In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The first media product that I am going to talk about is the magazine cover, the conventions which I used and developed was the star rating. From my research I noticed that majority of the covers had this, this would help sell the album which is being advertised and help people listen to the artists music since there is opinions from well known newspapers or well known indie magazines. This would help attract a certain crowd of people. With the indie genre being so hard to define, I think it makes it easier to apply certain conventions of the magazines. I chose to have the theme of the front cover to be black and white as I think a certain choice of colour would effect the convention forms and wouldn't refer to indie. The black and white theme is throughout all of my ancillary texts, it is also in the CD Digi-Paks. I did think about using colour but then it didn't fit in with the mood i wanted to project through the album advertisements and the music video. The text on the advertisement took me a while to decide what i wanted. I came to the conclusion to have something quite plain but make the important things stand out. I actually made one of the comments from 'Q' magazine a little bit more bigger than the others to highlight that, the magazine is well known and it is good to have their comment feature. I also had some writing bold, such as the title and information that means it is the album of the year. One thing that i did challenge about this advertisement is showing that you can buy it on a Vinyl. I think this represents the indie genre as a lot more people are buying it on vinyl now compared to the past. I find that the advertisement is a little bit plain but i didn't want it to look too over crowded as i related a lot to another magazine cover which was plain and only had small text and had the main band singer and the others in the background. If i could change anything about the image which i used, would be to use the costume which she wears in my music video,  I think it would've linked them nicely together. Although I think that it still goes well with the genre in the costume she is in. When i did the shoot for the magazine cover, I didn't want her bouncing around as it wouldn't show continuity as in every other image i have used of her, she isn't. The images i used for my CD covers, are her either in a studio, or outside. One thing that i could improve to make my images look a little bit more interesting would be the background of my images. E.g. Magazine cover, the background is very plain and it could have been a black background and white writing to look a little bit more interesting. My magazine challenges the appearance of girls in the indie music industry. Some women dress for men to look at them where as my model had her own fashion although she had a lot of flesh on show, it isn't seen as sexual where as if she was dressed different she might be seen as different. I have looked at every little bit of detail such as the necklaces she is wearing, this is all the way though out every image relating to my ancillary texts. The music video that i chose doesn't refer to the male glaze (Laura Mulvey) theory. It is seen as a typical love story. My story board was based on a couple who then have an argument as the guy gives another girl attention which causes the conflict, he then makes it up to her by taking her to a meal. The original music video is like that too. I wanted my music video to be a happy ending but then I didn't want too much conflict, but at the same time I wanted it to be obvious that it happened. In other music video's they have fast cuts when the conflict scene happens. This applies to my music video too since I didn't use a tripod to keep it steady, instead I used it handheld to give it that dramatic affect. A music video which I used as inspiration was Max Schneider and a music video which he is in, called 'Say Something'. It is featuring another girl called Victoria Justice. Within that video they are sitting back to back, i used this in my music video to refer to my conflict scene. It shows them making up and showing their effection towards each other.
In my music video this is just after the conflict scene where they slowly make up and become loving and having a laugh again. Since all of my music video was in black and white, I showed continuity by having my images which is shown on my digipaks and the advertisement black and white too therefore you could see the link between them. I only chose images which included the girl since the idea is that it is meant to be the artist who is part of the narrative created by this music video.

For my shoot I wanted todo something which not many people do with the images. I tried infrared photography to see if the outcome would look any different and some of them did. Not many real media products use this, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and do something that would challenge the conventions and form.

Draft of Music Video (Still missing bits)

Creating My Magazine Cover.

When i was planning this i knew that i wanted it too looked quite simple but effective and i wanted to have the correct information on my poster to be able to advertise for the right things and gather publicity. I know that i want to make my images black and white therefore i decided to use Photoshop to edit my images which i used to create my covers for the digipak. I already am quite experianced on photoshop as I learnt how to use it in depth in my A Level Photography class.

The first step that i always take when i am editing an image on photoshop is adjusting the levels. This shows me the clear image before the camera made changes itself. I always like to increase the white balance as it gets rid of the orange/cream look that is created from the lighting mixed in with the back drop. I also increased the black as it made the clothes look more definate and stood out a lot more.

This is what the Levels looked like once i had finished working with them. As you can see i put the white and black at either end which gives it a nicer effect. I also found it helped if i clicked 'Auto' as it brings the picture back to normal too.

Once i changed the levels i then move on to use another setting which is all about the saturation which will get rid of the orange in the background, i find that this doesn't need to change drastically as the smallest movement makes a huge impact therefore i only moved it ever so slightly down to decrease the orange. It also makes the skin look a lot more vibrant and normal. This image below is what the sliders looked like once i had finishe moving them.

