ANCILLARY PHOTSHOOT (CONSTRUCTION)

These are pictures during the shoot of our ancillary images, of the two chess pieces which we intend to use as our two digipak inside covers. As you can see we have used two different tripods, one a smaller less sturdy tripod and the other a larger more secure tripod. We found that after we had taken the shots when looking back at them the images taken on the larger tripod produced a much steadier, cleaner shot due to the balance and stability the tripod provided us with.

POST BY: Danny O'Brien

ANCILLARY AUDIENCE FEEDBACK (RESEARCH)

 Shown on the right hand side is the completed questionnaires that we made and printed out, then asked a variety of people to fill in. We got a mixed review from the people we asked, which we found helpful as it is always good to get different opinions in order to accurately target our chosen audience. We chose participants both from a media and non-media background to get a broader perspective on how the product would be perceived. We handed out seven questionnaires, of which four were filled out by people with prior knowledge about the current coursework and conventions of digipaks, the other three people had no idea about what we were making and were randomly chosen, however were all within the age range of our target audience.

The main consensus in the answers was that it seemed like a product that could be marketed and would work in the real world if it were made to be a professional digipak.

All of the people we asked clearly identified that it was a digipak, due to the four panels and the shape. Another thing that every participant said was that the rough sketches of our product looked like they were targeting teenagers or young people.

There was a varied response in answer to the question that asked what genre the digipak was, which is therefore something that we need to consider when we make our product. Every person that we asked, bar one participant, said either yes or maybe in answer to 'Do you think this product would work on a professional artists album?'.

SOFTWARE RESEARCH - PIC MONKEY (RESEARCH)

 In this post I'll be playing around with a software we haven't used before; Pic Monkey. The reason for this is to test it with the quality of our own software which is Adobe Photoshop.

Original Photo:

Urbane fade gradient has been added to the photo which has darkened the image.

 

The image below has simply been tampered with. For example, no gradients have been added however the brightness has been turned up and the shadows have been enhanced to add a cool effect to the image.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK - QUESTIONNAIRE (RESEARCH)

Below is the questionnaire that I have put together and will distribute to various people, both people who do and don't know about the project I am currently undertaking.

ANCILLARY ROUGH SKETCHES (PLANNING)

Shown on the right are rough sketches of the front, back and both inside covers of our digipak. The front cover is going to be a still from our music video of two arms, the arms of our actors. The image will span the majority of the front cover with just a portion of the left and right side left as a plain black background. On the arms will be two tattoos on the same place of each arm, one x and one o. These letters will be made of impossible shapes which we will create in photoshop.

The back cover will be another still from the video - this time of a blurred screen with smoke again covering nearly the whole of the cover. Within this smoke will be the individual song titles of the album.

On the inside covers we will have images of two chess pieces, of which one a King and one a Queen. These represent the boy and the girl that are our actors in our music video. It also is a reference to our music video, as we have shots of our actors playing chess within the video. The reference provides us with some consistency in the promotional activities we use.

SIMILAR ANCILLARY REMAKE (PLANNING)

On the right is Gorgon City's "Real" EP front cover. This is what I have chosen to remake as it is a similar front cover to what we aim to produce, so remaking this acts as a practice at making our own album cover. 

I started off by importing this image of a grunge texture into Photoshop as it is the same as is used as a background in the Gorgon City cover.

I then proceeded to use various saturation and invert tools to achieve the colour and saturation that matched the one of the Gorgon City cover. This acted as a background for the front cover.









The next step was to create the logo that features on the Gorgon City Real EP cover. I simply did this by creating rectangles then duplicating these many times and changing the length to fit the shape I wanted to achieve. Then I had to cut the end to a diagonal which I did by using the marquee tool to select the bits of the boxes I didn't want then rotating the rectangle to achieve the angled cut.






After this I added ovals and coloured them using the same colours as the Gorgon City cover did. The next step after putting all the ovals in the correct position was to use the displace tool to make a displacement map to create the same effect the real cover had.

The final thing I did was the adjustments of the layer that contained the ovals, playing around with the burns, overlays etc to find the right contrast between the background, logo and ovals.

 On the left is the actual example of the Gorgon City cover, on the right is my attempt to emulate this particular front cover, made from scratch using Photoshop.

ANCILLARY PLANNING: COSTUME, PROPS, ACTORS & LOCATION (PLANNING)

Like video planning, It is vital we have a clear idea as to what we're trying to achieve before shooting the image for our ancillaries.

Costume:
The clothing worn by the person in our Digi pack will be relatable to Flume's target audience. We also don't want to over complicate the colour scheme in our images because it will make it harder to add effects when we come to putting the images on Photoshop. Therefore, it's most likely the T-shirt he wears will be a clear white colour.

A T-shirt is the only item of clothing that will be shown because the images on album cover and magazine advert are relatively short. If we want to shift the focus on the persons face then a smaller framing will be used, such as a close up.













Props:

Props will be quite minimal when it comes to shooting our ancillary. The only form of props that we will use is accessories to add to the actors clothing. For example, shades, watches etc. Obviously attention to detail will be massively important when it comes to the ancillary, but we don't want to over complicate the final piece.







 

Actors:
We have managed to obtain the same actor we used in our music video for our ancillary task, creating a clear link between the two. Here is a picture of the actor we're using.

Location:
Ideally we would like a definitive background because it will make it easier when it comes to crafting the ancillary in photoshop. We shot the majority of our video At our group member Danny's house, because the white walls in his living space created a good effect on shots. Another location we could use is the drama studio.



Alternative Plan:

In our research, We've discovered a lot of artists haven't used their faces, or anyone's faces for that matter, in their album covers. This suggests they're trying to promote the content in the album rather than the person. We might take the same route when it comes to our Digi Pack and just use the actors on the inside pages. An example is Gorgon City's 'sirens'  EP.