Change to CD Cover and Digipack:

We showed our teacher our progress so far on the CD cover and digipack, he advised us to add a graffitti theme to the picture of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. This theme resembles the controversy the two Prime Ministers cause whilst in power and how some people hate the both of them, we added both a halo to be ironic and a moustache and lipstick on the two characters . To add to this, we have changed the plain CD covers which we had and put a union jack covering both of them, to again stick to the London, patriotic theme.

Magazine Advert Second Draft:

After talking to our teacher, he advised us to change and add a couple of things to our advert. We added logos to our advert to fit with the typical conventions of a magazine advert. After, re-evaluating our advert with our teacher, he advised us to move the logos as well as change the sizing of them in order for them to fit on the page neatly. By completing this we have decided as a group that we are happy with our finished piece.

Magazine Advert First Draft:

We have now finished our magazine advert to go with our completed video and cd cover. We have added ratings of the album, but decided not to add in tour dates as we thought it would have looked too cluttered and busy and would not have fitted with our theme of bold and the British theme.

Magazine Advert:

This week, as we have completed our music video, Lucy and I have started to complete our magazine advert in order to complete our coursework by the end of the week. Before we started our task, we thought of what we wanted on our magazine cover before we actually began making it on photoshop. We wanted our advert to be rather plain, simply having a photo of both David Cameron and Nick Clegg and have the details of the album and the band name below or above the photograph.
Due to the fact that Ellie is currently completing the album cover and content, we wanted to stick to the same theme- having the same background and font. The background colour is a really light cream colour, we are going to have this on all our additional album bits that adds to our completed video. The font we are going to use a blue and red font, these colours are very bold and also symbolise the UK due to the Union Jack. The photograph on the front of our magazine cover is very ironic as it does not present the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister in their normal light, they are shown as rebellious within this particular photo.
We are also going to add rating at the bottom of our advert, similarly to that of traditional album covers, having the rating from magazines and newspapers. We do however want to keep the advert very bold and simple so it stands out and is eye catching without having too much detail to the advert.
We are aiming to complete this advert by the end of the week, our deadline for the additional coursework bits is Friday.

Final, Completed Video:

This is our finished music video. We showed our classmates, our teacher and the teaching assistant our video and we received really good feedback. Many of our classmates said they really liked it and thought the narrative of the video was very clever. Each person said they liked a different thing about the video, commenting that the little things we added made a big difference adding humour and something extra to the video. Overall, all three of us are very very happy with our video and are very relieved that we have finally finished.

Finished Piece:

We have completed our music video on time for our deadline and we are really pleased with the final outcome. We have gone through our video with a fine tooth comb and picked out small details which we perhaps didn't notice at first and altered them to make them the best they can be. For example, we noticed that some shots were slightly wonky and so used the zoom tool and rotate tool on finalcut to change it to ensure that everything was straight at a right angle. However, by doing this we noticed that some shots were becoming slightly blurred and so only used this tool when vital to the shot in order to prevent blurry shots.
As well as this, we have constantly been asking for feedback from our class and what we have received has been very positive.
As a group we are extremely pleased with our final result and so are currently in the process of exporting it from Final Cut and will put it onto youtube.

Album Cover

This is our album cover for The Clash - London Calling. We used a comical picture of the two characters and put the image into black and white format. We used blue and red for the text colours to convey our British theme. 

This is the back cover of our album. The background is part of the London Underground tube map as this is an iconic British image, and thought it would be very effective for our back cover as part of our video was filmed on the tube. I cut the central text out and replaced it with the track names on our album. I then blurred out the surrounding text so the text in the center, which is the most important, will stand out. 

Filming and Inspiration:

Tonight we are aiming to completely finish all of our music video by photographing characters Nick Clegg and David Cameron. After previously analyzing the Ramones album cover for 'Anthology' we liked the idea of showing a controversial rebellious side to the two politicians.

In this cover we liked the way that the artists are appearing to be quite laid back and so have taken inspiration from this and have decided to try a similar shot in our photoshoot tonight. We will have both politicians against a brick wall, one with a cigarette and the other with his leg propped up on the wall whilst leaning against it. We hope that this will continue the humorous theme that has been presented in the video, in the album artwork.
By having the politicians in this way, it will show a comical yet controversial side of them.

Filming Five:

Today, we finished the last bits of filming we needed to do in order to complete our music video. The final shot we needed to get was of both David Cameron and Nick Clegg sitting on a bench in  a park reading the comic book, 'Where Wally?!'. In order to make our video comical, we had Ed Miliband playing the part of Wally and made it out as if both David and Nick are deperately lookinh for Ed Miliband. In order to make Ed Miliband look similar to Wally, we had him wearing a red and white stripy top to ensure that the audience knew who he was playing. Within this scene, David and Nick are sitting on the bench and Ed is hiding behind a tree behing the bench, pretending to be Wally. At the end, Ed comes from behind the tree and jumps out on the two politicians on the bench as they could not find him themselves. We are very pelased with our last filming session and are happy we have finally completed filming for our coursework.

