All - Inside Digipak Draft 1

Here is our first idea for the inside of our Digi pak, this is parts of the narrative mixed with the band as our main background. This is only a draft and understand there needs to be great adjustments.

We plan to gain feedback and improve these ideas.

Digi Pak - Back - Draft 3

Digi Pak - Draft 3 Front

This is a Qaudran effect we used, on photoshop when playing around with the effects.

Digi Pak - Back Draft 2

This is our 3 RD draft of our digipak, we again used a blizzard effect on photoshop.

Digi Pak Front - draft 2

This is our second draft of our front of our Digpak, here we used a effect on Photoshop, which was a Blizzard effect.

All - Rough Cut 1 - N'sync " Gone"

This is our first rough cut which includes both performance and narrative, we showed this to the class for our feedback from our fellow media students, and media teacher.

We are currently making adjustments to the performance aspect, which includes changing the cast members due to feedback.

Planning Evaluation Q 1 - In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? - Draft

Music Video 

• Goodwin cam up with the common 3 types of Music Video - Narrative where the lyrics have a relationship to the video being shown this can be seen in many videos and is common feature often used and example can be seen in Professor Greens - Read All About it  where the lyrics are talking about his relationship with his father and the video shows this in the form of narrative by having a young boy presumably him when he was younger and his family. The Second type is Performance which involves the members of the band or people in the video lip syncing the song, maybe adding a little bit of choreography and dance moves and sometimes props such as drums and other instruments depending on the genre, you can mainly see videos containing just performance in videos for genres such as Death and Heavy Metal. The third type is Concept where the video has no relationship or meaning to the video present.

• There are many general codes and conventions of music videos which include :    

1. Music videos are often focused more on a artist and often contain performance footage which includes lip syncing as a way to show performance, aswel as narrative, concept doesn't appear to be that popular of a convention used.
2. There are often variations of shots and locations, which fit the feeling of the song, an example of this is Depeche Mode - Enjoy the silence
3. There are different types of music videos, non-linier and linier.
4. Special effects are also often used.
5. Heterosexual Relationships are often used in music videos, when focusing on relationships, however there are some exceptions one example of someone challenging this is Christiana Agurlaria in her video for 'Beautiful' where their feature a homosexual relationship in parts. 
6. Female and Male gaze often used.
7. Fast paced editing
8. Layering is a effect used in editing processes.
9. Dijetic Openings and example of this is Thriller by Michel Jackson which in some way turns into a short film almost.

However these conventions may vary depending on the genre: 

• For example Heavy Metal Music Videos can include more shots which are focused more on close ups on the performers face.
• Close ups are often used on the instruments maybe to signify talent and the genre of music.
• This genre often includes Performance, maybe sometimes live.
• The location is normally dark, and isolated. 
• The special effects are often used, mainly being fast paced editing and lighting.

On a completely different note to this genre, R&B videos contain convention such as :

• Props such as Cars, big bling necklaces, Women are often seen to be wearing diamonds and chains could symbolise wealth and power and contain elements of Male Gaze.
• Dance routines are often frequent as well especially with women. 
• Often focus on one girl throughout and sometimes sing to the camera ( lip syncing ) 
• The girls used often have big breasts and are revealing a lot of flesh, the camera mainly focuses on getting their look to the audience. 
• Female often following the male, and the male seducing the women, showing the authority of men. 

Pop is the genre we worked with for our music video and our sub- genre being Boyband pop, for now I am going to focus on the conventions of Pop Videos : 

• They often focus on a member of the opposite sex, showing the typical convention of a heterosexual relationship. 
• Locations are used such as more public places, such as parks, cafe's, shopping places, streets in a town etc. 
• People just having a laugh, more happier locations and brighter settings and lighting compared to the metal genre. 

Boyband Pop is our sub - genre : 

• Conventions include, a rural setting such as a warehouse shown in the Back Street Boys " I Want It That Way" or country settings or maybe sometimes shopping places seen in the video for N'sync video for "Its Gonna Be Me" 
• Often cars, or fast cars are used and country roads so silent settings again shown in a N'sync Video " Bye Bye Bye" when we see the guys being chased by a girl using them as puppets which sort of reverses the roles of gender placed in many videos, This time we see the girl as the one in control and the boys being the puppets. 
• Sex Appeal often shown in boy band videos as their main target audience is teenagers, so they attract girls into watching their video, giving off the Female Gaze and boy band image
• There is often a female being sung about or maybe the lead having a relationship with a female.
• Water is sometimes involved when focusing on locations and effects, rain could be added to a scene, or there could be shots by a river or beach / sea etc. 

