Shooting day 2

Shooting day 2 was a success after having filmed some more (hopefully all of) the material I will need for my music video and having taken a plethora of photos for my digipak and poster. I took them all on the correct setting which was also beneficial because now I wont need to take any more retakes of things I have done so far.

All of these photos I feel are the potential final ones that I am going to use. I just need to make a decision on which ones to include, where to include them and which ones I think that I should scrap.

I'm Not Racist - Joyner Lucas - Music Poster Textual Analysis

This is my third and final music poster that I am going to be analysing.

This poster is one that really stays away from the norm and I am going to explain why in this blog post.

First of all I feel that this poster attracts an audience of male teens for the reason that it is deeply related to the rap genre and for the reason that it is very simplistic. Normally with rap posters, there is an element of confidence and aggression at times. However, with this poster there is the opposite, there is a sign of compassion and unity. White is also the meaning of things such as spirituality, faith and beginnings. Therefore, for this reason I feel that this is what the song in this single may be about.

Furthermore, the way that the text is planted with the image covering only a small amount of the page may represent the fact that it isn't something that has fully been conveyed in society today (and due to the title I feel that the audience acknowledge what I am talking about). Furthermore, the way the word "RACIST" has been put on its own line may be because the artist feels that it is such a powerful word that it has the right to be like that.

Despite this, I feel that there is still a sense stereo-typicality due to the fact that the black person in the image is wearing an expensive looking watch on his wrist and following the modern rap convention of having his hair in locks.

The mise-en-scene, in terms of what is behind them, there is nothing other than a blank wall, I feel like this was done so that the audience would focus on the two people in the picture and the message of them hugging will send.

Normally in rap posters there is images of parts in the music video. This is done in order to make the viewer want to look further into it. I feel this has been done in a more unorthodox way here, because normally there is an abundance of visual effects, however, I feel that it being done this way is more natural and more simplistic which means that the viewer will be able focus more on what is present. 

Finally, the colours shown, the way that the white man's clothing merges with the walls however, the black man's clothing stands out I feel was done in order to symbolise the ideology that the black race are still seen as outsiders in society today.  The camera angle is also from a low angle shot showing compassion and faith and things along these lines are rather powerful.

Overall, the things that I am aiming to take away from this are the colour clash. I want to do this in order to make specific aspects of the poster to stand out, for example in my poster, I want to make the dark suit clash with the bright setting so that my audience realises and views it.

Wretchrospective - Wretch 32 - Music Poster Textual Analysis

This is the second of 3 music poster textual analyses.

First of all, the poster includes many of the main convention of a music poster, including things such as the name of the artist, the release date of the album and who is going to be featuring on the album as well.

This poster gives off quite an urban feel. To the left of the poster we can see an image of a block of flats. Furthermore, "Wretch 32" looks like it has been graffitied and splashed with black paint. The typography is also urban which may relate to the types of clothing he is wearing, despite the genre of clothing being very conventional. Black is also a representative of danger.This could give us the idea of what the artist may rap about and give the audience a feel for the album. Also, the fact it has been spray painted makes it stand out from the white background. In addition the name of the album has been written in a white font across a black stretch which once again makes it stand out. Just below this large font is a smaller one with the names of the artists that are featured within the album. This gives the album even mire chance of being sold because it gives the audience more artists to want to listen to rather than just the main artist.

The main photograph is a long mid-shot of the artist, which straight away tells us who the advert is about. By having a long shot we are able to see his style of baggy jeans and some jewellery which is a convention for the modern day rappers. In the bottom left corner, the audience can see a small image of what his album looks like, so if we are interested in it we will know what to look out for in shops. In small writing underneath it also says the record label. In the bottom right corner we are able to see which stores we can actually purchase the album from, again helping us to buy it and know where to find it.

The poster relates back to the album cover because it uses the same image of the artist for both, this helps with the recognition of the artist and the album. Having one main image is a convention of a poster. The image of the flats and the tower block  gives the audience an idea for what the music is really going to be about. The image is also the type of image that one might be produced by a graffiti artist in a city, which will be aesthetically pleasing to the target audience and it will draw their attention to the poster, to look ay the more important features.

Due to the conventions that the rap genre upholds and the connotations and the semiotics shown in this poster I feel that the target audience for this poster is probably male teens mainly because despite the amount of things actually on the page, the poster is very simple sticking to only 3/4 colours for the whole thing and therefore it is rather simple in that respect.

