Digipak Research - by Josh

 As part of our coursework we needed to design a digipak for our music video. This first consisted of researching album cover art in our particular genre (Dance/House). The first ones I looked at were the ones that consisted largely of graphics as opposed to one photograph. Below are some of the albums by Drum and Bass band: Pendulum.

 Despite the album art using some pictures (that of the eye in 'Hold Your Colour' and the fish in 'Immersion') the art relies heavily on graphics that surround and emphasise these photographs. I personally really like these album covers as they look stunning and are an illustration of how we are able to create beautiful art simply with a few pictures and photoshop.

 The album name 'Immersion' directly relates to the album art, for a man and a woman are submersed in the sea among many other sea creatures. The intricate and detailed art is also meant to 'immerse' us in the sense that we are drawn in by it.

 'Hold Your Colour' could have a possible relation to the cover as it is made up of many different colours and shades, as well as colour being directly drawn from the eye, which is made to draw our attention, eyes being a focus of many different types of art.
'In Silico' is actually an expression used to mean "performed on computer or via computer simulation", which relates to the computer-generated graphics on the album cover, and could have possible connotations regarding what seems to be a fetus enclosed within an egg with sperm encircling it. This could refer to how Pendulum see their work (the album) as their child, the importance they hold to it and how they have created this through computers. We can draw a comparison between 'Immersion' and 'Hold Your Colour' in the sense that they feature original images that have been heavily manipulated to enhance them, whereas 'In Silico' makes use of simpler graphics. There is a continued house style through the covers as they all make use of heavily edited computer graphics to create the covers but there is perhaps no obvious correlation between the three, i.e. no band members are featured or the same font being used.

 There is no prevalent font through the three albums, and although they do bear resemblance to one another, there appears to be no brand recognition in that respect.

  As you can see from the inside design of 'Hold Your Colour', the concept of the stream of light coming out of the eye is continued on from the cover. This also applies for the song list on the back panel. Light is also shown bursting out of a pair of hands on the design behind the CD, very similar to that of the eye and surrounding inside design. The whole design of the panels uses a similar, dark background with a green, blue and pink/purple colour palette, using white against solid black for the font so it stands our easily.

 'Hold Your Colour' was the main inspiration behind this single (Witchcraft) cover art, the use of the eye being the most noticeable feature they chose to centre both pieces on. Again, this has been heavily edited, perhaps even the eye isn't an original photograph. The reason I believe this looks much more like a single cover art rather than a whole album is because there is only one centre-point for the viewer to look at, this being the eye, which takes up a lot of the whole image with there being little else to be looked at. This differs from 'Hold Your Colour' in the sense that, despite the eye being the main focus-point, it is much smaller than the 'Witchcraft' eye and features more around the whole cover such as the roots around the eye and the bubbles rising up through the title.

  The inside art for 'Immersion' bears similar resemblance to the cover; behind the CD it looks like an empty space underwater which the CD fills up. On the left side you can see the 'thank you's' which consists of a lot of text, thus being the reason the background is kept simple with solid black and only a couple of graphics added in.

 

  The song list on the right panel above compare very strongly, for the colour palette of black and blue as well as pink/purple are carried on from the front cover. The font for the songs is the same as the album title on the front. There remain some sea creatures as well as beams of blue light from above the water along with coral amongst other rocky features along the bottom, which all feature on the cover.

 The CD art uses original images for the bubbles as well as the jellyfish. This bears strong resemblance to the other four panels as it is underwater, uses black and blue for the colours and the use of the bubbles is meant to emphasise that the viewer has just been 'immersed', thus also emphasising the album title.

 The album art above by House supergroup Swedish House Mafia is of their two albums: Until One and Until Now. Their first album (Until One) features a very simple design with formal serif text which could be representative of their plain and formal nature. Until Now on the other hand features the three band members with their iconic three circles behind their heads, perhaps striking a resemblance to the circular halos found behind Jesus Christ's head in pictures of him.

 The electronic group Nero's only album 'Welcome Reality' features futuristic graphics accompanied by the name with their unique font spread across the cover. This is typical of albums; to have the artist name in the centre of the page which becomes the main focus of the art, especially considering the artist's name is far larger than the album name (artist promotion and recognition). It also bears some resemblance to a film poster or DVD cover due to the credits at the bottom of the cover. It seems appropriate for an electronic/house group such as Nero to encorporate futuristic graphics in their cover art, since this genre often makes use of the fact that it seems modern and advanced compared to other genres.

 A possibly more mainstream dance producer, Calvin has had 3 albums, with his most recent one '18 Months' reaching number 1 in the charts. His first album makes relatively simple use of a photograph of Harris edited to give it a cartoon effect. I believe this album art to be quite effective as although it is simple, it stands our quite well, yellow and black contrasting quite differently. It does however still retain a certain techno/dance appeal with the digital font. The second album has some continuity from the first one as the picture has the same 'light-filled' glasses along with the same font. The woman along with the glasses add glamour to the art, possible a metaphor to the album title 'Ready for the Weekend', implying going out to clubs and parties, which seems appropriate since Harris's dance music is very popular amongst clubs. His latest album contrasts highly from his first two, since it doesn't feature a facial close up or the glasses, as well as the text instead featuring prominently in the middle of the cover instead of the to the side. It is, however, another relatively simple album art, with an unedited photograph with Harris sitting on the pavement, which could be described as untypical of dance album covers. An interesting aspect of this album cover is that the background features in Harris's music video for his single 'Bounce'. This is very uncommon in not just dance digipaks but also for all digipaks of every genre, since the album is a collective of lots of singles and isn't just based around one. Harris possibly decided to use this for the digipak cover as artists often want to add in a personal touch to their covers (it being a work of their art), and he may feel that the music video for 'Bounce" relates to his life or bears some resemblance to it.