Conventions we used in  our music vid  : 

• Layering
• Variety of locations
• Lip Syncing
• Male/Female gaze
• Narrative/Performance
• Portrayed a heterosexual relationship as the norm (normative)
• Constant narrative through out
• Performance separate from narrative
• Some special effects used on flashbacks 

Conventions We Have Challenged : 

• There is no dancing in our music vid
• We have not put text on screen to make it have a dijetic opening / short film
• We haven't really had fast paced editing in ours with it being a slow, love song. 

Digipak
Digipaks are a paperboard case that allows space for a CD (in a plastic tray) and an information booklet about the artist or the tracks.They are used because a number of images and text can be printed onto every panel which is perfect for a special edition CD or DVD.  A digipak is a recyclable form a cd packaging. Digipaks are not as comoon as jewel case. A digipak consists of;

• Front panel
• Back panel
• 2 inner panels
• spine

Common conventions of Digipak

The front cover of the digipaks can contain;

• Artist shot
• Name and Album name
• Sticker showing DVD bonus
• Sticker showing leading singles contained

Back Cover;

• Track listings and timings
• Bar code
• QR Code
• Website URL
• Logos eg production and record company

The advantages of a Digipak;

• Recyclable as its made from card
• Lower in weight so reduces distribution
• Thinner cases- can fit more on the shelve
• Some resemblance to a LP
• More collectible than a jewel case

Other features;

• Spine- small details such as catalogue number this can either be a different colour or image to other panels or the picture front the front or back can be continued over the spine
• Inside design
• Removable lyrics sheet
• Distinct colour scheme

Some existing digipaks are very simple for example Take That- Beautiful World whereas others are a lot more complex.

The example we used in our digipak;

• Including a image of the band and making in the focal point of the front.
• Have the relationship bewteen the front and back cover- we used the same pose for the boys but took it front the back.
• Sticker
• Logos
• Social Networking images
• Track listing and times
• Production company URL
• Relationship between front and back panel.

Magazine Ad

Our target audience is 15-24 females, a secondary audience is an older audience of 25-35 because the they would of been 15-245 when the NSYNC track was released. Another secondary audience could be gay males of the same age.

It is possible for us to use slightly different adverts to appeal to a slightly different audience for example for a younger audience who read magazines such as 'Sugar' we could use larger texts and have more focus on cute and happy pictures of the boy band whereas for a older female or gay male audience who would read 'more' or 'heat' we could use slightly more seductive pictures of our boy band.

Conventions used in our Mag Ad.

• Artist name
• Album name
• Release date
• Production company url
• Image of band
• Small amount of text
• Font variation

EF - Planning Evaluation Q2

Similarities:

• Titles of Digi Pak and Mag Ad link together - "New Generation"
• Older teenage audience due to the 'new generation' of N'sync and time period
• Bottle of whisky from music video is included in the inside of the Digipak and flowers also included linking our narrative to the digipak
• Locations of pictures took for mag ad and digipak are similar to the locations in the video as we took them on set.
• Maybe have sophie in the Digipak, in our inside
• same clothes have been worn in pictures and video.

Differences: 

• Digipak is in black and white, where as the mag ad will be in colour 
• The narrative is not included in the mag ad \
• Style of the font used for digipak and mag ad are not the same 
• Black font colour on the Digipak and White on the mad ad
• some of the locations are different 

Mag Ad - Draft 1

This our first try of a Mag Ad, again the picture used will not be used for our final thing, as the band members are different, to our new cast.

Digi Pak - Back Draft 1

Here is our first draft of the back, the people used on this picture are the new members of our band so we will be using this picture for our real thing hopefully unless feedback changes our idea.

Digi Pak - Draft 1 Front Panel

Here is our first draft of our front panel of the digipak, we realise this isn't perfect and we know we will have some changes to make.  One thing i want to note is this picture will be different, as we have used different members now due to re-shoots.