Michael Shore's music video theory

This blog post is about a theory on music videos which I may refer to through analysing the remainder of the posters that I need to analyse.

Through the understanding of Michael Shore's theory a music video is able to fall into one or more of the following theories:

• Image assaults and outre folks - Over the top characters and artists sometimes form the basis of gaudy (extravagantly bright or showy) imagery.

• Speed, Power, Girls and Wealth - The four things that form the basis of a number of genres, especially hip-hop.

• Information Overload - Too many things happening at once, sometimes causing confusion in the audience.

• Album art come to turgid life - Imagery from other texts related to the band is used in videos as another visual link.

• Surface without substance - The video looks good without having anything meaningful to say.

• Classical storytelling motifs- Recognisable narratives used to allow the audience to relate to the video and song.

• Immediate gratification - The audience being satisfies with what they have straight away.

• Image and style scavengers - The tone and the look of the video has been borrowed from a previously existing text.

• Anesthetisation of violence through chic - Aggressive actions in videos are made to look cool and the audience dont respond negatively.

• Ambivalence - neither being one nor the other - either relates to a character or situation.

• Clichéd imagery - things the audience has seen over and over again.

Starboy - The Weeknd - Music Poster Textual Analysis

In these next few blog posts I am going to textually analyse 3 posters of the same genre as me in order to gain an understanding of what to include and what not to include to make my final production as professional as possible.

The narrative portrayed by the poster for the music video for the 2018 track Starboy by The Weeknd connects him as the artist, with a lifestyle of ridiculously lavish excess.The poster, as an advertisement for a music video, uses imagery from the music video for Starboy to attract an audience towards the viewing experience, bombarding them with 'cool' images and a 'cool' colour scheme. These relate to Michael Shore's theory of music videos as comprising of 'recycled images' that contribute to adolescent male fantasy. The poster's main audience seems to be adolescent boys as it contains many decadent images consistent with the style of the 'Cinema of Excess' approach exemplified by modern films such as "The Wolf of Wall Street", where amoral spending and the pleasures of being wealthy are presented without a positive or negative judgement. The primary purpose of the poster is to dazzle the viewer with excessive visuals and entice them into viewing the music video to see these visuals in motion.

The poster contains many visuals that would appeal to adolescent males today. The presence of a luxury car in the foreground of the mise-en-scene appeals to the car fascination that many teenage boys have, encouraged by video games such as Grand Theft Auto. The violent imagery presents the artist being suffocated in the upper left corner which in my opinion would attract the same people that play violent video games like this. (violence and cars being the two main elements). Not only is the poster going over the top in terms of expensive luxury cars, but the act of killing someone is considered a very immoral act in todays society, harm towards another human's life is a recurring theme of the wealthy in films. The fact that The Weeknd is being suffocated provokes audience intrigue, they would wonder why he is in this situation, how he could escape and to watch the music video to find out what happens and why.

Another image shown over the top is the use of religious symbols and themes. There are 4 crosses present, three of which are neon colours and one which is on a necklace. The juxtaposition of Christian iconography next to these images of money, cars, power and violence could be considered as blasphemous.

Furthermore, another image shown is the lack of regard for property. A man wearing a balaclava and a cross necklace is showing setting fire to a wardrobe filled with clothes. This could be because the man dislikes the owner of the wardrobe, or does not care about destroying his own possessions as he is wealthy enough to replace them. The fact that he is wearing a cross necklace while doing this reckless act could be seen as another example of a blasphemous act. The panther on the poster is another marker of a lavish lifestyle, big cats have historically been the pets of the absurdly wealthy, this connects The Weeknd with an excessive approach to life that wealth has enabled him with, money being used to purchase bizarre luxury items. ("The Wolf of Wall Street" sees millionaires renting lions for their parties.) The positioning of the artist at the centre of the mise-en-scene with all of the lavish images surrounding him connects The Weeknd further with this kind of excessive behaviour; showing these as being events in the exciting life of the artist.

Starboy is an R&B/Hip-Hop song, and the poster employs visual conventions to establish this genre. Both R&B and Hip-Hop are genres dominated by black artists, and presence of The Weeknd himself, a black man, in the centre of the poster serves to indicate this. Luxury cars are a visual conventions of Hip-Hop music videos, and the prominently-featured Mclaren P1, a sports car limited to 375 units, shows that this track will look at issues of wealth common in Hip-Hop tracks.