Album Cover inspiration: 'The Great Bear'

Our idea to use the tube map as the back cover of our album was influenced not only by the continuous London theme of our coursework but by an artist called Simon Patterson. His artwork, called The Great Bear, used the tube map in the same way that we plan to but instead of putting track names in place of the stations, but used each train line to represent a different group of people; such as footballers, scientists and comedians. This piece of art provoked many different responses, such as one writer claiming that Patterson "discovered the dreams of modernism within the world of the 1990s in the same way that he found the dreams of the present lurking within the modernist space of Harry Beck's underground map." The Great Bear is on display at the Tate gallery. Patterson's artwork inspired us to feel confident in our decision to use the London Underground map as part of our design. It clearly conveys the conventions of our theme and helps us to make our album artwork as creative as possible.  

Photohoot

On Wednesday 18th January we have planned to do a photoshoot for our digipack featuring the two characters in our video. We hope to capture high quality shots that could be used for both the front cover and inserts for our album. We have decided to do some outside shots, and some against a white wall; both locations which we feel could be very effective and could be easily manipulated by Photoshop. We are also going to use some props in our video to help convey the London theme, such as union jack flags and newspapers. 

Album Cover: Back

For the back cover of our album we have decided to focus on one of the most famous aspects of London; the tube. We think that using a tube map for the background would be very effective and artistic, as well as complying with the London theme of our song. We will focus on an area of the map that features many of the different colours to represent the many different lines of the London Underground, and then replace the station names with the names of the tracks off the album. I have taken a picture of a tube map, and once I have uploaded it will begin working on it to hopefully reach our desired image. 

Album Cover

After doing some more research and discussing it as a group we have decided that the best choice for our album cover would to include images of the characters from our video, while still conveying some of the same simple themes, such as background colour, from our first idea. We feel that using an image of the characters would stand out more, and people would atuomatically recognise and make a link with our music video. We still plan to try and include the teacup image in our digipack, as we all like this idea.

Digipack Research

Digipacks usually contain 4 sides, but some contain 6. Most albums can now be purchased in a special digipack edition, where they include pictures, lyrics and other artwork from the band. 

This digipack for Kanye West's 'Late Registration' probably contains more than 8 sides, but contains a poster, images and lyrics all relating to the album. I think that one of the most important features of a digipack are the images. For our digipack we plan to use some of the photo's taken from our photoshoot and some photo's of our locations. 

Digipack Research

This is the album cover for 'Sunny Days' by Kid British. I like this cover as it subtly conveys themes of Britain without using a union jack, as most covers tend to do. The album title, 'Sunny Days', is an ironic statement about British weather, which is always dreary. The background image emphasises this and could be recognised as quintessentially British. The text effect on the artist's name also shows the British theme. I think this album cover is really clever in conveying themes without making them obvious. 

Digipack Research

This is the album cover for Supertramp's 'Breakfast in America'. I particularly like this cover as the images shown all coney to the theme of America. The Back image of New York shows an iconic image of an iconic place, and is instantly recognisable to America. The woman in the center of the cover is recgonised as a diner waitress, and these are also typically American. I have taken inspiration from this cover as our group have decided to include a British theme in our digipack, and use images that are immediately recognised as being British. 

Audience Feedback:

We asked our classmates to watch our video through and write down a sentence or two summarizing what they thought of our video. At this point we are not yet completely finished our video and this will most likely reflect in our feedback.

1. Really nice shots, use colour corrector to get a 'house theme'
2. Captured the essence of London well
3. Use the 'guardian' paper, not the Mirror.
4. Close ups on performance
5. Love the sequins of road signs
6. Loved the fast editing, very effective
7. Concept makes the video, for the album cover maybe try to photoshop a picture of David Cameron
8. I liked the fast cuts before the telephone boxes in the middle
9. Liked the bits in bed at the beginning and the end great location use

We will take this feedback on board and look at perhaps changing or adding things to our video which have been suggested by our peers.

Album Cover

The first draft of our cover is finished, however we have had some ideas to include the characters from our music video into our album artwork. We are going to organise a photoshoot to get some images that would be suitable for both the front and back covers, as well as the inside digipack. 

Filming Four:

Last week, within the xmas holidays we completed more of our filming. Both Ellie and Lucy were unable to attend as they were both ill so me, Jack and Tom went up to London to complete the last of our shots. The trip to London went very well and we managed to complete the following: We re-filmed the Trafalgar Square shot, filmed more street signs, re-filmed the telephone box shot and lastly we filmed at Buckingham Palace. The day went very well and we managed to complete all shots that we needed to do.
We only need to do a few more shots to be completed, these are: the stop motion shot, the 'go at it alone' shot with Ed Miliband, the sun shot and the 'Wheres Wally' shot. This week in lesson we will upload the footage to final cut and edit the shots we completed within the xmas holidays.