CD covers

CD covers task- Research on five different CD cover designs.

Florence and the machine here I have noticed has used very dark colours the three establish house colours I noticed to be are black, white and grey these are all very dark and i think ties in well with their genre of music of indie/soft rock. This cover only shows two typography font styles, this has kept to the convention of only using three or less fonts. Florence and the machine show their identity well as they show the main singer Florence on the centre of the cover. The lungs presented on Florence's chest represent the album name 'lungs' which was visualy effective, as this image is iconic as it is shown on the website, CD cover and various other places. The visual birds and flowers in the background show a hint of a femine side to the band with florence being the main icon but does this in a subtle way. I found this cover to be a cluttered cover rather than having white space around the artist.

Lily Allen Alright, still.

Lily Allens album 'Alright, still' was released on the 14th July 2006. The album cover shows her niche straight away with her comical theme she has shown through her career. Lily is the main feature on the cover it shows her as herself a simple girl in very normal clothes and a simple image. As many CD covers artists are the main attraction on the cover, however for Lily she isnt the main attraction. The background shows a comical effect as it shows different cartoons of random objects that may be involved with the album. The colours fit well with the comical niche and her style of being 'fun' with alot of blues, reds, pinks and white. The typography is very informal and shows a cartoon like font which fits well with the rest of her album cover and niche.

Kate Nash- "Made of bricks"
I found this album cover to be very much like Lily Allens cover, even though they both have a different
cover they are the same in the sense they both have a comic effect. I found this album cover to be clever as instead of having the artist as the main attraction it instead has a yellow house with trees surrounding it placed in the centre of the cover then with kate nash as a smaller image walking into the house . This then ties in with the name of the album cover "made of bricks" which then underneath shows a brick house, which shows a relationship between thr words and visuals.

The font used on this album cover is used within her promotion such as her website which shows the same font for her name. The simple blue background gives allowance to concentrete on the main image of the house and other images.

I noticed at the bottom of the CD cover in a red box shows what the album includes this a clever way of getting the audience to buy the album as they may see a No. single that they like and then will be attracted to buy the whole album.

Marina and the diamonds- The Family Jewels

When looking at the artist marina and the diamonds album cover The family Jewels, the first image that i saw ans thought stood out was the artist herself. I found the omage of Marina is a very dominant part of the cover. The postioning of her head i found interesting as her head was postioned in a unique way to say what other artists would be postioned on their album covers, this may suggest this artist Marina is unique and may attract towards consumers. The floral background helps make Marina the main part of the album cover as the colours are very subtle using greens, creams and purples. The font of her name and the name of her album is the font used in everything she has within her promoition e.g. webites, posters and album covers. This helps the audience with reconising this artist as the will remember the font and logo of her name. I think the font is very unique and looks as it has been given a personal touch by the artist herself.

Adele 19.

When looking at this album cover by Adele the first thing i noticed was the artist Adele. The image of the artist powers the CD cover. The CD cover doesnt shows the artists mouth so it is not clear what emotion and what expression is shown on her face. I also noticed that her eyes are closed i found that both of this shows mystery towards the artist for the audience. The colour and background show a very dark black which highlights the partly shadowed face that powers the CD cover. The name of the artist shows the same font as her website which will help consumers know that that is her font and will then get reconised.

Cd covers

CD covers
When creating our CD cover i will need to consider a brand identity. We will have to consider this through:
-Establish house colours, this can consist of three different house colours for the album but CD covers have been known to break this convention and we may do the same.
-Typography must match genre and style- it would not be a good idea to use more than three font styles.
- Images used must target our audience, on existing CD covers images have been contraversitial or shown an image of the artist. Some CD covers depending on the artist or genre of music can use a sex promotion.
- Consider white space and visual clutter, what one would we want to use within our CD cover.

Having a 'niche'

Having a 'niche'?

Having a 'niche' is when a band/artist has something that sets them apart and when something is different from other bands.

Heather Mcdonald gives the following advice to artists:

Find your niche- The sad truth is, every writer, radio station, website or fan for that matter , you are trying to reach is likely being bombarded with info from other music hopefuls.

Creating a niche has many different aspect to it. It could include Cammerawork, editing, star image motifs, voyeurism, audience engagement and style of music video (narrative, perfomance, concept based.)

Camerawork; The close-up seems to predominate.

John stewart of oil Facotory states that he sees the music video as essentially having the aesthetics of the TV commercial, with lots of close ups and lighting being used most prominently for the star's face.

- Significant impact upon meaning.

Camera movement, angle and shot distance all need to be analysed.

- The close-up predominates

- Partly becasue of the size of the screen.

- The desire to create a sense of intimacy for the viewer.

-It also emphasises half of the commodity on sale (not just the song, but the artist.)

Editing:

The most common form of editing associtated with the music promo is:

-fast cut montage (lots of images flashing quickly sometimes along with the music.), rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing thus ensuring multiple viweing. Slow pace is often used and gentler transistions to establish a certain mood. e.g dido.

- digital effects which play with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.

- split screens

- colourisation

-blockbuster film style CGI.

Examples of the editing being very slow and establishes a mood, are artist coldplay and their song- violent hill, and artist Radiohead and their song- street spirit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un7usf68eE&feature=related

Having a 'niche' can vary in what form it is. It could be in many forms examples of 'niche' could be fashion and comedy.

An example of comedy and 'niche' would be Lily Allen.