R&B music video are usually shot at night to accentuate the sensual nature of the music, all of the images present in the poster for Starboy show events happening that night, this would be expected for an R&B track and not, for example, an upbeat pop song.

The poster does subvert some visual conventions of the R&B/Hip-Hop genre; the large, comic book style lettering used is unusual for Hip-Hop, as when it comes to direct referencing, gangster films such as scarface are often used, with comic books usually being referenced, in more humorous works. Here, The Weeknd is incorporating comic book stylings in a serious R&B/Hip-Hop context, an interesting juxtaposition that works to amplify conventional Hip-Hop imagery of the artist as an exceptional figure to a cartoonish extreme.

Overall I feel that the visual approach of having many scenes from the songs music video on one poster appeals to me a great deal as it gives the viewer a tantalising glimpse into the music video that encourages them to watch the full thing, I find the variety of images presented, and the clear inspiration from movie posters to be very appealing both visually and conceptually.

Filming update

By the end of this Saturday I will have finished filming and will have all of the resources that I need for both my digipak and poster and for my music video.

I will need to reshoot some parts and retake and take more photos for my digipak and music video generally, this was because the ISO was too high on some of the video and photos.

This time I am going to make sure that the ISO is perfect along with the rest of the settings.

More digipak mockups

In this blog post I am going to display what my two fold digipak cover will look like, this will not be the final product as this only took like 10-15 minutes to complete and I haven't made it to the standard that I want it to be with all of the colour correction and perfecting things such as the exposure of all of the shots and the temperature as well.

So far this is the inside cover of my digipak and the front cover of the digipak and a mock up of the front cover, it is a mock up because this is not the final photo that I am going to use for the reason that I feel it is not good enough due to the protagonist not being centralised.

The other two photos are yet to be taken and for that reason the other parts to the outside over have not been included in this blog post.

Digipak Textual Analysis - "Blurryface" - Twenty One Pilots

This is Twenty One Pilots' album cover for their latest album Blurry Face. The front cover shows patterns with colour of red, white, grey and black. These colours are easily recognisable as they are colours that the duo use and wear frequently (one of the performers has red hair and wears eye shadow when he performs). Therefore the colours are associated with the duo. There are also images of the band, as they want to be recognised by the colour theme as only their true fans will be able to identify them.

The band has always been very close to their oldest and most loyal fans as they have thanked them any times in interviews for promoting them and they said that they are grateful to them as their hard work promoting them has led to their success. The layout of the alum cover features a black background with abstract patters and fonts and some reddish-orange accents to accompany it. It has a basic 3x3 circle design with patterns embedded within each circle to give that abstract look. The reddish-orange accent gives a neon electro look to the digipak, which in turn makes it look unique. Additionally, it is used to also reflect the outgoing and uplifting spirit within the songs of the album.

The abstract patters are used to stylise the cover but also it can be said that it is to bring that subtle tone to the cover as having a solid colour for each circle may look to aggressive. The lead singer of Twenty One Pilots stated in an interview that each pattern represents a song on the album and that these patterns add a deeper layer of meaning to the art as each pattern has a special meaning to him and the drummer of the band. The black and white layout of the cover mimics that if the websites layout and thus strengthening the connection within their brand. So, there are two direct links between the digipak and the website, creating a sense of continuity. The stylised fonts of the text also brings that modernised style oto the overall looks of the album as the straight font with minimal style mimics that of many electro music covers.

The colours used on this digipak can be linked to the idea of rebellion fighting back against the nor. This comes across in the bands music as well as the lyrics that are said about how they have to fight for their place to be popular.

The ffont used is clear with rather large spaces in between the letters making it easy to read. The black, white and red colour scheme is very similar to other bands within the same genre, alternative. Bands such as New Politics and Panic! At the Disco, this may be because alternative is not as popular genre in the eyes of the music industry so these hands have had to work hard to get their music noticed by critics and to gain a greater audience.

The digipak also includes the bang's logo at the top of the cover. This makes the digipak to be easily recognisable as a part of the Twenty One Pilots brand. This brand identity is reinforced through the use of the typography of the album's title, it uses the same font as the band's logo, hence strengthening the sense of continuity throughout the product.

The track list is a convention of back covers as it informs the audience what songs are on the album. From this they can identify popular singles which ay have been released. All of the tracks are in chronological order so the audience can skip tracks if they want to find and listen to their favourite song. The titles of the tracks stand out because they are in bold, and written in a larger typography than the other information. The barcode is normally in the corner so that it doesn't draw any form of attention. Copyright and legal information is usually discretely written in small font at the bottom of back covers.

