atmosphere. 41 seconds quiet orchestral music starts to build, adding to the tension and becomes a lot louder when we see view of the full moon.

The song maintains a horror aspect throughout. After Michael Jackson has finished singing the verses, whist he’s walking/ dancing alongside his girlfriend it cuts to a grave-yard where we see a mixture of long and close shots of the dead coming to life and over the top we hear a man’s voice the tone/ depth of the voice adds a dis-comfort to the listener/ viewer:

“Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighbourhood

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom

And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller”

There are lots of quick cutting shots during the dance sequence and close ups and general camera movement mainly focussing on Michael Jackson, cutting to the beat of the music and keeping in sinc with the dancing zombies and as the chorus starts the cameral is nearly always on Michael Jackson (still in view of surrounding living dead) this is mainly to keep interest on the singer, to keep the record labels happy, create an image that people will then become familiar and interested in.

To conclude for the moment (until my teacher gives me some more feedback on this etc.) I like this music video for its use of techniques to create its intended “spooky” horror atmosphere; set in a dark misty night, the use of orchestral music at the beginning, crescendoing t build tension. And we as the audience are almost lead into false security several times by the way it cuts to different shots like the cinema, and at the very end of the video when the girlfriend wakes up all of it. And by using a series of close shots and moving and focusing on Michael Jackson it portrays to us his pop image.

Auto Draft