Lily allen was born 2nd may 1985. She really started being her career after her mainstream first single called 'smile' was released in the 2006 with regal records. Lily Allen started with the myspace viral marketing root then becoming more successful after being noticed by thousands on myspace and more importantly regal records.

Lily Allen has shown a very comical theme throughout her music. she has shown a fun loving, funny outlook in her videos and also within her lyrics within her songs, such as 'smile', 'the fear' and .

'Smile'

Even though Lily allen style has changed through from her first single 'smile' to her current work she has always kept to the comical theme through her clothes and lyrics and sassy acting through her videos.

'The fear'

I think she was sucessful with record compaines as this her niche is something that isnt seen very often especially within a young female artist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMISuX_c&ob=av2e

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WxDrVUrSvI&ob=av2e

The way in which Lily Allen first promoted herself using a social networking sight called myspace, would not work for our artist as Florence and the machine is already a signed artist who is well known. However we could take insperation from Lily allen's niche and use comic effect to our album. Florence and the machine is an different type of artist to Lily allen but i think if we decided to use the comic niche effect such as Lily Allen we could make a good oppurtunity of it.

The artist my partner and I have decided to use is florence and the machine. We relise that florence and the machine is already a signed artist to island records. The action that we used after knowing this knowledge was to write a letter to the managing director of island records.

Content of our letter:

Dear Mr Crossingham,

We are writing to request permission to use a track from an Island Records artist for a piece of A2 Media Studies coursework. The artist in question is Florence and the Machine, and the song we would like to use is 'You've Got The Love'.

For the project, we have to shoot, direct, edit and create a music video for a song of our choice, and this is then sent off to the exam board for marking. We understand that this is a big ask, but we hope you take into consideration the fact that we wish to use the music ina private, educative manner, and the video we create will be accessible electronically by the exam board, and will not be shown in public at any time.

The track is absolutely perfect for the storyboard we have created for our video, and we belive that, should you grant permission, that we can gain the very best marks to enable us to go and take our chosen media-related subjects at university.

Thank you for your time, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Adam Mills Naomi Smith
Year 13 Media studies
Hitchin Girls' School

Promotional websites

Promotional websites


Florence and the machine




I thought the Florence and the machine official website is very clever as it represents the artist very much to what her music is like. Her website shows main conventions of average promotional websites. It clearly shows a news and blog link this give the audience a chance to give comments and find out essential news for tours and album releases. Like many of artists websites Florence and the machines website shows a music player of a number of her tracks, she also has a music video presented ready to play for the audience to show her new track 'Cosmic love'. Both of these ideas gives the audience a chance to hear the artist music for free and at the same time if Florence and the machine is never heard of by a person then they can listen to her music free on the website. Colour/images and typography has been used in a clever way on this artists website. The moving images of red lungs corresponds with her album names 'lungs'. I found the website to be very different by the colour.

I analysed the foo fighters and found their website interesting. The website shows main conventions as it automatically shows an image of the band. It also has a scroller of images of each of the bands albums covers this advertises the band and gives an idea to the audience what each of their album covers look like. The colours contrast well with the type of music that is involved with quite heavy music with quite heavy dark colours.

When looking at eminems website i thought it suited the artist very well, very simple. The webside shows different links that fans may want to see, such as news, videos and events. It also shows a photograph taken of him from his new video 'not afraid'. The colours choosen for the website fit well how the artist is normally portrayed and promoted as very boystries and shown as a real person with subtle colours of black, white with some red i thought shows this. This is also shown through the typography which is very simple just like the artist himself.

Intertextuality and music videos

Intertextuality and music videos

Intertextuality is when aspects of film, television, video games, photography and fashion are incorporated within a music video. Intertextuality is apart of goodwins theory.

• Since cinema was invented it created the ability to bring songs and music to life.


• Advances in technology have transformed the music video into what it is today.


• Surprisingly, music videos have been around since the 1920's (Bessie Smith)


• Many Jazz musicians of the time, such as Bessie smith, made short films to accompany popular songs.
  
• 1970: The record industry discovers TV-Shows as a great opprtunity to promote their artists.


• They focus on producing short "promos", early music videos which started to replace the live performance of the artist on the TV-stage.
  
• 1975:Bohemian Rhapsody a groundbreaking video released by Queen marked the beginning of the video era and set the language for the gay modern music video. The video is considereed one of the first to use advanced visual effect.
  
  

Intertextuality examples:

Films:

-2 pac and Dr Dre's 'califonia love' (Hype williams 1996, drawing on mad max)

- Madonna- 'Material girls' drawing on ('dimonds are a girls bestfriend', Mary Lambert 1985)

Television:

- The beastie boys spoof cop show titles sequence for sabotage (spike Jonze)

- Remsrecent news show parody 'bad day' (Tim hope 2003)

Video games:

- Robbie williams- Let love be your energy.

- The red hot chilli peppers- californication

- Gorillaz- Clint Eastwood

Fashion and photography:

-George michael- father figure

- Robert Palmer- addicted to love (1986)

Goodwins music video analysis

- Andrew Goodwin writing in 'Dancing in the distraction factory (Routledge 1992)

1) Music vidoes demonstrategene characteristics (e.g. stage performance in rock video, dance routine.

2) There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

3) There is a relationship between music and visuals.

4) The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)

5) There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within, telescopes,etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6) There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc.)