CT: Mag Ad/Digipak Research

For our magazine ad we are taking into account both our primary and secondary audience. For this we may be placing ads in more than one magazine. Different magazines represent a different target audience.

This is my initial knowledge of magazines and their target audiences...

Jay Z on the Rolling Stone cover

• Q magazine - Target audience 25-40
• MixMag - Target audience 18-32
• NME - Target audience 15-24
• Rolling Stone - Target audiences 16-24, 25-40
• Mojo - Target audience 25-40
• Fact - Target audience 18-32
• FHM - Target audience 15-34

Dance specific...

• djmag - Target audience 18-32
• Core - Target audience 25-40
• Maxumi - Target audience 18-32
• OHM - Target audience 18-32

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  MixMag Cover

Magazine Ad conventions

From re-searching various magazine ads i have drawn a list of my own magazine ad conventions, these are below...

• The release date
• Album/song title
• Image of album cover/image of artist
• Artist name
• Brief information on the artist/album
• Record label logo

This is a post that will help us with our digi pack we are creating for our music video. We will be creating album artwork and a magazine add for the song 'Insomnia' by Faithless. To begin we are going to look into previous album covers that were used by Faithless and seeing if we can pick out any conventions or any techniques we could use.

Back cover

Faithless - Greatest hits 2005

In this cover the singer looks un happy, this may be because all of his songs have negative connotations or it could either be following on from some of his music videos. The ones i have looked at such as 'Mass Destruction' and 'Muhammed Ali' the videos are very abstract, and this is where the no shirt idea is taken from. Because in Mass Destruction, Maxi Jazz is sitting down in a blazer with no shirt on.

Front cover

Also having the male by him self on the front cover looking down is a gender representation signifying a dominance from this performer.

However on the flip side he is standing imtimately with a woman which may signify equality between sexuality. This is one of the things i picked up on when analysing his videos, in Mass Destruction a counter-type is used as the females play the drums and guitar which would usually be performed by male characters.

This Ad is a very simplistic design, though it still follows the main magazine ad conventions. The artist, the title of the album, and the date theses are probably the main ones that would be found on any magazine ad and digipack as you can see from the examples below. The mag ad is on a plain background with a single image in the center, there is a variation in the font size however the font stays the same. The red shirt worn be the person in the image makes the ad stand out, in magazine ads there is usually one aspect that will draw someones attention.

Faithless' We Come 1 magazine ad follows all three conventions which i mentioned above and is again a very simplistic magazine ad design, this will be a factor of the post modernist movement as if this was compared with the magazine ad below there is a clear change in image and colour of the magazine ad. The add contains a picture of two of the artists from faithless which is usually a regular thing when it comes to magazine ads having a picture of the artist or band.

This is a digipack cover Faithless produced for their final ever album called The Dance, which i have blogged on Faithless The Dance Collectable Box Set. This is a very bright cover and has a very large contrast of colours to make the image stand out. This cover is very effects heavy and has minimalist text, this is one of Faithless' magazine ad conventions as most of the mag ads and album covers don't include an extensive amount of text and a significant amount less when compared to other artists in  the Dance/House genre.

CT: Mag Ad Research Vodcast

This is my vodcast on magazine ad research and the main conventions i have found.

Faithless The Dance collectable boxset

Faithless are to release a strictly limited edition official book in a collectable box set called The Dance. This includes a book describing their 15 years of success in their own words. The book also includes two limited vinyl discs with a number of exclusive remixes and two cd's and an exclusive print.

This is the link to the pre-order http://faithless.sandbag.uk.com/Store/BoxSet.html

Faithless book cover

The upcoming release of this book shows that there is clearly a market and a wide fan base for Faithless. In retrospect we will be creating a cut down version of something similar to this but just a CD cover. Because we have know where near the budget to produce a piece of merchandise to this standard. However, we can also get some key ideas and inspiration from this for our album artwork and magazine ads.

Book images

There is a key theme throughout the box set as the colours all link together which runs through out the book. The use of images really gives it some flavour and would indulge the reader, which is something we should look to use.

The lead member of the band always looks depressed

Research Into Digipak Front & Rear

Digipak Front & Rear:

Her Make Believe cover rear.

From researching I found that a common convention for the cover of digipaks was that there's a link between the front cover and the rear cover, for example here the colours are matching and the design flows from front to back which works well. Therefore with our digipak we're planning on creating a design that flows similarly with colours, design, etc.



Her Make Believe cover front.

Also with the rear cover of digipaks it's common for them to have a bar code with their own unique bar code number, so we'll have to incorporate this convention into our rear side part of the digipak.

Then there's the track listing that's also a common convention found on the rear side which specifies the track that will be found on the CD, and this will be another convention that we'll incorporate with our digipak.

Along with some small print which specifies the record labels and the companies behind the production of the album, and in this small print there's always the copy right logo.


Her Make Believe Spine

 Also there's the spine inbetween the rear and the front cover, and on this spine it's a common convention to have the record label and the CD issue number which is unique to each CD, also there's the title which is repeated here.

 

Creative Arts Evening

On the 4th of December we volunteered to use our valuable free time to participate in the creative arts evening. The arts evening ran between 7.00 - 9.00 and as well as our media subject there were the art, drama and music department all showing off their work.

We had come up with an original idea previously to the evening for a potential viral aspect. This was that we would place our iconic chair image in different locations of the school. We would then proceed to tell the visitors the whole concept of our original video and what we were planning on doing. Secondly, we would tell the visitors to lip sync a specific line and we would then edit them all into one clip along with the mp3 in the background.

We had a variety of people sitting in our chair ranging through different age groups luring them in from outside the door showing them our 'different' set up. The experience was very enjoyable for our group as we were able to get peoples opinions and positive feedback. We edited the clip as we went along, taking the SD card to the Mac at relevant intervals. Surprisingly we had all the lines lip synced with-in the first hour of the evening. Thus giving us more time to master the editing and prepare it for our 8.40 premiere in the main hall.

This was a very good way to promote our video as a lot of people were highly interested in what we were doing in our actual music video. We took the opportunity as well to advertise the IGSmediastudies   YouTube channel as a lot of people were interested in the previous music videos that were made by other students.

We learned that:

• When needed we can edit very fast
• Our directing skills have been improved
• We have very good people skills

Therefore, all in all the evening was a success for team Deja Cu. We were impressed with the amount of people that showed up and were willing to interact with our video. 

We hipe to have the full video edited by the 6th of December where it can be viewed on our Youtube channels. 

Shoot 4: Plan

Shoot 4: Planning: 3rd December (skatepark, bedroom, brooke street)

As our third shoot didn't go as according to plan as we had hoped. Therefore, we will be using our shooting schedule the third shoot for our forth shoot to save time because we have missed some vital shots and scenes that still need to be done. As a result, it is arguable to say that we are behind schedule now however, we will be using the time we have left efficiently to get our full rough cut shot and edited.

Shooting schedule shoot 3 from CurtisTiplady

CT: Mis-en-scene: The mattress

For our third shoot we decided that we would use a prop that we thought would work well in our music video. This was a mattress which linked in perfectly with our music video - Insomnia. 

We put the mattress in an open field as you can see from the picture on the right. We filmed a variety of shots using the mattress and emphasised that our character cannot get any sleep, that his bed is like just sleeping in an open field. 

The mattress

We plan on experimenting with this prop we may layer a clip with our character trying to sleep in his own bed.

There was one problem that occurred which was that when we filmed the mattress we left it bare, with no covers or sheets. This would give our shot the preferred reading that he was actually trying to get to sleep not that just he is lying in a mattress in a field.