MA - N'SYNC Magazine Examples

MA-NSYNC Magazine Covers

It has been quite hard to find magazine adverts online for NSYNC.

Im not really sure why this is but i think it may be because they broke up in 2002.

However i have found a few magazine covers. 

I think these will help us when looking for ideas for our magazine advert. Here are some examples.

As you can see there some common aspects in these pictures. 

For example the members of NSYNC all wear clothing that ties in together. 

This was very common of the 'boyband' era. 

Also they all pose together, they are not about looking individual.

 Another point is that even though Justin Timberlake is clearly the lead singer 

(this became more obvious in the later NSYNC songs) 

he is not standing in the front in every picture, nobody is made to stand out. 

We want to use these examples to influence our own image for our mag ad.

We want to use the idea of having the band pose as a close group. 

It was said in our feedback of our first performance footage that the band should be wearing more 

similar clothing to help create a cohesive image.

EF - Cast Update

This is just a basic update on cast to my previous post. In my previous post i mentioned we had to change the cast, due to our re-filming and other commitments original members could not participate anymore. We recently had 2 new members and were looking for a 3rd new member, we have now recruited our new member and new band!... Finally!! 


Our new band consists of Keiran Mitchell, Jem Whitehead , Temour Ahmed who is an original band member and finally our newest recruit George Gamble who is a fellow media student, so knows the time urgency we need to complete this. Jem Whitehead was also in a Boy band last year for previous media students Emmie and Megan who did a Backstreet Boys track .. "As Long As You Love Me" so Jem is probably the most experienced member of our band, he is also a previous media student from last year. These members now make up the new generation of N'SYNC!!!. 


So now we have our new band after many difficulties we are filming our new performance footage Monday, and we are hoping this will be our final shoot and then we can work our hardest to edit all the way though to the end without re-shoots. 

EF - Changes We Still Want To Make To Our Final Cut

Recently Mel and I made the mistake of unfortunately not backing up our work, on the editing we had done with our footage, which resulted in us loosing our editing when the Lacie drive on the mac broke. This has meant we have had to transfer everything back on to Final Cut and re-edit our work. 


Music Video 


We are going to have to hand a final cut to be marked roughly on Friday this week, however the footage we are going to be handing in will not show the true potential of our performance, as we have not yet been able to re-film our previous performance, as we have had problems with casting, however we have now got a full cast and we know this is cutting it fine but we are hopefully filming our performance either Monday or Tuesday next week. 


So the performance in our cut we are giving in on Friday will not be the performance we are going to use for the Complete Final cut, but will show the locations we are going to use so far however we have decided to use one other location when we re-film. The clothes are going to be different, and more sophisticated as we have added more control to our part in this production now, and our new cast members will be taking the shot more seriously. There will be some more group shots for the performance, and some more camera angles and shots both for the narrative and performance. 


Unfortunately in the ending to our video has not yet been filmed, we are planning on using a final part of the narrative as our ending which is the grave scene, where we are hinting the girls death from the narrative as our ending. So the ending for the cut getting handed in will not be our actual ending.  There will also be another narrative flashback in our complete piece which will be a scene where our couple are feeding the ducks.  We are also filming this next week. 


We are going to be using more layering techniques in our complete final cut, than what will be shown in the cut handed in on Friday. We have done a section of layering for our bathroom, mirror scene to show what we are hoping to place in the complete cut. There will also be more  effects added in our complete cut. 


Digipak 


As for the Digipak being handed in, this will be our rough idea but the band members and pictures used will clearly be different in our final digipak. As we have changed the cast since this picture was taken. The back picture will be different, we are going to have the back panel as the band with there backs to us, however this will not be shown in the rough one handed in on Friday, as we forgot to take the pictures of there back to us when filming our previous performance. 


Mag Ad. 


We are going to use a water scene for the Mag Ad but this picture has not yet been taken so will not be present on the one handed in on Friday. We are hoping to show a generation change, through the water, with the reflection being either the new generation or the previous generation from when N'SYNC were first around, we have not yet decided on this. As we are going to have a 10 year reunion Mag Ad, showing a new generation advertising our digipak maybe.