Filming - Day 8 - 31st January - by Josh

 Yesterday we attempted to film the last shot of our final cut, but we unfortunately came across a problem. We were going to film at the Priory Centre car park, and after about 15 minutes of mapping the location and working out what we wanted to film, a security guard came up and told us that we were not able to film in the car park due to it being private property. This was extremely irritating as we found that this would be perfect for re-filming the car park scenes, and we knew it would be very difficult to find another suitable location, as well as not having a lot of daylight left. After we looked around a few areas, Luke noticed that we did not have the tripod. While Luke, Dan and I went to look at the industrial area as a possible location, James and Phil went to look for tripod in McDonalds, where we ate for lunch. Thankfully, it was still there, but by the time they'd found it, Luke, Dan and myself had looked around the industrial area and discovered that this also, would not be suitable. By this time nightfall was nearly upon us, and after some discussion, we decided that we would try and film today at 'Stone House', an old abandoned mental asylum. We do not have much time for this as Dan and Phil have lessons until 3.30, therefore Luke and I shall go at 1 o' clock to scout the area and set up the camera shots. James is going to meet us at 2.30, which will hopefully gives us enough time to discuss the technical areas of the scene, until James's mother drops Dan and Phil off at the location at around 3.45, giving us just under an hour to film.

 When we got to Stone House we scouted the location for about an hour around the area, including the abandoned houses next to Stone House. The scene we wanted to film required a space where the thief could be trapped by the masked men against a wall or something similar. Unfortunately, after searching we found there wasn't anywhere suitable around Stone House, since in every situation there was no exit route for the thief to take, e.g. we considered him running up to the house and attempting to open a door to no avail, but the only option for the thief to take would be to run the same way he had came which would be blocked by the masked men. However, before Dan and Phil arrived we found a place where we thought we could shoot the scene (image below).
 
 We thought this could work as Dan would run up to the wooden door and attempt to force it open, where Phil and I would slowly walk up the ramp towards him.

 

 After several shots (images below) of us advancing on Dan, he would leap over the fence as the lyrics 'brace yourself for the grand finale' are heard. Both myself and Phil would follow him by simultaneously jumping over the rail that ran along the rail and continue to chase him.

 

 

 

 This was a rather difficult day for us, as the location was relatively unknown to us (apart from Luke), it was awkward to get to and we had little time in which to film. Despite this, we managed to shoot all the shots we wanted in the time required before darkness fell which we were all satisfied with. Hopefully this was our last filming day, as accumulated they have taken up more than a week to film all the shots we know have, despite us not using every shot filmed (such as the car park scene where it seems none of those shots will be used).

Filming - Day 7 - 22nd January - by Josh

 As advised by our Media teacher, we sought to add an element of performance to our video. We ultimately decided upon adding a singer to the video who would appear at the start of the video to accompany the opening lyrics. With this aspect we also added another feature, more so perhaps plot twist: The thief (Dan) would be the DJ to the song, and would appear as the DJ at the start along with the singer. He would prompt the singer to start singing, at which point after he would eject the disc and leave the room. For this scene we used a recording studio at Luke's dad's workplace (Deluxe 142). We may also use the footage of the singer throughout the song at different points, but we are not fully decided yet. We have also decided to change the ending to the song, having decided that this was one of the weak points within our video: the chase would lead back to the recording studio, upon where Dan would be trapped by the two masked men. This ends on a shot of them closing in on Dan. However, this cuts to Dan waking up from a dream, which changes to a point of view shot showing that the disc is still in his possession. Relieved, Dan lays back down. Another point of view shot of Dan looking up at the ceiling, with a blinking effect showing him closing his eyes several times. Upon the last blink, the two masked men appear in front of him, where the video then ends. We felt this was a much stronger and more interesting end to our video than the masked men taking back the disc and removing their masks to Dan. In regards to our choice of singer, we decided to use myself, since it would not only be easier than having to find someone and take them up to London, but we all felt that I suited the role since both James and Luke considered me to look similar to a singer, especially that of a dance genre singer. Moreover, this would be easier since I knew the song quite well by this point and I knew the words, what sort of appearance I should take on when singing, etc. Below are the pictures from the recording studio, including the recording booth.

 We started the day with the singing, since only I was needed for this part; Dan and Phil could therefore relax (having got up to catch the train at nine to Charing Cross). We looked around four studios before we decided on the one we used; we chose this one since there was a large recording deck as well as a separate recording booth, just like what real recording artists use. We captured this scene with several shots and differing angles. Below are the pictures from this scene.

 

 

  Fortunately, these shots were not too hard to shoot and didn't require too much time to capture. Since we were already in the recording studio, we decided to shoot the shots involving Dan leaving with the disc:

 Directly after filming these shots we moved onto the last scene of our video involving Dan being chased back to the studio. These shots took a long time to capture as Dan had some difficulty falling backwards onto sofa and making it look natural. It was also difficult for Phil and myself to slow down after having rushed into the room.

 We then filmed the footage of Dan waking up from his dream and looking at the disc. This was easier than the last shots since James was able to film the point of view shots. However, the shot of Phil and I looking at the camera (i.e. Dan) was difficult as we needed to get into position quickly to allow for the blink of the camera.

 The last filming we did that day was the shot of Phil and myself running out of the security CCTV room, since we needed to re-film this shot as we discovered upon watching this previously filmed footage that Luke was in shot. This was because he needed to operate the light switch, which we overcame this time by using a remote light switch to alter the lighting in the room.

 We felt that this was a very successful filming day since we got a lot of filming done and captured exactly what we wanted from that day. However, we anticipate these shots will be difficult to edit into our existing video since they are filmed in a somewhat different way to what we already have. However, this will of course be worth it to see our video have a much better intro and ending.