After changing all of the settings to effect the shades of colours that are in the image, I had to change it into black and white, to do this I just used the settings that are automatic therefore it created the effect itself. I personally chose to have this effect increases the shadows and makes them a lot more visible. I think that it shows it differently to the CD cover but still the imagery of my model and artist are the same. 

I wanted change the size of my image as the magazine cover would be A4 size in the magazine therefore I think it was only right to make it this size on Photoshop as this is where I am most confident.

With the crop tool I can also create a frame, I tried to create the frame so it was white but I didn't think it looked right or good. I had a frame on my CD cover so I ink it is important that the conintuity is there. 

This is the outcome of the frame and I think it looks good as it links in the other colours and shades of black that is included it also sets the colours of the fonts so it can be as many different colours as possible and there will be no contrast. 

Magazine Advertisement - Research

This Kasabian poster is advertising for their new album, I noticed that they have based there poster on the theme of cards and used the 'King' Card which links in with the name 'Kasabian'. Secondly they have 2 different types of font, and that is used throughout the poster. The writing is also two colours; Black and Red. Finally, on the bottom, I can see where people have wrote about the album and rated it a certain number of 'Stars' and normally it is out of 5. 5 being the highest and the best. I think the images on all three of these advertisement are quite clear and don't look too crowded so I will aim to do the same with my advertisment too.

With the second advertisement, there is a lot more writing on this one compared to the Kasabian advertisement. It mentions specific tracks that are on the album since they include other artists not just Chris Brown. Throughout the whole poster, there is only one font that is being used and it looks like a olden times font compared to the other poster which had very simple writing fonts. This poster doesn't have a rating on, this could represent that no one has rated it or it isn't that popular. I noticed that at the bottom, there is a advertisment to win a compition asking the viewers to text or ring a number to win a prize. This could be an idea to put this on my magazine advertisment as it would create publicity for the artist.

Finally, with the last advertisement that I found, I noticed that this also had a star rating as part of the poster. This is there to help the up sell the album and get people's attention more. I also like that the picture for the background is quite simple, and I can relate this to my project as I would like my images to be simple but effective. I also like the colour schemes as it is similar to mine. The font is very sophisticasticed and the whole poster looks better for it and that's how I want mine to be reflected. This poster contains a lot of information but doesn't look over crowded so this is the magazine I will aim to be as clear but have the vailid information needed. I also noticed that this advertises for a film as well as the CD.

Template of the Digipak

This is the template that i am going to use for my CD cover. I used this because i think it looks simple, but when it has been done, the colour scheme will all fit in together and add a good effect. I want to use the same colours throughout the case so it is constant. I am using natural colours for my cd cover as it will go nicely with the cover which I have already made, I will be using a white boarder with the pictures and the text will be either black or white.

 

This is the cover which I plan on using for my main front cover, this includes the artists name and and the name of the single which she is singing. The clothes that she has on in this picture is what she wears throughout the music video, this creates continuity. 

CD DigiPak

After taking the pictures in the studio I used Photoshop to edit my images to make them suitable for my CD cover. I used Taylor Swift and Beyonce's CD covers as inspiration as i liked there colour schemes. On Photoshop the first thing which i changed was the 'levels'. This makes the image colours more balanced and the correct colours from the lights etc. I find that i like to change them myself rather then use auto. As i can get the colours the way i want them for further editing. 

After changing the Levels, i then decided to use 'Curves' to help add brighter colours and make certain sections stand out more then other parts. I wanted to brighten her hair and the skin tone, this will help with the next step. As i chose not to have any shadows in this image, the curves sometimes changes the colour of the backdrop.

To get the image to the correct size to fit onto the cover, i used the crop tool. When i was cropping my image, i wanted to make sure it looked good, and the framing complimented the model too. I decided to keep the face in, as you can see the top of the head line too. 

To make her face look a bit more flawless i used to 'spot healing tool' to get rid of certain dark spots. it can also get rid of certain mistakes that the camera lens make. 

Adding the text is important for the front cover of the CD, as it defines what the song or the album is based around. The text is normally plain as if it was too over the top then it wouldn't connote the artist and her genre. 

Changes in Location

I have changed my location for a few scenes in my music video.

- I will be having some scenes in the green room/studio.
- Instead of going to 'Cactus Jacks' to film for the video, i will be shooting it in college in the canteen.
- I will still be using the beach for a little bit.