The back cover shows the track listing with lines cutting across the track list. These lines are associated with the duo as they use them in the branding frequently, for instance the lines can be seen in the logo of the brand, so it acts as a signal to the consumer that this product of this bands' brand. The simplistic black and white colour scheme is used on the back to once again further the continuity throughout the product. The CD disk also has the colour and the line theme. The white straight line represents the drummer and the red line. They have used lines as their identified instead of themselves.

The CD is rather simplistic having the same lines as previously mentioned but just a bit more noticeable. I feel that this is aimed at all teenagers because of the universally liked colour black and because of the meaning behind it of the mental health. Furthermore the design is very simplistic and very meaningful at the same time.

Digipak Textual Analysis - "Views" - Drake

This is my second digipak textual analysis and I am doing it on Views by Drake. Drake is an artist traditionally known for making songs under the genres of Hip-Hop music and Contemporary RnB.

This is the front cover of the digipak and it is just a background image without any form of text or anything like that. However, there is a view of a building which probably explains why it is called 'Views'. The colour scheme of the image is mainly grey and white which implies a sense of a phantom like atmosphere. If you zoom in, you are able to see the artist sitting near the top of the building. For me this suggests that Drake is on top of the world because he is on top of a very tall building.

Furthermore, the building that he is sat on is in his home town of Canada, the building is called the Canadian National Tower. I feel that this means that the songs that he is going to release in this album are going to be on the subject of his life. There isn't any text on the front and I feel that this is so that the focus can be on the building and show a sense of symbolism that maybe some people would have missed had there been some text on the front.

The cover is also in greyscale which is a convention for RnB and Rap because it adds a sensual tone and a more emotive and deeper tone to the image.

The cd itself is once again quite basic as the same colour scheme is being used here as on the front with the title of the album "VIEWS" in block capitals with eyes coming out of the text for the reason that because Drake is so high up, people are looking at him both from the building and by seeing how successful he has become in the modern world or RnB and Hip-Hop/Rap.

I feel that this entire scheme suits the target audience of male teens because of the colour grey being consistently used throughout the digipak and because the design is very simplistic and it is also not overly creative in my opinion.

The back cover of the digipak displays the title and the list of all of the songs in the title. I feel that the name of the album was put on the back because it would make the front a lot less attractive and much more distracting. The font is plain although the way it was typed e.g. Block capitals makes it seem more classy. The generic conventions are included as record labels and barcodes are at the bottom and are out of the way. The back cover is a dark grey whereas the front is ore of a light grey and white. Parts of the grey colour is lighter than the other which also helps the contrast as the colours are different throughout the front cover.

Digipak Textual analysis - "Starboy" - The Weeknd

In this blog post I am going to textually analyse the digipak cover to "Starboy" by The Weeknd. I also textually analysed the music video to his song "Can't Feel my Face" as well which was under the same genre as this song and this artist in general.

First of all, the front cover generally; the colours that are used in the digipak are mainly yellow and pink (other than the person in the photo). In my opinion, these are not a very common combination because pink symbolises calmness and compassion meanwhile the colour yellow symbolises joy and happiness. I feel that this combination of colours and meanings do not symbolise the emotion shown on the face of the person in the picture. The body language that the character in the photo shows to me that he is rather defensive and frustrated. This tells me that the mood of the songs in this album are about the disappointment in himself while there is joy and calmness going on around him.

The colour of him stands out amongst the background which is very luminous as well which emphasises key parts of him such as his eyes and his hands and the cross. I feel that the cross is very symbolic as well otherwise he wouldn't have posed with it in the photo. I feel that this, just like with the hands on his head and the colour contrast has some relevance to the music that he has created.

The back of the digipak is similar to that of the front in terms of the colour scheme. The font of the songs are the same to the text on the front cover however are larger than the font underneath to inform the person purchasing the digipak that these are the names of the songs. 

In terms of the target audience, I believe that it is male teens and adults as it allows the listeners to relate to similar things that may have happened in their lives previously. I feel that these are life stories that the Weeknd may have experienced aswell.

The design of the CD is also rather simple but effective showing the image of the cross again with the same colour scheme as the back and the background of the front of the digipak as well. The lightning bolts on the CD are connotations of danger and therefore are not related to the cross I dont think. I feel like they have been placed there in order to symbolise the type of music that The Weeknd has produced.